The next day, I left my friends outside at the end of our lunch break while I went to see Professor Beauchamp. I was ten minutes early for his lesson, and he looked rather surprised as I knocked on his door.
'Clariss! What are you doing here?' he said as he turned from his desk where he had been sorting parchments. 'The lesson doesn't start for another ten minutes.'
'I know sir, I'm sorry for interrupting,' I said as I entered the room and slung my bag on the table nearest the desk. 'I was wondering if you could look over something for me.'
I had decided last night that I didn't want to tell the exact truth to Professor Beauchamp. I was rather attached to the little trinket and didn't want to risk it getting confiscated if he thought that finding it in a wall outside the Charms classroom meant that it actually belonged to the school. I had lay in bed that morning and developed a little story.
'Look over something?' he repeated.
'Yes.' I drew the bracelet out of my pocket and held it up. 'It's this. My great-aunt sent it to me as a present this morning, and, well, she's known not to be all that careful in her purchases. It could have any mixture of strange jinxes on it.'
He held out his hand for it, and I gave it to him. He eyed the tarnished metal and bent wings sceptically.
'She's also rather blind,' I added hastily.
Professor Beauchamp peered at it intently for a while, and then turned and put it down on his desk.
'Very well. I'll have a look at it tonight and send it back to you when I'm done.'
He was as good as his word; two days later I was eating my breakfast when a second year Slytherin boy came up to me with a small packet and a note. The note said that the bracelet had passed all the tests he carried out on it, and that I should thank my aunt for sending me a nice, safe bracelet.
I felt myself relax slightly; it was only a bracelet, which meant that my dream was just a dream, nothing more. It was completely normal to have dreams about things that happened during the day, I told myself, feeling slightly silly for getting so carried away.
A week passed, and to my relief, I didn't have any other strange incidents happen to me. My sixth year was progressing smoothly, though it wasn't without its difficulties. As Ceres had warned, our free periods weren't turning out to be comfortable and relaxing, but were spent either in the library or the common room pouring over books and parchment as we struggled to cope with the huge amounts of work our professors were setting us. It was annoying that despite the fact I was doing half as many subjects as last year, I seemed to have double the workload. Among that was practicing the non-verbal spells that were being introduced into our lessons. I was finding these incredibly difficult and hadn't yet managed to pull off a single one. I had begun to try and practice at any available moment, which caused some of my friend's great amusement.
'Clariss, you look like you're trying to lay an egg,' Tristan said to me at breakfast on the second Tuesday of the term.
'Tristan!' I sighed in frustration, lowering my wand and turning away from the salt cellar I was trying to wordlessly levitate to glare at him. 'I swear I almost had it then.'
He and Murray snorted with laughter, and I felt my face redden. 'You can't talk, Murray. Have you pulled off a non-verbal yet?'
That silenced him. Murray was the only one out of our friends, beside me, who hadn't managed to perform a spell without words yet.
'Don't worry about it, Clariss,' Lily's voice soothed from my left. 'We're only a week into the term! It's gonna take time, remember what Will said? You're bound to struggle at first.'
'Yeah, but you can do them,' I replied darkly, stabbing at the remaining piece of sausage on my plate with rather more vigour than was necessary.
'Only one,' she reminded me. 'And I only managed that on Saturday. Don't worry about it, it'll come. At least you're trying.'
'I suppose so,' I said, my anger fizzling away. 'Thank goodness I've got Divination first to take my mind off those horrible spells. I'll see you later.'
Divination was turning out, once again, to be my favourite. It wasn't in any way taxing or trying like the other subjects, but the cynical half of my brain whispered that it might not be long. The new Professor was a gentle and ethereal woman, tall and willowy in stature with silvery grey hair and large blue eyes. The first time we met in class, I got the distinct impression that we had met before, but was not quite sure where. She was like someone encountered in early childhood that I only half remembered.
I arrived underneath the trapdoor in the North Tower with two minutes to spare before the bell rang, and saw that most of the class was already gathered there. Our class had reduced by about a third over the summer, but my Ravenclaw friends, Clarabelle and Regan, the same girls I had met on my first train journey to Hogwarts, still took the subject with me. I saw them standing with the rest of the class, and before I had the chance to hurry over and say hello, the silvery ladder descended from the trap door and the class began to climb up.
Throughout my six years at Hogwarts I had seen several teachers come and go, and it was always interesting to see how they decorated their classrooms and offices to their personal tastes. Professor Sye was no different to the others who had come. Gone were the spangled silks that Professor Patil had hung from every wall and draped over every surface, giving the place the feel of a gypsy's caravan. In their place were enchanting paintings of the sun, moon, stars, and ocean that Professor Sye had told them she painted herself. The room was lightly perfumed with the scent of sandalwood and the blue curtains over the windows cast a mystical half light over everything. It was a very calming room to be in.
