"You're taking this 'please-the-in-laws' thing too seriously," Ron told Hermione as she checked her purse. " I don't even want to please Muriel."
Hermione slid her wand into her purse and snapped it shut. "At least she won't be pestering us with owls every other day, now," she said.
"She didn't harp on the others like this," grumbled Ron, retrieving the little porcelain box that held their Floo powder reserves. Apparating wasn't recommended for witches past their first trimester, so they were traveling via the fireplace to Diagon Alley. "Besides, we already have the name picked out."
"Well— Muriel doesn't know that," said Hermione.
"So tell her! She's worried about nothing. We're bucking the trend anyway, without her input. I'm surprised you're even humoring her. You've thought this stuff was hogwash since third year."
There was a distinctly shifty look in Hermione's eyes as she straightened up. "Er—well…"
Pausing before taking a pinch of the powder, Ron raised his eyebrows and looked around at her. She gave him a guilty sort of grin.
"Muriel did mention a set of rare books she owned…one that she might consider giving to, er, an appreciative owner…there are hardly any complete sets anymore…"
Ron stared at her. "So you're paying that old bat with her own Knut to get your hands on her books? Hermione, that's so— underhanded ," he said admiringly.
"Don't call her a bat," tutted Hermione, but she seemed rather flattered as she took out a pinch of powder, threw it into the fireplace, and said clearly: "Diagon Alley!"
A moment later, Ron followed. The fireplaces whizzed past in a blur of colors and, not for the first time, he stamped out his apprehension at Hermione, seven months pregnant, hurtling through that same network though she'd assured him many times it was perfectly fine. Indeed, when he'd stumbled out of the fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron, blowing ash from his nose, Hermione was standing as though she'd exited with ballerina poise.
Hot as the summer was, the fireplace did the Cauldron no favors. Even with the Chilling Charms placed around the pub Ron felt a bead of sweat prickling at the back of his neck. Hermione, who overheated easily these days, cast a smaller Chilling Charm around herself and flicked her wand so that a breeze whisped from its end and fanned her face.
Waving to the bartender, they moved through the back to the brick wall. "So what if Muriel questions the Naming Seer and finds out they recommended a name that's different from the one we picked out?" asked Ron, tapping the brick with his wand. Diagon Alley unfolded before them, as cheery a sight as it had ever been.
Hermione's hesitation before answering suggested she'd found another loophole in the arrangement, as only befit a rising star in the Magical Law Enforcement department. "Well…technically Muriel only requested that we consult a Seer, not that we follow their instruction to the letter. Besides," she went a bit pink when Ron started laughing his head off, "I thought perhaps I could…steer the Seer towards acceptance of our choice. They can be suggestible, you know."
"Wow, what books are these she's dangling over your head?" Ron cackled. "Signed first editions of Hogwarts, a History ?"
Hermione ducked her head, fumbling around her purse for something invisible. " Magick in Western Europe, from the Germanic Tribes to the Renaissance, " she admitted. "It's a really valuable set."
"I love it when you're sneaky," said Ron, "even if it's for the sake of education. Okay, let's go earn some books."
They passed colorful shop windows advertising the latest in brooms, books, and baubles. The postwar years had seen the winding market grow ever more exuberant, as though to make up for time spent in dreary fear during the time before Voldemort fell.
"We'll have to stop in and say hello to George and Angelina afterwards," said Hermione when they walked by Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, which had a display touting their new Jowlbreakers.
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Ron never managed to supress a pang at the implied plural in the shop's title, though Angelina gave the truth to it again.
That was, indirectly, one of the reasons for Muriel's insistence Ron and Hermione consult a Naming Seer before the birth of their first child. George and Angelina had named their son Fred, and given that Harry and Ginny already had James Sirius and were openly preparing for Albus Severus, Muriel had castigated what she called the 'ghoulish' practice of Weasleys naming their children after the dead.
Ron wouldn't have cared a whit what she thought if she hadn't started to pelt them with letters advising their own choice. Naturally, 'Muriel' had been one of the recommendations—she clearly didn't have a problem with a tribute if it happened to be hers.
