Class Roster
►Lua Taylor

►Duce  Alyx
►Winifred Leigh Oliver

►Sasha Schlagenweit
►Alvis Norling

►Sebastian Derosiers
►Esther Morell
►Debora Clarencieux
►Bran Blackwell
(D): detention; (Ř): zero mark; +/-: points; √: in attendance

Alana had the windows of the North Tower open, as it was a gorgeous April day, with just a light breeze. One wouldn't think that opening windows in a tower so high up would be wise, but Alana knew it got hot and stuffy inside her classroom, especially when they were working with tea and candles. Alana was dressed today in dark blue robes, which made the bright pink in her dark hair stand out all the more. The classroom was neatly organized and on the chalkboard was simply one word:

Cartomancy

Her students sat before her, murmuring to each other, playing with their wands, and there was at least one student whom Alana was fairly certain was sleeping. His loss then. She cleared her throat, tapping her wand on the chalkboard twice.

"Good afternoon class. Now, today we will be continuing our practice with Cartomancy, which as you'll recall, is often dubbed: tarot reading. There are 4 decks of cards to practice with, therefore I want each of you to pair off with another student. Do your best to find someone from a different house, we have no use for house grudges in this classroom." Alana gave these instructions smoothly, kindly but with no sense of hesitation. She knew how to handle a classroom.

---

* Assume your character is on time and present. If the character has reasons for being late, please notify me via PM.
* If you are a new student or if your character is not on the roster, please go ahead with posting and notify me via PM to modify the roster.

Winifred loved Divination. And there was a new professor who was a seer and a Hufflepuff. She was predisposed to like her because of that. She settled into her seat, excited for the class. Then Professor Wright said they would be practicing Cartomancy. Tarot cards! Winnie loved doing tarot readings.

Then shes aid a different house. Crap. That left Lua or Alvis- or a Slytherin. Winifred didn't like Slytherins. They were mean and nasty and gross and there was no way she was going to partner up with one of them if she didn't have to. So Winnie tried to catch the attention of someone from one of the other houses. Maybe she'd lucky and none of the Slytherins would want to work with her.

Unlike Winifred, Sasha didn't not love Divination.  Any class where logic and reason worked against someone was suspect in his book to begin with.  Add in the fact that Divination often involved delving into people's personal lives and it was an easy recipe for a not-so-fun class. 

It was also the one class that Sasha had yet to achieve an Outstanding in.  Which was one of two reasons he was still in it.  Dropping the class before achieving top marks was akin to giving up.  The other reason...well, it was admittedly more foolish than that reason and was best left in the recesses of one's mind. 

The Ravenclaw set his bags down and turned his attention to the assignment and then to the rest of the class.  Winifred was scanning the room for a partner - a less than wise choice if he could avoid it.  "Are you looking for a partner?" he asked, turning to the person closest to him.  "I warn you, I'm not really good at this."

While everyone else searched for partners, Alvis went ahead and claimed one of the small tables and the deck that went with it. He started shuffling in the simple hand-over-hand style they'd learned to 'clear' the deck of its previous influences. The presence of artifacts -- like cards -- always calmed him down, much more so than the amorphous "third eye meditation" of their previous instructor. They reminded him of home.

Alvis liked Divination, to a point. It was the closest thing Hogwarts had to an art class and he was, at heart, an artist, or at least a craftsman. Tarot in particular appealed to him, with its centuries of symbols worked into the cards and his memories of watching Grandma Niamh do simple readings at the dinner table. The history made it feel more permanent, in its own way.

He scanned the class shyly, trying not to close himself off to the possibility of partners. In these combined classes, he often liked to work with Sasha -- he knew Divination to be a weakness for the older Ravenclaw and tried to help when he could -- but Professor Wright had called for different houses this time around. Which, among the Fourth Years, meant Taylor, Alyx, Derosiers, or Oliver.

But, perhaps there was a work-around? He caught Oliver's eye first and shrugged, nodding towards the empty chair across from him as a silent offer and said, quietly, but loud enough to be heard, "There's an odd number of people. One group could do a three-person spread, if we needed to."

