Chapter Nine: Death and Doom for our heroine
I didn't really have class right away—I had just used that as an excuse to get away from Regulus and his intolerable lameness. I had to admit to myself—although Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor and thus had betrayed the entire family, I had always felt more fascinated and intrigued by him. Not to mention that he was really handsome. Regulus, on the other hand, had always been everything that Sirius was not. For example, Regulus was boring, stupid, and just downright annoying. I still couldn't believe that he had just gone traipsing into some troll's den whistling and looking for treasure like it was a field trip.
Anyway, I still had a few hours before my next class—Divination—so I hiked down to the Slytherin common room, said the password (This time it was a verse selected from some poem by some silly English poet that Professor Slughorn was fond of:
"Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.")
and then I went to take a shower. After that, I grabbed a granola bar and quickly did some studying for Transfiguration class—in case we actually did any transfiguring in the next class. After an hour, Vera came in and we talked for a little bit about fluff (There was no way I was going to tell her about Regulus and his problems; I didn't want her to laugh at me. Besides, I had already decided that I was just going to forget about the entire ordeal—I really didn't care what happened to Severus anyway). Then, another hour passed and it was time for us to go to Divination. So, we grabbed our books and left.
The Divination classroom was also in a tower. This one, however, was easier to get to, as there was no sheer cliff-face that we had to scale. The classroom was dark and flowery smelling, and there were crystal balls on all of the tables. I was actually really excited for this class, because Divination was one of the subjects that I was most looking forward to*. Vera and I chose an empty table near the front of the room, and while we waited for everyone to get there, I eagerly gazed into the crystal ball, trying to see something. However, much to my dismay, I couldn't see anything except my dismal reflection. After we waited for five minutes, the teacher entered the room. She was oldish-looking, with long white hair, and she sort of looked like what I imagined a nun would look like underneath the habit. She also kind of looked like she could be Professor Dumbledore's twin sister.
"Hello class," she said in a kindly voice, "My name is Ariana Slughorn. I want everyone here to call me Ariana! Welcome to the wondrous, exciting, and extremely important subject of Divination! I know that most of you have already had me before in previous years, but for those of you that are new, I am serendipitously happy that I am finally meeting you, and I know that we will all become good friends."
She beamed at us with delight. I could see a couple of boys sitting in the corner of the classroom that were making gagging motions, but I ignored them. Some people were just so stupid—couldn't they see that this was going to be a fun and useful class?
"Now, because it is the first day of Divining the Future for some of you," she serenely continued, "We are going to start off easy. On each table is a crystal ball. I want each table to take turns peering into it, and use your textbooks, Unfogging the Future, to decipher what you see."
Once she was finished speaking, my table gathered around the crystal ball. Along with Vera and I, there were also a tall, dark, and handsome sixth-year Gryffindor named Frank Longbottom**, and a slender, square-jawed Gryffindor named Amelia Bones. For a Gryffindor student, she was okay. For example, this is what she first said to me:
"What's your name?"
"Narcissa."
"Narcissa? That's a pretty name."
Can't you see why I couldn't just dislike her? Even though she was in Gryffindor...
Anyway, we all took turns looking into the crystal ball. I went first, of course. First, I saw the face of Lucius Malfoy. According to the textbook, that meant that he was on my mind. Well, no duh! I didn't need a stupid textbook to tell me that—he's always on my mind! After that, I saw what looked like Eva Perón from Evita. According to the textbook, that meant that in my future, I was going to help lots of people while being very beautiful. That made me happy—I so desperately wanted to be beautiful. And finally, right when I was about to let Vera have a turn, I saw a big black dog. When I looked in the textbook, it said DEATHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AND DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!1111 I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this—I was too young to be doomed to die. But, then, right after all the capital letters, I saw a tiny footnote number. So, I went right to the bottom of the page and read it***. This made me feel kind of relieved, but mostly not. So, I raised my hand to ask Ariana about it. She was just shocked when I told her, but then she patted my shoulder and said "Oh, don't worry, sweet stuff. This was just your first day. You probably didn't even see the Grim—I bet it was just a baked potato or something." Then, she patted my shoulder again and moved on to the next table. I, however, did not feel very much reassured. Baked potato, my ass.
Later, when I was helping Vera decipher her visions (pirates waging war and James Potter [I desperately wanted to throttle her when she said that]), Professor Slughorn, the Potions teacher, suddenly walked in, his great moustaches swinging back and forth. He was clutching in his hands a brown paper bag.
"Dearest!" he called. "We switched our lunches up again!" This really made me stare, but nobody else did.
"Well," replied Ariana tartly, "If you would actually look in the paper sack to make sure you grabbed the right one before taking it, we wouldn't run into this problem so often. Now, just to spite you, I already ate half of the tuna fish sandwich—"
Professor Slughorn's moustache hairs noticeably drooped when she said this.
"—and the nectarine, just to teach you a lesson. Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"But...I don't like peanut butter and banana sandwiches!" protested Professor Slughorn.
