cxli. burn the witch

Days came and went with no further sign of Sirius Black. Again, it seemed the madman had simply vanished into thin air.

March trickled into April, and with it came the first budding growth of the new spring. Practice exams were proctored, and most of the student body elected to stay in the castle for the Ostara hols despite the danger. Even Harriet and her friends found themselves too busy with studying to fret overly much about Dark wizards or Dementors or whatever new, pressing catastrophe waited on the horizon. For a time, life felt almost normal.

Whenever she happened to gaze out the window and spot the new, fragile leaves in the distant forest, Harriet's thoughts turned toward the encroaching summer holidays, and she wondered where she would go. With Black still on the loose, Grimmauld Place would be barred to both Harriet and Elara, and though Harriet really wished to return to Trefhud, she wasn't sure if they could. The Flamels had their own business to attend to, business which didn't much allow for the presence and rearing of teenage witches. Mr. Flamel ended each of his letters entreating her to be safe and to write if she needed help, but Harriet's definition of help had never been firm.

Help, she thought, doesn't include being a boarding house.

Elara didn't want them to return to London unless they could hide behind the Black wards; she hadn't told Harriet and Hermione exactly what the Aurors had said to her the day they removed her from History of Magic, but she intimated Gaunt's continued curiosity with Harriet and what had occurred before the Mirror of Erised almost two years ago. Harriet didn't know where Selwyn had disappeared to, but she hoped he fell into a bloody oubliette for telling Gaunt about her—and for traumatizing poor Luna.

The low groan of distant thunder brought Harriet back to the present, and she tore her attention away from the curtained window, blinking against the subtle sting of incense and chimney smoke. Most everyone else in the Divinations classroom had their heads down or their chins cradled in folded hands, staring with bland, dozing expressions into the smooth glass of their crystal balls. The coming storm had the room more humid than ever, and the thick malaise left many of them dazed, tired, and irritable in equal measures. Elara had long since succumbed to the Antihistamine Potion she drank before every class, snoring into her open textbook, and Hermione's hair had swelled to new limits, crackling with energy spurred by her nerves and irritation. She had limited patience for any kind of idle activity, and for Hermione, Divinations was the epitome of idle, uninspired, and dull.

"Ridiculous," the witch muttered as she thumbed through the text with enough force to crinkle the pages, snarling at the crystal ball. Harriet noticed the dark smudges under Hermione's eyes and wondered, not for the first time, what had her friend so frazzled and exhausted. Naturally, Harriet had asked several times, and always Hermione sidestepped the questions or gave bland reassurances. Harriet would press the issue only so far as Hermione would allow, but she didn't think that everything was perfectly fine for a second. Hermione kept something secret, and though Harriet wished she'd confide in them, she remained quiet.

Again, Hermione huffed, gnashing her teeth, and Harriet forced a breath through her nose, glaring at the crystal ball. She'd tried to do what Professor Trelawney said, tried clearing her mind and allowing whatever visions were meant to manifest to do their thing, but it gave her a headache and made her eyes itch. Harriet acknowledged there had to be a trick to it, or a talent she simply didn't possess—because though Trelawney might be a bloody fraud, Divinations hadn't come into existence overnight. There was magic in it, somewhere. Harriet wished she could find it, if only for the benefit of her marks.

Movement in the periphery of her vision had Harriet quickly nudging Elara under the table, the other witch sitting up just as Professor Trelawney came fluttering over. Her shawl glittered like a beetle's shell in the firelight.

"And how are you progressing here, my dears?"

"Erm, great, Professor?" Harriet answered, Hermione refusing to look up from the abused textbook, Elara blinking like an owl who'd crashed into a window.

"And what have you Seen so far?"

"Oh, uhh…." Trailing off, Harriet kicked someone—anyone—under the table, trying to get them to respond, but neither of her friends opened their mouths, leaving the poor girl to blurt out the first thing that came to mind. "There's a, er, great evil approaching? Something sinister. Really bad, ma'am." She waved her hand over the ball for emphasis as Trelawney leaned forward with interest. The only thing the Divinations professor ever wanted to hear was doom and gloom—especially if that doom and gloom centered around Neville, so Harriet took that idea and ran with it. "A shadowy danger is coming closer, but I can't quite tell what it is."

"Is there any more, Miss Potter? Search within yourself…."

Harriet moved her hand to her brow and scrunched her face as if concentrating very hard. "I think…I think Longbottom might be in danger, Professor." In danger of being crushed under his bloody ego, maybe.

"Yes, yes, I have often come to the same conclusion when I consult my Inner Eye about the poor boy!"

"I See…teeth, and fur, and—."

"Go on."

"I think…I think there's some kind of dog—."

"A Grim, my dear?!"

Harriet faked a gasp. "I think so, Professor!"

