With the midst of October well under way, and having no desire to find out if the ever forecasted (and ever changing forecast) of cold or slightly less cold rain held water, Lillian Janelle Potter instead ensconced herself in her office, trying to think of anything but the inquest she had been once more informed all too sharply that she was to have little to, ideally, no part in.
There was an air of both frustration and embarrassment to that reminder; that it had come from Director Bones with no room for anyone else to argue had been frustrating but not itself embarrassing; that the reminder had been made clear to nearly everyone during PMQs after a particularly rancorous assertion by the Deputy Leader Of The Opposition, Bartemius Crouch (no doubt with the approval of the Leader Of The Opposition, Rufus Scrimgeour), had implied the law was being broken for Lily's ego and thus wasting everyone's time. Amelia warned you that might happen. Delia warned you that might happen, the more reasonable recesses of her mind reminded her. And it did. But it wasn't true. It isn't true. It's why you have to be kept in the dark. Even though not knowing what's been found or what's being looked at is aggravating. Her fingers slipping up and down her quill, she took a glance between her notes and the additional reports handed over by the small team that had accompanied her down to Llanfairfechan, on the coast of Wales. A stay in the town, perhaps a visit to one of its near historical sites, or a trek down to the beach for a few minutes alone, just herself and her toes digging into cold water and sand before having to slip her heels back on could have been nice. A slightly less abhorrent reason to be in the area would have made it a pleasant trip, even. Yet, as it were, and after a somewhat frenzied report from the (so he said) retired auror, Alastor Moody, of muggle torture before the man went completely uncontactable once again, the trip had been, in a word, vile. Two days hence, and the bitter, iron taste of blood still slipped into her mouth every time she bit too hard into her own lips, barely aware she was doing so until the blood was starting to be drawn.
By the time she and her team of one other, seasoned auror (him of ten years in the role), two others gaining a real footing (with three years and one year in the job respectively), as well as three aurors in training, those three all under the age of twenty, one muggle was already dead. She had been found on the beach, puffy, cold, and water bloated on her side from having been left in the water; at closer examination, and no water escaping her mouth when they managed to get it open, it seemed she had, somehow, managed to drown with no water in her lungs. Taking down a note to check the muggle news channels – the BBC, ITV, SkyNews, and Channel 4 – for reports on potential victims who may have been missed, and, trying not dwell on the same sick feeling that had clawed at her since getting the assignment, she looked back at the reports from her team. With ten years in the job, Albert Wallstone's report had been one of the most thorough; having split up with him taking the trainees into the town to speak to some of the witnesses and to perform some of the needed obliviations, his noting that one of the witches who had been a ringleader in the muggle torture had been tracked down and arrested by a subsequent team granted her a fleeting sense of relief almost as much as his report having been made up on his favoured, muggle typewriter. Having been with her and, only one year in the job with a massive drive to prove himself as far more than the nephew of the current Minister Of Magic, twenty two year old Liam William Fudge had struggled to write a comprehensible report (largely a result of his handwriting) but had been, albeit after a few minutes of hesitation, the one who pulled the woman out of the water and out of the way so that he, Lily, and, an auror of three years, Brittany Rochester could determine if her death had been a result of the killing curse.
Like two others in town – one stuffed behind some industrial trash collection bins in the alleyway and another pinned between the doors into a cellar – it had been. More disturbingly, one found in a blood spattered hotel room had not been a victim of the killing curse and instead of a much more prolonged torture than that seen on the disfigured, bruised, and unnaturally contorted bodies of the other victims found in town. Thus, it seemed the killing curse was the only thing the woman on the beach suffered was, comparatively, the much kinder fate to befall the victims. Though she had likely been scared, lured down to the beach and to an isolated stretch of it, she had not been physically tortured, not even in the water; it seemed far too unlikely for her to have drowned without water in her lungs when no water escaped her mouth or even her nose; no signs of water aspiration seeming to rule it out even before it seemed all but certain it was the killing curse which had snuffed out her life.
The only one to survive his ordeal even a little while longer than the others had not been so lucky.
Found in the blood spattered hotel room had been barely clinging to life when discovered by Albert and the trainees, the man's state had been punctuated in its brutality at the sight of blood having been splattered even onto the ceiling. One of the trainees, too, had become ill, starting to violently retch in the equally blood splattered bathroom, when the man had died shortly after their arrival and after a gasping attempt to explain what had happened. A man and a woman had followed him up to his room, he had reckoned. Whilst in the shower, he had heard the locked door into the room click open; he had shut off the water and dressed himself quickly, about to tell off the hotel staff whom he suspected had blatantly ignored the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the knob. His shirt had been barely on him when the door to the bathroom was burst open, and a bolt of searing red light from the strange stick in the hand of the woman had been fired at him. A scream had escaped him but, seconds later, he heard no sound coming out of him after a flick of the wrist from the man with his own strange stick. The pain of his screams and a new, indiscernible pain and misery had overwhelmed his senses, only to feel himself being tossed against the walls, the doorframe separating the bathroom from the rest of the room, and then the ceiling and the floor. Blood had begun to drip down his face, and, by the time they had left and he had been left on the bed with blood pooling around him and twitching from the pain, he could have sworn, for a time, nobody else had been in the room but him, disorientation and a –
"Lily? Is it alright for me to step in?"
