Title: Walls in the Stars
Author name: Sphere's Delight
Author email: death_boat@hotmail.com
Category: Drabble
Keywords: Sibyll Trelawney Firenze
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: OotP
Summary: Firenze struggles with his newfound role in the Wizarding World
and searches for a breath of fresh air. (Post OotP)
DISCLAIMER This story is based on characters and
situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but
not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and
Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark
infringement is intended.
Author notes: I didn't have time to run this through a beta, I just
wanted to get it posted, posted, posted. That said, I like what I did
and hope that you do too.
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"Mars is bright tonight."
It wasn't a statement that Firenze expected response to. He knew better than to demand acknowledgement from his eccentric colleague. It was a statement of wistful remembrance and yearning for the feel of soft field and clean breeze, an attempt to express his loneliness. He hated being trapped in the castle; he'd never admit it, of course, for that would lack dignity and would show too much caring into his own life. Firenze had known the consequences of helping Dumbledore; he'd read it in the stars and in the smoke and he'd seen what would happen if he ignored Dumbledore's request. Both options were unappealing, but the latter had been bathed in far more bloodshed.
That didn't mean that he spent no time thinking about what it had been like in the Forest, with other centaurs and other creatures who truly understood what the art of Divination was all about. Certainly, Professor Trelawney wasn't one of those creatures. For all her show and heavy mists, she tried very little and cared even less. Her predictions were always about making an impression, be it good or bad, that would last. Some people were pulled in by it. Firenze wasn't, couldn't be, because he wasn't even a person. He was a centaur, and his place was in the woods. Not here in this castle, with these windows and doors and walls holding him away from the stars. In the forest, he was never held back from the sky by anything but his own weight and substance. It was his own fault that he couldn't touch the stars and read them from feel. But inside this prison… it was something else. Something wrong about being alive that he'd never thought would be a consequence of his move to the castle.
Sibyll Trelawney didn't even look up from her paper when she answered Firenze, the first time she'd spoken directly to him since she'd realized they would be sharing the position.
"What, pray tell, does this mean?" Her voice was laden with resentment and mockery. Firenze didn't mind. He clipped and clopped away from the window, to Trelawney's new desk; by the Headmaster's orders she had relocated to an area where they would be able to collaborate freely. No tricky stairs for Firenze to climb – it was ground level for Sibyll, and everybody around knew she hated it. Her eyes darted up from the star chart she'd been reading and glanced quickly at the centaur's hooves.
Firenze felt a twinge of resentment and anger when he saw her look. He pressed it down, though; young as he was, he knew that the way of the Halfling was not easy, fighting only made people more resentful. The hatred faded, giving way to sorrow. He had accepted the humans despite the wishes of his own people – what was so wrong with them that they refused to accept him?
He lifted a quill from Trelawney's desk and bent over her star chart, trying to ignore the way her body shrank from his closeness. He made three marks across her work, then stood tall and ambled back to his spot near the window. Placing his hands on the window sill, he stared pointedly back up at the sky, determined not to even glance at the forest. He didn't want to think about what he'd left to help these creatures that were so blinded by his legs that they couldn't see his intentions.
"That's no answer, Firenze."
This time, Firenze didn't turn from his window. "It is if you try to see it."
Trelawney shook her head. "Cryptic isn't what the world needs. They need direct answers."
A sad smile was all the response that Sibyll got. Before she could try further to find meaning in his symbol, or in Mars, or even in her chart, Firenze was clicking towards the door. She made no effort to stop him, maybe because she was immersed as she was in her pursuit of higher knowledge, maybe because she didn't want him to stop. Firenze didn't ask himself which it was.
It felt satisfying to be outside of the small room and in a hallway. The air smelled different outside of Firenze's shared office; it had less perfume on it and more night. Yet, even this hallway scent was nothing compared to the clear sharp aroma of the forest. In the corridors, a damp dust covered every breath he took. Firenze headed for the entrance hall, the only place where he could almost feel the forest.
But once he'd reached the hall and thrown the doors open, all Firenze could do was stand and breathe. He knew that once he stepped outside the castle, he'd never be able to force himself back in. He could only sniff the air and watch the moon, clearer than brighter than Mars, from his platform of stone. After a few minutes of staring at the sky, his former friend and current frustration, tears began to bit at the backs of his eyes and Firenze collapsed in the doorway, looking at the cobbled floor beneath him and wishing it were dirt or grass. He folded his front legs near to his underside, kicked back with his rear legs, and gave in to a sob. Eventually, the breeze of the Great Lake caressed his back and sang him to sleep. That night Firenze dreamed, something that most centaurs never do, and in the morning he woke wearing his first true smile.
Back in her office, Sibyll stared at the markings on her paper for a long time. She wasn't sure, but she felt she might be beginning to understand Firenze's stars. They weren't about answers. They were about understanding.