Chapter 5
So many eyes and whispers follow Harry around the next day, and no Hogwarts house has spared him. Hermione sticks by him this time, and not Ron, but since she’d dropped Divination from last year, Harry has to take the long walk up to Trelawney’s tower alone.
Harry keeps his head down in the halls, and his forehead on his desk during Divination. For once, Professor Trelawney doesn’t bother him until after class.
“Mr. Potter, if you’ll stay behind,” Harry sags, and ignores the snickering of his peers as he waits for the classroom to empty before going up to his teacher.
“Are you prepared, my dear?” Harry looks at her oddly.
“For what?” Trelawney smiles, and her eyes go slightly blank. Harry stills, and puts more effort into listening to what she says next. She doesn’t seem completely out of it, so no prophecy, but she’s definitely fallen a little out of the physical world.
“Your future is changing,” she explains. “Death looks upon you with favor, to return to him what he has been denied, with fire, fang, and ritual.” Trelawney looks at him with clearer eyes. “A ritual that Ms. Granger will not be able to find.”
Harry walks to his next class confused. Ron is the one who interprets Trelawney’s ramblings, expertly picking out the truth from her teachings. If he tells Hermione, she would huff and insist he forgets everything his professor says. Usually her immense dislike and disrespect towards a professor is amusing, but now it plays against him.
“Professor Trelawney didn’t predict my death today,” Harry opens conversation with Hermione, who is waiting for him at the bottom of the divination tower. Hermione stalls.
“That’s very unusual. Does it have something to do with who you were late coming down the stairs?” Harry nods.
Hermione looks doubtful and disturbed when Harry explains what she told him, but doesn’t tell him to dismiss Trelawney’s prediction entirely. “Maybe we should research Death,” she thinks aloud. “With the mortality rate in the tournament and all…”
Harry thinks he’s been in the library voluntarily more during his fourth year at Hogwarts than he has during his first three years combined. At least here, Madam Pince watches over her domain with an iron fist, and shoos away anyone who stops to gawk at them sitting quietly together.
“Potter,” Harry and Hermione look up from where they are sitting side by side, both of them reading through the same passage of a book. Nott is standing at the other end of their table. “May I look through your stack of books? You might have something I am looking for.”
Hermione looks reluctant to part with any potentially useful material, but in two weeks they’ve gotten no closer to finding a definitive answer if Death exists, or what he might need Harry to return to him if he does. “Sure,” Harry allows. Hermione stops on his foot under the table, and he ignores her.
As Nott goes through the spines of the books Hermione has gathered for their temporary hoard today, Harry grows less tolerant to reading the same six paragraphs over, and throws back his head.
“‘Mione.” he groans, and rubs his eyes. “Give it up, I can’t help you understand that.”
Hermione flicks his cheek, which tells Harry she’s not even looking. “You missed.” He deadpans. Hermione scowls at him, and flicks his nose successfully this time. He snickers.
Hermione concedes defeat in ten minutes anyway. “I suppose there’s nothing else to do but come back to it later.” She slides the book over to Nott, who is eyeing it with interest. “Maybe we’ll figure it out with fresh minds, or additional knowledge.” She gestures to a stack Nott has already looked through. Harry sighs, and picks the top two books for them to read next.
“Ah,” Nott voices. “This is what I needed. My thanks.” Nott stands up and takes off with his new reading material.
Hermione looks double irritated now. “And now we have no choice when we comb through that section again.”
“We can always ask him for it back if you find something that reminds you of the material later on.” Harry reasons. Hermione shakes her head.
“Nott doesn’t share, especially not his reading material,” she explains. “He’s in my arithmancy class. Of course, I can’t prove it, and she didn’t seem upset about it, but Pansy Parkingson ended up in the hospital wing for a couple days after mistakenly packing up his book instead of her own.” Harry tilted his head.
“Really?” He tried to imagine Nott cursing someone – which, okay, it wasn’t difficult to imagine, but he was also a very quiet person. “That’s extreme. But this is a library book, Hermione, and you’ve helped Pince on her mad end-of-year rampage to collect overdue books from the Gryffindors. If nothing else, it’ll be here next year.”
They went quiet. ‘There might not be a next year,’ went unspoken between them.
“Wait, Harry!” Hermione exclaims, and immediately jumps at her own volume. Her posture is sheepish when she explains what happened, but her eyes are vexed. “Look, there’s a definition we needed right here.” Harry slumps in his seat, suddenly exhausted on top of his throbbing brain.
“I’ll ask him after the second task is done with,” he is well aware that the abduction of the text is his fault.
“Harry!” Hermione whisper-yells at him. “That section looked important.” Harry waves away her concerns.
Harry knows what to expect of the second task, and isn’t too concerned about it. His cloak, map, and album of his parents have been hidden away, courtesy of Dobby.