Close On Omniscience ---- Chapter 2
A year later, sixteen-year-old Sirius Black found himself sitting in a double Divination Class with the Ravenclaws. On James' advice he had signed up for the class, based on the claim that it was easy. Well, as luck would have it, the old bat teaching it last year retired, and a new teacher had taken up post.
"Pair up, please," Professor O'Kinton said in her soft voice. She was not a stern woman, but a special silence was maintained in her classroom. Even troublemakers were suppressed by it. Sirius and James reflexively moved toward each other, not even thinking of it.
"I think not," O'Kinton smiled a strange little half-smile toward the dream team. "It is obvious that you do not get out to meet other people. It is important to extend a hand to strangers. Mr. Black, please pair with Miss.?" She motioned to a sullen, bored looking Ravenclaw girl.
"Megatroid." She glared up at the teacher. Issues, leave this one alone, was Sirius' first impression. But the teacher did not skip a beat.
"Miss Megatroid," O'Kinton chimed sweetly and smiled that odd half-smile. Sirius gently took his seat next to the girl, as if he was trying to safely sit on an armed landmine. He grabbed the teacup for something to play with.
"Today we will be examining tea leaves. To do this, drink the tea and swill the remaining leaves, and interpret what you see in the cup. Turn to page twenty-seven for an index of symbols and their meanings. There is not much instruction I can give you-but enjoy the tea."
"Do you want to go first, or." But the Ravenclaw had already drunk the tea and was shaking the cup.
"What, you're not done?" She asked with an annoying spark in her eye. Sirius was ticked.
"Sorry if I don't train for the Tea Chugging Marathon or whatever-"
"You're wasting time. Drink your tea." She began to draw symbols on the parchment, leaving Sirius practically fuming. He grabbed the tea cup, but then accidentally dropped it. He expected her to make a witty comment, but she said nothing. She went to get some paper towels.
"Five minutes after class, Mr. Black," Prof. O'Kinton said nonchalantly. "For abuse of school equipment." "Here," the Ravenclaw girl gave Sirius a new cup of tea, her face suddenly softer and not so bitter.
"Er.thanks. You didn't have to do that."
"You'll be late to Transfiguration. It's the least I can do."
"How do you know I have Trans next?"
"It's Divination class now, isn't it, Mr. Black? Many things are seen and known here that oughtn't be," she said with a big whiff of mystery, that enticed a little bit of Sirius.
"Yeah. Like, I oughtn't be able to see McGonnagal's living quarters from out that window, and I know now that she wears support bras?" The Ravenclaw snickered quietly, but waved the joke away.
"I mean to See, with the Third Eye. To gaze into the orb, or the leaves, and See things to be or things from afar?" "What-are you saying you can actually see things? That this class is more than a semester's worth of crap to you?" She shrugged, finishing the symbols.
"Do you want to know your future?"
"Sure. Why not?" She grabbed the piece of parchment.
"You have a combination of the Pyramid and the Acorn," she said in an official voice. "This means for you to eat heartily today, for your will be deprived tomorrow. Then you have a rare trinity of the Grazing Cow, the Linen Cloth, and the Grand Arch.this means your heart and mind are far from here. They dwell on forbidden things, for they dwell in the Forest."
"Great wizards, you know that from just a couple of symbols?" he asked breathlessly. The deprivation tomorrow meant nothing, but about him thinking of the Forest was dead on-he had a "date" with the Marauders there tonight. "It says nothing about 'combinations' on the page."
"Look in the appendix, J-3." There it was, a table of intermediate tealeaf reading symbols, with more descript interpretations.
"Can I see the paper you wrote the symbols on?"
"Sure." She handed over the off-white parchment. He examined the symbols, and the notes underneath.
Acorn- Fertility, bounty, good harvest. Pyramid - desert, famine
Analysis: Odd combination-they contrast one another. One believes that they follow each other in sequence.
