The weight of her necklace hung heavy against her chest, a comforting pull that she was slowly getting used to. She fingered the necklace once more as she left her class, a habit she was quickly picking up. She thumbed it through her robes, pushed it out so she could see the outline of it through the fabric. It wasn't the only thing she had to get used to, however, after their successful binding.

Though it wasn't nearly as intense as it had been in the midst of their ritual, Ginny could still faintly feel Luna, if she searched for it. Like the breeze through the orchard back at the Burrow, it faded into the background so easily that she most often didn't notice it. It fell away like so much background noise, just one more sense among many.

In the same way that she could close her eyes and listen to the wind, she could center herself and feel out towards Luna. She'd do so, every now and again, just to remind herself that she could. She wouldn't know how to describe it if somebody had asked her. Luna had described it as 'a good version of the feeling you get in your stomach when you overeat, except floating in the back of your head rather than settling uncomfortably in the pit of your stomach.' Ginny didn't disagree, exactly, with Luna's assessment, it just wasn't quite right either.

Ginny had finished her last class for the day, but Luna's wouldn't be done for another half an hour or so. She wondered if Roni was free and went searching for the younger girl.

She searched high and low through their regular haunts, but Roni wasn't in the library, near Mutiny's tapestry, or in the abandoned classroom on the fourth floor where Luna and Ginny still occasionally practiced their duelling, the one they'd accidentally stumbled into after running through corridors for hours on end. Eventually, she gave it up as a bad job and decided to head down to the kitchens to grab a quick bite from the house elves. She was surprised to find Hermione sitting beneath the oversized painting of a bowl of fruit. Even more surprising were the light snores she heard from her friend. She approached slowly, and gently shook the bushy haired girl awake.

"Hermione," she whispered "wake up. You shouldn't fall asleep willy nilly in the hallways."

"Hmmm?" Hermione turned over in her sleep, apparently immune to Ginny's attempt to wake her lightly.

Well, she'd tried to be nice and it hadn't worked. Time for a Warm Weasley Wake-up instead.

"HERMIONE!" Ginny gave a sharp shout, and punctuated it with a large, hard CLAP.

"IT'S!" CLAP

"TIME!" CLAP

"TO!" CLAP

"WAKE"! CLAP

"UP!" CLAP

Hermione jolted at the bellow of her name, then put her hands to her ears as Ginny continued to help her wake up. Hermione gave Ginny an evil glare, and it was all Ginny could do not to laugh.

"Good morning, buttercup! Rise and shine!" She felt as though her face might break from the force of her grin and her own struggle to restrain the giggles that threatened to burst through.

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, likely with a scathing retort if her nasty looks were anything to go on, but she paused at the last moment. She looked around, and became increasingly frantic. "What am I doing down here? How did I get here? What day is it?!"

"What… day is it? Don't you mean what time is it?"

"Yes, yes, of course, that too." Her hands flew rapidly as she sorted through her rucksack, parchment by parchment and book by book.

"Er, it's Thursday? Around 4 in the afternoon?"

"Bugger," Hermione cursed, as her parchment went flying out of her rucksack. Ginny's eyes flew to the top of her head. Was the curse for the parchment, or the time? Didn't matter, the girl was wound up tighter than a house elf that couldn't clean.

"Why, Ms. Granger!" she said in her best approximation of Professor McGonagall. "Such uncouth language! Why, I never!" Her mum always said laughter was the best medicine. Hermione must've agreed as she let out a light chuckle and began to slow her frantic pace.

Success! She knelt down to help pick up and sort all the parchment.

"Oh, shove it, you. I don't have time for your games. I missed my classes!"

"What, all of them?"

"No, I made it to Divination. Trelawney is just so-Argh! She's so infuriating! I asked her, you know."

"Asked her about what?"

"About if she'd ever teach other forms of Divination. Not just 'cultivating the inner eye' or telling the future, or all that rot, but telling the past or present. The stuff we did, you know." Hermione's voice dropped in pitch, and she leaned in to whisper. "On that night. Do you know what she told me?"

