Chapter 9

The next morning the school had come alive with the sound of students and teachers busying themselves in preparation for the first day of the term. The Great Hall was aflutter with students eating their breakfasts and comparing their class schedules as they were handed out.

Sam and Dean, pressed and dressed in their new robes, entered to see the hustle and bustle. Passing the house tables on the way to their own seats, they came across a group of Slytherins laughing and joking. They were about ten feet ahead of them but Dean stopped Sam in his tracks when he saw their attention had turned from themselves to across the room. One of them had spotted Harry Potter had also entered the room and abruptly began to swoon and gave out a dramatic wail followed by a bunch of laughter.

Dean turned to Sam. "What's the blonde kid's name again?"

"Draco Malfoy." Sam answered.

"We're teachers now, right?"

Sam looked confused, "Well, yeah. But I don't see w -."

Suddenly Dean shouted, "Hey! Malfoy!"

The whole group of them startled, and the look on Draco's face changed to one of panic.

"Knock it off!" he said approaching the group. Then he pointed his finger at each one of them in turn in a slow and deliberate arc. "All of you! Ten points from Slytherin! Now sit down and eat your breakfast."

The Slytherins begrudgingly broke their group apart and sat down at their table. Dean looked up and saw Harry, Ron, and Hermione staring at him from across the room. It was if they couldn't believe their eyes. Harry smiled and gave a small nod of thanks and he, Ron, and Hermione sat at the Gryffindor table.

Sam walked up to Dean and in a hushed voice he said, "Dude, you have no idea how much I've wanted to do that since '97."

"Why? What's that?"

"The year the first book came out."

"Seriously. Geek Card. Let's eat."

Sausages, bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, beans, oatcakes, toast, and much more covered the tables. Sam tried something called Bubble and Squeak for the first time with a fried egg on top of it. Professor Sprout had explained that it was potatoes, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, carrots, and peas hashed, formed into patty, and shallow fried. Dean ended up making himself a bacon and sausage sandwich between two fluffy breakfast rolls.

After breakfast was over, Minerva approached Sam and Dean with pieces of parchment in her hand.

"Good morning, Professors." she said cheerfully.

"Morning." said Dean.

"Good morning, Professor McGonagall." Sam said smiling.

"I have for you your classroom assignments. Dean, you have a choice. You can sit in on Divination with Professor Trelawney, or Muggle Studies with Professor Burbage."

Dean looked at Sam, silently asking him which one he should subject himself too.

Sam leaned in closer to Dean and whispered in his ear. "Do you want loony or boring?"

"I'll take Divination I guess." said Dean.

"Alright, here you go." Minerva said and handed him one of the slips of parchment. "And Sam, you'll be down at Hagrid's for Care of Magical Creatures. You know where that is, of course."

"Yes, thank you."

"First hour classes start in about 20 minutes so I suggest you two get a move on. Sam, your class doesn't start for an hour and a half but you should probably get their early to help Hagrid get ready for the class. I'm sure he's a bundle of nerves."

"No problem."

Minerva grasped both of them by a shoulder. "You two will be just fine." she said and sauntered off to speak with Dumbledore.

Dean shoved the rest of his eggs into his mouth and grabbed a piece of buttered toast. He stood and a fair few crumbs rolled off the front of his robes and onto Sam's shoulder.

"Dude!" Sam protested.

Dean responded by taking a bite of his toast and winked at him before taking off with his parchment in hand.

Sam brushed off his shoulder and chuckled to himself. This place was finally starting to rub off on Dean and it was nice to actually see him enjoy himself. It was nice to not be at each other's throats constantly for what seemed like petty trifles. He'd almost forgotten the argument they were having before they were sent here. What had that really been about, anyway? Who knows? But right now, it didn't matter anymore. Being here, away from their every day, psychotic, fight for their lives, lives, it felt like a blessing in disguise.

Sam also grabbed a piece of toast and then headed down to Hagrid's hut.

Ten minutes later, Dean had found the right floor but was now pacing back and forth down the hallway, the map of Hogwarts in one hand and his parchment with the class information on the other looking for the entrance to the Divination Tower. He found a spiral staircase and began to climb it until it had made him a bit dizzy. He found a silver ladder leading up through the ceiling.

"This must be it." he said to himself. He shoved the parchment and map into his robe's pocket and climbed.

About halfway up the ladder he smelled a heavy aroma of incense wafting down from above. It invaded his nostrils and forced a gale force sneeze. Suddenly, a frizzy haired woman with heavy round glasses and large magnified eyes behind them peered over the edge at him.

"Ah!" Dean said surprised by her sudden appearance. "Hi, I'm Dean, erm, Professor Winchester." he choked on the words.

"I knew you would come. Please, come inside." she said airily.

Dean climbed up through the opening and was met with an overly-warm, smoky room which was crammed full of students all sitting in armchairs or on little froufrou tuffets.

"Would you be so kind as to pull up the ladder and close the trap door?" said Professor Trelawney in a floaty, far-away voice.

Dean struggled with the ladder and had just closed the hatch when she tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and found her magnified owl eyes staring intently at him. "On second thought, there are some students have gotten lost and should be arriving in a few moments. Please lower the ladder for them when they arrive."

Dean blinked at her.

"There's a good lad!" she said patting his shoulder and turned toward her own chair and had a seat.

Dean opened the hatch again and immediately saw three faces look up at him from their own parchments.

"After you." said the redheaded boy to the dark-haired boy.

