A/N, Disclaimer:
Gryf: ~yawn~ We've really got to stop doing these things at 3 in the morning.
Cloe: Yeah I know but this is like the only time you can actually catch me to make me post.
Gryf: Unless I call at 6 in the morning your time and wake you up. It was so funny the last time I did that.
Cloe: Ha ha, yeah I was getting up anyway.
Gryf: Yeah...sure...anyway, here's chapter 6...er...7.
Gryf: It was chapter 6 before the prologue took up the first slot.
Cloe: Yeah I really don't like this new system, it had me freaking out for about 5 minutes then I figured out how it worked.
Cloe: But I still don't like it.
Gryf: As long as you know how to work it. I couldn't even work the old system
Gryf: Anyway, here's chapter 7.
Gryf: It features Hermione, Harry, Ron, the usual. Plus some centaurs and seances. ~Dances around Professor Trelawney's upcoming...something~
Cloe: Heh I had fun thinking that one up.
Gryf: I helped! And I wrote it! Well...this is one thing you wrote too...
Gryf: ~shrugs~ Either way it was fun.
Gryf: ~chants~ Dingbat, dingbat, dingbat, Trelawney is a dingbat...
Cloe: Teehee, don't worry you'll get it later O'fateful and not so fateful (you know who you are) readers.
Gryf: Okay, now for doling out credit where credit is due.
Gryf: Anything you recognize probably isn't ours.
Cloe: That's right not ours, I don't really need to be sued and you wouldn't get anything good anyway.
Gryf: I mean, money, it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Gryf: Dice! Now dice...if you sued us for dice, that might be a problem...
Cloe: Who would sue us for dice? Where the hell did you come up with that anyway?
Gryf: I told you we shouldn't be doing this at 3 in the morning...
Cloe: ::shakes head:: It's only 1 here.
Gryf: Let's get this over with. I want to start humiliating Snape ASAP.
Gryf: ~bows dramatically and then skips off stage~
Cloe: ::rolls her eyes:: What a Drama Queen, I swear, well on with the show....

********************
Guardian Angel From Hell
Chapter Seven, On With The Show

A Harry Potter FanFiction
By Gryffinth and Cloe
********************

Chapter Seven

Hermione woke up early Thursday morning just like she did every Thursday. The girl pushed the heavy curtains of her bed to the side distastefully, the normally crimson fabric an impossibly dark garnet shade that looked like clotting blood in the pre-dawn shadows. This was one of those times she wished the sorting hat had put her in Ravenclaw instead of brave and blunt Gryffindor. Not only would there be several other girls getting up the same hour as she every Thursday for Professor Vector's Arithmacy class, but the curtains would probably be a pleasant deep sapphire color.

If she were a Ravenclaw, she never would have known Harry and Ron like she did now, she'd never have risked her life for those thick idiots, and she'd never have felt so responsible for them, as though she was their overprotective baby-sitter. They always took her for granted, they thought deep down that she'd always be there, so no need to see her as more than just a brainiac who alternately researched their quests for them and covered their butts from the suspicious eyes of the teachers. They always trusted her to come through, for if she didn't they had a distinct way of giving her sad puppy dog eyes, especially Harry.

When would he learn that she was more than a walking dictionary? There was that party during the Triwizard Tournament when Viktor Krum had been her escort; Harry had looked at her differently that night, even she had noticed that, but since then he had withdrawn. Was the fool afraid of her or something? Her long-distance relationship with Viktor hadn't worked out in the slightest, not to mention that he couldn't even pronounce her name correctly, but at least he hadn't been afraid to touch her….

She glanced at the other girls in her dorm room, and almost regretted that she was the only one of them who had a class in the morning. Shivering, she shrugged out of her lacy nightshirt and pulled on the long, sensible flannel slacks that she could wear comfortably under the voluminous black robes. She snatched a few crackers she kept aside for herself and chewed them silently, concentrating on the stale crumbs between her teeth and then she continued with her morning routine until she was ready to go.

