A Little Knowledge

When Corinna came around, she found herself in the hospital wing, surrounded her friends and teammates, who had invaded the wing despite protests from Madam Pomfrey. She felt momentarily confused, but then she remembered the Bludger from the game against Gryffindor and winced. Her side ached, but she could tell that the injury had been tended. The mediwitch had probably needed only a few minutes to mend the broken bones.

“All right?” asked Olivia anxiously as Corinna sat up gingerly on the hospital bed.

“I think so,” she answered with a suppressed shudder.

How could she explain about Somerville with her teammates gathered around? And what had the vision meant, if it truly were a vision?

“I’ve never seen anyone hit that hard by a Bludger before,” commented Sexton rather appreciatively. “That was really something,” he added after receiving a cross look from Parker.

“Then you weren’t looking when Olivia got you with one that time,” remarked Corinna with a smile.

Ambrose and Savage laughed at this, and Sexton didn’t look too offended, but then, they had just beaten Gryffindor by one hundred and thirty points, giving them second place for the season. If only the Lions hadn’t won such amazing victories over the other houses...

“I guess this was our blaze of glory. Too bad you missed seeing Manfred get the Snitch,” said Alec, shaking his head regretfully.

“He made Pettigrew look like a complete prat,” laughed Savage.

“It was a brilliant game!” interjected Olivia, who, more than ever, couldn’t wait to play on the house team.

Corinna grinned and tried not to wish that she had contributed more to the win than being carried off the field.

“If Miss Bellew feels up to it, she can go, as can the rest of you,” said the annoyed voice of Madam Pomfrey from over the shoulders of the Quidditch team.

“Well?” asked Sissy, who had a very proud look in her eyes.

Corinna couldn’t help but notice the expectant looks in the eyes of her friends and nodded. “I think I can manage,” she answered.

“Good, but be sure not to overexert yourself,” Madam Pomfrey warned her as she climbed from the hospital bed.

Corinna was very tired when she returned to the Aerie with her friends. The Quidditch team, fortunately, had retreated to the kitchens to celebrate with butterbeer and all the trimmings, courtesy of the house elves. Many of the other Ravenclaw students had dispersed throughout the school with many of them going to the library to study for a bit after a few congratulatory remarks to the team. This left the common room reasonably quiet and nearly empty of students.

She collapsed on the couch, which given the ache from her previously broken ribs -- there had been four of them broken in multiple places -- seemed much more comfortable than her usual spot on the divan, which Olivia claimed so that Martin and Sophia could sit with Corinna. Sissy curled up in the chair that they all considered to be hers.

“I had a vision while I was unconscious, you know,” she informed them as she leaned back against the couch.

“We suspected as much. You were muttering about ... let me see ... a dark forest and two vampires,” said Sissy with a slightly raised eyebrow.

“Somerville and the one who changed him. I saw it happen,” said Corinna with a slight shudder.

“Really?” gasped Martin, causing her to chuckle painfully. Sometimes he could seem so comical.

“Stop that,” she muttered, wincing at the pain in her ribs, which was becoming rather annoying to say the least.

“How horrible!” said Sophia with a pronounced shiver, clearly not liking the idea very much.

“Did you see anything that might be of some use to us?” asked Sissy very pragmatically. “A weakness perhaps? Or some knowledge of Somerville that might come in handy?” she probed.

“I wish I could say that I had, but ... it was nothing more than a vision of the past,” she said with a soft sigh, wondering why she had had the vision at all.

Corinna also felt more than a bit guilty about the strange sort of pity she had felt for Somerville after the vampire had bitten him. This was the creature who had been terrorizing them since September! He was pure evil and had been for a very long time. Somerville had been a lieutenant to Grindelwald, she reminded herself fiercely, and that alone warrant imprisonment in Azkaban, if not worse.

“But you don’t often have visions like that, do you?” remarked Martin worriedly.

“No,” she replied, “but I don’t get hit by a Bludger very often either.”

Sophia and Olivia both looked surprised by her tone of voice, which included a note of mild sarcasm that was rarely present there.

“It’s just a part of the game,” said Sissy, who was completely unfazed, “but I think you handled yourself well. I don’t even think you needed Potter’s help.”

