That morning, it was the first day with Firenze as the new Divination professor. As he was now teaching, it had to be moved to the first floor, room 11.
She entered the classroom with Pansy and was shocked to see it, not as a classroom, but like a forest. The classroom floor had become springily mossy and trees were growing out of it; their leafy branches fanned across the ceiling and windows, so that the room was full of slanting shafts of soft, dappled, green light. The students who had already arrived were sitting on the earthy floor with their backs resting against tree trunks or boulders, arms wrapped around their knees or folded tightly across their chests, looking rather nervous. In the middle of the room, where there were no trees, stood Firenze.
She did the same as everyone and put her bag down. She turned around and the centar was staring right at her. "Natalia Di Angleo, the stars have talked about you."
Her eyes widened in panic, "They have, have they?"
"Yes, the girl, out of time, daughter of the underworld," he tells her just before he walks away. She stares after him, a little confused, before she shakes herself out of her thoughts and sits down next to Pansy.
"How did you mange to talk to him, isn't he a little frightening?" She whispered to her, afraid someone would hear. Natalia tried to hold in her giggle.
"I've seen things a little more scary."
When the door was closed and the last student had sat down upon a tree stump beside the wastepaper basket, Firenze gestured around the room.
"Professor Dumbledore has kindly arranged this classroom for us,"said Firenze, when everyone had settled down, "in imitation of my natural habitat. I would have preferred to teach you in the Forbidden Forest, which was — until Monday — my home . . . but this is not possible."
"Please — er — sir —" said Parvati breathlessly, raising her hand, "why not? We've been in there with Hagrid, we're not frightened!"
"It is not a question of your bravery," said Firenze, "but of my position. I can no longer return to the forest. My herd has banished me."
"Herd?" said Lavender in a confused voice, and Harry knew she was thinking of cows. "What — oh!" Comprehension dawned on her face. "There are more of you?" she said, stunned.
"Did Hagrid breed you, like the thestrals?" asked Dean eagerly.
Firenze turned his head very slowly to face Dean, who seemed to realize at once that he had said something very offensive. Natalia almost slapped her hand to her forehead in embarrassment for him.
"I didn't — I meant — sorry," he finished in a hushed voice.
"Centaurs are not the servants or playthings of humans," said Firenze quietly. There was a pause, then Parvati raised her hand again.
"Please, sir . . . why have the other centaurs banished you?"
"Because I have agreed to work for Professor Dumbledore," said Firenze. "They see this as a betrayal of our kind."
"Let us begin," said Firenze. He swished his long palomino tail, raised his hand toward the leafy canopy overhead then lowered it slowly, and as he did so, the light in the room dimmed, so that they now seemed to be sitting in a forest clearing by twilight, and stars emerged upon the ceiling. There were oohs and gasps, and Ron said audibly, "Blimey!"
"Lie back upon the floor," said Firenze in his calm voice, "and observe the heavens. Here is written, for those who can see, the fortune of our races." Natalia did as he said and laid on her back, looking at the stars.
She could remember doing this at night, with Nico or with Leo, or just by herself, gazing and recalling everyone she knew, including the huntress, one that wasn't in this sky yet.
"I know that you have learned the names of the planets and their moons in Astronomy," said Firenze's calm voice, "and that you have mapped the stars' progress through the heavens. Centaurs have unraveled the mysteries of these movements over centuries. Our findings teach us that the future may be glimpsed in the sky above us. . . ."
"Professor Trelawney did Astrology with us!" said Parvati excitedly, raising her hand in front of her so that it stuck up in the air as she lay on her back. "Mars causes accidents and burns and things like that, and when it makes an angle to Saturn, like now" — she drew a right angle in the air above her — "that means that people need to be extra careful when handling hot things —"
"That," said Firenze calmly, "is human nonsense."
Parvati's hand fell limply to her side.
"Trivial hurts, tiny human accidents," said Firenze, as his hooves thudded over the mossy floor. "These are of no more significance than the scurryings of ants to the wide universe, and are unaffected by planetary movements."
