Chapter 3
Decent voice beneath the obvious exaggerated performance to be a git. Looks the part. Would look beautiful singing Amor De Mi Alma. Has the reverent qualities needed to bewitch crowd
Aubrey’s quill stopped in its tracks and she cleared her throat delicately before speaking.
“Stop.”
The organ's tune paused and so did Stacie not a second after.
“Stop, thank you.”
Aubrey blinked, disoriented in the sudden silence.
"I wasn't done," Stacie deadpanned, glamour gone.
"Yes, I know, but that's all we need, thank you."
Aubrey kept her face down all while hearing fast footsteps approach their desk.
"What is your problem?" Stacie commanded, pissed now. Her voice was also quite close to Aubrey's face all the sudden, the thin desk being a measly barrier against Stacie's presence.
It all threw gasoline onto Aubrey's fire, unfortunately.
She slowly looked up with fake cheerful disposition into the beautiful fury of Stacie Conrad.
"I don't like your attitude," she said with her lofty, feminine cadence meant to set teeth on edge.
"Aubrey, don't," Chloe intoned.
"You've proven to be a grade A-pain in my ass lately, and I'd like you to leave my sight now, thank you."
With quick movements, Stacie snatched the notes right out from under Aubrey's fingers, green eyes flitting back and forth with a speed faster than Aubrey can seize them back. "You can't!" Leaning far enough away where Aubrey stays suspended pathetically above the oak desk, Stacie clearly finishes and her green eyes gaze above the book's pages curiously.
Their eyes stay locked for a heavy, stretched time before Stacie eases forward enough for Aubrey to rip the notes back.
In a curious blink, Stacie spun around on her heeled boots (also out of code) and stalked out of door.
(Chloe couldn't help but muse over how both girls moved about the world similarly sometimes. All tall legs and reeking of self reliance.)
"Wow," Chloe said in the silence.
Aubrey sighed, smacking her forehead into her hands. She felt drained and all mushed up in a bad way. Like Stacie had gotten her grubby hands all up in her insides and tried to bake a pastry in there.
"So-"
"Can we not? Can we please call in the next person, please, Chlo, please?" Aubrey's pleading eyes met hers and there wasn't much for her to do but give in.
"Alright, but only because you're using the magic word so much. I don't think you've said please to me that many times in our long long friendship."
"Okay.. thanks," Aubrey said quietly, delicately. Her fingers smoothed out the papers in front of her like it was a fragile thing and Chloe watched her worriedly.
They let the next person in, but not before Chloe let her friend eventually come back to herself.
"What about him?" Chloe encouraged further. Trying to pull information out of Aubrey was like coaxing an expressionless cat to let you pet them.
"Well did you look at my notes?"
"No! I wanted to hear it from your own mouth."
Deep sigh. "But why, you've got them right there!"
"Miss Posen. Miss Beale. Is there a reason foretold for this...ruckus?" Professor Trelawney's big eyes fluttered earnestly.
In the face of their silence Trelawney bobbed her head solemnly, "Do keep to your cards, ladies."
Aubrey peering down at their Divination textbook Unfogging the Future then looked to her tarot cards sitting cold on the desk.
"Yes, if I could focus in this incensed, stifling room," Aubrey grit at Professor Trelawney's retreating form. Off to go float over to another couple falling asleep surely.
"It's kind of interesting," Chloe shrugged looking at her Lovers card longingly.
Sighing again, Aubrey picked up her cards and began to read and shuffle, read and shuffle.
The clock ticked loudly in the colorful room and before the hour was up, Trelawney was back in front of Aubrey like magic.
"Gah!" Aubrey squeaked as she dropped her last tarot card into formation on her table.
"Hush child."
Gaping at her, she did hush.
The class was still and faces glanced over at her and Chloe with an interest. Perhaps Trelawney was about to tell her that Chloe's black cat Gob (short for Goblin) was going to die in the next few days or something equally ridiculous.
A hand touched the cards named The Tower and then The Hanged Man.
Lips pinched and eyes lidded with emotion, the professor slowly tilted her head up.
Aubrey nervously looked back as her professor's enlarged eyes flit between hers. Her thick rimmed black frames slipped down the bridge of her nose but Trelawney paid no mind.
"My child you must be careful."
Aubrey's heart stopped beating.
"My child," Trelawney emphasized, almost yelling this time unlike the chilling murmur before, "you must take caution."
"Wh-wh," Aubrey's desperate expression found Chloe who looked alarmed as well.
"You have been dreadfully shortsighted in your actions, young lady. Do you realize what you've catalyzed?" To Aubrey's horror, Trelawney's wiry hands gripped onto her shoulders and shook her a little.
Her heart jerked and she leapt back, stumbling away looking from her cards to her professor fearfully.
"You crazy witch, get away from me!"
Trelawney just looked disappointed in her response and shook her head to herself, nodding off to who knows where while her students gawked at her. As if Aubrey was no longer in front of her, still.
She took the seat Aubrey had just been and kept studying the spread, occasionally muttering and eventually picking up the spread and shuffling. She looked up again, cocked her head, and pierced her glazed eyes at Aubrey.
Shuffle.
Spread.
Aubrey's laborious breathe was not abated by this development and the only thing calming her down slightly was Chloe's presence at her side. She'd jumped up with her, always the loyal friend.
"I-I"
She didn't get to finish before every clock in the room started to chime so loudly the students all covered their ears.
"Let's get out of here!" One yelled and they all appeared to agree.
Students fled out the Divination classroom in a see of swooshing robes and disturbed faces.