She looked at the other girls that she shared a dorm room with and almost wished that she could sleep in with them, just get a few more hours just like every other girl in Gryffindor. She was the only one who took the Arithmacy class out of all of them, emphasizing how different she was from them. Again she wondered why the sorting hat had put her among the Gryffindors, but yet again, she brushed the thought aside as unproductive.

Respecting their need to sleep, the girl collected the materials needed for Professor Vector's class and left. She walked briskly down into the common room, where she was joined by a few of the boys from the other dormitory, and pushed through the fat lady portrait. She fell into the line behind one of the boys and silently walked to the classroom, spotless and stark white, imposingly so, but Hermione more often than not didn't mind, being far too absorbed in the lesson and the concepts involved.

Today, however, as soon as she sat down in the sterilized desk she began to squirm uncomfortably under the accusing glares of the various portraits of the more famous Arithmacist Excels. The professor went up and down the aisles, collecting homework as usual, and then sat down at his desk, glowing with the morning light let in threw the only window in the room, one with no glass. Vector's pure, hard voice resounded through the room with no pleasantries or preamble whatsoever, reciting out the day's lesson and concepts in a completely emotionless voice. He stood and drew various geometrical figures and a few charts while explaining their meaning, expecting all of his students to be paying rapt attention so that they could memorize and understand the concepts.

Hermione, usually wearing the most rapt expression, now stared glumly at her hands, twiddling her thumbs. She had a vague idea of what this meaning meant and somehow her attention could not be held. But her mind kept returning to the dilemma between herself and Ron and Harry, but there wouldn't even be a dilemma if that…that…that Malfoy had not come back from the future! How could they befriend that purple-haired floozy when they knew-but they didn't know, did they! They didn't believe her…and what could she herself do about that? Harry was the one who could come up with the options and make the decision of which one to follow, not she; she just gave him the information to make do with. Harry-someone poked her in the arm.

Hermione looked guiltily up at Professor Vector, his cold black eyes, as devoid of caring as ever; all he ever cared about was numbers and coordinates and absolute perfection. He cleared his throat and glared expectantly at his student. When she met his gaze with her own confused and contrite one, he repeated the question, "Ms. Granger, please name the three points of the astronomical triangle."

"Metallah, Atria, and Elmuthalleth," Hermione rattled them off, having memorized all the names of the stars at the beginning of the term when she realized that astronomy, the scientific study of stars, had been added to the curriculum. Evidently Vector, a former Muggle, admired the stars' efficient and precise manner in movement and how a complex equation could calculate exactly what they could be doing. Astrology, the study of the stars' effects on human lives, was mere rubbish and was more make-believe than truth and the professor disdained it as such.

Hermione sighed with relief that he had asked a question she could answer, but Professor eyed her stonily, "Thank you, Ms. Granger, but next time could you please refrain from daydreaming so that my class is more than just a free period?"

The girl ducked her head in acquiescence and stared at the board along with the others, becoming as involved with the lesson as usual, and forgetting to expect one more prank from that stranger. But her thoughts, while technically full of numbers in an orderly line, merely covered an undercurrent of loneliness and resentment.

The class shivered as a gust of bitterly cold air blustered in through the open window, but Professor didn't close it even though the weather was exceptionally cold for October, even bordering on November. The students nearest the window smelled a weak odor, a gross and disgusting stench, nearly overpowered by the brisk, airy pine resin morning air.

Circe, trembling with cold and other less obvious things inside the magical but not very warm invisibility cloak, watched the smoky remnants of the dung bomb she had tossed into a nearby elm with grim satisfaction. The bomb would have been a typical prank anyway…. A pair of crows and a half-dozen robins chattered at the girl furiously, sensing her presence whether they could see her or not. Furry-tailed grey squirrels bustled up and down the trunk, acorns and other seeds stuffed in their oversized cheeks, the sharp claws in their furry padded paws clicking on the thick strips of mottled brown bark. Then, all the creatures merely went back to their lives. Circe hugged her knees to her chest and rested her head against the trunk of the large maple tree, regardless of sticky sap or curious insects.