“Thanks,” said Corinna with a slight smile, although she knew that she would have probably broken her neck if someone hadn’t caught her. She made a mental note to thank Potter if she ever saw him in the halls.

“Are you going to see Professor Mallaghan about your vision?” asked Sophia.

Corinna glanced at the nearest clock to find that it was only mid afternoon. Mallaghan was sure to be in his office. The only question was whether or not she wanted to tell him about everything that she had seen and the strangeness of it all. She imagined that he would understand, but she wanted to think about what she had witnessed on her own before taking the matter to her mentor.

She wanted to figure out why she had seen Somerville changed. Her instincts told her that it had to do with Martin’s dreams about being bitten. He had had several of them and shared the contents of those dreams with her and the others. Those dreams were never far from her mind because she knew how easily they could, in some respects, become reality. But she could not say with certainty that this was the case.

“I think ... I’ll try to see him tomorrow,” she told Sophia in answer to her question.

The next morning as Corinna entered the Great Hall with her friends for the morning meal and was surprised to see Professor Mallaghan at the high table. He was seated between Flitwick and Dumbledore and chatting quite animatedly with them as he ate his breakfast. The professor of Divinations did not usually mix so freely with the rest of the staff. He had his reasons, which Corinna did not entirely understand.

Mallaghan smiled and nodded in her direction as he noticed her presence at the Ravenclaw table. She imagined that he had come looking for her, in a manner of speaking.

“I guess you really will be seeing Mallaghan today,” quipped Sissy, remembering Corinna’s comment from the night before.

“He probably just wanted to have a meal with the rest of the faculty. It must get lonely up in the Divinations Tower,” said Corinna lamely, knowing that that couldn’t be the reason at all.

“Right...” scoffed Olivia.

“Just let her eat in peace,” Sophia told Sissy and Olivia with a disapproving look.

Corinna was not surprised when Professor Mallaghan stopped her after breakfast and sent her friends on without her.

“You’ve an awfully long face this morning, my dear,” he commented, gesturing for her to follow him back to his tower sanctuary, “especially for someone who contributed to such a magnificent Quidditch victory.”

“I had a vision yesterday...” she shrugged.

“Ah,” he said knowingly. “Before or after your encounter with that Bludger?” Mallaghan inquired as they walked.

“Just after,” she said, feeling moderately surprised that he knew about that as Mallaghan almost never attended Quidditch matches. In fact, to the best of Corinna’s knowledge, he had only attended the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match that term.

She had not spotted him in the stands, but the pace of the match had been such that she had not had very much time to look for her friends, including the elderly professor.

“Professor Flitwick mentioned that the accident was rather ... stomach-churning to watch,” said Joseph, choosing his words carefully.

“How did you find out about it?” she asked curiously.

“An owl from Professor Dumbledore. He is very observant for such a young wizard,” Mallaghan told her with a smile.

“Not to seem impertinent, but why did he tell you about that?” she questioned.

Mallaghan laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “Because he knew that if there was anything the matter, that you would tell me more willingly than anyone else. Not an impertinent question at all.”

Corinna smiled and chuckled softly. “I was planning to see you,” she said, feeling a slight, residual ache in her ribs when she chuckled.

“Of course, lassie, I know that,” he said, “but some people aren’t patient like we are. Heavens, no; some people need to know things right away and can’t let us work them out in our own time as we should.”

Corinna grinned at this, knowing that he was referring to the headmaster, who was probably very curious. It seemed to be common knowledge that something had happened to her after being hit by that Bludger.

“And you’ve had another vision, you say?” he questioned as they began the climb up the Divinations Tower.

“Yes, and it was about ... Somerville,” she said, not wanting to refer to him only as the vampire after what she had seen.

Mallaghan nodded thoughtfully. He had suspected that whatever she had seen had something to do with their present situation. She seemed to be a rather focused Seer, compared to those he had known or read about. He found that part of her talent to be very advantageous -- to her and to those she might seek to help with her ability.

“I thought as much, my dear,” he told her.

“It isn’t as though I don’t know about other things... It’s just that this is so important,” she confessed.

“I never meant to suggest that,” he chuckled kindly. “In fact I was quite impressed,” Mallaghan informed her with an approving and encouraging smile.