Professor Trelawney made serious, appreciative comments, to all of which Harriet nodded in earnest, pretending the Prat Who Lived was cursed or doomed or just plain unlucky. She hoped to make enough of a positive impression for Trelawney to move on and give them full marks for the day—but it seemed Hermione had reached her limit of ridiculousness because she scoffed loud and hard, not disguising her disdain when Trelawney stopped to look at her. The older witch swayed ever so slightly, and the bangles on her wrists chattered together like anxious teeth. The odor of cooking sherry wafted past Harriet's nose.

"Anything to add, Miss Granger?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Everything she said is nonsense," she retorted, several of the neighboring tables stirring from their own gazing to stare at her. Harriet didn't have a good feeling about this. "It isn't magic or divination; it's a simple deduction, or logical reasoning. Not even that; it's common sense, a guess based on recent events."

"Is that so?" Trelawney replied after a beat, her skinny nose rising in the air. "Tell me, then, Miss Granger, what it is you See in the crystal ball."

A muscle ticked in Hermione's clenched jaw. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Trelawney sniffed and waved a hand. "Very tragic, yes, but not surprising. I'm terribly sorry, poor girl, but Divinations is a magical art, a subject requiring brilliance and talent beyond the mundane realm. It requires intuition, and for some, it is sadly beyond their ability to reach into the unknown and pull it unto themselves. They lack ability, and will always be—." Trelawney sniffed again. "Ordinary."

That was too much for Hermione to take. At once, her spine stiffened as if she'd been Petrified, and she slammed Unfogging the Future shut, leaving it there upon the table as she stood. Electricity crackled about her frazzled hair again, and—without another word to the professor or her friends—she shouldered her satchel and shoved the crystal ball from its faceted plinth. The ball didn't break when it fell, but it struck the floorboards with a sound like a gunshot, the whole of the class jumping in their seats as Professor Trelawney and Hermione glowered at one another.

Hermione's lip curled. "The only person lacking ability here is you."

If Professor Trelawney had anything to say to that, she never got the chance to respond, as Hermione flounced away, flung open the trapdoor, and disappeared down the ladder. The whispering began immediately, no one quite able to believe what they'd just witnessed. Trelawney snapped at them all to continue their gazing, not sparing Harriet or Elara another thought as she stomped—looking nothing more than a furious, stung Kneazle—and threw herself into her favorite poofy armchair.

Elara bent to heft the crystal ball from the floor and reseat it upon the short plinth while Harriet picked up Hermione's abandoned textbook. She blinked and took a breath of perfumed air.

"What in the hell just happened?"

x X x

Unfortunately, the pair didn't get the chance to find the answer to that question until much later, as Hermione skipped lunch entirely and refused to say anything in Charms regarding the subject. It was only once they entered History of Magic that the proverbial steam seemed to have built enough pressure for Hermione to hiss imprecations against Trelawney and her class, snapping her quill clean in half, splattering her notes in ink.

"I've already informed Professor Slytherin that I'm dropping Divinations," Hermione told them as she sought a new quill. "Such a waste of my time. Arithmancy is by far superior in both its practicality and its ability to provide proper predictions—."

"Hermione," Harriet needled, keeping her voice low as Professor Lupin lectured. Poor bloke looked done in and ready to drop, his voice heavy and weary as he spoke and paced. He had to know Harriet and her friends weren't paying attention, but he gave no effort into corralling them, seeming more interested in the bright, bursting color of the sunset coming down upon the forest outside the window. Sandwiched between the dark morass of clouds and the bleak grounds, the light looking like fire blazing across the horizon. "You went to Slytherin and dropped a class now?"

"Yes. During lunch."

"How are you alive? Bloody hell."

Hermione grimaced and fiddled with the white collar of her uniform. "He wasn't pleased, not at all. Usually, a Muggle-born would need written consent from their guardian to drop a subject, but apparently Professor Slytherin cares so little for Lucius Malfoy, he had no desire to write him." The first sign of unease broke through Hermione's frustration, and she shifted in her seat. "He did say something a bit—odd, however."

"What?"

"Well, when I told him I thought Divinations was a stupid, pointless waste of my time, he smirked like he does and mentioned that Divinations was a worthless study, but Trelawney has her uses."

Harriet questioned what their Defense instructor could mean by that. Truly, she thought Hermione had a point about the class being worthless, but the assignments were simple enough to pass with full marks, and sometimes Harriet appreciated the easy Outstanding. Why would Slytherin think Trelawney had her uses?

"Honestly, I think he just wanted me out of his office. He doesn't—." Hermione's voice dropped, her eyelids flickering. "He obviously doesn't like Muggle-borns."

A flash of bitter memories thrashed in Harriet's head, the Basilisk's writhing body, its eel-like head, Tom Riddle's sinister laughter. "No," she agreed, softly. "No, he does not."

