AN: Hello all :D
I've got chapter 9 here for you all. I hope you enjoy it. Next update is likely going to be in two weeks again so I can get it to my betas (thank you WithPatienceComesPeace, and CleverMird always and forever) but have fun with this one :)
Chapter 9: Closed eyes hoping for a better life
Friday was the first day that Halley had one of her new electives. The rest of the week had gone by as she had expected, with one or two challenging encounters with Malfoy. The Weasley family had kept to themselves - honestly, Halley wasn't sure that they would have, and the Weasley twins were trigger happy - and for the most part, nobody troubled her.
It was too much to hope that things would stay the same.
She had picked Divination mostly on a whim. Professor Snape had pushed her into an almost uninformed choice, but she had heard enough about it that it had piqued her interest. In the Muggle world, fortune-telling and divination were not real. But maybe it wasn't real in the same way magic wasn't.
And maybe, like she had been learning magic, she would learn to read into the future. It would help somewhat with the Riddle issue, and it would also give her a leg up with whatever Dumbledore was planning - or Voldemort. Because it was easy to forget that Voldemort was still out there somewhere, recuperating.
Halley figured she'd need all the heads up she could get about any of them.
Friday morning saw her walking up the steps of the North Tower haggardly; as much as her chores were laborious and required a fair among of strength, and for all that she'd ran when Dudley and his friends made up the game 'Halley Hunting', she had never done well with physical activity.
Her body had always felt fragile and weak. It was a testament to magic, she was sure, which kept her body sustained enough so that she could live. So the fact that she had to walk up what felt like hundreds of steps was...difficult.
One painting had seen it fit to comment on it, following her along the spiralling stairs. "You really should not be struggling, young lady."
Halley looked at the painting. It was a woman, dressed to the nines in frills and lace with a coiling brown hair and a fan in her hand, though it was closed and resting in one hand whilst the other was holding onto the rope of a swing.
"Women are not so weak that stairs should conquer them, and certainly not when escaping the gaze of feeble-minded men."
Halley said nothing as she paused to rest against the brick wall, thighs trembling and chest heaving to bring in enough oxygen. The cool of the brick seeped past her uniform and robes giving her some comfort, though not much.
"Get up!" the woman snapped, "and walk the rest of the stairs with some dignity!"
"Fuck off," Halley muttered just loud enough for the portrait to hear. "You're not even real!"
The woman glared at Halley with anger and spite. Then just as fiercely her gaze turned to one of cool disdain. She didn't leave like most portraits would have - they were so easy to rile up and left with as much drama as they could. Though Halley supposed if she were a mere shadow of her own consciousness, she would get bored too. But the portrait kept staring at her.
Halley looked upwards trying to calculate how much more of this she would have to do. She wasn't sure though, and she wasn't given enough time to fully figure it out.
She could hear the echo of footsteps hitting stone, and the breathy chatter of students trying to talk and walk coming from below her. She groaned quietly.
Halley had started early, knowing that her classmates would see her struggle if she left when the majority of them would have, but even with her 20-minute head start, they passed her with little difficulty.
The quick glances she got as they clambered up spurred her back into movement. She wasn't going to let them see how hard it was. There were already too many things stacked against her this year.
Halley picked up her satchel and began walking up once again. She ignored her burning thighs and rasping breath, she ignored the cramp when it came on, and she ignored the burning in her chest. And eventually she got to the top.
There were even a few people behind her.
There was no classroom, but there was the rustling of people moving around from above her. Looking up she saw a trap door and a silvery ladder.
More steps! Why are there more steps?!
Halley was sure that there was a power to ambiance, but what was the point of there being a trap door and ladder to a classroom that was already at the top of a tower?!
"Are you going?" came a snarky voice behind her.
She turned and saw a student from Gryffindor she'd never bothered learning the names of. "After you," she said with a gesture of her hand.
The student, followed soon by her friend, shifted her own satchel to the side and began climbing the ladder succinctly.
Halley glowered at the slippery looking ladder and reached out one hand and foot. She climbed.
She emerged, somehow, into one of the oddest classrooms she'd ever seen; it was somewhere between what she imagined an attic looked like, and those old stores that always had funky material, and dreamcatchers and smelled strongly of incense that Petunia would huff past in London.
Some fifteen or so tables were crammed inside filled with excited looking students lit with dim, crimson light.
