The next morning, Harry was awaken by a furious Hermione. "Where in the Devil's name were you ?" she shouted, violently shaking him by the shoulders. The boy oppened his eyes to see her howling about an inch away from his nose. When she finally moved back a bit, he caught a glimpse of Ron standing by her side, an apologetic expression on his face. As Hermione finished yelling about God knows what, Harry asked: "Why is it that we never get the chance to wake her up this hellish way?"

"Boys aren't allowed in the girl's dorm," Ron replied with a smile.

"Ah…Well the idiot who invented that rule probably didn't care much about his sleep."

Harry got up and before he had time to place his old glasses on his nose, he heard Hermione screech. "What again?" he complained, his head painfully throbbing.

"Harry… you didn't meet any vampires did you?" Ron asked, incredulous.

"Oh dear God, he was in the Forbidden Forest!" Hermione screamed, jumping to conclusions. "Harry you have to stop doing that, you will get killed sooner or later, and if Hagrid knew…"

"Hagrid!" Harry said out loud, causing Hermione to cease talking in the middle of her sentence. "I saw him, yesterday… or this morning, I don't remember…"

"Did he do that to you?" Hermione asked, horrified.

"Do what?"

Harry was getting sick of these little charades. He considered the main advantage of Christmas vacations was the absence of an alarm clock to pull him out of bed at outrageously early hours. Therefore, he did not appreciate his friends depriving him of his precious hours of sleep. "Harry, look at your pillow," Hermione said, finally bringing her voice back down to a normal level. Harry did so and saw that the usually white sheets were now almost entirely red. Putting his hand to his wounded neck, he discovered that it had opened sometime during the night, pouring generous amounts of blood all over his bed. He sighed. "Don't worry, it's… wounds around your head usually bleed a lot for nothing…" he explained, unsure of how he knew this fact. He lazily got on his feet and walked towards the wardrobe he and his roommates used to hang their school uniforms. He opened one of the doors and revealed the existence of a tall looking-glass. It was covered with inscriptions of all sorts but Harry simply erased them with a flicker of his wand. "Eh, now we won't know who won the bet," Ron complained.

"You boys bet? On what?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, many things," Ron evasively answered.

"Such as?"

"Well…"

"You bet on which girls you can get, which ones will break up…"

"How do you know that?" Ron asked at his turn, outraged.

"I didn't, but now I do! Ronald, and Harry too, you can't do this, it's simply degrading for us to know that you place money on our sorrows as if he were simply horses in a race, or chickens in a battle…"

"Well that's why we made sure you don't find out!" Ron replied.

Harry shut out the voices of his friends from his mind and focused on his reflection. His pillow was absorbed most of the blood that had leaked from his cut, and so very little blood has remained on his skin. He managed to rub off the small dark brown crust it had formed and closed the wardrobe's door. After a second's hesitation, he oppened it again and magically, all the words he had erased from the mirror appeared on it at once. After all, he did bet a full five galleons that Ginny Weasley would break up with her boyfriend before the end of the year. He sighed. He did not know why, but something inside him just wouldn't accept that she dates that young Ravenclaw. He smiled. Ron's older-brother protection over his sister was starting to rub off on him.

Jumping across his bed, he reached his suitcase and oppened it on his bed, spilling half on it's contents on the soiled sheets. Beside him, Hermione and Ron were still arguing about the boys' right to make money on other people's lives. As he pulled of his old shirt and replaced it with a warm vest, their conversation stopped. Harry understood a second too late that they were now addressing him.

"I'm sorry, what?" he asked.

"What are you doing?" Ron repeated.

"Going to see Hagrid for Christmas. Whoever comes with me gets to hear in world premiere the fantastic adventures I lived last night," Harry replied with a wink.

"Harry, I can't come," Hermione giggled, "I have Runes this morning."

"What?"

"And I don't think Miss Trewlaney would appreciate you skipping her oh-so-important lecture on the powers of the third eye," she continued.

Harry fell down on his bed. Dates were quickly flying by in his head as he tried to put his finger on one of them. Yesterday he had went into Thalia's office, after seeing her with Hagrid. We had went there to change his mind from Thalia's attacks towards the Gryffondor house, which she had perpetrated when they had refused to help Slytherins student study with them, which meant that yesterday was a Wednesday, and this day… "Thursday?" he asked his two comrades. They both nodded. He let his head fall back on his pillow once again. He could not believe that all he had lived only hours ago had held in one single night. "Then why did you wake me up?" he moaned, hiding his face in his still warm sheets.

