She did like Percival. Genuinely, not just as a feature of the artifice that was Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. He was curious and quick-witted, and when they had first met she'd found his simplistic outlook on life, his trustingness, in spite of all the turmoil he'd then so recently been through, to be slightly adorable. Charming. He could have been a brilliant alchemist, if he'd been willing to accept the price such knowledge demanded of him — and in a certain way she admired the nobility, the conviction, behind his decision to abandon the field in order to maintain his moral code. You didn't see that very often, these days.
It was no real surprise that he understood their relationship — or, had understood it, for many decades — as a filial one. Nicolas had been a very paternal figure in his life, and he reminded Perenelle (Aalis) of Josse (her first son, long gone, now) and another, much earlier life.
He had come to them a bitter, hotheaded boy, mourning his sister and running from his past, had thrown himself into his studies with passion and vigor. Over the four years he'd lived with Nicolas and Perenelle, she had watched him come to terms with the dissolution of his relationship with Gellert Grindelwald — then little more than a budding firebrand politician, and the love of Percival's young life — and the guilt he held over the circumstances of Ariana's death. She had taken him into her heart, done her best to give him support, to help him find a direction for his considerable talents, and when his path took him away from her, toward a Mastery in Transfiguration and a teaching position at his alma mater (in emulation of Nicolas, she suspected), she had been proud of the young man she could see him becoming.
They had kept in touch, in the years that followed. Nicolas had counseled him to act, when Gellert's movement began to take on a militant tone, when the tensions broke out into open conflict, the entire world at war, it seemed. (Again — the fragile peace which had been established after the Great War had lasted only two decades, hardly more than a blink, to one who had seen seven centuries by then.) He blamed himself — as though the fiercely determined young Gellert would not have attempted a revolution without his influence. And when he had finally found the courage to face his one-time lover, when he had struck him down — dishonourably, as Gellert withheld the killing blow, offering Percival his life for the sake of the history they shared — captured him and saw him caged away in his own prison, she helped him come to terms with that as well.
She thought she'd managed to teach him that life was hardly black and white, that there were as many shades of grey as there were people in the world and as many potentially conflicting motivations; that sometimes there were no good outcomes, no easy solutions or compromises to be had, and he could not force people to agree with him. But the direction his political career had developed over the past several decades and his response to the rise of Lord Voldemort — once again taking an outsized proportion of responsibility for the actions of others entirely outside of his control — suggested not.
And while she had seen that he had failed to take to heart the lessons Perenelle and Nicolas had sought to teach him, she had understood. It was difficult, learning to see the world in a new way, learning to accept the limitations of one's own power. Much as she would like to simply tell him how to make peace with the decisions he had made, how to let go of responsibilities which were never truly his to begin with, she was terribly aware that (all too often) some lessons could only be learned by living them.
Time was, after all, the greatest teacher.
And now it seemed it was teaching her a lesson, or rather reminding her of one she had somehow forgotten, in the years since she'd had much of a family to speak of. Sometimes, despite all your efforts, all your love and support and counsel, your children grow up to make poor choices.
It was one thing to have difficulty coming to see the world for all its beautiful, intricate complexity, and the people in it as individuals with agency of their own. Percival's perspective was, after all (and through no fault of his own), that of a great man — lauded in his youth for his power and intelligence, raised to a position of influence on an international stage too quickly to develop the skills and nuanced world-view necessary to exercise his newly-found political power with any sort of subtlety. It had been only too easy for him to become isolated, to feel the weight of thousands on his shoulders — far more people than he could know personally and individually — and come to think of those outside the political sphere as little more than pawns to be moved at the direction of their leaders, easily manipulated by anyone who knew the right words to say, the right actions to take.
It was not surprising that, when faced with the prospect of becoming a leader with no real experience or training and a Wizengamot which considered him little more than a figurehead at best (and an up-jumped muggle-loving fool at worst), he had come to believe that politics was a matter of them versus me, reinforcing that black-and-white worldview his mother and her religion had instilled in him as a child.
Nor was it surprising that the weight of the Flamels' counsel, trust them though he might, did little to balance the effects of his daily struggles against his political opponents.
She had lived a very, very long life. She had seen such things happen before.
It was something quite else to allow a school such as Hogwarts to fall into its current state of neglect and disrepair. Not physically, of course, and he almost certainly could not be held entirely responsible — the last time she had visited the school was nearly two-hundred years ago, and there had been many headmasters in that time, all of whom had likely contributed to the loosening of standards and lowering of expectations she could see all around her.
But to remember this school as one of the premier institutions of learning in Europe, only to be faced with the reality of what it had become, to realise that so many of the greatest, most outstanding flaws could be easily corrected by a sufficiently involved Headmaster... It was a blow to her heart.