She was already too hot from climbing the stairs, and the heat in the room made it almost unbearable. She wanted to strip off her robes and her jumper but immediately got rid of that thought. Instead, she sat next to the one empty chair that was by shelves crammed with dusty-looking feathers, stubs of candles, many packs of tattered playing cards, countless silvery crystal balls, and a huge array of teacups.
This was the Divination Classroom? Halley wasn't sure she wanted to see the professor.
"Welcome," a voice from somewhere in the room said. "How nice to see you in the physical world at last."
Professor Sybil Trelawney wasn't like anything Halley had ever seen, and yet she fit so well into the Wizarding aesthetic that it was almost hard to have imagined her any differently. Although the bug-eyed glasses were a little bit...too much.
"Welcome," said Professor Trelawney, as she seated herself in a winged armchair in front of the fire. "My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye."
Halley had a feeling she would regret taking the class. If not for the stairs, then for the ridiculousness that was before her.
Professor Trelawney delicately rearranged her shawl. "So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you… Books can take you only so far in this field…"
There was a quiet humf from beside her and Halley looked on instinct. Granger was there where that had been no Granger before.
Halley frowned.
Granger hadn't been there before, she knew that. She had specifically chosen the table because it was empty and because it was the closest to the stupid trapdoor. And she was tired, yes, but she wasn't blind. Granger hadn't snuck into the room without her noticing, nor had she been there already.
Halley looked at her from the side of her eyes. She knew Granger could see her looking but it was like the girl was purposefully ignoring the gaze. In Halley's experience of Gryffindors, either that meant that she was annoyed with her, which was quite likely, or she was hiding something.
Halley was somehow more inclined to believe the latter. Especially after last year.
Either way, she hadn't been there before.
Professor Trewlawny began speaking again. It seemed to be her version of introducing herself and it was filled with overly vague statements and things that were going to occur whether they were predicted or not.
The weather change would bring great sadness. This year was going to be filled with challenges for the students. A darkness looms over Hogwarts.
In the meantime, Halley surveyed the class. There were very few Slytherin's - actually there were none. The class was filled primarily with Griffondors and Hufflepuffs with the occasional Ravenclaw sprinkled in and Halley had a feeling that didn't bode well.
But what was worse was that in the class, only a few chairs away from her, sat Ron Weasley. He was listening to Trewlawny but every so often she saw him direct a glare in her direction. That wasn't good.
"Now," Trewlawny called breaking Halley out of her thoughts. "I want you all to divide into pairs. Collect a teacup from the shelf, come to me, and I will fill it. Then sit down and drink, drink until only the dregs remain. Swill these around the cup three times with the left hand, then turn the cup upside down on its saucer, wait for the last of the tea to drain away, then give your cup to your partner to read.
"You will interpret the patterns using pages five and six of Unfogging the Future. I shall move among you, helping and instructing. Oh, and dear," - she caught Longbottom by the arm as he made to stand up, "after you've broken your first cup, would you be so kind as to select one of the blue patterned ones? I'm rather attached to the pink."
As if on cue, Longbottom broke the glass somehow, and then flushed with embarrassment.
Halley had to wonder how much that was predicting the future and how much of it was just teachers' gossip because everyone and their mother knew about Longbottom's clumsiness.
And they were going to read each other's tea leaves? How could one reasonably predict the future through tea leaves?
Suddenly her mind whirled with all types of questions. Did it depend on what time of leaves they were? Earl Grey or PG tips? Did it depend on the water? And what if you swirled the leaves but then gave your cup to someone else before you were done? Did that then mean it was still your prediction or was it someone else's?
Granger had already stood up and was waiting in line to collect their cups. Halley gave her a curt thank you and Granger nodded.
They sat in silence letting the hustle and bustle of the classroom fill the spaces that would have been awkward. She hadn't spoken to Granger since she'd given her the information about the Chamber last year, and Granger hadn't sought her out. That was good; they weren't friends.
Eventually, the Professor came over to them and poured the tea, filling it to the brim in both their cups.
It was hot, so Halley blew at the cup until it was cool enough to drink.
She didn't have tea very often. There had been no point in it if the Dursleys were asked. They wouldn't waste good resources on her.
But now that she'd had it, she realised she didn't like the taste. It was bitter, but the lack of sugar wasn't the problem either. The tea was strong and coated her mouth with a tangible aftertaste. It rested in her tongue no matter how much she rubbed it against the roof of her mouth.
When they were both done they swapped cups.
"What do you see?" Granger asked.