She looked up suddenly in surprise, but at the sight of Kingsley Shacklebolt in the doorway into her office she nodded quickly, wincing when something popped at the base of her neck. "Of course," She said. "What is it?"
"It's 17:28," He said as he shut the door behind himself. "Amelia," He elaborated when she furrowed her brow in confusion. "You were supposed to have the report on the Welsh case to her a bit shy of a half hour ago."
"Damn it," Lily swore, looking between her notes from whilst the team had been in Wales, those on their reports, and the individual team member reports themselves. "They're more or less done," She eventually said. "The collection of my team's reports and my overview analysis of it. Is that all she needs for now?"
"It is, but I'd get it to her sooner rather than later," Kingsley said, going quiet for a minute as Lily, with a few flicks of her wand, slipped all the papers into their designated files, bundled them up, unlocked her owl's cage and the opening of the door into her office to let the creature take them to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, shutting it after the creature left. "Is everything alright? You usually are ahead of schedule on administrative matters."
Lily shook her head. "I think this case has really gotten to me," She confessed, closing her notebook with the personal copy of her notes inked and dried within. "The brutality of it all…the…and for what? So a few sick individuals could get pleasure out of ending the lives of unsuspecting muggles and making the final hours of those muggles' lives an unrelenting misery? We've only caught one of them, and I won't be shocked if, when we catch the others, at least one of the perpetrators were once Death Eaters who managed to slip through the cracks."
"There are probably significantly more of those than any of us would care to admit," Kingsley agreed. "I can't say I blame you for being so bothered by it. But I was – and I hope you can forgive me for mentioning it – wondering if your distracted mood may have come from Crouch having…" He hesitated, searching for words. "Having made an attack on your character."
"He's welcome to have whatever opinion he'd like on my character, but that doesn't mean his view of me is correct. I'm egotistical and set on making an untarnished legacy and reputation for myself?" A bitter scoff escaped her. "If that's somehow who I am, then I should think he needs to develop more of a sense of humility than me, seeing as he bet his chances on becoming Minister Of Magic on proving himself to be a paragon of virtue by sending his own son to prison – rightly so, I can admit – for crimes the boy committed as a Death Eater and has been worse than ever since his pride was wounded by not only a man younger than him ending up Minister Of Magic but a half blood whose family had no prior major relevance when Crouch himself is one of the so called 'Sacred Twenty Eight.'"
"The only thing more tiresome than Crouch's anger at his current lot in life is when he vocalises it," Kingsley said with a brief flicker of amusement. "And that I think was what drove his focus on your involvement in getting the investigation into Sirius' guilt or innocence reopened."
"Partly, I'm sure," Lily said with a frown. "But I suspect the real reason behind it was that I had, a few hours earlier, told him off for verbally berating his house elf and kicking her aside with the heel of hose shoes after giving her new orders to clean his office 'properly,' whatever that means."
"At least Dolores has the good sense to keep her abuse of her house elf under wraps as much as possible and behind closed doors. Rumours are, for her, better than outright knowledge as is in Crouch's case," Kingsley said, disgusted. "I don't understand how some people can treat other living creatures so horribly, which doesn't even scratch the surface of horrid things those two have in common. No one truly likes them, but are happy to use them. I'm not sure I even want to use them as expendably as we do, considering they try to use everyone else to try and get ahead."
"All the while treating their staff horrifically," Lily added, a dark note to her voice. "I will admit, both Amelia and Delia can be incredibly challenging people to work with and, as we've seen plenty over the years, for, but they don't have their staff leaving after just months or even weeks in the job."
"That would be because the two of them are more often than not at least reasonable, rational, and not seeking to be cruel for the sake of being cruel," Kingsley replied. "Which, in my opinion, was what Crouch's accusation against you was."