The House system, once little more than a way to organise students by their styles of learning, had somehow transformed itself into a disastrously divisive institution, and the list of course offerings had grown pathetically short — there was hardly any witchcraft left in the catalogue, no mind magic or weatherworking or geomancy, there hadn't been an alchemy class since 1930! They didn't even teach dueling anymore! And what about mathematics? Philosophy? Natural sciences? What about French? Welsh? English? There were no longer any non-magical courses to speak of! (Including History, which still ought to exist, but given the instructor might as well not be offered.) And the staff...
The staff were, as a whole, absolutely appalling. Half of Percival's hires over the past forty years were incompetent, and nearly as many should never have been allowed anywhere near vulnerable, impressionable children. (A concept that, honestly, she still wasn't entirely accustomed to, despite recognising that today's students were less capable than those in centuries past, more fragile and needing of careful handling — that, at least, wasn't Percival's fault, but that of their families and cultural shifts at a much broader level.) Several of the current professors shouldn't be teaching anyone below mastery level, one was dead—
If she'd been responsible for hiring, the only full-time professors she would have retained from previous years would be Filius, Pomona, Aurora, Charity, and possibly Septima — she, like Ashe and Severus, was far better suited to working with more advanced students.
And Hagrid... She strongly suspected that the half-giant had been granted his position out of some misguided attempt to make up for the shambles Riddle had made of his life when they'd attended the school...completely disregarding that he had been raising an acromantula in the building, and apparently hadn't learned at any point since how comparatively fragile humans were. Pomona had told her that, according to the grapevine, he'd allowed a student to be attacked by a hippogriff in his very first lesson. Hagrid himself, when she asked him about it, hoping that the gossip was simply that, had hardly denied it. Quite to the contrary, he'd brushed the incident off! "It weren't nothing, Lyra was fine. Ms Malfoy sent me an owl about it and her son was a little prat in the next few lessons, but the girl herself weren't fussed. Healed up the cut herself, never-you-mind. Bit annoyed, really, that we had to go back to less exciting creatures, but..." (Because of course the student in question had been Black — she seemed to be at the centre of half the drama which had taken place over the past year or more.)
The History post was, as far as she was concerned, vacant — everyone knew there was only so much a ghost could change after its initial impression was made. A History professor who could not take into account current events or even developments on the world stage in the past fifty years was hardly a qualified professor. If the Black girl hadn't driven Kyrah Shirazi's predecessor into St. Mungo's, based on the stories she'd gathered from ghosts and portraits, she thought that she might have been tempted to do so herself. (There were few things she hated more than pretenders to the Craft, and Miss Trelawney sounded like a particularly egregious example.) And the constant replacement of Defence professors was simply mind-boggling. Young Castalia seemed to be the best they'd had in some decades — and she, while enthusiastic and obviously qualified, had almost certainly bitten off more than she could chew, with her ideas to revolutionise the course. (She gathered that the girl planned to institute several ideas she'd had to improve the class when she'd been a student herself, with no real understanding of the logistical difficulties she would face.)
Minerva, she would have kept, though not as a professor. That girl was a born administrator, so far as she was concerned. There was no reason to force the Deputy Headmistress to spend the vast majority of her time and energy on teaching a core class, as well as managing the most openly unruly quarter of the students. At least Severus, for all his shortcomings as a teacher, actually seemed to understand the students who were his responsibility — from even the little she had seen in the week since the students returned, Minerva didn't, relying on strict discipline to keep her kittens in line, only encouraging their rebelliousness.
In fact, none of the heads of house ought to teach a core class. Pomona was a gem, and Filius one of the most dynamic lecturers she'd ever met, but they too were severely overworked, attempting to give their students the time they required from their heads of house as well as keep up their professorial duties and compensate for Minerva's shortcomings, all of which came back to Percival neglecting the administration of the school as he attempted to juggle both international and local political careers as well. She suspected that Severus was only able to both keep up with his workload and find the time to advocate properly for his students through liberal self-medication.
She also suspected that Percival had been heaping extraneous responsibilities onto the former Death Eater as some form of punishment for the mistakes of his youth. Granted, those mistakes had had terrible consequences, but his crimes were hardly worse than any of the Death Eaters currently holding seats in the Wizengamot or critical positions in the Ministry. Making a scapegoat for his frustration over the outcome of the conflict with Riddle and Bellatrix out of his exceedingly competent young potions master was, in her view, an incredibly petty action, one which, had she not seen it herself, she would not have thought her Percival would be capable of. But she had seen it herself.
And she wasn't the only one — she'd spent the better part of last evening sharing a bottle of brandy with Poppy, Pomona, and Rolanda, the other women confirming the hints she had seen of the tensions between the Headmaster and the sardonic young professor. They had all known him as a student, remembered him as a brilliant but troubled boy. He had spent the better part of his school years in an interminable feud with a group of Gryffindor bullies for his refusal to bow to their juvenile delusions of superiority, and his own housemates for his resistance to the young Death Eaters' overtures.
In Poppy's words, the situation between Percival and Severus was a sort of cold war version of that same feud. The Headmaster, the healer suspected, was attempting to pressure his Potions Master into some kind of breakdown which would prove his 'façade' of repentance false. Severus, of course, refused to admit that the additional duties foisted upon him were any sort of imposition at all, and so was continually saddled with more work as Percival upped the ante.