"Haven't the foggiest." Although, she could certainly guess by Hermione's reaction.

"She said that the present was already the past, and why would one bother with something already gone? She started rambling about 'deeper mysteries' and 'knowing the unknowable' and honestly I just tuned her out. I'd write the whole thing off, I truly would, but how could I? I can't just back out, I made a decision, a commitment! And I was entrusted to do the right thing, and they're all so proud of me!"

Ginny was quite sure that Hermione had stopped talking to her, and started talking to herself, but decided to pipe in anyways.

"Look, she sounds batty, but couldn't you just use the time to practice divination on your own? Use the methods she teaches, but not even bother with the future?"

"But then however will I do the assignments?" Hermione looked lost as she asked. "If I don't do them, I'll fail for certain."

"I know for a fact that Ron just makes them up. He hasn't gotten below an Acceptable, so far. Maybe one P?"

"I just, I can't bring myself to do that. My parents would be disappointed. Professor McGonagall would be disappointed." She paused for a moment. "I'd be disappointed in myself."

Ginny wasn't sure what McGonagall had to do with any of this but powered on regardless.

"Then just give it up as a bad job. If you don't like it, why bother? If you really need to load up your schedule, just pick up another elective. Which ones are you taking, again?"

"Oh, I suppose you're right." Hermione said hurriedly. "It's just, I've never, well, I've never failed at a class before. I don't really want to start now."

"You're not failing." Ginny rolled her eyes. "You're passing the class now, aren't you? Trelawney may not like you, but I'd be shocked if you didn't have an A, at least. If my brother can get an A, surely you could."

Hermione's cheeks flushed. "Well, yes, but only barely."

"Then you're not failing, silly, you're just deciding not to waste your time. You're Hermione Granger! You're at Hogwarts! You've so much to learn, you can't waste your precious time on silly subjects with batty teachers!"

That seemed to have the opposite effect on her than what Ginny had hoped her. Instead of a rallying shout, Hermione just looked more down trodden.

"Look, no one is going to judge you, or be mad at you, or whatever it is that you're worried about, just because you don't like a class. You don't have to enjoy every class that Hogwarts offers, that'd be insane."

"Lavendar and Parvati." Hermione murmured.

"Your dorm mates? What of them?

"They'll judge me. They'll never let me hear the end of it that they're good at divination and I'm not."

"Well then I have two things to say to that. One! Show them that you can do divination, and that you can do it without the Inner Eye! Unless either of them actually has the Inner Eye, which I doubt, then every prediction they're making is total bunk. You don't need their approval, you're Hermione Granger!"

Hermione let out a small smile, finally, but still didn't seem convinced. "They'll still be unbearable to live with. They'll tease me and mock me."

"Which leads me to point number two! Sod them!"

That finally broke Hermione into a fit of giggles.

"Language, Ginny."

"I mean it! You don't need to worry about those catty witches. If they give you any trouble, you just tell ole Ginny, and I'll hex 'em to bits for you." She patted Hermione on the shoulder consolingly.

"I'm not quite certain that that's the best way to handle it." Hermione sat, knees tucked under her chin while she fiddled with a strand of her hair, and Ginny wished there was a way she could prove to Hermione that the approval of her dorm mates shouldn't mean anything to her.

A grin split her face as an idea struck her, and she grabbed Hermione by her hand to haul her to her feet.

"Then we'll just have to prove to them that they're wrong! Shove it right in their ugly mugs that you dropped the course because you chose to, not because you couldn't keep up."

"Just how are we supposed to do that?"

"Just casually do some divinations near where they happen to be hanging out?"

"We can't be so obvious about it. We'd need a project or something to be working on, otherwise they'll know."

"Well of course! I'm sure you have loads of projects, all tucked away neatly in your head. One of them must use divinations." Hermione worried at her lip in response.

