Disclaimer: As Harry Potter was going to St. Ives, he met JK Rowling with seven books.

A/N: Chapter 4 of A Little Child Shall Lead Them is now up.

Chapter 51

We need a place to study toy wands. We need a place to study toy wands. We need a place to study toy wands.

At that request, the Room of Requirement produced a large work room. In the middle of the room was a similarly large work table lit by two desk lamps and arrayed with a strange variety of tools. Some of them look like miniature versions of old hand carpentry tools—hand drills, awls, chisels, small saws, planes, hammers, and pliers. Others looked more like the dissection instruments in Hermione's biology class the year before she started at Hogwarts: scalpels, forceps, scissors, and needles. There were also powerful table-mounted magnifying glasses and even a microscope, albeit one that looked like it was from the eighteenth century.

A small rest area at one end of the room held three comfortable chairs, but the other end was where all the additional resources were: three desks and a smallish bookcase, which, on closer inspection, had a mixture of books about wandlore, herbology (presumably to identify the wood), enchanting, and even one on magical toys in particular.

Even though they had seen some of the Room's capabilities before, Fred and George stood in awe behind Hermione, who was pretty impressed herself by what it had produced.

"Wicked," the Twins said in unison.

"Wow, you really went all out, Hermione," said Fred.

"I was pretty vague. It's the Room that did it," Hermione corrected.

"Books, though!" George said. "Does this mean we can just ask the Room anything?"

"I doubt it," she said. She inspected the books more closely. Many of them were very old and dusty and in poor condition. "Look at the state they're in. I can't imagine the Room could just conjure this information out of thin air. I bet it summons them up from wherever all the stuff that gets hidden in here goes. And…yes, see, all of these titles are ones that I would have picked out for this project. There aren't any surprises. So either I happened to get it right, or the Room only gives you certain books based on your expectations. I doubt it would be much help if you had no idea what to look for."

"Hmm…sounds like experimenting with the Room may be in order," Fred suggested.

"Maybe later," Hermione answered.

"Hey, what's in here—? Wicked! Check it out!" George had found a bin beside the bookcase, but it wasn't a rubbish bin, as it had appeared. Hermione looked inside and was astonished to find dozens and dozens of toy wands. Most of them looked damaged, burnt, or broken, but some still looked to be in working order.

Upon seeing them, Hermione started laughing, and she laughed so hard that she fell over backwards, and the Twins had to catch her. "I should've known!" she said, wiping a tear from her eye. "I asked it for a place to study toy wands, and it gave us all the toy wands it had, too."

"Excellent!" Fred agreed.

"But who would bring toy wands to school besides us?" George wondered.

"Other experimenters?" Hermione speculated. "Or a few of the first years? Even if it's not many people, quite a few could accumulate here over a century or two if this is where all the junk goes. Anyway, now we've got a lot more to experiment on."

"True—Aw, but then you wasted those two galleons on the ones you bought," George said.

She shrugged her shoulders: "It's not a total loss. The ones I bought are a known quantity—straight out of the package, never used, and several of the same model. And besides, at the rate I'm going, I'll probably make those two galleons back from your World Cup betting pool."

The Twins laughed. "You just might," quipped Fred. "Your arithmancy's serving pretty well there."

"Just be careful," George added. "They're going to the tournament stage next summer, and it'll get harder."

"We'll see," Hermione said confidently. "You know, the interesting thing is that England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland all doing so well in the group stage. But I suppose that's what you get when you actually invent the sport. Anyway, let's get to work."

"Right. How do we do this?"

"Well, I had some ideas for experiments to do with the toy wands I bought, but I think we should look at these others before we try most of them, in case we learn something new, so we don't waste them. There's just one that I want to start now." She pulled one of the cheap one-sickle wands from her bag and opened the package. "I want to see how long it'll keep up a Lumos Charm before it burns out—you know, see how good it is at its intended function."

"But even a cheap one could last for hours," Fred reminded her.

"I know. That's why I want to start it now. We can switch off whenever we want. We just need to keep it going so I can time it properly." She examined the wand. It was small—not too out of the ordinary in length at eight inches, but very thin. It seemed to be made from a five-sixteenths-inch dowel, while her own wand was a hair over half an inch at the base, and even that was thinner than average. The toy was rounded off at one end, but was otherwise unadorned. She a made a note of all of this in her notebook and then held it out to the Twins. "Would one of you like to start it?"

"Sure," George said, taking it in hand.

