Evanna waited until all of the other students had filed out of the potions classroom before she approached her professor.
"Yes, what is it Ms. Malfoy?" Professor Snape said irritably as he wiped down the chalkboard and began writing out the instructions for his next class in slanting script. She frowned at him.
"Can't you do that with magic?" she said, watching him as he had to stand on a step stool in order to fill the entire chalkboard.
He turned a glare on her. "If you are here just to ask inane questions, Ms. Malfoy, I am sure you have another class to get to."
"Sorry," she said quickly. "I actually had a favor to ask you."
Her professor paused, then stepped off the stool to come and stand in front of her, arms crossed over his chest as he studied her carefully.
"Is it a favor you want," he said slowly, "or is it an order?"
Evanna flushed. "I doubt even I have the authority to ask what I'm about to."
His eyes flashed. "Then perhaps you had best not ask it."
"But I have to," she said. "There's no one else here who will do what needs to be done."
Her professor heaved a great sigh. "What do you want, Ms. Malfoy?"
"I want you to train Harry Potter," she said. "He needs to know how to fight. Properly. He won't get that duelling against other students or writing out chapters of theory with Umbridge."
"I won't dare ask you what other students he has been duelling," Professor Snape said darkly. "But you must know your father will see this as a blatant act of disloyalty."
"You're an Occlumens," she said. "You've been keeping him out of your head for years."
"And if he looks in your head? In Potter's?"
Evanna flinched and looked down. "That is why I called it a favor. But I don't think Harry will survive if he doesn't know how to fight. And you've been helping him for years, haven't you?"
"I thought I warned you to quit trying to play both sides."
"I would say that is a rather hypocritical request, Professor," she told him blandly.
"Despite what you believe, you are still an underage witch with no business being entrenched in a war," Professor Snape said in a dangerous voice.
Evanna looked at him and shook her head. "Will you train Harry or not?"
Professor Snape heaved a large sigh. "You have me disobeying both masters, you know that?"
Evanna gave him a smile, recognizing that he had agreed to her request. "Thank you, sir."
"Don't be late to Professor McGongall's class," he said in a growl. "The Cup has been in her office for too long."
Before Evanna got to Transfiguration class, however, she was stopped by a large gathering in the main hall. She strained to see what was going on beyond the crowd, cursing her body for still not having hit any semblance of a growth spurt. The crowd's emotions were confusing as she fought her way through, ranging from excitement to anger to deep grief.
"What is this?" a new voice thundered at the end of the hall and just like that, the sea of students parted and Evanna could see what was going on.
At one end of the corridor stood three professors, McGonagall, Umbridge, and Trelawney. The third was cowering over a worn carpet bag that had burst open, spilling shawls and dresses all over the floor. McGonagall had her arms around the woman as she wept openly, Umbridge visibly smug. At the other end of the corridor was Albus Dumbledore, face painted with fury. Evanna repressed a shudder at the sight.
"As High Inquisitor I have the right to dismiss professors as I see fit!" Umbridge pronounced snootily, nose in the air.
"You may be able to dismiss my teachers, but you do not have the ability to banish them from the grounds! Poppy, Minerva, help Sybil gather her belongings and take her back to her tower," he said. The two female professors did so immediately and Evanna frowned. What motive could he have for keeping a fire teached on school grounds?
"Oh? And where will our new Divination professor stay?"
"I believe he would much prefer the ground floor," Dumbledore said, and then Evanna heard the clopping of hooves. A centaur. A centaur was the new Divination professor. Clever old….
Divination. Professor Trelawney was the most ineffectual Divination professor in years, if Lucius' old rants about failing standards at Hogwarts were to be believed. And, obviously, Dumbledore had enough pull to have found a better teacher for the students of Hogwarts if he had pulled in a centaur from the forest. Evanna narrowed her eyes at the old Headmaster, forcing herself to focus on him and only him, not to listen to all the students in the hall as they were warned to move onto their classes. It was only her and Dumbledore, she told herself. And she needed to understand the old chessmaster…
Icy blue eyes locked onto violet. The world stood still for a moment.
Trelawney gave the prophecy….
Evanna wasn't quite sure why she did it, but she smiled at the old man, dipping her head to him before turning on her heel. His worry and anger floated down the corridor after her as she made her way to the Transfiguration classroom, taking her seat by Bridget as the class gossiped over what they had just witnessed while waiting for Professor McGonagall to return.
"Quite a show, wasn't it?" Bridget mumbled as Evanna pulled out her textbook.
"If it was, they should fire the costumer for both Umbridge's and the Headmaster's costume," she said.
Bridget snorted, though everyone quickly quietened when Professor McGonagall entered the classroom, looking just as angry as she had before. Before the class was over, the students had lost nearly fifty points as a class for not staying on task.
"You've had Professor Trelawney, right?" Evanna said to Bridget as they left the class at last.