"Professor Trelawney —" began Parvati, in a hurt and indignant voice.
"— is a human," said Firenze simply. "And is therefore blinkered and fettered by the limitations of your kind."
Natalia glanced at Pavarti, she looked very offended, as did several of the people surrounding her.
"Sibyll Trelawney may have Seen, I do not know," continued Firenze, "but she wastes her time, in the main, on the self-flattering nonsense humans call fortune-telling. I, however, am here to explain the wisdom of centaurs, which is impersonal and impartial. We watch the skies for the great tides of evil or change that are sometimes marked there. It may take ten years to be sure of what we are seeing."
Firenze pointed to the red star that was directly above Harry. "In the past decade, the indications have been that Wizard-kind is living through nothing more than a brief calm between two wars. Mars, bringer of battle, shines brightly above us, suggesting that the fight must break out again soon. How soon, centaurs may attempt to divine by the burning of certain herbs and leaves, by the observation of fume and flame. . . ."
Mars– the Roman version of Ares– god of war, brutal and even when in his Roman form, Percy still had beef with. It was laughable, a 12 year old, beating up the god of war. It was something that made her smile thinking of, no matter what had happened, she loved Percy, he was hilarious.
When told to do so, they burned sage and mallowsweet there on the classroom floor, and Firenze told them to look for certain shapes and symbols in the pun- gent fumes, but he seemed perfectly unconcerned that not one of them could see any of the signs he described, telling them that humans were hardly ever good at this, that it took centaurs years and years to become competent, and finished by telling them that it was foolish to put too much faith in such things anyway, because even centaurs sometimes read them wrongly.
Almost everyone jumped as the bell rang signaling that the class had come to an end. Natalia grabbed her bag and headed to her next class.
Eventually, everything was dulling together, she was attending her occlumency and legilimency lessons alone and April was rapidly approaching. One day, after her lessons Snape led her to the headmaster's office.
"What's going on?" She asked him as he said the password and they started climbing the stairs.
"You will find out in a moment," he answered with no emotion as he opened the door.
"Ah, Severus, Ms. di Angleo, come in," he invited and they both walked in. Natalia walked in front of his desk as he stood up. "Now, I'm sure you're wondering why exactly you're here?"
She nodded, "Yes, professor, why am I here?"
"I need to ask you a few questions– it's about a boy from your memories–"
She looked at him with understanding, "Tom, Professor Snape was quite shocked to have seen him, what was the matter with him?"
Dumbledore gestured for her to sit down and she did and he sat next to her, "Tom, as you know him, was a boy named Tom Riddle, he was a wizard from an orphanage. I brought him to Hogwarts."
Natalia nodded, "okay, and?"
He glanced at Severus and continued, "he was exceptional in all of his school work, prefect, head boy, he even wanted to become a professor here. However, there was something different about him." Natalia leaned forward, interested. "He had a darkness in him, wanted to live for a thousand years, wanted power beyond anyone's capabilities. He had muggleborns and half-bloods because of his own muggle father–"
Natalia interrupted him, "are you saying what I think you're saying–"
Dumbledore nodded, "Tom riddle–"
"My sister's childhood friend– Tom Riddle– Is Voldemort?" She questioned him.
"Yes, and I believe that your memories can help us find how to defeat him," Dumbledore explained. She looked at him confused.
"How?"
He grabbed his hand and whisked over a book. It was a book of dark magic and opened to a page on immortality. "He wanted to create something to make him immortal so that he could live on forever. He succeeded on it, we just don't know what exactly the spell he used was. We can undo what he did until we know." Natalia looked over the page and then flipped to the next, then the next, then the next, each page filled with dozens of attempts and ways to trick death, each one more gruesome than the next. Each one more impossible and unlikely, each one with millions of failures.
"How will we know?" Natalia looked up, asking.
"We won't, not until we get someone that we need, but, almost all of them have something in common, tying your soul to something or someone in the living world," Dumbledore explained and Natalia had a stroke of realization.
"So we need to find something or someone he was so attached to he could have attached his soul to it?" She asked him and he looked impressed.
"Precisely."