Hermione readied the stopwatch on her new wristwatch. "Whenever you're ready."

George flicked the toy and said, "Lumos." Hermione started her stopwatch. The wand gave off a harsh white light that flickered much more than with a normal wand, rather like a fluorescent light that was on the blink. It must be the quality of the materials, she thought. She made a note of that as well.

"Looks pretty sickly, doesn't it?" Fred observed.

"Well, it is very cheap," George replied. "So what's next, o wise arithmancer?"

"Next, I think we should sort through all the wands in that bin and see which ones work. The ones that don't we can safely take apart to try to figure out how they're made."

"Sensible," Fred quipped.

They went through the used toy wands and eventually sorted them into four piles, though it was a little inconvenient since one of them had to keep holding the lit wand. The first and largest pile consisted of wands that produced no response at all. Nearly all of these showed signs of serious damage: they had large cracks, were snapped in two, or else had large burn marks on them. The wands in the second pile flickered or shot out sparks for a second and then "burned out" with a crack eerily reminiscent of a light bulb burning out. This always at minimum produced singe marks near the tip and often caused them to crack or snap. Two of them caught fire and one violently exploded into splinters such that it was lucky none of them got hit in the eye. The room immediately furnished them with three pairs of safety glasses after that. ("Wow, this place is pretty smart," said George.)

The third pile of wands were those that didn't burn out, but refused to cast Lumos properly and only produced sparks. The fourth and smallest pile, only eleven wands, did cast Lumos, although all but three of them flickered or blinked on and off so badly that there was obviously something wrong with them. It wasn't surprising that almost none of them were in good working order. After all, if they worked properly and weren't contraband, why would they be in with the junk and hidden things?

"Quite a selection we have here," Fred said. "The question is, what makes them tick?"

"That is the question," Hermione agreed. "The only thing we can really do is take the apart to see how they work."

Fred grinned. "Well, lucky for you, that happens to be a speciality of ours. See, we've looked into selling our own line of joke products, we wouldn't get very far if we couldn't dissect the competition."

A flash of fear crossed Hermione's face. "You're going to sell pranks?" she said. "Merlin help us all."

Fred and George laughed. "Someday, what we'd really like to do is open a shop," George explained. "We figure between my brains and Fred's planning—"

"Not to mention my rakish good looks," Fred added.

"—we can probably beat out Gambol & Japes in Diagon Alley."

"We, uh, might be able to take on an extra partner, if you're interested," Fred suggested with a smirk.

"I cannot condone such blatant rule-breaking," Hermione said primly, knowing full well that she'd done more than her share of that. "But I do admire your initiative. I'm sure it'll be great. Now, let's see what you make of these."

The first thing the trio did was to take a close look at several of the toy wands under a magnifying glass. All of the broken ones had cracks of some sort, and near or in the cracks were scorch marks, seemingly originating from the tip. The cracks tended to follow the grain of the wood, which wasn't particularly straight nor aligned with the shaft. That was how several of the wands had splintered in two. However, they soon noticed that in some of them, the cracks did go perfectly lengthwise through the wood, and when they looked close, Hermione saw that they were actually along a seam.

That seemed as good a place as any to start. Using the tools at their disposal, they carefully pried one of the toys apart along the seam. It was easy to miss, but it looked as if the dowel had been split in half and glued back together. Between the two halves were the charred remnants of a thread or fibre of something, and far more pronounced scorch marks, as if it had been burnt from the inside out.

"Well, it looks like this fibre is the wand core, or something like it," Fred reasoned.

"And it looks like it's the weak point of the device," Hermione said.

"Is it, though?" George countered. "Maybe the wood cracks first, and exposure to air makes it burn."

"Hmm, that's a good point," Hermione said. "Although, Ron's old wand had the unicorn hair sticking out, and it didn't burn…Of course, that's with completely different materials, different manufacturing processes, and who knows what else."

"It's too bad we can't dissect a real wand," Fred said.

"No…" Hermione brightened at once: "We can take a look at one, though." She whipped out her own wand and held it under the magnifier. "I can't believe I've never really taken a close look at this thing before."

