jemina // sirius black

six

chapter six - savior

My third lesson with the fifth-year class was... to put it kindly, amusing. 

Some of them, specifically my eldest daughter, had found it a good idea to brag about the fact that I had a heavy hand in the war. I had left out the fact that I had a rather important role in the Order of the Phoenix, earning me an Order of Merlin, First Class. 

Esme told her classmates about the Order of Merlin, and from the moment that I entered the class that morning, I was bombarded with a hundred questions as to why. 

Giving a stern look to my daughter, I decided that it couldn't hurt to tell them. I had planned to talk about the war, and answer questions, in the first lesson, but I hadn't been up to the questions part. I kind of just introduced myself, briefly talked about the year-long goal, and then allowed them to quietly converse. 

I think that Esme had noticed the weirdness, and had taken it upon herself to try to motivate me. 

Or she was just proud of me? 

"Why did you get an Order of Merlin and not your brother?"

"Woah, starting with a hardball, huh?"

"Sorry Professor."

"You're fine, Mr. Jordan," I smiled weakly as one of Esme's friends. Neither of the Weasley twins was in my class as they had both dropped Divinations at the first possible chance, but Esme had managed to talk Lee Jordan into sticking it out just to help keep the class size a bit larger. I was grateful to her since a majority of my students in that class were only there because Esme had persuaded them to try to do it. I leaned against my desk and looked at them, "I was awarded the Order of Merlin because I saved countless lives. Part of the reason Professor Dumbledore asked me to be a Divinations professor is that I used to have visions, during the war, of people's deaths, before they happened. I saved an entire village of people from being pillaged by Death Eaters when I was 17. Have any of you heard of the Orphanage Fires of 1977?"

A few students nodded, their faces scrunched in confusion.

"My Mum was raised in the Sudbury orphanage. She was 15 when the Death Eaters attacked," A Hufflepuff girl said, her hands clasped in front of her tightly. I stared at her for a long moment, the weight of the situation at hand felt like a mountain on my chest. She wouldn't be alive, wouldn't have been born without my visions. I never thought about that. I wondered how many of my students, or future students, were the children of people that I had saved, "They had to transfer the children to different nearby orphanages until it was rebuilt. She got unlucky and ended up in Denston. After that, they sent her to Somersham, and she left there when she was 17. She met my father when she reached out to other orphans a part of the fires, he was from the first one, the Colchester orphanage. Had been 16."

"She would have died in that fire in Denston. I doubt anyone ever told her the truth, she was probably told what all of them were, what my dad told the caretakers to say," The Hufflepuff, her name was Destiny Fetcher, furrowed her eyebrows and cocked her head. I smiled weakly, "The Colchester fire was the first vision I had. I thought it was a nightmare when it came, as I was asleep. It was, by all means, the worst nightmare I'd ever had. I didn't know it was real until my father brought home the girl that used babysit my brother and me when we were children, she'd been volunteering, and he dragged her from the fire. 

"I went back with him because we had a better chance of finding any survivors than Muggle authorities did. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I had seen wasn't just a nightmare. The survivors of that fire had mostly been magical, there were two Muggle children who the caretaker had grabbed as she ran into the basement. It was hidden behind a false panel in the kitchen, only accessible with magic. When I made it down there, two wands were pointed in my face. I can probably assume that your father was an older boy. Does he have a scar on his face? Left jawline, near his ear?" She nodded, a look of amazed horror on her face, "I had seen them go into it in my vision, and when I found them, it changed my life forever. From that moment on, I knew that I would have to do whatever I could to save whoever I could. The attack on Sudbury was one of the first, my entire family, and a friend of my brother and I, went to Sudbury, we apparated as my father knew the place. We got all of the children out of the orphanage, and they were on their way to safety when two Death Eaters attacked us. It was five against two, they didn't stand a chance. The next one that I had, I hadn't gotten there in time. Twelve children, two workers, and two volunteers died. Six orphanage fires in total, the Death Eaters gave up when they realized that they were being thwarted by a Seer."