"And yet you're going to tell me the same thing Amelia has been, what Cordelia and Cornelius have told me," Lily said, sighing when he did not object. "I've been trying not to let my desire to know get the best of me, Kingsley, but, after what I pulled together to get the investigation reopened in the first place, I feel so close to having answers to this question that I've tried to suppress for over a decade because to dwell on it was to remember that it was an apparent response to the worst thing that ever happened to me. And that thought keeps going on over and over every day. I forced myself to put away all of the old photographs, letters…everything I have at home away again because I kept getting lost scourging through them. Is it so wrong that I want answers and feel so close to having them? Because, while I know a lesser woman than I would have accepted things as they've been, I feel a greater woman than I would have faith in the process without being desperate to know everything."
"It isn't wrong to feel that way, but maintaining a clear, impartial investigation means keeping you out of it and away from evidence collection and review. I understand, Lily. I suspect Amelia does too, even if she's not keen to say it, and, considering you've been friends with them for the better part of the last ten years, I don't doubt Cordelia and Cornelius do as well. That doesn't change optics, though. Distancing yourself entirely – don't even get caught reading news on potential sightings of Sirius in the Prophet or in the muggle news – is necessary and, truthfully, stepping away from it as much as possible might help you keep a clear head. Quidditch has started again at Hogwarts, hasn't it? Maybe take a day or two off to watch your son play."
"Don't even be caught reading the news or taking in muggle news?" Lily stared at him briefly in shock. "For God's sake, Kingsley, I feel I'm receiving new rules for how to act and how to respond for my knowledge or lack thereof in this investigation with my morning coffee. But maybe…" She shook her head. "Maybe I should go see him play. I don't know. I'll mention it in this week's letter but I'm not sure he'd want me there. Not when everyone knows who I am and who he and I are."
"It's worth asking," Kingsley said sympathetically. "You need to keep your mind off Sirius as much as possible. Not just for the integrity of the investigation, but for yourself. Being there for your son is, I know, the most important thing in the world for you. So do it. Whatever you have to do alongside work to be there for him, take it. If nothing else, I'm certain it will help keep his mind off all the stories and rumours about Sirius too."
At receiving notice from one of her interns that her Head of the Department Of Magical Law Enforcement was, in fact, back in her office at Woolworth for the first time in almost seven months instead of in the UK, and would be for longer than just the already scheduled meetings, President Lucinda Carrington of the Magical Congress Of The United States Of America wasted little time in making for the woman's office.
March the 27th had been the day; a little less than a week after her father's funeral, twenty five days after her and her husband's nineteenth wedding anniversary, twenty six days after the ninth birthday of her youngest son, twenty eight days since the death of her father, and it was also the day that, only hours after arriving back in the UK, one Missus Cordelia Amelie Fudge was informed by telephone that the group of four seers in the small town of Sedona, Arizona had, in fact, as the evidence she had gathered suggested, been illegally using magic on their no-maj customers in order to convince them of their legitimacy as psychics.
And that was, unfortunately, only the beginning.
Less than a week later, after reviewing the documents she had been granted permission to bring with her to the UK, it had become more than clear that, not too far away from where the seers were (to say the very least) aggressively manipulating their customers in the Grand Canyon was a mad wizard who had more than likely grown obsessed with attempting to domesticate the thunderbirds native to the deserts; something which, in and of itself, might not have been a problem were it not for the fact he had attempted the hare brained scheme of using one of the friendlier creatures as a messenger bird and, instead of being such, got shot down by no-maj hunters who, until they were spotted and dealt with (read: obliviated) by a few off duty aurors hiking in the area, seemed intent on selling the strange creature they had killed as proof that, if it existed, then so too must the sasquatch. Come the end of April, after a review of the evidence, a disciplinary trial to be overseen by her subordinate, the Head of the Department Of Aurors, one Mister Victor Louis Picquery was set for a witch who had been selling potions to unknowing no-maj residents of southern Alabama as a form of supposed alternative medicine. Then, whilst May and June had proved to be far less eventful than the months preceding them, there had been the incident of a few pernickety nifflers escaping a class of Ilvermorny students towards the very end of term and ending up in the streets from Maine to Massachusetts after the creatures had begun to reproduce.
That the nifflers had been more or less mistaken for rather large and oddly shaped sewer rats by the no-majs that had spotted them, the investigation into how they had been allowed to escape the students in the first place had been frustrating and one which, to little enthusiasm of her, led to Cordelia, already exhausted with her own children having been brought home early from school in the UK due to fears for their safety amongst a string of student petrifications, recommending the removal of the Professor in question whose far from ideal oversight had led to the issue in the first place. The threats from that Professor towards her for having done so and the levying of additional charges on top of those for the negligence had amounted to more paperwork, more sensational headlines, and the ultimate conviction and sentence of eighteen months in prison for both crimes had, too, only set the tone for a frustrating summer. By late July, two additional witches were arrested for illegally brewing and selling potions to no-majs as 'alternative medicine,' and the mad wizard with his thunderbirds in the Grand Canyon had to be detained for his own safety after attempting to ride one of the creatures only to be bucked off and slammed into a group of profoundly confused no-majs attempting to picnic. Worse still, one of the candidates for the replacement of Ilvermorny's previous Care Of Magical Creatures Professor had turned ugly with one attempting to transfigure the other into a creature small enough to be eaten by a rather large spider. And, so, when September came, the fight over the job was resolved with nobody permanently hurt, the reappearance of another group of seers using magic on their unsuspecting no-maj customers had seemed comparatively mild.
