"First day, joint class," Ananke Cosmos said quickly and merrily, with an oddly striaght-face as she looked around the room, "My name is Professor Cosmos," she nodded to the one student she didn't recognize, and to the young werewolf who had returned to the school. Ananke had never met a werewolf, but as long as she didn't converse with the girl on the full moon she was quite all right with the young girl--there were other more hazardous Hufflepuffs in her midst.

The professor paced the floor in matte black jersey pants and a purple, ruched, and flowery blouse draped over her plump body, "I haven't been here very long and so this semester should prove interesting," the Divination Professor levitated a stack of parchment from her desk and each of the three syllabi floated to the student of the appropriate year.

"Fourth years will focus on honing their skills and finding what type of Divination they're comfortable with," she had finished directing the parchment onto each students' desk as she directed her wand tip at a batch of familiar sixth years,  "Sixth years will focus on creating personal Divination models, and 7th years are mundane divination models," her wand moved onto Miss Hawke and another older looking boy, who appeared to from a different school, "'Models' meaning techniques you each will develop on your own for a specific type of prediction."

"But lets see what we remember from past classes," she nodded tersely as she took her robust form to her own chair.

"Right now each of you have gathered around a possessed desk," Cosmos sat herself down in her own chair as she added, "technically."  She lifted up a forefinger on each hand as she waved them out in front of her, "You all are going to, technically, excorcise, or remove the supernatural entities from your desks."

She waved her hands, dismissing her explanation as she rocked back in her chair, "So you'll each be poking and prodding your desk with Divining spells, or you can scry, or try to communicate with the entity, and then proceed to remove it. Gently."

"And try not to destroy the desk," Her gaze focused on Oliver before she also raised an Eyebrow at the Slytherins, Foley and Ward, "Begin." .[1]

References

Seance & Exorcisms can be used as references, but you are also free to make up some other Divination technique too!

1.	I'll roleplay the reaction of the "supernatural entities." (:

Raven liked Divination. Honest-to-god, she actually like the class, even though sometimes got a little to... out there for her down-to-earth mind to handle without wanting to strangle someone. To be completely honest, she didn't see herself taking up any position that dealt with spirits or entities such as that. She was a little too... insensitive for that kind of role. And she wasn't a big of fan of "fate" either, as she liked to think she had a choice of what she's going to do in her life. But as a hobby and a way to fill up her schedule, Divination was loads of fun, even if she was petrified of the concept of running into her brother's ghost.

But not today. Today, or well, last night, she had gotten little-to-know hours of sleep, unable to get comfortable in her bed. In an attempt to make herself sleepy, she went into the common room and read book after book that her muggle friend had sent her. When that hadn't worked, she took to wandering the halls at an untimely hour, avoiding patrols of teachers who sought to catch any student out past curfew. By the time she got back into her dorm and got into bed, the sky was already beginning to get light and her body automatically commanded her to get up to begin morning training. She was almost through the day now, but it was getting near impossible to stay awake. 'Come on, Raven, you can get through this. This class and then you can sleep or something...'

Entering the Divination classroom and picking a seat in the back of the class, she gazed upon her new Professor with dead, tried eyes. She hadn't had Ananke Cosmos before, and she seemed like a rather amusing person. And her name perfectly fit her profession, Raven had to personally admit, to the point where it seemed like the woman had been destined for the role as Divination Professor. Taking the three scrolls absent-mindedly, she didn't even bother looking at them as she stuffed them into her bag, only half-heartedly listening to the Professor as she spoke as she desperately attempted to stay awake.

She was in the middle of face-planting into the desk, her head freefalling, when the Professor mentioned the fact that each of the desks were possessed. Stopping a mere inch or so away from the desk, she rose to sit straight, looking down at her desk with disgust and disappointment, as she knew that whatever spirit inside the wood would complain if she decided to take a nap. Well, this sucked.

Taking out her hand, Raven half-heartedly poked at the desk with its tip, not even muttering a spell. A part of her remembered vaguely that it was easier to communicate with ghosts/spirits in latin, so she spoke, her voice heavy with exhaustion. "Oi. Spiritus, ubi es? Exitus hic vas. Lassus sum.[1]" Elbow on the desk, she supported her head with her hand, trying to keep from nodding off.