They returned their attention to their classwork, though Elara made snide, irritated comments, and Hermione broke two more quills. Elara liked Divinations—not so much Trelawney or the potion-induced haze she experienced each time she was forced to dose herself before class, but she genuinely found the subject fascinating and disliked Hermione's constant maligning of it. Eventually, Hermione got dragged into a whispered conversation with Malfoy, who wanted to know exactly what happened in Divinations, while Elara propped her head against her folded arm, watching their professor move and speak.

Harriet also watched Professor Lupin's anxious, exhausted pacing. Outside, the pale shadow of the full moon rode the mountain's edge, looming just out of sight.

"In 1597, we see the publication of the Muggle book Daemonolgie, which King James used to fuel the hunts that would plague North Berwick and all of Scotland for the following two hundred years," he recited, arms folded behind his back, hands twitching. "The capture, torture, and subsequent deaths of many untrained students and apprentices during those initial years led Hogwarts' Headmistress, Dame Antonia Creaseworthy, to open the school to year-round boarding, both for the children and their families. It isn't the first time Hogwarts served as an asylum—many taking refuge during the height of the Bubonic Plague in the mid-fourteenth century—but the event would later serve as another stepping for the Statute of Secrecy to be born in the proceeding years."

Professor Lupin paused again at the window. "Indeed, Hogwarts has often been seen as a refuge in times of crises. Parents and activists had begun lobbying Headmaster Dumbledore to follow Headmistress Creaseworthy's example when the height of the Wizarding War threatened the lives of many students. In the end, such action proved unnecessary." He turned. "The correlation there, class, is drawn between three forms of catastrophe. After all, many historians believe You-Know-Who's war was simply another kind of witch-burning."

The bell rang. Harriet looked up from her unconvincing doodle of Tom Riddle getting burnt at the stake and sighed, crumpling the otherwise empty parchment. Everyone made quick work of stuffing their things into their bags, chattering loudly, excited for dinner. If anyone had ever deserved to be caught by a mob of furious Muggles, it was Voldemort—but, then again, it was the kind of paranoia bred by the witch-hunts that helped feed the Dark Lord's anti-Muggle rhetoric. Harriet despised how powerless the cyclical nature of history made her feel.

"I want two feet written on Headmistress Creaseworthy and the North Berwick witch-trials, due Monday!" Professor Lupin called over the noise. "Don't forget! Class dismissed!"

Harriet slung her satchel onto her shoulder, yawning, and followed Elara out the door with Hermione just behind her. "I'm exhausted," she mumbled. The day had started with Defense, a tiring burden at the best of times, and Hermione's blow-up in Divinations had been more trying than she would have guessed.

"You were up too late, reading that silly book."

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not a silly book!"

"It's silly if it keeps you up past midnight."

"Hmph."

"Take a nap after dinner. We have Astronomy tonight."

"Ugh. D'you think Professor Sinistra will mind if I don't show up and sleep instead?"

"Yes, I do believe she would mind—." Elara glanced over her shoulder, and in doing so, happened to look past Harriet toward Hermione—or where Hermione should have been. "Hermione?"

Puzzled, Harriet glanced about, but Hermione wasn't following her any longer, nor did was she in the corridor behind them. The only person remaining was Susan Bones from Hufflepuff, who smiled slightly when Elara and Harriet blinked at her, and then quickly scuttled away, unnerved by their confused looks. "Where did—?"

Suddenly, Hermione came dashing up the corridor in front of them, passing poor Susan in a blinding rush. She looked positively mad, her hair tangled and damp, her jumper spotted with water and mud, torn along the hem, and there was—.

"Hermione!" Harriet gasped, overcoming her shock. "What happened?! Is that—? There's blood on your face!"

"It's nothing. Everything's perfectly fine," she said in a voice that conveyed how perfectly not fine everything was. It cracked and warbled, raspy as if she'd been running. "I—I got caught up for a moment."

"Where did you go? You were just there a moment ago—."

"Listen," Hermione insisted, interrupting Harriet's confused babbling. She took hold of their arms and tugged them close as if to whisper a secret, and when Harriet inhaled, she could smell rain and earth. "I think—it's very important for you to go to the Sundial Garden. Right now, please."

"Right—? It's getting late, though. We're not meant to be out on the grounds past nightfall."

Hermione doubled her grip, causing Harriet to wince and Elara to yank herself free, furious at the rising bruising coming up on her marked wrist. "Listen! We must go to the Sundial Garden. Right now! We must!"

"…okay?" Harriet didn't understand what Hermione was on about, but her intensity was not to be questioned. Perhaps, if they hurried, they could make it out to the Garden and back before anyone took notice of their absence. She doubted it, however; Harriet could feel the imminent lecture coming upon her like a storm cloud, and she swore Hermione wouldn't hear the end of it if she landed another week-long stint of Snape's detentions. "Okay, Hermione, we'll go there—and then maybe we should pop by the hospital wing just to make sure—?"

