Chapter 96 — Leaves at the Bottom

Our first Divination lesson required enough stairs to make me hope that predicting the future would save us some of the walking towards it. At the top, a ladder led through a trapdoor into a room of low tables and soft chairs. Curtains dimmed the daylight, and a fire burnt despite the mild weather.

Tea mingled with a sweeter smell which seemed determined to settle behind my eyes. I chose a chair near a window that might open, earning Harry’s approval as he sat beside me. I explained that I intended to remain conscious throughout the lesson.

Ron inspected our cups. Seamus leaned over from the next table to ask when the practical part began, although we had barely arrived. He said he hoped for advance notice, which I thought appropriate to the subject.

Trelawney emerged behind a screen with her hands raised. Thick glasses enlarged her eyes, and bracelets slipped down her wrists as she welcomed us to the study of things ordinary sight could not reveal. I tried to listen despite the warmth and the article which had kept me awake longer than intended the night before.

When I reached for the tea, Seamus asked whether it might be part of the lesson. I said I was taking a keen interest, and Ron lifted the teapot to predict another cup in my future. He filled mine before I could object, leaving Harry to bend over his book and hide a smile.

Trelawney explained that we would read the leaves. We should drink most of the tea, leave a little at the bottom and turn the cup before examining what remained. I looked at Ron and told him his prediction had delayed my progress.

He reminded me that it was only by a cup. We followed the instructions, leaving fragments and streaks clinging to wet porcelain. I rotated mine carefully, looking for more than evidence that somebody had recently made tea.

Harry suggested a branch, then a bird. I thought a bird might give the branch something to do, but before he could decide which way it faced, Hermione remarked beside me that the shape might also be tea leaves.

I turned to find her lowering her bag between two chairs. When I asked when she arrived, she said just now; I had been looking into the cup. This was true, but did little to explain Harry and Ron staring as well. She opened her book to the assigned section without adding anything.

Trelawney moved between the tables offering interpretations. A crooked line became a warning about a journey, and Neville was told to be concerned about his grandmother. He stopped turning his cup and glanced towards the door as though a message might be waiting there.

Hermione quietly asked whether his grandmother had said she was ill. He shook his head, and she told him to remember that as well. Trelawney reached us before he could answer, requesting that I explain what I saw.

The branch had survived several rotations. The bird looked less convincing, and I admitted that turning the cup let me find several different things. She told me to allow the image to come, so I waited before asking whether she would show me.

Her bracelets clicked against the handle as she took it. For a while she said nothing, then drew a sudden breath which made Ron jerk back in his chair. She had seen a lion, she announced, and an eagle in flight.

‘A pursuit which lasts a lifetime, with a white rabbit always ahead.’ She returned the cup with an expression suggesting that she had answered far more than my question. I examined it again before asking whether the lion or the eagle was pursuing the rabbit.

That was for me to discover. When I asked how I would recognise the discovery, she said experience would provide the meaning and moved to another table. I found myself irritated by an answer I had requested mostly out of curiosity.

Now someone had offered a story about my future, I wanted enough detail to question it. Hermione watched me turn the cup and reminded me I did not have to make it mean anything. I agreed, but wanted to understand the claim before deciding whether to believe it.

She thought Trelawney had made that difficult. Harry lifted his own cup towards the light, drawing the professor back, and passed it over when she held out her hand. This time her breath caught sharply enough for nearby conversations to stop.

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She set the cup down at once, spilling the remaining tea into its saucer. Harry stared at it and asked what was wrong. Trelawney pressed a hand against her chest before naming the Grim.

Ron began turning textbook pages. Harry asked what she meant, receiving an answer about a terrible omen while Ron found the entry. I leaned close enough to see an illustration of a large black dog beneath a heading about death.

Hermione said Trelawney could not tell Harry that from a cup. The professor regarded her with weary disappointment and spoke of minds which resisted what they could not measure. Hermione replied that this did not make the prediction true, drawing a short laugh from another table.