Her Percival, the boy she remembered as having a somewhat simplistic but fundamentally forgiving outlook on life, who had always tried to give even his enemies second chances, had somehow come to be a man who refused to believe that an enemy — and one, Poppy insisted fiercely, whose enlistment had been the best of a poor lot of choices available to him — could repent his mistakes and become a boon to society.
Between that realisation and the outright paranoia he had demonstrated surrounding the Black girl and her (likely figmental) conspiracy to destroy him, not to mention the state he'd allowed to persist at Hogwarts — even encouraged, spreading himself so thin she didn't think he had even noticed the travesty which had become of this once-excellent institution — she found herself asking what had happened to her poor boy. These were not the sort of problems which developed overnight, but with their interactions restricted to letters and brief visits she hadn't seen them growing. And now, in the midst of a world where he held complete authority, they were impossible not to see.
She was, to put it plainly, concerned.
It didn't help either, that she'd begun to feel immensely guilty about allowing Percy to think she had died — and that he'd played some role in it, failing to protect the (entirely fictional) Philosopher's Stone from Riddle. He did, she thought, bear some responsibility for deciding to meddle in her efforts to 'secure' the thing, but even so, it had been undoubtedly cruel of her to allow him to suffer so.
Cruel and selfish, as she'd prioritised her own wellbeing, gaining her freedom from the Flamels and their legacy, over his. She'd tried to explain that it had been time to end the Flamels' story, time for them to publicly but quietly slip into the night. Assuring him that she yet lived would have ruined her plan, even if it would have assuaged his guilt, and in the end...she'd just carried on with it.
She hadn't wanted to explain that there never had been a Stone and, moreover, hadn't wanted to face those like Percy with whom she'd still had a relationship, no matter how distant. She had learned many years ago that it was always harder to leave if she let people try to talk her out of it. She had, in fact, been talked out of it before — it was too easy to form new relationships thinking, When these ones die, I'll move on, only to fall into more friendships in the meanwhile. That was, after all, why she'd come up with the Flamels in the first place — she could continue to have a relationship with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren when, if she were pretending to be human, aging 'naturally', she would have to leave them after only a century or so.
But it had to end sometime, and there was never going to be a convenient point where everyone she cared about was dead.
No, she had decided, it was kinder if she were to 'die' — she hadn't wanted her friends to think that she was abandoning them, to take it to heart that she was so very tired of being the Flamels that even their company and correspondence couldn't entice her to stay. She'd feared not only that they would try to talk her into staying, but that they would, as she could tell Percy was now, feel that they were somehow inadequate, that she would rather walk away and never see them again (so far as they would know) than remain a part of their lives.
She'd tried to explain that it was simply unnatural for a metamorph to live a single life for hundreds of years, especially when it wasn't widely known that she was a metamorph. The only other she knew who had kept up a single persona for more than a century or two was Nymphadora, and she only revisited that identity every few decades — she hardly tried to live that life consistently. (And even so, most of the other metamorphs she knew considered Nymphadora to be nearly as odd as the Flamels for her peculiar attachment to her first name.)
It was better, she'd thought, to announce that the Flamels would soon run out of the mystical, imaginary elixir which sustained them, give everyone time to say their farewells, come to terms with her taking her very final leave. Let them have some closure, so to speak.
But then Nymphadora's many-times-great-granddaughter had invited her to judge the Triwizard Tournament — a once in a lifetime opportunity, even for her — and she hadn't been able to bring herself to say no. She had managed to convince those in the know to conceal her identity, rather than out her as Perenelle (or Nicolas), to allow her to appear on the judges' panel with a different identity, one she hadn't fully developed yet. (She was leaning toward the infamous Salazar Slytherin, just for the shock value. It wasn't as though the metamorph who'd made that identity famous had used it in the past few centuries — she would ask, of course, it would be rude not to, but she doubted they'd care.)
But for Percy it was too late. The trust he'd had in her was damaged now, deeply so, and she doubted it could ever be fully repaired — which only made it more difficult for her to urge him to re-examine his recent decisions and conclusions in a more objective light.
And, on top of all that, there was a poltergeist in her classroom.
A poltergeist making flatulent noises any time she opened her mouth in an attempt to carry on her introductory lesson in spite of its presence.
The fourteen-year-olds — Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, this section — were laughing at her. Some of them were, of course, trying to hide it, but some of them weren't bothering. "So, I would like to—"
"PPPPRRRTT!"
For the eighth time, in five minutes.
There were ways to get rid of poltergeists — temporarily, at least. Were Kyrah just passing through, she wouldn't hesitate to use one of the less...dramatic, even with all the children looking on. But with hundreds of students crammed into a relatively small, highly magical area like Hogwarts, it would be only a matter of days or weeks before the spirit of mischief returned, and as Kyrah wasn't simply passing through she would almost certainly become the primary target of its attentions. She could, of course, keep banishing it, but the Castle itself would eventually get annoyed with her constant attacks on what was, when it came down to it, a part of its magics, as surely as the wards or the souls bound into its heart or the bloody house elves.