"I'm not so sure I do. Oh, I don't know Ginny, I don't even really have the time!" She scooped her rucksack off the ground where she'd left it and started her way down the hall. Ginny trailed behind her.

"Well then just help me with my own project! We'll make sure we cross by them. Are you free this weekend?"

"Well, not especially. I have so much homework to do, and I'll have make up work to do from missing classes today, and-."

"Yes, but think about how much less homework you'll have to do once you've dropped Divination?"

"Well, I suppose," she trailed off.

"Heck, drop Muggle Studies too! Don't know why you think you need it, you probably know more about being a Muggle than the professor does."

"It's an interesting cultural experience!" Ginny rolled her eyes and started walking back down the hallways towards their Common Room.

"Sure it is."

"It is! Learning how wizards and witches feel, and are taught to feel, about Muggles, its fascinating!" Hermione chattered away at her, and Ginny was glad to have her bubbly friend back, rather than the mopey one who'd nearly broke down in tears after a short nap.

A few days later, Hermione had set aside some time to speak with Trelawney after the conversation Ginny had had with her, and had subsequently stormed back into the Common Room. Ginny had gone with her for moral support, and then walked with her all the way from the Divination classroom to the Gryffindor tower, and she'd ramped herself up into a rather fearsome snit.

Ginny had been content to let her work it out on her own. Her method seemed to be attempting to kill her homework and murder her schoolwork by completing it with a vicious fervor. Eventually, when her essays had been revised and her readings completed, she'd turned to sulking. Ginny couldn't have that.

"Don't you feel better now?" Ginny asked Hermione.

"No. I feel terrible."

That was about what Ginny expected, based on the look on Hermione's face, but it was a good place to try and open a conversation about it. She tried to stay positive, hoping it would infect Hermione.

"Good! That's how you know you made a good decision."

"That's horrible logic!"

Ginny then dragged Hermione forcibly out of the Common Room, and she would do her damnedest to make sure Hermione got into a better mood. To that extent, she'd invited Luna and Roni, and decided they'd follow up on their research from the day before. They had finally found the method they'd be using to track how their bullies normally traveled back to Ravenclas tower after a Hogsmeade weekend.

"Actually, it makes a certain kind of sense," Luna chimed in after they'd explained to her their conversation. "Children don't enjoy eating their vegetables, even though it's good for them. Some Muggles feel worse after giving blood, but it's a good thing to do, too!"

"Those are terrible examples, and I want desperately to prove you wrong, but I can't. It bothers me that I can't, too," Roni said.

"Look, are we even sure that this is a good idea? Will we even run into them? Maybe we should just leave well enough alone? I'm dropped out, now, and I can handle a few snide comments."

"Well, we have to do this regardless of if we do it to prove a point, so we may as well kill two birds with one stone." Ginny was trying to be pragmatic about the whole thing, and also it had been her idea from the beginning.

"Have you even prepared the materials yet? We only just decided yesterday on a method. Maybe we should wait until next weekend. Or, no, I'll be busy next weekend, I've an essay due that week. Well how about-.."

"So it's decided then! Luna, have you got the hair?"

"Here!"

"Roni, the sticks?"

"Can't believe you made me whittle these down. I could have been doing so many other fun things. You could have done this yourself! Or at least helped; I spent all night last night doing this"

"Perfect!"

Ginny took the three strands of hair from Luna, and wrapped one each around three separate carved sticks. The bark whittled away, they were a fresh white with a few simple runes carved up and down their lengths. The four girls stood in the Entrance Hall, the way into the castle. The huge open room connected to staircases, corridors, and the Great Hall. Behind them, the doors leading out into the grounds of Hogwarts were closed shut against the chill.

"Alright! Hermione, if you'd do the honors?" She handed the carved branches out to Hermione.

"What are we doing this for, again? And who's hair is this?"

"Irrelevant!" Luna yelled. "Onwards!"

Hermione just rolled her eyes. She kneeled down and set the sticks up so they were wedged between her hand and the floor.

