Petri woke up early in the evening to find Harry and Rosenkol covered in flour and the table laden with an assortment of misshapen biscuits and scones.
"I see that you have been hard at work," he said, and Harry could not tell whether he was irritated or amused. "Rosenkol, tea."
The elf hurriedly began to lay out the tea set, directing its movement with his wand. This was normally a task that Petri did for himself, so Harry shot him a questioning look.
"Rosenkol has been out of sorts all week," Petri explained. "I've been a poor master to him lately, leaving him without duties. It's brought up old insecurities."
"Oh. He, er, told me, about his… past," Harry said vaguely, uncertain if he was at liberty to discuss the topic. He assumed that Petri must know, and that he did not count as a third party to whom Harry could betray the elf's trust, but it was better to be safe.
"I see," Petri murmured, glancing briefly at Rosenkol, who was still focused on his task, and then at the pile of baked goods. "He also allowed you to assist him. Interesting."
Harry flushed. "Well, it was my idea to practise cooking," he admitted. "Rosenkol said a house elf's cooking has to be flawless, and I thought, practice makes perfect. But also, I told him, 'Es ist dem Meister egal, was er isst…'"
He waited for a stinging hex, but Petri only smirked at him, before summoning a biscuit and taking an experimental bite.
"It's true," he agreed, "I don't care what I eat. This is acceptable. Still, I don't understand your fascination with servant's work. I remember you were clamouring to learn cooking and cleaning charms last year. Despite his familiarity with you, Rosenkol is not your equal."
"He's a person, too," Harry protested. He knew that Petri knew that.
"He is, and he has his needs, which include serving a master. You are a wizard, not an elf," Petri explained with surprising patience.
Harry narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean, he needs to serve a master? Needs to, how?"
"A house elf's magic depends on love and self-sacrifice. Loving someone who does not love you as much in return puts you in a subservient position." Petri sighed deeply at this, and closed his eyes. "One does not choose whom to love, unfortunately."
Petri sounded as if he knew this from personal experience, which was unfathomable to Harry. He tried to imagine Petri writing sentimental poetry for some giggling girl and only managed to nauseate himself. Also, he realised, this assertion did nothing to support the argument that house elves had to be servants.
"Wizards can love people too," he pointed out. "How is that different?"
"And do you love me?" Petri challenged, eyebrows raised.
Harry bit back a wince. He had walked right into that one.
"Well, er, no." Honesty was the best policy, wasn't it? Petri hardly looked offended.
"Then your only duty to me is as my apprentice."
"Okay, but still, shouldn't everybody know how to do 'servant's work?' What if they haven't got servants?" Harry said, not ready to back down from the argument. Petri was obviously in a good mood, because he tolerated the debate with a sanguine expression and took another bite of his biscuit.
"I never said that household charms are not valuable, only that you seem to be unduly interested in them," he said. Harry reviewed the conversation and discovered that he had already forgotten what they had started out talking about, and could not contradict that claim.
The tea set landed with a rattle on the one empty spot left on the table, and the kettle poured two cups.
"Thank you, Rosenkol," said Petri, taking a cup, though he was still looking thoughtfully at Harry. "I should not be so hard on you, I suppose. You are right to respect Rosenkol. So many wizards treat their house elves too poorly."
"But why?" Harry asked. "Surely a 'please' and 'thank you' now and then isn't hard." Not to mention refraining from horrible torture. He bit his lip.
"People conflate inferiority with worthlessness. They think those beneath them are rubbish, and those above them are gods. It's a foolish, bestial way of thought. In reality there is always room to rise or fall," Petri said.
Harry nodded, unable to find fault with this statement, even though something still felt wrong. He sipped his tea and nibbled on a scone. They really weren't half bad.
It wasn't the logic that was the problem, he thought. No… Harry mustered up his thoughts and went for another round. "What makes someone inferior or superior? Isn't everyone good at some things and bad at others?"
Petri's wand was in his hand and pointed at Harry before he could even blink, its tip glowing a threatening, cruciatus red. Harry inhaled a bit of scone and doubled over in a coughing fit, his head still awkwardly raised to track the threat. But Petri laughed quietly, and the spell did not leave his wand. Harry took a resentful swig of tea to clear his throat.
