Chapter Sixteen:
The alarm clock jumped suddenly to life, clattering vociferously on the lacquered surface of Eleanora's bedside table.
"Get up, Eleanora! Get up! Quick! No time to lose! Get up!"
A slim hand shot from underneath the heavy bed clothes and pointed a finger at it, cursing the interruption of her deep sleep.
"Jeez, "the disjointed voice muttered. "Remind me never to charm an alarm clock again."
The clock shuddered into silence and the hand withdrew under the warmth of the blankets once again. Eleanora slowly opened one eye, then the other, blinking in the early morning sunlight that filtered into the dormitory though the cracks in the velvet curtains. She stretched languorously; curling her lithe arms above her head in a feline manner, then threw off the bed clothes and jumped off the bed, taking care not to wake the others, who still slumbered peacefully.
She grinned at Hermione's prone form, one hand still curled tightly around a book that she had fallen asleep reading. How they had managed to sleep through that wretched alarm was beyond her, but she was glad that she had no need to field questions from her room mates about why exactly she had woken at such an un-godly hour of the morning.
Padding in bare feet to the shared bathroom she shot one last look at the clock.
Six o' clock.
That left her an hour to get ready before leaving for her godfather's office. She gently shut the bathroom door, then as an afterthought sealed the doorway with a silencing charm. She doubted very much that the others would welcome the interrupting sounds of running water pervading their sleep.
True to his word, her godfather had immediately arranged for all her belongings to be brought up by the house elves to the Gryffindor firth year dormitories. She had followed Harry, Ron and Hermione back through the cavernous corridors and mischievously moving stairwells to the portrait hole of her new common room, and then suddenly remembered that all of her things were still in the room allotted to her on her arrival a week before. Having decided to call for Dobby, she had stepped through the portrait hole, bidding a greeting to the Fat Lady, to be greeted herself by a loud voice exclaiming,
"Bloody hell, girl! How many suitcases did you bring?"
The voice emanated from a tall black boy standing over her motley pile of luggage. His dreadlocked hair shook animatedly as he surveyed the mountainous heap with amusement.
"Bloody women," he grinned, shaking his head at Eleanora. "Hi, I'm Lee."
Eleanora shot a quizzical glance at her cases, then turned to shake the boy's hand.
"Where did my stuff come from?" she asked him bemusedly.
"The house elves apparated it here just as you came in though the portrait hole," Lee explained. "Practically appeared on top of me!"
Eleanora grinned. "Well, I better move this lot up to the dormitory then." She turned to Hermione who stood behind her talking to a stunningly pretty Indian girl.
"Hermione? Could to show me to our dormitory please?"
The brunette smiled and nodded, and motioned to the girl stood beside her.
"Eleanora, this is Parvati, she's in our dorm as well."
Eleanora smiled widely at the girl.
"Do you want some help with your stuff?" asked Hermione, eying the pile of cases and trunks.
"That would be smashing," Eleanora replied.
She felt a slight irritation that she couldn't apparate them into the dorm herself and save them the trouble, but she might have a hard time explaining to the gathered students why exactly a fifth year was able to apparate not only herself but a large assortment of luggage inside Hogwarts boundaries no less.
* * * * * * * * *
Eleanora had wasted no time in unpacking and smiled happily to herself as she saw her toothbrush sitting alongside those of her room mates. She shared a room with Hermione, Parvati Patil, (who had proved to be an authority on hair straightening potions; a useful ally for Eleanora,) Lavender Brown, an effervescent blond and Sally-Anne Perks, a quiet red head. She had immediately warmed to her room mates and felt instantly at home in the large circular room that served as their dormitory, dominated by five imposing four posted beds, each hung with vivid scarlet and gold drapery. The walls next to Lavender's bed were plastered with muggle posters, the same chiselled face staring moodily out into the room from each one. Eleanora and Hermione had barely been able to restrain their giggles when Lavender had devotedly planted a kiss on each poster before jumping into bed the night before.
"He doesn't even move for Merlin's sakes, Lavender!" Eleanora had replied when asked by the blond girl if her poster boy wasn't the most handsome man she had ever seen.
"And he's so…bland," added Sally-Anne quietly
"Yep; give me a distinguishing feature any day," finished Eleanora, smoothing her clothes as she put them away in the solidly carved bureau at the side of her own bed.
Lavender could keep her poster boy, thought Eleanora to herself as she vigorously brushed her teeth, frowning faintly at their slight crookedness. Whilst Lavender's dreams had no doubt been filled with images of the chiselled wonder, her own had been a subversive concoction of the austere face of the potions master, pervaded with the coal black gaze of his fathomless eyes. Her dreams had left her on edge, a feeling of nervous anxiety waltzing in the pit of her stomach, and she tried in vain to dispel the tangle of thoughts that crowded her mind as she tried equally unsuccessfully to work a brush through her tousled hair.