The dark-haired boy began climbing the ladder. Dean hadn't paid attention at first, but when this boy's head popped through the hatchway, he saw the lightning shaped scar on his forehead and realized that it was Harry himself.

Dean waited for Ron and Hermione to pull themselves up into the tower before pulling up the ladder and again shutting the hatch.

As soon as all was quiet and the three late-comers had taken their seats, Trelawney had fully taken advantage of the fact they had not seen her in her chair.

"Welcome," she said. "How nice to see you in the physical world at last."

Both Dean and several students in the group rolled their eyes at the dramatic statement.

"Welcome to Divination," she said from the comfort of her wing backed chair. "My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye."

Dean leaned against the back wall next to a bunch of shelves covered top to bottom with tea cups and saucers and teapots, and watched the circus act unfold before him. He recalled Sam's question. Do you want loony or boring? He wasn't kidding about the loony part.

"Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future," said Trelawney. "It is a Gift granted to few. You, boy," she said suddenly to a nervous boy with front teeth too big for his mouth, who now appeared very frightened.

"Is your grandmother well?"

"I think so," said the boy, shaking like a leaf.

"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you, dear," said Professor Trelawney. She let a moment of dramatic pause float by before continuing. "We will be covering the basic methods of Divination this year. The first term will be devoted to reading the tea leaves. Next term we shall progress to palmistry. By the way, my dear," she quickly assaulted a pretty Indian girl, "beware a red-haired man."

She responded by looking at Harry's red-headed friend and uncomfortably scooted away from him.

"In the second term," Professor Trelawney went on, "we shall progress to the crystal ball - if we have finished with fire omens, that is. Unfortunately, classes will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of flu. I myself will lose my voice. And around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever."

Dean found the room to be a bit warm and hard to breathe in. He grabbed his robes and fanned the fabric rhythmically trying to aerate them with no luck.

Trelawney was suddenly at his side. "I wonder dear, if you could pass me the largest silver teapot?"

Dean looked over the shelves next to him and located the teapot. He inched his way toward it, trying not to trip over the students who were packed in like sardines. He grabbed the teapot and put it into Trelawney's hands.

"Thank you, my dear. Incidentally," she looked deeply at him. "You will have most, but not all of your questions answered on Halloween."

Dean could feel everybody's eyes on him as if he were under a microscope. Quite a few of the students were hanging on the edge of their poufy tuffets as if looking for his approval of Trelawney's prediction.

"That's . . . just swell." was all he could muster.

After that exchange, Trelawney had instructed the class to split into pairs and enjoy the tea they were about to be served. When their tea was gone they were to take turns deciphering the tea leaves using their books as reference.

Trelawney had Dean running from table to table pouring tea for the students. The nervous boy broke a teacup and Dean was asked to clean up the shards. It was only once the students were examining their empty teacups that Dean was able to sit, relax, and drink a cup of tea on Trelawney's insistence.

"Broaden your minds, my dears, and allow your eyes to see past the mundane!" Professor Trelawney cried through the gloom.

A few minutes later Dean watched as Trelawney suddenly crossed the floor and scooped up Harry's teacup from Ron's hands. "Let me see that, my dear." she said.

She slowly spun the cup in her hands and read it out loud for the whole class to hear. "The falcon...my dear, you have a deadly enemy. . . The club . . . an attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup. . . The skull . . .danger in your path, my dear."

She abruptly shrieked and retreated to her chair to sit down. "My dear! You have. . . . the Grim!"

With that there were several gasps from students. Harry, himself was unaffected by the news.

"The Grim, my dear, the Grim!" cried Professor Trelawney, who looked shocked that Harry hadn't understood. "The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear boy, it is an omen - the worst omen - of death!"

Everyone rushed from their seats and piled around Trelawney to get a glimpse of this Grim in Harry's cup. Even Dean looked over a few of their heads hoping to see something. He had only just missed hearing Harry say something to the point of everyone needed to stop telling him he was going to die over everyone else's whispers.

Trelawney quietly excused the students from the lesson for the day. They packed their bags and descended the silvery ladder on a quest to find their next class room.

Once they were gone and it was just Dean and Trelawney left, she busied herself cleaning up the teacups from the tables.

"Is there anything else you would like me to do before I go?" Dean asked.

There was a clinking of china and Sybil stood straight up. Without turning, she said lowly, "Bring me your cup."

It was more of an order than a request. Dean grabbed his cup and brought it to her. She scooped it up and began to turn it counter-clockwise.

"A wine glass, oh my dear you must remember to act with integrity in difficult situations." she continued to peer into the cup. "Hhmm . . . scissors. To make something new, you must get rid of something old. Ah! An envelope, which means you'll be receiving news from far away!"

"Not likely." Dean scoffed.

"My dear. You must not take Tasseography so lightly. It is quite difficult and extremely accurate."

"Look, Sybil is it?" he asked.

She nodded so lively her shawl slip off her shoulder. "Y-yes, it is." she said, wildly grabbing for the end of the shawl failing several times. She managed to grab it and threw it over her shoulder again. She seemed to be quite nervous around him.

"I would absolutely love to know what's in my future." Dean started. "But this method . . . it's just not for me."

He turned and made for the silver ladder, leaving Sybil pouting with a quivering lip. He had just put his feet on the rungs when she spoke again. "Halloween!" she called after him. "You'll get your answers then!"

"Thank you, Sybil." he said not really paying attention and began to descend. Her voice changed as he lifted the hatch to close behind him.

"The Dark Lord is coming. . ."