Now, in October, with the mayhem and chaos of the previous few months behind them, President Lucinda Carrington of the Magical Congress Of The United States Of America did her best to affect a halfway pleasant face upon stepping into the office of her Head of the Department Of Magical Law Enforcement.
"President Carrington," Delia said with a terse smile as she stood up, closed the report she had been reviewing on her desk and set atop the other files already prepared for the older woman. "Seeing as you're here, I suppose you'd like to take my reviews early?"
"Partly, yes," Carrington said curtly. "But also to offer you my welcome of your return to the States ahead of this afternoon's cabinet meeting."
"Not necessary, but thank you," Delia said, binding the files together with a thick rubber band with a flick of her wand. "I set the disciplinary hearings for the seers out in Arizona before I arrived back in the US, as well as a few others for a handful of aurors whose actions have been, in the words of Miss Kowalski, indiscreet at best and the work of saboteurs at worst. I have a handful of larger investigations to take a second look at, but, from what I've already seen, heard, and reviewed of –"
"Much as I appreciate that your management of the Department even from across the pond is and has been thorough, I find it easier to not have to phone you and I suspect it's much easier for you to hold meetings here than over the telephone in the UK," Carrington's eyes narrowed in scrutiny when Delia handed her the stack of files. "And easier to not have to receive transcripts of your reports and analysis rather than the initial report itself. Nevertheless, if I may ask, has your reticence towards spending time in the US had much to do with your father's…well, with his murder?"
Delia frowned. "I'd rather not discuss that, President Carrington. I've done my job as prescribed, and I made it clear before I went back to the UK at the end of March that I would be there longer and working from there longer than usual because I wanted to spend a little more time with my youngest, who was only eighteen months at the time. It was no secret, and I have been meticulous in –"
"Cordelia, if you needed a few months of leave to grieve, you could have put in for it."
"It had been just shy of a year since I had been on maternity leave," Delia said, bristling and eyes narrowing behind her glasses. "I had no desire to neglect my work, and I hope that's been clear."
"Perfectly," Carrington said through pursed lips. "But your physical absence was still felt. It's much easier, for some, to break the law when they are all but assured the imperious and merciless woman they could be landed in front of is in another country entirely."
"I'm here now," Delia icily replied.
A moment passed in silence; one of Carrington's eyebrows arched but, soon after, she shook her head.
"That you are. I read the overview report you submitted before you left to return to the States. I assume these," She lifted up the files Delia had handed her. "Are a follow up to that?"
"An extension and more thorough review. And, while I share your concerns about the International Statute Of Secrecy being upheld after those incidents in the Southwest, I should think the burden of that on us is, at least, somewhat eased seeing as it is the UK which will be hosting the upcoming Quidditch World Cup and it will be France and the UK who will be party to the Triwizard Tournament, though I'm not thrilled with the…options for who the third party in that will be."
"Durmstrang, most likely," Carrington noted. "But I stand by my decision to refuse France's request. They wanted to bring the Tournament back, and that's their prerogative, but we do not have to go along with it. All things considered for you personally, however, that's barely the ease it is for the rest of us."
"Neil was, to put it mildly, less enthused at the prospect than of Britain hosting the Quidditch World Cup this summer," Delia said shortly. "Though much of the Tournament has been shunted off to Crouch. It is his department, after all."
"Crouch…" Carrington paused a second with a frown. "I think I've met him once or twice. Far from a pleasant person to be around, as I recall. A lot of simmering anger and frustration tied together by self important arrogance. I pitied his secretary. Has he got a new one already? It didn't seem to me that they lasted particularly long."
"Yes. Percy Weasley. He happens to be the older brother of one of my elder son's friends," Delia said. "But he's likely to last longer than the others. He's fixated entirely upon making a name for himself and, also, a great deal more money than he's ever had. His mother's a homely, frumpier woman who still has to take care of his younger siblings when they're not at school, and his father has never moved up since taking charge of the Muggle Artefacts Office and whatever else it is he does. Enchanted a car so it would fly which his youngest son flew to school last autumn with poor Harry Potter in it after the boys could apparently not get through to Platform 9 and 3/4 on time. Lily was mortified, blamed herself for not taking him to the train even though she was going over for some work in France."