Kyrah Shirazi did not want to go picking a fight with an entire bloody castle. Especially not one she intended to live in for the better part of the coming year.
"Peeves, I really must—" ("PRRT!") "—insist that—" ("PRRRT!") Well fine. She'd tried being calm and reasonable. Time to see if intimidation might work. (It probably wouldn't, but it would, at least, be an outlet for her frustration.) She let the façade she'd been maintaining — that of a thirty-nine-year-old witch from muggle Persia (Iran, now) — fade away. Not physically, but her bearing and attitude and all the little bits that made a persona seem like a person. She wasn't truly Kyrah Shirazi, after all. She was a powerful, preternatural being, favoured by Magic Itself — dangerous and not to be fucked with, even by a spirit of mischief such as this. Magic flared around her, crackling invisibly, save to those who were already rather sensitive to it, but...
"Ahh!" the poltergeist exclaimed. "Scary fairy coming out to play, Peevsie sees!"
Yes, she'd thought it might notice that. "I'm not playing, poltergeist. You will leave this room. And you will do so now."
It flipped over in mid-air, from hovering as though lying on its stomach on a bed, to showing her its arse, peeking at her upside down from between its ankles. "Shan't do nothing if you don't say please," it taunted her.
Well, she truly doubted it would do any good, she supposed it wouldn't hurt to try... "Please. Go. Away."
It flipped over again to 'lie' on its back, cackling madly, accompanied by many of the students. The metamorph glared at it. "Scary Fairy knows better than to expect Peeves to play her game! But he did promise, and so, does nothing!"
"I will—"
"PRRT!"
"You know, Peeves, it's just not as funny when you've already heard the joke," one of the students said, sounding genuinely bored with his antics. Her focus entirely on the thing as it was, Kyrah failed to see which one had spoken. The poltergeist answered that question for her, though, almost at once.
"Has the Little Lady heard the one about a dog, a rat, and a stag walking into a bar?" it asked, spinning around to hover inches from Lyra Black's nose, smirking broadly. A reference, no doubt, to that horrid miscarriage of justice involving the Lord of her family — Pettigrew's trial over the summer had revealed that he and his friends had been animagi with those particular forms.
Though it was odd that it was that particular student who had spoken. She'd hardly seen much of Miss Black in the week since the students returned to the castle. She'd ceded the time slot of what ought to have been this group's first lesson to Cassie — she doubted the girl knew how extensive a project remaking the Defence curriculum would be, but that didn't mean she didn't want her to succeed — and while they had seen each other several times in passing, they hadn't actually spoken to each other. Based on the stories she'd gathered from the staff, however, she would hardly have expected the young troublemaker to intervene with the poltergeist on her behalf.
"I imagine only the dog and the stag walk into it, and the rat gets clean away...for a while, at least." The girl grinned at her own pointed addition to what would likely have been a cruel jab at Sirius Black's intelligence and the tragedy that was the House of Black in recent decades, sending the poltergeist somersaulting backward through the air, cackling again and clapping in delight. "You know what would be really funny?"
"Peevsie is listening, my Lady..."
"The Sorting Hat, I imagine, gets awfully lonely, just sitting up in Dumbledore's office all alone."
"It does, it does. Poor Hattie Hat," the poltergeist agreed, grinning and entirely failing to sound the least bit sympathetic to the Hat's plight.
"Yes, well, I imagine that if someone were to...liberate the Hat, perhaps take it on a tour of Heads, well... Sprout's reaction might not be that entertaining, but I expect Minnie's would more than make up for it."
The poltergeist put on an expression of pure ecstasy, only exaggerated by its cartoonish features. "Little Lady has the best ideas!" It started floating toward one of the upper corners of the room immediately.
"Steal a camera first! I want pictures!" Black shouted after it, even as its belled toes disappeared through the ceiling and the girl sitting beside her hissed, "I didn't want you to send him after Professor McGonagall!"
Black just shrugged. "Next time be more specific."
Ah, that explained it, she supposed. Based on the gossip she'd gathered, she gave little credence to Percy's theory that there was someone directing little Lyra Black's apparent campaign against him, but based on the tenor of her magic... Well, it was hardly a secret that the Black black mages could be a bit lost, with all the power in the world and no idea what to do with it. There was, after all, a reason that Nymphadora kept returning to Carthage, and everyone's least-favourite Avatar made a habit of attaching herself to some poor mortal or another, taking their desires and whims as inspiration in her efforts to entertain herself. This girl must be Black's current muse.
She wondered, even as she relaxed back into the posture and demeanour of the foreign witch half of her peri-pretending-to-be-nothing-more-than-a-foreign-witch character, whether the serious, slightly-disapproving girl beside Black realised what it meant that little Lyra was so willing to do as she bid — and, if she did, would she be the next Henry Black, or the next Tom Riddle?
