Chapter 21: Respect

To Molly Hooper's delight, she found on the very first morning when they all received their time tables that both of her new classes were scheduled with Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw together. Sherlock was taking Care of Magical Creatures and Alchemy as well and that meant she'd get to see him more often.

Care of Magical Creatures was first thing that morning and she and Sherlock separated from John, who was headed off to Transfiguration, in the Entrance Hall and went out to the grounds, bickering with each other all the while about where they should go to meet the professor when 'GROUNDS' was marked under 'Classroom #' for the course. Eventually, they agreed to go down and ask Hagrid where Professor Kettleburn usually conducted class.

The walk was a nice one. The weather was just as lovely as it had been the previous day and the cool morning air helped chase away what remained of the drowsiness in their heads. They kept to the path to avoid getting their shoes wet with the dew that clung to the grass. When they arrived at Hagrid's hut, they found him in his garden, tending to his considerable pumpkin patch.

"Good morning, Hagrid," Sherlock called and the huge man looked up. He beamed at the boy and waved jovially.

"Ah! Mornin', Sherlock...Molly." The pause said everything Molly needed to know about how Hagrid felt about not getting any replies to his letters.

"Listen, Hagrid, I'm really sorry. I promise I've got a good explanation, but it'll have to wait. Sherlock and I need to find Professor Kettleburn so that we're not late for Care of Magical Creatures," Molly told the gamekeeper's assistant rather rapidly. The words had come spilling out like water in a glass that had just had a large rock dropped into it, the rock in this case being guilt. This seemed to satisfy Hagrid and he became instantly more friendly.

"Yer lucky ye came this way, then. Professor Kettleburn passed by not two minutes ago. He'll be tha' way." Hagrid pointed towards the Forbidden Forest and Sherlock's eyes immediately lit up.

"Great. Thank you so much. Oh, and, er, tea Saturday?" Molly responded and the bushy bearded man smiled at her.

"O' course. Now you two best be off. I don't know what Professor Kettleburn was thinkin', not tellin' ye where t'go." That settled, the two third years went on their way. It made Molly admittedly a bit nervous to be going into the Forbidden Forest, because it was, after all, forbidden and for good reason, but since it was daytime and this was for a class, she reasoned that it couldn't be all that bad. Sherlock seemed totally unconcerned, which helped. Once she got over it, she was able to appreciate the beauty of the forest, how the morning light filtered through the canopy and the exposed roots of the trees creating steps that led them up and down the terrain.

The pair finally found Professor Kettleburn quite a ways into the forest. With him were a couple of centaurs and they appeared to be having some sort of thoughtful discussion. It wasn't until the two students got closer that they learned that todays lesson would be about centaurs. The two in question looked up when Sherlock and Molly approached, which prompted the teacher to turn around and beam at them.

"Ah! Students already! Come, come! Don't be shy!" Professor Kettleburn was apparently a very energetic sort of wizard, as was evident in the way he greeted them and beckoned for them to come forward. After sharing a slightly bewildered glance, the pair came closer. "May I have your names?" he asked as a piece of parchment floated out of the sleeve of his robes and unfolded in midair.

"Holmes."

"Hooper."

"Oh look, one just below the other. Lovely." The teacher tapped their names on the parchment with his wand and the black ink turned green. "I'll wait until the rest of the class arrives to do introductions. I wouldn't want anybody to miss anything."

"That might be quite a wait," Sherlock commented dryly and Molly elbowed him for being rude. Kettleburn's brow furrowed.

"Why?"

"Well, you didn't tell any of us where on the grounds to meet, so I imagine there are a lot of students wandering around aimlessly right now."

"Oh dear!" the professor exclaimed. "I must have forgotten to make the announcement at breakfast. I'm dreadfully sorry. Stay here please while I fix this." Without another word, he rushed off back towards the castle, leaving Sherlock and Molly alone with the centaurs in awkward silence.

"Right," Molly muttered, trying her best not to feel intimidated. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and extended her hand to the friendlier looking of the two centaurs. "Good morning. My name is Molly Hooper."

"You would offer your hand to me as your equal?" the centaur questioned after staring at her for a moment. She couldn't tell whether he was pleased or offended, so she decided to give the simplest, most honest answer.

"Yes, of course." This appeared to have been the right thing to say, because the centaur shook her hand a second later.

"I am Breon. This is Faxi. She is my herd leader and life mate." Molly was quick to offer her hand to the other centaur upon this introduction. She feared for second that she would be rejected, but then Faxi took her hand and firmly shook it.

"You are welcome among us, Molly Hooper. There are few humans willing to humble themselves as you have," the female centaur said in a smooth, alto voice. Molly had to admit that she was a tiny bit starstruck and her mouth hung open, though no reply came out. "Your companion, the plain speaker, what is his name?"

"Sherlock Holmes," Molly answered, giving her friend a meaningful glance. Taking her hint, the Ravenclaw extended his hand, which Faxi did not hesitate to shake.