"I get it," he muttered, coughing a few more times than strictly necessary.
"Not only power, but the willingness to use it," Petri clarified. "As I mentioned, love can make even the powerful weak."
"You make love sound like a bad thing," Harry said. Trust a dark wizard to pervert all that was good. Petri snorted.
"Do I?" he said. "I haven't said anything about good or bad. We are talking about hierarchy."
"Sorry," Harry said, chastened. "So you mean, weakness isn't good or bad?"
Harry wasn't sure what to think. On the one hand, he didn't want to be so easily threatened by Petri's wand. On the other, he still remembered what the Dark Lord had said about power being dominion over other people. Harry didn't want to be better than others, he just didn't want to be at their mercy.
"It's simply unavoidable. There will always be someone more powerful than you," Petri said.
"Even if you're the Dark Lord?" Harry countered. Petri sighed.
"Even the Dark Lord is not invincible," he said, giving Harry a meaningful look.
"That doesn't count," Harry protested. "He—he was a spirit, or something, and still stronger than me now. Whatever happened when I was a baby was a fluke."
"I'm sure the Dark Lord was eager to convince you of that," Petri said. Harry saw his point, but found it unpersuasive.
"You're the one who told me to do whatever he wanted," he pointed out, suddenly angry. Had he put too much stock into Petri's advice? What if he could have stopped the Dark Lord from getting the philosopher's stone after all?
"I've been thinking," Petri said, ignoring Harry's tone, "The Dark Lord's interest in you makes no sense. At first, he would have naturally been curious about whether there was something special about you. If there was not, he should have forgotten the matter, or if there was, perhaps he would have made another attempt on your life. To use you as he did, to help him… a risky choice. Tell me, what do you think of the Dark Lord, after meeting him?"
Harry did not like that question at all. "What do you think of him?" he shot back.
Petri did not hex him, thankfully, and only sighed. "Fortunately, we have never met. I imagine we would disagree on some crucial points, and then he would be forced to kill me."
"What, really? Like what?" Harry was thrown, having thought this whole time that Petri, a dark wizard, would naturally follow the Dark Lord.
"The dark arts and their place in society, for one. The Dark Lord wants everybody to learn the dark arts—not just the dark arts, but all forms of magic. Wizards, beasts, creatures, he does not care, they are all the same to him. The strongest will naturally rise to the top and the weak will perish. He does not care about the good of our society, about order or tradition, he wants, simply, meritocracy. In the end, that's not much different from anarchy," Petri said.
"So you don't want everyone to learn dark arts?" Harry asked.
"Of course not," Petri cried. "The dark arts are highly dangerous, especially in the hands of fools and incompetents. It takes years of study to master them, yet they are so easy to simply use and abuse—I would never think it a good idea to allow just anybody to practise them. Don't you remember? That possessed professor of yours was showing you deadly curses without teaching you anything about them—that exemplifies the Dark Lord's ridiculous philosophy. You haven't been casting them any more, have you?"
Petri gave him a searching look.
"I haven't," Harry said honestly. "He tried to teach me this obscure curse that I couldn't do, before Christmas, and then after that we stopped meeting. Er, until he—the Dark Lord—possessed me."
"What curse?" Petri asked.
"The, er, protection of blood?" Harry said, struggling to recall the name. Petri's eyes sharpened in recognition.
"Why that charm?" he wondered aloud. "It's exceedingly useless unless cast as an enchantment, and even then… mostly an academic curiosity."
Harry shrugged. "He was pretending to help me defend myself against Silviu at the time. He said it, er, would stop him from using sympathetic magic?"
Petri laughed incredulously. "Surely you realise how ridiculous that is? You're an orphan, last of your line," he said. "There's no bloodline for the charm to protect."
"There's Aunt Petunia," Harry protested. Petri looked at him blankly. "My muggle aunt. The one I used to live with. Er, do muggles count?"
"Muggles count," Petri muttered, his brows furrowing. "I never asked, but why the devil were you living with muggles? Surely there were wizards lining up to adopt you, survivor of the Dark Lord?"
