Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 1048: Professor Trelawney Sacked

“Just that one?!” said Snape doubtfully, his dark, cold eyes narrowing slightly. “Perhaps you actually enjoy having these visions and dreams, Potter. Maybe they make you feel special, um, important?”

“No, they don’t,” said Harry, his jaw set and his fingers clenched tightly around the handle of his wand.

“That is just as well, Potter,” said Snape coldly, “because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is doing.”

“No — that’s your job, isn’t it?” Harry shot at him.

He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper. For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far.

But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered.

“Yes, Potter,” he said, his eyes glinting. “That is my job. Now, if you are ready, we will start again…”

He raised his wand, and a light flashed.

Harry turned into that terrifying statue of the evil god, surrounded by corpses and flesh, and his face was twisted with tension.

He saw Caresius being knocked away and he wanted to devour him, but at the same time he could also see Snape standing in front of him, his eyes fixed upon Harry’s face, muttering under his breath…

And somehow, Snape was growing clearer, and Dementors were growing fainter…

Harry raised his own wand.

“Protego!”

Snape staggered; his wand flew upward, away from Harry — and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his — a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner…

A greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies…

A scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broomstick, and a girl next to him was laughing at him. That girl…

“ENOUGH!”

Harry felt as though he had been pushed hard in the chest; he took several staggering steps backward, hit some of the shelves covering Snape’s walls and heard something crack.

Snape was shaking slightly, very white in the face.

The back of Harry’s robes was damp. One of the jars behind him had broken when he fell against it; the pickled slimy thing within was swirling in its draining potion.

“Reparo!” hissed Snape, and the jar sealed itself once more. “Well, Potter … that was certainly an improvement!”

Panting slightly, Snape straightened the Pensieve in which he had again stored some of his thoughts before starting the lesson, almost as though checking that they were still there.

“I don’t remember telling you to use a Shield Charm … but there is no doubt that it was effective!”

Harry did not speak; he felt that to say anything might be dangerous.

He was sure he had just broken into Snape’s memories, that he had just seen scenes from Snape’s childhood, and it was unnerving to think that the crying little boy who had watched his parents shouting was actually standing in front of him with such loathing in his eyes. Snape’s childhood didn’t seem pleasant, but the girl in the final memory…

“Let’s try again, shall we?” said Snape, with a very provocative tone. “You can continue to use the Shield Charm.”

Harry felt a thrill of dread: He was about to pay for what had just happened, he was sure of it.

They moved back into position with the desk between them, Harry feeling he was going to find it much harder to empty his mind this time. He simply couldn’t do it…

“On the count of three, then,” said Snape, raising his wand once more. “One — two —”

Harry did not have time to gather himself together and attempt to clear his mind, for Snape had already cried “Legilimens!”

He was hurtling along the corridor toward the Department of Mysteries, past the blank stone walls, past the torches on both sides.

The plain black door was growing ever larger; he was moving so fast he was going to collide with it, he was feet from it and he could see that chink of faint blue light again…

The door had flown open! He was through it at last, inside a black-walled, black-floored circular room lit with blue-flamed candles, and there were more doors all around him — he needed to go on — but which door ought he to take—?!

“POTTER!!!”

“I … dunno what happened,” said Harry truthfully, standing up. There was a lump on the back of his head from where he had hit the ground and he felt feverish. “I’ve never seen that before. I mean, I told you, I’ve dreamed about the door … but it’s never opened before!”

This was very important information. He had gone behind the door, which meant that Voldemort had been inside.

“You are not working hard enough!” For some reason, Snape seemed even angrier than he had done two minutes before, when Harry had seen into his own memories. “You are lazy and sloppy, Potter, it is small wonder that the Dark Lord —”

“Can you tell me something, Professor?” said Harry, firing up again. “Why do you call Voldemort the Dark Lord, I’ve only ever heard Death Eaters call him that!”

Snape opened his mouth in a snarl — and a woman screamed from somewhere outside the room, her voice much louder than his.

“What the —?” Snape looked up at the ceiling.

Harry could hear a muffled commotion coming from what he thought might be the entrance hall. Snape looked around at him, frowning.

“Did you see anything unusual on your way down here, Potter?”

Harry shook his head. Somewhere above them, the woman screamed again.

Snape strode to his office door, his wand still held at the ready, and swept out of sight. Harry hesitated for a moment, then followed.

The screams were indeed coming from the entrance hall; they grew louder as Harry ran toward the stone steps leading up from the dungeons.

When he reached the top, he found the entrance hall packed.

Students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on. Others had crammed themselves onto the marble staircase.

Harry pushed forward through a knot of tall Slytherins and saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened, and some kept wiping tears.

He also saw Professor McGonagall, who looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick.

Then, he saw Evan, Hermione, Ron, Elaine, Colin, and Ginny standing opposite, and he hurriedly squeezed through.

“What happened?” he asked quickly.

“It’s Professor Trelawney!” said Hermione, with unconcealable shock and sadness in her voice. “Just now, during dinner, that woman announced in front of the entire school that she’s been sacked!”

At this moment, Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the entrance hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad.

Her hair was sticking up on end; her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams.

Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her.

“No!” she shrieked. “NO! This cannot be happening… It cannot … I refuse to accept it!”

“You didn’t realize this was coming?” said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused. “Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow’s weather, you must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable you would be sacked?” “

“You c-can’t!” howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, “you c-can’t sack me! I’ve b-been here sixteen years! H-Hogwarts is m-my h-home!”

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