Carrington let out a short laugh. "I will confess, Cordelia, I do appreciate your scathing assessments of people."
"I wouldn't call her scathing," A gentle and almost musical voice said, its owner standing in the doorway to the office. "Apologies for interrupting you, President Carrington. Mandy told me Delia was in, and I wanted to stop by."
"In that event, I'll leave you be, Missus Kowalski," Carrington frowned when three others soon stepped in after her. "I assume you have –"
"The books from the vault you needed. Already translated, and should have been brought up to your office, President Carrington," The first, a small blonde woman a bit taller than but with almost the same face as Delia said.
"Here are the updates from Major Investigations," The second, a tall woman with chestnut hair said.
"And my reports should be contained within Cordelia's," The third, a man with warm dark skin and kind brown eyes said with a polite handshake. "Which, I see, you were given, President Carrington."
Carrington narrowly looked between them but soon shook her head upon a glimpse at her watch.
"I suppose it's within break hour. The three of you," She looked pointedly to Delia, the second woman, and the man. "Don't forget the cabinet meeting at 3:30, Cordelia, Victor, Amanda."
"Won't be a problem," The man said with a pleasant smile. "Good day, President Carrington."
"Good day, Mister Picquery," She said, the file from Delia under her arm as she shut the door behind herself with a swish of her wand.
A few seconds passed in silence, the hum of still air ringing out.
"I always forget you're twins until I see you together. I think Crusa's lack of glasses is what does it most to me," Missus Kowalski said with a soft laugh. "But it's lovely to see you both, Crusara, Delia."
Delia sighed. "It's good to see you as well, Queenie."
"I can't believe you didn't tell me you were stopping in, Nonna!" Mandy said with a half hearted scowl. "Your own granddaughter, you could have told me!"
"We have our monthly dinner date this evening, lapochka," Queenie replied with a smile when her granddaughter embraced her. "I didn't think I needed to."
"Would rather you drop in than my grandmother," Victor said with a nervous laugh. "President Carrington's hair may be as severe and steel grey as her terse voice, but she's never made me quake in my shoes the way my grandmother has, owed, in my view, to her having also been President."
"We didn't get on well for a long time – she and Tina have always had a slightly better rapport – but I can admit, now that is, Seraphina Picquery is a good woman. Imperfect, but aren't we all?" Queenie's face fell when she looked back at Delia, the woman's thoughts subdued but still louder than everyone else's bar her own sister's as her eyes fell on a family picture on her desk. Catherine won't even remember dad. She's too young, won't even be three when Neil, I and…the Quidditch World Cup next summer…and… "How are you holding up?" Queenie said gently, stepping over to Delia.
"Better than me," Crusara bitterly but almost nonchalantly said, ignoring the dark look Delia cast her when she took out a cigarette. "I'm not doing lines off your desk, Coco, and I don't do coke at the office anymore. That was a feat only a woman of barely twenty could accomplish, and at least I did it then."
Victor frowned. "I thought you had quit smoking."
"On and off," Crusara said with a flippant wave upon sparking her cig with her wand.
"It's a nasty habit," Delia snapped. "If you could think about someone other than yourself, I'd –"
"Alright, alright! Jesus, Coco, I'm sorry, alright?" Crusara stubbed out her cig on the back of one of her heels, having briefly swung one leg up onto the edge of her twin sister's desk. "I didn't expect you to still be so sensitive," She said, hesitantly stepping over to her and gently setting a hand to each of her sister's arms. "Thought it might just be me and mom. Lyle won't even acknowledge it anymore."
"Don't make me think about what happened to dad again, or talk about it," Delia said quietly, blinking back tears. "I'm going to be here until the week before Christmas, and I don't think I can bear it if I have to think about it."
"Oh, you darling girls," Queenie said, moving quickly to embrace them each one by one. "It wasn't your fault, DeeDee, and you were there for him the fastest you could," She whispered to Delia, brushing away a few tears from under the younger woman's eyes before they could fog her glasses. "You're incredibly strong, you know. Still working, still being there for your children. I'll have to give Cornelius my thanks again. I know you wouldn't still be standing without him."
"She's lucky like that. Wonder what it's like," Crusara said under her breath, though a hint of relief crossed over her face when she realised her sister, who had stepped back around her desk to look for something after Queenie let her go, had not heard her.
"If you need anything, please come to me," Mandy said, coming over to Delia and sending her a pointed look when she briefly grabbed one of her hands. "I told you a bit shy of twenty years ago that there's nothing I won't do for you after you saved my life on that God awful first assignment we ever had as aurors. I still mean it, Delia."