Hermione's thoughts burned just as much as the words she had spat last night; Circe had employed a mind-read spell on the girl when she saw Hermione's oddly recalcitrant behavior. Strangely enough it was thanks to the HSM's lesson that she knew the spell, though the unforgiving-from Circe's point of view at least-head of the time college had meant for the spell to be used as an aide to remain invisible to people of the past. The young woman replaced her hands on Harry's Firebolt-Harry had wanted to see more of her Flaring Zephyr-and went back to the kitchens to prepare for Professor Trelawney-that, at least, was where she could let out a lot of the anger rankling in her stomach.


The Flaring Zephyr felt confident and comfortable under Harry's legs and it sped swiftly through the air, spinning circles around Ron's Cleansweep. The afternoon sun had warmed the air and had turned the canopy of the Forbidden Forest an enticing emerald color speckled with olive green shades, but the colors burred together and the exhilarating rush of air blew refreshingly past his cheeks and eddying a bit about his lightning scar. Harry was vaguely surprised that Ron didn't want to ride Circe's broom, but he took advantage of his friend's dreamy expression by taking extra long turns on it. At last, however, Ron's silence began to irk him to the point of worrying about it.

Harry spun around and faced the redhead, "What's wrong with you? You're about as talkative as a vegetable!"

Harry had to repeat the question and another taunt before Ron's eyes focused and responded, "Huh?"

"What's getting your goat, Ron? I just called you a vegetable and a boggart and you didn't even blink!"

When Ron only submerged into that dreamy look again, Harry sighed with disgust, "Ach, I think Hermione was right about you and Circe!"

The redhead snapped to attention when Circe's name was spoken and glared at Harry, "Well, she was just as right about you and that broom!"

"And you-!"

"Look!" Harry whirled around to look where Ron's finger was pointing. A blinding flash silhouetted the screen of leaves, after which the boys caught glimpses of something yellow green, visible against the forest and olive greens of the woods, moving north further into forest. As though possessed of a single mind the two boys sprung through the canopy in pursuit of the mysterious object. Harry could vaguely see what looked like a billowing cloth but then he had to dodge the trees before he could discern anything else. Yet even so the Blazing Zephyr soon came near enough for Harry to just…reach…and-WHAM!!!

Ron, a few yards behind thanks to the slower pace of the Cleansweep, stared at his friend knocked flat on the ground by a still swinging branch…and grunted when another branch took him in the chest and his Cleansweep swept out from under him. A command was barked somewhere to his right-Ron couldn't tell exactly what it was-and hoof beats thundered to his left, on the other side of Harry, following the runaway broom.

Clop-clop clop-clop clop-clop pierced the gloom a few feet from the redhead and a centaur, a yellow-brown palomino with whitish blonde hair, stepped into the tiny space that didn't have every inch covered by trees and grabbed the Blazing Zephyr from where it quivered waist high, only inches from where it had been when Harry had been knocked from his seat. The centaur, grey eyes sparking, examined the broom nonchalantly and then leaned it against a tree. He then bent and picked up the two boys by the collars of their robes, setting them onto their feet. Ron fumbled for his wand, but his friend scrutinized the centaur a moment before offering him his hand. The centaur frowned at the hand for a moment before grasping and shaking it with his own.

"Firenze," was Harry's one-word greeting.

The centaur inclined his head, "Harry Potter. You've grown."

The boy rubbed the back of his head, "Why did you knock us down?"

The roar of galloping hooves drowned Firenze's answer and two centaurs reared into camp. The first to arrive was a female, smaller and obviously younger than Firenze, with blue-black hair, coat, and tail. She just had time to place the Cleansweep by the other broom before a larger male, larger and brawnier than Firenze, overshadowed her.

"Firenze!" he bellowed, "What is the meaning of this! We are not to interfere!"

The female, delicate and tiny she may be from her youth, spoke up before the other male had opened his mouth, "Bane, there is already interference by the stray comet. She will either burn up or prevent the supernova, but she has already entered the galaxy and nothing we do will change that."

