AN: I think I'm getting better at making these longer

AN: I think I'm getting better at making these longer. So applaud me and shower me with reviews please! –Richard S.

Picking and Choosing (Tales of Hogwarts Romance) Chapter 19

Class crept by, Illy's head was thumping so loud she couldn't think, finally she raised her hand.

"Yes miss Enquirous, a question?" Professor Sprout asked.

"I have a terrible migraine, I think I'm going to be-" but before she could get the sentence out she found herself retching into the pot of soil in front of her. Jackquinn rushed to pull her hair back and motioned for Dolan to help him. Killious wiped her mouth with her sleeve, the vomit was black, tar like, and strung out from her mouth, sticking to everything it touched like slime.

"Are you alright?" Dolan asked, helping her steady herself. Christian stood off to the side, he didn't do vomit…ever. The smell at the moment was enough to send him over the edge, Sprout seemed to share his inability to cope with bile, as she was already covering the tar-like substance with a layer of dirt to trap some of the smell, which was rather like sulfur and blood.

"Actually I think I'm feeling quite a bit-" She was cut short again by another spell of regurgitation, just before she fainted. Jackquinn caught her a split second before her skull collided with the stone floor and Sprout piled on more dirt.

"Get her to Pomfry, right away!" She shouted to Dolan and Jackquinn, "You can stay Christian, it won't do any good to have you getting sick all over the place as well. Millicent, take care of this pot." She instructed, pointing the girl in the direction of the back door.

Dolan and Jackquinn escorted an unconscious Killious to Pomfry's station, making light conversation along the way, as they did their best to keep from shaking her up too much.

"What was that, the stuff she threw up, it was like ink." Dolan asked Jackquinn, who had given Illy to his older, larger counterpart.

"I've read about it actually, it's either the result of a bleeding ulcer, meaning its made up of stomach acid and blood…or, and this is pure myth, so I'd bank on the ulcer thanks to her perpetual malnutrition, but I've heard it happens to young peoples with…with mental abilities."

"Meaning what? She can think really hard and make herself sick?"

"No, meaning she could have the gifts of precognition, or telekinesis that's stronger than most wizards, possibly telepathy…or even all three. It's characteristic of those with very powerful ESP."

"What's ESP?"

"Extra sensory perception, she might be able to predict the future, or move large objects with no wand, or talk to you in your head…but I doubt it, it's probably just a horribly degenerative stomach ulcer that will render her in bed for a day or two…as long as we catch it now, other wise it could potentially kill her."

"I'd hate to think that she could read my thoughts right now." Dolan sighed, he passed Illy back to Jackquinn for a moment, he took her easily and carried her bridal style as the two talked.

"Why what are you thinking?" Jackquinn asked, Dolan looked to his feet, shuffling along noisily to evade the silence that followed the question. After several seconds he tried to renew the conversation.

"I'll take her back if you like." He offered.

"Dolan I'm not as much of a child as you think. I'm certainly more mature than most of your friends, I'm smarter than the rest of my class, and I'm not even physically all that small." Dolan shrugged before looking over at Jackquinn's arms, they were banded with thick muscles. Jackquinn caught him looking and stared back with his ice blue eyes at Dolan, his face looked almost frozen in its current expression of wise indifference. It sent shivers down his spine to see the boy stare unabashedly at someone older and larger than himself.

"You…you um, have nice skin."

"It's black, one more thing to separate me from most of my house, and the rest of this school for that matter."

"But it's nice, it's not ashy or anything, just smooth, even you must take good care of it…and besides, I like the color." Dolan was still staring at the bulging muscle that Jacky's rolled sleeve revealed.

"I'm an excellent groomer." Jacky enunciated every consonant heavily, as he stared back at Dolan, unblinking. The silence left Jacky's words ringing in the air around Dolan's head, and the odd framing of the conversation was making him uncomfortable.

"You are pretty big for a kid your age I guess."

"I don't look that much like it, but yeah. I used to be on a wrestling team, and I played some rugby, a little lacrosse as well. I was pretty athletic before I came here. Quidditch isn't really my game, I like to use full contact, to collide with people, to fell the burn of your lungs when you're entirely out of air and each breath is painful."

