Chapter 12: Foolishness 

Lucy woke up the next morning to find that her face was stained with tears, she couldn't figure out why because she couldn't recall any dreams that she had had were bad, if she had dreams at all. She wiped away a fresh tear and got out of bed to approach the mirror in her room. 

The girl staring back at her had messy long brown hair that had been simply tied into a plait for the night, her green eyes were outlined with tears and her face was a little pale. She sniffed and turned away, she didn't like what she saw. The girl in her mirror wasn't the most satisfactory thing to look at. 

"Lucy?" Snape called from outside of her bedroom door and Lucy froze as the door opened, Snape walked in and closed the door behind him. 

"Yeah?" She asked then pulled her book off of her bedside cabinet and turned around with the book covering her face, she didn't need Snape to see this. 

"Are you alright?" He placed a hand on her arm but she jerked away instantly. 

"I'm perfectly fine." 

"Did you sleep well?" 

"I slept well." 

"Why won't you show me your face?" 

Lucy lowered the book slightly so Snape could only see her glassy eyes and she sniffed again. Snape suddenly snatched the book away and looked at her with concerned eyes, she slashed away another tear before it had choice to run down her face. 

"Morning," Lucy smiled nervously. 

"Why are you crying?" Snape asked and he stepped closer but Lucy took a step back. He gave her  a look, he hated it when she was being suspicious. 

"I actually don't know..." she turned away awkwardly and this time Snape gave her an even worse look, he really didn't understand teenagers. "I woke up like it." 

"Then why are you still crying?" 

"I-I-I don't know," her voice cracked and she sat down on her un-made bed, Snape took a place beside her. "What the hell is wrong with me?" 

"I often ask the same question about you sometimes." 

But then Lucy's head snapped up and Snape prepared for a long sympathetic lecture about how sorry he was and how he would take her down to Hogsmeade this weekend so he could buy her something nice but she didn't seem to be interested in what he had said. She stood up and walked over to her window and gingerly pulled back the curtain. 

"I can't quite remember what I dreamed last night, but the more I think about it, the more clearer it becomes..." Lucy whispered. "Of course..." 

"You're not making any sense, Lucy," Snape said as he got up and approached her. "You haven't made sense since I walked in here." 

"Zuc, he's playing with my mind again. I know he is, I just know it." 

"Well, until you can remember what's wrong you better head off to lessons. You've got Ancient Runes first." 

"I have?" Lucy whispered and Snape held up a piece of paper with her timetable written on, she skimmed it quickly just as Snape reached out and touched her face although she ignored him and tried not to think about how many defense against the dark arts lessons she had. "Well, that's good." 

"What have you done to your face?" Snape asked. "Have you scratched yourself?" 

Lucy frowned at him but Snape opened her draw and pulled out a hand held mirror, he held it up for her and she brushed the lose strands of hair out of her face. 

There she was again, the girl with the green eyes and messy plait but this time there appeared to be claw marks on her face. Not Kingston claw marks, they were too small for Kingston claw marks. Lucy gasped and looked at Snape. 

"I'm going mad, aren't I?" Lucy whispered. 

"Not at all, you probably did it accidentally in the night. Now get your things ready for today. I refuse to let you miss Ancient Runes, the subject you have been desperate to take." 

Snape left the room suddenly and Lucy looked back in the mirror again. The girl staring back at her winked as if to say 'you are going mad, I'm making you look like a fool.' 

"Go away," Lucy snapped at her reflection and began getting ready for the day. 

*        *        * 

After breakfast in the great hall, Lucy headed down to classroom 6A and joined the forming line of fifth year students, they all talked amongst themselves while Lucy just stood there awkwardly and wished the floor would swallow them up and the door swung open. 

The students piled into the classroom and Lucy waited patiently as they all filed into their seats so she could find a spare one, she saw Hermione sitting near the front and she waved eagerly for her to join her at the empty place next to her. Lucy smiled gladly and took a seat next to her. 

"Hello, Lucy, how are — what happened to your face?" Hermione began, she stared at Lucy's cheek horrifed as Lucy herself gave a nervous laugh. 

"Woke up and found it this morning, no comment really." She shrugged and pulled out her textbook just as Professor Babbling stepped into the classroom. 

"Good morning, students. I hope you are all well after a relaxing summer break away from school," the Professor beamed at the class as she sat herself down on the edge of her desk and then she looked up to see Lucy, her features seemed to soften even more at the sight of the girl. "Ah, Miss Snape, I hoped you would of joined this subject in your third year but it seems you have finally chosen the right decision to join now, I hope to get you a good O.W.L in your first year of learning.But first of all, do you have any questions regarding this subject?" 