"We know who you were, who you are, and who you will be. It is a pleasure to meet you, Sherlock Holmes." As if these words were not astonishing enough, Faxi and Breon proceeded to bow to Sherlock. He and Molly stared in shock, both knowing enough about centaurs already to be aware that it was no small thing when they behaved this way to a human. What destiny could Sherlock possibly have that such creatures would respect him so immediately?

"Well, isn't this a lovely thing?" The pair whirled around at the familiar voice of their teacher to find him returned with a number of other Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw third years behind him. "Class, I'd like you to meet Faxi and Breon, members of the centaur herd here in the forest. They've kindly agreed to participate in today's lesson. Now, it seems Mr. Holmes and Ms. Hooper have already gotten the chance to get acquainted. The rest of you, why don't you line up and introduce yourselves. Just say your name and offer your hand. No need to be shy," Professor Kettleburn began cheerfully.

Nervously, the other students came forward, one by one, and shook hands with Faxi and Breon while Sherlock and Molly stood to the side and watched with Kettleburn.

"Now, can anybody guess what the theme of today's lesson is?" the teacher asked once everyone had gotten a chance to introduce themselves. Nobody called out a guess or even raised their hand. "Respect, my dear students. Respect is the foundation of everything you will be learning in this class. You cannot hope to interact meaningfully with magical creatures if you don't afford them the proper respect. Some of you may be thinking that you'll win respect with your wands, but I must impress upon you now that that is entirely the wrong way of going about things." A red headed Ravenclaw girl raised her hand at this. "Yes, Ms. Reppert?"

"What if we're being attacked?"

"Then all the more reason for you to respect the creature attacking you. Harming another sentient creature is never, ever to be taken lightly. Understood?" Kettleburn responded sincerely.

"Yes, sir." Reppert looked decidedly as if she didn't understand, despite her words, but the professor didn't dwell on it.

"Now, I want you all to sit down and take out a quill and parchment, because you'll be needing to take notes. Faxi and Breon are going to talk about centaur culture." At this, there was a bit of a scuffle over who got to sit on the nearby fallen tree. Everyone else settled on the ground and pulled out writing materials from their bags. They stayed quiet and listened while the centaur spoke of their traditions and beliefs. They were a bit long winded and had a habit of making vague references to things no one else knew about, which eventually caused a number of students to tune out, their eyes staring blankly forward, but Molly was captivated and she wrote down everything. Sherlock wrote down nothing, but oddly enough still seemed equally interested.

Faxi and Breon spoke at length about the art of Divination and even shared a little bit of information about how to read the planets and stars. Molly remembered how John had scoffed at the subject, but to these creatures, seeing the future appeared to be very serious business indeed.

At the end of the lesson, when everyone was packing up, Breon lingered and approached Molly just as she was about to follow Sherlock back to the castle.

"Bring him to us when the time comes," he told her, his voice only loud enough for her to hear. She looked back at him in complete confusion.

"Sorry?"

"The planets have chosen him." Without any further explanation, Breon turned and left in the same direction as his mate, leaving Molly no more enlightened than she had been before. Who had he been talking about? What had he been talking about? Unable to answer either of these questions, the Hufflepuff put it out of her mind and went on her way.

Next, she was off to Charms, where she would get to see John and tell him all about what Care of Magical Creatures had been like. He was taking the course as well and would be heading out to the forest that afternoon for his first lesson. Unfortunately, before Molly could get to the classroom, she was waylaid by none other than Peeves the Poltergeist.

"Oooh, if it isn't Molly Wolly Hoops!" he greeted when he twirled down from the ceiling.

"Hello, Peeves."

"Should tell you the nasty things the other girlies been saying about you, I should," he went on, clapping the chalkboard erasers in his little hands over her head so that she was covered in chalk dust and she sneezed as she tried to brush herself off.

"Oh no, please don't," Molly pleaded. Not only was she in danger of being late to Charms, but she already had some idea of what insults people had been tossing around and she didn't want to hear them. Of course, asking Peeves to do something was almost a guarantee that he wouldn't do it and so it was no shock when he started reciting a long litany of blood-purist slurs and who had used them in reference to her.

"Peeves!" The familiar severe tones of the young Professor McGonagall carried down the corridor and Molly looked around to see the woman herself approaching, livid. "You will never say any of those disgusting words again, do you hear me? I'll be speaking to the Bloody Baron about this!" The mention of the Slytherin House Ghost succeeded in striking fear into the poltergeist's heart like nothing else could.

"Apologies, miss! Meant no offense! Molly Wolly's just as much witch as the rest, of course!" With an awkward cackle, Peeves zoomed off as if he feared that the Bloody Baron would appear at any moment.

"Thanks, professor," Molly said, sighing with relief and McGonagall gave her a sympathetic smile.

"You're welcome, Ms. Hooper. There are many things we must tolerate from Peeves, but I refuse to let bigotry be one of them. Now, I do believe Professor Flitwick is expecting you."

"Yes, ma'am." With that, Molly hurried the rest of the way to Charms and arrived just in time. She took her usual seat beside John, slightly out of breath.