"Well, that's just too bad!" Ariana smirked as she said this, and I got the feeling that she was enjoying this argument.
Amelia leaned over to me and whispered "They do this all the time—at least once a week. So by now, we're used to it."
That explained why none of the other students found this exchange at all interesting. "But wait," I whispered back to her, "You're telling me that they can't figure out how to keep their lunches straight? After how many years of being married and teaching at this school together?"
"Oh, they don't really get their lunches mixed up. They just pretend they do so they have an excuse to visit each other during class hours."
"But why?"
Amelia made a gesture that said 'just wait and watch.' So I did. After a few more minutes of friendly bickering, the two teachers then decided out loud that they would have to go into the nearby broom closet in order to get their lunch fiasco sorted out. They did so, and then I could hear loud snogging and smooching noises coming from the closet. I looked at Vera, horrified. She shrugged, as if to say 'well, they do this every week and we're all used to it now.' I decided to ignore the animalistic noises, and I started concentrating really hard on figuring out what my future held in store for me.
Thirteen minutes later, the two teachers came out of the broom closet, their hair really disheveled. "I'm glad we got that sorted out, sweetie pie!" Professor Slughorn called as he waddled out of the room.
Ariana walked to her chair, nearly falling over as she did so, and then she sat and surveyed her class giddily. "Where were we? Ah yes! Tea leaves are really useful when you're a tea clogger and you have a sudden urge to see—"
"Please, Ariana," a student called out, "We were learning about crystal balls!"
"Ah yes. Well, when trying to correctly view your future in a crystal ball—"
The door suddenly swung open again. This time, it was a haggard old man with brown stringy hair and wrinkles on his face. He was wearing a brown trench coat, was holding a magnifying glass up to his face, and he had a scrawny cat following him around his ankles.
"Who's that?" I whispered.
"That's Filch," Vera whispered back to me. "He takes care of the castle's grounds, and he doesn't tolerate mischief of any kind. That cat that's down by his ankles is Mrs. Norris. She a hideously mean old thing, and everybody just hates the pair of them."
Filch's eyes swiveled in our direction when Vera said this, as if he could hear what she had said. Then he walked over to Ariana and said "I'm just making a routine inspection of the classrooms, to make sure that everything is in order."
"Ah, yes!" Ariana replied in a high, wavering voice. "I'm sure that you'll find that everything is just fine, just randy dandy—peachy really!"
Filch cut her off. "Then why," he roared, "Did I just see your husband coming out of this room? I'm sure he wasn't illegally visiting you during class hours, right?"
Ariana shook her head. She looked like she was about to faint. The entire class was staring this time. I got the feeling that this didn't happen every week.
Suddenly, the doors swung open again, and this time...Dumbledore walked in! Filch looked extremely started to see him, and he immediately removed his hands from around Ariana's neck. "Headmaster...I was just making a...routine inspection. But, everything looks just great, just topsy-turvy! So, I guess I'll be on my way now!" Without a backward glance, he and his cat quickly scuttled out of there.
I then watched to see why Professor Dumbledore was there.
"Hello Albus," Ariana called with relief, "What brings you here, my dear brother?"
I gasped. Professor Dumbledore was Ariana's brother?
"Yeah," Vera whispered, answering my question. "Couldn't you tell?"
"Ariana my sister!" Dumbledore rumbled. "I have a question for you! It's about our brother, Aberforth Dumbledore, and my lov—friend, Gellert Grindelwald!"
"Oh, okay," Ariana cried cheerfully. "What do you want to ask me?"
"Well, I wanted to have Gellert over for Thanksgiving this year—otherwise he gets so terribly lonely having to eat alone and all—you know how his entire family is dead. However, Aberforth flatly refused and said that it would wreck the tradition we Dumbledores have of eating solely with family. What do you think?"
"Oh, I don't know," Ariana replied anxiously. I noticed her hands were twisting and wringing nervously as she spoke. "I don't really care one way or the other, as long as everybody is happy and can get along."
"Oh, okay," Dumbledore said. "I just wanted your opinion. See you later." And with that, he spun on his heels and left.
"And back to the lesson!" Ariana cried gaily. She was cut short by the bell. "Never mind! Class dismissed!"
"That was an interesting lesson, Narcissa," Vera remarked as we walked out.
"Yeah," I replied. "I learned that I'm going to become very beautiful and die while thinking about Lucius Malfoy, and you have a disgusting fetish for James Potter. Ish!"
My mind was so preoccupied with thoughts of death that I didn't give another thought to Regulus and his situation.
*We didn't have it at Blarneyland, because the school was running low on funds and so we had to cut all the useless programs such as art and music. For some reason, Divination was cut too.
**Hey! I would never actually think that a Gryffindor was handsome; I was just making observations for detail's sake. That's called good narrating, cuz you guys can't see him.
***Also occasionally means that you will soon be romantically involved with an animagus whose alternate form is a big black dog. But, don't count on it.