"As many paths as there are stars in the sky, we seek the brightest. Thexte mou."

She lifted her hand, and the rods stood still for a moment longer than they should have without support. Then, as one, they fell to the ground. They all pointed in the same direction.

"Well, that was anticlimactic."

"Hush, Roni. We don't need any negativity clogging up our auras."

"Now this really feels like Divination," Hermione muttered.

They picked up their three rods and followed along the hallway that was indicated. They traversed hall after hall, wandering about for what felt like the whole of the castle stopping often to reset their carved divination rods and ensure they followed the correct path. Their work quickly became monotonous. Ginny had to force herself to focus intently on where they travelled, and marked down each interesting point of interest on a piece of parchment.

A few times, she or Luna would call for a short stop as they went off the explore a hidden alcove or where they thought a secret passage might me. It wasn't until a few floors up when they got near the exit of Mutiny's secret passageway that Ginny decided to check on the time.

"Tempus," she muttered. "Okay! We're taking a break."

"Thank goodness! My feet are going to fall off," Roni fell to the floor in a huff.

"Have you been bitten recently by a Naddering Odflicker? Their bite is known to be necrotic."

"Luna, that's absolutely terrifying."

"And a Unicorn's horn isn't? Odflickers are quite docile, just like Unicorns, so it would be a total fluke if Roni had been bitten. About the same chance if a Unicorn had attacked her."

"Then why did you ask?"

"It was the first thing that came to mind?"

They devolved into laughter, until Hermione focused them again by asking "Seriously, why have we taken a break? We're so close to the Ravenclaw tower, I doubt they'd take any more detours! Roni's not wrong, my feet are killing me."

"We're at the best intersection between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, the one most people take on their way to the Great Hall. Honestly, we could probably be done. We've got a good few spots that will work for what Luna and I have planned. But we haven't run into Lavender or Parvati yet, so we're going to wait for them to show up. Lunch starts in five minutes. Hermione says they normally head down and sit through the whole lunch period to gossip on days that aren't Hogsmeade weekends."

"Lunch is like, hours long! It stays open forever on the weekends so people can just come and go! What do they have to gossip about that much?"

"Who knows? Point is, they should be here any minute. When we hear them coming, we strike!"

"You make it sound like we're attacking them."

"Don't put words in my mouth, Luna, you know that's not what I meant!"

Ginny didn't mention it, but her heart soared when she saw Hermione chuckle as they all bantered back and forth. As much as this was valuable information for her and Luna's plans, making Hermione feel better was just as important.

Eventually, they heard footsteps coming down the hall, so Hermione leaned over to begin the divination. Ginny couldn't have planned it more perfectly if she tried. It was one of those rare instances where everything just seemed to work itself out.

Hermione muttered the last sounds of the spell as the two girls turned the corner. Their titters stopped abruptly, and they locked eyes on the four of them immediately. Hermione pulled her hand away, and they all stared at the three carved rods as they stood upright, not wobbling even slightly. It was as though time had frozen in their hallway, or the world was holding it's breath. Then, all of a sudden, they fell in tandem in the same exact direction, just as they had every time before.

"Hello, Hermione, hello, all! What're you doing?" Lavender asked.

"Just a project we're working on!" Ginny beamed at them, all sunshine and roses as she said it. Nothing to see but a cute little second year, no nefarious plans at all, she thought to herself.

"What's that, then? And what's Hermione doing with you? Did you convince her to help you do your homework?"

"No! Of course not!" Hermione let out.

"It's not a class project, it's a personal project. Hermione agreed to help us with the divination, seeing as we can't take it until next year," Luna spoke up.

"Shows how much you know. Hermione couldn't hack it in Divination."

"Yeah, we heard she up and quit, stormed out of Professor Trelawney's office in a huge snit." Parvati giggled to Lavender after adding her two cents.

"I did nothing of the sort!"

"Well you weren't there last class, so obviously you couldn't handle it!"