On this matter, Ron and Hermione were in agreement from the start. "There's too many to choose from," Hermione had said sadly of the people they'd lost, "and I don't know I want that hanging over a child—not that I'm criticizing the others, of course," she'd hastened to add.
"You don't have to justify it to me ," said Ron, who had felt the same. For some reason he just wanted a name that didn't remind him of anyone else. When Hermione had dreamily murmured "Rose" upon their admiration of Molly Weasley's riotous garden a couple months prior, Ron had liked that right away.
They strolled up the street, arm-in-arm. "What's this Seer place called?" asked Ron, eyeing the reopened ice cream parlor. Perhaps he'd suggest they grab a sundae afterward. Hermione's cravings came in handy when it came to his own appetite, so he enthusiastically indulged her uncharacteristic, pregnancy-driven fondness for sweets.
"It's only an address," said Hermione, consulting her note again.
"S'pose a business title wouldn't be considered dignified," mused Ron. "Seers have got to take themselves more seriously than anyone else, don't they? I'd call my business Prophet for Profit."
Hermione gave a most un-Hermione-like snigger, and Ron suddenly realized it was going to be difficult to sit through the session with a straight face, if their old Divination lessons were anything to go by.
"It ought to be here," she said, stopping before an obscure stretch of brickwork. They glanced at each other, and Ron was forcefully reminded of their first Divination class when the entrance was not immediately apparent. They looked around the building front for a moment before spotting the golden 77 on a beam above a wooden flight of stairs that wound up and around the back of the block. Beside it had been painted a small, open eye.
"I was expecting a trapdoor," said Ron slyly.
His wife stifled an unwilling laugh. "Oh, stop, if you start this now I'll never get through it. Come on, let's get this over with."
Plants wove in and around the latticework that flanked the stairway, growing increasingly thick and snarling as they climbed, giving it a dreamy quality as though they were leaving Diagon Alley behind for some tiny, hidden realm.
"Good grief, do they make all the pregnant women climb three flights of stairs?" huffed Hermione. Ron slowed down and watched her cautiously. "Oh, I'm fine," she waved away his concern. Like many new fathers, he took alarm to most of her small discomforts.
At last they reached a wooden landing that was completely shielded from view of the boisterous Diagon Alley. "Lest the Inner Eye be cast upon the Outer Sty," muttered Ron, earning a muzzled snort and a half-hearted smack on the arm from his wife, who seemed already torn between exasperation and amusement at the ordeal.
Despite Hermione's determination to go through with the whole thing, her expression as she knocked on the wooden door was one of barely restrained disdain.
"Books," he heard her mutter as the door opened on its own.
"Attagirl," Ron said under his breath. "Just pretend there's marks at stake."
"Come in," drifted the words from inside.
Ron edged inside after Hermione. Against the sunny London afternoon, the room seemed very dark and it took a moment for their eyes to adjust. Once it did, the shapes of a small, circular wooden table and some mismatched chairs grew gradually better defined. The small parlor was draped with gauzy fabrics and decorative ephemera served to cramp the space futher. A crystal ball sat in the middle of the wooden table, mysteriously aglow with fog.
All in all, it seemed the Divination Tower writ small.
The Seer was not present when they entered, and Hermione rolled her eyes at the theatrics. They took the likeliest seats closest to the door and waited. "Let's see how dramatic an entrance they make," murmured Hermione.
It ended up being quite a dramatic one, for a moment later wafted in a bangled woman from a side doorway, gliding over to her seat and turning severely to face them—
"Merlin's beard," said Ron, as Hermione gasped: " Professor Trelawney? "
If they were surprised to see her, it was nothing next to the professor's own astonishment at seeing her two former students—one a little more 'former' than the other—sitting before her. Muriel had set the appointment in her own name. To Trelawney's credit, she quickly recovered and sank into her chair with deliberate grace.
"How nice to see you in the External World again," she said airily to them. "I am often visited by former students. I have always thought it cruel to cut them adrift upon their graduation, when they have only begun to explore the Inner depths. The Sight can wither from neglect."