"Thank you, Miss...?"
Black raised an eyebrow, the tiniest of smirks on her face, as though she also already knew exactly who she was talking to. Not entirely surprising, the foreign witch façade was deliberately thin — she had likely done it serious damage, losing her temper with the poltergeist a moment ago — and Black had to know that there were no Greater Fae in this dimension any longer. Not to mention she had invited Perenelle to help judge the Tournament in the first place and, given the form of address in that invitation, she likely knew enough about the history of metamorphs to get the joke which was Kyrah Shirazi.
"Black. Now that Peeves is gone, I have a question about pensieves," she began, only confirming that supposition. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the first enchanters to begin exploring the potential of memory-oriented scrying.
That said, she wasn't about to admit it — Kyrah hadn't any special expertise in the subject, and she hadn't even managed to properly introduce herself, yet! She cut the girl off rather quickly. "I'm afraid it will have to wait, Miss Black." The girl pouted at her, though she couldn't possibly have expected any other answer. "We will be discussing scrying aids later in the term, including the pensieve, but before we get into a lot of long, potentially boring lectures — including a discussion of the syllabus — I would like to go around the room and let us all perhaps get to know each other a bit better. After all, while you have all been students together for the past several years, it occurs to me that your houses keep you somewhat separate outside of classes, and I, of course, know none of you.
"I propose that we play a game — two truths and a lie. It's quite simple. Each person, in turn, introduces themselves and tells the rest of us two true things about themselves, and one lie; then we try to figure out which statements are true, and which false. I'll go first. My name is Kyrah Shirazi — you may call me Professor Shirazi. I was born in the muggle city of Tehran, my father was a cobbler before he passed beyond the Veil, and I wear a size thirty-seven shoe."
A babble of noise erupted as the students began debating amongst themselves which of the three very reasonable-sounding facts about herself was false. After several minutes, they reached a consensus. "You don't wear a thirty-seven shoe," a girl said firmly. "That would be tiny."
"And what is your name, Miss...?"
"Parvati Patil, Professor."
"Well, I'm sorry to inform you, Miss Patil, but I do wear a thirty-seven." As well as any other size shoe she chose, but that was hardly the point.
"She's not from Tehran," Miss Black informed the other girl.
"Well where is she from, then, know-it-all?"
Black shrugged before giving the obvious (albeit incorrect) answer. "Shiraz?"
"A good guess, but no, Miss Black. I am from a city called Fasa, somewhat south of Shiraz." That was, in fact, where she'd encountered the peri whose face she was now wearing, almost five centuries ago. "Would you care to go next?"
"Oh. Sure, I guess I could." She paused for a moment to think before saying, "My name's Lyra Black. I'm definitely not Bellatrix's daughter, I was raised by werewolf terrorists, and I know a spell to set dementors on fire."
Clearly Percy's teenage nemesis had decided to take the opposite approach from Kyrah herself, offering them three statements which all sounded false. Or, well, she assumed not Bellatrix's daughter seemed as unlikely to everyone else as it did to her — accounting for the age difference, they were bloody identical. (Metamorphs tended to have an eye for that sort of thing.) Granted, it might be stretching the definition of daughter a bit, applying it to a child created through blood alchemy (likely with the use of a surrogate) who hadn't even been raised by the witch in question, but Kyrah would argue it was close enough. In any case, complete silence met this ridiculous offering.
"Er, Lyra? I'm pretty sure two of those were supposed to be true," a round-faced boy said hesitantly. "I mean, that's right, isn't it?"
Black's...friend gave the boy an exasperated sigh. "Yes, Neville. Two of them were true. Lyra's just absurd."
"Hey, Maïa! Don't just tell them! They're supposed to guess!"
Maïa? Was the girl from whom Black was taking direction the Hermione Granger whose article had caused so much trouble for poor Percival over the summer? There were no other students among the dozen listed on the course roster for whom Maïa was a natural diminutive, so it did seem likely. Kyrah very nearly snorted trying to suppress a laugh at the realisation — perhaps there was a conspiracy after all...if one could call a couple of rebellious fledgling witches a conspiracy.
The argument that followed centred on whether or not it was possible to set a dementor on fire, how plausible it was for her to actually have been raised by werewolves, and whether she'd actually admit it if the infamous Bellatrix Lestrange were her mother. Kyrah personally thought that, assuming the girl actually had given them two truths, the lie was probably that she had been raised by werewolves (no matter how plausible Miss Patil and her friends seemed to believe that claim). Of course it wasn't possible to set a dementor alight with real fire, but there were several classes of spells that created effects similar enough to fire that they were generally referred to as such, and it would be easy to claim that "mother" implied a much greater degree of involvement in the girl's life than Bellatrix could possibly have had.
After several minutes, Black, apparently bored, confirmed that deduction, telling them that she would only have been raised by werewolves if Bellatrix were her mother, and since she was actually a fae changeling, she couldn't possibly have been raised by werewolves. (Winking at Kyrah, cheeky brat.)