"Er, well, Aunt Petunia is my family," he said. Not that she'd ever acted like it.
"You were obviously unhappy there. I remember what you told me about how those filthy muggles treated you, and you've never once expressed that you'd like to return to them," Petri pointed out. He gracefully left out part where he had kidnapped Harry, and left him with little choice.
Harry hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Good riddance. You're right. It was awful there. She hated me."
He realised, dismally, that Petri treated his house elf better than Aunt Petunia had ever treated him.
Petri also seemed to have some kind of epiphany. "Arabella lives down the street from those muggles," he said.
It took Harry a moment to place who Petri was talking about. "Mrs Figg? Yeah."
"Dumbledore gave her that house, a decade ago, it must have been," Petri muttered, half to himself. "You knew Arabella, didn't you? You said she would watch you?"
"Er, yeah," Harry said. "When the Dursleys—my relatives, were out."
"She never mentioned anything," Petri said. "But why would she? It wasn't relevant. Perhaps we should just ask."
He waved his wand in a distracted circle and a piece of parchment slipped out from underneath a plate of biscuits and zoomed into his hand. He colour-changed words onto the parchment and charmed it to fold itself, which Harry thought was excessively lazy.
"Rosenkol, deliver this to Arabella," he ordered, tossing the note to the elf. "Wait for a reply."
"Right away, Master," said Rosenkol, vanishing with a pop.
"What did you ask her?" Harry asked, feeling lost.
"I asked her to come for dinner tomorrow," he said. "There's something strange about all this. I think Dumbledore must have placed her there specifically to watch over you. But why? She's a squib; she wasn't going to be protecting you from anything. Nor did she teach you about magic—you thought she was a muggle, right?"
Harry nodded.
"So Dumbledore was interested in observing you, for some reason, and the Dark Lord was also interested…"
This line of thought reminded Harry of something that he wasn't sure he should bring up. He hesitated for a few moments before curiosity overwhelmed caution.
"The Dark Lord said something, that he intended to kill me when I was a baby, me specifically, and not my parents, and I asked Dumbledore about it and he knew why but he said he couldn't tell me. Because grammatica," Harry said.
"You said the Dark Lord taught you arithmancy?" Petri demanded, as if that were the most salient thing he'd revealed.
"Er, not exactly. He just told me some things about it, er, mostly grammatology, and I read some of the textbook," Harry said.
"I see… For future reference, if hearing about something is grammatica, then that something must be a prophecy," Petri said, grimacing. "Why am I surprised? That explains everything."
"What, how?" Harry asked.
"It's called the fateful word effect, but really it's the same concept as any other grammatica. What did the Dark Lord tell you grammatica was?" Petri asked.
Harry felt a twinge of nervousness, as if he were about to get an answer wrong in a lesson, which was silly. "He said it's when you use words to influence other people's magic."
Petri nodded, so Harry supposed the Dark Lord had taught him the truth after all.
"Yes, that's the general concept. It's called a fateful word if it's spoken divination, such as a tarot reading by somebody with a clear inner eye," Petri explained.
"Inner eye?" Harry asked. "Is that the same thing as, er, a talent for divination?"
"I wouldn't call it a talent, exactly. It's more like a suitable attitude," Petri said.
"Really? The Dark Lord made it sound innate—he told me he couldn't do it," Harry said. "He said only one in two people could."
"It isn't innate, but it's not something that's easily changed," Petri said. "One in two is generous. Perhaps one in two can do general readings, but only one in ten will make precise predictions. But it is possible to improve."
"How?" Harry asked.
"Something more easily said than done," said Petri. "You have to accept fate, accept what you learn unconditionally. If you have even the faintest hopes or fears for the future, then your inner eye will be clouded and you will simply see what you want to see, rather than the truth. People with strong ambitions, people like the Dark Lord, would find it difficult to think like this, I suppose."
"Oh," Harry mumbled. "That makes sense. So what's special about a prophecy?"
He knew what the word meant, non-technically—a prediction. But Petri was obviously referring to something specific.