Throwing a gaze back at the locked door, she shiftily pointed a finger at the knotted mane and muttered the well practiced spell. Her hair was transformed into a sleek stippled spill and she hurriedly braided into a thick plait, thanking the gods that this particular mirror could not talk.
Her morning toilette completed, she carefully unlocked the door and walked over to her bed. Hermione, one eye open, smiled unfocusedly at her, but the other were still fast asleep, Sally-Anne snoring delicately. Eleanora grinned back and grabbed her school uniform which she had draped over the foot of her bed the previous evening. She pulled on her shirt and skirt and but tied her scarlet jumper around her hips as the day promised to the warm. Flinging her robes around her shoulders and hoisting her well worn leather book bag across her body, she grabbed her wand and whispered a goodbye to Hermione, promising to see her at breakfast in an hour's time.
The common room was deserted; the only sounds a muted symphony of decidedly indelicate snores coming from the boys dormitories and the weak protests of a charmed book which had been carelessly left flung open on the floor. Eleanora stooped, picked up the book and placed it, closed, upon the low table in front of the scarlet over stuffed armchairs, then decidedly ungracefully half clambered, half fell out of the portrait hole.
"Morning," she whispered to the Fat Lady, finding her feet again, her reply a disgruntled look at having been unceremoniously woken at such an early hour.
She set off down the silent corridors, enjoying the still tranquillity of the castle at rest. The portraits along the walls reverberated gently with snores and even the valiant Sir Cadogen had found time for forty winks, slumped up against the ornate gold frame of his pasture.
Lightly jumping a leisurely moving staircase, Eleanora found herself in the corridor outside her godfather's study. She checked her watch. Thirteen tiny hands spun round, the longest one lingering on the number seven. Eleanora silently congratulated herself on her good timing. That left her one hour exactly before breakfast to hear the explanation for the previous night's debacle.
However, she had not anticipated the time it would take for her to work out the password to her godfather's enchanted staircase. The last time she had entered his rooms, it had been by an imprecise apparition spell and she ruefully admitted that she had no idea what the password was. Although, she pondered, given her godfather's sweet tooth……
"Toffee cluster?" she whispered hesitantly.
Nothing.
"Fizzing Whizbee?"
Still nothing.
"Hmmm…..Chocolate Frog?"
The stone stood resolutely still.
Eleanora wracked her brain.
"Blood flavour lollipops?" she tried, wrinkling her nose at the thought.
"Oh certainly not, my dear," a voice behind her said.
She whipped around to face her godfather, standing with a look of distaste on his face.
"Rather an acquired taste, blood flavour lollipops," he mused. "Still, each to their own."
He stepped in front of her and whispered to the head of the phoenix that guarded the staircase, "Tooth-flossing Stringmints."
The staircase grumbled to life and the phoenix began to grate upwards, the sound of enchanted stone filling the empty corridor. Dumbledore leapt nimbly onto the step and extended a hand to his goddaughter who followed throwing a backwards glance down the corridor to check that she had not been seen.
Dumbledore motioned for her to sit down in the chair opposite his own. He sat down and conjured a tray of coffee. He raised his bushy eyebrows in question and Eleanora nodded. A steaming hot cup of black coffee appeared in her hand ands she settled back into the cushioned depths of her chair.
"I expect you want to know what happened last night?" Dumbledore began.
To Eleanora's eager nod, he replied, "It took me a while to work it out, I must admit. At first I, no doubt like you and your new found friends, jumped to the conclusion that someone had deliberately befuddled the old thing."
Eleanora, for the thousandth time in her life wondered how it was that her godfather seemed to know everything that went on, as if it had happened right before his very eyes. However she remained silent, sipping her coffee gratefully.
"However," the elderly wizard continued, "that was not the case. Professor McGonagall and I have performed extensive revealing charms upon it and Professor Flitwick has subjected it to some rather intense revelation spells. He nodded to the hat perched upon the shelf in its usual place. I fear it will take the old thing quite some time to recover."
Eleanora ventured a small grin.
"The hat was not interfered with in any way then?" she asked.
"It seems not," replied Dumbledore. "I should probably start from the beginning," he mused to himself.
"When the school was founded, there were five founders," he explained, his cool blue eyes surveying his god daughter searchingly.
"The four, you know about; Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Godric Gryffindor and of course," his blue eyes darkened momentarily, "Salazar Slytherin. However, there was a fifth founder, Artemisia Arrowsbane. Shortly after the founding of this school, she and Salazar Slytherin encountered, how shall I put it, a difference of opinions. Salazar, of course felt that only pure blood students should be accepted into the school, whereas the other four felt that anyone who exhibited an interest and aptitude for magic should be allowed to learn. Whilst the others were able to overcome their differences with Salazar, Artemisia felt that she was unable to affiliate herself with such a man. She left the school shortly after."
