The Thunderbirds Courtyard [GRYFFINDORS]

Ducky had practice enough exuding confidence when he actually had none that it was easy enough to take the role of comfortable leader. In most situations, he could not lead his peers because he was the least in the know. However, with all of them equally at a loss, he found his confident nature and broad figure had become easy to look toward for guidance.

If only he knew what he were doing.

Once he had gone back to fetch his trunk, light in comparison to most of his housemates, he had helped others get on their way before approaching the gate that Mulligan assumed would be the Gryffindor counterpart. Voice loud and authoritative, the door gave before him quickly, and he waited as the rest of his house shuffled through.

Once most of them were in, he turned to view the courtyard they had found themselves in. He cursed under his breath, as it seemed to have gone native, as though the plants had been left to grow wildly all year. There was something strange about it, but strangest of all was that there did not appear to be a door… Wait. Was that?

The roots of a tree had spread and in front of the door, barring its path. Ducky scrambled forward to tug on the door’s handle but it would not budge. Unless someone had a good idea, they were stuck.

Maybe the train would have been better.

Hit wanted to go home.

She never thought she'd tell herself that she wanted to go home. She was the outcast, the one that shouldn't want to go home because of the family she had to go back to. But it would've been better than this. Seriously, the one time she decided she'd go back home on the train something like this happens, it was just her luck. She, along with the others on the train were stuck somewhere new, that they'd never seen before and she couldn't help but be nervous about it, everyone else was.

She followed the rest of her house as they gathered in front of and passed through the gate doors. As she stepped through and noticed how untamed the area before them looked, she couldn't help but think that she was glad that her siblings had decided to go home in different ways. Actually, come to think of it, Josiah hadn't. She suddenly became scared that something happened to her little brother.

She thought Xem had taken him with him when they left but as she thought back, she remembered that Josiah had wanted to go with his new friends on the train. She really hoped he was okay. But she needed to focus on what was going on now, in front of her.

"I think we need to get the roots out of the way somehow." She finally spoke up.

Andrew grudgingly went back to the train, dragged off his trunk and Poppy's and started to drag them both around the school grounds. They reached a door and they both tried yelling their names at it. The creature looked like a porcupine on hind legs.

"Well, that's just bloody ugly," Andrew frowned as Poppy shouted her name at the door. The doors opened to her. "Well, how happy for you. You're a two legged porcupine thing," he said, "whatever that means." He started to drag her trunk towards the open door, but he found out immediately that he could not pass through the door. There was some sort of enchantment that seemed to prohibit him from helping her any further. He gave it a big shove to get it through the door.

"Good luck," he told her. She smiled at him nervously and went through the gates. Picking up his own trunk again, he moved on until he got to the next gate--a gate with a great big bird of some sort. A hawk-ish, eagle-ish thing. He shouted his name and the gate opened to him.

"Great. I'm a bird," he said to himself. He grabbed the handle of his trunk and dragged it through the gate, hoping to find a room, a stairway, some sort of dormitory--anything. What did he see? More outdoors. A courtyard. Across the courtyard was another big wooden door, but the others who were already here didn't seem to have had any luck getting the door open.

He went over to the other door--one that actually did seem to be attached to a building. He was looking for hinges, a keyhole, anything helpful. There was nothing. Heck, he didn't even see a proper latch on this door. He knocked, and it was greeted by lots more nothingness. He shouted his name at the door, and again found nothing.

Okay, so that was out. He started walking around, looking for windows, maybe something to climb on, some way of breaking in, but it wasn't looking promising.

Andrew could pick locks. He could pick pockets. He could climb just about anything he set his mind to. This was going to require some thinking. Surely he could think up a way to break in, right? And if he did, he wanted to find whatever imbecile had thought this was any sort of idea of hospitality, no matter how unrefined and crude Americans were, and try to appeal to their humanity.

A voice sounded next to him and Ducky turned, eyes falling on Hitame Mulciber. If she didn't seem to be someone so used to her own little bubble, he might have thrown an arm around her and ask her in that lazy, good-natured way how she supposed they do that. He liked Hitame, from one name-rejecting Gryffindor to another, and thought she could use being shaken out of her sulk. But he didn't think it would help to make light of the situation, even if he thought everyone needed to see that they were not completely lost.

So instead he nodded, giving her sentiment affirmation. "Right. Yes. That's it. That's what we do next."

His eyes drifted towards the most active being in the courtyard, Andrew Diamond. Diamond typically seemed to be off causing trouble, so Ducky wondered if he had any clever ideas. "Diamond? How good are you at pruning?"

He looked towards Hit, smiling. Was his plan working? Were they all relaxing?

Behind him, one little girl started crying. Seemed not.

The roots were there and they weren't going to let them get inside without a fight. Fight, as in being a pain in the arse to get them moved out of the way, that is. The had three options, if she thought about it. One: cutting away at them, two: setting fire to them, or three: continue pulling at the door to see if it would eventually budge.

The third one was out, hands down.

So either cutting away or burning was left. Before she could say anything else, Ducky had turned his attention to Andrew, whom she'd actually not noticed was there until he'd been spoken to. She blinked, watching Ducky interact with him and quickly looked away once he'd looked back at her with a smile. No, she wasn't antisocial, she wasn't even sure why she ended up looking away. Weird.

She winced as a younger girl started crying and walked over to her, "Don't worry. Everything'll be alright." she spoke softly to the girl in hopes that her words would calm her down. She looked toward Ducky again and said, "Maybe we could just burn them. I figure it'd be faster." Hit looked at the door, "We could even burn the door for what it's worth."