Chapter Seventeen:
Eleanora sat down heavily at the Gryffindor table, flinging her book bag on the stone floor by her feet. Harry and Ron were already seated and were between them demolishing a large platter of bacon and scrambled eggs.
"Good morning!" she greeted them jovially, pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
Ron looked up from his rapidly diminishing pile of breakfast, his face glum.
"Is it?" he asked tonelessly.
Harry punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Come on Ron. It's not that bad." His only reply was an unconvinced snort through a mouthful of bacon.
"What isn't so bad?" asked Eleanora, taking in a mouthful of juice.
"Ron's just looked at his timetable for this year," Harry explained gesturing to a roll of parchment lying on the table in front of him. "He's got double potions with the Slytherins first thing this morning."
"Again!" expostulated Ron miserably, spraying morsels of half chewed toast over the table. "Sorry," he muttered, wiping the crumbs off the parchment.
"You'll have to enlighten me," Eleanora said, helping herself to toast, "I understand the whole aversion to the Slytherins, but what's so awful about Potions?"
Harry and Ron exchanged dark looks.
"You've obviously never met Professor Snape," Harry said.
"Not that you'd want to!" added Ron, making a face. "Crabby old git!"
Eleanora wrinkled her brow, hoping that her face showed no sign of the back flip that her stomach executed at the mere sound of his name.
"He's not that bad," she countered in what she hoped was a casual tone. "A bit temperamental perhaps, but hardly an ogre."
"More a vampire," finished Ron. "That's what the lower years say anyway. That's why he hides out in the dungeons all day."
Eleanora quirked an eyebrow. The students obviously had no idea of Professor Snapes more clandestine activities, she thought, chewing contemplatively. If they did, they feel a little differently towards their irritable potions master. However from the inconsolable look on Ron's face, nothing short of a mass cull of Slytherins, their housemaster included would solve his problem.
The contemplative silence that had fallen over the three was broken by the sound of Hermione's cheery greeting.
"Hello, you three! All ready for the new term?"
Harry and Ron both groaned.
"'Mione! You ask that every year and every year we feel like gagging you with the sleeve of your robe."
Hermione huffed and sat down next to Eleanora who smiled cheerfully at her. Whilst the two boys were obviously not looking forward to the new year she was rather excited, truth be told. Even the possibility of double lessons with the Slytherins couldn't dampen her good mood.
At Hermione reached for the coffee pot, two scrolls of parchment, tied with a scarlet ribbon materialised on the table in front of them. Eleanora lay down her toast and picked it up, frowning as she left buttery finger marks on it. Wiping her fingers on the linen napkin to her side she unfolded the scroll.
"What have you got first thing?" asked Harry.
"Double transfiguration," replied Hermione and Eleanora simultaneously, their eyes roaming over their weekly schedules.
Eleanora caught a glance of Hermione's timetable. It seemed to contain far more lessons than her own and she shot her a quizzical glance.
"Gods, are you doing classes enough for two people or something?"
Hermione shook her head and pointed to the crowded timetable. "It's not that bad if you look. The extra arithmancy takes up a lot of time but I dropped muggle studies so it sort of balances out."
Eleanora looked closely at the girl's scroll.
"Hang on, you're meant to be in potions at the same time as ancient runes," she pointed out looking up at Hermione. "How the hell do they expect you to do that?"
Harry exchanged a glance with Hermione. "Go on, you can tell her, can't you?" he asked quietly.
"Tell me what?" asked Eleanora in the same hushed tone.
"They gave me a Time-Turner in my third year," Hermione explained quietly, "so that I could do all my classes."
"Wow," breathed Eleanora, "Gods, no one in their right minds would ever trust me with a Time-Turner! You really must be a genius!"
Hermione blushed and began stirring her coffee with interest, as Eleanora turned back to her own timetable. Double transfiguration was followed by double DADA, then a break for lunch, then double potions then:
"DOUBLE DIVINATION?"
Eleanora practically choked on her toast as Hermione slapped her back vigorously. Slurping down a mouthful of coffee, she expostulated loudly,
"I hate divination! I thought I was rid of it when I left Beauxbatons! The teacher there was an utter quack and it's all just a load of bloody nonsense!"
The Gryffindor table went rather quiet as they all turned to look at the irate Eleanora who looked helplessly at Harry and Ron for some sort of solution.
"Professor Trelawney is a marvellous teacher," gushed Lavender from the other side of a startled Ron, leaning over him in her enthusiasm.
"She's the real thing you know," she continued her eyes shining with adoration.
Eleanora wrinkled her nose, though smiled contritely at Lavender all the same.
"Yeah well, I guess I'll find out this afternoon." Turning back to the others, she asked,
"She's a loon right?"
"Who?" Harry grinned, "Lavender or Professor Trelawney?"