"And took her house with her?" Eleanora asked.
"No, for many hundreds of years the house of Arrowsbane still existed. But gradually the number of students sorted into the house grew smaller and smaller until no Arrowsbane students remained at Hogwarts."
"So they just closed the house?"
"No, no official closure ever took place, and the last student to be sorted into Arrowsbane left the school over a century ago."
Eleanora mulled over what she had heard, before asking,
"Why does no one ever get sorted into Arrowsbane now?"
Dumbledore stared into his half empty cup, as if the answer lay at the bottom engraved onto the delicate china. He set the cup down onto its saucer with a sharp tinkle and gazed at his goddaughter with clear blue eyes.
"The qualities that set an Arrowsbane apart from the other four houses are quite extraordinary."
Eleanora's forehead creased with thought.
"Arrowsbane had produced more Unspeakables then the other four houses put together in the last five centuries. Do you understand?"
Eleanora hesitated before articulating a response.
"You mean that Arrowsbane is the house you get put in if you have really strong magical abilities?"
Dumbledore nodded. "You see my dear; it is truly your rightful house."
Eleanora's eyes narrowed at her godfather. The crafty old weasel, she thought.
"Yet it was hardly on my head when it yelled out Gryffindor the second time."
Her tone was light and trivial, yet Dumbledore instinctively understanding the meaning of her words shifted somewhat uncomfortably in his chair.
Hurriedly changing the subject he asked his goddaughter, still staring at him across the desk through narrowed eyes, "More coffee my dear?"
She held out her cup yet pursued her line of questioning, inwardly guffawing at the elderly wizard's guilty expression.
"Why do you think it put me in Gryffindor straight away the second time if I was mean to be in Arrowsbane?"
He regarded her cautiously for a second, then seeing the mischievous glint in her eye, dropped his gaze and admitted sheepishly,
"All right, Eleanora. I charmed the hat to sort you into Gryffindor the second time. I couldn't prevent it from saying Arrowsbane again, so I simply made it say Gryffindor. Forgive an old man his deception?"
Eleanora smiled smugly. "Thought so. Well, my father's right; it's probably the best place for me. And yes, you're forgiven, though a lemon drop might sooth me a little as well."
She grinned cheekily and nodded pointedly at the glass bowl full of lemon yellow candy on his desk.
Returning her smile he pushed the bowl across to her and she took a handful, dropping them into the pocket of her robe.
"One question though," she said, rolling a tart lemon drop around her mouth.
"Why isn't there anything about Artemisia in Hogwarts: A History?"
"Because soon after Artemisia parted company with the other founders she become what we now know as an Unspeakable. Back then they were called Saturnines, because of the relationship of their powers with the cycle of the moon of Saturn."
To her mystified expression he continued, "You may have noticed that your powers wax and wane at certain times of the year?"
She nodded tentatively.
"Anyhow, in the grand tradition of Unspeakables, all records of Artemisia were destroyed, leaving her free to carry out her duties undetected and untraced. Hence no mention of her in the book or any book for that matter."
Crunching her candy loudly, Eleanora said candidly, "That's just great. I have a life of anonymity and lack of identity to look forward to! Lucky old me."
Her godfather sighed and stared at her, meeting her confrontational chocolate gaze face on.
"We all have things we must do, my dear. This is what you must do. Do not fight it."
Eleanora rolled her eyes, but grudgingly admitted that her godfather was right. As always.
They sat in companionable silence, punctuated only by the sounds of crunching that emanated from Eleanora. Suddenly that imposing grandfather clock that stood in the corner of the room tolled resonantly, it's tenor peal startling Eleanora who had sunk into deep thought.
"Breakfast time!" announced Dumbledore, rubbing his gnarled fingers in glee. I do so hope that it's bacon this morning."
Eleanora grinned and suddenly became aware that she was rather hungry.
She grabbed her book bag and another lemon drop and leapt out of her chair. She hugged her godfather and called out as she strode to the door,
"First day of school! Wish me luck!"
Dumbledore smiled to himself as she door shut behind her.
"Good luck my dear. Though I doubt that you will need it."
* * * * * * * * *
A question for you guys to ponder: Is Blaise Zabini a girl or a boy? It was never revealed in the book and consequently there seem to be two distinct camps. He/she will be making an appearance sometime soon and it doesn't make much difference whether he/she is male or female. If you have a distinct preference, tell me in a review and I'll go with the majority. Wouldn't want to upset any male/female hardliners out there!