Chapter 6: A Novel Class
"Is something a matter, Mr. Potter?" Professor Flitwick inquired.
"Who… is that?" he asked, staring at the photo.
The teacher bent down and scooped the book into his arms. After careful inspection of the photo he laughed. "Professor Binns needs to update his book list."
"But who is she?"
"Take your seat, Mr. Potter. I suppose I can tell you: it's been long enough." Confused, the class quieted and stopped milling around.
Flitwick walked to the front of the room. "While this is not History class, I don't think any of you will get this particular lesson. Please don't tell anyone what I am telling you now. This," he said, pointing to the photo, "is a picture of Princess Gretta Genoux. None of you are old enough to remember, but we used to have a monarchy."
"You mean, like the firm?"
"No, the muggle royalty now works more as a figurehead: like a mascot. The royal family here was chosen by a prophecy. The Queen or King was more powerful than even the Minister of Magic."
"And they never had any problems with tyranny?" Pavarati Patil asked.
"The prophecy ensured a reign of peace as long as the family held the throne. I'm surprised you haven't heard of them before.
"The last queen, Queen Ann Genoux, died over 20 years ago. Princess Gretta was her only child. This picture was taken when she was about 16. However, she decided she did not want to be queen, so she ran away. She was very irresponsible. The Queen disowned her as her daughter, although she still held her royal title, and no one was allowed to speak her name. That's why I was so surprised you had this book. I thought they'd all been destroyed."
"Why didn't they find her and bring her back?"
"They were unable to find her. The Queen died only a year after the disappearance, and after awhile, the Ministry learned to get along without the monarchy. However, they did eventually find Gretta's body, killed by the Avada Kedavra curse."
"Didn't you say that the family ensured peace? What about Voldemort? That wasn't very peaceful."
"It seemed that the Princess was cursed to bring pain to the country. Since she never took the throne, it could be considered that she was not there to protect the country."
"So that was the end of the monarchy?"
"All that's left is a silly superstition."
"What's that?"
"Well, there's a prophecy that says the last of the royal family will wage a war against the greatest evil of all. Without this leader, the evil will destroy the world. It also says this leader will be the source of infinite power for this evil and die by the ultimate evil's hand. However, many think the prophecy is just someone goofing around, not a real vision. Only time will tell."
"I've seen Gretta," Harry blurted.
"That would be impossible," Flitwick told him. "She's been dead seven years."
"She was in this school! She looked exactly like this!"
"Mr. Potter, this picture was taken decades ago and she is DEAD." The bell rang and Flitwick looked relieved.
Though he tried to avoid them, Hermione grabbed him by the elbow and Ron stepped in front of him. "What's up, guys? Gee, I'm awfully hungry, maybe we could talk at lunch-"
"Maybe we could talk now," Ron answered, "seeing as you haven't been saying much lately."
"Harry, who is this girl you saw?" Hermione demanded.
"There's not much to tell," he replied honestly. "When I followed Dumbledore after the ceremony, I ended up down by the boat docks. Hagrid shows up with this pretty girl: the one in the book. She was a new student, I guess, but she saw me and I had to leave before I learned anything." The two eyed him critically.
"And you haven't seen her since?"
"No." He didn't mention his dream the week before. After all, it was only a dream, right?
"Why'd you lie to us, Harry?" The two stared at him, waiting for an answer.
"Hagrid swore me to secrecy," he fibbed. He hoped they didn't notice his shifting eyes, for he certainly couldn't tell them the truth.
They seemed to buy his story and Hermione released her death grip. "Okay, let's go get some lunch."
***
"Please stir your potions regularly, as to prevent burning," Snape droned on. That day the N.E.W.T. class was working on a particularly difficult draught: the Floo Potion. After drying and crushing, the potion would become Floo Powder. However, if made incorrectly, the user would never reach his desired destination.
"Harry," the professor ridiculed, "While it is quite easy to rely on those smarter, you should not have Hermione do all the work." Harry's ears began to burn, but he said nothing. Indeed, he and his lab partner had made a deal: he would prepare ingredients: chopping, measuring, etc., and Hermione would do the mixing and the adding.
"Excellent work, Miss Kinter." The strawberry-blond smiled broadly. It was already obvious, from previous classes, that Snape had chosen his favorite student. While she rarely made mistakes, Snape always personally helped her fix the ones she did. He constantly turned other students' attention to her, so that she could demonstrate the appropriate way to do this and that. While she seemed embarrassed by the extra attention of her fellow pupils, it was obvious she radiated in Snape's praise. Rumors circulated that she had a crush on the critical teacher; twice the gossip circulated that the teacher reciprocated her feelings. Even Malfoy, who benefited from the astounding grades Snape showered him with, benefits of his partner, was getting jealous. He was used to being the favorite student, and did not appreciate losing the title to a Gryffindor.