"A prophecy is a sort of… spontaneous message," Petri said. He looked uncomfortable. "Usually it's a warning or a threat. Normally, when you divine, you're asking for some information, but a prophecy isn't something you asked for, you simply receive it whether you want it or not. The information is always about something influential that affects the fates of many people, so usually it's only important people in society, leaders or kings, who receive them."
"And you think Dumbledore got one?" Harry asked.
"You said he told you it would be grammatica to tell you why the Dark Lord tried to kill you?" Petri asked.
"Er, he didn't say that explicitly," Harry said, wondering if he had just jumped to conclusions and was accidentally blowing everything out of proportion. "He told me something like, he thought he shouldn't tell me, and that I shouldn't try to find out."
That sounded really lame, now that he had said it out loud.
"Hmm," said Petri. "Perhaps he just thought you were too young to hear whatever it was. But that doesn't explain the Dark Lord's interest. Some kind of prophecy involving you and him would make sense."
"Wait. If it was Dumbledore's prophecy, wouldn't it be about him?" Harry asked.
"It would be relevant to him, yes, but not necessarily about him," Petri corrected. "Dumbledore would certainly have been interested in the Dark Lord's fate."
"How do you know he didn't just do, er, regular divination?" Harry asked.
"If it's true that he did not tell you to avoid doing grammatica, then it must have been a prophecy, because no other fateful word can be transferred like that, as far as anybody knows," Petri explained. "If I do a tarot reading for you, your future will be influenced, but if you tell someone else about the reading, even if somebody views the memory of it, it won't have a further effect. Prophecy isn't like that. It stays active, and the more people hear it, the stronger its effect."
"Er, that's kind of scary," Harry said. "So I guess it's good that he didn't tell me, then."
Petri grimaced. "It's difficult to say. If there is a prophecy, then it's probably already in effect, and your possible future is already restricted. At a certain point, it might be better to know, even if that cuts the possibilities down even more."
"Yesterday you mentioned I could try to see my fate, like you did, didn't you?" Harry asked, reminded of their cryptic conversation about choices the evening before.
"You can try," Petri said. "Are you finished with your tea?"
Harry blinked at this non sequitur and glanced briefly into his teacup. There were only some soggy dregs remaining.
"Er, yeah," he said.
"Bring the teacup," Petri said, leaving his own cup on the table and striding over to the trunk. Harry followed him, resisting the urge to ask annoying questions that he supposed would be answered soon enough.
They passed through the blood door and the hexagonal antechamber, emerging in Petri's workroom.
"Have you studied divination at all in school yet?" Petri asked.
"Er, no," said Harry. "I think it's an elective, for third year."
"No wonder you're so eager. Telling the future is like asking questions to a dog," Petri said. "It won't lie to you, but its answers will be basically incomprehensible. All these things," He waved his wand at the top row of cabinets and summoned some of their contents to the table—crystal balls in various colours, a deck of cards, a human skull with a pipe coming out of it, and a bunch of twigs tied together with a string—"all these things are tools to help translate that answer. Hopefully some combination of them will work for you."
"Er, okay. So what do I do?" Harry asked. Petri summoned a book and opened it up to an apparently random page with a flick of his wand. He covered up something with his hand and then beckoned for Harry to come closer.
"Look at these symbols," he said, indicating the left half of the page.
Harry saw some fairly basic drawings—a sun, a leaf, a cross, a sailboat, a dog, and a heart.
"Now look for one of these in your teacup," Petri said. Harry peered up at him sceptically but he was completely serious, so Harry looked. To his surprise, he immediately identified a rather lumpy four-legged figure with menacing jaws looming against the pale porcelain.
"Looks like the dog," he said.
"Hmm," said Petri, sounding vaguely pleased. He uncovered the book and read, "The Grim is an omen of untimely death. Apart from physical death, it may symbolize an unexpected end to a relationship or the passing of an important opportunity. As we are interested in your fate, I would take it that we've found your literal death. A good start."
Harry wouldn't call dying a good start by any means. "Er, so I'm going to die young?" he asked. For some reason, he felt rather indifferent to the prospect, even though he was trying his best to take everything seriously.
"In the majority of possible futures, you die unnaturally," Petri corrected. "Let's move on. Show me your cup. Aguamenti. Relashio."