The first thing she noticed about her own wand was that it was much more carefully-made. Instead of being roughly sanded, it must have been polished with a very fine-grained paper (or spell) and varnished over top of that. Moreover, the varnish had not worn away one bit after two and a half years of handling and was probably magical itself. The wood was of very good quality—perfectly straight-grained, parallel with the shaft, and also with a very tight grain, like the wood of a fine violin. Ollivander had called it vine wood, but had never explained what type of vine, although if the vine pattern he had carved into it was meant to match, it was probably English ivy, and it couldn't have been easy to find a piece of such a plant that perfect. She didn't know if there was some additional magical quality to the wood, but it seemed likely. No seam was visible to insert the dragon heartstring core, although there might still be one, invisible under the varnish or magically repaired.

There was one odd thing though—something she had noticed before, but never paid much mind—little grooves carved into the wood in between the vine carvings, except that under the magnifying glass, they weren't grooves at all.

"Holy cricket, they're runes!" Hermione exclaimed.

"They're runes?" Fred and George said in surprise.

"Yes! Look. Right here. I can't believe I never saw that before." Sure enough, there were tiny letters a fiftieth of an inch high all up and down the length of the wand, carved with incredible precision by some tiny tool beyond what the Room had given them. They must have been filled in with varnish, or Hermione would have felt the roughness under her fingers, but they were in the material of the wood, and that was the important thing. They were probably near the limit of what could be accurately carved into the cellular structure of the wood.

"You don't think…" Fred said. He and George both pulled out their own wands and examined them.

"Bloody hell, they're there, too," George said. "I can't believe we never noticed that."

"And look, they're not all Norse, either," Hermione said. "See? That line looks like Latin written in a Gothic script." Professor Babbling had explained once that the spacing of Gothic-style letters was more uniform than modern ones, making for more reliable runes.

"I wonder what they're all for," Fred mused.

Hermione looked closely at the letters. "Well…" she said hesitantly, "I don't know all of these, but I see a lot of runes that have to do with permanence, strength, and power. They're probably intended to make a real wand able to withstand a lifetime of hard casting, while from the sound of it, the best toys couldn't do that even with first year spells."

"Magic can be hard on things," George agreed.

"I always wondered what old Ollivander did with his time," Fred added. "He must only sell about a hundred wands a year, at most. And that must be why they're seven galleons a pop. I wouldn't wanna do all that carving."

Hermione thought it might be interesting to make her own wand someday, but she agreed she wouldn't want to do it for a living. It seemed there was a lot more to a real wand than just better materials. Even her expensive one-galleon toy wand, which had fairly good wood and was varnished, was only decoratively carved—no runes in sight.

"I'd like to get a better idea what these runes mean," she thought to herself. "Maybe I should ask Ron."

"Ron?" the Twins said incredulously.

"As in our little brother, Ron?" added Fred.

"The classic underachiever?" said George.

Hermione sniffed: "He doesn't underachieve at what he's good at. And he's surprisingly good at runes—good enough to be worth a second opinion, anyway. Maybe not on the level of, say, analysing the Marauder's Map, but that would be a big project for anybody."

An unreadable look crossed the Twins' faces. "Runes, huh? Who knew?" George said.

"In the meantime, we should keep working," said Fred, waving the still-lit toy. "You know, we should do this again sometime, Hermione. I like where this is going."

"Me too," said George.

"Yeah, definitely. This is fun," Hermione agreed.

Classes soon started up again, more or less the same as before, and Hermione was as busy as ever. She had of course passed her Linear Algebra exam with flying colours and had also shown Professor Vector her Non-Euclidean Geometry textbook. Vector agreed that it was a very good subject to learn, as it was critical for various advanced topics like Extension Charms, magical architecture, and geomancy.

Meanwhile, Harry's next anti-dementor lesson with Professor Lupin on Thursday evidently did not go well. Lupin had mentioned to him some time ago that he had known Harry's father in school, and while Harry had calmed down since the beginning of the holidays, he still demanded to know why Lupin hadn't mentioned Sirius Black. He didn't find Lupin's short response of "Yes, I knew him, or I thought I did," to be very satisfying, and it apparently threw off his casting ability pretty badly.

"Honestly, Harry," Hermione told him afterwards. "Black was his friend, too. It probably hurts him almost as much as it does you."

Harry reluctantly agreed with that, but he was in bad mood for the rest of the night. Lupin seemed off his game, too, the next day, at least considering it was more than a week since the full moon, so Hermione decided it was time to stick around for another brief chat with him after class.

"I wanted to apologise for Harry yesterday, Professor," she told him. "He understands it must be hard for you. It's just that he doesn't like people keeping things from him. They tend to do that a lot, especially this year."

Lupin sighed. "Yes, I suppose we have," he said. "I can only plead that nearly everyone involved thought it was for his own good. How did he take it when he first found out?"

