She'd never known that there were that many emotions. She looked it up in a book, afterwards, and found well over one hundred listed. On occasions Lavender Brown felt like she'd experienced all of them, several times.
The other thing the book said was that emotions can be classified into positive and negative. Yes, she could confirm that. It was strange how she'd gone from one to the other, before coming back again.
She'd seen a man in her life in divination for years. She didn't believe in the "tall, dark, handsome stranger" rubbish, but she kept seeing somebody who was certainly tall, and close by, so she started thinking and soon ended up with a fairly small list. In fact, it was a list of one.
Nobody from Slytherin. To Lavender it was obvious that the return of Voldemort meant civil war was coming and she could not be on their side.
Hufflepuff was unlikely. They were very nice, but perhaps too nice. Justin Finch-Fletchley was well connected, and from a wealthy family, but he didn't have enough spirit for her. The same went for Ernie McMillan, a "young fogey" if ever there was one.
The Ravenclaws had a couple of possibilities, and Lavender explored in that direction on occasions. The problem was that they were proud of their reputation as the intellectuals, so wanted to show it. Lavender didn't think that the main use for an empty classroom was to discuss homework.
That left Gryffindor. Neville was very sweet, but not her sort. Seamus was trickier. He felt something for her, that was obvious, and he'd been quite fun at the Yule Ball but he wasn't very subtle. He was still a boy, and he had this habit of blowing things up. Dean, he was possible and liked Quidditch...and Ginny Weasley. That said it all for Lavender; a tomboy with no dress sense whatsoever. All those brothers, she supposed.
Harry, ah Harry. Well, he wasn't tall but he was certainly the centre of attention. There might be a certain cachet to that. The girlfriend of the boy who...maybe not. He was very intense, as well.
No, he was best left to Hermione. She was fairly attractive, dressed fairly well, and was even willing to take advice on how to apply make-up properly. Yet she never seemed as interested in these things as a fairly attractive, fairly well dressed girl should. She and Harry were joined at the hip, and had been since first year. It was inevitable...sort of... Then she kept going off on these mad adventures and trying to get herself killed, and it always seemed to relate back to him.. It was obvious Hermione would end up with him eventually, because he drove her mad and Lavender thought Hermione was the sort of girl who'd like that kind of a challenge..
So, unless Lavender started looking outside her year, that left Ron Weasley.
Ron.
Weasley.
Ron Weasley.
That made her think long and hard.
On the plus side he was sort of tall and sort of good looking. He'd got a bit of hero status from what had happened in the Ministry of Magic last year. He played Quidditch.
On the minus side.
Ron.
Weasley.
Ron Weasley.
Part of her wondered if he was a bit "odd". Padma had said he was a disaster at the Yule Ball and not interested in her at all, though he was younger at the time. He was quite loud and he was quite unsophisticated. No, correction, he was very unsophisticated. She still remembered his attempt at a joke in third year.
"Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?"
He'd actually thought that was funny.
He was a bit of a slob. She'd had to watch him eat for the past six years.
Lavender never considered her thoughts as doubts; she didn't need to have doubts on this kind of thing. Once you understood Divination, and Lavender understood Divination, doubt became unnecessary.
So many people got it wrong. Hermione, for example. She wanted the recipe, she wanted the formula, like it was Ancient Runes. Lavender hated it when people called Divination "Fortune Telling", like it was some kind of fairground trick. She hated it even more when people thought it foretold the future. That was Prophecy, and Lavender knew she wasn't a Seer.
Divination showed paths, many and varied. The key, to her, was that it only showed possible paths. Nobody would ever see themselves turning into a Mermaid, for example, because that was not a possible path.
She thought of Divination as an atlas of the future; there were many routes one could take to reach a destination. Some may be direct, others more winding, but they were possible paths. Lavender wondered which atlas to use for this particular journey. Like all good students she had already moved beyond the syllabus, so reached for her Tarot cards. She loved the challenge of deciphering them, when their meaning were not written in stone. She pondered which method to use to read them, but didn't consider herself experienced enough to do anything complicated. Instead, she would just shuffle the deck and lay out cards to see what came up.
The First Card. She knew this was the "significator", the person asking the question. In this case it was herself. She turned it over.
The Empress. The Great Mother, the provider of plenty. Sexuality, Pleasure, Desire, Sensuality.
Lavender smiled; that was a good start! She was the significator, and had turned up a card that matched perfectly. She skipped over the part that showed The Empress to be smothering, possessive and jealous.
The second card made her smile even more. The Hanged Man. He was the Consort, closely associated with The Empress.
Excellent! The cards knew what she was asking for. Now, would they give her the final answer? She turned the third card and gasped.
The King of Wands.
For Lavender it might as well have been a picture of Ron Weasley. The orange robes, the tongues of fire – red flames – on his crown. A man who is decisive and passionate. On his throne was a lion – Gryffindor, obviously.
Lavender saw the potential in her cards. She saw a path, if she chose to take it. She turned a fourth card.
The Lovers.
-o0o-
'WHO? Ron? Weasley? RON WEASLEY? Did you find the key to your parent's drinks cabinet again?'
Lavender sat back, slightly nonplussed. That wasn't the reaction she'd expected from Parvati when she told her soon after The Hogwarts Express pulled out of King's Cross.
'Why not Ron?' Lavender threw her hair back and lifted her chin. 'No, listen , I thought about it long and hard...and I took advice. You couldn't get a clearer reading.'
'Ron?' Parvati asked again, shakily. 'He isn't your type at all.'
'He's passionate, and fiery and...'
'Only about food...and maybe Quidditch.'
'I can change him.'
Parvati lifted an eyebrow. 'Change him? So he's not really a lover, then, more like a little project? Anyway, haven't you forgotten something – or somebody?'
Lavender shook her head. 'Who?'
'Hermione? Do you think she'll just let you walk off with her boyfriend?'
Lavender goggled. 'Don't be silly! They're not interested in each other. Don't you think they might have just made a move on each other by now if they were?
It was Parvati's turn to smile. 'I'll be the first to admit they're taking their time.' Then her expression turned serious, almost solemn. 'She loves him, never forget that. One day he'll see it, and you won't be able to stop him. Lavender, you could get hurt.'
Lavender leaned forward and gave her friend a hug. 'I think I have just a few advantages over Little Miss Prefect.' She gave Parvati a wink. 'I don't think my mouth is only there to answer questions, for a start!'
Both girls screeched with laughter at that one and it took them a while to calm down.
Eventually Parvati nodded her head, as if coming to a decision. 'Go on, then; I'll be ready and waiting with the spello-tape to put the pieces of your heart back together again.'
AN: As always, my thanks to Euclidian for unmangling the grammar and making good suggestions. If you haven't guessed already, I'm not JK Rowling and she owns these characters.