DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I own many of the background characters. Some of the characters (Taseia, Faellen, Kairn, Seth, Sienna and yet another addition: Professor Mirillen in particular) I am the creator and owner of. So hands off please. The rest are copyright to J. K. Rowling.

Author's Note: Yet another person thrown in, heh. She won't be a MAIN main character, or anything but she's vital to the plot. No, really... I know that I have a habit of throwing in random char's (i.e.: Luvenia) just to gain perspective sometimes, but I've tried to cut down on that in this fanfic. I think it's working but I'm not all too sure. A few of you were asking for Kairn, and you'll get your fair share of him in this chapter ;). And romance? Someone, not mentioning names *cough*silv*cough* was wondering about it, and I just thought I'd let you know that it won't be anything serious in this book seeing as they're just first years but in the next few ones it might build up. You'll be seeing hints of it here and there in this story segment though. Oh, and think hard. Because you might be getting unsure ideas from this chapter concerning romance. Try to sort it out, heh. Enjoy!

Mystixnight

Chapter 5 Just Curious

Seth snuffled around the blankets with his face. Even he had no idea how he ended up with his head at the end of the bed and a foot resting on the window sill, but that was where he was when he was awoken by the soft sound of someone laughing.

"Wha'?" he sputtered groggily, blinking the hair out of his eyes and whipping his head up, trying to see through the haze of sleep still misting his eyes.

"You look hilarious, Seth!" Taseia held a hand up to her mouth, trying to quiet the laughter.

Seth was so mystified and tired he forgot that he still supposed to be mad at Taseia for the earlier events at breakfast when she had brushed him off, along with Faellen and Kairn. "Aren't you supposed t'be in bed?" He mumbled, sitting up slowly and untangling himself from the comforter.

He cringed as Taseia's face grew a mite colder with hurt. "I don't want to sleep there tonight..." She murmured softly, pillow held to her chest as she sat down beside him. By 'there' she obviously meant the RavenClaw dormitories.

Seth swiveled around to look at her, brows lowered in concern and a mild bit of reprimand. "Are y'gonna tell meh what the matt'r is or not, Taseia?"

Taseia took a deep breath; meeting and holding the chocolate gaze, before her tears started up again. Before she knew it, she was sobbing out the whole wretched ordeal, from meeting up with Kairn outside the Great Hall to where she sat now, her tears staining the linen bedspread.

Seth sighed, placing an awkward arm over her shoulders, not sure what to do. He patted her back on instinct, feeling uncomfortable but not wanting to add to her worries. "Ack... Black tale, that is... So what were you planning on doing now?" He lowered his head a mite, trying to see her expression in the darkness.

Her slender shoulders rose and fell in a listless shrug. "I'm sorry... I don't know what I was thinking when I came here. I don't think I was thinking! It's just that Kairn and Faellen are in their house and I wouldn't know the password in, even if I could find the entrance. I didn't know who else to come to, and I didn't like the thought of wandering around Hogwarts alone in the middle of the night... I'll understand if you want me to leave, Seth. It was stupid of me to have come here anyways... And we have lessons starting again tomorrow and everything!" She rose quickly, shaking her head. "I-I'm sorry... I'll see you tomorrow for lunch, I guess- "

"Wait, wait, wait! I never said you 'ad t'leave, now did I? We're in the Hospital Wing! Pull up a bunk!" Seth grinned as jovially as possible considering the circumstances, trying to ease the almost tangible sense of depression that hung above their heads.

Taseia perked visibly, or would have if anything WAS visible in the haze of a moonless night. Her lips parted in a grin. "You wouldn't mind then? Mean it?"

Seth waved a hand in scoffing dismissal. "'O course not! What kind of a friend would I be if I turned you 'way?"

"One like Sienna," Taseia replied, though she didn't seem half so forlorn at the mention of the name, trying to move a cot closer to her friend's resting place. She cursed as it squeaked upon the cobblestone flooring, then literally smacked herself in the forehead, azure orbs rolling in the face of an obvious revelation. "Am I a witch or aren't I one?" She drew her wand from her robes, for she was still fully dressed, not yet having been back to her common room. "Wingardium, Leviosa!" The bed lifted easily into the air, and with gentle pushed from her hands she managed to bring it over aside Seth's own.

She plopped down upon it with a satisfied aura. Seth chuckled. "Feeling better, are we?"