Grazing Cow - vegetation, life thriving Shepherd's Crook (this she had scratched off) Linen Cloth - the psyche, the heart, in which with one is concerned, except when in combination with Ear of Corn, but this does not apply Grand Arch -distance, a bridge crossing an expanse
Analysis: Vegetation could mean Herbology Greenhouses, but one doubts this. Vegetation most likely means Forbidden Forest. The bridge means he is not thinking about Divination, for he has crossed it to the Forest. He is concerned with things there, hence the Linen Cloth.
Sirius was astounded. The bell rang.
"See ya later," the Ravenclaw smiled a tiny smile and waved. Sirius smiled softly back, contemplating the notes. They were incredibly advanced, even for a sixth-year. Then again, she was a Ravenclaw. They were well known for intellectual superiority. Maybe he just couldn't comprehend it in his small, prank-conceiving Gryffindor brain.
He studied the note carefully. The writing was easily readable, not like his fast scribbles. A strange chord of déja vú struck him. Out of his robe's pocket, he took a faded, oily note of matching off-white parchment similar to the one that the Tea leaf symbols were drawn on.
You made her laugh. But you're more than a comedian.
The day he had received this note he had aced a test in Potions, his worst subject. After that he had won a trip to the caretaker's office, which normally meant nothing, but today the "Confiscated" drawer had been open. He had quickly rifled through the contents, and had found an incredible little toy, which he fondly named Cupid's Quiver. We'll get to that later. But he was convinced that all this good fortune owed up to the lucky note. So he made a habit to carry it with him. He hadn't seriously read it for a whole year.
The writing matched. The perfect Denelian, with the curly tails. He had found the author.
But who was the author? All he knew her by was 'Miss Megatroid' which wouldn't get him anywhere. And what would he do once he found her? He needed a second opinion.
"Prongs?" he whispered to his best friend that night in the dorm room. Remus was in the bath and Peter seemed to be stuck trying to get his pajamas on. Sirius was getting ready for bed. He grabbed three muffins he had stolen from the kitchens, and devoured them one by one.
"Why are you eating like you've never seen food before?" James gave him his signature wiser-than-thou look as he read in bed. Sirius had no idea why James bothered; reading bored him to tears. Since his mouth was full, he just gave him an annoyed look.
"Stay up, will you?" he said once he was done chewing. "There's something I want to talk about, but not with Moony and brilliant Wormtail over there." He motioned toward Peter, who fell over from bad balance trying to get his jammy bottoms on.
"All right," he said seriously. The other two fell asleep close on nine o'clock, Peter like a log and Remus a little later. They still spoke in whispers-Remus was a light sleeper.
"What's wrong?" James asked, just a little bit on moonlight from the window reflecting on his glasses.
"Do you remember Alice?"
"Alice." James pondered. "Oh yeah, last year." Under normal conditions, Sirius would have said the same thing.
"Well, remember you guys were guessing why I dumped her?"
"Not really."
"Study Hall? Fourth hour, right after lunch?"
"Oh.yeah. Sort of."
"That day, I found a note on the ground."
"Well, what did it say?" Sirius went over to the bureau and pulled the note out of the pocket of his robes. He unfolded it, letting the moonlight act as an ersatz nightlight. The two sentences shone in the standard black ink.
"So?" James shrugged after reading them.
"That's the reason I broke up with Alice. Right there, on paper."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Isn't that weird, though? That they'd write it and drop it on the floor, knowing I find it?"
"Of course."
"Well, here's more for you. Do remember Divination today?"
"Ha, yes. You and Miss Megatroid, what a pair."
"She wrote it." He waited for it to sink in. James rubbed his eyes, skillfully not bumping his glasses.
"She told you that?"
"No. I compared that handwriting," he took out the tealeaf symbols paper and flashed it at James. "It's the same."
"Lemme see." It was indeed the same writing.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Sirius sighed. He rubbed his face. It was not often he was cornered with no plan. It did not help that the room was several hues of blue from the moonlight. It was making him dizzy. The air was cold, creating a sort of skin-shell, but not quite goosebumps. "Why didn't she just give it to me?"
"Maybe she was embarrassed," James mused wisely. "She might have just lost it, never planning on giving it to you."
