Chapter Seventy-Five: An Eye-Opening Experience

Harry began to look increasingly tired over the next couple of days, as Umbridge was keeping him past midnight every day, and he had to do his homework in addition to it.

It understandably did little to improve his already bad mood, and Daphne wasn't really sure what she could do about it. She'd already taken to finishing his homework in addition to her own, but even with that there was so much of it that she barely managed to get it all done.

Harry had managed to tell Fred and George where Umbridge kept the blood quill, but of course, they hadn't been able to steal it yet, and Harry's hand was already beginning to show signs of scarring.

Daphne had written to her parents, but it would take time for them to find anything on Umbridge as well, and so there was hardly anything she could do except keep her head down and observe. This, combined with the fact that her Occlumency practice still wasn't going very well, made her mood almost as bad as Harry's.

On Friday evening, she sat in the library, working on both her own homework and Harry's at the same time. She wanted to set fire to the entire pile of books and parchment in front of her, but she bit back her annoyance and kept going.

At least she wasn't having 'I must not tell lies' carved into her hand by an illegal quill while also missing the Quidditch team tryouts and being labeled a liar by the entire wizarding community. However much Daphne hated Umbridge and the Ministry, it would have nothing on how Harry felt. If doing obscene amounts of homework could help him at all, she'd do it. Not quite as glorious as training to fight Voldemort and his Death Eaters, perhaps, but still necessary.

"Need some help with that?" someone asked, and Daphne looked up to see Ginny smiling at her.

"Hey! Aren't you supposed to be at the tryouts?" Daphne asked.

Ginny shook her head. "It's just for Keeper."

"Not your thing?" Daphne asked with a small smile.

"Not spectacular enough," Ginny said with a grin. "I'd like to be a Chaser. Seeker would be fine too, but as long as Harry is here I doubt that spot's going to open up anytime soon. So, need a hand?"

Daphne cocked her head. "Isn't this a year too high for you, though?" she asked.

Ginny shrugged. "You've got dream diaries for Divination, right? I can probably make those up without too much difficulty. And Hermione's been telling me things about Muggle society, so I'm pretty sure I could help you with Muggle Studies too."

"And your own homework?" Daphne asked.

"Already done. It's the first week, so it's not that bad yet," Ginny said.

"Well, in that case…I'd be glad to have a bit of help," Daphne said with a smile.

Ginny sat down across from her and Daphne shoved her Divination pile over. "Go crazy," she said. "I don't particularly care what you write down, and I doubt Harry does, either."

"Just gotta try to match the handwriting a bit…wow, Harry's handwriting is terrible…"

Daphne chuckled. "It's not usually that bad. He was just getting annoyed by the end of it. But don't worry, Trelawney doesn't care about the handwriting at all. Something that mundane is beneath her Inner Eye, or something…" she said.

"Oh, good," Ginny said, and then began to write.

"So…how's Umbridge to the fourth-years?" Daphne asked while they worked.

"As boring as Binns and as strict as McGonagall or Snape," Ginny replied. "She just tells us to read chapters from the book and then asks questions about them. If you can't recite it word-for-word she has you read it again. And all the while she keeps talking about how the Ministry wants the best for everyone and how she wants to hear about everyone who has a different view.

"I really had to bite my tongue not to start shouting at her…Colin did shout at her and cost us twenty points, though he stopped before he got a detention. Some people seem to think she's sincere, though. Even in my year there's a couple of people who think that Dumbledore and Harry are liars."

Her expression darkened. "As if they've forgotten what Harry's already done for everyone. As if they've forgotten what happened to me in first year…If a memory of You…Voldemort could do that much, why is it so hard to believe he could regain his powers?"

"It makes them feel safe," Daphne said bitterly.

"I can imagine that for people outside of Hogwarts, but my classmates know what happened. They were there," Ginny said.

"When I saw Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest in my first year, Hagrid didn't want to believe what I'd seen, even though he fully believed that he'd be back one day," Daphne said. "It's too frightening for a lot of people to even consider, so they act as if it never happened, and the Ministry is playing into that with their denial." She scoffed. "And Dad told me that Fudge apparently thinks that Dumbledore's trying to raise an army here to take over the Ministry, and that's why Umbridge won't let us learn any spells."