"Blimey, Molly, where've you been?" the Gryffindor asked with a frown, eyeing the chalk dust that was still in her hair and on her robes, and she explained about Peeves. "That does seem a bit low, even for Peeves. I mean, I know he wasn't directly insulting you, but he was obviously trying to upset you. Good thing McGonagall was there to stop him. I'm not surprised about him mentioning the Black sisters or Yaxley, but Matthews and Williams? I thought they were decent people."

"Apparently not," Molly replied glumly, resting her chin in her palm. She did her best to look more disappointed than deeply hurt like she really was by the incident. Thankfully, Professor Flitwick soon provided a distraction. He instructed them to open their copies of the Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3 and take out their wands. Today, they would be learning how to do Cheering Charms, which was exactly what Molly needed.

By the time she and John came out of class, she felt as if she were on top of the world and nothing could spoil her day. Listening to Sherlock complain all the way to Defense Against the Dark Arts that afternoon about how Sebastian Wilkes had dropped a full tray of Puffapods on him in Herbology didn't bother her in the slightest. Not even spotting Anna Matthews' head of hip length brown hair at the front of the DADA class when they came in could dampen her spirits, which she would later consider a testament to John's skill with Cheering Charms. Of course, it also helped that their new DADA teacher wasn't half bad.

Professor Van Coon was a young, conventionally handsome wizard with dark hair and eyes, who wore fashionable dark green robes and seemed to be the essence of cool. Molly could easily picture him swaggering down the steps of Gringotts. She didn't want to admit it, but she, like most of the class, was immediately taken in by his charm.

"Good afternoon. My name is Edward Van Coon. Oh dear, that rhymed," he began and laughed at himself. The students joined in good-naturedly. "As you may already have heard, I was, until recently, a banker at Gringotts. It was my task to travel around the world on behalf of the goblins and I saw a lot more excitement than I expected when I first took the job. I enjoyed that part of being a banker, but I'm afraid I got tired of goblins constantly giving me dirty looks, so here I am, you're new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Now, you can put your books away. We won't be cracking those until next class. Instead, I thought it would be nice if I let you all choose what we'd learn today."

This was an exciting prospect for the students, since they'd never been allowed to choose topics or even guide discussion before. Most notably, it succeeded in making Sherlock give Van Coon his complete attention. It almost caused Molly to giggle, the way her friend perked up. It was really quite endearing.

The class ended up spending the entire period interrogating the teacher about goblins and the various myths about the bank. He didn't seemed to mind at all and peppered his explanations with humour. He told them everything from how you should never patronize a goblin to the fact that, yes, there really were dragons guarding the high security vaults at Gringotts.

Half the students left that afternoon with massive crushes on Professor Van Coon and the other half just generally liked him. Even Sherlock, who was heavily critical of anyone in whom he detected the slightest level of incompetence, seemed to approve of the man, which was saying something.

After that, Molly found paying attention in History of Magic to be even more of a trial than usual. Professor Binns was perhaps the very antithesis of Professor Van Coon. The ghost droned on and on without even seeming to notice what state his students were in. Even worse was the fact that neither John nor Sherlock were there with her to pass notes to and the Gentry twins had fallen fast asleep not even a third of the way through the class.

By the time Molly made her way to the Great Hall for dinner, she was exhausted and quite ready to pass out. Meena had a job keeping her from faceplanting in her soup. Still, it had been a good first day back, all things considered.

After she managed to finish her dinner, she dragged herself up to the library to meet her best friends, who were already deep into an argument about Quidditch. Molly didn't want to get involved, so she tuned them out until they invited her into the conversation by bringing up the arrangement to go and visit Hagrid on Saturday. This morphed into a discussion of Care of Magical Creatures and the centaurs.

"Honestly, John, you should have seen the way they were looking at Sherlock. It was like he'd done them some great service," Molly said as she recounted to John Faxi and Breon's reactions to their Ravenclaw friend.

"Weird," John replied with a scowl. "I mean Divination is usually a load of tosh, but it does get you wondering sometimes when stuff like this happens." He eyed Sherlock and clutched his chest in mock surprise before adding in a very silly, falsetto voice, "Merlin's Beard! Sherlock Holmes! He who is destined for greatness! Can I have your autograph so I can sell it for a huge pile of gold when you become famous?" Sherlock then shoved the laughing Gryffindor out of his seat. In Molly's own fit of giggles and the ensuing dressing down from Madam Pince, she completely forgot to tell the boys about what Breon had said to her about the planet choosing Sherlock and it settled deep into the back of her mind.

A/N: Oooooh, plot things. *wiggles fingers ominously* What could Breon possibly have meant? I'd like to note to people who aren't aware: Divination was not a taught subject at Hogwarts until after Sybill Trelawney made the prophecy about Voldemort. Anyway, I hope this chapter was a good mix of fluff and plot thickener. I'd be much obliged to reviewers if you'd let me know which of the secondary/background characters (from anywhere in the story) you'd like to see more of. Thanks for reading!