By Means of Conformity PV Closed

The professor looked up at the girl as she entered the tent, surprised to have a visitor. Despite her distaste for most of the students, she considered it a sign of her professional integrity that she was still willing to employ an open office policy. A policy that had been unfortunately extended by the summer's events that dragged out her responsibility for the students much longer than she was truly comfortable with. Her already pale hair had become bleached by the sun, and she wore dark glasses when she did have to go out in the daylight. Her tent was comfortably dark, with just enough lantern light available for midday reading. The book in the professor's hand snapped shut as the student caught her attention, the older woman raising an eyebrow as the girl said her name.

She'd seen this one before. The neat little blonde one. She couldn't remember how she knew her face, but the girl must have been impressive in some respect, although students were often impressive in their ability to baffle the professor. To be memorable was not always a positive trait. But she did do her research. Greeting Professor Kibitzer by name - and with the correct pronunciation, nonetheless, was one way that a student could make a positive first impression. To follow it up with such a refreshing breeze of honesty - asking Rosalind to lie to her - well, it was downright charming, even coming from such a dour looking girl. Rosalind couldn't help but laugh at the request.

"I would be happy to. But I'll need your name, first," the woman said, setting aside her book at the small table beside her. It seems she's just doing some summer reading on her subject of choice - a thin text on the subject of xylomancy, a method of divination which relied on twigs. How unfortunate that Persephone had not brought any with her today. "And some information on the nature of this lie you'd like."

Professor Kibitzer's normally stony face had a slight smile on it today, the shadows cast by her reading light illuminating her face, bringing the expression into sharp focus. She wasn't sure what to expect. The depressed state of the girl who'd shambled in pointed toward another tragedy needing resolution. A beacon of hope laid in her sarcastic remark. If there was a tragedy, the girl had at least maintained good humour about the whole thing. She wouldn't tolerate any true disrespect - but a snide remark was just idle amusement. The woman waited before she made any further judgements.

Perhaps there was some universal social obligation to greet the woman with sweet kindness, whether that be credited to her assumed age or position of authority, or even just developing that smooth first impression in a private encounter. If there was such, it flew far below Persephone and the child’s play blocks of ego, missing its shot entirely. Though watching the young blonde move, how someone could be so lethargic and purposeful, it should be well-respected that she could very well be much worse. Something lacked in her bite, fangs crushed and fallen off, or just barely on the brink of it. Persy still waited for them to emerge with the pliers, blood freezing and boiling. Kibitzer had been sought after, not encountered, and there was an ever-so-slight nod of respect. To be appreciated, as its oddity would plague any casual recipient.

The sound of a book promptly snapping shut kept Persy grounded enough to admire the atmosphere of the tent, how loyal it was to the illusion of divination. There was a certain quaintness to dim lighting in an impossible situation, provided almost solely by lanterns that bred shadows with every delicate gesture. A peculiar mantle of simplicity covered the Slytherin student, as though life weren’t so complicated, only highlighted by gold and readings of the future seen with a true sixth sense rather than the mystery known as the imagination. Inferences and deductions, an art, the practice was not to be discarded in skill, just legitimacy. If she weren’t feeling healthier by the affection of darkness and a scent only brought by a make-believe million candles, skepticism would turn her back around to the bleaching sun. Then apprehension would make it a three-sixty.

Professor Kibitzer, a professor only met one prior time, already seemed different. Maybe it was the stone walls of the castle that did that to someone, sunk them in a sea of melodrama and tragedy, maybe it was the blood-filled lake and whatever aura it radiated, a sickness. Some waves could not be explained by the pull of the tide, rushing with the moon worlds away and gravity but a mere dream, this was such. But it had gotten to the professor, perhaps. Or, better yet, those darkened eyes had seen too much calamity in the past year to credit it to lightened hair. The way a specialist sees their practice in all that walks.

Her laugh and following comments, so light-hearted compared to the stoic visages of a few namely coworkers, it was unexpected. Not the joy of someone unhappy, but who could live all those years and not be, at least, a tad miserable? The thin book that yanked Persy from oblivion came to rest on a nearby table, a completely incomprehensible word scrawled across. She raised an eyebrow at it, almost as though expecting it to mock her ignorance. This woman and things hard to pronounce. ‘Kibitzer’ in itself had been a tongue twister barely overcome beforehand. “Persephone.” For a very brief moment, those were the only syllables the girl could form without the threat of hesitation, a virtually invisible tremble to her pale lower lip. “Persephone Barret.”

She went to stone once more, attentive and meticulous about the next words to be chosen. The nature of the lie wavered with her wishes; in honesty Persephone craved stability and hope, but that held no candlelight to the truth. To jump into her recollections, and most importantly, what she needed so strongly to know, it would be unwise. A possibility lingered like a monster of silhouettes, to be chuckled away or lied to with a scolding tone, deemed far less than worth the time. “I have a question that I believe can only be answered by your practice. But I’m wondering first how you plan to answer this question, if possible?”

The process of divination, however many there were, was as much a puzzle as its vocabulary. No need for a lesson now, year three could provide, underneath these words was an inquiry likely not seen simply. Is the answer going to be worth my time? Rather narcissistic to contemplate, given the hollowed time was left to anxious worrying, to suffer twice. The hours would not fly by, however precious and short they may be.

