Anything that's not blatant is a riddle
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Author's penname: Elixa Amethyst
Voices of the Past Part III
Written May 2002 onwards, pre Order of the Phoenix.
All characters and things you recognise, are © JKRowling, no infringement intended.

All references to "mediwizard" mean healer.
Please read parts I and II first.

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Chapter Seven
Blind Anger

Next morning at breakfast, I walked straight into the great hall, determination in each stride that I took, and my fists clenched. I headed straight for Severus at the teachers' table, a stormy look across my face.
"Angry niece at nine o'clock." Minerva warned my uncle, buttering a piece of toast. Severus only just looked up before I exploded.
"How could you? It is little of your business who I choose as my friends and my enemies!"
"Good morning Miss Amethyst." My uncle greeted
"I accept with my mother it was a different house-." The hall behind me had gone deathly quiet.
"Outside- Now." Professor Snape growled, getting up and walked round the table to where I stood, glaring at him still although I was silent. He kept walking, a hand grasping my neck where it met my shoulders and forced me out of the hall.

The corridor to the entrance hall was empty apart from Quirrell, who took one look at the anger on our faces and went through the doors. Severus pushed me hard against the wall, leaning his face close to mine, his black eyes staring into me like daggers.
"At least your father was a decent man." He told me in a soft tone. I exploded, seeing the true meaning in the comment, and hit him in the stomach with my knee before going for him with my fist to his face. I didn't care what I was doing, just as long as he knew where he stood with this situation.
"That's enough!" Professor McGonagall had come out of the hall. She stood in the empty corridor, arms folded and that ever-so-stern look on her face. "Listen, everyone's anxious about the results, last night has prevented anyone from getting much sleep, so tempers are short at the moment. I suggest you wait until evening before discussing this further. Remember you don't have to discuss it with each other before talking it over with someone else. Breakfast will be getting cold, come along." Minerva pushed open the door to the hall again.
"I'm not hungry." I muttered and turned away. Severus caught me harshly by the shoulder from behind. He leant towards me.
"I warned you, child." Our eyes met briefly, and then I threw his arm off me and walked past Minerva into the great hall. The two teachers exchanged looks, Severus receiving a much disapproving one from his colleague. I sat down opposite Kerry.
"What's going on?" She asked me, a confused look on her face. I glanced down the table at Draco, and saw he had his arm in the way, elbow on the table, unable to look at me.
"Nothing, I'll just be glad to get away from some people when this stupid year ends." I said turning to look towards the staff table where Severus and Minerva were sitting down again.

"This morning is to make sure all of you have the right expectations of your grades in your minds, and have an idea of where you are going to go from here. I understand that some of your choices may be entirely balanced on the marks you get in your owls, and in a way that is quite foolish, but how can I expect you to understand that?" Professor Snape sat at his desk in the potion lab, the tips of his long fingers together, elbows on the desk and looking severely over the top of his hands at the seventh year Slytherins. Since we'd finished our exams there was little we could do apart from think about what we would do once we'd left and help the teachers with the younger years. I sat next to Kerry, glaring at my uncle from the third bench back. He'd so far ignored what I was doing.
"Professor Quirrell has assembled some information for you to help when we go to the library to allow you to browse the careers section." One hand dropped to the table and the other hand rubbed at his chin. "So to kill a little of this time and to amuse me, we'll go round the lot of you to see what you plan to do with yourself at the moment in the way of a career." An evil grin cracked across his face. He went through the people in the benches before us by calling their names. He got to the person beside me and then called out Kerry's name as if I didn't exist. Kerry paused, wondering if he'd explain why he'd missed me out.
"Miss Alanis speak up I can't hear a word."
"I'm going to follow in my family's business Sir."
"Which is?"
"Robe-making, the finest in the north." I saw Severus narrow his eyes and then he moved onto the next person. He didn't come back to me. Oddly enough one of Lysander's friends piped up.
"Sir you missed Elixa out."
"If that was for his benefit, then he doesn't need to ask me." I snarled, a quill snapping in my hand as I said it. For the first time Severus looked at me.
"Miss Amethyst wishes to be field Medi-wizard." He told Lysander's friend before drawing back his chair and standing. "We will move to the library now, the Hufflepuffs should have finished by now."
"And if they haven't they will be now." Kerry muttered as the class filed out of the lab past Professor Snape who stood holding it open.
"Watch your tongue very carefully Miss Amethyst." He told me in a soft tone. I glared at him and followed Kerry down the corridor.

"What is going on between you two this morning? You were fine last night?" Kerry whispered as we sat down at a table with some university prospectuses.
"Draco is being pressured to end it between us by more than just his father." I said, flicking through the contents to the page I wanted without my eyes leaving the paper.
"What you mean Snape's trying to end it between you two?" She hissed.
"What do you think?" I asked hugging myself slightly with my arms as I leant over the prospectus. Kerry understood it as a rhetorical question.
"Was that what it was about this morning?" I turned another page where a student and a professor were shaking hands over being awarded a degree, grinning at me, and then letting go and slumping against the sides of the photograph, tired from doing it every time the page was looked at.
"Why would he want to do it?" Kerry asked.
"Because he's an arrogant, slimy bastar-."
"Discussing Mr Malfoy again are you?" The soft, dark voice of my uncle interrupted my sentence. I clenched my jaw, resisting the temptation to smack him one again.
"No Sir, we were talking about you." I didn't look at him. Severus leant down to my ear the opposite side to Kerry.
"One more word out of you and you won't be speaking for a week." We glared at each other. Someone asked for Snape from another table. When his back was turned, I drew out my wand slowly and muttered, concentrating on his back.
"Petrificus Totalus." It shot out and hit his back, but to my amazement shot back towards me as if reflected. Kerry and I ducked underneath the table and when we looked round, we saw Madame Pince frozen a pile of books in her hands and a stunned look on her face.
"Elixa Amethyst get up and go down to my office now!" Severus looked as though he could murder me, as he brought out his wand and took the spell off the librarian.