Chapter Nineteen:
"How many?" gaped Ron incredulously, as Eleanora settled herself into a low velvet armchair at the back of the Divination classroom.
"Four rolls of parchment by next lesson," she hissed angrily, yanking her books roughly out of her bag.
"Four?" said Harry, with a sympathetic grimace. "That's harsh, even for Snape!"
Evil old bastard, thought Eleanora, slamming her textbooks onto the table. But for some unfathomable reason she could not make that sound as convincing as she wanted it to.
Their conversation was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a woman who Eleanora recognised as Professor Trelawney.
She was tall and stick-thin, her spare frame adorned with layers of silks and chiffons, flowing voluminously out behind her as she seemed to glide soundlessly across the room. Her eyes were magnified behind a pair of enormous frameless spectacles, giving her the appearance of a gossamer thin winged insect.
"Hello, my dears," she breathed softly, her eyes widening behind the thick lenses as she took her place at the largest table in the room. Lavender and Parvati quickly moved their seats to her side, and Eleanora could practically feel their admiration radiating throughout the room like the cloyingly sweet incense that threatened to lull her into a deep sleep any moment now.
"Welcome to Divination," Trelawney continued, clasping her hands in front of her in anticipation. "This year we will delve deeper into your subconscious minds than ever before. What we shall unearth, I do not know."
She shot a pointed glance at Harry, who was trying his level best not to dissolve into giggles. Ron was having less luck and was silently rocking with mirth, hiding his laughter behind his hand. Eleanora grinned at the two boys, but kept her attention Professor Trelawney. Let's face it, she thought to herself, when it comes to Divination I need all the help I can get.
Having collected their teacups from the rickety looking china cupboard, the three sat down around a low table, upon which was precariously balanced a large blue and white china teapot. Eleanora picked it up, surprised at its weight and poured a generous amount into the three cups.
"Got any coffee instead?" asked Harry teasingly.
Eleanora grimaced. "With my luck in Divination, I'd probably get just as much success out of a cup of pumpkin juice." She took a large gulp of the scalding tea and spluttered indelicately. "Probably taste a lot better than this rot too!"
The tea was bitterly strong and had a deeply unpleasant aftertaste. Taking a glance round the room, and finding the rest of the class staring studiously into their cups, Eleanora slyly stretched out her arm and quickly poured the remainder of the tea into a conveniently placed pot plant, taking care to retain the dregs.
Placing her cup back down on the table, she peered into it, her forehead furrowed in concentration.
"Well, my dear," came the breathy voice of Trelawney from somewhere beside her. "What do you see today?"
"The same thing as I see every time," answered Eleanora, catching Ron's eye mischievously.
"And what is that?" asked the gauzy professor excitedly.
"A mess of soggy tealeaves," came the inevitable reply.
Trelawney's face creased with disappointment, and her eyes lost their animated glitter. She rather brusquely took the cup out of the girl's hands and peered into it herself.
"Ahh," she said mysteriously. "There is much to see here."
Eleanora wrinkled her nose in disbelief.
"Look!" the professor said, shoving the teacup right under Eleanora nose. "What do you see now?"
Still a load of tealeaves, Eleanora thought sceptically.
"Look harder, my dear!" Trelawney urged, her thin hands trembling in exhilaration as she held the cup.
Eleanora stared intently into the cup. If she cocked her head to one side and squinted a bit through her fringe, she could sort of make out a very wonky broomstick. However she doubted that much of the future could be gleaned from what resembled a broken Firebolt.
"Hmmm," she mused, aware of Trelawney's growing excitement, "Death maybe?" she tried, remembering what Harry had said about the professors near obsession with his various methods of imminent demise. He tried to arrange her face into a suitably horrified expression but the stick-like woman shook her head vehemently.
"Look harder still!" she breathed.
Eleanora rolled her eyes, trying not to look at Harry or Ron who were collapsed in silent laughter on their sagging sofa.
"I give up!" she said, her eyes widening in real horror this time, as Trelawney drifted to the front of the class room, her teacup still in hand. The professor clapped her frail hands for silence.
"Class!" she announced in joyous tones, her melodic voice filling the incense heavy air.
"Miss D'Souza has made a wonderful discovery," she continued, as the whole class swivelled in their seats to look at her. Eleanora blushed a deep beetroot colour and hid behind the dependable pot plant, coming to her rescue once again.
"She has found," Trelawney pronounced dramatically, savouring her proclamation, "the constellation of Venus!"
This statement evoked deep intakes of breath from both Lavender and Parvati and a blonde Ravenclaw girl whose name Eleanora did not know.
Ron leant across and whispered in her ear. "Pretty clever fitting a whole constellation in that teacup: I would have thought it would've been a bit big!"
Eleanora smiled weakly, still dismayed at Trelawney's interest in her teacup.