'Good morning, class,' Professor Sye said in her ethereal voice as she stepped from the shadowy corner of the room. 'We're going to do something slightly different because today's lesson will be a practical.'
I exchanged looks with Clarabelle and Regan as we sat down at a small circular table. Our lessons so far had consisted mainly of note taking and question answering so far.
'We have spent the past week looking at spirits and beings in their different forms, not just the everyday ghost you can converse with at breakfast, but those who linger unseen and unheard,' she began. 'We can learn much from these beings about both past and future. To be able to contact these spirits, a certain frame of mind has to be used, and today I hope that some of you will be able to achieve it. We will be leaving the classroom and heading to a balcony in the Astronomy Tower.'
'The haunted one?' I blurted out. The entire class turned to look me, and I recoiled in horror. Where had that come from? It was haunted, there was no doubt that I knew that, but I had not known so until I said it. I looked back at Professor Sye, expecting her to be angry with my interruption, but instead she was smiling.
'Yes, it is haunted,' she said. 'Haunted by a spirit that you cannot see or hear with everyday senses. Hogwarts is privy to several of them, but this one I believe will be the easiest one for some of you to contact. Please open your books to chapter two and read the passages concerning frame of mind.'
I hurried to take my book out of my bag, aware that Professor Sye was still looking at me, a curious expression on her face. As I flipped through the pages, I wondered how I had known that the room was haunted. Nobody ever went onto that balcony, or into the room that lead to it, but I had never given it a second thought before, nor the fact that it might contain some sort of ghost. And why had I sounded so apprehensive, almost fearful about it?
I skimmed the paragraphs, not really taking them in and after ten minutes or so, Professor Sye told us to close our books and follow her, bringing only our wands. We followed her down the silvery ladder and along several corridors until we reached the Astronomy Tower. Practical Astronomy lessons were usually held on the roof of the tower, but there were several rooms on the way up that were used as classrooms to study theory, and it was to one of these that Professor Sye led us. As far back as I could remember, the room had never been used, but until this day I had not thought why. I, along with many other students, presumably, had just though it an old classroom. It was indeed old. The door had evidently not been opened in a long time, as it gave a terrible screeching noise as it was forced open. The room it concealed had been used as a sort of storage area come dumping ground. There were old, broken desks and chairs huddled together, along with an unused blackboard, old fashioned telescopes, piles of mouldering books and several rusty cauldrons. Everything was covered in a thick blanket of dust, including the floor, and our muffled footsteps sent great plumes of dust into the air.
The double door to the small, curved balcony was opposite the one we had just entered by. The view from it was beautiful; from it you looked over the smooth, sloping lawns and down to the sparkling lake. However, there was an unpleasant, musty smell about the place and the feel of the room was altogether strange; it felt as if we had just entered the home of a dying person. Our voices were hushed and our movements minimal.
'Here,' Professor Sye addressed the class in her usual hushed tones, 'if you can feel it, is a curious and powerful phenomenon. I want you to all close your eyes and concentrate on what you feel, like the book describes. Let your senses guide you to other emotions that may linger here. Seek them out, but do not try too hard; relaxation is essential. In a way, the emotions must come to you as well. Close your eyes and breathe deeply, sense the atmosphere.'
I glanced around at the class and then seeing that others had followed Professor Sye's instructions, I snapped my eyes quickly shut. Standing here like this made me feel very silly; this wasn't the type of Divination I was used to, or even sure I could master. I was used to dealing with interpretations from books, signs and sums; this was about as far away from that as you could get. Here, I had nothing to go on except a feeling that I had to look for, yet not look for, and that I might or might not actually experience. It all seemed a bit unlikely to me.
But then I remembered the strange vision I had experienced at the welcome feast. Was Professor Sye asking for something like that? But I had no idea where that had come from; I had merely stood up to find myself in that odd place. It may have just been a by-product of tiredness and over-excitement. I certainly hadn't used any level of concentration to make it appear.
As I stood there, trying to relax into the quiet mood of the room, I felt something begin to creep into my mind. A strange tingling feeling was running up and down my spine, and I felt myself being drawn towards the doors that opened onto the balcony. It was if some invisible force was pulling me closer, willing me nearer...
I took a step towards it, unable to stop myself. Dimly, I was aware of my classmates opening their eyes and turning to look at me, watching my progress across the room, but I didn't look at them. I kept moving towards the doors.
And then it hit me.
Shine a Light by Sapphire at Dawn
Chapter Notes: Thanks once again to Gina/Gene24 for being a wonderful beta.
Chapter Endnotes: I would love, love, love any opinions or thoughts on this! Reviews always welcome!