Winifred saw Alvis nodding at the empty chair, and she moved toward him. Ravenclaw. Good. Ravenclaws were so smart. And they weren't in her own house. She moved to the table and sat down, grinning. "Yeah, I think a three person spread would be okay," Winnie said. "So long as I don't have to work with the Slytherins." She cast a look at them like they were the plague of the earth.

She shuffled the deck and looked at Sasha and Alvis. "Who wants to go first?" she asked. "I haven't done a three person spread yet. Maybe you should do that first, Alvis? Or we could take turns doing single person spreads for each other, too. I'm okay with whatever. I dabble in the cards in my spare time. So maybe you two need more practice." She set the cards down and pushed them toward one of the Ravenclaws.

"Sorry for messing up the feel of the cards by shuffling them first. You have to put your own feel into them, you know." Winnie tucked her hair behind her ears, and looked at each of them expectantly.

She’s heard of particular people not being too fond of her house but never met one in person - it's either due to the fact that she’s been unnaturally kind as a snake or that she has been too occupied to pay heed. Stepping away from the fourth year but not really retreating, Flo stood next to Norling’s chair, intent on staying for the reading. She’s always had an O on this subject and the many others before, but didn’t really mingle with the others so as to focus on the main activity. Smiling, she tried to somehow dab away the feeling Oliver felt around a Slytherin by responding: “It’s a mirror. A slice of life’s journey, but not really the future itself. Just an intuitive compass.”

“Art.” she nodded to no one but herself, pointing at the deck Winifred held. She will never lash out at a student just because they looked at her house as if it were the plague. She was built of sturdier emotions. Holding up five fingers to the sky, she tilted her head to the side in a childlike manner. “I’ll watch - I’ve done it before, and I can help if any of you comes to need it.”

She doesn’t really know how to prove to others that not all snakes in the bunch were vicious ones.

Winifred looked up at the Slytherin, and frowned. "We don't need your help," she said. "I know how to do tarot readings. I do them all the time in my spare time for my friends and for my family. It's rude to just assume that people don't know what they're doing, you know. Sasha and Alvis are both quite brilliant Ravenclaws. Between the three of us and a text book, we can manage."

Winnie wasn't generally so rude or mean to people. But it always bothered when people just assumed she didn't know what she was doing just because she was young, or a Hufflepuff, or because she was bad at everything else. Divination was one of her great subjects, and she didn't like being treated like she was dumb in one of the few classes that she excelled at and actually knew what she was doing. Despite her predisposition to like Slytherins, Deborah's tone and know-it-all attitude would have made Winifred sour even if she had been a fellow Hufflepuff.

"And depending on the spread you do, it can give you an indication of what is in store for your future and what steps to take to get there. It might not be like telling someone that on a certain day they are going to fall down the stairs and break a leg- but it can foretell bad luck or ill health."

She looked at Alvis and Sasha. "I'm not doing a reading while she's watching. It clouds my inner eye when there are people looking on who think they are so high and mighty just because they are older and Prefects and stuff like that. So you two can go first until she finds a partner. Or one of you can partner up with her. Because I'm not."

The emotional side of her personality began to bridle but even if it did, she certainly didn’t let it show. She wasn’t going to allow someone to just trample down on her like that. All that she was doing was playing the part of a helpful classmate, and here they were trying to force her into the background. She’s had enough of people doing that, forgetting that she was Deborah Clarencieux - she was her own person. Not a stuck-up, righteous, insufferable child. “I wasn’t being rude, if you’d allow me to clarify Miss Oliver,” she began, leveling her voice, but not raising it in proper protocol. “And I wasn’t being high and mighty because I am a prefect.” In fact, if there was a Miss-Nice-Prefect-All-The-Way award, Flo was almost certain she'd be one of the main candidates. If not the main, then perhaps the secondary. She never viewed her status as a means of getting ahead of everyone. Surely this girl could've misunderstood?