"That's a little sick." Dolan adjusted his gaze to the hall in front of him, as did Jacky.

"No, it's not. It's masculine you moron, I just got into it more than most."

"I see, I wasn't even aloud to play quidditch. My parents were convinced we were too good for anything that could physically harm us."

"Woman." Jacky's words alone seemed like an insult, but the tone, the mood, and the context of their knowledge of one another's well guarded secrets made his accusations more like a statement than cruel mockery, Dolan still wasn't happy.

"I'm sorry not all of us can be raised in inner city London with an accent that makes no sense and a mother that gushes over our every victory and triumph. Besides, you cry more than I do!"

"I'm not afraid to cry, it's natural, good for the skin, and I'm not shy either, I know that its coming next, I'm just observant."

"Yeah…you know everything, your life is just great Jacky." Dolan complained as he looked back to Jacky jaded and irritated. The younger boy was three inches shorter than Dolan, making him just about five foot five inches, but you could tell he was bound to end up bulky.

"Don't say that Dolan. You have a good family, pretentious, and most likely not entirely accepting of you, but still, they love you. They're normal for us, they know what magic is, and you actually have a father. Don't take them for granted, after you've spent four summers backpacking across France, depending only on your hitchhiking skill to get you everywhere without being killed by some sadistic serial killer or raped by a band of art thieves, then you can tell me how great my life is." Jackquinn chuckled at his own jokes, and shifted Illy's weight in his arms.

"You don't have a father? But you're always getting letters from 'mum and dad'"

"They're trying to help me, I'm like a breathing minority orgy, I just need to be female and paraplegic to cover every base."

"So you're parents…they're…"

"Both female? Yes, they adopted me when I was nine, Michelle, the one who is always sending letters, her best friend was my actual mother, and Tatiana, the one who bakes, had promised Michelle that if anything happened they would take me in. I already spent most of my time with them, my mom did a lot of traveling across the country for her modeling, so when she died, they adopted me."

"How did she-"

"Another time, we're here." Jackquinn nodded toward the door.

"This girl is going to kill me." Pomfry bustled about the room, searching for her wand.

"I think that a little test and a lie down would be enough." Dolan suggested as he found a bed for Illy.

"Oh, and what test might you suggest Mr. Cook?"

"Jacky…er, Jackquinn thinks that she might have a bleeding stomach ulcer, she's not been getting enough food or sleep lately, worrying about Draco and all." Pomfry nodded and dropped a cotton swab sample of the vomit left in Illy's mouth into a clear jar of water. She added a few ingredients from bottles labeled in short hand, and stirred twice. The liquid became volatile, shifting from browns, to greens, to yellows, to blues, to reds in a matter of seconds, before settling on a black color with a deep plum tint. The boys were transfixed, Pomfry turned to them cheerily,

"Not a stomach ulcer I can tell you that much, now shoo back to class, so I can call Dumbledore to take a look at this, she'll be down for dinner." The boys didn't move they wanted an explanation. "Get, it won't do you any good to stare, she's not sick, just tired, so shoo." She waved them toward the door.

"Now wait a minute," Dolan began, determined to see if Jacky's second theory was correct. But before he could finish Jackquinn put a finger to his lips and grabbed his hand, pulling him forcible toward the door as he gaped at the strange turn of events.

Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall, and Trelawney stared at the liquid test results that Pomfry had produced. Each one absorbed in their very different reaction to what was happening. Dumbledore was pleased as punch, or as much as he could be when a students health was at risk, Illy was just what he had presumed and even more powerful than he had thought. McGonagall was puzzled, the results could have been a mistake but if they weren't it would mean a world of trouble for the school if he-who-must-not-be-named found out. Trelawney was just about to piss herself from pure excitement, she was bursting at the seams, a real, genuine possessor of mental power lay on the bed to her left, and this test was proof to anyone in the wizarding community who doubted it. Snape was a jumble of emotion, he was mortified that no matter what he did to protect Illy from her past it would find a way out of her, he was scared that her body was always seeming to work against her, he was happy to find out that she had so much of her mother in her, he was proud that she was even more powerful than her mother was, and most of all he was entirely stumped as to what his course of action should be.