1.	Translation: "Oi. Spirit, are you there. Please exit this vessel. I'm tired."

The whole way to the tower classroom Ayla had been wondering why she had decided to take Divination for another year. It wasn't so much that she didn't like the class, she simply didn't think she was any good at it. When it came to potions and charms she was a natural and those were subjects she could understand. Divination however was completely touch and go. The class had been rather amusing for the five months tiny Professor Cuthbert had been teaching it, he thought the whole class was just 'bollocks' - as he would say - but Professor Cosmos was hardcore. Ayla had to admit she had learned alot more from the woman than the pint sized Irish bloke but it only made her more worried that she wasn't going to do well under such a competent teacher.

She slipped the syllabus into her bag afraid of looking at what the year had in store for them. She then focused her attention on those around her as if she had just noticed that she was in a split class, in fact Winnie, Naomi and Veronica were the only other fourth years she could see. Thankfully none of the other older boys were all that distracting, she wouldn't admit it out loud but she was happy to see Xavier wasn't taking Divinations again and silently hoped they wouldn't end up in any classes together this year.

After the Professor gave her instructions Ayla glanced down at the desk in front of her then over at her best friend, "Psst Winnie, got any clue how to exorcise a desk?"

Veronica squinted back at Professor Cosmos. Even though their reputation was deserved, and often did precede them, it still always struck a chord of resentment in the blonde little Slytherin. If she were a badder kid, a kid that picked fights... Frankie, her little sister, in fact, she might have thrown her the fingers and said something to the effect of "Shut yer gob, ye great donnered old get, ye." But she wasn't Frankie, and in fairness Professor Cosmos had never directly implicated the girls in some "accidental" explosions of years past. Instead, she flipped a hand through her hair and leaned back in her seat, trying to look disaffected.

Would she continue this class after OWLs? Probably not. She wasn't terribly good at it.

After the formalities ceased and she was left to her own devices, she immediately knew she was going to try to yank that thing out of the desk as hard as she could. She took out her wand and tried to stare harder at the desk, as though something would appear if she tried hard enough.

Giving up on that thought, she traced lazy circles with the tip of her wand over the desk, looking over to her best friend languidly. "Maybe if we stir it like, we can drag it out like spaghetti, d'ye think?"

If only his Catechism teacher could see him now. 

Sasha's eyes widened as he looked from Professor Cosmos and down towards the desk in front of him.  Carefully, he inched his chair back a few inches from his desk, glancing at the person sitting next to him.  His exposure to the wizarding world outside of school - aside from what he'd seen through Kronos - was still pretty limited.  Possession just wasn't something he remembered coming across yet.  Admittedly, the word still had the tendency to bring to mind scenes of blood and uncontrolled chaos and terrifying teenaged girls. 

"We're exorcising a demonic desk?" Sasha muttered to his neighbor before glancing at the Professor, again.  "What does she mean by 'technically'?"  Divination class suddenly seemed a far cry from reading tarot cards. 

Somewhere off to the side, a fourth year was asking her neighbor if she had any clue how to exorcise a desk.  Sasha strained his ears, slightly, admittedly embarrassed that he was eavesdropping on a fourth year in class. 

Slowly, Sasha lifted his hand as he looked towards the front of the class.  Once he was certain he had the professor's attention, he asked tentatively, "what are they possessed by?" 

Ligeia very much liked Professor Cosmos and her opinions, given how during her career advisory meeting last year the professor had given her a reading of the future that suggested finding work related to potions or creatures and the threat of terror at any moment. From this Ligeia had volunteered at St. Mungo's and had overall enjoyed the experience, although several patients had hoped to never see her again like she was some harbinger of death.

Honestly, medicine was supposed to taste nasty. That's how you knew it worked.

Ligeia was so impressed with Professor Cosmos she had stayed on in divination although there wouldn't be much use for it in a future of healing, except increasing her accuracy of gauging the length of a recovery, perchance. The explanation of the exercise simply enthused her whereas to the desk next door Sasha had nervously backed away from his own.