Hermione grimaced: "Very badly. For a little while, we were really worried he'd go and do something stupid. I had to hex him to make him see reason—Disarming Charm."

He cracked a smile and chuckled softly. "Harry's very lucky to have a good friend like you. I remember there were times I had to hex the sense back into James…and Sirius…" His mood turned darker. "You know, Hermione, everyone says they had no idea that Sirius Black would turn dark, but there was one time—just one. One of his 'pranks' went too far…I won't give details, but suffice it to say he could've killed someone. I was so angry I nearly threw him out a window…In hindsight, I think I might be sorry I didn't."

Hermione felt rather awkward. She wanted to do something—to reach out to him, maybe, but she didn't know Lupin as well as she did Professor Vector. "I'm sure you did what seemed right at the time, sir," she said.

"Yes, yes I did," he said, "and Black narrowly escaped expulsion. But I've always wondered if that was the first sign…But I shouldn't disturb you anymore. You should go be with your friends."

She gave him a sympathetic look, and she decided to take a chance with the question that was still bothering her: "Professor, I don't mean to bring up unpleasant memories, but there's something that doesn't quite make sense to me."

Lupin's eyes narrowed: "What is it?"

"Well, do you happen to have any idea what kind of spell Black used on Pettigrew?"

Lupin gasped softly and paled a shade or two. "Th-that's not exactly the kind of magic you want to be getting into, Hermione," he said.

"I'm not getting into dark magic, sir," she insisted. "I only asked because something doesn't add up, and you know how I am about maths problems. You see, I don't know much about dark magic, but muggles do know a thing or two about explosions, and I've heard the description…and I just can't see how to get one intact finger and a set of robes out of that blast, when they didn't find anything else but a crater, and twelve bystanders were killed."

Lupin's eyebrows rose a fraction, and he stared at her in thought. Hermione could practically see the gears in his mind spinning faster and faster. Obviously, he'd never thought of that problem either. Wizards were far too quick to accept "magic" as an explanation.

"I-I-I…I'm afraid I have no idea what the spell was, Hermione, but…I think you may be right that there was something very unusual about it—purely academic, of course; however…I really think you should be going. If I have any sudden insights into your question, I'll tell you—within reason."

"Yes, sir," Hermione said, hiding her disappointment. She started to leave, but just before she reached the door, she turned back to him. "Professor," she said, "if you knew Harry's dad, and Black, then that bright muggle-born girl who was also a friend of yours…?"

He smiled and nodded, seemingly relieved. "Harry's mother," he confirmed. "And I do believe you're one of the few witches I've met who would've been her equal. I think the two of you would have been great friends had you ever had the chance to meet."

"Thank you, Professor." Hermione nodded in return and left with a smile. As highly as everyone spoke of Lily Potter, that was praise indeed.

"Ooh, and tough luck for Cho Chang!" Lee Jordan announced. "Draco Malfoy gets the Snitch with half a pitch length head start for a Slytherin win, two-sixty to two-fifty. Well, sometimes that's just the luck of the game."

"I can't believe it!" Harry complained as he and his friends walked back to the castle. "If Cho had tailed Malfoy like she did Cedric, she would have beat him easy."

"She didn't because Malfoy's a mediocre Seeker," Hermione told him. "She didn't think he had a chance of spotting the Snitch first. You must know that."

"Yeah, I know, but I still don't have to like it," he grumbled. "Cho deserved it. She's way better than Malfoy."

"Yes, I understand, Harry," she replied. "I had it three to one on Cho, and most of that one was either what happened—the Snitch popping up in Malfoy's end of the pitch—or Cho getting knocked out by a Bludger."

"No way! She's too good for that!" Harry defended the Ravenclaw Seeker.

"Okay, okay! Yes, she's a very good player, Harry."

"Not bad looking, either," Ron muttered.

"Yeah…" Harry said. "Er, I mean…" He trailed off and turned red as he realised what he'd said.

Ginny, however, turned pale and hung back, looking to Hermione for help.

"Just give him his space, Ginny," she whispered. "You can't expect a lot out of boys, especially at this age." She sighed sadly.

"Y-you sound like you've got the same problem," Ginny whispered back.

Now, Hermione turned pink: "What? No!"

Ginny grinned, momentarily forgetting her own boy troubles, and said, "Anyone I know?"

"I—I don't know what you're talking about," Hermione stammered as she tried to banish the image of a certain tall, dark-haired Hufflepuff from her mind. He's just a friend.