"Yeah. You're right. I mean-what are the odds, anyway? Picking a scrap off the floor? I'm not Filch, great wizards."
"See? It's totally logical. Who knows how many stalkers your have? She might be one of them." It seemed to be a perfectly good conclusion, on one level. Then.what about the Divination thing? If she was able to See how wrapped up he was in the Forbidden Forest, could she see other things? It made his head hurt to think of the things at stake.
Knock, knock. It was Madame Pomfrey's soft rap on the door. James and Sirius immediately fell onto their beds, lying still with closed eyes. She slipped in unceremoniously, gliding over to Remus' bedside. Sirius couldn't hear what she was saying, but he could tell she was trying to rouse him.
"Come, the hour draws near." The nurse's warning was heard throughout the chamber. Remus was on his feet, not taking his coat. He gave one shifty smile back at the other boys before he disappeared out the door, the door closing loudly.
James and Sirius got up and nodded to one another. James went to fetch the Invisibility Cloak while Sirius was flicking Peter on the forehead, trying to wake him up.
"Wormtail, you prat. Get up. It's time to go."
"Right..right." He winced, climbing out of his sleep to sit on the bed.
"Ready, Pete?" James called from the bathroom. If anyone was to actually look for the Cloak, it was their guess that no one would look in the bathroom closet.
"Yeah."
"Prongs, let's go. Wormtail, do you need help walking?" Sirius asked business-like.
"No, I'm good. Let's do it." The trio shifted out of the room, slinking down the steps. James nodded; the common room was dark and empty, only firefly sized glowing embers remained in the untended fire. They dashed soundlessly across the stone floor in the purple-tinted room; a combination of the blue moonlight and the red décor. They pushed the portrait gently open, so as not to awake the Fat Lady, filed out, and closed the portrait. She was undisturbed, and snoring fitfully. They flashed one another smiles and began to hug the wall to stay in the shadows, inching down the hall.
"Get under, get under," James hissed, ushering the two boys inside the Invisibility Cloak. They moved as one, an invisible mass walking carefully down the Main Stair. When they had reached the fourth floor, they stuffed the Cloak behind a suit of armor under the large Hogwarts coat of arms.
"Ready?" Sirius breathed, although they had done this a dozen times before.
"Let's do it," Peter repeated, panting slightly. They began a brisk jog, speeding down the Green Mile. They fell forward, down and hit the ground running, transforming into their Animagus forms: the stag, the dog and the rat. They filed into a fast-moving line, passing door by door. At the end of the Green Mile there was a mirror, standing a foot above the ground and about two feet wide.
Prongs was first. He leapt with all of the agility of a deer, hurdling into the mirror. He disappeared, and the midnight dog went second, then the near-unnoticeable rat. They mirror rippled slightly where they had entered, then stilled, leaving no trace of their crossing.
The three landed paws and hooves first onto the grounds near the Whomping Willow. The Forbidden Forest lay to their west and the well-worn path to Hogsmeade to the east. The odd group of animals stood in the pale moonlight, their reflection on the black lake.
Wormtail sped along, low to the ground, scurrying up a bulking root and through deep ingrained wooden grooves to a knothole. He gently tapped it with his meek paw, but that was all it needed. The tree's irritable thrashing and snapping branches froze in place, even stiller than a normal tree. Wormtail ran back and wicked fast climbed up on Padfoot's back, clinging there in the thick black fur.
The stag and the deer proceeded into the hole low in the trunk, barely wide enough for Prongs. An earthy, pitch-black tunnel led down farther and farther. Then, it inclined upward again. It was actually a little it warm. The dirt was humid and moist.
The tunnel spat them out into a small hut that was boarded up from the inside. Cracks between the boards on the window lit slivers of moonlight snake in, revealing the wrecked furniture and gnarled mattress on the bed frame. A lone whimpering could be heard.
The three animals soon became four as the crying wolf's sullen attitude was suddenly joyful. He bounced into step between Prongs and Padfoot. The group started back down the tunnel, and into the adventurous night.