Harry's eyebrows furrowed and he glanced at Ron, out of habit most likely, and grimaced. The redhead was gawking, mouth ajar, at the female, most likely entranced by the sorrowful blue eyes and the earthy, bubbly voice, but an elbow in his side quickly changed that.

Firenze nodded appreciatively to the female before waving her away and facing Bane once more, "Branwen has made the point. And we can either help or hinder fate."

The big centaur grunted furiously, "Ronan will see to the end of this," and stomped off. Branwen clopped forward and handed the boys their respective brooms.

"Mount and leave, Ron and Harry," Firenze commanded.

They mounted, but Harry turned back one last time, "Why did you stop us?"

Branwen scrutinized the pair with those rueful eyes of hers and then glanced at the sky, daylight though it was, "Mercury glows red."

The boys appealed to Firenze for a translation but he merely grimaced and repeated the statement. Disappointed, they left and went back to the castle, Harry swapped the Firebolt and the Blazing Zephyr, and the boys retired to the Gryffindor common room until their Divination class of Séances.


Circe checked the clock in the kitchen…fifteen minutes until Professor Trelawney was shown up. Quickly she checked her purse for all the things she would need, slipped on the invisibility cloak, and crept up to the high tower in which the bug-eyed phony spent most of her days. She arrived just after the horde of students climbed into the turret and stumbled through magically enforced twilight darkness and noxious fumes to their seats. Following them up, the young woman searched for a discreet corner to hole up in, but the only corner far enough away from Trelawney was occupied by Harry and Ron. Grinning, she realized that the pair would most likely enjoy being in on the joke and tiptoed over to the pair.

"Pssst! Harry!" hissed the empty air beside him, almost making Harry drop the aromatic candle he was fiddling with. Behind the cover of the rickety table an extra poofy cushion inserted itself between the boys and invisible elbows nudged them aside. After a few muted exclamations, Harry muttered, as if to himself, "What in bloody hell are you doing here, Circe?"

"Having some fun, what else?" was the whispered reply, tinged with smug mirth.

Ron's eyes bulged, "You're the prankster? But I thought Fred and-"

A tangible, if invisible hand cupped his mouth before his whisper grew too loud, "No, you'd think they were, but they're not. Now, I've wanted to get Trelawney for a while now, but I am gonna hafta say some spells and if you two could make sure nothing's heard…" and they nodded "good. Now pay attention to the teacher."

As the boys trained their eyes on their sparkling teacher, eerily like the stereotyped witch with a bubbling cauldron in front of her-Hermione had looked it up when they told her and said that while many things were required for a séance, a cauldron wasn't one of them; their professor used a lot of special effects to keep fans like Lavender and Parvati hooked-Circe dug into her bag. The first thing she pulled out was a small pack of small smoke bombs, just a common muggle toy popular in America for their Independence Day holiday, although no one in England could figure out exactly why they celebrated it.

Dexterously she tossed them out to the three corners on the room-Trelawney was situated in the far corner-and a few rolled directly in front of the cauldron, creating a mist effect. Their teacher's eyes, magnified by her thick glasses, widened for a moment but then they half-closed, letting her students believe that she had expected it. Most of the fifth years, mostly the girls, leaned forward with halted breath; today was the first time Professor Trelawney actually let them see a séance, before then all they could do was study exactly what a séance was: retrieving a soul from the realm of death for the sake of a few questions.

The prankster pulled next out of her bag her wand, after checking to make sure it was her wand and not one of Fred or George's trick wands, and a crystal goblet purloined from the kitchens. She muttered a few words, obscured by a suddenly coughing Ron, and pointed at the windows and at the goblet. Before she went any further, however, Circe listened to what her victim was saying, so that the timing would be perfect.

"So you see," Sybil Trelawney murmured in a low trancelike voice, "Everything is aligned and in order. At any time now-"

On the word now, Circe pronounced the final syllable in the spell used on the windows, letting in gusts of wind that whistled near the ceiling but refused to come down and blow the haze away from the charlatan. Next she licked her finger and ran it over the edge of the crystal, around and around and around, and the spell took the spine-chilling note and amplified it from behind Trelawney, as though a loudspeaker had been placed behind her, minus the static and electrical failures.