And now those former students pay to keep nourishing that Sight, do they? thought Ron. Well, he could hardly talk, he was paying a laughable number of Galleons to sit in that chair and have what he thought would be a stranger telling him how to name his child. "Is this what you do in summer, Professor?" he asked politely. "Er—you still teach at the school, right?"
"Naturally," said Trelawney with a slight crispness to her tone. "But students are not the only ones who may benefit from my Gift. I must confess, when your visages crossed my Orb it surprised me to learn you would enter my threshold."
About a thousand possible responses seemed to present themselves to Hermione but she chose the politest one. "It's, um, lovely to see you again. Ron's Great-Aunt made the appointment," she added by way of explanation.
"Yes, I surmised as much from the name ," responded Trelawney with a touch of pique. "Which brings us to the matter at hand," she went on, ignoring Hermion's high color. "My sincerest congratulations to you both."
"Thanks," said Ron with a sideways glance.
"Too many futures were cut short at the Great Battle," murmured the professor. "I am glad this was not one of them."
This unexpected sincerity startled both Ron and Hermione, who couldn't think of a response.
For some reason Ron's brother Fred swam before his eyes before changing into his nephew, and he thought guiltily that the Fred who lived now would not be here, but for the Fred who'd died back then. He hoped George's son never felt himself the tradeoff.
Trelawney broke the silence that had fallen with a rustle of her shawl and the delicate clink of porcelain. She drew out a flowered teapot and set cups on saucers. "Many come to me for help with naming their children," she informed them as she poured fragrant tea.
"Anyone we know?" Ron wondered out loud, in part to grease the wheels of casual conversation.
"Yes…Parvati Patil came to see me last year," said Trelawney with a distant look, "to ask for my blessing to name her daughter Lavender."
Ron sat still, feeling blood drain from his face. Too many to choose from , Hermione had said of all the dead they'd known, and it was the truth. Sometimes it could still take his breath away. As fraught as his relationship with Lavender had been, founded on hurt and immaturity, doomed from the start by feelings for Hermione he had not yet learned to acknowledge, he'd grieved for her.
It was easy to see why these names could be so alluring. Grief gave them power.
A silence fell over the three that was probably unusual for these sessions. Ron suddenly wondered how many other classmates called upon Trelawney, and how many of those were less interested in the future than in ghosts of the past. He hoped she was not that kind of Seer.
Trelawney roused herself. "Of course, your Aunt is a dear patron of mine," she told Ron, "as are other, more…distant relatives."
Her hesitation spiked Ron's suspicions, which were well-honed now from time as an Auror. "Not any Malfoys?" It always disgruntled him to recall the common ancestry he and Draco shared, though it happened frequently in the pure-blood lines. Before their wedding, Ron had told Hermione that marrying Muggles could only improve the lineage or they'd all end up with harelips.
"As a matter of fact, dear," said the professor, "my services were requested by Narcissa Malfoy, whose grandson is due to be born—"
"What?" Ron said loudly. All three of them—Ron, Hermione and Harry—kept tabs on the Malfoy family, and this was the first they'd heard of a new generation.
Hermione elbowed him, though he'd heard her gasp audibly.
"—As I said, due to be born in a few months," said Trelawney, blinking. "I was able to provide a suitable name for the child."
"I could think of a few suitable names," Ron muttered.
" Hush , Ron," said his wife. "It's just a baby. Er—boy or girl?" she asked in a tone of feigned polite interest.
"A son," Trelawney said. Then, relishing their expectant attention, which they'd never given in class, she added impressively: "To be named Scorpius."
Ron laughed out loud and barely tried to suppress it. Even Hermione coughed delicately into her hand. Then his brain—ignoring the Seer's scandalized look—did the obvious math. "He'll be at school the same year as R—ours," he told her.
There was definitely a speculative glint in Hermione's eyes as he could picture the exam scores whizzing through her brain.
Professor Trelawney plainly thought the conversation had veered off the rails. "The Malfoys are continuing the Black legacy of looking to the skies," she said with dignity. She returned the teapot to a knitted cozy, then began stirring their tea. "Names are the first step in establishing one's identity, you are aware."
