Check first chapter for disclaimers and warnings.
Epilogue"Wow!" exclaimed Harry when the fortune teller had finished drawing the tarot cards. "That was… bad. Very bad. Speaking of bad, shouldn't you do this with a used deck?"
"What? Er… that is…"
"I saw you unwrap it. It was new. I know a few card tricks myself, and that they're better done with a new deck. But a new deck is sorted. How can you seriously do cartomancy if you align the cards in sequence?"
"Well… I thought that…"
"And all the cards, too! Not ones randomly picked with a given hand and arrayed along cosmic drawings. And a bad outcome for each! I admit that some of your stories were quite close to reality, but the others were way off the mark, miss!"
"You see, Harry… I'm new…"
"That I could have guessed on your third card. And then it became a game. How was I going to die that time?"
"But… the Inner Eye… I'm…"
"Ah I get it! You took Divination with Trelawney? She, too, had a knack to predict people's death. Including mine. Especially mine, by the way. Which means… since your voice isn't that unknown to me… not the voice itself but the intonations, and mannerisms… because I know there are many ways to disguise oneself for magicals… so I'm just guessing… Lavender?"
"Drat! Harry! It doesn't work that way!" exclaimed the green-eyed novice fortune teller.
"Well, how does Divination works, then? If you aren't Lavender, how do you know my name? Did you divine the game's result, as well?"
The woman reddened at that, and looked down briefly. But that only sparked her newfound indignation. "You're supposed to be all misty-eyed before our mastery of divination! Not poke logic-shaped holes in my innocent inventions!"
"Innocent? With all the bad people around the place, I'm quite sure you'd make a killing selling them ways to make others suffer creatively."
"Really? I mean… Not that I would do something like that-"
"Which is good since they'd kill you afterwards, using one of your scenarios."
"And now I feel bad all of a sudden."
"The shoe doesn't feel the same when it's on the other foot, right? Or something like that anyways." A pause. "So… what is it that made you older? Polyjuice? Illusions? Aging Potion?" He looked at her shape clinically. "Stuffing?"
"HARRY!" exclaimed the girl, trying to hide her publicized assets.
"If you didn't want them ogled, you shouldn't have put them on display."
"Be gentle… it's my first time…"
Harry laughed out loud at that utterance, and Lavender smiled when she got her own involuntary innuendo. Although she was beet red.
"So…" she started to say.
"Yeah. Sorry, but that was unexpected. And funny as hell. I didn't laugh at you, you got that, right?"
"Yes, Harry. I may be dumb, but I'm not that dumb."
"You're not dumb, Lavender. You can improvise an almost realistic story in a few moments, and that takes work – even if it's to kill your own characters afterwards like that Martin guy. You may have other interests than, say, Hermione, but you shouldn't sell yourself short. You shouldn't sell yourself at all, by the way." She started, and he noticed, and he put that into the little (but growing) bag of intel he had on the girl.
"But how can I sell you this fortune-telling, now?" she asked.
"Lavender? Can I ask you something?" She nodded, and he continued. "Are you required by someone to make money, for which you took this role?"
"…how? How do you know? Do you have the Inner Eye? Teach me!"
"I don't have that. You just seemed awfully interested in making money, for a first-timer. By the way, usually, fortune-telling is paid in advance. That way, angry clients can leave immediately."
"Oh. Okay. You seem interested in this, too, mister. Would you care to do… me?"
Harry went googly-eyed for half a second, before rolling on the ground again. And the girl-turned-woman groaned and put her face in her hands. "Not again!"
The tent's flaps opened, and Hermione peeked a glance inside. "You fine, Harry?"
"Yeah Hermione, thank you."
"The twins are up again. We're leaving soon. Join up?"
"Just a minute, please."
"Alright." and she left.
"Listen, Lavender-" he started.
"Lav." she interrupted. "My close friends call me that."
"-Lav, then." he smiled, and she blushed. "We may not have seen eye-to-eye on many things, in school, but I'll see you there. There are a number of things I ought to discuss with you." He stood up straighter and approached. "But the most urgent topic is this: do you have a money problem, right now?"
"I may have made a wrong prediction on the game outcome." she said, slowly but her momentum building along the way. "And some people believed me. Now that they lost, they want their money back."
"First, you are not to blame if some idiots played with their money by following anyone's advice. Second… how much?"
"They lost… a hundred galleons. But they want from me what they could have won. A thousand."
"I can't believe this…"
"I know! That's quite a sum!"
"No! I mean I can't believe they could even ask you this, and also that they "only" asked for a thousand! Fred and George had gambled on twenty-to-one odds, so if they had bet a hundred on it, they'd have won two thousand." A pause. "Who are they, really?"
She looked at her feet. "My brothers. Or half-brothers, really. I'm the one not pureblood. My mother was raped by a Death Eater who fell in love with her after the act. But he was already married. He tried to make the whole shtick stick, but… I'm afraid! I'm afraid each time I come home!"