Ginny gave her an incredulous look. "He's afraid an army of students will take over the Ministry?"

Daphne nodded. "Yes."

"And that is the man Percy chose to be loyal to…what a massive prat," Ginny said angrily.

"Why d'you think he did it?" Daphne asked. "I mean, he's your brother, you know him…"

Ginny shrugged. "I don't know…" she said. "He's always been really ambitious. And Bill, Charlie, Fred, and George were always messing with him, trying to get him to lighten up a bit, but…maybe he took it seriously. Maybe he really thought they didn't like him. I don't know. He was always really protective of me, though, even in first year."

Daphne nodded slowly. "Back then, he trusted Harry enough to go and get him when I'd found the Chamber of Secrets. It's so hard to believe he'd completely reject that in favor of the Ministry's warped views," she said. "I mean, last year his boss was being impersonated by a Death Eater…"

"Maybe he's in denial about that," Ginny suggested. "That he's feeling so embarrassed about overlooking that that he's just denying anything that might have to do with it, including the fact Voldemort's back at all… If that's true, though, I've got some things to say to him if he shows up at some point. I mean…I still feel guilty about what I did in my first year, but at least I'm admitting it and trying to fix it…"

"What you did in your first year wasn't your fault," Daphne said firmly.

Ginny gave her a look. "And when has hearing that ever stopped you from feeling guilty about…well, anything?"

Daphne smiled sheepishly. "It hasn't," she admitted. "But…I never even knew you were still feeling guilty about the diary…"

"Of course I do. I could've killed someone, even though it wasn't me in control. I just don't show it by trying to get myself killed."

"Probably smart not to take pointers from me, yeah," Daphne acknowledged.

"I am, though. Just a bit more…lowkey. I try to help my classmates and friends when I can. I try to stand up for what I believe in, and to do the right thing… You've inspired me to do that, partially, with your S.I.N. initiative and the way you and Harry became friends in the first place," Ginny said. Then she smiled brightly and added, "And you've taught me to care less about what others think, with our dance at the Yule Ball last year."

"I…inspired you?" Daphne said stupidly.

She hadn't expected that. Sure, she knew that she'd inspired some Slytherins to be better people, but she'd never imagined anyone else would be, certainly not Ginny. And the reasons she even started S.I.N. weren't because she didn't care about what other people thought, but because she did.

Ginny laughed. "Is that so surprising? But yeah, you have," she said.

Daphne wasn't sure what to say to that, so she mumbled a quick 'thank you' and then focused on her homework again.

With Ginny's help, she managed to get most of it done, and it surprised Daphne how natural it felt to work together with her. Maybe it was because they'd spent so much time together already over the summer.

That night, though, when she lay in her bed, she thought back to the conversation. It felt strange to her that she'd inspired Ginny in some way. After all, what had she really done? She was sure that her friends could have solved every single situation they'd gotten into without her help. Maybe she'd affected some minor things, but on the whole, she just couldn't imagine her actions being very meaningful.

And, for some reason, that bothered her. With S.I.N., she knew she was having some kind of effect, however small. And Snape being less openly hostile than before and actually trying to be a decent teacher was certainly welcome. But in the grand scheme of things, in their challenges outside of school work…what had she really accomplished that couldn't have been done without her in much the same way? What did she have, that her friends didn't? What could she do that her friends would not be able to do without her?

Well…they didn't have visions of the future, for one thing. Even though, for the time being, those visions were only of Harry's future, if she could learn to shift her focus in emptiness… But even Dumbledore hadn't known how to do that, and she hadn't heard anything from him since their conversation at Grimmauld Place.

But hadn't a dream-version of Ginny given her something to work with, during the second task of the Triwizard Tournament? 'You are rooted by the fear of loss'. The words seemed to be very significant, and Daphne was almost certain they were a variation on something she'd read in Snape's book, but her conscious mind didn't seem to be able to make the connection.

But maybe…maybe her conscious mind wasn't supposed to. If her divinatory indifference made her more sensitive to her thoughts being manipulated by an outside force, then maybe trying to figure it out directly wasn't going to help her at all. Maybe she'd have more success just letting her subconscious figure it out and hoping it would make sense somehow.