"Both of them if you ask me," muttered Ron darkly.
"Professor Trelawney is an utter fraud," said Hermione dismissively. "She spends all her time deciding which way Harry is prophesied to die next."
"Last time it was by being gored to death by a Hippogriff," Harry explained his voice heavy with mock reverence.
The four laughed loudly gaining an injured stare from Lavender.
"Anyway," Ron asked, "We've got an excuse. Why do you hate it so much?"
Eleanora snorted indelicately. "Bloody waste of time isn't it?" she said quietly so as not to provoke another awed defence of the subject from Lavender.
"I'd rather focus on the here and now," she continued, "as opposed to the far off and quite frankly far fetched." She bit into her fourth piece of toast with an air of finality.
"Still," concluded Ron, "You've got us with you so it won't be that bad."
"Plus, you never have to do any real homework," added Harry.
"I'll just make it all up," shrugged Eleanora, "Not like it'll be any less accurate!"
"Well, that's what we've done for the past two years," said Harry, grinning at Ron. "Just make it as grim as possible and the old bat's too over the moon to notice that you've been run over by a bus twice in the same month."
"Are any of you in my potions class," Eleanora asked, changing the subject as the issue of divination was making her blood boil. "First thing after lunch?"
"Is that the advanced healing class?" asked Hermione.
Eleanora nodded.
"Then yes," Hermione answered after consulting her timetable.
"How come we don't have that?" asked Harry. "Not that we mind obviously," he added hurriedly as he glanced around as if scared that someone was going to come and assign the extra class to him.
"It's an extra OWL," Hermione stated loftily as she rummaged around her school bag.
"You mean you actually chose to spend more time with Snape?" Ron gaped, regarding the two girls as if they were dangerous convicts.
Eleanora dearly hoped that she was not blushing because once again her heart was performing a rather elaborate drum beat against her ribcage.
"Get a hold of yourself, you mooning idiot!" she inwardly chastised herself, gulping down the dregs of her coffee in an attempt to kill the troop of performing acrobats in her stomach with caffeine overload.
"Anyway," said Hermione pushing back her chair. "We had better get going. It's a bit of a trek to the transfiguration classroom."
"I guess we'll see you at lunch!" Eleanora said brightly to Harry and Ron, who looked as if he dearly wished to crawl under the table and not emerge until first lesson was over.
"Cheer up glum-guts," she said teasingly to him, "If big bad Professor Snape is mean to you, we'll sort him out this afternoon."
He smiled weakly up at her, though looked like he was about to vomit slugs.
As she left the Great Hall with Hermione, Eleanora allowed herself to steal a glance up at the staff table. There he sat, distant and regal in his black teaching robes, his ebony hair obscuring his grave face as he leant forward to converse quietly with Dumbledore. Eleanora's hands twitched with that irrepressible longing to restrain his locks and she buried them deep into the pockets of her robes letting her gaze linger upon him a while. Ever since their encounter in the hallway, she had been in a state of constant turmoil, sifting through her feelings over and over again.
She was outraged by his rudeness and abrasive manner, yet knew that he of all men had right to be somewhat reticent. More so, she found herself filled with admiration and a romantic image of the stern professor as the dauntless hero. However from years of living with her father, she knew that spying was anything but an outwardly heroic occupation. Grovelling to a master at his feet and betraying him behind his back was a dangerous game to be playing and one that left her in no doubts that Severus Snape had reason enough to be as surly and caustic as he was.
"Come on!" chided Hermione impatiently. "We'll be late!" The look of utter anguish of the girls face, as if the whole future of the wizarding world balanced on their punctuality, sent Eleanora in a spasm of giggles.
"Alright, alright," she conceded, reining her laughter with a limited degree of success. "I'm coming; don't get your knickers in a twist!"
* * * * * * * * * *
Transfiguration had proved to be an enjoyable and interesting lesson. Professor McGonagall was a hard taskmaster and immediately set the class the assignment of transfiguring a guinea pig into a wooden box. Eleanora grinned to herself as McGonagall detailed the transfiguration process. She had been set this same task the previous year as part of her end of year examination and was confident that she would encounter no problems. A large cardboard box sat upon the professor's desk, sporadically delivering loud squeaks of protest. The students filed up to the box to select their guinea pig, Eleanora choosing a rather over-fed black one. She crooned softly to the creature as it skittered nervously in her arms. Hermione appeared to have selected the live-wire of the bunch and was having difficulty in restraining the little beast as she attempted to perform the spell. Eleanora, holding her pacified guinea pig close to her chest leant across the desk to whisper,
"If you cast immobilus on it first then it makes it a bit easier."
Hermione sharply withdraw her hand as the creature bared its tiny teeth.
"Won't it affect the transfiguration process though?"
Eleanora shook her head. "It shouldn't do. We did this one last year," she confided quietly.