Granger rolled her eyes. "Oh, you are not."
"No, that would be silly. Clearly I actually am Bella's daughter, raised in Fenrir Greyback's pack, because everyone knows you can't set a dementor on fire. I mean, you know I'm not actually a werewolf, so that seems kind of unlikely, but hey, maybe I'm immune to the Curse or something." She shrugged, shit-eating grin firmly in place.
Dark-haired, green-eyed Harry Potter leaned around Granger to say, "I thought you told me you could set a dementor on fire!"
"I tell a lot of people a lot of things, Harry. I told a bunch of people I was obliviated at the end of last term, for example. Objectivity is an illusion, and truth is an artefact of oversimplification."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" a girl who hadn't yet introduced herself demanded over Miss Patil's efforts to hush her. It might just have been Kyrah, but the look she was shooting at Black seemed rather alarmed. As did Granger, actually — Kyrah made a mental note to find out more about the incident they were referencing.
"Either that I'm immune to obliviation along with the werewolf curse, or that I've been reading too much Oscar Wilde and the empty glibness is contagious."
Well...that was a thought, wasn't it. She wouldn't be surprised if the girl was immune to the Curse. Hela, the only researcher who'd published any truly thorough etic perspectives on the werewolf condition, had claimed that certain categories of beings — vampires (and their imitators), metamorphs, wilderfolk, and shadow-kin had been her examples — should theoretically be immune (or partially immune) to the Curse, the magics fundamental to their existence rendering them too inhuman for the Curse to take hold effectively. That was one of the reasons Hela was supposed by many to be a vampire, though it wasn't out of the question that a dedicated Black might also be too steeped in magic to register as 'human'. One would have to be mad to test the idea, but then that was a defining feature of the House of Black, especially these past few centuries.
"Anyway, was that you volunteering to go next, Bunny?"
"Fine! My name's Lavender Brown. I'm a Virgo, the Slytherins call me Bunny because my poor Binky got murdered by a fox last fall and they're all cruel, heartless ar– jerks! And Draco Malfoy is not my boyfriend!"
"Actually, Lav, we call you Bunny because yours was killed and we're far too mature and sophisticated for toilet humour. The only other thing that came to mind was Loo, you see. So."
"Shut up, Black!"
"I think that counts as a truth, though?" the round-faced boy said. "I mean, Lavender thought it was a truth, so it's not the lie..."
"Her birthday's in the first week of March — she's a Pisces, not a Virgo. My turn!" Granger said, leaving no room for debate. "My name's Hermione Granger. The first proper spell I ever did was transfiguring a leaf into a flower; my birthday is in September, but I'm the youngest person in our class, not the oldest; and...oh, I don't know...Draco Malfoy's not my boyfriend either."
As the game proceeded, Kyrah matching faces to the student roster she'd been provided, she learned that Draco Malfoy was not dating four other students (Brown's friend Patil, Leanne Malone, Megan Jones, and Neville Longbottom, who'd managed to say it with an impressively straight face, at least in contrast to Brown's, which was by that point glowing a mortified red); about half the class had some occlumency training, not obviously telegraphing the veracity of their statements; and a bare handful had enough experience with proper witchcraft to attempt to actually divine the answers, whether consciously or not — Black, Bones, Longbottom, Potter, and, surprisingly, Granger.
The children of the Most Ancient Houses would obviously have been taught elementary magical awareness and control by their families (though Black's could use some work), and Potter was clearly a legilimens, for all he was trying very hard to pretend he wasn't. Granger, however, was muggleborn, and if Percy's professors weren't teaching basic magic-sensing exercises — which, given the lack of awareness from the majority of the students, they weren't — it was odd that she would have developed that particular skill. Perhaps Black had been teaching her?
In any case, it was clear that she would have her work cut out for her with this group. She couldn't imagine what they'd been learning from their former 'professor' — whom Percival had given the job more out of charity and a desire to keep her from Riddle than any actual expertise on her part, much as she suspected he had with Hagrid. Surely meditation and magical perception were among the easiest skills to fake practising, regardless of one's intuitive ability (or lack thereof) to interpret such information as one might perceive. If she knew nothing about divination, she thought that was the first thing she'd 'teach'.
Though it was, in fact, the first thing she'd teach regardless. Followed by an in-depth comparison between divining and divining charms — likely a simple tempus, to start, and possibly a few direction-seeking spells. If that went well, she would introduce the idea of scrying foci, which would likely require a diversion into other foci — wands and dueling knives were the most common in Britain — and the distinction between witchcraft and wizardry. That would, she thought, be a good transition into discussing the basics of ritual — potions and alchemy were the most widely-taught branches of witchcraft these days — and the commonalities between that discipline and scrying, in terms of semantic development. They probably wouldn't get much further than that before the end of the year — especially if they integrated exercises for scrying the past as well as the present, which was what she would be teaching the third-years. Obviously these children had missed out on it. (And the fifth-years were almost certainly not going to make it to proper predictive scrying and the various methods of analysing said predictions in an attempt to determine their relevance to any particular timeline.)