Petri returned the cup, now filled and steaming.
"While you wait for the tea to steep, tell me what you think of what you just saw," he said.
Harry blinked. "Er, that's sort of a rubbish future, I suppose."
"Hmm. What else would you like to know?" Petri asked.
"When I'll die?" Harry said.
"Drink your tea," said Petri, nodding. The tea was still too scalding to drink. so he swirled it around a bit and then sipped at it cautiously. Eventually, when there were just the dregs left again, Harry scrutinised them for another shape. There was a somewhat pointed blob in the centre, with some missing bits.
"I think it's a leaf," he said.
Petri read from the book again. "The leaf symbolises springtime and youth. It may be a signal that something will happen early, or that new experiences await."
"I'm going to die young," Harry said again, a little vindicated.
Petri hummed again. "You seem very interested in dying young," he said.
"What? No," Harry denied. "That's just literally what the book is saying."
"Perhaps," Petri allowed, obviously not convinced. "Let's try the place of death. I hope you have no preconceived notions about that."
Harry shook his head. Petri refilled his cup, and he had the feeling that he was going to be drinking an unfortunate amount of weak tea today.
He finished off his third cup, his stomach feeling rather sloshy. "Er, I really can't tell what this is. Maybe the sun? But it's pretty vague." He showed Petri the cup.
"Nothing," Petri agreed. "That suggests that there really are many possible deaths, in a variety of places. What do you think of that?"
Harry considered the information that he was likely to die young no matter where he was, and had to conclude that the only way that made sense was if somebody was trying very intentionally to kill him. "I'm going to be—possibly going to be murdered," he said. "By the Dark Lord, do you think?"
"I would normally say not to guess too far ahead," Petri said, "but in this case that seems likely, yes."
"So it's a possible future, or many possible ones. So er, how do I avoid that?" Harry asked. "There's a way, right? You said you could choose."
Petri nodded. "That is the difficult part. I recommend that you do more general divination first to gather more information."
"I'm feeling a bit sick from drinking so much tea," Harry protested.
"Try the crystals," Petri suggested. He flipped through his book. "Look for one of these in the blue crystal."
There were new symbols on the page—a snowflake, a bird, a diagonal cross, a wand, a diamond, and a spiral.
"How does this work, anyway?" Harry asked, unable to make heads or tails of the apparently random images.
"As I said, you are trying to decipher that which your inner eye sees. This is a book of symbolism sets. Using a random set helps you avoid wishful thinking, but even then you may still see what you want to see instead of what truly is, or misinterpret the sign," Petri explained. "It's best if you try to forget what you learned from the tessomancy. The tea reading."
"What about the memory charm?" Harry suggested again. "Then I'll actually forget."
"It's a good idea, in principle," Petri said. "I haven't heard of it being done before. If you're willing, then we can try it." He opened one of the large cabinets and took out his pensieve.
Mist swirled, and Harry gasped as he was ejected from the memory. He rubbed at his forehead, finding it deeply disturbing to see himself and Petri almost exactly as they were now, but to have absolutely no episodic memory of it.
Petri looked up from the book he was reading. "Next one?" he asked.
Harry nodded, eyeing the phials of silvery memory resting in a row on the table. They had apparently done this five times. He used his wand to scoop the first memory back out and then poured the second one. Taking a deep breath, though it was unnecessary, he plunged back into the pensieve.
He remembered blacking out after entering the trunk, and then waking up to read a note from himself, in his own hand, about what they were doing. He had been slightly distrustful of Petri for a moment after immediately blacking out again, but the first trip into the pensieve had convinced him that nothing untoward had happened, and that the whole thing had been his own idea in the first place.
This second memory must have taken place just after he read his note. Fortunately, he had thought to write down some information about symbol sets and divination there, because the second time around, Petri was noticeably reticent and unhelpful. Harry supposed he hadn't wanted to influence the results.
"I see a wand, I think," said Harry in the memory, peering intently into a fist-sized, pale blue crystal ball. Harry stepped closer so that he could see what his past self had learned. There was a weakly shimmering light in the crystal, concentrated in a single, somewhat wavering beam.