Sure it is, thought Ron, when you're taking that first step as a Malfoy. Hopefully naming rites were the only Black tradition they'd pass down to the boy.
"As I understand, there do not appear to be any such ingrained traditions within your own family," Trelawney went on.
Personally, Ron suspected his mother of drawing inspiration from romance novels. "Nope," he said, crossing his fingers.
"Nor mine," said Hermione.
"We begin with a fortune, then..."
Trelawney drew the misty globe towards her and gazed into its depths. What had worked so well in the first class of third year had evidently lost its veneer, because Ron just felt jittery as the professor paused for dramatic effect, turning her head this way and that.
"Hmm," was all she said. "Interesting..."
Hermione suppressed a sigh. "What's interesting, Professor?"
"I think," Trelawney replied, "in fact, Fate would be better served if I did not lift the veil on this future."
It did not take Divination to read the look on his wife's face, which plainly wondered if Trelawney had ever lifted the veil on anyone's future. But Ron uncomfortably recalled the times the professor had made true predictions and wondered when he was supposed to be able to tell the difference. Harry said she went all weird when she did it, but how was he supposed to tell one kind of Trelawney's weirdness from another?
"Why can't you say?" he asked nervously.
"Our futures are the tides of our decisions in the present," the Seer told him loftily. "Though I may observe these effects, I should not be so arrogant as to affect their outcome by parting the mists. I may be so bold as to say, however...before the triumphs must come the trials."
Hermione did not appear to be worried about it. "I suppose we'll have to muddle through the mists, somehow," she said dryly.
"It is the most that most can do," said Trelawney. She poured tea into china cups, and soon the air was made more heavy and fragrant by jasmine. If nothing else, this would be a paid teatime. Ron was cheered by the prospect of triumphs. Trials were par for the course with the Seer's predictions. He noted a distinct lack of deadly prognosis in Trelawney's forecasts, her favorite thing to predict, but maybe she reined that in with expectant parents and saved it to scare the daylights out of their kids thirteen years later.
"Now you, dear," she addressed Ron suddenly, "might have had some potential, if you'd focused your Inner Eye more."
Both of them stared, nonplussed. "Beg pardon?" said Ron.
"Your predictions, Mr. Weasley! Don't you remember the first effort you made in my class, when you interpreted Mr. Potter's tea leaves? He did indeed end up working for the Ministry, did he not? Did you not predict coming riches, shortly before he received a Firebolt broomstick? And though he may have suffered terribly, I daresay he found joy nonetheless during his trials! All," she flourished her hand to the teacup, "in the leaves!"
Now Ron felt as though she'd hit him upside the head with her crystal ball. "Er—I wasn't really sure what I was saying—" he stammered.
Trelawney waved her jeweled hand impatiently. "Of course you weren't. Beginners never are. True Sight is a skill that must be developed, but I'm sorry to say you seemed to stop taking it seriously before exercising its potential. Your tragic astral charts seemed promising, but then…"
"I predicted my death loads of times," Ron reminded her, a little shakily. "None of those came true."
"My dear, all futures are true," said Trelawney with fervent conviction. "Our present is only one of infinite possibilities, such as we will never recognize…only our Inner Eye can see beyond the here and now—yours may have simply wandered into another astral dimension…"
Mutely, Ron looked to Hermione for a thorough debunking, but she was, if anything, even more startled. He could have sworn he heard her mutter wonderingly, "String theory?"
Trelawney pushed forward the teacup encouragingly. "Tell me what your Inner Eye sees here."
Wasn't this a bit like doing her job for her? Still, he saw an opportunity to carry out Hermione's agenda. He peered into the cup and tried to recall his old Divination homework.
"This bit looks like a brain," he said. "She'll be brainy, right?"
"A true gift, so long as intelligence does not allow perception to relapse into narrow-mindedness," said Trelawney, delicately adjusting her shawl. Hermione threw her a sharp frown. Her spectacular exit from class hung above the conversation like Nearly-Headless Nick, yanking at its neck and reminding everyone that Hermione had been a bad student for three seconds when they were thirteen.
"Um..." Ron squinted. "This part looks like a shield."