The majority of the students were watching the cauldron with rapt and anticipating eyes, while a few of the more bored students either stared at the floor or took an uncomplimentary notice of the fact that the professor's face was glistening with sweat and uncertainty.

She stopped running her finger around crystal and let the eerie note die out, then she pulled a golden ribbon from her purse. She muttered a few words and tapped the ribbon and finished the spell by throwing it up in the air above Trelawney head. Instead of falling, the ribbon twisted, stretched, and hovered 6 feet from the ground right next to the faker's chair, in clear view of the class, revolving around the column of purple-grey smoke like a barbershop pole.
Next Circe waved her wand and sculpted the smoke into the form of a woman; the bottom a few inches from the rim of the cauldron flaring out into ornate robes with alien script on the trim, long hair that fell into ringlets around her shoulders and down her back, and a look in her eyes…Ron swore it was familiar, and, after thinking a bit, he decided that the invisible girl beside him shared that expression of smiling maliciousness. The tall and sinuous woman with flashing eyes proudly stood up and pointed at Professor Trelawney accusingly with one long manicured finger. The ribbon soared up to spin around the smoke woman's head like a hypnotic crown. A flowing jet of a fluent language spilled out of the smoke woman's mouth while the ribbon snaked into a rotating band of fluid symbols.

Professor Trelawney stammered perfunctorily at the smoke woman.

"Sybil Trelawney," the woman mouthed and the words scrolled out on the golden ribbon, "You really need to touch up on your Greek!"

Professor Trelawney blinked in surprise then cleared her throat, "O-oh spirit from the land of the dead - uh who are you?"

"You? Not recognize me? I am Circe, the enchantress. Even the muggles knew me, feared me, and remember me still in their embroidered mythology!"

"Oh…er…what do you want?"

The woman seemed to shrug with annoyance, "I have come to warn you, to bring a prophecy to a blind prophet; a raven-haired child shall be the one who brings about your destruction."

Lavender and Parvati gasped Professor Trelawney paled slightly and lost her sleepy mystical look. The class eyed all the black haired people with suspicion, Harry and Ron sunk into their chairs trying not to laugh.

"A raven-haired child? Wh-who would do such a thi-Could you be more specific?"

"Listen, you dingbat, I'll put it in simple terms. You're going to get killed and a kid with black hair is gonna do it, you got that?"

All the boys snickered and Ron and Harry almost fell out of their poufs in the attempts of muffling their glee. Even the curly, elegant script lost its finesse and the gold ribbon seemed to writhe angrily and uncontrollably-mainly because the female Malfoy giggling on the floor was having a hard time controlling the ribbon. Trelawney's mouth worked closed and open like a fish's as she gaped at the suddenly bold ribbon.

The gold gleamed and the smoke lady's eyes flashed, "Pathetic! You call yourself a mistress of Divination? You can not even divine a stick! Look at this! You don't even need a cauldron for any of the spells you teach!"

"How-what do you know of what I teach!?!?" Trelawney demanded.

The smoke lady laughed, "I may be a dead sorceress, Sybil Trelawney, but I was a good one, not a stupid one! I know divination when I see it, even if I lived on that Grecian island for a few centuries, so don't backtalk to me! I believe it is time to leave, but I will give you one piece of advice, least I can do. Smarten up, Dingbat!" and with that the sharply detailed, if ephemeral smoke lady collapsed in on herself, sending puffs of smoke all over the room, hiding the ribbon that was sizzling and then dissolving in the steaming cauldron.

The girls rushed all over to open windows and clear the air, and once the smoke was gone Lavender and Parvati discovered their beloved teacher to be lying on the floor and feet up in the air, the cause of the position being Trelawney's filmy robes had caught on a wire sticking out of her pouf and holding her legs up along with the dress. The boys were grunting, guffawing and pointing to the professor's bare and somewhat hairy legs and her pointed slippers; Ron thought he was going to explode if he tried to hold in his laughter any longer. A high-pitched giggle was emitted and echoed from just above Trelawney's neck as Circe's spell finally died away.