Chapter 5-Waiting for No One

Leo sat at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, eating his lunch beside Lysander and Jeremy while watching Albus bicker with Pat down the table.

"Patricia Cassiopeia McLaggen, I am frankly insulted that you would even suggest I copied your homework."

"They're the same essay!"

"And what's to stop me from assuming you didn't copy my homework?"

"You've got no memory of writing it."

"We don't know that. What if you erased my memory of writing it and then took the essay for yourself?"

Pat rolled her eyes. "We're in the same class, you thick git. Binns is going to know you took it."

"He's dead!"

Patricia rose from her seat and leaned far over the table so their noses nearly touched, her eyes boring into his. "How about this? If you don't write a new essay, I'll hex you!"

"Your breath smells just awful."

"Hey, Jeremy," Leo started, turning his attention away from the scene.

The boy turned away from a rather entertaining spectacle farther down the table to his friend. "Hm?"

"I need to switch places with you in History of Magic."

"What? I thought you liked the back. I need to be up front. Got a bad ear, you know?"

"It'll just be for today. I promise. I need to get Binns to notice me. Still haven't gotten any approval for my paper."

Jeremy nodded. "No one wants to do it with you, then?"

"No one's got the time between Quidditch and schoolwork. I wish the days were longer."

"You know I've got time, but I can't write to save my life. Start talking about the Quidditch game and I'll end it off discussing salmon. Something's wrong with me."

"It's not just that. The professors don't know where we'll get the paper, how we'll print it, or if anyone will even buy it. Merlin, I'm not even sure what my first few stories would be."

"And that's near everything you need," he admitted.

"I swear, this week's felt like a month."

"Leo, what do you need another responsibility for? We're going to have NEWTs next year, anyway, and you won't have a free second to spare for a newspaper. You're piling on too much, if you ask me."

"And when NEWTs come next year, does that mean you'll quit the Quidditch team?"

Jeremy piled eggs onto his plate. "My future's just as much in Quidditch as it is in those NEWTs. If I become the best of the best this year, I can get a spot on a professional team for sure. Besides," he grinned, "girls come to me this way."

Leo grimaced at the thought. "As long as you're using them right back."

Jeremy looked up from his plate at the boy. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Leo!" Rose said, announcing her presence as she took a seat among them. "I found out everything I could on Pocahontas."

Leo's eyes widened. "Seriously? How did you even know I was looking for her?"

"Frieda told me you wouldn't shut up about it. Frankly, I am glad someone else takes as much of an interest in magical history as I do."

Leo kitted his eyebrows. "What?"

Rose removed a volume from her bag and turned to a bookmarked page.

"Pocahontas was a Native American woman who lived in North America during the latter part of the sixteenth century. She was the daughter and advisor to the Powhatan chief. A primary account of her tells the story of her saving the life of John Smith, the leader of an English colonial expedition, though because Smith is the only one who writes of the tale, muggles believe it to be false. She eventually, married Englishman John Rolf and became Rebecca Rolf after moving to the British Isles to represent her people and converting to Christianity. Muggles believe she died at a young age of Tuberculosis, but in reality she was murdered in a duel between herself and several dark wizards. She is significant for being the first witch from the New World to learn to use a wand and marry a wizard from overseas. More importantly, though, are her vast contributions of foreign knowledge of the magical properties of plants and several dozen different potions still in common use today which otherwise may have been lost to history." Rose slammed the book shut, sending an echo through the Great Hall and a cloud of dust into her white, freckled face. "Don't you just love history?"

"It's thrilling," Albus agreed unenthusiastically as he scribbled furiously at a piece of parchment.

"I'm sorry, Rose," Leo told her, "but that isn't the Pocahontas I was looking for."

She frowned. "How many Pocahontases are there?"

"This one's still alive."

She stuffed the book back into her bag, rather disappointed.

"Ah-hem!" Albus stood, clearing his throat as he looked down at a sheet of parchment paper. "I have written a new essay. New World Witchcraft: A Female Perspective," Albus flashed Patricia a glance. She scowled.

The day went by as it usually did. Transfiguration with the Slytherins, Charms with the Ravenclaws. They really weren't the best classes to have with those respective groups. The Ravenclaws were always showing off their spells, irking the Gryffindors, while the Slytherins seemed to take advantage of Transfiguration and sent fur flying on a daily basis. He still occasionally woke up with a webbed pinky and ring finger that would mold back into his hand as the day went on.

Leo enjoyed Professor Trelawney's antics more than most people. It was entertaining to see a seventy-year-old lady hopping around the room with wide eyes magnified by the glasses on her nose, chanting odd lines of nonsense. He wondered how this had ever been considered a class. Or how it was even still running. Their predictions seemed rather ambiguous for his taste. The only people who seemed to take this class were boys who didn't want to expend effort in ancient runes, girls who actually believed the rubbish…and then there was Lorcan Scamander. He was definitely Lysander's twin. At least on the outside. He and his brother had taken his mother's house of Ravenclaw, but it seemed only Lorcan retained his mother's unusual senses.