"She really didn't. I was there with her when she talked to Trelawney," Ginny defended her friend

"Professor Trelawney," Hermione said, glaring at Ginny as she used the professor's title "and I just have some differences of opinion on what should be taught in the class. I'm not going to waste my time with someone who won't even teach me the bits of divination I can use."

"You? Use divination? Ha! Professor Trelawney was always saying you don't have the Gift, that's why you really left!"

"Well yes, obviously that's part of it." The two girls looked gobsmacked that Hermione agreed with them. "I very much do not have the Inner Eye, or the Gift, or whatever else she's calling it these days."

"We knew that was the real reason!" Ginny wanted to palm her forehead when they crowed in delight, as though they had won.

"Well, part of it anyways. I went to the Professor and asked her if she'd be teaching any of the techniques used to divine the past or the present, or if she'd only be teaching how to use the Sight, or what have you, to see into the future. She essentially told me that only the future was worth divining, which is nonsense."

"Professor Trelawney is a great teacher! You're just mad that you're not good at a subject."

"She is a great teacher." Ginny could almost hear Hermione grinding her teeth together as she said that with a mostly straight face. She was impressed with her immense ability to restrain herself, and also with the ease that Hermione blatantly lied. "A great teacher of seeing the future, anyways. I wish they administered a test to see if you have the Inner Eye before taking Divination. I wouldn't have wasted half a year!"

"Prove it." Lavender inched closer as she taunted Hermione. "If you're so good at divination, prove that you can divine something from the past, or that's happening right now!"

"Err, well you see-."

"She'll do it!" Ginny jumped in. She pulled out knut and tossed it to Hermione. "Do that thing you were doing yesterday!"

The day before they'd holed themselves up in the library researching the ways they might search Hogwarts for the path most taken by Olivia, Felicity, and Kim on their way back from Hogsmeade. One of the methods they'd heavily considered had been numismatomancy. They'd eventually given up on the idea. The advanced version of it had been far too complex and complicated. None of them would have been able to perform it correctly after just a few tries. The Tossing of Three Coins would have to be a longer term project, if any of them were interested in learning it.

The basic method, though, was almost too simple for their needs. It relied on a coin flip, answering yes and no questions.

For this though, it would be perfect.

Hermione fumbled the coin a few times before latching on to it firmly. She stared at it in confusion for just a moment, before understanding lit up her eyes.

"Of course! What should I ask?"

"Did I receive a letter from my parents yesterday?" Lavender seemed more interested than Ginny would have expected.

"With the wizard's head for yes and the ram for no, Ty lte." She flicked the coin up high into the air, and it glinted in the firelight of the hallways. No one made a move as it clattered to the ground, tinkling as it plinked and clinked.

Hermione peered at it as it finally settled. "No, you did not."

"Did I?" Parvati asked. Hermione scooped the knut up and flicked it high again.

"Yes, you did."

And on and on the questions went. Lavender and Parvati seemed to be an endless source of them, and Ginny quickly tuned it out.

"Focus and intent," she heard Hermione explaining in the background "along with utilizing implements…" and she tuned back out again.

"Oh! That's odd." Ginny turned and realized shouldn't have tuned it all out. The coin had landed on its edge, against all odds a stationary statue, not rolling or moving even slightly.

"Well, I suppose that answers the question of what happens if you ask a question it can't answer!" Lavender said.

"But it should have been able to answer, I'd have thought. It wasn't a question about the future and we worded it as a "yes or no" question."

"It wasn't well defined. The question was technically a yes or no question, but a yes could have meant so many different things that it couldn't give an honest answer. There was something in the reading about that a few weeks ago."

"A few weeks… The lesson on tea leaves? When there's no leaves left in the bottom of your cup?"

"Exactly!"

"Oh, how interesting. I hadn't really considered how an unanswerable question might be represented. I wonder if every form of divination has something like that?"

"Maybe? We're headed down to lunch, did you all want to come with us?"