Never had she been so insulted her whole life. She needed to calm herself down on the inside. It would do her no good to argue with a younger woman. She knew the consequences, but wanted to make them see reason. “Perhaps you can try not categorizing everyone firsthand,” she murmured, pride stabbed through enough it was beginning to die (since when did she have it?). Distancing herself safely away from the trio, she turned her head to look at the Hufflepuff. It was a dirty hit below the belt, she’d give the child that. Not something she'd expect from someone, really. “I never said they weren’t brilliant,” she sighed. “You’re not the only one who knows how to do them, Miss Oliver."

Since when did helping suddenly became sour? Sometimes, she truly wished she wasn’t an innocent seer. They often mistook her help for arrogance. Walking back to her own chair, Deborah laid her head on her desk and closed her eyes.

A single tear managed to escape her thick eyelashes, but even if they saw it, somehow, they wouldn't have noticed.

Bastian nodded along as he listened to the instructions, right up until that inter-house-unity balderdash. Ugh, teachers were sooooo horrible. And everyone knew that all the houses got on perfectly fine, except for ninnies like Winnie, but if she was going to be a nincompoop and say all Slytherins were evil (obviously not true, just most of them) then it was her loss, and Bastian would be able to enjoy not speaking to her.

But for all his insistence that inter-house divides were a thing of the past (and they were!), his best friend was from his own house. And since she was perfect, and everyone else was not, there was a problem with the teacher’s order.

Ugh, Hufflepuffs were always terrible at reading social situations.

Looking across the classroom, and at the inexplicable huddle around Winnie’s table, it was immediately apparent that there was nobody from another house without a partner. And if there was, they could stay without a partner, because he was going to be Esther’s partner. Unless she objected and betrayed him to be paired with Lua. But they could be a threesome, right? Bastian wouldn’t mind that in the least, and clearly the Winnie-centric gaggle was more than two. Even handed treatment! And that way they were all with someone from another house.

As Bastian watched, wary of potential interlopers, the Slytherin got up from Winnie’s table and sloped off. Well, they already had three people, and they were only supposed to be in pairs. No wonder Winnie had seen her off, like the malicious house-ist she was!

He beamed happily at Esther, conveniently seated beside him already, “want to be my partner? Nothing would make me happier than if you would graciously accept me.” Namby-pamby house intersectionality claptrap aside, tarot cards were boss and Bastian was really looking forward to this. His own set had been a present from his older sister (as was only right and proper, it was bad luck if you bought them yourself) and was be-a-yoo-ti-ful. He produced it, fanning the cards out and peering over the top of them as a regency lady might with a fan.

Alvis blanched, his hand closing around the deck and drawing it towards him defensively. "Oliver! There's no reason to be rude..." He cringed away from the understandable blow-back from Deborah Clarencieux, who stood close enough that her hurt and anger nearly blindsided him. Bloody hell. Hurt feelings already and they hadn't even done a spread.

He came out of the cringe as Deborah stormed away, stretching a somewhat pathetic hand after her. "Wait, Clarencieux, you don't have to..." But she was already on the other side of the room, head down and shoulder slumped.

Alvis groaned, closing his eyes and absently shuffling the deck. Was that the beginnings of a headache behind his eyes? Of all the times he wished he could 'turn off' his Legilimency, getting stuck in the middle of someone else's fight ranked high on the list.

"Winifred...that was cruel. She only wanted to watch." He cut the deck and slipped into a simple three-card spread, one of the earliest they'd learned and one that, supposedly, offered advice on conflict resolution. It came up Swords -- no surprise. First was the Five, then the Ace reversed, and finally the Queen of Cups.[1]

He pushed the Five to Oliver and placed the rest of the deck on the table with an apologetic shrug. "Sorry. I can't just leave her like that." He grabbed his bag, nodded to Winifred and Sasha, and crossed the room to join Deborah. He took the seat across the table and just sat there, waiting quietly for her to lift her head.

1.

Broadly speaking, because there are of course multiple interpretations: Five of Swords -- Conflict, tension, pyrrhic victory, the consequences of acting without consideration Ace of Swords Reversed -- Confusion, chaos, clouded judgement, a lack of clarity Queen of Cups -- Emotional security, intuition, compassion. Mind that Alvis hasn't focused properly for this spread, so it could mean anything or nothing or be talking about something completely unrelated to the current situation.