Leo raised an eyebrow as Lorcan stared into his teapot. They did the exercise every year and it never seemed to tire Lorcan as his mind switched through endless meanings, piecing the formation into various pictures. To Leo, it just looked like coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.

"Um..." Leo started. "Could you, er, re-explain this to me?"

Lorcan nodded, rather proud of his knowledge. "The bottom is the past, the middle is the present, and the top is the future, but if you want to get more complex—"

"That's not nece—."

"—then the bottom is really home and family, the side with the handle is your love life, the part opposite the handle is money, the part closest to you is the present, and the part farthest is the future."

"Okay," Leo nodded, picking up none of it. "Oh, look, you've got a heart. There's a good sign."

"Depends on where it is."

"Right, right. Well, it's…at the top. Love in your future perhaps?" Leo flipped through the pages of his book and frowned. "Oh. It means you'll be cursed. A heart? Really? Why would that mean a curse?"

"What else?"

"At the bottom, in your past, there's a fish." Leo flipped through his book. "The fish is a sign that the course for the reading of the future has already started and cannot be undone. Resistance is futile." Leo looked back up at Lorcan. "Again, why would a fish mean that?"

"Indeed."

"Ah!" Leo jumped, looking back at Professor Trelawney. "Professor. I didn't see you there."

"Give me your cup, child," she insisted, gesturing to Lorcan. He handed over Leo's cup. She caressed the cup lovingly in her palms, staring deeply into it. He wasn't sure if he wanted her holding that. He felt much better with it in Lorcan's hands. "I see death," she intoned.

Leo's eyes bulged. "What?"

"Don't worry my dear. It's not necessarily for you. Perhaps just someone close to you."

"Why would that make me feel better?"

The professor lowered the cup to Lorcan's face. "What do you see my dear?"

Lorcan studied the teacup. "Well, I see…a sun, there in the present."

"And a sun is a sure sign of happiness," she lamented drearily, as if she was upset to think Leo would be skipping gleefully in a field of daisies or something. "Anything else?"

"Scissors. Open scissors."

"Perhaps the cutting of a lifeline?"

"But it's in the past. Maybe just separated from something. Not necessarily life."

"Quite right, my dear. Great tragedy awaits him."

Leo shook his head. This class never made him feel better.

Leo waited, patiently for his last class so he could catch the no-name Hufflepuff girl. He would sit down with her today during History of Magic and she wouldn't be some mysterious specter. She'd just be another girl, another name to add to his list.

Or maybe not. Because she wasn't there.

He sat in Jeremy's seat at the front of the class, but the entire time, the Hufflepuff never came. She was gone, almost as if she'd known.

At the end of class, he didn't bother getting up. He sat there until the room was empty, save the ghost shuffling papers around and occasionally pushing a moldy sandwich through his head. Binns looked up suddenly, but past Leo. "Ah, there you are!"

Professor Longbottom walked in, but paused when he saw Leo sitting there, looking up from his deep thoughts. "Mr. Wespurt!" he greeted, walking up to Leo. "I just came along to tell you I'll approve your newspaper."

Leo shot up from his seat. "You'll do what?!"

"You do still want to do it, don't you?"

"Yes! Yes, I want to, but what about before? You said—"

He waved his hand away. "When I found out Jeremy and the Scamander twins were involved—"

"They are?"

He looked surprised. "Well, aren't they?"

Leo paused. Better to lie first and ask forgiveness later. "Yes…yes they are. Err, but what about the paper and ink?"

"Worked out, I was told. All of it, yes. We get swell discounts on all parchment and ink, we being a school after all, and the printing will be processed through Frontier Parchment, an independent printing company."

Leo's mind was whirling. How had it all suddenly fit into place? "I didn't think you were interested when I talked to you," Leo admitted. "I didn't think you'd go to the trouble of getting my friends and a printer."

He looked surprised. "Me? Why, no, it was your friend. Yes, quite a persuasive fellow."

"Friend?" Leo had tons of those. "Who?"

"Well, I can't say I remember very well. She was…well, her name seems to have slipped my mind. That is embarrassing."

He paused in his spot. That couldn't have been possible. But Professor Longbottom knew all his students' names by heart and Herbology was a required class. "That's okay. I think I know who you mean. She's in this, my last class, but I actually only ever call her Pocahontas. But," he added, "we could look up the attendance list to see what her real name is."

He and Longbottom turned to Binns in unison, both curious. Leo had the feeling, though, that his professor's curiosity was less than his and even more sure that by the end of the day, the name of the girl would vanish from his mind. Binns looked up. "Oh, oh, right, the attendance list."

"She was absent today," Leo told him. "I imagine she was sick." Conveniently.

"There's just one," he said. "A Carina Honeycomb. Yes? That the girl?"

Leo cracked a smile. "That's her."