"And perhaps, if we have time at the end of the year, we'll do a bit of mind magic."
Several students gasped or grinned, muttering to their neighbors. Yes, she'd thought they'd like that — boring as occlumency exercises tended to be, there was a certain mystique about the Mind Arts, if only because so few people were actually familiar with them anymore.
Granger's hand shot into the air. "Does that mean we'll be learning the Legilimency charm?"
"What about Obliviation?" Jones chimed in.
"I doubt anyone will get quite that far this year. We'll begin with basic occlusion; isolating, duplicating and extracting one's own memories to be shared as with a pensieve; and so-called passive legilimency — that is, scrying the thoughts and emotions that people project out into the greater world."
"You can do that?" Potter exclaimed. "Er, sorry, professor. But, um. I mean, I thought you had to be a legilimens to..."
Kyrah gave him a soft smile. "Legilimens have a natural talent for entering and actively shaping another person's mind, which non-legilimens require a spell to emulate. They also have a talent for thought-scrying, or passive legilimency, which comes to them naturally, as it does to empaths and some other more generalised Seers. Others can learn to pick up the emanations of projected thoughts in much the same way one picks up the echoes of distant or yet-to-occur events in more mundane scrying. Much in the same way that everyone can learn to speak another language, but an omniglot can do so much more quickly and easily.
"To begin, however, we will be focusing on focusing."
Black groaned. "But focusing exercises are boring."
"Which I presume is why you've been neglecting yours, Miss Black." The girl pulled an outraged face at her, but Kyrah continued before she could object — she had to know that, no matter how good her mental defences might be, her hold on her magic was tenuous at best. "Not only will we be learning to contain our magic within ourselves, but we will explore the idea of drawing on different registers and poles of magic when casting spells, and of course the idea of extending our magic beyond our bodies, opening ourselves to the echoes of events occurring all around us. You may have heard this process referred to as opening your inner eye, and the echoes of events as emanations of the universe or the Great Symphony."
Several faces around the room cleared at that, Brown and Patil among them. Kyrah sighed. She had suspected the fraud who'd been their instructor last year might have resorted to more metaphorical descriptions, lacking any real understanding of the process and the nature of magic. Divination was truly a much more theoretical field than most people thought — the fact that it wasn't taught as such was practically criminal.
"What about freeform magic?" Black asked, a certain wheedling in her tone. "That's basically an effect of aura manipulation too, right?"
"If you know enough to ask, I daresay you know enough to explore the subject independently, on your own time," Kyrah said firmly. They would already have quite enough on their plates attempting to master freeform divination techniques which had been adapted into simple charms without attempting to adapt simple charms into freeform physical effects.
"So much for an easy O," Malone muttered to her neighbor, Rivers.
He shot a quick look at Kyrah before kicking his friend under the table. "I think she heard you," he hissed.
"I did, yes," she confirmed. "I am, however, quite familiar with my predecessor's reputation and the resulting quality of your previous divination lessons. I am not in the least surprised that this subject has a reputation as an easy O. Now, two more things before we adjourn for the day.
"Firstly, on the topic of marking: no, this class will no longer be an easy O. I do not believe that ranked marking has any place in a discipline as ephemeral and talent-based as divination. There is no simple checklist of spells one can learn to claim a degree of mastery in the subject, and those who struggle with the necessary skills to advance should not be held to standards set by those with an inherent gift for it. Therefore, I will be tracking your efforts and progress individually on an advance-retain basis."
"Does that—" Granger demanded, her hand in the air again. Kyrah silenced her with a glare and a silent, wandless jinx. Black broke it for her immediately, of course, reaching across the space between them and touching her friend to transfer a freeform finishing effect rather than draw her wand, but the shock of having been silenced by a teacher was enough to keep Granger quiet, anyway.
"I realise we haven't discussed rules as such, but one generally doesn't go wrong in observing basic politeness — including not interrupting when the instructor is speaking. No, there will be no marks assigned at any point. If you wish to know how you are progressing you may ask, privately, during my office hours, which you will recall are displayed on the slate behind me.
"Now, as I was saying, I happen to agree with Professors Lovegood and Babbling that dividing subjects into levels and sections strictly based on age and house is a ridiculous conceit. Those of you who require more time to practice certain skills will be welcome to remain in this class next year along with those advanced from the current third-year class, and those to whom the subject comes easily may request to be advanced early, at term. If and when you decide you would like to sit a competency or proficiency examination, we will discuss the skills that will be tested and whether you are ready to demonstrate them for the examiners, and spend some time addressing any specific deficiencies. As such, it would behoove you to bring the matter to me at least a month or two in advance of the exams."
Stunned, complete silence met this suggestion, a full quarter of the students allowing their jaws to droop in their shock. Honestly, it was as though no one had ever addressed them as individuals, with individual abilities and potential before. (Standardised exams were, she was certain, the worst thing to happen to education since individual apprenticeships were phased out at the elementary level.)