"The wand symbolises power and challenge. It signals difficult times and conflict ahead, which must be overcome if the subject is to succeed," Petri read.
"This is about how I'll die, right? Maybe I'll be killed in a duel. Or if I win, I suppose that means I won't die?" Harry speculated.
Petri remained stone faced and did not say anything when Harry looked to him, except, "Write it down, and then let's move on to your next question."
"Who's going to duel me?" Harry asked, to present-Harry's surprise. He had expected himself to ask the same questions each time, but he supposed the first thing he saw must have influenced him more than he would have thought.
"I see a wand again. Are you sure this is working?" past-Harry asked.
"If you see the wand, then the wand is the best answer to your question," Petri said. "Would you like me to read the entry again?"
"No, it's fine," said Harry. "Difficulty and conflict? So it's an enemy I'm duelling. I mean I suppose that's kind of obvious… not like a friend is going to be duelling me to kill. But that doesn't really tell me who it is. It could be anyone…"
Having seen the first memory, Harry admitted to himself that his mind had immediately leapt to Lord Voldemort, but he could also understand how, without the tessomancy results, he might be confused as to the meaning of the crystal gazing. His enemy list intersected dismally much with his friends list—Petri, Silviu, the Dark Lord, Dumbledore—any of them could be either one. They were all also definitely capable of killing him in a duel. Dumbledore, perhaps not, as he didn't seem the murdering type, but Harry also knew him the least well. With the right motivation, perhaps…
Harry in the memory seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he said, "Why are they duelling me? That's a better question."
Harry half expected to see the unhelpful wand again, but the light in the crystal warped and shuddered, spreading out and multiplying into a complex geometric form.
"Snowflake," said Harry in the memory.
"The snowflake represents winter, the inevitable end of an era, the completion of a cycle. Winter may bring death, but more often it means sleep, at the end of which comes spring, the reawakening of life," Petri obligingly read. He frowned, breaking his indifferent facade.
"The reason someone is duelling me is to… finish something? It can't be reawakening if I'm dead," Harry muttered.
"The completion of a cycle—it may also mean that they are doing it because it is fated," Petri said. Harry looked surprised at this contribution.
"What does that mean, doing something because it's fated? Fate means that's how it will happen. But it's not the reason why it happens. Isn't that circular?" he asked.
"It's circular, but possible," Petri said. "What you are doing now is trying to learn your fate. If you do anything because of what you learn, is that not, in some way, acting because of fate?"
"What, so you mean I find out I'm supposed to duel this person, and they did divination and found out the same thing, and we end up duelling to the death for no reason?" Harry demanded. "That's completely mad."
"It's completely rational," Petri averred. "If you are fated to duel to the death, would you not rather duel on your own terms? Your opponent will think the same thing, and strive to strike first. The outcome is precisely in line with fate."
"But it would be better if we never duelled at all!" Harry protested. "Just, agreed to ignore each other and forget about fate. Obliviated ourselves."
"You're right in theory of course, but it is never that simple in reality. For you to divine a fate means that it is probable, not only possible. Perhaps if you lose that knowledge, forget it, then the probability of it coming to pass will fall. But will it fall enough? It's impossible for you to know what would happen if you did not know. You might very well die in this duel anyway, unprepared," Petri concluded.
Harry's jaw dropped, past and present.
"This is cruel," said past-Harry, staring at the crystal. No matter how long he looked, the light remained in its frozen lattice.
Present-Harry was occupied with another matter, two thoughts that were chasing each other around his skull: "The opponent is Lord Voldemort" and "he would strive to strike first."
Intending to kill Harry as a baby. A miscalculation. It just fit too well—Lord Voldemort must have known about this fate, known about it before Harry was even born, perhaps.
He shook his head as the memory ended. It was too early to jump to conclusions. He understood now why attempting to divine anything less vague than the arbitrary symbol set would be an exercise in futility. Even with such ambiguous results, his mind was already filling in details at an alarming rate. How could he possibly see past his expectations to the truth?
Harry groaned, and Petri gave him a knowing look and passed him the third memory.