Much later, when Aubrey had calmed down with her head laying in Chloe's lap and her body curled up against her as much as possible, Chloe would convince her that it was just an act.
"She's mental, we know this. Dumbledore keeps her around out of pity. Once in a blue moon she makes a small prediction, but she didn't even say what she was going on about! Her lack of specificity was a big sign that it's pure rubbish," Chloe explained in a more subdued version of her bubbly voice. She kept carding her fingers through Aubrey's blonde hair and squeezing her hand.
"Should I get one of your brothers?"
"No," Aubrey quickly interrupted her, fearing how awkward that'd shape up to be.
No one but Chloe would understand the magnitude in which Aubrey was affected by such a visceral foreboding experience. Especially one where she was apparently doing something wrong. Something shortsighted? Merlin help her.
She tried to melt into Chloe as they sat there with her parents' voices torturing her every thought. She tried to soak her up and become Chloe's warmth instead of a shaking blubbering carcass she felt like now.
Aubrey Louis Posen , you have disgusted me! Disgusting little brat, dirtying the very blood of this family with such foul behavior. When you open your mouth, so help me Merlin, you will regret it if it's not Yes, Sir No, Sir, do you compute, girl?
When you open your mouth if it is not the most beauiful ever-loving thing to grace my ears, keep it. Go apologize to the Fae family. Now. Get!
Yes, dadd- sir. Yes, sir.
They stood smart in their robes special for the choir, all dark with a muted floral pattern so subtle you'd have to be near to notice the beautiful design. Their ties were all black and the mens hair was slicked back while the women had theirs pulled in a half up half down style. Soft tendrils of hair escaped onto their faces, fluttering as sound escaped their open mouthes to sing the elegant lofting of Candidi facts sunt.
The clothing changes of the choir had been Aubrey and Chloe's collective efforts in order for students to take them seriously when they were advertising their club like they were now. They needed to not only look appealing but they needed to look a part of a collective. Everyone loved to feel a part of something.
Aubrey also refused to sing some of the most exquisite pieces of composed work while the whole choir was a mishmash of yellows, reds, greens, and blues.
Aubrey and Chloe were among them now, the group in one of the sizable corridors where majority of student traffic occurred regularly. A lot of students stopped to listen to the angelic resonance bounce off the walls of the castle.
Aubrey smirked to herself, singing her next note fluently as she basked in a job well done. Her heart felt like it soared up and down pleasingly with the high trill of the sopranos .
They'd just started Candidi facts sunt, the last song for the day before they'd have to disperse and go on with their classes as usual.
The small crowd that had formed around them showed curious faces and a variation of other emotions behind Flitwick's balding head. Many included the awed expression of the students they'd auditioned the other day. Some even had their eyes closed, taking in the music the correct way in Aubrey's opinion.
She watched them attentively, needing to take note of the public response to their club, silently hoping Chloe was doing the same from her spot in their rows.
A face swam into vision like a dream and the people around became fuzzy to Aubrey's eye. All but one. Stacie materialized from the crowd like a vision, capturing what little was left of Aubrey's attention while she sang from a special section in her heart that made the Frog Choir so important to her.
Stacie noticed the choir and had evidently chosen to walk over. She'd chosen to stop, Aubrey thought with exhilaration.
Aubrey watched as Stacie contemplated Flitwick then roamed her eyes upon the faces. Until she landed on Aubrey.
Their eyes connected, as was becoming habit with them, but this time was different from the rest. Stacie's eyes were so clear. They, amazingly, were so open and pure Aubrey's breathe hitched and stopped singing.
She stopped!
Aubrey could feel herself staring, but she couldn't control her facial expressions no matter how hard she tried.
What charm did this girl possess in her unguarded eyes?
Regretfully, Aubrey began to sing- sing as if she was singing to the Ravenclaw herself.
Singing a tune, spinning an otherworldly story for her. It glided atop rooftops and rushed through towns, dipped into the The Great Lake to skim its surface with the liberation of a hippogriff.
Aubrey sang to her and Stacie stared like she heard everything.
Haunting echos of Hogwarts' grand-again Frog Choir drifted far into the castle, even to the darkest of corners. It even lifted up to the Headmasters office where Dumbledore sat next to Fawkes, feet propped up onto the cluttered desk. Curled toed shoes bobbing back and forth as the Headmaster's eyes closed, small smile curled into his lips.
In the potions classroom, a disgruntled Snape had long ago stopped trying to plug his ears and sat at his own desk staring into nothingness with a devastating stillness.
Portraits stopped their puttering to listen.
Deep in the castle, next to the clanging of the kitchen, a boy with puffy brown hair slammed a dormitory door shut. His hands shook as he rifled through his possessions savagely. Every now and then, his hand would wave upward to crack against his own head in a self inflicting manner. If his roommates were to see him now, they'd surely send for Madam Pomphrey.
His frenzied search stopped as his hands landed on a white leather-bound book and a nondescript box of clinking material. Viles and other potion instruments and possessions of Madam Pomphrey. Ugly looking things that a boy like him ought not have under his bed. He held the items close to his chest. He kissed them, caressed them each.
He clenched a vile in each hand, white knuckled and rose the contents to the warm light of the Hufflepuff dorms. His ears rang with the sound of Spem in alium and nearly smashed the viles and their contents into his temple.
They mock him.
His forearms shook with effort and he dropped everything back into the ruddy box. Whipping the book open, he yelled a few words and with a loud crack, the dorm was empty.
The boy was gone.
The book's pages whirred back into place before the cover snapped shut.