THC/The Houses Competition
House: Ravenclaw
Category: Standard
Class: Herbology
Prompt(s): [Object] an open packet of crisps & [Last line]And I never saw him again.
Word Count: 1768
Betas: Mega, Hope, Miakoda
As far as Professor Lupin knew, Sybil Trelawney had only ever been right twice: in 1981, when she'd told Professor Dumbledore what would happen to the Potters, and in 1973, when she'd somehow known that Sirius Black was about to throw an orange at the back of her head at breakfast and ducked just in time. It had hit the second-year whose palm she'd been reading in the face, and Sirius had been in detention with Professor McGonagall for three weeks. Sybil had wafted around the school all the while telling all her seventh-year classmates that Sirius's aura was polluted by dark urges and he was sadly destined for a life of crime - well, Lupin supposed, that might make three times, but he wasn't sure that it should count.
Still, he wasn't taking any chances. Dumbledore had assured Lupin that Professor Trelawney would not be privy to the nature of his condition: she took a little too much pleasure in dropping cryptic hints that she knew everyone's most terrible secrets to be trusted. Even so, she seemed to have correctly deduced that there was something he didn't want her to know - or at least he assumed that was why, on more than one occasion, she'd nearly chased him down the corridor trying to ensnare him in a session with her crystal ball. Professor McGonagall had also mentioned with a tiny smirk that Trelawney was always asking after him whenever he would miss a meal at the staff table.
It was a good thing his office was right off the Turris Magnus. When Professor Trelawney deigned to leave the Divination Tower, her shuffling, slippered footsteps could be heard shpp-shpp-shpping down the spiral staircase, and a cloud of nauseating incense would soon follow. Through a mixture of stealth, subterfuge, a litany of outrageous excuses he'd not had to use since his school days, and pure stupid good luck, Lupin had managed not to let her corner him all year.
But good luck, Professor Lupin had always found, had a tendency to run out.
It was late May when she finally caught up with him. He'd let himself into his office on a Saturday morning, hoping to grade a few essays and nurse the lingering fatigue and joint-aches Thursday's full moon had left in him. As a treat, he'd saved himself a butterbeer and a packet of Manticore Munch; his raw stomach only seemed to want the worst of junk in the days after his transformations. He'd already eaten half the bag on his way down the corridor; salty clumps stuck in his teeth.
Lupin smelled her before he saw her: stale patchouli and Florida water. She was crouched in front of his desk, layered like an onion in diaphanous shawls, tapping with one long, ringed finger at a glass bell jar filled with swirling white smoke.
"Best not to upset it," Lupin said quickly, and Trelawney turned her bespectacled face with her hugely-magnified eyes towards him. "Last week I was foolish enough to eat a roast beef sandwich in here and it got so excited it started throwing fireballs and broke the jar. Glass everywhere. Then I had to lure it back out of my kettle, where it had gone to hide."
"It's alive?" Trelawney said bewilderedly.
"It's a hinkypunk. Set it loose in a wetland and it takes the form of a lamplight far off in a thick mist. Misdirects and confuses lost travelers."
"How awful," Trelawney murmured, goggling at it. Her finger still hovered near the jar as if it wanted to tap again.
Lupin shifted awkwardly and cleared his throat. "Can I, er, help you at all, Professor?"
"Oh, no," Trelawney said airly. "My dear Professor Lupin, it is I who have come to help you."
Lupin frowned. "How did you get in here, by the way?"
"Why, the door was unlocked."
Lupin squinted and turned his head to the side. "Was it?"
"Well, after a spot of help from Mr. Filch. What a kind man." Trelawney stood with a crackle of her knees and draped herself over one of Lupin's chairs. "Come and sit, Professor; I'm afraid you're long overdue for a session with me."
Lupin stifled a long-suffering sigh, eased his sore body into his chair and set the snacks on his desk. "Would you, er... like a crisp?"
Trelawney gave a perturbed huff and pushed her open palm at him. "Salt and sugar cloud the inner eye." She pushed up her thick glasses. "I will take a cup of tea."
Lupin saw where this was going immediately. "I'm afraid I'm allergic," he blurted. Trelawney looked puzzled.
"Why do you have a kettle, then?"
"Er..." Lupin thought quickly. "Hinkypunks do best in a humid environment."
"I see," she said slowly, her eyes narrowed.
"And, well, I've actually quite a lot of work to do-"
"I thought you'd be interested to know I've completed my Spring term crystal gazing," Trelawney interrupted. At Lupin's blank look, she continued: "A complimentary service I provide for my fellow teachers. So that they may prepare themselves for what's to come in the next school year."