Trelawney was the first to speak, which irritated Snape and McGonagall a bit because in reality she had no reason to be present, as she was neither teaching nor related to the girl who was sleeping beside the troop of faculty members; not to mention that the only reason she had shown up was because she had received a "vision" or in other words a psychic tremor so large that every advanced wizard in the school felt something slimy brush up against their skin, though only a few knew what it meant.

"She should begin training at once." Her words were even more infuriating than her presence. "I sense great danger for her, but power none the less."

"Yes thank you for that clearly advanced analogy of the current situation, I would have never guessed without your insight." Snape snapped at the wide eyed woman.

"Now servious, be kind to our dear friend." Dumbledore instructed, "These events may be none of her business, but she is present none the less, and therefore we must be kind." Trelawney looked triumphant at first, until she realized that Dumbledore had not in fact really been defending her.

"The school must be thought of first. If we have a…well if we have one, it won't go unnoticed by you-know-who." McGonagall offered, uninterested in turning the conversation into a fight. "So Sybil, what exactly are we looking at?" McGonagall asked the woman to her right. She may have been a total fraud, but she had spent enough time studying that which she acted, to know what the signs before them meant.

"She's not like what I've seen before, prophetic, gifted with smoke signs, star, palm and omen reading, none of that is new to the school, but she could be much, much more." The bug eyed woman narrowed her eyes on the liquid before them. She was in her own world enough to miss that Snape had drifted to the left of the group and was now at Illy's side, holding her hand and whispering to the sleeping child.

"Sybil, please elaborate, we need specific signs that point to what you're aiming at." Dumbledore coaxed her along, softly, but with enough authority to eliminate any chance of the woman deciding to bring the paranormal into discussion more than she had to. The art was rare enough in the wizarding world that a majority of high power wizards scoffed at the very idea of genuine precognition or prophesy.

"Fine then," Trelawney moved towards Illy, leaving the jar behind. "the test results mean nothing to me, other than that she has powers that no one can refute, but those conclusions could develop from a student as unbelieving in mysticism as Granger, just because you have the gift doesn't mean that you'll learn to use it properly." She took Illy's hand, and flipped it palm side up, she stroked the creases in the skin softly at first and then with her nail, all the while watching Illy's face. "Her lack of reaction to physical forces means that her dreams are deep enough that she's having a hard time escaping them." Snape reached the end of his rope with this superstitious woman.

"Yes we know! She won't eat, she's obsessive compulsive with her hygiene, she can't sleep, she's developed an unnerving psychological attachment to Draco Malfoy, and this is far from her first experience like this, tell us something we don't know or get out! Besides, she's just taken a light sleeping draught you dolt." He sneered at the woman, eyes narrowed and teeth bared, his unnatural looking canines shining maliciously at her. She recoiled in shock, almost whimpering and pointing at Snape's teeth,

"The sign of the serpent." She began.

"Oh do shut up!" He silenced her before she could drag the moment out longer. Snape's teeth had been that way since he was young, in his own way he liked them, but he had trained himself not to let them show, though they had their moments of chauvinism. McGonagall waited for Dumbledore to say something, but he was busy with his own thoughts, so he just nodded to Minerva for approval of her taking command of the meeting for the moment.

"Both of you be quiet, we don't need her awake for this. Now listen, Sybil do your best to put superstitions and dramatizations aside, Servius do your best to catch Sybil up on everything that she's missed in the life of Miss Enquirous." Snape nodded and turned to Trelawney who had calmed herself down and was ready to listen.

"A few weeks ago Ike- I mean Miss Enquirous of course, passed out in her common room. She had a few visions jumbled together; Draco caught several of them too, as they were in a rather…inappropriate situation. At any rate, she had the visions, gained back some memories of very traumatic past events, and then she passed out. I set everyone's head back as if she had never had the visions at all, so they're lost, but that's what happened."

"Let's see those teeth again." Snape looked to Dumbledore who nodded, he put on a beastly grin to sport the teeth, Sybil gave them a good looking over and moved to Illy. The used her thumb to push the girl's lips out of the way so that she could look for the teeth, and sure enough just as her father had them so did she.