"Not really, just thought it would be nice to learn a bit of code cracking," Lucy admitted, she reached down to her bag and felt the handle of the knife inside, she'd soon learn the strange language that was written on it. She was determined to. 

"It is more than code cracking, my dear, it takes a lot of dedication and hard work in this subject to discover the true meaning of different words and symbols." She turned towards the board this time and picked up a piece of chalk. "But before we move on to something different I think it would be better to endure a little revision to jog your memories after the summer break, I will draw ten symbols on the board, each representing a number but they will not be in order and you must decode them for me. No books allowed — apart from Miss Snape, she has a lot to learn." 

Professor Babbling drew the ten symbols on the board then sat at her desk and watched her students eagerly as they frowned at the symbols, trying desperately to remember what they meant — well that was every student apart from Lucy. 

Lucy opened up her text book and found the right page for numbers and then began comparing them to the one's on the board; the first one that Professor Babbling had drawn was a Unicorn, Lucy looked at her list and found that the Unicorn symbolised the number one. 

'The Unicorns single straight horn is used to symbolise the number one,' the book told her and so she wrote this on her parchment carefully. 

The next symbol was an Acromantula which symbolised the number eight: 'the eight eyes of the Acromantula are used to symbolise the number eight.' 

And so Lucy continued until she had completed every symbol, ending with 'Fwooper' used to symbolise number four ('the different colour varieties of the Fwooper are used to symbolise the number four.') But even so, Lucy finished at the same time as the rest of the class. 

"Excellent! I see you've all managed to finish!" Professor Babbling sighed. "I guess that you're all up to scratch on your work so we can move onto translating words now." 

Lucy sat on the edge of her seat, prepared to finally know what was written on that knife until Professor Babbling gave them all a seat, Lucy's jaw dropped to the ground. There was no way she was ever going to be able to translate this, for all she knew it could of been Chinese. 

"You have all lesson to complete this and if it is uncomplete you will have to finish it as homework," and with those final words from the teacher; they all got on. 

Lucy gingerly opened her textbook, as everyone else completed their work without even having to glance at the cover of their textbook, and turned to the pages about translating words and letters. She began her work OK at first but it became harder and for the rest of the lesson, Lucy found herself peering over Hermione's shoulder. 

"Class dismissed!" Professor Babbling announced as Lucy stood up. 

"DONE!" She yelled, everyone stared at her and shook their heads. They had been finished for a long time. Lucy's shoulders slumped. "Hey! I'd like to see you do this without any knowledge whatsoever!" 

Hermione giggled as Professor Babbling approached Lucy. "Is it alright if I have a word before you leave, Miss Snape, it's quite important." 

"Uh, of course," Lucy nodded as she shoved everything in her bag. 

"I'll meet you outside, Lucy," Hermione smiled and stepped outside the classroom, she closed the door behind her and the buzz of the children transferring to their next class ceased and it was just silence. Lucy stared at Professor Babbling who wore a concerned look on her face. 

"There surely must have been a reason why you chose Ancient Runes so close to your O.W.L.S," she whispered as though she was saying an unforgivable secret and nobody could possibly hear it but Lucy. 

"Yeah, I thought it looked interesting and — " Lucy began but the teacher held up her hand to silence her and she instantly stopped muttering. 

"Now tell me the real reason, Lucy, I am not here to waste time, I am here to get a straight answer out of you and don't try and tell me that you thought it looked fun because Ancient Runes is definitely not fun." 

"Well...long story short...do you remember the tri wizard tournament when I returned with that knife in my back?" Lucy pondered for a minute to see if she sounded ridiculous but Professor Babbling nodded eagerly for her to continue. "Well, I found out it had some interesting writing on the handle. I mean, it's only a simple butter knife but it confused me as to why it had such writing on it. For all I know it could say 'made in China' but I need to know."

Professor Babbling looked at Lucy as though she'd just escaped from a mental home and was threatening to kill her. But her expression returned to normal after a few moments and she looked almost sympathetic. 

"But if you were that desperate to know what was on the knife, why didn't you just ask me rather than bothering to take the subject?" 

"Because, if this has any meaning it could possibly help the gifted become one step closer to be defeating Lord Zuc. Zuc might speak a totally different language, for all we know English could be his second language and some other language that could be linked to Ancient Runes could be his first." 

"But, Lucy, you're fooling yourself. You'd have to take extra classes, stay after lessons have ended even to so if there was such language you're talking about. You could waste a lot of time to find out that it didn't even exist and Zuc's language was just plain English." 

Lucy gave Professor Babbling a look. "I'll do whatever it takes to defeat Lord Zuc." 