Bran had about two seconds t decide whether or not he would be attending this class. His overall mental well-being was screaming get away, pronto at hearing they'd be grouped with the fourths, but his carefully constructed persona of charming, diligent student was also rearing its ugly little head to encourage him to remain.

So he remained, eyes flitting about the classroom in hopes of identifying someone that wasn't a complete pleb. He cringed looking at Clarencieux, a complete body shudder in response to her absolutely pathetic display of... whatever that was. But his lips curled into a charming smile as he noticed Esther and he grinned brightly, waving one hand sweetly at her. He winked at  the little darling that was always around her and smiled even more sincerely at noticing what was probably the cutest  creature in all of Hogwarts, namely Lua. He sat next to her without waiting for an invitation and cooed at the lot of them.

"For a moment there I thought this was about to turn tragically droll and lethally obnoxious. But look at you..." he clasped his hands over his chest, sighing dreamily. "Esther, always a pleasure to see you darling" he offered, with a curt nod of his head and a small smile. "And Lua" before he could even stop to control his actions, he leaned over and gave her a short hug, patting her head. "Tell no one, but you're even cuter than my baby sisters and that demands a hug."

Divination wasn't his favourite subject by a long shot but like all of his classes he still did well in it and had even managed an O for his OWLs the previous year. He saw it more or less as a shrug off course, one that had no real application for him once he graduated but still another NEWT he could put under his belt. The up side was that Professor Wright was nicer to look upon than Professor Cosmo had been, well at least Wright was younger (and Xavier never really liked Red Heads) The downside was her propensity to mix the years in her classes. This put him in the same room as the one ex-girlfriend he usually did a very good job of avoiding. Thankfully Ayla was huddled in a far corner with Fourth year Ravenclaw, Brittany something or other. He tried to pay her no mind and made sure he positioned himself on the other side of the room from her. He had either driven all his exes mad or they had driven him mad and it was best to just distance himself. Besides, there was only a month away from his Seventeen birthday, then he would be a man in the eyes of the Wizarding Community and he was better off not thinking about shapely little fifteen year old Hufflepuffs.

Finding a partner from another house sometimes proved difficult when you were a Slytherin. As much as some of the younger years wanted to claim the old rivalries didn't hold true, they were still there, even if just under the surface. Oliver's glare in the general direction of the Slytherins proved as much. He twinkled his fingers and gave her a wink in response to her glare just to ruffle her feathers further.

It appeared that the boisterous Hufflepuff just as good at ruffling feathers as he was himself and sent the Slytherin Prefect off to sulk. Xavier drew a deep breath and rolled his eyes. Clarencieux may have been a the Slytherin's most recent Prefect but she was no Jordyn Dimbleby. Xavier rose from his table, having yet to be claimed as anyone's partner and crossed over to Deborah just as Norling took a silent seat. He gave Norling a nod in recognition. The kid had his respect for his skills out on the pitch.

Xavier placed a hand on Deborah's shoulder and leaned in to whisper so only she could hear, "Don' take it personally luv, no'ne truss a Snake." His thick Scottish Brogue was heavy in her ear.
 

Upon Bastian’s question, Esther tore her gaze away from the proceedings, which, while unexpectedly dramatic and absolutely riveting, weren’t actually anything worth the fuss. in her expert opinion And was Clarencieux crying? “It would be my pleasure,” she beamed, smile blinding and perfect, because it would be.

On its own, divination was a thrilling subject; an ancient and venerable practice, it was a means of gathering information, of a searching for answers through interpretation, from the most innocent of occurrences to the most ominous of portents. Esther– forever in the pursuit of knowledge, albeit of a very specific nature and frequently in a very specific way –could never say ‘no’ to another silver platter.

With friends? It was a game, a fabulous game of fate and fortunes. And Bastian– sweet, silly, potatohead Bastian –was always more fun than most. Esther giggled, now, at his fan of cards, and leaned in to better admire them. They were pretty, clearly quality; oh, the benefits of being rich…

Not that, of course, she ever had known what it was like being anything else.