"I need to—I forgot something in Professor Lupin's classroom." Hermione broke off, dropping her arms back down. She rounded her shoulders and swallowed. "Go on. Meet me in the entrance hall, will you?"

"Hermione—."

Before Harriet could protest, the frazzled witch had already bolted off along the hall, leaving Harriet and Elara to stand there alone, befuddled and slightly bruised from their friend's manhandling. Harriet released a loud, annoyed grunt. "What is with her today? She's gone barmy."

"I'm not sure. She's been more stressed than usual these past few weeks—months, really. Maybe we should find Snape. Or Pomfrey."

"Maybe. Let's go see what she's on about."

They encountered no one they knew on their way downstairs, a few upperclassmen still dotting the passages as they meandered off toward the Great Hall or their common rooms. Harriet expected Hermione to catch up with them, and yet she never did; instead, Elara and Harriet descended the marble steps and found Hermione already waiting for them by the open doors to the Great Hall, her face clean and her clothes tidy, her bulging book bag hanging from her drooping shoulder.

Where had the blood gone? The water?

"There are you are," Hermione said with an exasperated twist of her mouth. "I thought you'd gone and gotten lost."

It didn't make sense. Harriet looked at her, brow scrunched, then at the stairs, attempting to puzzle out how in the world Hermione Granger had managed to beat them there. They each had their own lens of the Argonaut's Atlas, of course, but no matter how many times she reevaluated the route in her head, Harriet knew Hermione would have had to take the stairs or used the Moon Mirror, which would have deposited her in the dungeons. They would have arrived at the same time.

"Are you ready for dinner?"

"Ready for—? Hermione!"

The bushy-haired witch blinked, startled. "What is it?"

"You just now told us you wanted to go to the Sundial Garden!"

"I did?"

Harriet decided Hermione needed to be dragged to the infirmary if she wanted to go or not. Her best friend had been remarkably more scatterbrained of late, and Harriet worried she'd been hit with a curse of some kind. She remembered Ginny Weasley wandering about in a daze last year and how Riddle had boasted about cursing the poor girl to get her out of his way.

However, rather than question them further, Hermione cleared her throat and said, "Oh. Right—the Sundial Garden. Of course! We should get going, then."

"Maybe we should have Madam Pomfrey take a look at you, first. You're acting peculiar."

"I'm fine, Harriet. If I said we need to be at the Sundial Garden, then that's where we need to be."

Harriet scoffed. The trio tromped out of the school and into the brilliant, orange light straining through the forest's spindly fingers, turning their path to the long trail looping about the castle toward the cliffs and Garden. Clouds overhead threatened to thicken and descend, smudging the sky. They had to run at one point, spotting Professor Sprout departing the greenhouses on her way to the Great Hall, and they sprinted up the path leading toward the Quidditch pitch and the Whomping Willow. By the time they passed both and reached the covered bridge, the air had gained a palpable chill, and the sun passed below the trees, grotty pines casting the whole of the grounds in their reaching shadows. Harriet wished they'd thought to grab their cloaks from the dormitory.

"This is all very strange, Hermione," Elara commented as they came out from under the bridge's eave. Going by her tone, she'd long since passed from bemused to annoyed, her breathing uneven from running. The wind burned against their uncovered ears. "Are you going to tell us what the point of all this is?"

"I'm…not entirely sure."

Elara stopped, robes eddying about her legs. "What."

"I—." Hermione held up her hands, mouth pressed in a firm line as Elara's eyes glittered with anger. "I know it's odd. I'll explain later, I guess it's inevitable now, but if I told you we needed to be here, then we need to be here."

"This is ridiculous."

"I know."

They continued to bicker, and Harriet—tired and chilled—meandered away from the pair, finding a perch on one of the ancient, fallen plinths. The cold bit against her bare knees, and the first unwelcome droplets of rain peppered her spectacles, the moisture sliding from the Charmed glass. The night came fast now, like the Hogwarts Express barreling closer and closer to its last station, the stars and moon making their final ascent. Again the wind rose and seemed to howl.

Harriet didn't hear the footsteps in the dead grass, and didn't feel the weight of beady eyes on her back. She never saw the curse coming.


A/N: I didn't have Trelawney give the prophecy about Peter. It's entirely possible she still did, but Harriet wasn't there to hear it. If a Seer says a prophecy to an empty room, is it real?

It honestly bugs me that the canon lore makes light of the witch-hunts. Thousands and thousands of people were tortured and brutalized, and the idea that real witches and wizards just cast some Charms and laughed about it was kind of offensive, ngl.

Hermione: [appears in inexplicable, impossible places]

Harriet: "I know this is a magic castle, but how."

Elara: "I'm not even going to question it at this point."