The next day was spent with divided attention. On one hand, the party was the next day, and final preparations had to be made. On the other hand, they had a lot of prophecies to look at and try to decipher.
It was decided the work would be divided. Luna and Hermione opted to take charge of the prophecies, while Harry, Susan, and Blaise finished preparations for the party. Harry was insistent on them getting coolers to put ice in for the butterbeers, which required a trek to the muggle store and back.
Meanwhile, Luna and Hermione had fun rewriting all the prophecies onto index cards in different colored inks and thumbtacking them to a corkboard. Luna ran back to her house at one point, returning with different colored strings, scissors, and a backlog of old newspapers and magazines.
"If we're going to do this," Luna said, eyes shining with excitement, "then let's do it right."
It was a lot of fun to look through newspapers with Luna for pictures or phrases to help with the interpretation of different phrases from the prophecies. They were able to find a photo of Amelia Bones relatively easily, tacking it to the board and connecting it to Susan's prophecy with string. They used a picture of Luna to connect to the phrase 'Sidhe-spawned she' in Hermione's prophecy, but they only tacked up a sketch of the coven house for the line about a tree of power with a house. They'd have to get a real photo of it later.
When they got to the next one, Hermione paused, but Luna didn't.
"Shame there's no photos of the dementors on fire," Luna said, tacking up the photo of Azkaban with the side blown out and the artist sketch of the Valkyrie. "That would have been really neat to have."
"Should we just tack this one up with the others?" Hermione asked, gnawing on her lip. "Harry and Susan—I haven't told them anything yet."
"They'll know soon enough," Luna said, shrugging. "They won't be looking at this today, anyway."
The next two were less helpful – 'a bond with the fourth, connections to three' could be anything, and Hermione really didn't like the warning that she would have to save someone's life. The other one was at least more straightforward – Luna connected strings from the phrase 'New Blood' to Hermione, and strings from 'dark charlatan' to sketches of Tom Riddle and Snape, as well as a photo of Lockhart and a question mark.
"Snape is not a charlatan," Hermione objected.
"How are you certain?" Luna asked, tilting her head. "He certainly wears enough black to be 'dark'."
Hermione growled but let her protests subside.
Luna's prophecies they put on the right side of the cork board, tying 'moon-child' to a photo of Luna, a picture of a crystal ball to 'her gift', and a photo of Luna's mother for 'your mother's legacy'. The second was so short that they just tacked it under the other one. They discussed whether or not they should draw a heart made of coal for 'the mined heart' but ultimately decided against it.
Harry's prophecy took up the top middle of the board, written on a large card in scarlet ink. They put up a photo of James and Lily Potter nearby, a sketch of Harry's scar, and a drawn calendar of July in 1980. As Luna was connecting them with string, Hermione paused.
"Do we know anyone else born then?" she asked. "I feel like someone else's birthday is around then too."
Luna shrugged. "Does it matter? Voldemort marked Harry. I don't think he marked anyone else."
She had a point, Hermione acknowledged with a sigh.
Harry's second took up a small amount of space below his 'main' one. They connected strings for 'his friends' to photos of the coven members, but there wasn't exactly a great visual representation of 'learning to lie', so they let it be.
Blaise's were interesting. The first they tacked up, connecting a string with a photo of Blaise's mother to the phrase 'wicked, wretched woman', which Hermione found very funny. The second, Hermione rewrote carefully in green ink, though she didn't recognize or understand the words at all:
Blaise non erediterà soltanto i tuoi attributi - avrà anche parte di quelli di suo padre.
Al primo sfiorarsi di labbra, saprà qual è la strada per la sua felicità,
E fortunatamente per entrambi, la sua non porterà a morte e sventura incombenti
Not wanting to leave the prophecy unconnected to anything (as it would make the whole prophecy/conspiracy board look uneven), they drew a string from a photo of Blaise to his name, but it was all they could do.