"Secondly, homework. Your first exercise will be to choose a partner and pick cards from a standard tarot deck — if you do not have one, there are several here you may borrow. You may look at your card if you like, but do not show your partner. Meditate on your partner and their card, which is to say, sit somewhere you will not be distracted by ongoing activities, and attempt to sense the suit of the card your partner is holding. You may find that this sense takes the form of a certain feeling, or an image appearing before closed eyes, or a sound you aren't truly hearing, or any number of other proximal interpretations — your mind, not being accustomed to interpreting strictly magical input, will find ways to translate what it senses into a more familiar format.
"When you feel certain that you know the suit of the card, write it down. If you are simply certain that you will never be able to tell, guess. Wait until both partners have recorded an answer, and check them. Record whether you were correct, shuffle the deck, and do it again. I expect each pair to do this at least fifty times. If you find you guess correctly about a quarter of the time, this method probably is not working for you — don't be discouraged, we can discuss other exercises to try in our next lesson. If you find you are guessing correctly almost all the time, or never guessing correctly, focus on exactly how you are choosing the suit to write down, and try to articulate it. All of you bring your recorded guesses and actual results to class on Monday, and be ready to discuss your perception of the exercise.
"Any questions?"
Not even Granger raised a hand, occupied, along with the vast majority of the students, exchanging significant glances, silently calling dibs on various partners.
"Very well, then. You are dismissed. Potter, Black, a word."
Chatter erupted as the students gathered their effects, surging toward the doorway as though sitting in a single lesson (and one which they'd spent the better part of playing games at that) for thirty-five minutes was some sort of hideous torture. Granger lingered, muttering something to Black, who responded at a perfectly normal volume. "As your name is neither Potter nor Black, I'm guessing yes. I'll meet you in the library later."
Granger nodded, closing the door behind herself with a last suspicious glance toward Kyrah, leaving her friends alone with their new professor — lingering in the corridor, if Kyrah was any judge. "This won't take long, I simply wanted to notify you that I am requiring you two to work together on any partner-based divining exercises."
Black, apparently unsurprised, rolled her eyes. "Sure."
"Er, why? I mean, sorry, yes, professor. But why?"
"Why am I singling you out, or why have I chosen to do so in privacy?"
"Um...both?"
"You're a legilimens. I presume this is not common knowledge."
"Nope," Black said. "Harry, what do you think would happen if you try to use magic to determine what card someone else is holding? You're almost definitely going to end up reading them rather than the moment."
Potter winced slightly. "Right. Okay, that makes sense. Um, thanks for not telling everyone, I guess."
"Yeah, doesn't make up for silencing Maïa, though." Black sent a very pointed glare at Kyrah.
"And you don't silence everyone all the time?"
"That's different."
"I really don't think it is, actually."
"Yes, well, you are welcome to debate the point elsewhere," Kyrah noted, pulling the door open with a thought and waving them toward it.
"Go fuck a hedgehog, shape-changer," Black muttered, stalking away. Kyrah was so surprised to hear High Elvish from a Hogwarts student that she completely failed to compose a come-back before the young witch was halfway to the door.
Potter was already asking, "What was that?" in a very suspicious tone.
"Farsi," the girl said, apparently still willing to play along with Kyrah's existence, even if she was a bit annoyed with her at the moment. "Just being polite."
"Since when do you speak Farsi? Actually, strike that, since when are you polite?"
Okay, that was funny. Kyrah bit her lip, trying not to laugh. Even if they weren't paying much attention to her anymore, it wouldn't do to ruin her stern-but-fun school-teacher façade.
Black hesitated a moment, clearly attempting to come up with a response. "...Come on, Maïa will be waiting."
Kyrah just managed to hold in her giggles until the door slammed behind them.
I'm pretty much just using "she" as the default pronoun for metamorphs now, in much the same way "he" is sometimes used as a default pronoun, especially in older books. I did consider using "they" for bits where the metamorph who is currently Kyrah Shirazi is referring to the period when she played both Perenelle and Nicolas, but decided that was a bit confusing, and begged the question why not use "they" all the time (because Perenelle being closer to the person the metamorph was born is more a matter of personality than the fact that the character is female — after seven centuries of living as a man as well as a woman, I imagine the concept of gender loses almost all meaning), but by that point I'd already written "she" throughout most of the scene (in contrast to when she was playing multiple characters) and didn't feel like changing it. —Leigha
You might have noticed "they" was used in reference to a metamorph once, talking about Salazar Slytherin. (Yes, Slytherin is a metamorph in this fic, and our resident metamorph-pretending-to-be-a-fairy-pretending-to-be-human is going to play him judging the tournament, because she's a troll like that.) Kyrah is using it there because she doesn't know which gender the ex-Slytherin is being right now, or even if they have a preference at all. It's just polite.
So, that's the last scene of what was originally planned as a single chapter. They're just under 35k added together. Just, holy hell, we have problems. Wordy bitches. —Lysandra