Corinna returned the smile, but he could see a lingering seriousness in her eyes that made him wonder what ‘other things’ she might know. He did not imagine that many of them were especially pleasant.

“You know that you may tell me anything, don’t you, Miss Bellew?” he asked her as he led her up the stairs to his office and classroom.

“Of course,” she answered quickly.

“And you may also not tell me anything you do not wish to divulge,” said Mallaghan.

She smiled softly at this and said, “I’m not very fond of keeping secrets, especially from my friends.”

Corinna did not add that she wasn’t very good at it either nor did she choose to say anything about the incident with Martin’s uncle; she was still not certain if it could have been avoided.

Mallaghan beamed as he realized that she had included him, wittingly or no, among her friends and walked with her to the comfortable alcove by the window where they usually sat to talk and have their tea. As they had just finished breakfast, he elected to save that latter part until later as he knew that they would be there for some amount of time.

“Well, your secrets are your own, and you may keep or share them as you like,” he told her, watching as she sat down gingerly, careful of her ribs.

She regarded him quizzically, remembering how strongly he had originally encouraged her to open up and wondered if he had had a change or heart or if he trusted her judgment more. She wasn’t sure which the case might be.

“Thank you,” said Corinna quietly.

“Quite welcome. Now, if you feel up to it, please tell me about your vision.”

Despite the concerned caused by what had happened at the Quidditch game, not to mention after, Olivia felt rather happy as she sat in the library with her friends, waiting for the missing member of the quintet to return. Ravenclaw was nearly tied with Gryffindor for the House Cup after receiving numerous house points for the Quidditch victory that had put them in second place behind Gryffindor for the Quidditch Cup for the second year in a row. However, this status, not being in first place, was difficult not to attribute to Molly Prewett’s Bludger, even though it had made no real difference in the actual outcome of the game.

But Olivia was proud of how Corinna had handled herself on the field. She beamed every time she thought about the comment Ambrose had made when Corinna was being taken from the field:

“I’ve never seen anything like that in all my days! Even David would have thought twice about just taking a Bludger like that. No matter how close the score was. Blimey, that was just terrific,” the Quidditch captain had said to her as they trudged behind the stretcher carrying Corinna.

The difference in points between the house of scarlet and the house of blue was only twenty-five, and they had the better part of three months to make up that difference and establish a lead. Olivia just knew that it could be done.

Hufflepuff and Slytherin were so far behind that they didn’t even figure into the matter anymore, and as far as Slytherin was concerned, that made Olivia quite pleased too. After all the trouble Black and his gang had given them, the whole house could go to blazes in her humble opinion.

Of course, with the exception of Sophia’s nearly inexplicable respect and tolerance for Professor Krohn, the other girls and Martin quite agreed with Olivia on the subject of Slytherin house, and Astrophel Black in particular.

They were all waiting for the next, inevitable confrontation with the Slytherin bully, but no one, not even absent Corinna, knew when it would come. They passed him in the corridors from time to time, and he exchanged dark looks with Sissy, who was the best at giving them, but did nothing.

That worried Sissy more than she let on, but she was quite aware that Black was a strategist, as she considered herself to be also, and surmised that he would only strike when it was most advantageous to himself and when he was least likely to be caught.

Because of those factors, Sissy had suggested that none of them should be in the corridors alone at any hour of the day and the others had whole-heartedly agreed with that. This only naturally meant that they were anxious about Corinna’s return, although she had departed with Professor Mallaghan. She would doubtlessly be returning alone. Sissy was less than pleased with that idea.

“I’m going for a walk,” said Sissy, closing her books and leaving her seat. It was her intention to go to the bottom of the tower and wait for Corinna.

“Can I come along?” asked Martin, which was the only thing that stopped Olivia or Sophia from volunteering.

“Have you your wand?” she asked.

“Of course,” he nodded.

“Very well,” Sissy agreed, motioning for him to follow her out of the library.

Sophia and Olivia just exchanged looks. Sissy almost seemed to be spoiling for a fight, not that doing so would be unlike her; it simply made them uncomfortable and a bit worried about Martin, who was still not as capable in matters of defense as they all thought, given his situation, that he ought to be.