"A symbol of valiance, I should say. Begin casting your Eye for symbols that point to a name," the Seer advised him.
Ron began to enjoy himself. "And this clump here—looks a bit like a Moray eel…"
"Moray eel," mused Trelawney. She stroked her shawl. "Moray eel…murray-eel…Muriel? As in your Aunt Muriel?"
"NO!" shouted Ron and Hermione together, making the Seer jump.
Ron hastily said, "I—sorry, my Inner Eye um, wandered into another astral plane again. Let me give it another look. I'll really concentrate." He didn't know whether he was addressing that more to Trelawney or to his blanched wife. Come to think of it, Muriel did bear a strong resemblance to the clump of soggy tea leaves.
"Look carefully," said Hermione with an undertone of warning.
"I see a rose," said Ron, staring at the dregs. "Like the kind Mum grows in her garden."
"Rose is a lovely name. The flower is delicate, yet not approached lightly," said the professor, and Hermione actually beamed at her.
"I quite agree!" she said happily, and Trelawney seemed surprised by the swift solidarity, "We'd liked that the most—but of course, er, we weren't sure," she finished in a rush. Trelawney blinked at her suspiciously.
Ron looked between the two and said quickly, "Rose Granger-Weasley. That's settled then, don't you think, Hermione?"
"Oh yes," said Hermione, blushing, "that's wonderful."
Perhaps this was altogether too easy, because Trelawney seemed to suspect she was being steered. Her eyebrows contracted and she emptied the dregs of Ron's tea, but rather than set it aside she poured in another serving and handed it back.
"What of a middle name?"
"Middle?" repeated Ron. They hadn't gotten so far as a middle name.
"Yes, middle. It goes between first and last," the Seer told him testily.
"Oh." Ron looked to his tea. Was he supposed to find another name there? This time, however, Trelawney went to a delicate silver instrument on a side table that Ron had mistaken for ephemera. It looked similar to ones he'd seen from students at Hogwarts who'd gone on to study Advanced Astronomy.
"When is the child due to be born?" asked Trelawney.
Hermione told her mid-May. The Seer set the twirling, shining instrument on the middle table and tapped a silver sphere. Hoops spun in and around themselves while the spheres rearranged to form an approximate model of the solar system. Little silver beads glided up to form constellations. Ron snuck a glance at Hermione to see she was impressed against her will.
"This will be the night sky when she is born," said Trelawney, and Ron felt a chill.
It was one thing to prepare, to expect and to talk about it. After the initial delight of finding out Hermione was pregnant, they'd settled into a habit of preparing for the baby as though she were, well…an exam. Reading books and building a crib and painting a nursery almost served to distract from their intended purpose, rather than emphasize it.
Ron gazed at the stars and the planets that would be arranged just so when their daughter would be born, and committed them to memory like he never had in Astronomy class. A moment later Hermione's fingers were in his and he wasn't sure whose hand had found the other's first.
"Jupiter in Scorpio," murmured the professor, and Ron tried to remember what that meant. Most of his Divination lessons had leaked out one ear; he hadn't stared at the bottom of a saucer in years. She gave them a significant look that he was at a loss to interpret.
"Er—what's that mean?" he asked at last, ignoring Hermione's tiny huff at the Seer's theatrics. "She's going to be born with a tail or something?"
Hermione sighed audibly.
Professor Trelawney took offense and wound her shawl tighter as though to ward away Ron's rudeness. He felt a little indignant; he'd sat through her lessons like a good little student, didn't that count for anything? Women always managed to bracket themselves together.
"You'll see in due time, I suppose," said the Seer with weary superiority. She looked over the configuration of hoops and beads, then tapped a particular silver sphere. "'The Devine Awakener'," she said mysteriously. She sounded like a centaur. "Uranus. This planet will play a special role in her charts."
With a guilty pang, Ron remembered a joke he'd made in Divination before and resolutely kept his face straight.
"Uranus heralds change—frightening change, but important... those with the influence of Uranus are granted great intellect..."