A year later, sixteen-year-old Sirius Black found himself sitting in a double Divination Class with the Ravenclaws. On James' advice he had signed up for the class, based on the claim that it was easy. Well, as luck would have it, the old bat teaching it last year retired, and a new teacher had taken up post.
"Pair up, please," Professor O'Kinton said in her soft voice. She was not a stern woman, but a special silence was maintained in her classroom. Even troublemakers were suppressed by it. Sirius and James reflexively moved toward each other, not even thinking of it.
"I think not," O'Kinton smiled a strange little half-smile toward the dream team. "It is obvious that you do not get out to meet other people. It is important to extend a hand to strangers. Mr. Black, please pair with Miss.?" She motioned to a sullen, bored looking Ravenclaw girl.
"Megatroid." She glared up at the teacher. Issues, leave this one alone, was Sirius' first impression. But the teacher did not skip a beat.
"Miss Megatroid," O'Kinton chimed sweetly and smiled that odd half-smile. Sirius gently took his seat next to the girl, as if he was trying to safely sit on an armed landmine. He grabbed the teacup for something to play with.
"Today we will be examining tea leaves. To do this, drink the tea and swill the remaining leaves, and interpret what you see in the cup. Turn to page twenty-seven for an index of symbols and their meanings. There is not much instruction I can give you-but enjoy the tea."
"Do you want to go first, or." But the Ravenclaw had already drunk the tea and was shaking the cup.
"What, you're not done?" She asked with an annoying spark in her eye. Sirius was ticked.
"Sorry if I don't train for the Tea Chugging Marathon or whatever-"
"You're wasting time. Drink your tea." She began to draw symbols on the parchment, leaving Sirius practically fuming. He grabbed the tea cup, but then accidentally dropped it. He expected her to make a witty comment, but she said nothing. She went to get some paper towels.
"Five minutes after class, Mr. Black," Prof. O'Kinton said nonchalantly. "For abuse of school equipment." "Here," the Ravenclaw girl gave Sirius a new cup of tea, her face suddenly softer and not so bitter.
"Er.thanks. You didn't have to do that."
"You'll be late to Transfiguration. It's the least I can do."
"How do you know I have Trans next?"
"It's Divination class now, isn't it, Mr. Black? Many things are seen and known here that oughtn't be," she said with a big whiff of mystery, that enticed a little bit of Sirius.
"Yeah. Like, I oughtn't be able to see McGonnagal's living quarters from out that window, and I know now that she wears support bras?" The Ravenclaw snickered quietly, but waved the joke away.
"I mean to See, with the Third Eye. To gaze into the orb, or the leaves, and See things to be or things from afar?" "What-are you saying you can actually see things? That this class is more than a semester's worth of crap to you?" She shrugged, finishing the symbols.
"Do you want to know your future?"
"Sure. Why not?" She grabbed the piece of parchment.
"You have a combination of the Pyramid and the Acorn," she said in an official voice. "This means for you to eat heartily today, for your will be deprived tomorrow. Then you have a rare trinity of the Grazing Cow, the Linen Cloth, and the Grand Arch.this means your heart and mind are far from here. They dwell on forbidden things, for they dwell in the Forest."
"Great wizards, you know that from just a couple of symbols?" he asked breathlessly. The deprivation tomorrow meant nothing, but about him thinking of the Forest was dead on-he had a "date" with the Marauders there tonight. "It says nothing about 'combinations' on the page."
"Look in the appendix, J-3." There it was, a table of intermediate tealeaf reading symbols, with more descript interpretations.
"Can I see the paper you wrote the symbols on?"
"Sure." She handed over the off-white parchment. He examined the symbols, and the notes underneath.
Acorn- Fertility, bounty, good harvest. Pyramid - desert, famine
Analysis: Odd combination-they contrast one another. One believes that they follow each other in sequence.