Fortunately for her pride, a distraction came in the form of a loud taunt from a group of Ravenclaws: "Hey, Loony, where are those nargles of yours when we need 'em?"

Luna Lovegood was walking quickly, clearly trying to put some distance between herself and the girls—and one boy this time—whom Hermione knew were the usual suspects who gave her a hard time and isolate her from the rest of her house.

But at the same time, from prolonged observation, Hermione had noticed something about Luna's attitude. Some might have called it confrontational, but Hermione saw it as more of a need to try to get along with everyone and treat everything like a pleasant conversation—well, unless you insulted her parents. Hermione suspected it was some kind of coping mechanism—a way of denying to herself that they were really giving her a hard time, and in this case, that trait manifested itself when Luna turned around and walked backwards, saying, "I'm afraid the nargles cannot be easily controlled, especially to influence a Quidditch game. I've certainly never had any luck with it." She turned back around and quickened her pace a bit more.

"Well, you're no help, then," one of the bullies said.

"Ginny, come on," Hermione whispered, and the two of them ran over to intercept Luna. "Hey!" Hermione called to the bullies, "Just because you lost doesn't mean you have to take it out on your own house-mates."

"Oh, stay out of this, Granger," the one boy said, a fourth-year she didn't know.

"Why do you care, anyway? It wasn't your team playing," said the curly-haired fourth-year girl she saw before.

"But we're Gryffindors. We don't want to see Slytherin win either. At least it's still between you and us for the cup, as badly as you flattened Hufflepuff last month."

"Are you okay, Luna?" Ginny asked, catching up with her year-mate.

"Hello, Ginny," Luna replied brightly. "I'm fine, although that match was rather disappointing. But you know what they say: win or lose, there's always pudding, right?"

"Um…I think that's what you say, Luna," Ginny said awkwardly, shaking her head. She turned to her assailants and told them, "You know, it really doesn't look good for any house if you don't stick up for your own, so maybe you all should just lay off."

"Thank you, Ginny," Hermione agreed. "In Gryffindor, we at least know how to stick up for our friends." However, from the glares they were getting, she didn't think it would be that simple. She walked closer to her friends and said softly, "I still say you'd be better off taking this up with the teachers, Luna."

Luna flashed her a sad smile. "I understand why you say that, Hermione," she said, "but I don't want to cause more trouble. We Ravenclaws are smart, you know. I'm sure they can find ways to cause trouble within the rules."

Hermione's eyebrows shot up. That was a surprisingly cogent reply, coming from Luna. Was she having more trouble than she let on? Hermione didn't really have a response to that, so she decided to try to find a creative solution. She wandered over to two of her other house-mates and asked, "Fred, George, can I get you two to back me up on something?"

Hermione stood outside the door to Ravenclaw Tower. Interestingly, there was no portrait here, only a solid door, which had no doorknob, but a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle. She'd heard that there was also no password—just a riddle to be solved. That suited her well. It was time to make her move.

She gave the bullies a brief chance to have a change of heart. They were limited in how far they could go, but there were still a couple of incidents of them tormenting Luna verbally or with minor pranks over the next couple of days and even one of someone hiding some of her things.

"Scandalous!" Fred had said when Hermione explained the situation.

"A breach of basic pranksters' etiquette," George agreed. "Pranking should be kept lighthearted and not cruel, except when Slytherins are involved."

To the extent that she condoned pranking at all, Hermione quite agreed, which was why she was here. She had sent Ginny to distract Luna so that she could attack the problem at its source. She knocked twice with the eagle knocker, and suddenly, the knocker spoke:

"As I was going to St. Ives,

I met a man with seven wives.

They couldn't carry all their cats,

And so they kept them in their sacks,

But each cat's seven kits they sold

To chase seven rats from each ship's hold.

And if each kit then had nine lives,

How many rats fled from St. Ives?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow at the knocker. The riddle was ambiguous and didn't technically have enough information to solve it. If the traditional number of 343 cats were intended, then the answer should be 151,263, but even most Ravenclaws wouldn't get that. Plus she knew the traditional solution of the riddle was to rethink your assumptions…

"Zero," she answered. "The kits ate them all."

"Cleverly reasoned," the knocker said, and the door opened.

Hermione drew quite a few eyes when she walked into the Ravenclaw Common Room, wearing her red-trimmed Gryffindor robes.

"Hey, you're in the wrong place," one of the older students yelled at her.