"So you could tell us why it took you so long to get back here," Ron answered.

"And so you could explain this pool of blood," Hermione added with a half sly-smile.

Harry sat up and without a word, left his two friends. When he came back moments later, he was fully dressed and ready to enter class. "How much time do I have?"

"Thirty minutes, if you don't mind running afterward," Ron giggled.

"Make it twenty five then," Hermione objected.

"Breakfast?" Harry asked, as his stomach growled in anger.

"Your friend Dobby dropped this off when he realized you wouldn't be there to taste his very own porridge," Ron said, pointing a gigantic bowl filled with what had once been hot porridge.

"Alright," Harry started, sticking a spoon in the cold meal, "last night, I was so angry at… everyone, really, that I decided I would go see Hagrid…"

***

"Ron, could I talk to you?" Ginny asked her out of breath older brother as he ran down the Main Hall.

"No!" the brother in question replied, barely stopping himself to deliver his answer.

"What?" she asked him in vain, as he was already starting the ascent of the never ending staircase that led to Miss Trelawney's classroom.

"Late!" Harry shouted as he also passed by her.

The girl laughed at their hurry, and Harry took the time to give her a little wink. As he jumped up the staircase close behind Ron, he thought that she looked quite sad. He felt somewhat proud of making her laugh, even though it was quite unintentional. Harry's story had taken longer then he had thought, and it was only when Dobby appeared to clean his empty bowl of porridge that Harry discovered how late he and Ron were. Hermione had simply smiled as then threw themselves out of the Gryffondor common room, her class being only a corridor away. Finally, they managed to reach their places about half a second before the bell rang. They were quite proud of what they dared to call a running feat, nevertheless they saw their teacher darting them an angry look as she placed her two most hideous tea cups in front of them. She even let out a small, desperate sigh as she filled the cups with boiling water. As they clumsily threw pinches of tea into the steaming liquid, she rolled her eyes and simply left. Behind them, Harry heard Parvati Patil let out a small laugh. He inwardly promised himself to bet a galleon on her imminent breakup with Seamus.

Harry quickly emptied his cup of tea, gulping down it's entire contents within seconds. He grumpily passed on his cup to Ron. "Argh!" his friend cried. "This is hot enough to make stone melt!"

"Not enough to reheat that porridge though," Harry joked.

"Alright well, what do we have here… It may be the rain drop of pain, or maybe the sun of eternal beauty," he proposed with a wink. "Oh wait, this one is easy actually. It looks like a crow…"

Ron placed his open book under Harry's eyes, and the boy had to admit the image in the book and the figure in his cup were almost identical. His tea was gathered up in an oval, which was the crow's body, and a small circle, which was his head. Two lines also composed it's legs. Strangely, there was a small hole in the head, right at the spot were it's eye should have been. A small branch even officiated as the crow's beak. To Harry, such a striking similarity had to be more than simple coincidence. "Well, what does it say?" he asked his friend, impatient.

"Since when do you care about the messages your food sends you?"

"I'm not kidding Ron, quickly, before she sees it!"

"Alright well upwards it means bad news, but if it's upside down then it means, erm, disguise of evil… How can a tea cup be upside down, anyways?"

Harry took mental note of Ron's analysis, but before he had time to explain his curiosity to his friend, he heard a piercing, high pitched shriek. "The black crow! My dear boy, my very dear boy, bad news indeed. Seeing it's position, I should think news of death…"

"Wait," Ron interrupted her, still reading a page from his voluminous book, "it says here that when the handle is on the left side, then the cup is considered as being upside down… Wouldn't that mean that the crow represents evil in disguise?"

Miss Trewlaney's jaw dropped as she observed her student. She ripped the teacup out of Ron's hands. The boy in question simply sat back down, just now realizing what an insulting affront this comment had been to his teacher. Miss Trewlaney, after throwing a quick glance at the book, threw it on one of the small couches that surrounded her, missing Neville by only inches. "Well, it takes a real beginner, I dare not say an idiot," she stated, "to forget that evil in disguise is simply another way of saying that death will arrive without warning." On that she marched towards her desk, giving back to a slightly paler Ron the cup she had taken him seconds earlier. "Don't worry mate," Harry whispered as the sound of conversations quickly came back, "to her everything is a way of saying death will arrive without warning." He then tried interpreting the red-head's cup, but without any success. The pack of wet tea leaves had formed what could only be compared to a pack of wet tea leaves, and so Harry had to invent a prediction at random. Though he tried to make it as realistic as possible, his head was not to it. His mind was rather focusing on something Thalia had told him about a week ago… In my case, for example, he recalled her soft voice saying, a black crow is associated with Severus. Harry knew he had to tell his teacher about this, but he certainly did not want to do so. To him, the association was clear: Snape was evil in disguise. He simply feared that if Thalia discovered what he knew, she would make sure he couldn't transmit the message to anyone else… That little pouch on her waist was so easy to reach.