She returned the light laugh. "How could you tell?" She lowered herself under the covers, promptly pushing back the upper layers. She tossed the pillow she had been clinging to onto the hospital cot from which it had been abducted, now supplied with another one. Her wand found a safe haven atop the bedside table 'twixt the two beds.

Seth grinned, flopping back onto his own bed, rummaging through the web of covers and sheets till he found his pillow and placing it 'neath his head. "Jus' a hunch." He replied in jovial sarcasm.

Taseia chuckled gently, curling up slowly. "Thanks again, Seth..." Her voice was soft, on the verge of sleep but ringing with true gratitude and weight.

Seth's maw opened to reply that it was his pleasure, but he closed it knowingly, alerted by the barely audible sounds of hushed breathing that his companion had already fallen asleep...

He didn't know how long he lay awake that night, eyes focused on the silhouette of the femme as she lay still and serene across from him, hair splayed in all directions across her pillow. But he thought he saw a glow of light on the horizon before sleep took hold of him once more...

"G'night, Taseia..."

* * *

She was up before the sun had completed its rise into the heavens, a fleeting smile of thanks and warmth cast to her sleeping companion. With nary a sound she slipped through the hallways, a flickering ghost of a figure. Books and supplies were collected hastily from her dormitory and her trunk carefully locked. The remainder of the morning was spent in the library, head on her arms, awaiting the start of a new day...

* * *

"Up, Mr. Flaherty... We have a few things to sort before you can go about your first day. I should have had them handled yesterday, mind you, but time was not permitting. So we must take care of them as of now"

Seth groaned remorsefully as McGonagall's voice snapped him out of the astral realm and into the physical.

"Five more minutes... Jus' five more..." He mumbled through his pillow.

"Absolutely not! You're going to wake up and you're going to wake up now. I'll leave you so you can dress. I expect to see you out that door," Her index finger gestured sharply to the entrance way, "in no more than five minutes."

Muttering in a disgruntled fashion he clambered out of bed saving himself from falling flat onto the floor by leaning onto the bed aside his. He blinked, the former night's events resurfacing. He looked around sharply, as though expecting to see Taseia still there somewhere, but he knew already she would have left... She was a bright one, unlike others. Himself in particular.

He snapped out of his reverie at a sharp tapping on the door. "I don't hear any movement in there!" McGonagall's voice was sharp as always. Seth hurriedly dug around in his trunk of belongings, hopping out the door a few minutes later on one foot, the other in the process of being crammed into a shoe.

McGonagall looked overly him in scrutiny but nodded her acceptance of his state of dress. "And your school-books are.?" A pencil thin brow twitched upwards.

With a jump Seth sprinted back to his room, hoisting his book bag from the jumble and tearing back out into the hall. "Got 'em right here!"

McGonagall nodded and started off down the hall. "Since you aren't as of yet situated in a house, you shall be attending your classes as a member of a certain house. Each class you will be in a different house, understood? As you know, our timetables are split up into two-day sections. Today you will be attending Herbology first along with the Gryffindors. I assume you can find your way to the greenhouse with relative ease... Afterwards you are to join the RavenClaws for Charms Class... Thirdly is Transfiguration with the Hufflepuffs, taught by none other than myself..."

And so they continued on down the hallway, Seth hurriedly trying to scribble down when and where he was expected today, along with whom he would be working with...

* * *

The classroom was void of an instructor. Faellen and Kairn were seated side- by-side. They could border on being companionable when the mood struck them mutually. One of the regular intervals for such was during classes, when partnering was needed especially. And though both would deny it if posed the question, neither was fond of having not a single soul to discuss with during these highly social periods of time.

Back to the situation at hand, though. They were in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Their regular professor, a fellow by the name of Carniggan, had yet to make an appearance and the lesson was supposed to be twenty minutes underway already.

Faellen sent a questioning look to Kairn, minute shoulders rising and falling, 'fore her slitted gaze returned to the doorway, which remained empty. "Where do you think he is?"

The archway was suddenly home to a figure. Heels clicking firmly on the stone of the floor, the tall, imposingly beautiful femme made her way sedately into the classroom, pausing in the center of the room, turning slowly to look at those who surrounded her.

Kairn knew somewhere in the back of his mind his jaw dropped, and he could see from his peripheral vision the multitude of males in the classroom whose expressions mirrored the same. Faellen's gaze was equally awed, though in a much different way than his own.

