Loyal | Tom Riddle

2: Divination and a Confrontation

The first breakfast of the year was an overwhelming affair, complete with owls delivering parcels of things forgotten at home and a swarm of first years pelting poor Arabella and John with question after question about Hogwarts.

"What's the password? I already forgot it," said Ethel Hatfield, a stout little Muggle-born girl with auburn pigtails.

"Mars bar," Arabella answered automatically, smiling a bit to herself. Gryffindor's Head of House, Transfiguration Professor Dumbledore, had a penchant for setting the password to names of different Muggle candies.

"When do we get our schedules?" cried out another first year.

John sighed. "We handed them out first thing -- come here and check the few unclaimed ones I have... now, what's your name again?"

"Why do we have to go to Potions with the Slytherins?" a lanky boy with a mop of red hair complained.

After answering all of the new students' questions as quickly as they could, Arabella and John set out for their first lesson of the term.

"Of course, Divination is all the way across the bloody castle," John muttered.

The pair were practically jogging to reach the North Tower in five minutes' time, their dark robes flying behind them, silver Prefect badges gleaming proudly on their chests.

"And Trevil still hasn't retired yet, the old bat," Arabella groaned, struggling to keep up with the large steps of her long-legged boyfriend. "I don't know how her Inner Eye can see things if she can't even tell me apart from Nikolai."

John snorted. "She called me 'Tom' last year. I nearly gagged."

Within a few minutes, they had somehow managed to reach the top of the rickety spiral staircase below the Divination Classroom just as the ladder swung down precariously, allowing students to finally clear the narrow landing.

It was a bright room, decorated with all sorts of odds and ends. Armchairs of every shape and size were scattered across the patterned carpet floor, along with tables of varying degrees of sturdiness and bookshelves that looked as if even a breath would send them careening earthwards. Dirty teacups were stacked into teetering towers on the windowsill, with their discarded leaves stuck in the pages of open textbooks and dreamcatchers that dangled from the ceiling.

Arabella took her usual seat in a stuffy wingback chair that was in a particularly horrible shade of snot green. The little table between John and herself had an old, dusty crystal ball perched upon it, along with an ancient guide to deciphering its secrets.

"Nice to see you all back," croaked old Professor Trevil from the front of her room. She was by far the oldest teacher at Hogwarts, with leathery skin and bone-white hair. Her eyes were milky, as if cataracts had already set in several years before.

"Just as I predicted last year," she continued on, "we are missing some familiar faces."

Everyone glanced quickly at the four empty seats that had belonged to Riddle, Nikolai, Ulysses Lestrange, and a boy called Tantum Yaxley. The only Slytherin that remained from that friend group was none other than Abraxas Malfoy, whose face seemed to be locked in a perpetual sneer.

"But we have some new faces, too, to replace the old ones," Trevil chirped. "Welcome, Hufflepuffs."

They all shifted uncomfortably in their overstuffed armchairs.

"Today, we will be reexamining the crystal ball. Oh, and Mr. Bones, dear, do be careful when you're leaving class today. The last rung is always a bit slippery, isn't it?" Trevil sighed, almost in disappointment. "Anyways, the future can be determined by . . ."