"It could be anything, maybe Peeves has decided to play along with a professor for once," she told her fellow prefect. "The desk is not going to pry open its jaws and swallow you whole, though if it did a good reducto might get rid of it, just watch out for splinters."

Ligeia proceeded to pull every means of possible contact from her divination kit, as if she routinely went to haunted dwellings during the weekends to reach out to the mostly departed. She placed four black candles at the corners of her desk to serve as a conduit, which alighted with purple flames. She placed a crystal orb in the center of this square, for good measure scattered some fresh chicken bones she had been saving from dinners, and for extra fun placed her Terr-Oh! deck off to the side.

That should be enough for any spirit to play with. "Although if I can get the tea brewed and drunk in under a minute, that would also add tea leaves."

Naomi didn't think the eyebrow arch was totally deserved. It wasn't her or Ronni's fault they got dropped into some creepy Egyptian cave on the summer trip. Aileen should have taught more about hieroglyphs.

The dark-haired Slytherin kicked her boots together under the desk, still leaning on it despite the mention that it was possessed by something. For some reason, a piece of furniture becoming possessed sounded much more normal in comparison to her summer and any of the tournament jumble that came with it. Naomi wrapped her finger around her braid as Veronica began to comment on the desk like a pensieve.

Instead of replying to her desk-mate, Naomi sat up straight and her virid eyes regarded the desk with a critical stare. She pulled out her twisted wand and gave it a flick as a string of small shells jumped out of her bag. She put the string of shells in the middle of the desk and then put her palms down on the desk.

What the dark-skinned witch did next was about half a minute of the some purposeful and elaborate desk drumming. After she finished the desk just sat there, silently.

Looking to Veronica with a shrug Naomi lazily replied, "Eh, nobody's home. Do didyou want ta' stir wit' a spoon or a wand?"

Divination certainly was going to be different this year from any year prior. Of course that could be said for a lot of classes because, for whatever reason, Hogwarts had an insanely high turnover rate. Sometimes Sophie couldn't help but wonder if it did a great disservice to their education, not having a consistent way of being taught, but there was the argument that being exposed to so many different teaching styles would, in fact, prepare them better for the real world where they would inevitably work with people who had vastly different styles of working through problems. Whether either argument was valid didn't particularly matter at the moment because Sophie had to decide how, exactly, she would release the spirit from the desk it was supposedly trapped in.

Of course no one seemed to be having a lot of luck communing with the spirit world via spells so Sophie dug through her bag trying to find the appropriate tools. From it's depths came a Spirit Board, made of oak and worn smooth from years of use, she then slipped a small Sophie-finger-size iron ring (it was Tuesday after all) onto the chain that had formerly been around her neck (the Onyx locket having been removed). Dactylomancy was easier when one was working sigularly, the spirit board often needed partners and since everyone seemed to have either paired off (or were Sasha and looked terrified to even try) Sophie thought she might try to go it alone. She had a fair bit of practice and believed in it as wholeheartedly as any other form of Divination.

"Right then, are you a good possessed desk or a bad possessed desk," the question was a bit cheeky, she didn't actually think that Professor Cosmos would put any of them in danger of being possessed by evil. Really, how would one explain that to the Hogwart's Board of Governors? She watched as the ring spun lazily, twisting and untwisting itself without giving any indication of an answer. Clearing her throat she decided a more direct question was needed, as she leaned forward a little looking at the board and concentrating her energy, "are you a possessed desk at all," she waited aware of any movement from her own hand and tried to steady it as the ring swung back and forth between the Y/N on the board, giving a small sigh, "Maybe I need to find a glass and try and knocking method..." her expression twisted up in mild frustration. She was usually so good at these sorts of things. She'd gotten a bloody O on the exam at the end of last year after all. Sighing she threw a look to Sasha and cleared her throat, "you want to help me with the planchette"?

Cosmos sighed as Ligeia spoke of blowing up the desk, and she answered the witch casually and dully, "Miss Canterbury, if you fail to actually pay attention to my instructions and do use Reducto you will be excused from this classroom for today."