Someone whispered Harry’s name. He stayed focused on the illustration, and I asked before picking up his cup myself. Two points at one end of the shape rose above a longer smear; after seeing the picture, I found it difficult to look without recognising ears and a muzzle.

That was still no view of Harry’s death. I set the cup between us and admitted that it resembled a dog, but said I did not understand how the rest followed. Harry looked at me without giving much indication whether I had helped.

Trelawney advised him to take the warning seriously and moved away. Noise returned gradually to the room while Hermione pulled the saucer from his sleeve before the tea could reach it. We finished the exercise with less enthusiasm than we had brought to the table.

Outside, the air felt wonderfully clear. Harry waited until we were away from the ladder to ask whether I remembered the dog he had described. It had been large and black, he repeated, although he saw it only briefly.

Hermione reminded him that dogs could be both without becoming omens. He said he knew, then repeated the answer when she pointed out that leaves were not black fur. She stopped as Ron joined us with a finger still between his textbook’s pages.

Ron thought it was a lot to put together: the animal, the cup and Black supposedly looking for Harry. I pointed out that these were not all the same thing, making him ask whether I considered it a coincidence.

‘It might be. Harry saw an animal, and we’ve seen a shape in a cup.’ I waited while Ron closed the book. ‘We were also told what to look for before most of us looked. I don’t know how much that matters, but I think it matters some.’

Harry rubbed his thumb along his bag strap. What if she was right, he asked, and I abandoned an easy answer about everybody dying eventually. It would have sounded much less clever in front of somebody who had just been given a picture of his death.

I would want to know what danger she meant and what we could do, I told him. She had supplied neither. Harry could not organise his life around something so vague, although Ron fairly objected that we could not ignore everything either.

‘We take what we can check seriously,’ I said. ‘Black has escaped, and the Ministry thinks Harry may be in danger. We keep following those arrangements. If Harry sees the animal again, he tells somebody who can help identify it.’ None of that required deciding that the cup had settled what came next.

Hermione added that he need not become frightened every time he drank tea. Harry smiled reluctantly at how inconvenient that would be here, and Ron proposed pumpkin juice as an alternative. I wondered how long it would take Trelawney to teach us to read the pulp.

This time Harry laughed properly. We walked on while Hermione explained why she preferred the methods she had encountered in Arithmancy. Ron listened for half a staircase before asking how many other subjects she had managed to put on her timetable.

She said the arrangements were approved. I remembered the extra permission she had waited for before the holidays, and her determination had not weakened now the work arrived. Her answer became more difficult to understand later in the week, when Harry asked whether I had seen her after Ancient Runes.

I told him she had been in the lesson. He said she had been in theirs, and Ron confirmed it, leaving me to check whether we meant the same period. They had both chosen Muggle Studies, Ron to understand the objects his father brought home and Harry to discover how a wizarding textbook would describe a telephone.

Ancient Runes had seemed an obvious choice for me. I spent enough time marking paper I hoped would carry magic; learning older writing might prevent foolish assumptions about an impressive-looking symbol. So far the class supplied more grammar than ancient power, and Hermione had appeared delighted by both the grammar and my difficulties with it.

I asked Harry whether he had seen her near the beginning of his lesson. Ron added that she was there at the end as well, which left little room for my first explanation. When Hermione caught us up, I asked whether the classes overlapped for only part of the period.

She glanced at the notes in my hand and repeated that her timetable was approved. I said that was not quite my question, but she knew and could not explain all the arrangements. She asked me to leave it with McGonagall, without a trace of a joke in her voice.

Harry shrugged when I looked towards him, still visibly puzzled. I agreed to leave it, provided Hermione told us if she needed somebody to save lunch for her. Her shoulders relaxed a little as she assured me she could manage lunch.

Ron thought she should wait until she tried to attend three of them before being certain. She rolled her eyes and went with us to the hall. I continued wondering about the timetable, but the only answer I could support was that I did not understand it.