Of course, it wasn't like her dreams generally made all that much sense, but some of them, like the one she'd had in the lake, stuck with her. And she'd had that dream shortly after reading Snape's book. What had she done differently at that time, compared to every other time she'd tried to read it?

For one thing, she hadn't really been bothering to try and understand everything on her first read-through. Instead, she'd just been reading it superficially…but had it truly been superficial, or had some part of her really seen things that made sense? Or had it been more than that, and had the book been enchanted to only be readable by someone's Inner Eye?

It was a far-fetched theory, admittedly, but there might be something to it. Stranger things had happened, after all. A book hiding its information wasn't really that odd, all things considered, especially given the book in question was already enchanted to appear to be a book on Potion-making.

Daphne sat up and took the book from her nightstand. She drew her curtains shut again, lit up her wand, and cast Revelio on the book. Annotated Theory of Potion Brewing transformed into Seeing Beyond: Employing Mind Magic to Steer Divination.

The chapters Daphne had been reading thus far were all around the halfway point of the book. She hadn't really bothered to read through all of it just yet, so she decided to begin at the beginning this time.

Unlike she'd usually do with a book, though, she deliberately didn't pay much attention. Instead, she tried to call up the feeling she'd had when looking into the crystal ball, a feeling similar to staring into a crackling fire, mesmerized by the motion of the fog or the flames.

Of course, the book's letters didn't move at all, but Daphne was pretty tired from doing homework all night, and in the dancing light of her wand, which she wasn't holding entirely still, it wasn't hard to imagine the letters wriggling and moving on the page, and she followed their swirls and lines without really registering the words…

Welcome, Seer, and congratulations on taking your first step Beyond.

Daphne blinked a couple of times, and the page came back into focus. The words had popped into her mind out of nowhere, much like her prediction with the centaurs had done.

She looked at the page attentively now. While the words 'welcome', 'Seer', and 'Beyond' were certainly on the page, the word 'congratulations' was nowhere to be found. Instead, the page was a very dry introduction to the book and its aims and intended audience.

She took a deep breath and focused — well, unfocused — again. It was a bit harder now, because without meaning to, she found herself reading the letters for real instead of merely seeing them as symbols like she did before, but by staring at the word 'the' for a while, while waving her wand back and forth over the page to make the shadows move, she was soon able to 'read' on without looking at the words themselves, just following the curves and lines in the moving shadows...

What lies on the surface is seldom True, and what is True must be felt — like these words.

Again, Daphne hadn't meant to think that sentence, and she was certain now that the book held more information than even Snape would have realized. And, given that she'd reached the end of the page and had only 'read' two sentences, the obscured nature of the real teachings probably had something to do with its immense thickness. It would be hard to explain something in detail if a mere two sentences took up an entire page, after all.

She didn't turn the page yet and instead tried to think of a more consistent way of reading the book. Right now, she was tired and her mind could wander easily, and even then, it had been a bit difficult to get back into the zone after reading the first line. If she'd attempt to read the book during the day, while she was awake, she might not be so successful in getting it to reveal its secrets.

But maybe there was a solution to that. Trelawney's attic room was always stifling hot and heavily perfumed. It was the sort of place where a proper, clear head was impossible to maintain for longer than a few seconds. Of course, Trelawney might not take too kindly to Daphne doing her own thing during class, but she did know that Daphne had seen things in the crystal ball, so she might be willing to cooperate.

Binns's classroom would be another good place to read. His dry voice would put everyone into a stupor in no time at all, which would likely be perfect for Daphne's purposes, and he wouldn't care if she was doing something else than paying attention. The school itself could sprout legs and walk away and it wouldn't deter Binns from his lectures. Even dying hadn't stopped him.

She grinned and put her book away again, after first using Obfuscato to make it resume its appearance as a Potions book. She'd become someone worth of being an inspiration yet.

A bit meta, this chapter, but still. Again, being a pantser is making it hard to keep the story going, especially since Order of the Phoenix is already a tough book for me to read given the staggering amounts of injustice in it. It's still an important book which will allow me to set up the things I want to set up for the final two years, but that doesn't make it easy.