***

As Harry arrived in front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, he realized he was not the only one who seemed nervous. Many students were pacing up and down the hallway, and most of them were enumerating endless lists of information, their eyes shut. It took Harry a few seconds to remember that today he would receive the dreadful test Thalia had warned them about. He felt his stomach jolt inside his body. The exam had fled his head a long time ago. He had learned so many things last night that the revision for this test seemed to belong in another chapter of his existence. As he was slowly bringing DADA lessons back into his memory, he saw Thalia appear at the end of the corridor. He was about to warn her about the prediction his tea cup had made when he saw her eyes. They were shining coldly, as hard as steel, and their usual warmth had simply vanished. He imitated the other students as they moved backwards in order to let her gain access to the door and unlock it. No student dared to say a word and everyone silently followed her inside the classroom. Very carefully, each student took place at a desk, everyone making their possible to sit close to students from the other House. Harry quickly spotted a group of uneasy Slytherins situated nearby and sat with them, making any communication between them impossible. They all sighed in relief. None of them wanted to be on Thalia's bad side that day. Harry recognized the girl that had came up to the Gryffondor common room last night and smiled at her. If he had any luck, Thalia had caught a glimpse of this scene. Sadly, she did not. When the bell rang, the woman was as sullen as before. She took out her wand and with a yank of the wooden object, a pile of heavy documents appeared in front of her. She snapped, and a copy fell loudly in front of every student. The racket this operation had caused seemed to be just another way for Thalia to show her students she was in a terrible mood, and Harry had to admit it worked wonders. She then oppened her mouth with an annoyed look and pronounced the only ten words she would pronounce of the entire period. "Write your name," she snapped, apparently annoyed, "remain silent, fill in the blanks. Go." On that, all the students took out a quill and started silently writing.

The class went smoothly, and for a moment Harry was hopeful enough to believe he would not face Thalia's anger for a second time in about twelve hours. Only, after half an hour, he was proved wrong. As every student wrote in silence, a small man situated in the portrait at then end of the class coughed slightly in order to catch Thalia's attention. If she had heard it or not, none knew, as she kept on writing on a meter long piece of parchment. The man did not seem to catch this was a warning that, for his own sake, it was recommended to stay silent. Harry tried communicating with the man, but he did not seem to understand the boy's silent gestures. When he coughed again, Thalia picked up her wand and gently tapped it against her desk. All the students looked up to see what would happen next, but they were deceived: everything in the class remained still, as if Thalia hadn't conjured anything. It was only when they all returned to their copies that a bottle of ink jerked upwards and flew directly into the portrait, shattering and spilling it's jet black contents all over the living room illustrated in the painting. The little man, apparently terrible at decoding silent warnings, ran into the portrait that was situated only a few feet away from the teacher. "My home!" he whined loudly. All the students held their breath. Without detaching her eyes from the text she was producing, she lifted her wand and gracefully drew a small circle in the air. Harry saw Hermione shrink on her seat, covering her face with her hands. He looked at her with wide eyes but before she had time to warn him, the frame that hosted the man burst into flames. The fire was close to the students sitting at the back of the class, but none of them dared complaining. They simply lifted their desk and moved it away from the roaring brazier.

The little man had finally understood Thalia's message and instead of trying to interact with her, he proceded into extinguishing his furniture. The rest of the class was ponctuated by his groans of anger, but the man managed to keep them as suddle as possible. When the bell rang, every student, Gryffondor like Slytherin, neatly placed their answer sheet on her desk, and then ran out of the class as if to save their life. Harry had to admit that he too was walking quite quicker than usual. Soon enough, Ron and Hermione had joined him, a few minutes later the three of them were sitting down in front of a delicious lunch. Harry looked at his time table and almost choked on his string beans. His next course was Care for Magical Creatures, which he knew by experience would be spent chasing pixies Hagrid could then use as elves to decorate the Christmas tree. After that, he had potions. Harry gasped. Though Snape had starting being slightly fairer towards Harry, the boy knew a potions class was the best cure against hapiness. Also, he guessed that if Thalia was in such an loathsome humor, Snape would too.