Halley waited for the tea leaves to settle after the handover and then looked in the cup. It was difficult to make out at first. There were no glaring symbols but the more she looked the more she could see. Almost like shapes in the clouds.
"There's a sun here," she said, "and something that looks like a crossroads or a cross. It's difficult to tell." Halley looked at the symbols in the textbook one by one and then made a face.
"What is it?" Granger asked.
"The sun means happiness or tidings of joy or setting of sorrow and concern. The crossroads means you'll come to a path where a choice will need to be made while the cross means trials and suffering."
Granger frowned and took the cup from her. "Is that so?" She looked at the symbols and Halley wondered whether she could see the same thing.
But Granger didn't start looking through the book so she assumed she hadn't.
"How are you supposed to know if it's in a specific order?" she asked, sounding frustrated.
Halley wasn't sure.
"What does mine say?"
Granger picked up Halley's cup and looked at it. "It just seems like tea leaves," she said after a moment.
Professor Trewlawny had to have been walking around close to them because she was suddenly standing over their table. "Let me see that dear," she said.
Granger gave her the cup without much trouble and they both waited.
"A falcon," she said and then began to rotate the cup counterclockwise. Finally she spoke again, but not before Halley noticed the room had gotten very quiet. "You have a deadly enemy," Trewlawny said.
"But everyone knows that," Granger said. Halley had to agree but Trewlawny stared at her intensely. "They do. It's You-Know-Who."
It seemed like Professor Trelawney was choosing not to reply to Granger's astute observations. She lowered her huge eyes to Halley's cup again and continued to turn it. "The club...an attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup...The skull...danger in your path, my dear..."
Halley felt a little blossom of panic flutter up in her stomach but then she pushed it away. There was nothing to indicate that Professor Trelawney was predicting anything from tea leaves! Then she screamed.
There was another tinkle of breaking china in response; Longbottom had smashed his second cup. Professor Trelawney sank into a vacant armchair, her glittering hand at her heart and her eyes closed.
"My dear girl - my poor dear girl - no - it is kinder not to say - no - don't ask me..."
Halley rolled her eyes. "What is it Professor?" she asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice.
Evidently, everyone had forgotten about last year because they had all gotten to their feet and were crowding around their table like they were the most fascinating thing in the world.
"My dear," Professor Trelawney's huge eyes opened dramatically, "you have the Grim."
A beat of silence and then there was a nasty laugh. Weasley was barking with laughter, hands over his stomach.
"Mr Weasley this is no laughing matter!"
"Oh Potter," Weasley said between gasping breaths, "if anyone deserves the Grim, it's you!"
"Mr Weasley!" Trelawney called more firmly.
Halley was confused and she wasn't the only one. Most people were looking as puzzled as she was though there were a few that were clapping their hands to their mouths in horror, eyes wide and looking at her with fear. Some were even shuffling back from her.
"What is the Grim?" she asked.
"The Grim, my dear. The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear girl, it is an omen - the worst omen - of death!"
If she was supposed to feel scared, Trelawney would need to do better. Halley knew there was death hanging over her head. She'd known it from the moment she was old enough to realise that the Dursleys were only one really bad day away from purposely or accidentally hurting her too badly.
If the Grim was shadowing her then it was taking its sweet time to end her.
Still, she looked at the teacup. "I don't think it looks like a Grim," she said unnerved.
Granger huffed in agreement. "If you ask me, it looks more like a donkey. Or randomly settled tea leaves!"
Professor Trelawney surveyed Granger with mounting dislike. "You'll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future."
"I suppose that's a measurable quality?" Halley murmured to herself. Granger picked up on it and tightened the muscles around her mouth in a way that could be considered a smile.
"I think we will leave the lesson here for today," said Professor Trelawney thinly. Maybe she'd also heard Halley's comment as well. "Yes...please pack away your things..."
Silently the class took their teacups back to Professor Trelawney, packed away their books, and closed their bags. Weasley smirked as he passed Halley by and she clenched her fist.
"I'm not coming back to this class," Granger said once they were down the trapdoor. "Ancient Runes or Arithmancy is probably more suited to ever predict the future than...this."
Halley said nothing but she agreed.
Transfiguration was gloomy but brightened up by news of Malfoy's stupidity. Everyone knew that you didn't offend a Hippogriff. Of course, the beast was going to be put down once the school board heard about it - and the school board would hear about it if Malfoy had anything to say - but it wasn't Halley's business.
