Chapter Eleven

Speculation and Experimentation

Jennifer watched forlornly as the Headmaster struck out suggestion after suggestion on her list, growing more somber with every muttered, "no" and more concerned with every uttered, "definitely not." Finally he looked up at her, holding out her list expressionlessly.

"Is there anything even left?" she asked only half-jokingly as she accepted it, frowning when she looked it over. "Five? Out of three dozen suggestions this is all I have to work with?" Jennifer sighed.

"Yes, well, for all the other ones I struck out, I immediately thought of just how disastrous any of those questions might have gotten," Severus said in an almost defensive tone that made Jennifer sigh.

"All right, Professor, I know better than not to trust your judgment on something like this," Jennifer said, looking them over. "I think I'll start with the coin toss first. You did want to supervise the first one, did you not?"

"Yes, did you want to do that today?" Severus asked, straightening his desk.

"You did say something about wanting it on a day in which I have made no plans in case I ran into trouble," Jennifer pointed out, watching as he went over to a cabinet and opened it with an ornate key before pulling out a book on rare coins. Opening it, he took out Hufflepuff's Obol, while Jennifer gave him an amused grin. His expression was much more serious, however, glancing at the coin thoughtfully before handing it over. "Shall we try it here, or downstairs?"

"Since you're probably going to do the majority of these experiments downstairs, let's go down there for consistency… although I would be shocked to find that location would have any true effect…" he murmured, pondering it. Finally he shrugged it off. "Shall we?" Jennifer took his arm and in no time they were stepping down into the Potion Lab and over to Jennifer's office.

After taking only a moment to hook back the door, Jennifer stepped in and grabbed a folder she had prepared and then sorted through a pocket to bring out a galleon. Putting the regular coin on her desk, she glanced over at Severus, who came up beside her and nodded.

"Will the galleon land on heads?" Jennifer said, not catching Severus' frown as she tossed the Obol in the air.

"I don't think that was specific enough, Jennifer…" Severus began, but then immediately turned his attention to the ancient coin spinning in air, finally showing the symbol of Charon.

Jennifer felt a curious tingling sensation running through her as she watched an image appear, for she had never been present when the Obol had been thrown before. It was slightly hazy at first, but when it cleared, she saw that the vision was of someone's feet, and she was quite positive it was her own.

"I seem to be in the Potion Lab," she murmured. "Only a handful of students, not paying attention to me… must be an open lab period, and since it's daytime, it must be a weekend."

"I can see it," Severus said, watching as the view changed as Jennifer knelt down to pick up the coin on the floor. It grew blurry again, and Severus realized that Jennifer had whipped up her head abruptly and was looking at the door where he saw a vision of himself, standing with a disturbing expression of worry on his face. The perspective changed again to just outside the doorway, and the Severus in the image was saying something. A moment later, the perspective changed again, a hand coming up in front of the students watching curiously from the classroom, immediately turning to pack up their things. Just then, the vision faded. "Not very informative, was it?" Severus murmured. "I don't suppose you were able to read anything?"

"Yes… a little," Jennifer admitted, gazing at him. "You were very worried about Lucky. Something terrible happened, and you were certain you had made the situation worse unintentionally. In fact, as worried as you were about Lucky, you were rather too busy kicking yourself at that moment for me to get a clearer reading of what caused it." Severus stared at her searchingly for a long time.

"Hm. In that case, still rather vague," Severus said.

"I… well, I suppose," Jennifer said with a frown, folding her arms and staring at the Charon thoughtfully. "I hope whatever it is… I hope Lucky's not in any danger…"

"Jennifer, I thought we agreed that no matter what was seen in the Obol that we would approach this as a research project?" Severus said disapprovingly. "You can stop the event easily enough by simply flipping the coin now, and I suggest you do so. And from now on, we should probably stipulate some sort of time frame for the yes or no answers. We have no idea from the way that was worded just how far off in the future that possible event could have been."

"Yes, that is true, I should have thought of that," Jennifer agreed, thinking about the vision a moment before picking up the Obol. "Although I am certain it is an event that is supposed to happen this year. There was a seventh year I recognized in the lab…"

"Might be an event, not is, Jennifer. Flip the damn galleon," Severus said, picking it up and handing it to her. Jennifer gazed at his firm expression unsurely, but finally sighed and flipped the coin up in the air, watching as it hit the desk with a clatter and saw the unmistakable picture of a goblin head. "There, now, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"I suppose not," Jennifer said, opening her notebook and sitting down to take note of it. "I just hope… well, I just hope by choosing to go against it that we didn't make things worse."

