Forbidden Lore

Forbidden Lore

Chapter Two

Two weeks after my arrival at Hogwarts, I had managed to tell Draco Malfoy off twice, had a long, seemingly endless conversation with Professor McGonagall, confuse three quarters of the school, and make Professor Snape smile. Ron was impressed, but they hadn't seen anything yet; I had long since made it my job in my life to turn every school that I went to into utter chaos. I was just getting started at Hogwarts; I was planning on being remembered at Hogwarts for years to come.

My first divination lesson was enough to convince me that I should have taken something else. Professor Trelawney was so obviously making up most, if not all, of her predictions, and that was hilarious. Or, rather, it would have been hilarious had I not been faced with the prospect of her class for the rest of the year.

"Ah, yes, Raven, our newest student," Professor Trelawney said in a misty, foreboding voice, "I saw your arrival months ago, and was frightened to discover that you will not be with us very long."

"Really?" I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Oh, yes, you will suffer from a terrible misfortune and you will be forced to leave us. It will happen rather suddenly, just after the new year."

"I see... well, you'll forgive me if I appear skeptical. I'll believe that prediction when it comes true."

The girls, Lavender and Parvati, looked at me in shock, I smiled cheerfully back and sat down at the table that Ron and Harry were at.

"Wow," Ron said, "I've never seen anyone talk to her like that, the rest of us just go along with whatever she says and forget about her."

I shrugged, "I'm not like the rest of you, I don't like faulty predictions, especially ones that have to do with my injury or death."

Ron shook his head; "First, you make Snape smile, that's never happened before, he doesn't even smile at the Slytherins you see and now you tell off Trelawny. That is amazing, absolutely amazing. Did you do this at your last school?"

"Ron, you haven't seen anything yet, trust me, you'll see a lot more before this year's done." I smiled at him and looked back at Trelawney in a rather poor attempt at paying attention.

Within five minutes, I had abandoned all thoughts of paying attention and was staring fixedly at the stone wall to Trelawney's left, lost in thought. I allowed my eyes to slide out of focus and I tuned out Trelawney's misty voice completely.

"Here," a soft whispery voice said, "my prize is here, I've waited for so long."

I jerked out of my daze in surprise and the world flew back into sharp focus, sharper than usual, and the lack

"Are you all right, dear?" Professor Trelawney asked her misty voice coming back to me, "Is it a premonition? A warning of death?" She sounded more excited than worried.

"You didn't hear it, did you?" I asked my voice sounding like it was miles away.

"Hear what," Ron asked, looking over concerned at me, cute, I thought.

"Am I losing my mind?" I said, more to myself than to anyone else, "Hearing voices no one else hears? That's bad, no, wait, that's really bad."

"Voices? What kind of voice?" Harry asked, turning to look at me.

"A soft, whispery sort of voice. It said, 'Here, my prize is here, I've waited for so long.' No one else heard it?" I asked, looking wildly around the room.

Everyone either shook their heads or looked at me in confusion, which was answer enough. I was the only one who had heard it. It frightened me immensely, but I fought to keep my cool. Drawing in deep, calming breaths, I sat back and smiled slightly; everyone was worried for no reason, as it was my fault, I decided to feign calm to ease the tension.

The class relaxed at my smile, some even smiled back. I said in a would-be cheerful voice (they would have known it was fake had they known me better... I'm not sure if Ron caught my fakeness), "I'm sure that it was nothing, I was nearly dozing anyway, perhaps it was a dream."

The mood changed so drastically that I could practically feel it in my skin. The class relaxed the moment I said that.

They can go from panicked to eerily calm in less then sixty seconds. I thought with detached amusement.

The rest of divination went without any difficulties; I did try my hardest to focus on what Trelawney was saying. I thought that, if I paid close attention, I wouldn't hear any more voices. Since I didn't hear anything else, I assumed that it had been a figment of my overstressed imagination. Though, it was difficult to listen to what Trelawney had to say; she spent the remainder of the class hinting that I was mental.

"Raven, dear, given your rather closed-minded attitude towards the subject, and this voice you've heard, am I correct, in stating that you were born in late August or early September?"

"No," I said, shaking my head happily, "I was born in late March, the 21^st to be precise."

"Oooh," she said, "The day of your birth is the most powerful day of the year, the cusp between Pisces and Aries. Pisces, The House Of Death and Aries, The House Of Rebirth, that is very interesting, yes, very interesting indeed."

I smiled and nodded, privately thinking that she was a crazy old bat who deserved to be locked up in Saint Mungo's. She went back to the rest of the class and correctly guessed the month of Lavender's birth. Lavender and Parvati looked impressed, I had to bite my lip to hide the smile that twitched at the corner of my mouth.

Ron muttered something along the lines of, "Someone must have told the old bat. It doesn't mean anything." Luckily, for Ron, that is, no one but Harry and I heard that statement.