Delia stared at her for a moment but then sighed. "I know. That's why we're still going for drinks with Vick and Crusa after work, after all."
"And I, for one," Victor said with a reassuring smile. "Have a great deal of good things to tell the lot of you. Dwelling in sadness won't make things any better. Try to focus on the good. Work can't be the only distraction."
"It never can be," Queenie said, sharing a faint nod with her granddaughter. Something her grandfather's death in '79 taught me all too well. "It really can't."
Stuffy and humid from the heat of boiling water, tea making, and incense burning in the already poorly ventilated Divination classroom, it was, perhaps, more than understandable that, after staying up late struggling to finish an essay for Potions with help from Hermione, Ron Weasley was already half asleep, his eyes fluttering open and shut, the left half of his face resting in one hand and the other almost numbly laying near the teacup and saucer in front of him.
Not faring much better than him and increasingly angry with her hair getting, she could have sworn, more tangled and bushy by the minute, Hermione Granger scowled at the class's very own Professor Trelawney who was humming to herself in between dramatically delivered lectures that sounded far more like she were rehearsing for a theatre production than actually teaching. Beside her and in between her and Ron, his own curly hair also bushing up, Eddie Fudge found himself only relieved that, for once, the Ravenclaw Year Threes had Divination with the Gryffindor Year Threes. Beginning to feel a little sleepy himself despite having gone to bed at a far more reasonable hour than his friends, his Potions essay already completed the night before, Eddie tried not to yawn, glancing down at the shrivelled tea leaves in the teacup before him. Looks a bit like an albatross. Isn't aunt Crusa an animagus? Could've sworn her form was also an… A sudden loud crackling from a stick of incense falling onto the table in front of Professor Trelawney upon being knocked down from where it was in the burner hanging down from the ceiling when one of her far too long, flowing sleeves bumped the burner while reaching for something else behind her snapped him, Hermione, Ron, and, across from him on the other side of Hermione, the equally bored Harry back to their surroundings rather than their swirling thoughts. Harry grimaced when, as she snuffed out the small fire that had begun on her sleeve, Trelawney cast her gaze almost absentmindedly over towards him, letting a sigh of relief out when she did not say anything and instead turned back to what was in front of her.
Nudging Ron a little under the table to stop him from falling asleep, Eddie slipped a folded piece of parchment over to Harry, also under the table. He waited a few seconds, making sure Trelawney's gaze had not shifted back towards him, before unfolding it and taking a look at what his friend had written. Did she unnerve you during the one on one test earlier in the week? Because, halfway through mine, she snatched both of my wrists, told me I'm a 'natural born seer' unlike my 'rigid minded elder sister' and that 'great misfortune' is going to befall my family in the next year. Taking another look to make sure Trelawney was still very much distracted as her 'lecture' began to veer more towards sounding like an overdone, Shakespearean monologue, Harry quickly scribbled back a reply. She kept predicting my death and told me to not listen to Professor McGonagall stating otherwise because she 'lacks a tangible connexion to the ephemeral world.' Made a weird note about my mum, too. Said she and I both have the grim. Folding it up along the same lines he had unfolded it from when he was sure the ink had dried, Harry passed the note back to Eddie under the table. The two boys shared a knowing look when he finished reading it and, rolling his eyes, Eddie set the piece of paper on fire on the saucer with a tap of his wand, watching the ashes smoulder for a few seconds with a fleeting smirk. He sighed when he realised Hermione was sternly scowling at him, but soon after had to force himself not to laugh when Ron sat up far straighter than before and with more focused eyes upon her kicking him under the table, herself, too, trying to keep him from falling asleep.
"How much longer have we got to be here?" Ron mumbled, towards Hermione.
She glanced at the dreadfully dusty and cobweb adorned clock across the room. "About an hour," She whispered back in reply.
"Well, that bloody well sucks," Ron muttered.
Neither of his three friends sat with him objected. Eddie merely shrugged. Hermione nodded in approval, and Harry briefly snickered. The scent of the burning incense continued to grow more and more over present in the room; it was no longer getting only hot and humid but was beginning to smell so strongly of spearmint and lemongrass that it was making the eyes of several of their classmates begin to water. Doing her best to not give into the ever growing urge to scratch at and tie up her hair as it continued to frizz and get in her face while she tried to focus on reading through the class textbook, Hermione kept curling and uncurling her fingers to try to keep them busy. The longer she stared at any given page, however, the more they seemed to warp as her eyes began to water against the oppressive weight of the incense. It's just another hour, then you can go outside where it's colder and work on Transfiguration homework, something much more logical, and much more reasonable. She grit her teeth a little when the metallic clatter of some of the precariously hanging windchimes began to ring out again. She scowled when she looked up and saw it was due to Trelawney, almost aloofly, letting the unnecessarily long, flowing sleeves of her dress brush up against them as she turned to bring down another box of tea leaves. She set them down on the table in front of her with a flourish, only to soon after pick up her wand and, unknowingly mercifully for her students, snuffed out the candles and incense, finally cracking open one of the windows in the room just enough for a little bit of the cold, autumnal air to enter.