"Yeah, I was told her class would be easy and a bit of a laugh to boot," Bridget said. "I don't quite know how it's going to be with a centaur teaching though."
"Could you point me to her tower?" Evanna said, ignoring the last statement.
Bridget's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"
"Do you really want to ask me that?" she said.
"I thought-you telling Pott-" Bridget clamped her mouth shut, her face becoming carefully blank. Evanna couldn't help but think that her friend was angry with her. No, not angry.
Disappointed.
"It's that way, in the North Tower," she said. "You'll have to climb up the through a circular trapdoor."
Evanna looked at her friend carefully for a moment, before thanking her and turning in the direction of the North Tower.
"Evanna!" Bridget called after her. She turned.
"Yes?" she said.
The Hufflepuff looked nervous, rubbing her arm as though she was cold. "Just…. Don't do something you'll regret."
"Merlin, B, I'm not going to murder her-"
Evanna cut herself off as she saw Lucius in her mind's eye while in front of her Bridget flinched. Icy cold fingers clenched at her insides.
"I'll see you later," she said, turning away before Bridget could say anything else to cause that iciness to spread further.
She made her way quickly through the halls until she found the trapdoor Bridget had described. She pointed her wand at it and a spindly ladder descending. Muttering about the idiocy of expecting proper young witches in skirts to have to climb a ladder, Evanna glanced about the corridor to make sure she was alone before climbing the ladder.
"Professor Trelawney?" she called as she stepped into the classroom, coughing on the all the incense that was clouding the small room. There were poufs and chintz chairs everywhere, and the fire was roaring in the fireplace. She did not immediately spot the professor, but she could hear quiet sobbing coming from behind a wooden door.
"Professor Trelawney?" she said again, softer as she opened the door.
The owl-eyed professor quickly straightened, her wide eyes blinking. "Yes, child," she said, her voice not quite as airy as the professor might have liked. "What is it?"
"I was sent to check on you," Evanna lied easily, probing the Divination professor's mind with her own. "It was kind of the Headmaster to allow you to stay here."
"Hogwarts is my home," Professor Trelawney insisted. "I have been here for sixteen years."
Evanna pressed into her mind a little, seeing a glimpse of a dirty tavern, the Headmaster standing over a greasy-looking young man…
"You are strange, child," the professor murmured, reaching out a hand toward her. Evanna flinch as her cold fingers connected with her cheek.
"Isn't odd for the headmaster to allow you to stay here?" Evanna pressed, using the physical contact to push further into the professor's mind. It was odd, different than most minds she had encountered before. She heard the professor's voice.
"My great-grandmother was the greatest Seer of her time-Cassandra Trelawney-"
"And she passed this gift onto you?"
"Yes, though it is hard to demand the Gift visit-"
The memory clouded. In the present, Professor Trelawney had pulled away from Evanna, a deep frown on her face.
"There is something about you, so much Darkness for one so young," the Professor murmured, rubbing her head. "You are clouded my inner eye-I believe you should leave-"
"Could you just tell me, Professor?" Evanna said, panic starting to overtake her. "Is there some reason the Headmaster would want you to stay close to Hogwarts?"
Evanna thought the professor was about to order her out of the room when the woman's eyes glazed over and her voice sounded like it was old and young and many and one all at the same time.
"The child of the dark and the equal shall destroy the plans of great men…. The star shall be saved but the moon will not stay…. Darkness's child will set the Light ablaze….. But the equal will escape into the night…. The child of the dark and the equal shall destroy…"
Evanna backed away from the professor, terror blooming through her body. She had suspected that there was more to the Divination professor than silly glasses and a penchant for incense, but a prophecy made to her? A prophecy made about her? Because who else could be Darkness's child than Evanna Belinda, Dark Lady, heir of the Dark Lord?
And the equal? What on earth could that mean? Could there be another heir? Evanna shuddered at the thought. That was impossible.
The professor seemed to come out of her trance at last, looking at Evanna again with wide eyes. Evanna was not sure what the professor saw-pale skin? cold sweat? trembling hands?-but it must have been unpleasant.
"You don't look too well, dear," she said. "Do you need the Hospital Wing?"
"No-no, I think I just need to go… Get something to eat," Evanna mumbled before positively bolting down the ladder, no longer worried about the propriety of skirts and steps. Without consciously deciding, she made her way to the Chamber of Secrets.
"Misssstressssss!" Del cried as soon as Evanna stepped foot in the Chamber. "Missssstresssss, I could ssssmell your fear all the way in the casssstle proper!"
Evanna forced herself to take several deep breaths. She reminded herself of her old thoughts of prophecy, that all the tales told of people bringing about prophesied downfalls because of their own fear, not because destiny was something set in stone.
"It's nothing, Del," she assured the basilisk. "I'm just working myself up over nothing."
Evanna wasn't positive about the snake, but she knew she had not convinced herself.