I thought that my school year at Hogwarts was going pretty well; I loved Potions, and Professor Snape, for all his unpleasantness, was an excellent instructor, and Professor McGonagall was also an exceptional teacher, it helped that I liked Transfiguration too. Divination was a joke, but that made it an easy class to get an A in, and Care of Magical Creatures was simple. Charms, on the other hand, was not so good, I wasn't good at charms. I was great at potion brewing, good at transfiguration, and pretty good at astronomy, but it was the charms that I had trouble with. In fact, the only class that I liked less then charms, was Herbology; I was dreadful with plants.

Sad as it sounds, I managed to screw up on my first charms assignment, and ended up begging Hermione for help. She did get me a good grade on it and then offered to tutor me once a week, an offer I snatched up in an instant.

"Wow," Harry said, "I'm surprised that you would want to be tutored. Don't you like charms?"

"I despise it, and would be better if I was any good at it, but I'm not, and Hermione is kind enough to help me out. I'll take all the help I can get. Oh, by the way, if any of you need potions help I'll tutor you if you need. Potions is my best class."

Hermione chuckled, "You need help in charms, but excel in potions. Are you sure that you're not a Slytherin in disguise?"

I smiled, "Oh, I'm quite sure, but you should be careful, I could be lying. It wouldn't be that hard, you know, were I a Slytherin."

Everyone laughed, everyone but me; my laughs were rare and far between, another mark left by years on my own. My life had been so lonely and sad, that I found laughter rather poignant, so I didn't laugh often. Hermione promptly noticed that I didn't laugh and looked concerned, but she didn't say anything, something for which, I was exceedingly grateful.

* * *

In Herbology, the next morning, I got, in one of my rare moments of pure luck, paired with Hermione as the class was split in half to work on the assignment that Professor Sprout has us doing.

"All right, I need you to pot these plants, nothing difficult, just make sure that there's three inches of soil on top of them and four inches below. Some warnings though: be very careful, wear your dragon hide gloves, and don't let the roots touch your flesh."

"Why?" Neville asked nervously, he loved herbology, but dangerous plants still made him panicky.

"The roots are highly corrosive. Ten seconds is enough time to give you second-degree burns."

I was eyeing the roots in front of Hermione and I in trepidation. I didn't understand why the idea of roots with corrosive properties bothered me so, I used acidic things all the time in potions and that never effected me at all. I supposed that it was just because we were in a green house. I abhorred gardening and being in a room that was full of plants and reeked of earth made me a bit edgy, I've never been able to explain my hatred of gardening, I've just always been that way.

"Shall we get started?" Hermione asked, apparently not bothered in the least by corrosive roots.

"Er, I suppose," I said, pulling on my gloves, "D'you know what you're doing? Because honestly, I don't, really, and I would hate to have one of us end up in the hospital wing because of my incompetence at the subject."

"Don't worry about it Raven, potting plants is incredibly easy compared to some of the things she's had us do. In fourth year, everyone had to squeeze bobotubers and collect the puss. Compared to that, sticking corrosive roots in pots is simple child's play."

"Hmm, I seem to remember enjoying child's play, I'm not enjoying this."

"You really hate Herbology, don't you? Even more then you hate Charms?"

"I'd take a whole day of Charms over a single period of Herbology. At least I can work with my wand, which is more then I can say for plants. Well, I can work with them when they're dead, you know, like in potions, but not when they're still among the living."

"You sound like you'd like to go on a rampage and murder every plant on the planet, wouldn't you?" Hermione laughed.

"Of course not!" I said, removing my left glove and flinging it at her playfully, "I'm not some psychopath who goes on murderous rampages. Besides, if I killed all the plants on the planet, there wouldn't be any more potions ingredients," I replied smartly.

She handed me back my glove, "So, that's why you won't kill all the plants, you need them for potions. You should wear those gloves, by the way, we wouldn't want you to burn your delicate hands."

I smirked, "Delicate? Moi? When you've basically taken care of yourself for as long as I have, you can't afford to be delicate."

"Have you really taken care of yourself for a long time?"

"All my life, Hermione, all my life."

"Girls! Start working, please!"

With that charming interruption, we began potting our corrosive roots. Hermione kept talking and I was able to avoid injury because of it. Thinking back, I realize that she had done that deliberately, by talking about completely unrelated subjects she successfully kept my mind off the plants, which kept us from getting burned.

Later that evening, Hermione was correcting my Charms homework and I was helping Ron with his Potions essay, when Harry came in slowly looking rather flushed.

"What happened?" I asked after a casual glance in his direction, I didn't stop writing out Potions notes for Ron.

"Malfoy, we had an, er, confrontation," Harry said slowly.

"Really? That's too bad," I said half-heartedly in the general direction that Harry was.

"'Too bad', Raven?" Ron said incredulously, "That's it? Harry gets in a fight with Malfoy, and all you have to say is 'too bad'?"

"Calm down, Ron, these things happen, there's no reason to flip out. Besides, he didn't say that it was a fight; he said that it was a confrontation. There is a difference, you know. Now, look at this, if you do the work this way it's much simpler," pointing to a place on Ron's paper.