But as soon as the classes were over she went back to Snape's office.
Knocking, she waited for him to allow her entrance. When he eventually did, she entered cautiously.
"What do you want?" he asked angrily.
"I'd like to change Divination to Ancient Runes, sir," she said respectfully.
Snape curled his lip but didn't immediately shoot her down. That was progress - or at the very least it was promising for her request. "Why?"
"I think it's an inaccurate skill that very few truly possess. My time would be better suited to studying Runes and Arithmancy."
"I agree. Sign this paperwork and get out of my office. You will be given a textbook and your timetable will be altered." Snape flicked his wand and a piece of parchment fluttered into her hand. A quill soon followed.
Halley signed it quickly and thanked him. He didn't need to tell her that she was dismissed. She left on her own.
14th February 1992
February had been...difficult. Between Dobby's overall involvement at the Quidditch match and Lockhart's stupidity, and the exams that were coming up, there had been very little time to do anything other than survive the month.
Sometimes Halley wondered if the universe was trying to push her into a direction she would never want to go in.
But there was no use contemplating that. If the universe was out to get her, all she could really do was hide. Maybe all her time in Slytherin was going to be of use to her in that way. It might not even be hard. She'd survived all of the last year, and she'd had nothing to prepare her for that.
This year she had an ally in Parkinson and Greengrass at least.
Halley suddenly had to step to the side against the brick wall in order to move out of the way of an angry Filch. She was happy that he'd not seemed to notice her; she wasn't interested in hearing him moan about his cat again.
She hardly paid any attention to his grumbling - Filch was always moaning about something - but it was brought to her attention when she stepped into a large puddle of water.
A great flood stretched over half the corridor, and it looked as though it was still seeping from under the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. How had she managed to end up there again? Halley almost rolled her eyes at how pathetic she was to constantly be ending up in the same place as Myrtle.
Maybe that was what the universe was telling her. That she was destined to end up in a toilet.
Still, Halley was about to move on when she heard conversational murmurs from inside the toilet. Who would Myrtle be speaking to? Who would want to speak to Myrtle?
Despite her house, Halley had always been curious. Almost always, she had tempered the curiosity because - unless it had to do with school work - the consequences were never worth it. But this time, there was very little she suspected would go wrong with eavesdropping on a conversation that a ghost was having. So she moved closer to the entrance.
It didn't take long before she could hear Myrtle's high pitched voice. The ghost was loud enough as it was. But Halley was surprised to see the mess of bushy hair that pointed out Granger to everyone.
"-et them treat you that way?" Myrtle asked.
Granger sniffled and Halley heard her blow her nose. "I just want them to like me," she said. "I thought that maybe - if I helped them with their homework - we could be friends. But they keep being so mean to me. I don't know why."
Halley rolled her eyes. No one wanted a bossy know-it-all as a friend. They were the worst character traits a twelve-year-old could have.
"Nobody liked me when I was alive," Myrtle groaned. "There was a really nasty girl - Olive Hornby - who made fun of me all the time."
"I'm sorry," said Granger.
"When I died, I haunted her," Myrtle said.
"What did you do?"
"Olive Hornby used to charm her curtains to keep out noise. She couldn't sleep with all the snoring, she said. So I would wait until everyone was asleep, and I would glide past her charmed curtains and whisper and moan and groan all night. She had to leave school because nobody could figure out what was wrong with her."
Halley could hear how smug she felt about that, and really, who could blame the girl. If she was dead, she'd make everyone - no she wouldn't. That would become so boring after a while. But Myrtle was vicious.
"That's - that's horrid!" Granger gasped. "You shouldn't have done that!"
"Well it's not like I could get in trouble for it. I was dead!"
There was silence for a little while, and Halley's curiosity seemed to have been quenched. But just as she was about to leave, Hermione started talking.
"Myrtle, did...did you see anything? The night that Mrs Norris was petrified?"
"No. Potter blew up my toilet."
Halley's eye twitched. Why? Out of all the people Moaning Myrtle could have talked to about this, she chose the teacher's pet. Granger was sure to go to one of the teachers about that.
"Halley Potter blew up your toilet?"
"Well there isn't any other Potter, is there?" Myrtle sniped.
"How?" Halley couldn't tell if granger was impressed or just shocked that she'd destroyed school property. She wouldn't put it past the know-it-all.
"She used reducto," Myrtle groaned, sounding very much like Dudley when Vernon changed the channel on the tv.