Professor Kibitzer had no doubt that there were worse thirteen-year-old students at the summer camp. If you presented her with the worst of them all, there was no doubt that she would shrug, let out a contemplative hum, and decide that they could certainly be worse. One of the hardest parts of scraping the bottom of the barrel is realizing that there were still things below the barrel. Thankfully for her, she still had plenty to dig through before she found the worst. Persephone sat soundly within the range of bearable. Even pleasant, with the caustic humour she had gracefully demonstrated with that small line of introduction.

Kibitzer's xylomancy textbook laid harmlessly on the table. It would not mock anyone, but made an excellent set piece for internal monologues if one wanted to mock oneself. It wasn't totally obvious that Persephone was tiptoeing around a trembling lower lip when she spoke. Another step taken to put her above the rest who would shamelessly sputter Kibitzer or Clowncar or whatever came to their minds. And they would have the gall to be offended when she just called them "student" afterward. If they would not learn the name of one professor, she would certainly not memorize hundreds of students.

"I'm curious how you expect me to know how to answer a question you haven't posed," the professor said, her thin patience fraying ever thinner with the posing of the girl's first question. But she had bought enough time for the professor to humour her once more, reaching back and pulling a small pack of cards out of her back pocket. These weren't her tarot cards - no, those were much too precious to have so far from home - but they did the job. "Playing cards," the professor said simply. "They usually do the trick. Cartomancy is my specialty."

Specialty sounded much more professional than favourite. It meant the same thing in this context, however. She shook the cards out of the package and onto her palm, setting the empty cardboard aside to begin shuffling the cards. Getting them ready for the reading. Just simple, American playing cards. Exotic, maybe, so close to London, but not expensive enough to be notable.

"Ask away," she said, before putting her hand out to offer the cards to the young girl. "Then draw three, put them in a row on the table."

You can determine the cards drawn or I can, whichever you prefer.

As if to make matters worse, with no trace of mystique or illusive glamour, the older woman pulled an ordinary deck of playing cards from her pocket following a rather cold response. It wasn’t the callous reply that deepened Persephone’s slender frown, but the plainness of her methods. Divination, though a clear riddle on its own, was if nothing else a branch of magic, meant to enchant and astound, to do what nothing else could. Though the cards, at least to the naked green eye, were identical to whatever a drunk pulled from his coat during an evening with money on the table. No different than what her father dealt around the card table years ago.

Persy couldn’t say with precise certainty that the magic wasn’t meant to move from hand to card, a conductor of sorts, or that there wasn’t simply more than met her gaze beyond its suit and number. Her mind travelled back to the words, not quite of a taciturn woman but definitely not spoken with a soft spot of sensitivity. Of course, that hadn’t been what she’d come for, that pity could be nothing but her own. Though this deck of cards, these fragments of hoarier times trapped in the cages of the muggle world and methods, it played her question as game. And thereby, her life as a game, matters of life and death reduced to change, probability, a lucky draw or a dastardly unlucky one. A winning outcome, and a losing one.

And now she’d be reminded of her humanity, her vulnerability in this tent, the way it shielded the sun but no other outside forced from damaging what lay within. Methodical Persy, the girl she loved and adored with a stone heart, should be partial to these facts and numbers, or so she believed. But there was an ounce of hurt, offense, perhaps even apprehension at a fate that lingered in the color, number, and shape of a card. A card she could bring from home, a card like the ace of spades she’d gifted Thomas the prior year. Something so incredibly forgettable to determine the life and death of Persephone Barret, someone who believed in nothing if not their dominance. Perhaps the trick was to believe in nothing at all.

She did not care if Kibitzer had changed against the pressures of the castle walls and the burdening shade of the Forbidden Forest, but she wondered. What difference would asking this earlier have made? Would she know more, know less? Did the answer matter at all? More suffering, these questions, fresh slices in wounds that had truly not healed, perhaps never would. Not if she kept reopening. This was meant to close them.

It was possible that the assurance that cartomancy was the specialty of the professor was meant to polish any areas of doubt, supply some kind of reassurance that though it was a game of chance, there was a science in its composition. All it did for Persephone, though, was add to the dance of delusion and shame for standing here now, so inelegant with her lessening weight shifted to her left side, a slight fidget in one hand. Biting her lip, watching a frail woman shuffle cards to tell her whether life was worth living. No, whether it would be living at all, or else merely surviving.

“Ask away.”

Oh, how simple that made it sound, like the words could tumble with grace and be greeted by a smile, a few drawings of irrelevancy and a direct answer with no remainders of judgement in the icy glare she was given. How easy it would be to give Kibitzer a gentle smile, express her worries with a beating heart and warm crimson blood, and be loved, not by the listening ear but by herself. Shown compassion, not covered with a blanket to hush those midnight cries for passerby’s help. To let words not be ploys, but ounces of herself. “Is this…” Her voice trailed away, along with the eye-contact she was once able to make.

“Is this it? Is this how things are, and how they’re always going to be? In life?” And with that, that bomb dropped with an impact felt solely by Persy, she pulled three cards from the professor’s hand and laid them down. From left to right, with a deep sigh to gloss her eyes, a six of hearts, a ten of diamonds, and a four of spades.

To determine the cards drawn, I used a random card generator, so I hope this works okay.