And then that's when the desks started to come to life.

Ligeia's desk gave a snobbish and dusty sounding sniff, before it toppled away from her and fell onto the ground. With all of the witch's things dumped onto the floor, the desk rolled back onto its base with a creaking groan--sounds one of Ananke's new desks didn't make.

"Try again Miss Canterbury," Ananke answered as her gaze surveyed the other desks, as began to make their show, "And this time try communicating with the desk, do not assume its Peeves." To a ghost, being mistaken to a poltergeist could easily be considered insulting.

Naomi & Veronica then became an audience to a spinning desk, making Naomi quickly retreat from its surface as her seashells were swirled around the desk's top. Once it stopped spinning it then answered her earlier drumming by eerily  drumming back, as the hollow sound of  beating drums rolled through the seashells before it ended with one last, long, and hollow beat of a jungle drum.

It could almost be awe-inspiring if the faint murmur of snorts and snickers weren't whispering from the shells a moment later.

Ayla & Winifred had a much more impatient desk; it suddenly floated off the ground and launched itself in the air, only stopping to spin in place and give out a ghostly laughter, before it thunked back down between the two girls.

Ananke assumed it was possibly some twisted sense of humor or rebuttal to the chant sung at the Opening Ceremony.

Raven's desk was much more jovial and dusty whisper, "Me too, but it doesn't make lazy," then it urged,"put some effortinto it child!"

Sasha's desk then took it upon itself to answer his question for Ananke. A quill rose from Sasha's things and in an old and calligraphic handwriting wrote, "I am a WHO, thank YOU very much."

"Oh don't write on my desks," Ananke chided the object, but she was quite sure her concerns would go unnoticed. The limited abilities of each of the possessed desks was showing through now, and the spirits in each were much too restlessness to behave.

Sophie's desk, as if responding to Ananke's comment, then began to frame Sophie's iron ring over a specific set of letters, moving them around until they repetitively spelled:

T E L L    P A T R I C K   H E    H A S    P U M P K I N    J U I C E    F O R   B R A I N S

"Try again Miss Canterbury. And this time try communicating with the desk, do not assume its Peeves."

"You're right, professor." That had been a spectacular response, nonetheless. With her wand Ligeia cleared the candles and broken pieces of crystal ball out of the way, gathering the scattered cards of her Terr-Oh! deck before placing them on the desk again, a legitimate reading this time.

"Pardon me," she patted the desk, "I knew it would be a day of frozen brimstone for a true poltergeist to work in tangent with a professor. But if we think of you like a person we can try a personalized card reading, since you've been kind enough to shuffle the deck already."

Ligeia laid the cards out in a spread, face down. She flipped over the first one. "Oooh, Pestilent Plague! I had thought you sounded sick with that snuffle. But we won't know for sure until all the cards are flipped over."

Sasha glanced anxiously at his fellow Ravenclaw prefect but quickly turned forward again, not too keen on leaving his desk unsupervised for very long.  He couldn't tell if her words were meant to be reassuring, comforting or a warning but, either way, he wasn't going to drop his guard.  The desk may not be planning on ingesting him but there were plenty of other things the desk might do that could be just as horrible. 

"If...when we remove the supernatural entity from our desks, what do we supposed to do with it?" Technically?  Or, in a few moments time, were they going to have fifteen stray poltergeists roaming aimlessly around the room? 

To his other side, Sasha heard Sophie clear her voice and glanced towards her.  He was surprised, and it showed, to find her talking to him, let alone offering to partner up.  Normally, Sasha might have refused - he tended to be particular about who he partnered with in Divination.  Having his tea leaves or palms read had always felt far too vulnerable to risk being partnered with just anyone.  But, then, Sasha had far too many secrets he preferred stayed concealed.   "I - sure...but, who's ... who's Patrick?" he asked, as he watched Sophie's desk spell out a message. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something white.  One of his quills was presently writing a message across his clean desk.  "I'm sorry," he apologized to Professor Cosmos even though the writing was far from his doing. 