"Not allowing yourself your free will right to make your own decisions because of any portent of the future makes things worse, Jennifer," Severus said firmly. "If nothing else comes out of this little experiment, I am hoping you'll at least come to realize that much."

Jennifer decided not to comment, dutifully logging the time and the exact contents of the vision and their choice not to follow it while Severus broke out the tea set, wondering not for the first time if this sort of research was such a good idea after all.

As Lucky and Connie approached the back of the Great Hall after lunch, the sound of groveling pleas outside the door made them look at each other questioningly. They darted out the door, staring in disbelief at where Professor Scribe had Dale cornered outside the staff room.

"Okay! Okay, okay… I won't drop choir," Dale promised with a soft chuckle, gently pushing her pleading cupped fist out of his face. Lucky folded her arms, watching the scene disapprovingly as the professor got to her feet and straightened her robes, glancing at the other students peering out the door and pretending as if nothing had happened.

"Good. Then you won't miss next week, then?" Scribe asked primly.

"No, but I still need to leave early for tryouts…" Dale reminded her.

"Of course! Of course!" Scribe said quickly. "But you will show up?"

"I'll show up," Dale said, sounding almost as if he were regretting it already.

"Good! I'm sure missing this week won't hurt too much, since I was mainly testing our new members, of course… see you in History?" she inquired as she got back into her normal professor routine.

"Yes, Professor," Dale said, watching her step into the staff room. Dale shook his head, then noticed Connie and Lucky walking up.

"Well, you can always drop the newspaper still, right?" Connie said with a sympathetic grin.

"There's only one problem with that," Dale sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. "I was voted newspaper editor last night," he admitted, glancing over at Lucky's unimpressed expression. "Which leaves me with having to drop Quidditch and/or soccer, I guess." Lucky blinked, suddenly aware of the conversation.

"What? You can't do that! Ravenclaw is the only competition we got!" Lucky protested. "The other two houses football teams trip over their own feet!"

"I imagine Bobby would take over, Lucky, he's not that bad," Dale said with a sigh, joining them on the walk to the library.

"Ya, but it's not the same. 'Sides, I don't think ya really wanna drop it," Lucky argued. "An' it's not like we have any games until spring. By then half of the Quidditch season is over."

"But we still have practice while the weather holds. When do you expect me to study if my weekends are completely taken up with activities?" Dale asked.

"Weeknights," Lucky shrugged.

"A lot of good that will do me if I have a Charms test on Monday," Dale said, shaking his head. "And you know being an items major I will need top marks in that."

"You can always drop something later if it doesn't work out," Connie suggested.

"It's not worth getting stressed out about," Lucky said with a shrug, the three of them going silent as they passed through the library and into the order room.

"There you are!" Ambrose said the moment they entered, grinning at them. "Choir let out early… in fact, if Professor Scribe didn't have to test the ranges of our new people, she probably would have let us all out the moment she realized you weren't coming, Dale."

"Yeah, she caught up with me," Dale said dryly. "Apparently, she's not going to let me drop any more than Weasley is prepared to let me drop the Veritable Wizard."

"So how does it feel to be popular, Dale?" Laura teased him as he sat down beside her.

"Exhausting," Dale said, his voice betraying a hint of irritation. "Care to trade lives?"

"You would want anyone else's home life but mine, trust me," Laura said dryly. "As much as I love my father, living on a lunar calendar is no picnic."

"At least you have a calendar. My father can turn wild at any moment," Dale chuckled.

"My father is nice, but I'll trade anyone who likes if they'll take my brothers too," Elizabeth Coventry said.

"No way," Dale said, and nearly everyone else chuckled, except for Ambrose, who looked slightly uncomfortable, and Lucky, who seemed unusually interested in her goal list. "So Lucky, anything worth doing in there this year?"

"Nah, I only finished one last year," Lucky shrugged, "and I was one of those folks that got 'keep up correspondence' as a replacement. I already sent a letter off though."

"I haven't, but I probably will tonight or tomorrow, even though I haven't got a clue where mine is from. Only there is something a bit odd about him… well, other than the fact he doesn't have a clue who I am, that is," Dale said, missing Lucky's eye roll because he was busy digging out the letter. "His name is Ipilee Jaq Kaniq. Any guesses?"

