Blotted Out

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"Mr. Nott, please stay after class." Professor Trelawney's voice was as airy as ever, but for once it silenced the class. The students, self-segregated Ravenclaws and Slytherins sitting on opposite sides of the room, all turned to look at their dark haired classmate. His face was disappointingly blank, and they turned back to going over their dream journals.

Theodore Nott himself was partnered with Daphne Greengrass, possibly the one of the worst matched pairings Professor Trelawney had ever had to assign. Greengrass's assignments were always heavily influenced by whatever last week's lesson had been. As soon as Trelawney gave a lecture on an omen, Greengrass spotted one prancing about the lake. Nott was something else entirely.

Once the other students had clamoured out, Trelawney was alone with Nott, who had hung back in his seat.

"What's the matter, professor?" With a clattering of beads, she turned toward him and landed in the seat opposite.

"You are wasting your gift, my dear," she explained.

The boy frowned. "I haven't received any presents recently, professor."

"No, no your gift." She raised a hand to her forehead, and closed her eyes before explaining, some level of mystique dropping from her voice. "Mr. Nott, I can't help but notice that while your dream journal is intentionally creative, your readings of the leaves have always been precise, accurate, and effortless. Not to mention your mastery of the unit on tarot cards would be considered impressive in a wizard at least twice your age. You cannot hide your gift from me, dear child. We seers have a way of finding one another."

When she'd opened her eyes again, she saw that the boy was attempting to look through the table at the floor. She waited patiently until he replied.

"I'm not a seer. I just..."

"You just see things?" she tried, but he shook his head at once, looking back up at her again.

"No, I don't. I sort of feel them. It's like I've already read something about it, except I've never thought of it before. It's like events are familiar, except I don't remember where I know them from, I just sort of-sort of know things, in the moment. Usually it's things about people."

"What kind of things?"

"Dark things. Mostly." The professor looked alarmed and the boy quickly elaborated. "Not... Not dark-dark. But, things that happen to them, things that they think are dark. Feelings they have. Like, like it doesn't matter much to you or me, what our hair colour is, right? But when I sit across from Daphne, I just, I get this feeling, just this notion that she wishes she were blond. Her sister is blond and I think she wishes she were more like her sister. Or, or Blaise Zabini's mother... Dark things about his mother, I know those, too."

The boy was torn between being alarmed by the light in his teacher's eyes and the relief of finally explaining his condition to someone properly. She seemed to be intent on hearing more, so he continued.

"It makes it hard, being with other people. I know them all so well, so quickly, but they don't know me at all. And I can't-I can't talk to them, or I know I'll slip up and say something that won't make sense, or they'll think I'm spying, or something."

"That must be very hard for you." Her voice was almost devoid of any mistiness, but he hardly noticed.

"Well, it's worse for them. I mean I-I can see what's broken with people. I want to fix it, but I can't, because I'm not supposed to know. I don't know how to help these people. And it would be so easy, so easy to hurt them with this information. Sometimes I think it would be better if I just died." Trelawney looked startled, so the student leaned in, now seeming to have realized he'd said something he shouldn't have. "Don't... Don't mention this, to anyone, but my father, he's in with a bad lot. We don't really talk, at all, but if he... If he figured out, you know, how my mind works, he'd hand me over to them. They're going to ask me Harry Potter's secrets, or something."

The woman strummed her hands on the desks, a faint jiggling arising from the numerous rings lining her fingers. "Harry Potter concerns me, too. He's going to die young, I can feel that much. Do you-do you know what's going to happen to him?"

Theodore shook his head and was silent, before a slight blush arose in his cheeks. "That's another problem, professor. I-I don't want to be anyone's weapon. So I try hard not to focus on Potter at all, I just go for the people nearby him. And... Well, Weasley, he's the youngest boy of so many, his life is rather obvious. Granger, though, I keep getting lost in her past and future. But there are strange parts that- I don't know if someone is blocking me, I know Snape has some sort of wall up, but Granger..." Trelawney nodded for him to continue, though she pursed her lips at the name. "I sometimes get, notions I guess, with parts missing. It's like parts of her future are blotted out. It's not like that with anyone else, it's really concerning."

Trelawney strummed her hands again and asked, "Well, she does have a particular lack of intuition. It's possible that her blocking off of her inner eye has closed something off to you?" The boy nodded but she could almost tell he didn't agree. She sniffed and tried again. "Why are you concerned? A gifted boy like yourself, concerned about someone as stubborn as Ms. Granger."

The dark haired boy drew his chair back and swung his back over his shoulder. "She's not stubborn, professor, she's determined." Trelawney half expected him to storm down the ladder, as he there was a startling and sudden edge in his voice, but he paused next to where she sat and seemed to compose himself.

"Thank you, Professor Trelawney. I appreciate that you wanted to talk to me. I'll try harder with the dream journals. Do have a nice day."

She watched, still seated, as the boy made his way down the ladder. As he was about to be far enough down that the floor obscured him, they made eye contact, and he added softly, "You know, plenty of us take you seriously. You shouldn't worry about it so much."

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