He looked down at the parchment, "I suppose, but we were talking about Harry and Malfoy, you shouldn't just brush it off like this. And what's the difference between a fight and a confrontation, anyway?"

"A fight's a fight, a confrontation's a confrontation," I said, not really wanting to discuss this topic further.

"That doesn't answer my..."

I cut him off, "A fight is violent, a confrontation, on the other hand, can be peaceful or even beneficial. He didn't say that there was violence, only that he met Malfoy somewhere," my voice rising slightly.

"Yeah, but..."

Again, I cut him off, "Pay attention to your potions. If you desire my assistance, then you will work hard. If you are unable to do that, I will leave you to work by yourself. So, start writing and I will help you, or don't and I will leave, it is your decision," I said harshly at Ron, putting down my quill momentarily.

Ron looked at me with surprise, "My god, you're worse then Hermione, but I really need your help, so I'll work now. I just don't want Malfoy getting Harry hurt or in trouble, I'm not trying to overreact here."

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, "I know that, Ron, it's just that my definition of bad and your definition of bad are two completely different things. In my mind, just about everything short of murder is all right and not worth getting upset about," I said flatly, I could already hear the words from my next big speech forming in my mouth.

"Why?" Harry asked.

"Because I've seen how hard life can be when it wants to. Sometimes, it's like life, or God, or the universe, or whoever it is that decides these things just points at some unsuspecting person and says: 'Aha! An innocent, happy person, I've been looking for you!' And then, bam, your life's been destroyed for no reason at all." I'd begun to cry, tears were streaming down my cheeks, but I didn't care, I just kept going. Almost in a rant, "People get killed before their time, people get horrible, wasting diseases, and the loved ones they leave behind are the ones who suffer most. Life is cruel, you need to understand that, life is cruel and life is hard, and, sometimes, life takes the things that mean the most to you away and leave you with nothing!

"And," a sob escaped, as I struggled painfully and fought to keep down a second, "and, people kill other people, hurting more people in the process, and it's horrible and painful, but that's the way it is. If you think that a little schoolboy fight is bad, just wait until you get out into the real world, then you'll see the things I'm talking about and you'll understand."

Another sob shook me then, and it was then I got up and fled the room, out into the halls.

I ran blindly, not caring if I was caught without an excuse. After perhaps three minutes of sprinting through empty hallways, I stopped and leaned against a wall, gasping between sobs. I covered my face with my hands and, slowly, my tears subsided, though dry sobs continued to shake my wiry frame. Then, I heard the voice again.

"My prize, my beautiful prize, I must claim what is mine, what has always been mine. Soon, soon, everyone will see my prize and know the truth."

I jumped at the sound of the breathy voice, jumped then promptly hurried in the direction of the Gryffindor Tower. Halfway there, I realized that I'd cried in front of people and stopped dead. It was a big deal to me; I'd promised myself that I'd never let anyone see me cry. Up until that night, I'd kept that promise, never letting so much as one tear escape.

"I told them too much," I whispered to myself, "I lost control and told them way more then they ever needed to know. I should have kept my mouth shut and let Ron treat some argument like the end of the world, I should have held my tongue. Now they've gotten a look at the real Raven, they've seen that I'm bitter and angry at the universe for something that I can't even remember. It's time to salvage what I can, it's time for some major damage control.

"Great, now I'm talking to myself, and, to top it all off, I think I've lost my mind. Hearing voices is not an indication of a sound mind. This is going so well, I've let them see me cry and I'm becoming a schizophrenic, things can't get much worse."

It was then that I noticed that no one had followed me out of the common room; somehow, I knew that I had Hermione to thank for that. Even though I was afraid to say it or even think it, Hermione and I were becoming good friends. She was a smart girl and seemed to know that what I needed most was not the closeness that the other Gryffindors did, but instead a warm distance. She knew it and made sure that I got that from the others who didn't understand that need.

Drawing in a deep breath, I walked up to the portrait and murmured the password. I got a concerned smile from the Fat Lady, but she didn't ask. Carefully, I forced myself to relax, it took a lot of effort, but the tension in my shoulders eased a bit. I then climbed through the hole and into the tower, prepared for any sort of questions my classmates might have had for me.

"Are you ok, Raven?" Seamus asked cautiously.

"I'm all right," I said firmly, leaving no room for argument.

They looked unconvinced; I forced myself to smile slightly, then walked towards the stairs to the girl's dormitories.

"Everything's all right," I whispered as I moved away, but I wasn't sure, I wasn't sure of anything anymore.

I didn't think that anyone heard my whisper, but Hermione did, and she told Ron and Harry in low tones once I was out of earshot. Of course, I knew nothing of this; I went to bed that night thinking that no one had heard my whisper at the foot of the stairs.

I went to bed that night thinking many things that were not true, things about the voice I was hearing, things about my life, things about the family that had never existed except in my imagination. I believed a good many lies when I was sixteen-years-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that I could still believe them, that I had never learned the things I did that year. But, most of the time, I'm glad, because the night that I cried in front of people for the first time since I was five-years-old, that night that I thought was the end, was really just the beginning.