"Durmstrang maybe?" Lindsay ventured.

"It's definitely not French," Helena said, grimacing when she saw the way it was spelled.

"He also said something in here about the fact that most of his family doesn't use last names, except on official documents and things, and he also says here that his father's parents didn't have a last name on documents either, so they had to use a code number instead."

"Sounds rather backwater to me," Dirk said skeptically. "I don't know, perhaps you got a giant, Dale. I'm sure full giants don't have last names, although I admit it doesn't sound Norwegian. Perhaps Russia?"

"Perhaps, but I'm not sure about the giant thing," Dale decided, glancing at it. "Any clues on yours?"

"Nancy Parker," Dirk said. Ambrose blinked and looked up thoughtfully. "Her parents are horticultural herbologists, apparently, so I am guessing either she's from that Irish Academy or perhaps America. I'm sure I'll figure it out in a post or two."

"Really? Hey, I think I know some Parkers," Lindsay commented thoughtfully. "Of course, they're just regular farmers."

"It's a very common name, Lindsay," Ambrose said quickly.

"Oh, well, that's true enough," Lindsay said. "I was just wondering if she might be related to someone."

"Highly unlikely," Dirk said critically. "At least not any that they'd admit to, considering they seem to be a fairly prosperous wizarding family."

"Maybe, but we probably shouldn't read too much into these first letters, considering they wrote these not knowing at all who was going to be receiving them," Ambrose said. "Mine has a French name, but that doesn't guarantee they're at Beauxbatons, after all. Just like Lucky's American, but her last name wasn't…"

"Give it a break, Bill," Lucky said flatly.

"Well, the point is, we still have a lot of find out about them, but you have to admit it's all rather fascinating, isn't it?" Ambrose said.

"It was a good idea," Pimra agreed, nodding over to Laura who was smiling back in satisfaction. "But what are we going to do this year?"

"I got an idea," Lucky ventured. Everyone looked over at her in surprise. It wasn't like Lucky to volunteer anything these days, especially not ideas. Of course, the idea was so perfect that for the first time in quite some time it had ended in a unanimous vote.

"A new fountain?" Reggie asked curiously as he, Helena and Pimra waited near the gates for the rest of the Muggle class to arrive. He was sheepishly aware of the fact that he was the only seventh year in the whole class, and was quite glad that he hadn't put Divination off to until his last year as well.

"Not just a fountain, really, but a memorial fountain, dedicated not only to Lyra, but all the other students who never made it through school because of one tragedy or another," Helena explained. "Like Myrtle, and Noah…"

"Noah would not want a fountain of anything," Reggie snorted. "Although I bet Moaning Myrtle will."

"Well, you get the idea," Helena said.

"We're also going to make special tiles so they can be written on later if need be, although I thought that part of the idea is a little morbid," Pimra admitted.

"It may be here for hundreds of years if we do the job well, Pimra. Realistically, whether we like it or not, there's going to be a student death now and then, Lucky is right about that," Helena said.

"Lucky does like to be morbid," Reggie agreed, Helena giving her cousin a dirty look in response. "But I agree it's a good idea. Where are you thinking of putting it?"

"Don't know that part. All I know is that Ambrose is going to write up some sort of proposal to the Headmaster about the project, and we'll see what he thinks," Helena said.

"Ambrose? Shouldn't you get Dale or Laura to do it?" Reggie asked.

"Ambrose volunteered to do it, and really, why would we?" Helena said.

"Oh, let's see, maybe because he's ten?" Reggie chuckled.

"He's also our chairman," Helena said evenly.

"Only because he and Lucky started it," Reggie said, shaking his head.

"No, not only," Helena said proudly.

"I don't know, Lena, maybe Lucky's right about Reggie not being Owl material," Pimra said, putting up her nose.

"Perhaps she is," Helena said curtly, giving Reggie a cold stare before the two of them shuffled over to where some of the other third years were standing. Reggie shook his head at them in annoyance, but just then he heard heavy hooves and looked up to see a rather big trolley pulled by a pair of Clydesdale-sized deer with charcoal grey coats and huge, dangerous-looking racks of antlers.

"Wait… are those reindeer?" Reggie asked out loud.

"They are Moonbucks," said Cindy, stepping up beside him. "Don't tell me, you didn't take more than a year of Magical Creatures either? I'm sure your father was thrilled about that."