"How comes we haven't seen them in Hogwarts?"
"They go to Durmstrang. They are just outside the tent. I'm not to leave, you see?"
Harry had a people-saving thing. And here was a damsel-in-distress. So he called his faithful sidekicks, and they kicked ass on their way to freedom – or, rather, Hermione walked in, and dispelled a good deal of magic (and stuffing) and pulled Harry's infamous cloak from the endless bag she always wore around her neck (with the propensity of her friend to find himself in trouble, she was now prepared for almost everything, having bought the bag as well as many healing potions).
And Lavender held onto our hero's side for the whole trip, like a good damsel-in-distress.
When they saw the mob of Death Eaters advancing through the camp, later, Harry remembered something from Lavender's stories, and knew what to do, and how not to react, especially.
In fact, it seemed that some of them were quite on topic. And as the year progressed, as he saw the Goblet of Fire being propped for the show, he asked for help from his sidekicks and especially his new girlfriend. Who pulled her own girlfriend in. Who in turn pulled her twin sister. Who asked a few interested parties to the party.
That's how Harry found himself with Hermione, Lavender, Parvati, Padma, Morag, Su, and Luna. No Ron? No, Ron was stuck in Detention.
And they pooled what they knew of Divination… which finally amounted to much since they all had differing views.
But differing didn't mean incorrect. Hermione had been a bit miffed (and a bit jealous) that Harry had chosen Lavender as a girlfriend that early. But sharing a dorm with her, she had paid attention for the first time, and noticed that, under the veneer of a ditzy blonde, the girl was not stupid. Not as intelligent as she was, perhaps, but she had other assets. And the work she did for her appearance could have earned her good grades in most core classes.
Since then, Hermione had mellowed a bit, and accepted the buxom blonde in the group. And that made things easier for everyone, because Luna's suggestions were often both on topic and way off. Morag brought a knowledge of Divination as seen from the muggle side – mostly as a hobby and as a part of role-playing games (something Hermione didn't know). Su told them about Chinese practices (those she knew about, because there were many, she said, depending on who you asked, and where). Parvati spoke of Hindu practices, and Padma continued with the other oriental stuff such as Tibetan, Buddhist, and even some Animist methods. And Hermione brought other things the muggles knew about predicting the future, such as Lorenz's Attractors, as well as her knowledge of navigating the Library to find even more obscure tomes.
All in all, they devised a way to predict the future quite accurately. And they used it. And they found out that seven was truly a magical number: with seven witches doing the rituals, Harry's life and choices were laid bare for them to see. And since their fate joined his from their first meeting onwards, theirs were known too. It didn't leave many secrets between them, and they bonded even tighter.
All of them.
For a very long time.
The EndAuthor's Notes: And here it is. Of course, with the chapter names, some of you guessed quickly how many chapters this was going to be.
As for the "normal" timeflow, you can imagine that only the prologue and epilogue really happened. Each vignette involving Harry's death happens in the fortune-teller's speech, after all. Although with a magical fortune-telling, there might be elements of Truth. And Time.
For those of you wanting a tragic closure to an already sad story (or at least less sweet than the above), there's the following alternate ending instead.
Bonus – an alternate awakeningWhen Harry "awoke" after hearing the fortune teller's last prediction, it took him a few seconds to recognize his surroundings. His mind still reeled from the mismatched patchwork of memories, and his body was sluggish.
But a thought clicked immediately: he was back in his Fourth Year as a Hogwarts Student, and if the Diviner's words were accurate about that year, he had Death Eaters to catch. Jumping to his feet, he ran outside to share his burgeoning strategy with his friends.
Doing that, he missed the look on the Diviner's face. She had been troubled when telling him some of her stories, and downright terrified at other moments. Now that it was finished, she was looking at him with longing.
And when he jumped outside, it was shock that registered first, then despair.
Because she hadn't told him why she was there at all. She hadn't finished her act, nor completed the spell she had intended to cast. And everything she had worked for, lately, disappeared like so much smoke.
The tent disappeared as if it had never been there.
Harry's memories disappeared from his mind.
And the Diviner returned to her place in the clouds – which was her own hell since she could only witness from afar her son stumble through life. Badly.
"No luck, Lily?" asked her husband.
"No, James." and a lone tear found its way down her cheek, through the cloud that was their home, and down to earth, announcing an imminent downpour.
And at the same time, Harry and his friends were almost killed by overzealous Aurors under a floating Dark Mark, after having been surprised by the rampaging Death Eaters.
And the school year hadn't even started yet!
The Other EndAuthor's Notes: And here it is. Wouldn't it be sad that, after having had all these warnings and recollection, Harry would leave only to forget everything, and be condemned to follow canon till the end? Thought so.