"This goes back as far as tarot card signs, you each have a mark. It's very unlikely that two unrelated people with the same distinct sign would ever meet, but her relationship to you would explain them. They are the mark of the serpent: betrayal, cunning, and wisdom. If I had seen these earlier I could have told you that she would never struggle in a class," She looked at McGonagall who was inwardly rolling her eyes at the absurd conclusion. "but the sign of the serpent more importantly means betrayal, she has been betrayed, will be betrayed and will betray. She has no fate but that of a many sided spy." Snape and McGonagall both seemed unhappy with this, but were silent none the less, as Sybil continued and Snape brushed hair from Illy's face. "I can't tell you what she will become for sure, but all signs point to something volatile and dangerously powerful. It's almost set in stone that she will follow you-know-who at some point, but we can only hope for something other than evil in her soul as to why, and we'll also have to hope that he's the one she betrays, not us. She's going to develop these powers independently and quickly, and her link with Draco will probably only speed things up, if we can find a way for the two to be together over breaks it will help, especially since taking him from her could result in what we've seen over the last week and a half taking place for three months. Lastly she is at least a triparaphetic. I would bet everything I own on her having distinct powers of telekinesis, precognition, and telepathy. She has clearly already shared her telepathy with Draco, and her precognition is indisputable for the most part, but I would watch for the telekinesis. She may be a quadparaphetic, in which case she would also be able to speak with the dead, or those on other spiritual planes, if she's strong enough she might be able to raise them as well. Or she could be clairvoyant as well, which would be something indeed. To see a pentaparaphetic with powers of necromancy, incredible…but keep a tight guard on Draco, I have a suspicion that she passed her clairvoyant abilities to him, he may well just go home and see something she saw, and end up going into an epileptic shock over a bad memory she has associated with anything from stones to house elves. It's not that uncommon really, for a strong paraphetic to pass an gift to a close loved one, or someone of lasting significance in their life, we can all guess why Draco might be given such gifts. Well that's all the speculation I can give you without other tools, which I'm certain would upset Servious quite a bit." She concluded and Snape squeezed Illy's hand lightly before letting it rest again at her side.

"So, are you going to tell us what your sources for such outlandish speculations are Sybil?" Snape persisted in his nasty mood.

"You wanted my opinion, and you have it, now I must go and prepare myself to ask the stars for their help tonight. I do wonder how Saturn will play into this…" She began rambling like usual again. Snape shook his head and watched the woman drift from the room, as though she had never acted normally for a moment in her life.

"That was a preposterous waste of time."

"Don't be so quick to judge her." Both McGonagall and Snape turned to face Dumbledore.

"Are you saying that she's right?" McGonagall inquired.

"Who can really know that? Even the greatest of prophecies can be changed; the only person who can determine Killious' future is Killious." Dumbledore smiled and ushered the two from the room, Snape was downcast as he swept from the room, looking for a student to reprimand, particularly Harry Potter. Dumbledore moved back to where Illy slept.

"You know, it is considered inappropriate for a young lady to eaves drop." He spoke jovially through his mild rebuke.

"Is it not also considered rude to talk about those who are not fully present?" She retorted, as she sat up and slid the blankets around her shoulders to her knees.

"Indeed, but children must be watched after by someone should they not?" His eyes were glowing at her bright conversation as he chuckled warmly at her response,

"Then who should watch me? You and the other teachers? I fear you have thousands of students who need your watching. But perhaps my parents would watch, if only they weren't terrified of what a single blow to the head has done to me. So I suggest we let those who conceived me take care of me, they've done so all my life."

"You believe in their spirits helping you then?"

"I do. Besides, you heard Professor Trelawney, I am a necromancer who's to say I haven't brought them back."

"I think you know that's not how necromancy works. But I'd almost forgotten about your incident with the broom, you were eleven correct?" She nodded to affirm his assumptions, "That might help explain why Draco's accident scared you so much."

"Maybe, and maybe it's something else, I don't know. You'd think that someone whose supposed to be a paraphetic would know something about their past, but I don't."

"You must be wanting to go see Draco now, its dinner time so you should head that way." She pushed her blankets off entirely and headed for the door, before turning to Dumbledore,

"I didn't hear everything…I only woke when Snape touched my face, so I expect that one of these days you'll explain things to me fully." Before he could answer she had bolted from the door and headed for the great hall.