"Well, I had to leave time for Quidditch Practice," Reggie retorted to the sixth year, "but if you want to know anything about dragons, I'll be happy to enlighten you." Cindy simply shook her head and focused past him where Madame Black was walking up with a list in her hand.

"Good, I see you all made it here," Madame Black sighed, stepping up to the back of the trolley as far from the beasts as she could possibly get, while trying to pretend they weren't there at all. "But just to be safe, I'll mark off your names as you get on. Line up so we can get this over with."

"Couldn't get a car to work this far in, Madame Black?" Reggie ventured daringly. "My grandfather had one that made it this far once."

"Yes, I heard about that," Madame Black said, making certain that Reggie sat on the lower level so she could keep an eye on him. "But I'm afraid my insurance doesn't cover my car being turned into a monster."

"My father could sell you some insurance that would cover that, Madame Black," ventured another student helpfully.

"In, Mr. Havershaw," Madame Black sighed, impatient for everyone to get on.

Helena and Pimra quickly made their way up the stairs right behind him and into the front seats so they could see while classmates piled in.

The chatter around them was so excited that Helena could barely hear herself think, but she was much too interested in looking out the front of the trolley anyhow, even thought the antlers of the Moonbucks partially ruined the view. Around the lake they sped and up to the train station, bumping over the tracks dramatically and meeting a freshly laid gravel road she hadn't noticed before cutting through fields of corn and barley. It wasn't a long ride from there to the back of a large farmhouse where the trolley finally stopped.

"All right, everyone! File out! And before we go in, don't forget the safety rules! In fact, maybe we ought to go over them now," Madame Black muttered, suddenly remembering more than one disastrous incident that happened when she took students over to her house. "Okay, first! What are the general safety rules we learned in class last week? Reggie?"

"Water and electricity don't mix?" he offered.

"That's one. Helena?"

"Um…" she said, pretending to be concentrating on getting down the stairs to buy herself more time. "Don't stick fingers, wands, or anything else that's not a plug in a wall socket?"

"Right. Um… Cliff?"

"Don't stick fingers, wands, or anything else that's not a plug in a toaster?" he offered.

"Anything that's not bread, Cliff, and that's a kitchen rule, not a general rule," Black sighed. "There's one more big one."

"Oh! I remember! Don't push buttons or pull switches unless you know what it does first!" Cliff said.

"Great. Now the kitchen rules I had you memorize for homework. Jill?"

"Don't put metal or familiars in the microwave," she recited.

"Cindy?"

"Um… don't put hands, metal or familiars down the garbage disposal?" Cindy said.

"Er... close enough. How about you, Pimra?"

"Don't use the blender without the lid on?" she guessed meekly.

"Well, that wasn't one of them, but it's a good point," Madame Black decided. "You have another one, Helena?"

"Just because the oven doesn't have a flame doesn't mean it isn't hot," Helena said. As they rounded the bend, they saw Sirius leaning against the front door holding it open. He smirked at Helena.

"Right! Yes, Don?" Madame Black asked reluctantly.

"Don't cast any flame spells because it might set off the sprinklers?" he said.

"Yes, but you'd better not be casting any spells while you're in here, come to think of it, and if you do, you will all be going without wands next time," she warned, making certain to fix her gaze at the Coventry twins.

"Yes, Madame Black," they both said at the same time.

"Fine, then I suppose you can go in and explore now, but don't bother trying to get into the attic. That's the computer room and you're not going to be ready for that for a while," she said, stepping over beside her husband so they could work their way inside.

"I give them five minutes," Sirius murmured in Anna's ear. Anna let out a short exasperated sigh.

"At least give them the benefit of the doubt," she said irritably, but just then several students cried out at once.

"Madame Black! Helena did something in the kitchen with the toaster and all the lights went out!" Cindy called out.

"I was giving them the benefit of the doubt," Sirius murmured back before stepping in the doorway. "All right, just hang on a minute, guys, and I'll go check the fuses."

"Don't worry, I'll just light a candle!" Don suggested enthusiastically.

"NO!" Sirius and Anna shouted. Just then, all the students began squealing as the sprinklers turned on. "Good thing I put the computers in the attic, now, isn't it?" he said, the icy gaze on his wife's face showing him just how much she didn't need another "I told you so" remark at that moment.