There was a gasp. "But that's a fourth-year spell!"
Again, Halley wasn't sure what to make of her tone. Still, she prepared herself for a talk with Dumbledore or Snape, maybe even McGonagall soon enough.
"Well it did a lot of damage, didn't it!"
There was silence until Granger broke it - again. "So you didn't see anything odd or out of place? You didn't hear anything?"
"Why do you want to know?" The ghost asked.
"Because," Granger began. Her voice lowered conspiratorially and Halley struggled a little to hear what she said. "Someone wants all of the Muggleborns gone. I'm sure the professors are handling it, but...I'm scared Myrtle. I don't want to go home, but I don't want to die either."
Halley felt a strange sort of pity at those words. Granger faced different difficulties coming into this world. There were more prejudices thrown her way just because of her blood, and Halley felt sorry for her because of it. The circumstances of your birth weren't something anyone had control over.
She also felt some respect for her. If Granger was asking Myrtle, it meant she was using whatever resources were available to her. Not many witches or wizards looked at ghosts as anything other than a nuisance or a feature of the school, but they were valuable in gaining information. Halley hadn't even thought of that.
"Well, after Potter destroyed my toilet, I was sitting in another cubicle when all of a sudden someone threw a book right through my head!"
"I'm sorry," Granger said. "Did it hurt?"
"No. But that's not the point!"
"Of course not. It was terrible of them to do that," Granger said, trying to mollify the ghost.
Myrtle huffed.
"What kind of book was it?" Granger asked.
"I don't know. It's over there, it got washed out…" The sound of robes sploshing in the water echoed - was Granger sitting in toilet water? That was disgusting - and then steps moving away from Halley. Then nothing for a couple of seconds before: "It's blank."
Really? She'd waited here for how long for a blank book?
"It's a diary," Granger continued. "To a T. M. Riddle. Do you know who that is?"
Riddle? Was there anyone here by that name? Even if there was, it was unlikely that Halley knew them. She barely knew anyone.
Myrtle hummed. "I don't think so, but the name is familiar. Oh!"
"What is it?"
"There was a boy called Riddle, when I was alive. He was a Prefect. So nice. He helped me once when Hornby was being horrible."
"But that was fifty years ago," Granger said.
"So?" Myrtle snapped.
"Maybe he has descendants here." Granger hummed as if she was thinking to herself. She then started speaking too quietly. Halley stepped closer so she could hear better. "Myrtle were you...here the first time the Chamber opened? According to Hogwarts, a History the first time the Chamber was opened was in 1943, which was around the time you said you went to school with the owner of the diary."
What? What was Granger thinking?
"No. I wasn't."
"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "Well, thank you for the talk Myrtle but I have to go to the Library. There are some things that I have to research."
That was Halley's cue to leave. She pushed herself away from the door and all but sprinted to the other end of the corridor. Even if Granger came this way to go to the Library - which would be highly illogical seeing as the Library was in the opposite direction - Halley could easily feign walking that way to get to the Library.
There wouldn't even be any contact seeing as she'd not spoken to Granger once in the two years she'd been at Hogwarts. Halley wasn't even sure she knew the girl's first name.
That mattered little though. Whatever was happening was going to affect her time at Hogwarts. If more students were petrified then it was very likely the school was going to get shut down. She could not live out the rest of her days as a Muggle. Not now.
But she wasn't sure what to do.
It wasn't her job to go monster hunting. But most of the teachers were incompetent. Who could she tell?
Dumbledore? That seemed like the best option. He was powerful, and he was the headmaster of the school. But she didn't trust him. Not fully. He was hiding something from her, she was sure.
Snape would undoubtedly know something, but did she want to go to him? He would dismiss her, call her arrogant for wanting to take on something like this alone, and stupid for thinking the teachers didn't know there was something wrong happening.
She didn't know McGonagall well enough.
Lockhart was an imbecile.
Maybe Flitwick? But for all his prestige in the duelling world, how much power did he have to make a change in anything?
Halley pressed her head against the brick wall. It was cool and there was a thrum behind it that made the tiny bobbles under her forehead vibrate. It felt weird, but also a little bit relaxing. Like the castle was soothing her, which was…
Well, it wasn't impossible. The castle moved, so there was magic in it. But it wasn't very likely.
Halley sighed.
She would go to see Dumbledore. She'd voice her concerns about the school shutting down, and she'd ask what there was to be done on the teachers' part.