Still, a thought occurred to her, and so she turned around in her seat again, scanning the sea of plebeians for that one, darling diamond in particular. (There was, of course, Bran Blackwell, who was obviously one of the more respected, if scandalous, Slytherins of his year, but he was also two years older, and, well—as lofty and ambitious were her goals, she was also quite aware of her own rank within their House, which was a bit different when one included upperclassmen in her calculations.) “Should we invite Lua?” she asked as she looked, fingertips feather-light against the bottom curve of her lip. “I think we should.” With Oliver and Schlagenweit pairing off, and Norling sloughing away to join Clarencieux, that left them and Lua. And while she and Bastian were clearly capable on their own, they were still Slytherins. Lua, on the other hand, was a Gryffindor. With her, no one could accuse them of house chauvinism, which was silly to begin with.

Anyway, there were more Slytherins than any of the houses. Someone was going to end up with an extra Slytherin.

“Lua? Lua!” Catching her friend’s eye,[1] Esther brightened even more, excitement and urgency moving her to wave her friend over. “Sit with us,” she commanded, patting the chair beside her, but it was softened by a pleased, girlish smile.

And then, just like that, it grew even brighter. As Bran claimed a seat, Esther let herself preen under the acknowledgment before composing herself; it wouldn’t do to let him– or anyone, really –think her twee, or worse: slavish. “Hello, Bran,” she simpered, lifting up her chin. “If that’s everyone?” Membership was now closed. “Bastian, will you start?”

1.	With Tor’s permission!

Sasha had just settled himself into a seat at the fourth year’s table when Clarencieux joined them.  He’d started to shift his chair back, making room for the Slytherin to join them and form two pairs when Winnie - wonderful Winnie - voiced her disapproval.  After spending several weeks with the fourth year, the outburst didn’t surprise Sasha but it did shock him.  In between apologetic grimaces cast towards the Clarencieux, Sasha tried to cut in to interrupt the Hufflepuff’s comments with no avail. 

“She wasn’t being rude,” Sasha offered, backing up Clarencieux’ insistence.  The Ravenclaw leaned against the table and hid his face in his hand, waiting for the minor cat fight to subside.  Reason number 14 why Divination was far from his favorite class: classes driven by 'emotional feel' were prone to ... well, emotions.  He was certain these quarrels weren't as common of an occurrence in Arithmancy.  People seemed less possessive over the number 5. 

He heard the quiet scrape of chair legs against the floor and looked up, watching Alvis follow Clarencieux to her table.  A single card was sitting on the table - the five of swords.  Something about conflict and, wasn't it about something annoying?  With a sigh, he turned back to Winnie. 

“What was that for?” he asked.  “All she did was talk about the class subject.”  Sasha gestured to the board where Cartomancy was clearly written.  “That’s what we do in class.  We discuss the topic as well as practice.  You might not have needed help but this doesn’t come easily to all of us.  She might have been able to help one of us.”  Or, more than likely, him. 

"Since when did you start not liking prefects?  I was one, once, you know."

Juni wasn’t even in divination. She was taking advantage of the fact that the professor was new in order to sit in and watch.

 She did not have the natural talent, and had stopped taking it in the middle of the year last year. Still, her friend Winnie was now a seer, and she wanted to see firsthand how good the Hufflepuff was at divining things. Plus, this was a combined lesson with the NEWT students and the fourth years! It was bound to be interesting. Or at least, more interesting than twiddling her thumbs bored because she was already all caught up with most of her homework (or at least, the homework she was interested in.)

She had scooted her chair behind Winnie, ready to see her put her seer powers to work. She waved rather enthusiastically to Bastian and Esther, absolutely beaming. That smile disappeared however, when Winifred insulted a prefect for no reason.

“Are you, are you serious right now, Winnie?” Juni raised her voice much more than she intended,  “Flo is perfectly nice. Stop being so rude. It’s ridiculous!” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “You don’t need to be so close-minded when it comes to Slyherins!” Said the person who was vehemently against werewolves. “You’re the one acting all high and mighty. I like you, but stop being such a blast-ended-skrewt’s blasted end and apologize.”

Juni didn't care that Sasha was also trying to be the voice of reason. He wasn't dropping the harsh truths enough.