𝒍𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒛𝒆 - pjo x hp [₂]

xii. foxes and eagles

𝐑𝐀𝐘𝐀 𝐒𝐍𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐎𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌.

For half a second, she thought she was imagining it, but Nathaniel looked up as well, furrowing his brows. A moment later, all of Raya's friends had craned their necks towards the sound, trying to hear what was  happening.

It was dinnertime, and they were all gathered in the hall to eat. Halfway through the conversation, a woman's screams began to sound, stopping all activity in the hall.

"What the hell is that?" Raya muttered, getting up and following the noise.

She reached the Entrance Hall, her friends right behind her, only to see a massive frizz of hair standing near the Castle doors.

The Entrance Hall immediately became packed with all the students who were eating dinner. Some had actually climbed the marble staircases because there was no space in the Hall.

Professor Trelawney — the Divination Teacher — was standing in the middle of the entrance hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her. 

Raya followed Professor Trelawney's gaze, clenching her jaw at the sight of Dolores Umbridge.

"She's kicking her out," Raya muttered.

Around her, her friends and all the other students looked terrified.

"No!" Professor Trelawney shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening... It cannot... I refuse to accept it!"

"You didn't realize this was coming?" said Dumbridge, sounding callously amused. "Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow's weather, you must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable you would be sacked?"

"You c-can't!" howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, "you c-can't sack me! I've b-been here sixteen years! H-Hogwarts is m-my h-home!"

"It was your home," said Professor Umbridge, and Raya was revolted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, onto one of her trunks, "until an hour ago, when the Minister of Magic counter signed the order for your dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this hall. You are embarrassing us."

But she stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backward and forward on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. 

A few of the students were actually crying as they watched the scene unfold.

Professor McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to Professor Trelawney and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes.

"There, there, Sibyll ... Calm down... Blow your nose on this... It's not as bad as you think, now...  You are not going to have to leave Hogwarts..."

"Oh really, Professor McGonagall?" said Dumbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward. "And your authority for that statement is...?"

"That would be mine," said a deep voice.

The oak front doors had swung open. Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared in the entrance. What he had been doing out in the grounds Raya could not imagine, but there was something eerie about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night. Leaving the doors wide behind him, he strode forward through the circle of onlookers toward the place where Professor Trelawney sat, tearstained and trembling, upon her trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.