Chapter Twenty-Nine – The Newt in Divination

I spent all Monday cramming for my NEWT. Back in the common room after dinner, everyone was poring over the copies of The Quibbler that Luna's father had sent. The articles were all very favorable and we all sounded both intelligent and sincere. Everyone looked very attractive in the pictures. Just about the entire issue was taken up by reporting on the 'exclusive coverage' of the press conference. Xenophilius had included a note, apologizing for not sending copies by the morning owls, explaining that he wanted to keep every copy he could print for sale. He had been able to sell every copy he printed, until he dispatched the owls at noon. We went to bed a little early, and I slept in the girls' dorm again, missing Harry, but wanting to keep Professor McGonagall and Mom happy, and wanting to get as much sleep as possible, in order to be fresh for my NEWT.

I went down to breakfast extra early, ahead of everyone else, and was already getting up from the table as the others arrived. Harry met me on his way to the table, and gave me a big hug and a snog.

{[happy] Good luck on your exam. I'll see you after you finish. We're going to be in the library.}

I walked briskly to the classroom, where the exam was scheduled to be given. I wanted time to pull myself together, before the exam began. A few minutes after I arrived, one of the aurors arrived and then Professor Flitwick came and unlocked the door to the classroom. He directed me to the middle seat in the front row.

"Since it's just you taking the exam, Miss Weasley, I'll just give it to you now, and you may begin immediately. You have two hours. Here's your exam book, here is the question sheet, and I'm starting the time right now."

I felt like the subject of intense scrutiny as Flitwick eyed me from the front of the room and the auror watched me from the rear, pacing about the back of the room. If I had planned on cheating, I certainly would have been out of luck. I was encouraged to see that the longest essay question requested a detailed discussion of the factors affecting the accuracy of a prophecy: the extent to which the Wizards involved could alter the fate forecast by a valid prophecy; how to assess whether a particular prophecy was valid; how prophecies were stored by the Ministry; and to state, analyze, and comment in detail about any specific prophecy of my choosing. Given our discussion with Professors McGonagall and Trelawney the other night, our adventures seeking Harry's prophecy at the Ministry, and the detailed discussions which I had participated in concerning the Harry/Voldemort prophecy, I felt confident of earning full marks on this question, which counted for fifty percent of the exam.

I think I did reasonably well on the more detailed questions regarding the interpretation of tea stains and palms, remembering a fair amount of what Professor Trelawney had taught us and having crammed on these topics throughout Monday. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a question on interpretation of prophecies and readings based on celestial observation, which required a short essay, and was worth twenty percent. Since I was one of the female students who found myself particularly taken with Professor Firenze, I had maintained rapt attention to his lectures. I would have been in far worse shape had the twenty pointer been on astrology instead. I had also crammed astrology, but had found Professor Trelawney's lectures rather boring, so would not have been equipped with anything other than the specific facts that I had crammed. I felt certain that, at NEWT level, the graders would be seeking a deeper understanding on a twenty point question.

I finished about fifteen minutes before the exam was to end and spent my remaining time quickly skimming my answers, correcting a few minor errors that I had made due to the haste with which I was writing. I was feeling quite good about my performance when Professor Flitwick came up beside me and asked for the exam book back. I gave it to him, watched him seal it, and initial the seal. Then it was off to the library to join the others.

When I entered the library, I could tell by the way she was sitting and flicking her pen between the notes she was writing down, that Hermione had found something important and was very excited. I made enough noise upon entering the library that she looked up and immediately motioned for me to join her. She was working alone at one of the tables provided for students in the main section of the library. The others were in the adjacent room, rooting through the visual archives. I knew, from our prior foray into that room, that it housed exclusively photographs, drawings, and paintings. I sat down next to Hermione and she whispered to me, "I found an old record in a book from 1840. It quotes Nicholas Flamel as describing an interesting case of telepathy between a German couple.

"Flamel had studied the couple years earlier and reported that they were able to freely exchange thoughts, emotions, and even a fixed visual image of something that one of them was staring at. The husband could transmit his thoughts to his wife over a distance of six feet and he could pick up her thoughts from a distance of four feet. The author describes elaborate precautions that Flamel took to rule out any possibility that he was being hoaxed. I was just beginning to read the really interesting part, when you arrived.

"This couple later had a son and two daughters. Flamel returned to interview them all years after his original investigation, when the son was seven and the sisters were eleven and thirteen. Both parents were able to exchange thoughts with their son, but not with either of the daughters. The father and son could communicate over a distance of up to a dozen feet, in either direction. Flamel put them in separate rooms, with a one foot thick stone wall between them and found that they were still able to communicate at a distance of four feet, including the wall. The mother could only communicate with her son at a distance of four feet. Now, here's another really interesting thing. By that time, the husband and wife had noticed an increased ability to trade thoughts, and could do so at a distance of up to twenty feet.