Grazing Cow - vegetation, life thriving Shepherd's Crook (this she had scratched off) Linen Cloth - the psyche, the heart, in which with one is concerned, except when in combination with Ear of Corn, but this does not apply Grand Arch -distance, a bridge crossing an expanse
Analysis: Vegetation could mean Herbology Greenhouses, but one doubts this. Vegetation most likely means Forbidden Forest. The bridge means he is not thinking about Divination, for he has crossed it to the Forest. He is concerned with things there, hence the Linen Cloth.
Sirius was astounded. The bell rang.
"See ya later," the Ravenclaw smiled a tiny smile and waved. Sirius smiled softly back, contemplating the notes. They were incredibly advanced, even for a sixth-year. Then again, she was a Ravenclaw. They were well known for intellectual superiority. Maybe he just couldn't comprehend it in his small, prank-conceiving Gryffindor brain.
He studied the note carefully. The writing was easily readable, not like his fast scribbles. A strange chord of déja vú struck him. Out of his robe's pocket, he took a faded, oily note of matching off-white parchment similar to the one that the Tea leaf symbols were drawn on.
You made her laugh. But you're more than a comedian.
The day he had received this note he had aced a test in Potions, his worst subject. After that he had won a trip to the caretaker's office, which normally meant nothing, but today the "Confiscated" drawer had been open. He had quickly rifled through the contents, and had found an incredible little toy, which he fondly named Cupid's Quiver. We'll get to that later. But he was convinced that all this good fortune owed up to the lucky note. So he made a habit to carry it with him. He hadn't seriously read it for a whole year.
The writing matched. The perfect Denelian, with the curly tails. He had found the author.
But who was the author? All he knew her by was 'Miss Megatroid' which wouldn't get him anywhere. And what would he do once he found her? He needed a second opinion.
"Prongs?" he whispered to his best friend that night in the dorm room. Remus was in the bath and Peter seemed to be stuck trying to get his pajamas on. Sirius was getting ready for bed. He grabbed three muffins he had stolen from the kitchens, and devoured them one by one.
"Why are you eating like you've never seen food before?" James gave him his signature wiser-than-thou look as he read in bed. Sirius had no idea why James bothered; reading bored him to tears. Since his mouth was full, he just gave him an annoyed look.
"Stay up, will you?" he said once he was done chewing. "There's something I want to talk about, but not with Moony and brilliant Wormtail over there." He motioned toward Peter, who fell over from bad balance trying to get his jammy bottoms on.
"All right," he said seriously. The other two fell asleep close on nine o'clock, Peter like a log and Remus a little later. They still spoke in whispers-Remus was a light sleeper.
"What's wrong?" James asked, just a little bit on moonlight from the window reflecting on his glasses.
"Do you remember Alice?"
"Alice." James pondered. "Oh yeah, last year." Under normal conditions, Sirius would have said the same thing.
"Well, remember you guys were guessing why I dumped her?"
"Not really."
"Study Hall? Fourth hour, right after lunch?"
"Oh.yeah. Sort of."
"That day, I found a note on the ground."
"Well, what did it say?" Sirius went over to the bureau and pulled the note out of the pocket of his robes. He unfolded it, letting the moonlight act as an ersatz nightlight. The two sentences shone in the standard black ink.
"So?" James shrugged after reading them.
"That's the reason I broke up with Alice. Right there, on paper."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Isn't that weird, though? That they'd write it and drop it on the floor, knowing I find it?"
"Of course."
"Well, here's more for you. Do remember Divination today?"
"Ha, yes. You and Miss Megatroid, what a pair."
"She wrote it." He waited for it to sink in. James rubbed his eyes, skillfully not bumping his glasses.
"She told you that?"
"No. I compared that handwriting," he took out the tealeaf symbols paper and flashed it at James. "It's the same."
"Lemme see." It was indeed the same writing.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Sirius sighed. He rubbed his face. It was not often he was cornered with no plan. It did not help that the room was several hues of blue from the moonlight. It was making him dizzy. The air was cold, creating a sort of skin-shell, but not quite goosebumps. "Why didn't she just give it to me?"
"Maybe she was embarrassed," James mused wisely. "She might have just lost it, never planning on giving it to you."