Ron would bet her a million Galleons that would have little to do with the influence of Uranus and everything to do with Hermione, but it was unobjectionable enough. Hermione certainly wasn't going to protest a prediction of intelligence, and possibly Trelawney was catering slightly to the easiest target.
Tiny balls revolved on nearly invisible wire around the planet in question. Trelawney's finger drifted over them and settled on one. "Miranda," the Seer said dreamily. "The smallest of the major inner moons."
Ron peered at it. "Can't she be a bigger moon?"
"Rather Jupiter of you to say," muttered Trelawney. She suddenly straightened her spectacles and stared at him. "Aren't you a Pisces?"
It sounded accusatory.
"Well, that seems quite—er, I think we have our answer," said Hermione, possibly to forestall further discussion or before Trelawney could pick another moon like Umbriel (which sounded altogether too similar to Muriel.) She sat down her teacup with a tiny rattle.
"Oh—yeah," said Ron, taking his cue and helping Hermione to her feet. "Sounds good, Professor. Thanks for your help."
"May her name be a herald," said Trelawney mysteriously, rising. "I am pleased to have been of assistance to you in the naming of your child. It is an auspicious name."
Ron could not have said why he felt weirdly reluctant to go, to leave this parlor which reminded him of a dark classroom from many years ago. Back then it had been full of predictions about death but made before anyone had died, back when it was still easy to laugh them off (once you got up the nerve to do it.)
Hermione retrieved an envelope from her purse which held the Seer's payment. Trelawney somehow managed to accept it so graciously it hardly appeared a transaction.
Looking at her, a memory flashed vividly before Ron's eyes: of Sybill Trelawney, hair wild, throwing crystal balls at Fenrir Greyback with abandon for whatever futures the balls might have foretold. At that moment only the present had mattered to her.
Hardly thinking, he abruptly stepped forward and hugged her. She'd tried to save Lavender.
Initially surprised, Trelawney relaxed and gently patted his back. When they withdrew he thought her eyes looked misty, and not from otherworldly understanding. Even Hermione beamed and, following his example, embraced their old teacher with real warmth. They'd come through the battle, after all, fighting the mists along the way.
"Give my regards to your Aunt," said Professor Trelawney as the door shut.
"Don't worry, we won't," said Ron under his breath.
The sunshine, though blinding, was a reassurance after the gloom of Trelawney's parlor. Diagon Alley's bustle was a welcome reminder of the outside world.
All things considered, it could have gone worse. He'd heard of people coming out of these sessions like they'd seen a Grim in the leaves.
"Well, I hope those books are worth it, because we'll have to toss Trelawney a bone," Ron told Hermione as they wound down the garden stair. "We should have come armed with a middle name. If you really want to fight it, you can."
"Do you know," Hermione said wonderingly, "I actually like that. Rose Miranda…"
Ron gaped at her. "You liked something Trelawney suggested?"
"Well—" Hermione smirked a little— "she may not realize it, but it's a Shakespearian name, which my name is as well, as it happens. All the Uranus moons are."
Ron recalled Shakespeare was a kind of nutter Muggle writer. "That's not the one with the witches, is it?"
"No. She was the daughter of a wizard."
"That settles it, then. Miranda it is."
Hermione turned to him with a shining face. "Really? Do you think so?"
"Sure," grinned Ron. "I like it, you like it, and the old woman won't complain."
Hermione giggled. "Muriel or Trelawney?"
"Yes."
Hermione laughed out loud. They emerged back into the sun of Diagon Alley, where shoppers bustled along the storefronts, feeling the lightness of having completed a tedious chore.
"Oh, fine, let's get ice cream," Hermione said gaily. "Just don't tell my molars."
"I won't if you don't tell my gut," said Ron.
He felt buoyant, almost exuberant. Though they passed reminders of the war every day, Rose Miranda would, as the Seer had said, have a future. Which apparently had something to do with Uranus.
"You realize, though," he said as Hermione slipped her arm through his, "that you can't complain about Trelawney's batty predictions anymore if you helped one come true."
.
.
started this quite a while ago after reading the blurb on Naming Seers on Pottermore and finally picked it back up.
Hope you're all doing alright! Thanks for reading and any thoughts are appreciated. :)