They used the skull in the third attempt. Petri explained that the skull belonged to Aleksandra, Harry's predecessor, and that she would be happy to send them visions. He lit a short candle and placed it in the cavern, which made an eerie, flickering glow emerge from the eye-holes, and an unexpected amount of smoke began to waft from the pipe sticking out of the top.
"You have to inhale the smoke, and then expel it," Petri explained. He demonstrated briefly, and Harry saw a surprisingly coherent, if not comprehensible, scene played out in smoky figures—a contingent of red-robed aurors, a great plume of black smoke shooting into the sky, and then the ocean, choppy and beset by a storm, with the vague outline of an island in the distance.
Harry tried to do the same thing, and of course started hacking and sputtering everywhere, but it was enough to release the smoke. It billowed out and Harry glimpsed a forest clearing full of robed and masked figures, and a flash of green light—then a graveyard, and green light again, but then it flared golden for some reason—a cavernous room with smooth marble floors, and again the golden light—scene after scene, but always spellfire, and the light.
"I'm going to die by a golden light," Harry mumbled as he finally recovered from his coughing fit. He glanced to Petri, who seemed equally at a loss.
"I've never seen anything like that before," he said.
Present-Harry thought that the light was maybe not the salient part, but the duelling. In the first vision, there hadn't been duelling, and there hadn't been golden light, only the unforgettable colour of the killing curse. Surely that meant that Harry was dead in that vision, whereas in the others, something else had happened. Whatever that light was, he didn't think it was deadly, and it had something to do with the duelling.
"How come it can't show something that makes more sense?" Harry grumbled.
"You cannot see a future that would not take place if you knew of it," Petri said. "Be grateful. A detailed fate is an unavoidable one."
Harry groaned into the mist.
In the fourth memory, they used the bundle of sticks, which Harry simply took in hand and hurled at the ground. They scattered satisfyingly across the wooden floor.
"How many crossings?" Petri asked, holding a small book in his hand.
Harry counted, and then counted again, just in case. "Seven."
Petri grimaced. "Crossings represent the importance of your fate to the fate of others. Seven is the most powerful number, which means your fate influences a great many people."
"How?" Harry demanded. "I don't even know that many people!"
Petri did not answer, and only said, "How many uncrossed sticks?"
"None," Harry mumbled.
"Uncrossed sticks represent the importance of others' fates to yours. Zero is invisibility, or the closed cycle. It suggests that anybody capable of influencing your fate is also influenced by it."
"That's not helpful since you just said my fate influences loads of people," Harry muttered.
"How many separate groups of sticks?" Petri asked. Harry stared at him blankly, so he pointed with his fingers and indicated the disconnected shapes. "One, two, three. The driving force of your fate is a conflict of powerful ideals."
Both past and present Harry were rather lost at this point.
"Finally, how many closed shapes? Just one. Your fate can be thwarted through unity and purity," Petri finished, and snapped the book shut.
"I didn't understand any of that," Harry complained, though he had written down Petri's commentary verbatim.
"Xylomancy is very rigid, and thus imprecise," Petri said.
Present-Harry thought that the xylomancy results made some sense, in light of the other things he had seen. It seemed more and more like there was just one central figure in his fate—his would-be murderer, his duelling opponent, the one who influenced and would be influenced by his fate, and whose fate would affect many others—all these things pointed to Lord Voldemort.
There was just one final memory left. Harry guessed that they had used the tarot cards.
He was right. For this one, Petri sat down across from Harry, picked up the deck, and began shuffling it methodically.
"You cannot give yourself fateful words, so I will read for you," Petri told him.
Harry nodded, taking his word for it.
"Make notes on what I say," he said, beginning to deal cards without any pomp or circumstance. Somehow, Harry had thought getting his fortune told would be more mystical than this. He readied his quill.
When Petri had dealt seven cards face up in a column, he glanced over them once and then began to speak, pointing to the cards.
"Your enemy—an enemy of your past—will be renewed. Your friends… choice and change. You must choose to keep your friends or abandon them for their actions."
Harry shifted uneasily as he marked the full stop. Present-Harry was surprised at how specific and understandable the reading was compared to all the prior methods. Perhaps his expectations had got lower after being frustrated by too much vagueness.
