Burning Pumpkins

.:Burning Pumpkins:.

.:Prologue:.

One dark, rainy, September night, a woman, drenched and trembling, staggered into the Hog's Head pub. Her appearance was truly bizarre; she wore large, thick glasses and was draped with beads and shawls. At the time three people were in the pub; the bartender, and two middle-aged men who were sitting at a table drinking fire whisky. As she entered, or rather fell into, the pub, the men looked up and one of them narrowed his eyes at her. The woman, Sybill Trelawney sat herself down at a table, clutching her heart and staring into space. Her shoulders were trembling and her eyes, wide behind those huge glasses. For a few minutes she just sat there, breathing heavily, clearly not noticing the other people around her.

But then she spoke... her voice loud and hoarse.

"The night when the planets align,

The moon becomes full,

Starlight falls to the ground,

Pumpkins will burn,

And hate will turn to love."

Sybill finished what she had to say and fell to the ground in a dead faint. The bartender who had been polishing some glasses with a dirty rag in the back room had not heard all of this, but the two men had... They looked at Sybill, lying on the floor with apparent disgust, placed some coins on the table and left the pub their black robes billowing behind them...

"Hear that Lucius? An actual prophecy," one man said to the other.

"Oh shut up Avery! It's not like we're going to tell anyone! The ministry would make a big deal out of it! And that's exactly what we don't want" Lucius snapped back, he was in no mood that night. His wife was in labor and that was the reason he had been drinking tonight. He didn't really want to be a father... correction he didn't know how to be a father, so in his opinion, drinking was his only solution. He wasn't exactly an alcohol addict but he did drink in extreme cases though, and having a baby was definitely defined as an extreme case.

The other man, Avery, was just accompanying Lucius, since he was "a friend". But he didn't know that they would hear an actual prophecy. This, however, probably didn't matter since they were drunk, they heard it from a person who was most likely to be a fraud and they weren't going to report it to the ministry anyway. He'd probably wake up the next day with a huge hangover and no memory of the prophecy whatsoever, anyway.

"You'd think Narcissa would've done her business by now eh? Come on you can't tell me you're not the least bit excited about having a kid," said Avery.

Lucius shot him a death glare. "Avery if you really know what's good for you then you'd stop making comments like that about Cissa. And no I'm not the least bit excited about having a baby. Stinky, drooly little devils they are..."

"Aww you're worried about Cissa huh? What? Have you gone soft Malfoy?" Avery teased.

"Shut up!!" Lucius hissed. Avery heeded he knew from experience what angering Lucius meant, and he didn't like it much.

"Anyway what're you going to call the little rascal anyway?" Avery asked cautiously.

"We don' know yet. I would rather not have a baby at all but..." Lucius sighed and left the sentence hanging.

"Who knows he might end up a big supporter of the Dark Lord. Then you could be proud of him properly Malfoy," Avery said and grinned.

"I s'pose so... Let's get back to the hospital I'm sure it's over now..."