"Yeah. You're right. I mean-what are the odds, anyway? Picking a scrap off the floor? I'm not Filch, great wizards."
"See? It's totally logical. Who knows how many stalkers your have? She might be one of them." It seemed to be a perfectly good conclusion, on one level. Then.what about the Divination thing? If she was able to See how wrapped up he was in the Forbidden Forest, could she see other things? It made his head hurt to think of the things at stake.
Knock, knock. It was Madame Pomfrey's soft rap on the door. James and Sirius immediately fell onto their beds, lying still with closed eyes. She slipped in unceremoniously, gliding over to Remus' bedside. Sirius couldn't hear what she was saying, but he could tell she was trying to rouse him.
"Come, the hour draws near." The nurse's warning was heard throughout the chamber. Remus was on his feet, not taking his coat. He gave one shifty smile back at the other boys before he disappeared out the door, the door closing loudly.
James and Sirius got up and nodded to one another. James went to fetch the Invisibility Cloak while Sirius was flicking Peter on the forehead, trying to wake him up.
"Wormtail, you prat. Get up. It's time to go."
"Right..right." He winced, climbing out of his sleep to sit on the bed.
"Ready, Pete?" James called from the bathroom. If anyone was to actually look for the Cloak, it was their guess that no one would look in the bathroom closet.
"Yeah."
"Prongs, let's go. Wormtail, do you need help walking?" Sirius asked business-like.
"No, I'm good. Let's do it." The trio shifted out of the room, slinking down the steps. James nodded; the common room was dark and empty, only firefly sized glowing embers remained in the untended fire. They dashed soundlessly across the stone floor in the purple-tinted room; a combination of the blue moonlight and the red décor. They pushed the portrait gently open, so as not to awake the Fat Lady, filed out, and closed the portrait. She was undisturbed, and snoring fitfully. They flashed one another smiles and began to hug the wall to stay in the shadows, inching down the hall.
"Get under, get under," James hissed, ushering the two boys inside the Invisibility Cloak. They moved as one, an invisible mass walking carefully down the Main Stair. When they had reached the fourth floor, they stuffed the Cloak behind a suit of armor under the large Hogwarts coat of arms.
"Ready?" Sirius breathed, although they had done this a dozen times before.
"Let's do it," Peter repeated, panting slightly. They began a brisk jog, speeding down the Green Mile. They fell forward, down and hit the ground running, transforming into their Animagus forms: the stag, the dog and the rat. They filed into a fast-moving line, passing door by door. At the end of the Green Mile there was a mirror, standing a foot above the ground and about two feet wide.
Prongs was first. He leapt with all of the agility of a deer, hurdling into the mirror. He disappeared, and the midnight dog went second, then the near-unnoticeable rat. They mirror rippled slightly where they had entered, then stilled, leaving no trace of their crossing.
The three landed paws and hooves first onto the grounds near the Whomping Willow. The Forbidden Forest lay to their west and the well-worn path to Hogsmeade to the east. The odd group of animals stood in the pale moonlight, their reflection on the black lake.
Wormtail sped along, low to the ground, scurrying up a bulking root and through deep ingrained wooden grooves to a knothole. He gently tapped it with his meek paw, but that was all it needed. The tree's irritable thrashing and snapping branches froze in place, even stiller than a normal tree. Wormtail ran back and wicked fast climbed up on Padfoot's back, clinging there in the thick black fur.
The stag and the deer proceeded into the hole low in the trunk, barely wide enough for Prongs. An earthy, pitch-black tunnel led down farther and farther. Then, it inclined upward again. It was actually a little it warm. The dirt was humid and moist.
The tunnel spat them out into a small hut that was boarded up from the inside. Cracks between the boards on the window lit slivers of moonlight snake in, revealing the wrecked furniture and gnarled mattress on the bed frame. A lone whimpering could be heard.
The three animals soon became four as the crying wolf's sullen attitude was suddenly joyful. He bounced into step between Prongs and Padfoot. The group started back down the tunnel, and into the adventurous night.