"Now, my dears," she began again, "who can tell me what the constellation of Venus signifies?"
Lavender and Parvati got their hands up almost as fast as Hermione could have managed, and sat there, hopeful expression painted on their faces.
"Yes, my dear?" the professor asked Parvati.
The Indian girl took a deep breath, as if her answer were of utmost importance. "The constellation of Venus when found in a teacup is a strong portent of great happiness to be found in love and matters of the heart. It augers the meeting a new lover or coming to see an acquaintance in a deeply romantic light."
"Correct, Miss Patil," Trelawney praised her eliciting a delighted smile from the girl.
Eleanora however had sunk down so low in her hair that only the crown of her head was visible over the lush foliage of the plant.
Her face burned bright red and she shot a horrified look at Harry and Ron as she listened to Parvati's answer. Her horror multiplied ten-fold though as the professor asked,
"Have you recently met someone special, my dear?"
Eleanora jerked herself up from her slouched position, and answered quickly, "No, no one at all."
In her head her reply sounded forced and far too loud, but as she reflected later, no one else saw the ephemeral flash of the potions master face in her mind, smirking at her tauntingly.
Trelawney however seemed to accept her answer, and merely smiled benignly at her and added, "Well, when you do, you must let us know." Eleanora smiled back as best she could, but stuck out her tongue at Trelawney as soon as her back was turned, much to Harry's amusement.
"At least your blossoming love life distracted her from my imminent doom today!" he teased lightly, as they made their way down the rickety staircase after the lesson. His only reply was a thunderous scowl that Snape could have been proud of.
"Come on," coaxed Ron, who had recovered from his fit of laughter. "It's not that bad."
"You think?" Eleanora shot back. "Not only is Trelawney playing my own personal Cupid, but I'm probably going to fail Divination too!"
They looked mystified at her.
"I thought it was a broken Firebolt," she admitted sheepishly, a small grin finding its way onto her lips.
Ron nearly tripped over the hem of his robes at this and their gales of raucous laughter could be heard all the way down the corridor.
* * * * * * * * *
Severus Snape was in a dangerous mood. He stabbed his fork into his cut of meat with such ferocity that diminutive Professor Flitwick seated beside him, bolstered up to table height by a pile of cushions, cowered away in fear. None of the staff save Dumbledore dared to catch his eye, so used were they to the steely glare that would no doubt fix upon them should they so much as try.
Dumbledore contemplated the grim spectre of his potions master thoughtfully. It was no wonder that he was in such a foul mood, given the news that he had been forced to give him that morning. Images of Snape's resolute scowl flashed through his mind, the austere features disintegrating into a disconsolate grimace as he was given the news that his entire summers work had come to nothing.
At Dumbledore's orders, Snape had spent the best part of the summer holiday attempting to worm his way back into Voldemort's inner circle. Whilst all concerned had known that this would be no easy task, as traitors were punished harshly, their lives at the mercy of Voldemort's unbending will, none, Severus included had suspected the mammoth task that lay before him.
The gruesome details had been divulged to no one but Dumbledore himself, though from the wounds that the man bore, both physical and psychological upon his return, it was obvious that his mission had not been an easy one. Whilst the deep lacerations and bruises upon his assaulted body had been expertly healed by the experienced Medi-witch, by now used to tending to the broken form of the potions master, the deeper wounds were those inflicted upon his mind; old scars ripped open again, deeper and wider than before, a poison poured into them that now ate away at the soul of the dour man, tainting his consciousness; no antidote to be brewed and no refuge to be found in sleep.
To find then, that all his exertions had come to nothing was a deadening blow to the already wearisome man, already hollowed by the many years of double dealing and treachery that tainted his past and now looked set to dictate the passage of time to come. His confidence in thinking that he had successfully infiltrated Voldemort's inner circle had evidently been misplaced, as Dumbledore had had the unenviable task of telling him that two nights previously there had been a Death Eater's gathering at the Malfoy mansion; one that he had been noticeably excluded from, the Dark Lord's trust in him evidently not fully restored, despite his acts of unwavering loyalty at his supposed return.
Snape shuddered despite himself at the mere memory of these acts: Their pitiful cries still echoed through the dark recesses of his troubled mind, stirring his soul into a torrent of guilt and deep regret. These disjointed voices, begging for mercy, had no accompanying faces. He could no longer bear to look at his victims, finding the looks of anguished agony contorting their faces into grotesque masks of pain too much for his overwrought consciousness to bear, when late at night, he tossed and turned in the privacy of his bed, their ghosts trespassing into his mind, reminding him of the dreadful deeds that he vainly attempted to cloak with darkness.
Something of his torment must have shown itself in his expression, as Professor Sprout dared to lean across the table and tap him lightly on his back robed arm, sharply dragging him out of introspective reverie.