"Professor, I must respectfully decline. I am still quite busy preparing myself for this year's final examinations, so perhaps another time-"
"My tea leaves this morning indicated that eleven o'clock would be the most optimal time to meet with you. I fear if I postpone..." Her watery blue eyes grew huge. "...It may be too late," she sighed theatrically.
Lupin rubbed between his eyebrows with his forefinger. After debating for a moment whether he should just be rude, he decided it was probably safer to humour her. "Very well. All right. What do you -"
"I have foreseen a rather difficult year ahead for you," Trelawney's quavering voice cut across him. "Full of struggle, full of strife. It's your students, you see - next year's crop will be quite a handful."
Lupin shrugged. "Well, all part of the job, isn't it-"
"Truly problem children. Little, as they say, 'punks.' They'll be quite disruptive for you - hair of pink and turquoise, rebellious sorts. You'll be at wit's end with them." She fixed him with a wide-eyed stare and proclaimed solemnly, "I have seen it in my crystal ball."
Lupin forced a tight smile. "Well, I'm sure I'll manage. Now, if that'll be all, I -"
"Oh no, Professor Lupin, that's not all I have to give you. I offer a customised, personal fortune for every staff member who desires it. I'd have liked to read your tea leaves, but since you are -" She gave a little shudder. "- allergic, I shall have to improvise. Scatter your crisps across the table, I shall divine your future there."
"I'm - I'm sorry?"
"Oh, a Seer may read anything that forms a pattern, Professor Lupin. Just as the tea leaves gather themselves into symbols of what is to come, so too will a packet of spilled crisps. Go on, then - spill them on the table and be amazed!" She flung her hands out dramatically, and the ends of several shawls went flying. The smoke inside the bell jar started to spin in a tight spiral, and Lupin steadied the glass with one hand just in case.
"You know," he said tightly. "I'm terribly sorry, but I really do have work to do, and I don't have time to clean a mess off my desk, so if you'll excuse me -"
Trelawney gave him an affronted look and gathered her shawls around her. "Well, Professor Lupin, I'm beginning to think you've something to hide from me. It puts me in mind of your dear friend Sirius Black when we were in school together. He, too, refused to let me use my gifts on him, and, well, I daresay we all know what happened there-"
"Fine," Lupin sighed, and upended the Manticore Munch onto his blotter to shut her up. Yellow crisps and crumbs scattered in a messy pile and stained the blotter translucent with grease. His uneasy stomach made a low growling complaint.
"Marvellous," breathed Professor Trelawney, as she clasped her hands in front of her chest. Adjusting her prism-like glasses on her face, she leaned forward to pore over the crisps.
"Oh dear," she said sadly. "Oh, goodness."
"Yes?"
"Terrible. Ghastly. Just here-" She poked a crisp. "- the Serpent! Bad luck, misfortune, unhappiness - and the Dagger! Peril," she cried, her voice quivering with emotion.
"Any particular kind of peril?" Lupin asked mildly.
"Oh, gracious, the worst kind." Trelawney's enormous eyes met his; they were filled with a strange sort of sorrow. "Mortal peril! Tragedy! But!" She jabbed a finger in the air; pewter bangles clattered on her knobby wrist. "There is still time! Through the art of Divination, we may become masters of our own fates!"
She inched forward on her chair and fluffed her long, frizzy hair around her shoulders. For the first time, Lupin noticed she was wearing bright pink lipstick.
"My dear Professor Lupin," she continued. "Take heart. For here -" she pointed at the crisps. "- I see the Beetle, signifying renewal, redemption; and the Swan, for happiness in love - together, a love that shall save you from a terrible destiny! A love that changes the very course of your life! What a blessing, to have such a love in one's future!"
Relief coursed through Professor Lupin. He couldn't help but smile faintly down at the mess of crisps. Obviously she was just as wrong as usual. Hilarious. He felt a bit silly for having been so terrified of her all year.
He jumped a bit as Professor Trelawney leaned forward and laid her cold, bony hand on his. He looked up at her face: she was batting her blonde lashes at him from behind her butterbeer-bottle glasses. She seemed to be suppressing a grin, and when she spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically girlish.
"So, Remus - may I call you Remus?" She cooed. "Any summer plans?"
Lupin blushed and began to stammer. The hinkypunk abruptly started to glow and ripple with agitation. The bell jar vibrated, then broke open with a ringing crack, and Professor Trelawney leapt out of her chair in a flurry of fluttering scarves.
Luckily for Lupin, she didn't offer to stay and help clear up the mess.
Lupin assumed the hinkypunk would turn up eventually in his kettle, and he even left a bowl of muddy water out for it all the next week, but it must have scurried out the door along with Professor Trelawney, and he never saw it again.