MAGIANIMA // Hermione Granger

Don't Lie

The sacking of Sybil Trelawney was, surprisingly, not a hot topic, instead, all anyone could talk about was Firenze and his arrival. It was breakfast time, two days after his new appointment as their Divination professor and Atlas walked the halls, heading for the Great Hall, she caught snippets of conversation about the Centaur and much to Atlas's delight, most were talking about Umbridge, the look on the woman's face when she had seen him. Not that she could blame them, she kept replaying the moment in her head —  had Umbridge's look of utter despair hung up in the back of her mind.

Honestly, her mood could only be improved further if Hermione stopped glaring at her nose at every interval she could. It had been healed, the very next day in fact but it seemed to look permanently broken to Hermione who looked as if she might be trying to scold the nose for even breaking in the first place. Atlas idly hoped Hermione never came across any of the other Centaurs, for she was sure a civil war would break out and they needed no more of that.

She turned into the Great Hall and ducked when Fred tried to place one of those hats that made a person's head disappear atop her head, turning briefly to shoot him a look before continuing forward. She slid beside Hermione, nudging her in greeting but the girl merely shot her nose a very pointed look and turned back to her newspaper. Atlas couldn't help how she reached up to stroke the previously broken bridge, just to check if it was truly healed. When she confirmed her face wasn't still ruined, she greeted Harry and Ron.

"So, Hermione, I'll bet you wish you hadn't given up Divination now, don't you?" Lavender asked, a few seats away from them and Atlas sent Parvati a small wave the girl sent one back in return but gestured to Lavender a moment later, with a sad shrug. Ah, so it seemed Lavender had developed a little crush on their new professor. Poor Parvati.

"Not really," Hermione said indifferently and Atlas let out an internal sigh of relief. "I've never really liked horses."

Atlas snorted into her apple juice, coughing very violently through her sudden burst of laughter. Hermione looked at the girl out of the corner of her eye, smiling slightly, satisfied in a way before going back to her neutral expression before Atlas could see.

"He's not a horse, he's a Centaur!" Lavender cried indignantly.

"Lav says he's a gorgeous Centaur," Parvati muttered.

"Either way, he's still got four legs," Hermione said coolly and Atlas coughed again, steadily going red-faced.

"So, having four legs is a deal-breaker then?" Harry asked, grinning as he shot Atlas a discrete look.

"Don't we all just have four legs? We just choose to identify two of them as arms," Ron said, pointing his fork between each of the group, Hermione actually put down her paper, looking over at Ron with her mouth agape while Atlas gave up on drinking, resolving to just choke.

"He has a point," Parvati muttered, "I really can't believe I said that but he does."

Ron nodded, pointing his fork solely at her, "we just call arms something different because they end in hands but if you look at a Hippogriff, their back legs end in hooves but their front ones end in talons, right? Ones they can grab stuff with? So Hippogriffs have hands too but nobody says they have arms."

"Ron, mate, go back to bed," Atlas said, still red in the face as she pointed to the door.

"Ron's delirium aside, I thought you were all upset that Trelawney had gone, Lavender?" Hermione asked after shaking her head and returning to her paper.

"We are! Parvati is too," Lavender rushed to say. "We went up to her office to see her; we took her some daffodils -- not the honking ones that Sprout's got, nice ones."