"The author says he has searched diligently through the Wizard records at Durmstrang, the Paris Ministry library, and what he describes as 'with special permission from the Hogwarts staff to view their reserved collection', but could find no further mention of this phenomenon. I think this man has done the bulk of our research for us. We now know we are highly unlikely to find any records older than 1840, unless there was something else in Flamel's records that this author did not review.

"There could be something more recent in the Hogwarts restricted collection. Dumbledore and Flamel were great friends and there may well be some correspondence that touches on this phenomenon. Flamel may have even sent some of his original records to Dumbledore. After all, he knew six years ago, when he allowed Dumbledore to destroy the Sorcerer's Stone, that he and his wife would not have long to live. I found a reference that says Flamel died three years ago and that his wife died a year later. So, Dumbledore was still alive at the time and Flamel would have expected him to live another several decades. It makes sense that he would give Dumbledore his most important research papers for safekeeping. I'm going to look for them in the restricted section, before we leave for the Continent."

"That is very interesting information," I replied, a little stunned to have learned so much so fast. Hermione certainly was everything she claimed to be, when it came to library research. "It just feels good to know that at least one other family had the same ability that Harry and I have. It makes it seem rare, but not freaky."

"Happy to be of service," Hermione answered. "You know how much I enjoy getting really deep into a research project."

It was nearing lunchtime when Harry and the others stuck their heads out of the visual archives room. "Look what we found," Ron beckoned us. Entering the room we saw a large unframed pencil drawing on very yellow and cracked paper. The drawing was a good four feet by three feet and was dated 1591. It was a detailed drawing of one side of the stables. The interesting feature was that, unlike the oil paintings, which we had examined earlier, this one clearly showed a lot of fine detail on a second floor of the stables, with glassed windows, fitted with shutters. We tried to estimate the size of the windows, from the sketch of two men and a horse shown in front of the stables and from the open stable door next to these figures. The windows appeared to be about five feet high and three and a half to four feet wide. Only one window was depicted with the shutters open, and it showed the window divided into nine panes, with what might have been wood lath separating the panes. There were six windows showing on the second level, which might well correspond to six rooms. It was possible that the boys had found our first concrete evidence of the original Gryffindor dormitory.

George was very excited. "Luna and I found it, going through this box of really old drawings. We also found a few old, or even older, drawings of the castle, that I'd like to examine in more detail on another day. These drawings are from the days when students aimed for exactly capturing the image, with all of its detail, and no poetic or artistic embellishments. They're much more trustworthy than the later oils. The guys who drew these pictures also really understood what they were doing with perspective. The school must have taught pencil drawing back in the day. There aren't a lot of drawings in the archive, but what's there is really quite good."

"This has been a very productive morning," Harry declared, "but it's time for lunch. We have our visit to the Ministry and night on the town to look forward to."

As we were leaving the library, Harry touched the back of my neck{[exultant] How'd your NEWT go. You look very happy and confident, so I'm assuming it went very well. I never realized that rooting through old archives could be so exciting or so worthwhile. I'm beginning to see why Hermione gets such a kick out of library research.}

"I think I did really well," I replied as we walked to lunch, "it was as if some of the questions were written just for me. I got to use just about everything we talked about with Professors McGonagall and Trelawney in their apartment. I have a really good feeling that I passed. And, more excitement, while you and the guys were finding those pencil drawings, Hermione found an old 1840 reference to a family that had the same skill as our secret communications. A Nicholas Flamel did the study. You'll remember him from the Sorcerer's Stone."

"I certainly do, but we're at lunch, we'd better drop this, for later."

"One more thing, before we sit down," I spoke quickly as I led Harry to a quiet corner of the Great Hall. "The exam brought the whole meeting in McGonagall's apartment flashing back to me, including your comment about her manipulating me, because the prophecy made me very important. How do I protect myself from that?"

"You make her job a lot harder if you don't let her know what kind of candy you like. The most dangerous candy is craving her approval. Be your own judge of your worth. Or, just accept my view that you are the most wonderful person I know."

Harry had embarrassed himself and he scurried back to the table, before I had a chance to ask him more about candy.

McGonagall was immersed in detailed planning with Mom and Bill, the auror, by the time we sat down at the table. It had been decided that we would disapparate for the Ministry at around 1:30, guided by Bill, who was authorized to apparate directly into Dad's antechamber, which was just down the hall from the Minister's conference room, in the top executive wing of the Ministry. The executive wing was an inner sanctum sanctorum more restricted than the area housing the Deputy Under-Secretaries to the Minister, like Delores Umbridge, which Harry had successfully infiltrated just a few months ago.