She lay her own guinea pig down on the desk, steadying it with one hand as she withdrew her wand from her sleeve.
"Immobilus," she murmured, aware of Hermione peering with interest over her shoulder.
The guinea pig froze, rigid in her hands. "Sorry, little guy," she whispered, as its eyes darted wildly in trepidation.
A swish and flick later and the diminutive creature had vanished to be replaced by a delicate wooden box, ornately carved with a floral pattern. She flicked open the metal clasp, and a high pitched, tinkling strain of music filled the air.
"Shit," she muttered darkly, hurriedly slamming the lid shut again, glancing around to make sure that she had not attracted undue attention. Everybody else however seemed to be absorbed in their own task, particularly a tall Ravenclaw boy who was nursing his finger after being bitten by his outraged test subject.
It was a bloody music box.
Whilst McGonagall's instructions had made no mention prohibiting the creation of musical boxes, she was pretty sure that it would not do to cause a commotion especially in the first lesson of her first day.
She swiftly transfigured the delicate music box into a normal, more plainly decorated wooden box, and gave an inaudible sigh of relief as she opened the lid to utter silence.
"Well done, Miss D'Souza," uttered the voice of McGonagall from over her shoulder. "And you too, Miss Granger. You may change them back and replace them in their box."
Eleanora picked up her guinea pig, now mobile again and offered to take Hermione's. Having deposited them in the box at the front of the room she returned to her desk, where Hermione was now copying notes from the blackboard.
"I went to see Dumbledore this morning," she began quietly, their heads bent close as they worked on their parchments.
"What did he say?" came the whispered reply.
"Just that……." Eleanora trailed into silence as McGonagall swept past them, keeping a wary eye on her as she instructed the class in their next task.
"I'll tell you at lunch," she whispered, seeing no opportunity to share the story without risking the rebuke of the strict professor.
* * * * * * * * *
Lunch was a noisy affair, and Eleanora, Harry, Ron and Hermione grabbed seats at the far end of the Gryffindor table so as to be as far out of the reach of prying ears as possible.
"So, what did Dumbledore say?" asked Harry, shovelling fish pie into his mouth.
"Apparently, there used to be five houses, not four, "Eleanora began to explain between mouthful of food.
"And Arrowsbane was the fifth house?" asked Hermione, her hazel eyes gleaming with interest.
"Bingo," replied Eleanora. "Artemisia Arrowsbane had a falling-out with Salazar Slytherin and decided to leave."
"Understandable," snorted Ron, casting an irritable glance over the Slytherin table.
"The house just grew smaller and smaller and eventually there was no one left," Eleanora finished.
She felt slight chagrin at not being able to tell her new friends the whole story but in order to do that she would have to explain why exactly she had been placed in the house with the talent for advanced magic and that was not something she was prepared to do just yet.
"So, the house just died?" asked Hermione incredulously.
"Looks that way," Eleanora replied sincerely hoping that Hermione would not go ferreting around for information too deeply.
"Strange that Hogwarts: A History never mentioned anything about it," she mused.
Ron gasped with mock horror and clapped a hand over his mouth. "A book was wrong?" he gaped. "The world is ending! What will we do!"
Hermione merely smiled sarcastically at him and Eleanora tried unsuccessfully not to giggle. Ron cracked her up and she already felt a great affinity for the comic boy.
"Do I have time for another sticky toffee pudding?" Eleanora wondered aloud.
"Not if you want to get to potions on time," Harry warned. "And believe me; you do not want to get in Snape's bad books on your first day. I did and he's been an absolute git to me ever since."
I think I'm already in his bad books, thought Eleanora to herself. Still, she resolved, no need to make it worse that it already is.
Despite her earlier bravado about her first potions lesson, she once again felt the familiar flip of her stomach and began to sincerely regret eating even one sticky toffee pudding. She was immeasurably thankful that she had Hermione with her, and didn't even smirk as the other girl insisted that they leave ten minutes early.
"I'll see you two in divination!" she called over her shoulder to Harry and Ron, still sitting at the table.
"We'll save you a seat right at the back," called back Harry.
"Perfect position for an afternoon nap!" added Ron happily.
As she and Hermione left the Great Hall, Eleanora tried to swallow the nervousness that she felt rising in her at the thought of spending an entire double lesson in the torturous presence of Professor Snape.
Still, she reasoned, things could only get better between them. At least that was what she hoped.
* * * * * * * * *
A little note to all of you out there concerned about Eleanora being a bit of a Mary-Sue. I realise I might have been a little heavy-handed with the physical descriptions of her, especially with regards to that over long and gushing description in Chapter Seven. I've re-done that section and I hope that it's better now. Go take a look and let me know what you think and if there is anything else you think I should change while I'm at it.
Thanks guys!