"Very well..." she eyed Lucy's bag. "Give me the knife, I shall study it while you're in the rest of your lessons." 

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Lucy hook her head and shifted her bag from out of sight. "I need to keep it with me, it's the only hope I have at the moment and if you're going to decode it I want to be with you. I am not having Zuc throw another one of them in my back again." 

"Very well, we'll have to find a time when we can both meet up to figure out this knife." 

"Agreed." 

Lucy headed for the door and on her way there Professor Babbling said. "You're a fool, Lucy Snape, but if you're the fool who's going to kill Lord Zuc, I put my every last bit of faith in you." And as soon as the words left her lips, Lucy's dream came back to her:

"She could discover our secret, My Lord, she could discover that we have our own language and possible destroy us." Kingston said as Zuc paced back and fourth in deep thought. 

"No." Zuc stopped pacing and turned to Kingston. "You are the reason that I threw that knife! You are the reason Snape got away!" 

"M-My Lord?" Kingston stuttered as Zuc advanced on him. 

"If you hadn't been messing around you would have got that filthy piece of scum in time and snatched the cup away from her but I had to think of a back up plan because of your foolishness!" 

Kingston trembled but tried to keep calm. There was nothing worse than Zuc blaming something on you. "Forgive me for my foolishness. I — " 

"Forgive you? Forgive you! Who do you think I am? I do not waste my time on foolish people and if you keep foiling my plans I will physically tear your throat out and have you served for dinner. Is that understood?" 

"Yes, My Lord." 

"Good, now we have some sense into you, I can continue." 

Kingston nodded vigorously as though Zuc was about to tell him a bed time story. 

"You do not realise how much time I have spent looking for a new plan, but I figured it out in the holidays. But of course, the girl escaped it but still landed herself in trouble. If it wasn't for that McGuire girl, Snape would be in Azkaban with dementors, having her soul sucked out and she would be no use to anybody. Her father would lose it and McGuire would be useless against us." 

"Oh how I wish..." Kingston said, voicing his thoughts out loud. 

"Yes, don't we all. And so, she defeated the little chess piece and came out clean. But the thing is, she didn't realise that the thing I sent over was purely a chess piece, did she?" 

"Not at all, she only found that out at the hearing!" 

"Yes, Kingston, but what if I were to send a real knight over?" 

"But, My Lord, you can't. All knights have been banished from the wizarding world." Kingston muttered, afraid of how Zuc was going to reply. 

"But what if I broke the spell? What if then I could send a real knight over and destroy them once and for all?" 

"Somehow I can't see this working..." 

"We have an army! Do not be ridiculous! We have an army! They won't stand a chance!" 

"But won't she have enough experience from the chess piece?" 

"Maybe and maybe not. If we can't get knights in, why not upgrade the chess pieces and set them on the gifted. See how they make of that..." 

"That sounds better, that way we can keep upgrading them...have we got the remains of that chess piece?" 

"Oh, it will be easy to fix. You know a bit of magic, don't you?"

"I suppose so..." Kingston muttered but then Zuc gestured to the broken knight that had been taken from the wizarding world by Kingston's summoning charm. "Reparo!" 

And so the chess piece magically fixed itself, Kingston put his wand away feeling a little smug while Zuc placed the knight along the back wall where it belonged. 

"Do you not see this Kingston? We are using their own objects against them. They don't see this yet but when they do it'll be too late." 

"The day we'll have the orb, My Lord?" 

"Perhaps, perhaps...but let me paint you a picture, Kingston. We've all been able to get to the wizarding world, all three of the gifted are terrified and are trying to fight back but they can't. There's too little of them and too many of us, they've tried to set up their own army but there's still too few and they're too weak. And then, you advance on Lucy but Snape runs in front of her trying to protect her. You kill him on the spot, slicing him into two and then there's Lucy. She's terrified. But what will she do without daddy?" 

"There's still McGuire, though," Kingston pouted. 

"Yes, there is and she will fight alongside Lucy until I'll kill her myself, she won't get away. Which leaves us with just Lucy. She'll have the orb, we'll take it from her and then she'll be begging for death." 

"So we kill her!" 

"Oh yes we do, we'll torture her first, see how long she lasts, see how much information she's got until — " Zuc drew a finger across his throat. "We'll behead her." 

Lucy snapped back to reality. Did Zuc even know who she was anymore? And for that matter could he even tell Lucy could see what he was doing? 

She only realised she was still standing in the Ancient Runes classroom when Professor Babbling cleared her throat. 

"Yes, I am a fool. But not as much as Zuc." Lucy whispered. "Good day, Professor." 

And with that Lucy exited the classroom, feeling as smug as Kingston had.