The woman in the middle of them all might have been just graduated, for her bod' glowed with youthful exuberance. Her dark auburn hair fell over her right eye, whilst the other was revealed, beneath a thin, arched brow, to be impossibly deep violet. Her lips curved upwards in almost an innocent snicker, shifting weight from one foot to the other. "As soon as you fellows roll your tongues back into your jaws we can begin..."

Cough after nervous cough, shuffling filling the room like thunder, the boys shifted uncomfortably. The playful, though stern air in which she set them aright unnerved even Kairn.

A lad, voice stuttering and husky called out to her. "Where's Carny- I mean Professor Carniggan?"

The woman's gaze snapped sharply to meet the questioner's. Her tone was icy cool, almost challenging. "He's unavailable and henceforth I am to be your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher... Unless of course there is a problem with such, in which case I shall bid you adieu and go tell Dumbledore that my services don't appear satisfactory."

The child shook his head, shrinking back against the hard wooden benches. "N-no, no. No pr-problem..."

Immediately the woman's face curved into a bright smile, at which point a few jaws fell earthwards once more, though quickly shut. Kairn shivered, partly of discomfort and partly from the attraction there that was tangible between every single one of the bloke's that were able to see the lady. A fell grumbles and hissing whispers circulated through the girls in the chamber, but none had the courage to do anything more. He disregarded them, though, focused on the newest arrival. She was a knife; glinting, luminescent in the reflections it cast. So beautiful, but just as dangerous... Or so his mind told him. And he had come to trust that nagging voice in the back of his head, however resentfully.

"Now, then... Shall we begin? You shall be addressing me as Professor Mirillen. I don't know exactly how far you made it into your textbooks with 'Carny' as one of you has so fondly dubbed him," her voice dripped with a dry sarcasm, though the smile still played over her lips. A few nervous laughs were released from the student body but she continued on. "But it doesn't matter. You won't have much use for them while I'm here teaching with you. We're going to be doing mostly hands on work. Letters have already been sent home to your parents. Their permission is now needed in order for you to take this course. If they do not wish to have you participate you shall continue your studies here in the classroom from the textbooks on your own, taught by a seventh-year tutor. The rest of you will be wandering with me, through the school and grounds mostly but we will be making a few escapades into the Dark Forest... If you think you can handle such work." Her face was lit with an almost mocking smirk at which a few of the lads puffed out their chests in pride, the need to prove themselves subconsciously their main desire of the moment.

The rest of the period was spent reviewing mandatory standards at which they all had to meet in order to participate.

As they left, the children were jostling, muttered words flowing thickly in the air around them.

"Mr. Sairet... I should like to speak with you a moment." The Professors voice rang clearly over the crowds.

Kairn halted mid-step, confusion clouding his dark occuls. Professor Mirillen furrowed her brows in impatience, gesturing for him to step forward.

"Yes?" He queried, his curiosity lacing the words.

"Would your father happen to be a man of the name Pyre?"

Kairn's expression hardened to stone, voice blank, harsh. "He was..." He was too struck by sudden hurt to even wonder why she had brought it up, though later he would spend a great deal of time obsessing over the question.

"Was?" The visible violet orb blinked in obvious inability to understand.

"Yes, was... He's dead." He met her gaze squarely, lifelessly.

"Oh..." Her tone rang with genuine sorrow and sympathy.

"Why...?" The student was in a state of recklessness, mind numb from the repression of pain.

"Nothing, nothing... Just curious. You can go now, thank you." With naught a word more she turned back to her papers. The conversation was finished beyond question.

Kairn shuddered; blinking furiously as he returned to the hall where he knew Faellen was waiting.

"Just curious? Just curious my ass..."

* * *

"I don't like her, Kairn..." Faellen murmured uneasily, glancing backwards at the open doorway through which their teacher could be seen, head bent over parchment scrolls upon her desk.

Kairn rolled his eyes, shoulder checking her slightly so that she had a minor collision with the wall. He had his doubts about Mirillen as well, but he wasn't about to let Faellen in on it. "You don't like anyone, Faell. S'probably why everyone avoids you. You're too twisted and bitter for them to handle." He grinned as he kept walking, knowing she'd have to jog to catch up. The telltale flare of crimson at the side of his vision only earned another smirk as he ducked instinctively, a textbook slamming against the wall ahead of him. "See? Bitter!" He snickered and picked up his pace again, so as to avoid gaining a knuckle shaped indent on the back of his head.

Amusement clogged his mind, but underneath flittered images that would follow him like a faithful, though irritating puppy throughout the day. Of a certain professor by the name of Mirillen...