Obliviate My Rebellion {Book 3}

30. The Snitch (and not the quiddich one)

We ended up having the centaur (Firenzze I think he was called) to teach our divination lessons. Trelawney was kept on, much to Umbridge's disgust to teach the lower years.

It turned out that when Harry, Hermione and Gennie went on their first year trip to find dead unicorns (logic I still didn't get) they'd met him and saved Harry from Voldemort. While I was grateful and everything, I wasn't sure if he was the best teacher for us.

He was trapped here now, as his herd had thrown him out once he started to work for Dumbledore and made more propchesies than Trelawney and other seers combined. But he did teach us about astrology, and it always made me smile when he mentioned the Sirius or Draco constellations.

The nice lesson atmosphere was shattered when Firenze told us that the stars said that for the last ten years we'd been in a break between wars. He kept empahasising that war was going to break out again soon, making me feel sick.

The euphoric happiness I'd had over the quibbler article and Harry's acceptance of my depression had long gone. March blurred into April, and my life was once again full of stress and anxiety.

Hermione and the teachers loved to remind us about the exams coming closer. Everybody was stressed at some point, but Sam was the first one to suffer the worst. She had higher expectations placed on her (by herself) to be the best, and that she could still achieve after all she had done for Voldemort.

At one point she'd been revising in the common room with us, and suddenely started pulling her short hair out and having a total freak out about how she couldn't do anything right in her life.

Hermione had managed to calm her down that one time, but Sam had to take calming draughts from Madam Pomfrey every wednesday now to avoid anymore high levels of anxiety and stress over exams.

If it had not been for the D.A. lessons, I think I would have been on my medication a lot more. Sometimes, I thought my entire week was always building up to the hours in the room of requirement for when I'd see us all learning and enjoying ourselves.

The only possible downside to the DA meetings was that I couldn't tell Draco about them in case Umbridge found out about the group through him. It made me feel bad that I couldn't share this part of my life wit him, but as we were working on patronuses, it made me feel a lot better.

But the happiness of doing patronouses again was cut short when we were ten minutes into the session without beginning yet, as several people were missing.

"Where's Gennie? I swear I saw her when I was coming down." Alia complained to Harry, looking very put out about it. Alia liked doing the advanced spells, it made her feel much older than she actually was.

Harry just smiled mysteriously. "I know why she's late, and it's a valid reason."

"What about Marietta Edgecombe?" I asked, exasperated. "She's missing, any idea where she is?"

"No, sorry." Cho said apologetically, and before I could press the matter further, the door opened into the room of requirement.

It was Gennie, holding the hand of someone who I hadn't seen in what seemed like lifetimes.

Cole.

The reaction was amazing. People started cheering and Alia let out a girlish squeal and threw herself at her brother, who spun her around before Alia composed herself. Even Sam cracked a smile for the first time in DA, as Mira had kept staring at her.

I approached Cole and Gennie with a big grin. I tackled Cole into a hug, and he ruffled my hair in his chidish way. I looked him up and down. "Two things--one, how are you here. Two, since when did you get pierced up?"