Hermione looked around at the rest of them, and Ginny, Luna, and Roni all nodded. The large group of girls all walked back down to lunch, and the smile on Hermione's face warmed Ginny's heart.

It was a few weeks later, once they'd finally found time for Hermione to take a break from studying again. The weather was finally starting to warm up, and Hermione was taking her last big break before starting her final studying push before finals.

Nevermind that finals were ages away, or that she was also spending a ridiculous amount of time already working on a defense for Buckbeak.

"You're basically Morgana reincarnated, you know that right? If you end up as a Dark Lady, I'll never forgive you," Ginny said as they all stared up at the clouds above the Black Lake.

"You know, that's a common misconception. I did an essay on her in History of Magic, and it was fascinating. Illuminating, really, how bad a reputation she got. Did you know she was mostly a healer?"

"Well if she wasn't a Dark Lady, why did she take control of all the dragons in Wales and have them eat all the Fertiods? There aren't any natural habitats left for them anymore!"

"I don't know what a Fertiod is, and I didnt say she was a good person, just that she wasn't a Dark Lady."

"Oh look, everybody, that cloud looks like a cat! Isn't that nice, and relaxing, and totally not related to either learning or school or the Dark Arts?" Roni pointed high in the sky at a cloud floating along slowly.

"That cat looks like it has on a witches cap. Maybe it's a cat which practices the Dark Arts? Oh! Perhaps it's Circe's familiar?"

"I hate you all."

Ginny cracked up laughing at Roni's deadpan, and let the comfortable silence overtake her as they all lapsed back to cloud watching and relaxation. The lake lapped against the shore, and the sun would occasionally peek out through the mottled sky. The wind brushed lightly against her skin, and she sighed in contentment.

Things were slowly, but surely, looking up. They weren't perfect, but this year had been so much better than the last it was hard not to have hope.

"We should all get together this summer." Ginny was surprised to find that she was the one who had spoken.

"Mmm."

"Sure."

"That'd be nice."

"No! I really mean it! We should make plans, like actual solid plans to meet up this summer."

"I'll be gone the beginning of summer for France with my parents. There's a conference they want me to go to with them, but I'll get the rest of the time to explore. Maybe the middle, or end of the summer?"

"Roni, what about you?"

"Ah, I don't have any plans. I'll have to ask Mother, though, and I don't know how that will go. She can be very particular."

"We'll figure that bit out later. She's not likely to make plans for you though?"

"No, if anything she'd go away herself and leave me alone with Father."

"Well then we can make it work. And obviously Luna and I will be free all summer."

"Mmm, I'll be doing things this summer."

"Wait, what? What things? When?"

"Just things, at different times. I don't know when for sure. Or where, or why, or how. But I'm certain they'll be happening."

"That's incredibly vague."

"You're incredibly vague."

"Luna. Please? We should all get together this summer."

"I'm sure we will."

"Yes, well then let's make those plans so that it happens."

Ginny sat up on her elbows, and turned her glare on Luna. She could feel the weight of her necklace against her chest as she stared at her sister, and she narrowed her eyes as she glared. Luna was hiding something, Ginny was certain. There was something going on that Luna didn't want Ginny to know about, and it bothered her.

Ginny didn't like not knowing things. She'd spent too long in a haze of fear and uncertainty to ever truly feel okay with secrets. She glared over at Luna's limp form and tried to glower her into submission.

Eventually, Luna merely tilted her head towards Ginny and she murmured "I'll let you know when I know."

It was enough. It might not have been, a few weeks ago. Ginny wasn't sure. She wanted to believe that it would have been enough, but she couldn't know for sure. It didn't truly matter. What was important was that, in that moment, it was. Luna was her sister, and she trusted her.

She might have imagined it, but she thought she could feel a light thrum from her amulet, her half of the spear head. Unbidden, she thought to herself "a horse and her rider, a trust like no other."

She leaned back with a thud as she knocked out her elbows. She blew a raspberry with her mouth and felt the soft grass beneath her as she laid her head back and continued to watch the clouds floating above.