Sasha glanced between the two desks, towards Sophie and then shrugged.  This was ... crazy.  But, worth a try.  "Are ... are you Patrick?" Sasha asked his desk, quickly retrieving a bit of parchment and setting it on his desk in hopes the quill would spare the wood. 

No sooner had she asked Sasha if he wanted to partner did the room go crazy. Ligeia had managed to insult her desk and in return it seemed Sophie's wanted her to insult someone else. She scribbled the letters down frantically before shaking her head, "Well obviously you are not a nice specter. Why do you want me to tell Patrick that? What's he done to you"? She watched the ring sort of spin in place for a moment, then gave a sigh. Her desk was obviously being peevish, even if it wasn't Peeves.

She glanced at Sasha, eyebrow arched as he wondered if his desk was Patrick, then she glanced back down to her spirit board, "If we can figure out what Patrick has done, I might be able to exercise you and send you on your marry way. Wouldn't that be nice"? Again she waited for some kind of answer, and found the ring plopped itself right over the word NO. Sighing she looked to Professor Cosmos, this was going to prove to be a rather difficult assignment. "Alright, well what else would you like me to tell Patrick then? You must have a better insult than that stored up".

Kirby Gracean was certainly nervous about divination this year. Sure she enjoyed the class but she panicked far too easily for her liking. Her hair was perfectly curled as she entered the classroom and moved towards the desk at the front of the classroom. She sat alone as always she was never a great speaker with other students. Sure she would speak when she was spoken to but that was the most.

She listened closely as professor cosmos began her introduction to the lesson as she began figiting. After recieving her instructions she drew out her wand nervously. "okay i can do this" she whispered to herself encouraging herself slightly.

When class began, Alvis had tried to gravitate towards sitting with Sasha - the older Ravenclaw was often on the same wavelength as Alvis and, despite a streak of bad luck, made him feel safe - but somewhere in the shuffle he'd wound up instead sharing a desk with a older Slytherin girl he didn't know. She was quite tall, even for a girl, and had different-colored eyes that gave her a slightly wild expression. Finding her even more intimidating than your average Slytherin girl, Alvis stayed as far on the opposite side of the desk as he could and tried to focus on it, rather than her.

Divintion was easily the most esoteric subject on his roster. It was the one class he couldn't approach scientifically. He'd taken it up for exactly that reason. There was something relaxing about turning his mind off for a while and going with his instincts, and last year he'd proven to have a talent for reading others. Communicating with spirits was a slightly different matter, but it promised to prove interesting nonetheless.

The scratching of Sasha's quill two seats away sparked a bit of inspiration in Alvis's mind. He lay a large square piece of parchment on his desk and used the compass he carried for his astronomy maps to draw a large circle in its center. "Please excuse the preparation," he said to the desk in a soft tone as he began measuring out 26 vaguely-even points along the circle's edge. "I'd like to try something a bit different."

When he was finally done, the letters of the alphabet surrounded the like numbers on a clock. After a bit of digging in his bag he unearthed a small crystal on a string - a supposedly protective amulet his Muggle gran had brought back for him from a holiday she'd taken last semester. It had no real magical properties, but it would work well enough as a focus. Looping it around his middle finger, Alvis dangled the string over the center of the circle, the crystal only centimeters from the parchment. He swung it a few times like a pendulum, glancing at his desk-partner uncertainly. After a moment he let the crystal settle and cleared his throat.

"There we are. Now then. Would you mind please telling me your name?"

Naomi had backed off from the desk as he drummed back to her, and then snickered. The shells seemed to be working like a telephone, amplifying whatever supernatural presence was in the desk.

The curly-haired witch pursed her thick lips together as she cast a critical glare at the surface of the desk, and the spiral of seashells strung together.  By gut feeling alone, Naomi could already tells she wasn't going to like whoever or whatever was possessing the desk. And there was only thing for two parties to do when there was a mutual dislike. Clash.

"Interesting personality, don't chu t'ink?" hazel green eyes focused on Veronica as a smile crawled across Naomi's lips, "An' since we can hear it, it must have a difficult problem..." a white smirk peered through the Slytherin's lips as she continued, "shutting up."