"Severus, old boy!" she said jovially, her forced smile a little too bright to be genuine. "We thought we'd lost you there for a minute!"
He smiled tightly. "Sorry to disappoint you, Philomena," he said shortly, as the curly headed witch shrank into her seat under his piercing gaze.
Sweeping his gaze over the rest of the staff table, his eyes narrowed with innate dislike as they alighted upon Sybil Trelawney, who was fervently talking with a very bored looking Minerva McGonagall and a listless Carmel Sinistra, professor of astronomy. Snape managed to grasp snatches of their conversation from down the table and realised to his extreme vexation that she was enthusiastically prattling on about Eleanora D'Souza.
Gods, he thought angrily to himself, slamming his knife down on the side of his plate, eliciting another scared glance from Flitwick. Haven't I heard enough of that name for one lifetime?
"……Found a constellation of Venus in her cup in my lesson today," she said dreamily, her over-large eyes glittering behind her glasses, as if she was personally responsible for that occurrence.
Though, Severus thought sardonically to himself, she probably was wholly responsible, as she no doubt interpreted what amounted to nothing more than a few wet tea leaves as some deep portentous augury. If only she could oblige his mordant humour by predicting such omens of death for the impossible Miss D'Souza as she did for that intolerable upstart, Potter. That might take her down a few pegs, he thought caustically, attacking his pudding with new found fervour.
"……She seemed most certain that she had met no such person, but the tea leaves never lie," Trelawney continued earnestly, seemingly oblivious to McGonagall's unsubtle snorts of derision and Sinistra's apathetic yawn.
"It makes a welcome change to receive portent of love for once instead of an omen of death," she said sadly, shaking her head, the many strings of beads around her scrawny neck clattering together as she craned to catch a glimpse of Potter and his trio sitting obliviously at the Gryffindor table.
Love, thought Severus acidly, his lip curling into a sceptical sneer. How in Merlin's name could a few clumps of leaves left in the bottom of a teacup portend love? Next the foolish woman would be seeing love in the remains of his dinner left sitting on his plate. Though, he reflected somewhat regretfully, not even a fraud like Trelawney would go so far beyond the realms of possibility as to predict love pervading the solitary existence of Severus Snape.
He followed her saddened gaze to the Gryffindor table, his scowl returning in full as he fixed his indomitable stare upon the figures of the Terrible Trio.
Damn, he realised. He would have to think of a new name for the brats now as it seemed that the D'Souza girl was attached resolutely at the hip to them. The Fatuous Foursome perhaps?
She threw her head back, laughing throatily at something the Weasley boy had said. Suddenly, the cold hand of jealousy crept around Severus' gut, inexplicably tangling itself in his innards and curdling his thoughts.
Could it be, he wondered, his eyes narrowing in hatred at the red haired boy, that it is Weasley who is destined to win the D'Sousa girl's heart? He reluctantly entertained the thought whilst he stared at the girl who had curbed her strident laughter, and who was now gesticulating wildly with a spoon, almost poking Potter's eye out in her enthusiasm.
He caught himself sharply, inwardly chastising himself for such a pathetic show of emotion. What did it matter to him what the girl felt for Weasley? And besides, why on Merlin's grave was he putting such stock in Trelawney's words of all people? The woman was a charlatan and a fool, and her auguries were capricious nonsense.
"Then why do you care?" asked a small voice in the back of his mind teasingly.
"I don't," he asserted brusquely, abruptly tearing his gaze off the animated girl.
"Liar," the voice taunted, suddenly taking on a sharp, biting tone.
The voice tittered irksomely, and he pushed back his chair, oblivious to the loud scrape it made on the stone floor. He ignored the several startled glances of the staff, though most of them were used to Snape's volatile exits by now.
He strode dauntingly between the house tables towards the doors, his boots upon the stone sounding like whip cracks. The Slytherins nodded politely to their house master but the other houses avoided his gaze.
That is all except for one student seated in the midst of the Gryffindor table. She followed the potion master with her eyes as he left the Great Hall, her gaze hungrily eating up his receding form, black robes billowing arrestingly behind him.
She too was weighing over the events of Divination class. Her instinct told her to dismiss the presage as superstitious nonsense but something in the way that her heart had leapt up into her throat as Parvati had revealed the "broken Firebolt's" significance told her otherwise. Even without the augury, she had to grudgingly admit to herself that Severus Snape unnerved her, in a way that she was not entirely hostile to.
"Earth to Eleanora!" Ron said loudly in her ear, waving his hand in front of her face, transfixed upon the now empty doorway of the Hall.
"Sorry," she mumbled, trying to rid her thoughts of the image of his ascetic face.
"What's up?" Harry asked, through a mouthful of custard.
"Oh," she replied, as lightly as she could, "Just thinking about something to do with Potions."