Petri dealt seven more cards to the left of the first column. His eyebrows rose.
"Disaster is likely, but distant. Your death… pivotal. The status quo will be saved."
Harry really did not like how this sounded. Petri dealt cards again.
"A deep desire of yours will be attained unexpectedly. Judgement—guilt will destroy your life."
"What?" Harry demanded, pale.
"We will speak after you've reminded yourself of all the results," Petri said.
Mist brought Harry back to reality.
"My future is depressing," he concluded. Petri looked worried, which did not reassure him.
"I have thought about what we saw today, but I want you to draw your own conclusions first," he said.
Harry collected up all the parchments with the notes he had made and tried to consolidate them all into one narrative.
"It seems like everything points to the Dark Lord as the most important person for my fate. We'll be in conflict somehow, maybe a duel, but I don't know if the duelling is literal. But…" Harry thought about the second memory, the snowflake in the crystal. "It seems like there's no actual reason for the conflict. Also a lot of other people will be affected, but that makes sense because didn't the Dark Lord practically start a war last time?"
Even as Harry said all this, his eyes refused to leave the last line from the tarot reading. A deep desire of his—that could refer to none other than the resurrection of his parents that he had seen in the golden mirror. So the mirror really did show the future, or some version of it. But why would guilt destroy his life? Would he have to do something terrible to bring his parents back? It was very possible, knowing the sorts of ingredients that were commonly used for enchanting the dead, and it scared him that the thought did not dissuade him.
"Yes. I am more and more certain that there really is a prophecy," Petri said. "Your fate is extremely convergent, as if your death is imminent, but there were no signs of urgency, not even in the cards. In fact, the cards tell us that death is distant, at least many years away. I can't think of any other way for a future to be so predictable than that everybody involved already knows about it. I pulled twenty-one cards and there were twelve major arcana, twelve."
"Is that bad?" Harry asked. "Er, how do the cards work, anyway?"
"There are twenty-two major arcana in total, out of seventy-eight cards in the deck. Twelve in one reading is extremely many. They represent important, life-changing events," Petri explained. "I suppose it must be right. The Dark Lord will soon be restored by the philosopher's stone, we are sure of that much. He will be gathering his following, and we will all have to decide our loyalties."
"So what do I do?" Harry asked, half afraid that Petri would have no answer.
But he did. "You must choose, now that you have seen the options," he said.
"What options? Die, or die?" Harry demanded. Petri sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.
"Everybody dies—that's fate. You are fated to die at the hand of the Dark Lord, as are many. If you cannot accept your fate, then we can proceed no further," he said harshly.
Harry felt his ears burning in frustration, but he thought he understood Petri's point. He was focusing too much on the part that seemingly could not be changed, rather than the parts that were still more than vague enough to present possibilities.
"I want to die later then, as late as possible," he said.
"Which divining medium did you prefer?" Petri asked. Harry considered the question. The tea leaves were out. His stomach was still sloshing. The skull had also looked unpleasant.
"Er, the cards made the most sense, but you said I couldn't read myself?" he said.
"You cannot tell your own future effectively, but you can certainly ask for guidance," Petri said. "It's much more difficult than any of the general divination we did today. You will have to consult the cards daily to familiarise yourself with them. I also recommend writing down all your dreams."
"My dreams? Why?" Harry asked. It was true that his dreams sometimes contained vague hints about what kind of day he was about to have, but he had always chalked it up to coincidence.
"The dead inhabit the space of dreams, and sometimes they can even communicate information through them," Petri explained.
"So, there really is an afterlife?" Harry asked. "Confirmed?"
Petri snorted. "There's nothing confirmed about it. At best, death will be just like a dream from which you can never wake. At worst, these impressions of the dead are nothing more than figments of memory from the living. Regardless, when you die, you're gone. If somebody conjures you, some version of you might enjoy a few moments of false life. That's all."
He spoke with such bitterness that Harry could not find it in himself to argue.
But Petri had to be wrong, because the fateful words he had told Harry, about the achievement of his desire, meant that true resurrection really was possible. And how could it be possible if the dead were figments, and not real?