Mom explained that we would meet at the entry steps and depart from there, after we had changed our clothes. Dad had provided suitable Muggle dinner attire, which was waiting in the Gryffindor common room, and which we were to wear under our formal robes for our meetings and press conference at the Ministry.

"This built up a degree of agitated excitement that took enough of an edge off my appetite that I didn't even mind when the headmaster announced "just light fare for lunch, since I'm sure the Minister will feed you extremely well. Old Kingsley is delighted to spend some of Malfoy's Muggle money in London. He's settled our obligations to the Muggle Prime Minister and still has what he described as 'two million quid' of Lucius's spare cash. He assured me, when I gave him a blank look, that it really is an awful lot of money. I just hope Kingsley is neither standing out among the Muggles nor causing the Wizarding community to doubt his honesty."

Lunch was basically a light tomato bouillon soup and a few crackers, which certainly came under the category of light fare. Draco seemed hugely annoyed and announced that he would have to hunt up another picnic basket for the afternoon. Much as I enjoyed seeing Draco feeling sorry for himself, we had to hurry back to Gryffindor to get ready for our trip. I grabbed the parcel with my name on it and rushed up to the girls' dorm to change. Hermione and Luna were right behind me.

"Today may be the only chance we get for months," Hermione began, "to have Rita Skeeter in a position where we can challenge her about the interviews on the train, her connections to the Malfoys, Draco's wand, and our trashed dorm. I hate to pass it by, but we have enough gaps in our knowledge that we're going to have to bluff that we know more than we do, and hope we can trick or frighten her into filling in the missing pieces. I think Ginny is right that Rita is guilty of something in this affair, probably much of it. It is not just proving her guilt - the more important thing is that if we can get to the bottom of this mystery, it will lift a cloud from some other people, like Margaret and Millicent."

For some reason, I dropped my voice to a whisper as I suggested to Hermione "I doubt the Minister knows or would appreciate Rita keeping him in the dark about being an unregistered animagus. If you hinted in that direction, it might cause her to confess the smaller secret, before you reveal the larger one."

"I like the way you think," Hermione complimented me. "I'll have to think how we can make this work."

"Don't get too carried away in your enthusiasm with my mental doodling," I said. "I recognize there are a lot of holes in my theory. I haven't explained Mrs. Goyle, or how Narcissa or somebody else learned where Lucius hid Voldemort's wand. So, to make my theory work it has to involve not only Rita and Narcissa, but Lucius who, unless he faked the estrangement to throw us off, is not on speaking terms with Narcissa. I also don't understand how the remaining Death Eaters fit into this. We believe they would kill, rather than help, either Malfoy. Then, there is also the mystery of why Umbridge was carrying poison, in addition to the letter from Lucius. It's like she was on two different missions at the same time."

"Alright," Hermione agreed. "Perhaps it is best not to confront Rita, unless I can fit a few more of the pieces into place, especially if there were multiple plots and plotters. However, Rita could be one of the pieces that tie them together. Her work would bring her into contact with both the Malfoys, and also with known Death Eaters, particularly Thicknesse, when he was Minister. And, if these aren't all separate plots, but linked, with the animosities faked in order to draw off suspicion, then Rita would be the perfect intermediary. As a reporter, she is expected to move about and talk to all sorts of people, and, with her bug routine, she could elude surveillance even without apparating. I definitely have to think some more on this one."

The boys were waiting for us, when we returned to the common room. Harry had decided to take Draco's wand with us, just in case he could arrange with Minister Shacklebolt to conduct an experiment with Voldemort's wand. We were all leaving the common room, just as Mom was trying to cross the portal. Seeing us, she turned around and accompanied us to the entry stairs. "I was just a little worried that you were going to be late, and that would be an embarrassment to your father," she said by way of explanation. "By the way Ginny, with all the excitement about planning this visit to the Ministry, I forgot to ask how well you did on your NEWT exam."

"I think I did just GREAT, Mom!"

Soon we had joined Bill in front of the entry steps. He was staring at his watch, and at exactly 1:29 he told us to join hands. "You will not be allowed to have wands in your hands within the executive wing of the Ministry, so make sure your wands stay safely stowed in your robes." I was watching his wrist as he lectured us, and at exactly 1:30 I felt myself pulled back into never-never land. I was thinking this guy doesn't fool around when he says ABOUT 1:30. My musings were halted as we apparated into what I was told was Dad's antechamber. It was very impressive. A large waiting room, at least twenty by thirty feet, with a Witch assistant at a big formal desk of some exotic wood, just waiting to greet visitors, and a really thick carpet that one sank into, almost up to the ankles.