"I'm just here for a visit," she called back. She scanned the room. It was a cool, airy-looking place, with high ceilings and bookcases full of the more popular refernce books so that the Ravenclaws wouldn't monopolise the library so much. It was more elegant, but more impersonal that the cosy Gryffindor Common Room. As she looked, she found she was in luck. Her eyes rested on Luna's roommates, the main instigators of her torment.

"I'm sorry to barge in here like this," she continued, "but I wanted to help Luna Lovegood with the issues she's been having, and short of going to the teachers behind her back, this was the best way I could think of to handle it."

There were some annoyed murmurs in the Common Room complaining that she was wasting their time as many people turned away and ignored her, and there were a couple of defiant shouts that "Loony" was nutters.

"Yes, I know Luna can be…eccentric," Hermione said icily, "but I still consider her a friend. In fact, she's not even my weirdest friend, and she's quite caring in her own way. Now, I have noticed her consistently being singled out, berated, and outright bullied by members of her own house this year, and from what I hear, last year too. I don't know what Professor Flitwick told you, but in Gryffindor, Professor McGonagall told us that your house is like your family, and family doesn't do that to each other. I want it to stop."

Hermione was getting a lot of looks, now—mostly annoyed and confused, but some intrigued or even worried. However, one of the second-years made the mistake of speaking up and saying, "Oh, yeah? And what're you gonna do about it, Granger? You've got no proof."

Hermione smiled serenely. "No, but I do know several people in particular who I've seen giving Luna a hard time," she said. Including you, was clearly implied. "And if those people or anyone else continue to give her a hard time like that, I can, and will, sic the Weasley Twins on them."

A shudder ran through the room. The girl who had confronted her and several of the other bullies paled and turned away without answering.

"Thank you for your time," Hermione finished with a smile and quietly left the Common Room.

Amazingly enough, Luna had an easier time of it after that. I guess it's true what the Americans say, Hermione thought. Speak softly and carry a big wand. She got back into the swing of things for the next few weeks—that is, until things started to go wrong again at the end of January.

It was a Thursday, and Hermione had a free period early while Harry was in Arithmancy and Ron was in Muggle Studies. She took the time to relax and fiddle a bit with geometry, and everything was fine until she went to Transfiguration, to which Lavender and Parvati had just come from Divination. Her two roommates were casting nervous glances at her the whole period and generally looking very solemn. At lunch, they kept this up until Hermione finally got fed up with it and confronted them.

"Okay, what is up with you two today?" she demanded. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Excuse me?" said Nearly-Headless Nick, who was floating by.

"Sorry, force of habit," Hermione said, embarrassed.

"Oh, Hermione, you need to be really, really careful!" Parvati said.

"Yeah, something terrible's gonna happen," added Lavender.

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"We were burning laurel leaves in Divination for pyromancy," Parvati explained.

"And ours weren't burning very well at all," Lavender continued breathlessly. "And that's a bad omen. They were crackling, and the flame was bending all around."

"So of course, Professor Trelawney came over for a closer look," said Parvati, "and just as she did, whoosh! The fire blew out, and there was this huge billow of smoke that spilt all over the table!"

They sat there, staring at her with wide eyes as if that should mean something to her. Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"That means impending catastophe!"

Hermione sighed. She was really glad she hadn't taken Divination, now. "It was probably just a draft caused by all those shawls she wears. Honestly, it's a miracle she hasn't caught fire herself, yet."

"But that's not the worst part," Lavender said, not listening. "After the fire went out, the ashes fell into that weird long-S shape you're always writing."

"An integral sign?"

"That's it! It was a warning for you, Hermione."

"I highly doubt that, Lavender. Even if it's a real omen, the integral sign is a pretty simple shape. It's probably just a coincidence."

Parvati shook her head: "I don't think so. The ashes show the subject of the prediction, and Professor Trelawney confirmed it herself. She says there's grief and terror coming for you, and soon."

"Coincidence!" Hermione insisted. "I think the dementors are getting to you. There's certainly no reason for grief and terror to be coming for me in particular."

"Just be careful, okay?" Lavender said.

"Okay, but I'm telling you, I'm going to be fine."

Hermione was perfectly certain that nothing bad was about to happen, but at sunset, she was reminded of one thing that gnawed at the back of the mind for the rest of the night: tonight was the full moon. As much as she thought divination wasn't worth more than her horoscope in the Times, she'd feel better tomorrow when the sun rose and she could see if Professor Lupin was alright.