No one yet

"Why don't you settle in at your cottage, Mr. Hawkfeather." Ms. Naylor suggests in what you guess is her most reassuring tone, "That office hasn't been used in years. I'll reach out to my head of House and Grounds and see about getting it cleaned out for you." You've seen this kind of stalling technique before in the military and suspect that once you are settled into your cottage, it might take months before the office suite was considered habitable. On the other hand, maybe it really is far worse than you imagine, in that case you should concede this fight gracefully.

"I don't mind a little mess, Ms. Naylor," you smile easily trying your best to keep this from becoming a power struggle. "Maybe we could go and look at it together?"

"Very well, Mr. Hawkfeather." Ms. Naylor, accepts your compromise without further protest. "I've met with all but one of the new teachers, and he's not scheduled to arrive for a couple hours."

Less than five minutes later, you walk into the Mellon building together. Like the main building at the front of the campus, this is a grey-stone building with six-foot windows and marble steps leading up to the first floor. It sits directly across a large neatly-mowed quadrangle from the building you were just in. Ms. Naylor confirms your suspicion that these are the two original buildings of the academy built over two-hundred years ago by the wealthiest families of the new Union as a place to educate their sheltered daughters.

As you walk, the stiff Headmistresses loosens up a little and points out the faculty building on your left adjacent to the dining hall, a more modern looking building with classrooms attached to the larger Mellon building by a walkway and finally the path leading to the cottages. Once inside the high ceilinged twin of the one across the quad, you see the stairway leading to the forbidden dorm-rooms in the second and third floors of the building, but Ms. Naylor leads the way to the left. There is something about the way her firm backside wiggles under the pencil skirt of grey wool and once again you wonder what this woman would look like if she chose to dress a little less severely.

"Here is the office Mr. Hawkfeather." Ms. Naylor stops in front of an unmarked door; only a slight discoloured rectangle on the dark wood of the door gives any indication of this office's past history. "Like I said, this suite hasn't been used in over ten years, so I can't promise anything."