"I'll becoming around, one by one, to speak with your groups together and then with your individual members," She said as though it were a proclamation. "Until I reach you and your group, take out your guidebooks and swap teacups with the person across from or beside you and read each other's leaves."
Hermione snapped her textbook shut with a thud, dropping it almost carelessly into her bag at her feet and all but ripping up the guidebook that she promptly let fall onto the table in front of her, scowling at Harry and Ron when they swapped teacups, seemingly snickering about something when a note, too, passed between them.
"Alright, let me see yours," She said, startling Eddie when she shoved her teacup towards him and snatched his towards her. She frowned when she looked at it. "Did you let some of the ash from your note get in here?" She hissed in his ear.
Eddie shook his head. "All that's on the side of it, more or less dust on the saucer. I think," He grimaced when she briefly glared at him. "I think you might have been a little aggressive handling yours. This just looks like a blob to me."
"Come up with something," She muttered, though more to herself than to him. Flipping through the guidebook, she tried to mask her annoyance as she struggled to find the pages she was looking for. She cast a wary glance at his teacup when she did. Definitely is shaped like a bird. But couldn't it be like how sometimes people think they can see something that resembles a face in an electrical outlet? And…damn it, the kind of bird matters… "Well?" She said, keeping her voice almost inaudible when she elbowed Eddie and showed him his teacup. "What do you think it is? It looks like a bird."
"Pretty sure it's an albatross," Eddie told her, careful to keep his voice quiet too as he glanced around the room to make sure Trelawney wasn't too close him, her, Ron, and Harry quite yet. "The book," He said, showing her his copy of the guidebook. "Says seeing one means either something or someone is coming to destroy you."
"Insightful," Hermione said dryly. "What do you think mine is? Other than a blob?"
"Maybe a black cat? The muggles have it wrong, you know," Eddie said with a half smile. "They're good luck. Think Crookshanks is secretly a small black cat under all that orange fur? Could be a puffy costume," He laughed a little when he looked back down at the remains in her teacup. "My aunt Philomena sometimes puts her cat into a little outfit for –"
"…How foolish…your brother really thought there'd be no consequences for refusing to step down after the Dark –"
"…Like I'd do so either, you fucking –"
A crackling rang out, the hazy words and dark, fuzzy room, raised voices were soon subsumed by the violent clatter of breaking glass, cruel laughter, and several flashes of red then green light. A woman's scream; her voice…familiar or…; her face briefly seen…she slumped forward over something seconds after another flash of violent green light blurred everything; for a few seconds, an unnaturally bright red perm seemed to be…; the woman slumped over slipped down, unable to grip onto what she had so briefly fallen over onto, and –
"Eddie? Mate?" Ron smacked his hand against the back of his friend's head, startling him so much that he, not realising until it was too late, smacked him in the face back. "Well," Ron said, managing a laugh when Eddie turned to him suddenly, his face apologetic. "'Spect I deserved that one. But you good? Or the incense finally getting to you too?"
"She snuffed it out," Eddie muttered, rubbing at the back of his head where Ron had smacked him. "Didn't think it was making me tired, too."
"You started mumbling," Hermione said, a tinge of concern lacing her voice.
"Think the smell and bits of smoke are starting to mess with my vision," He said, biting the inside of his cheek for a second before looking back at her teacup. "I'll say it's a cat," He told her before looking between Harry and Ron. "What'd the two of you get?"
"Pretty sure Ron's got a lumpy pig or something," Harry said with a smirk. "Might be a good omen for you winning that bet against Fred and George."
Ron scowled. "That's Scabbers being eaten you're talking about."
"And that looks nothing like Crookshanks!" Hermione exclaimed when Harry passed her the teacup. "He's much cuter than this. And he doesn't look like a pig."
"'Course he doesn't," Ron said with a falsely innocent look on his face that made her turn her irritable glare to him.
"Really, he's the prettiest cat in the world," Eddie added, trying not to laugh.
"Not likely to bite anyone at all," Harry said when she handed the teacup back to him. "Or anything. Probably wouldn't bother trying to hunt down a bird if it made its way into the dorms."
Hermione let out a frustrated sigh. "If we're going to do this, at least take it seriously."
"Eddie dozed off trying to take it seriously," Harry told her with a shrug.