The third one of Blaise's was even longer, and again, Hermione didn't know what she was copying out onto the card:
Le identità celate
di chi ha ricattato e chi ha tradito
verranno da Blaise svelate
lasciandolo con un quesito
dinanzi a lui la strada si biforcherà
e l'aver scoperto la verità
di fronte a una scelta tra due destini lo porrà
Se rivelato a Lei immediatamente
egli verrà bandito immantinente
ma la di Lei rovina a ruota seguirà
poichè la sua forza ridurrà
Se invece il traditore verrà da lui ricattato
un utilissimo strumento verrà guadagnato
egli sarà completamente suo da governare
in suo completo potere da manovrare
Persino un drago, se a un guinzaglio soggiogato
può venire aizzato e controllato
They obligingly tied a string from Blaise's name to his photo. Hermione had a strong urge to tie a picture of ricotta to ricattato, even though she knew they weren't the same thing. Luna wanted to connect a picture of a scorpion to the word scoperto, and eventually, they decided since they weren't supposed to ever translate it and know what it said anyway (or meet their peril), they might as well have fun with it.
When Harry, Blaise, and Susan finally returned, they'd also connected a picture of bifocals (biforcherà), melted cheese (quesito), and Zorro (bandito) to the prophecy. They were working on connecting random things to the second when the others came over.
"What are you doing?" Blaise wanted to know. "Scoperto doesn't mean 'scorpion'!"
"It doesn't?" Luna blinked up at him innocently. "My Italian must be bad."
"What is that?" Susan asked, watching as Hermione connected a roughly sketched drawing she'd made to the word entrambi in the second prophecy. "Is that…is that supposed to be a stag?"
"It's a deer with its guts and organs hanging out," Hermione corrected, grinning, and Harry started laughing.
"Is that supposed to be entrail-Bambi?" he demanded, wheezing. "Merlin, that's amazing. I love it."
Blaise looked highly annoyed, but as he watched the others giggle at their mischief, his shoulders relaxed, and he sighed.
"You're delusional, but that's nothing new," he chided them, resigned, and Hermione laughed.
"Maybe," she said cheerily. "But at least we had fun with it, even if we're not supposed to know what it says."
It was decided that they would hide the giant prophecy conspiracy board for the party the next day – they didn't need everyone seeing all their business willy-nilly. Harry took it down into the secret staircase down to the ritual chamber (which they'd already decided was off-limits to everyone else), and Hermione helped unpack all their purchases.
"Are these serving platters?" Hermione asked, surprised. She looked at Susan. "Where all did you go?"
"Almost everywhere," Susan said, sighing. "Harry was very adamant about how a proper party should look."
"I had to set up for fancy dinner parties at my aunt's all the time!" Harry objected, returning from the staircase. "And hors d'oeuvres go on platters, not plates."
"This isn't a fancy dinner party though," Luna pointed out. "They're coming just after lunchtime."
"It's the premise of the thing," Harry argued, aggrieved, and Hermione laughed.
"We have this wonderful house," Hermione agreed, gesturing around her. "Surely we need impressive platters to match."
"Exactly!" Harry beamed at her, and Hermione hid a grin.
"Is there anything else we need to do today to prepare for tomorrow?" Hermione asked. "I'm picking up the catering tomorrow, and Harry's cleaned the place twice over."
"We might want to come up with a contingency plan," Luna said seriously. "What is our plan if people start fighting or dueling?"
Hermione blinked. "…is that likely?"
"We did invite a bunch of Gryffindors and Slytherins to be in the same place at the same time," Blaise said dryly. "It's not a bad idea."
Amused, Hermione sat down in the living room.
"Fine, then," she said, pulling out a clean sheet of parchment. She glanced around. "Any ideas for how to handle such an event?"
None of them had the slightest idea what a contingency plan for that should look like or how it should be written or formatted, but they certainly had fun coming up with ideas: stunning people and throwing them back through the Floo, using air magic to pin them up against the ceiling until they behaved, enchanting the furniture to throw them out the windows, or everyone just booing them until whatever perpetrators stopped misbehaving and sat down.
In the end, they decided on making a loud BANG from someone's wand to scare everyone into silence, similar to how Dumbledore reclaimed order in the Wizengamot, and then one of them would yell at everyone to calm down. It wasn't the most intricate plan, Hermione thought, smiling, but it was effective, and it was much easier to do than charm the furniture to throw people out, no matter how awesome and hilarious Harry argued it would be.