"Harry, you have twenty seconds to get the wolfsbane ready. I have to add that right away." The look on Hermione's face would have been quite comical, had Harry not known the consequences for failure. He quickly chopped the rest of the root and dumped it off the cutting board into the cauldron. The potion bubbled and turned a sick greenish color.
"Ugh, is it supposed to do that?"
"Yeah, it's not pretty, but it's right."
"So what do we add next?" Harry began flipping through the potion recipe book. "Yeah, it says we have to smash some Mulungus leaves to release their oils and then add them to the cauldron one at a time."
"You start pounding, I'll keep stirring." They turned to their respective tasks, eager to finish the consuming potion. Harry wrapped the leaves in cheesecloth, then raised his mallet, ready to strike. Suddenly a high-pitched scream wrenched through the room. Hermione squeaked and dropped her wooden spoon into the cauldron, where it began to smoke. "What was that?"
Turning to the origin of the sound, they saw A.M. writhing on the floor, grasping her arm to her chest. "It burns!" she cried, scrunching her face against the pain.
Snape jumped over his desk and ran to the girl's side. He stared accusingly at Malfoy. "What happened?
"I don't know!" the Slytherin shot back, glaring. "She keeps saying it burns, but-"
"Make it stop, oh God… the pain." The whites of her eyes totally surrounded her irises, make Harry think her eyes might pop out at any second.
"-but she was nowhere near the cauldron."
Snape gently pulled A.M.'s arm towards him and slid her sleeve down. Everyone cringed at the blackened flesh that peeked around her hem and the professor quickly pushed her robe back into place, something akin to fear gripping his face. Harry felt a nagging itch at the back of his mind. "I will return soon. All of you continue working on your potions." He scooped the moaning, sobbing girl into his arms and left the room.
Several students, mainly boys suffering from crushes, cornered Draco. "You wouldn't have just lied to Snape, would you?" one of the large Slytherin boys asked him, lust overtaking his loyalties. "After all, you are awfully upset about losing your precious teacher's-pet spot, aren't you?"
"You don't frighten me," he sneered at the crowd. "She wasn't near the fire. I don't know what happened to her." Harry and Hermione returned to their workstation, but the dropped spoon had obviously ruined their hard work. "There's something strange about what just happened," Hermione commented, scrubbing the burnt crust at the bottom of the cauldron.
Harry agreed. 'Yeah, I feel like I should know, but I just can't think of it right now." Why would a burn cause so much mental agitation?
"Do you think she'll be all right?" Hermione asked him, concerned. "She was burned very badly. The skin was black."
He considered, his heart seizing for a second, then quickly answered, "Yeah, she'll probably be back by lunch." But A.M. was not in the hall during the large meal. And still she had not returned by Defense Against the Dark Arts. "Kinter," Kenchi had called during role. However, he must have known of the event during potions, because he did not repeat her name in hopes of an answer.
She finally stumbled into the common room that evening, her usually buoyant hair plastered to her head with old sweat and her left sleeve raggedly cut off at the shoulder, exposing the white bandages lacing her arm. Many Gryffindors surrounded her and showered her with condolences, but she stifled them with a raised palm. "Thanks for the sympathy, but I'm just going to go to bed." She trudged up the stairs and everyone returned to their previous tasks.
"So did Draco really burn her?" Ron asked Harry as they played Exploding Snap.
He shrugged. "I don't know. He says he didn't, but would he confess if he did? And how do you know about it?"
"Everyone knows about it."
"There's something really weird about it, don't you think?" Harry scratched his head, trying to stop the itch overtaking his brain.
"Yeah, like the fact that that's where a Deatheater would have his mark?" While meant to be a nonchalant comment, Harry could almost hear the click in his mind.
"Exactly!" he shouted, then grinned awkwardly as everyone in the room turned to look at him. Then his face fell. "But Snape didn't seem to have any problems. I mean, if Vold… er, You-Know-Who was calling the Deatheaters, all of their scars would have hurt, right?"
"Okay, so maybe it was just a burn." Ron shook his head. "Harry, not everyone in this school has a buried secret for you to discover." As he pictured A.M.'s blue eyes, deep as forest pools, he felt certain that, in her case, that was not true.