"That's not what I –" She snapped though, thinking better of it, shook herself out. "Let me see yours, Harry."
"It looks like a dark cloud to me," Ron told her. "Think that means the next two or three Quidditch matches are going to either be called off for bad storms or are going to have bad storms start in the middle of them."
"Don't tell Oliver that," Harry said as Ron handed Hermione the teacup. "He's hellbent on having a clean, clear, and full Quidditch season where we take the House Cup with no room to argue."
"Seeing as he wants to be able to make one of the British national teams after he graduates, I can't say I blame him for wanting that," Hermione said, flipping quickly through the pages of the guidebook again, looking between it and the teacup. After a minute or two, though, she relented and handed it back to Ron. "I think you might be right. But it could be anything. If you want to see something in those leaves, you probably will."
"It's not about what you want to see," An airy voice said, drawing nearer. "It is what is revealed to you in the tea leaves, Miss Granger."
Hermione grit her teeth, struggling to put on a tense smile when Professor Trelawney sat down at their table. "Can't those be one in the same?"
"Very rarely," Trelawney replied, reaching across the table towards her. "It's still a ways before we begin palm reading, but may I take a look at yours? And which is your dominant hand, dear? I need to see the other in order to see your innate character. The dominate shows how those traits have been actualised."
"I'm left handed," Hermione said shortly, startling a little at how cold Trelawney's hands were when they began to trace over her right hand.
Trelawney hummed a little in acknowledgement. "It seems you have, at a glance, an earth hand. I'm not surprised. Logical and practical, often to the point of being closed minded. Slow, perhaps, to take on new ideas, and very set and comfortable in structure and what you know."
Hermione cast a dubious look to Eddie, losing some of the tension she was holding when he gave her one back; the both of them thinking the same thing. How excitingly obvious.
"My most naturally gifted students tend to be water handed," Trelawney remarked, suddenly turning to Eddie. "May I examine yours more closely, again? If I recall correctly, you have a water hand."
Eddie hesitated but, Hermione's discomfort almost palpable, let Trelawney take a look at his left hand, trying not to grimace when Hermione let out a faintly audible sigh of relief upon Trelawney letting go of her hand.
"Yes, my recollection served," Trelawney said with a hint of a smile. "Your cousin, Cathleen, did not last in my class after her OWLs. She was an air hand, and her departure did not surprise me. Your sister, however, is fire handed and, even so, I think well perceptive even though I suspect she lacks true sight."
"And he has true sight?" Hermione said, sharing an uneasy look with Harry and Ron.
"I believe so. What did you see," Trelawney began, her long, elaborately painted nails clicking against each other when she let go of Eddie's hand. "When your vison hazed? It looked to me as though you were in the hands of sight."
"What?" Eddie said, startled. "Not much," He said, a little embarrassed and beginning to nervously run his hands through his hair. "A bit of fighting. Yelling. And a red headed woman…dying? Passing out? I don't know. I think," He said, forcing himself to cough a little. "The incense has gotten to me."
Trelawney considered that. "I wouldn't be so sure. One's first visions can feel to be induced by outer sources."
Hermione frowned. "How is that any difference than muggles who take psychedelics and believe they're having visions?"
"It is different because the sight is particular in who it is gifted to," Trelawney told her, looking over the four again. "Allow me to see your teacups, but, first, who read who and what did you see?"
"I read Eddie's," Hermione said. Please let this class end. "It seems to be an albatross."
Trelawney glanced at the teacup before suddenly taking Eddie's nearest hand again. "I agree," She said before turning to Eddie and handing the teacup back to Hermione. "You have one in your family."
Eddie eyed her strangely before handing her Hermione's teacup. "Hermione has a black cat."
"Perhaps," Trelawney mused. "But I could see a butterfly too. If you shift the way you look at it…"
"A sign of good luck either way, then?" Eddie said.
"For her and in this case? I would say yes. Her upcoming endeavours will bear fruit," Trelawney turned to Harry. "And you then, of course, read Mister Weasley's?"
"He has some sort of animal. I'd like to think it's a lumpy pig," Harry tried not to laugh. "A bit like Hermione's cat."
"I'm not quite sure what I see here," Trelawney said, frowning as she shifted the teacup he had handed her in a semi circle in her hands. "These may have been steeped too long."
"Good news for Harry, then," Ron said, handing her the last teacup. "Because I reckon that's a storm cloud that's going to ruin Quidditch."
"It is not," Trelawney informed him, though she looked back at Harry with a light smile. "You do not have the Grim this week, dear. We will have to wait to see if that appears in your readings again. But, I do believe, you are safe. The shadow of death, I will pray, is away from you."