Professor Mallaghan rubbed his chin thoughtfully as Corinna finished giving him a detailed account of what she had seen in her vision. He was more than a little impressed by the depth and richness of what she described. He did not miss the hesitance with which she divulged her own feelings and actions, despite her relative candor concerning what had happened between the older vampire and Somerville.

“Let me make us some tea. I think we could both use a cup,” he said, patting her knee gently as he rose from his seat.

“Thank you,” she whispered, looking positively drained.

Not for the first time was he tempted to add a little something to her tea, but he restrained himself.

“Do you know, professor, why ... why I ... I felt sorry for him?” she asked tentatively.

He looked over his shoulder at her and said, “Somerville was a strange one by all accounts. I can’t imagining pitying him very much myself ... after what he’s become, and I don’t mean a vampire. But seeing someone, anyone, even a Dark Wizard and even willingly, go through something so horrible as that... I can imagine that it would bring out some strange emotions in anyone. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Compassion is hardly a something to feel guilty about.”

“But after everything that has happened...”

“I know, but I suppose visions are like dreams. Things happen in them that you can’t properly explain,” Mallaghan told her patiently.

“It’s so silly. I wish I had never seen him... and I wish I knew more about him too,” she confessed.

“Well, you’ve seen some rather intimate moments in his life,” he shrugged, pouring the tea, “and that would make anyone curious.”

Mallaghan glanced uneasily at a nearly empty earthenware jar on a shelf by the hearth. He wondered if it might be all right to try and help Corinna answer her questions. The method had never worked for him, not in sixty years of occasionally taking the stuff, the potent potion that was sealed in the jar, but Mallaghan suspected that Corinna, because of the strength of her gift, might profit by it.

“Nasty business, inducing visions,” he thought to himself. “One never knows what will happen. I would hate for her to foresee her own death again, or anyone else’s death for that matter. And if it didn’t work, she would be terribly disappointed.”

He touched the vessel gingerly and wonder if perhaps he should ask Miss Bellew and allow her to make her own decision in the matter.

“Professor, what’s in that jar?” asked Corinna curiously. She had been watching him for some time.

He looked over his shoulder and said, “A potion, my dear. I was never very good with potions and the like. I only know what Reynard has told me he puts into it. Truthfully, I just smile and nod when he tells me the contents of the draught. His predecessor explained it to me in more detail, but, alas, my memory isn’t what it once was.”

“What’s it do then?” she asked with a quizzical expression.

Mallaghan had the feeling that she already knew more than she was letting on. There was nothing wrong with that, of course.

“It supposed to induce visions in those with the talent, but it has never worked for me,” he told her.

She pondered this for a moment and glanced at the tray of tea and biscuits, the former of which was growing cold. Mallaghan took her meaning and levitated the tray over to where she was sitting, following slowly behind it.

“But ... it doesn’t work?” Corinna asked, looking toward the shelf as Mallaghan sat down.

“That isn’t what I said,” Mallaghan told her, taking a ginger newt to nibble with his tea. “I only said that it had never worked for me. I never had any visions using it, but other witches and wizards with the talent have had very interesting visions while taking the stuff,” he corrected in an off-hand tone.

He was expecting her to ask if she might try it, but she didn’t say anything more for a long while as she drank her tea and gazed out the window.

“Maybe she just isn’t ready to have another vision yet,” he mused.

“Do you think it might help me to ... to clear up what’s going to happen in the immediate future or just show me something from the past? I mean, if it worked at all, that is,” said Corinna hesitantly, though rather believing that it would have some effect.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

She frowned at her teacup and nodded that she understood.

“Even if I could only see the past ... I could possibly learn more about him, maybe I could somehow predict what he’s going to do next,” she said softly, “or I could tell Sissy and she’d figure it out. If we knew more ... we would be better prepared to face him when he comes for Martin again.”

“True, true,” conceded Mallaghan.

“Is it very ... dangerous?” she questioned.

“Not in my experience,” he replied with a smile. She had a greater portion of Ravenclaw caution than he might have otherwise thought. Joseph found more than a bit of relief in that.

“When... I mean, do you suppose I could I try then?” she asked with a slightly more hopeful expression.

“You could do so now, if you would like,” said the professor, setting his cup aside.

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