Just then, Hagrid came into the Great Hall.
He was wearing that long moleskin overcoat, absentmindedly swinging a dead ferret-chicken in one huge hand.
"Well?"
He stopped on his way toward the staff table and said eagerly,
"You lot are coming to my first class! First lesson right after lunch!
I was up at five this morning, got everything ready...
Hope it all goes alright... Me, a teacher at last... Honestly..."
He beamed at them, then kept walking toward the staff table, still swinging the dead ferret-chicken in his hand.
"What has Hagrid prepared?"
Harry asked, his voice full of obvious concern.
"I'd rather hope he hasn't prepared anything at all,"
Ron said too, staring gloomily after Hagrid.
"What... are you planning to do?"
Hermione frowned at the dead ferret-chicken and asked Sean in a low voice.
"Hagrid thinks we ought to get a little closer to magical creatures..."
Sean answered carefully.
"Closer?"
Justin sounded curious.
"Like putting our hands on some weird animal or something?"
Ron leaned over and asked in a whisper.
"Mmm..."
Sean neither confirmed nor denied it.
"It's not going to be something like riding a dragon, is it?"
Ron gave two dry laughs.
That sent everyone into thoughtful silence, because if it was Hagrid...
"Not a dragon. There aren't any dragons in the Forbidden Forest for the time being."
That was all Sean said before standing up from the table. He had to go to Divination now, the first class of the afternoon, together with Gryffindor.
Since Sean had joined the assistant staff—well, since he alone made up the assistant staff—Vice-Headmistress Minerva McGonagall had rearranged the schedules of several professors to make things fit together better. In practice, that also meant she had moved the Divination lesson, which should have been this morning, to the afternoon.
"Wait for me, Sean."
Hermione hurried after him at once.
Since yesterday, they had often been moving around together.
Hermione was still carrying the excitement and unease that had come with first using the Time-Turner.
"What did you mean by that? If not dragons, then what? And what do you mean, 'for the time being'? Hagrid wouldn't dare..."
Their voices faded into the distance as they talked, while Ron stayed behind, scratching his head.
"I keep feeling like those two are acting a little strange..."
The wizards were all hurrying off to their first lessons, and the Great Hall gradually emptied.
Sean and Hermione made their way toward the North Tower.
They climbed the last few steps and reached a small landing, where part of their class had already gathered.
There was no door on the landing.
Hermione glanced around, then looked up at the ceiling, where there was a circular trapdoor with a brass plaque set into it.
"Sybill Trelawney, Divination teacher,"
Hermione read aloud from the plaque.
"How are we supposed to get up there?"
As though answering her question, the trapdoor suddenly opened, and a silver ladder slid down, landing right at her feet.
The students all fell silent.
Sean and Hermione blended into the crowd and climbed the ladder with the others.
A book floated beside Sean, titled Unfogging the Future.
It was the required textbook for Divination.
Though Professor Snape believed books were useless for learning Divination, Sean had brought it anyway. After all, what else was he supposed to bring?
According to Professor Snape, the only thing a wizard could really bring to Divination was a gift almost nobody possessed.
Unfogging the Future was a large, substantial book, rich in content, bound in black hardback with an illustration of a full moon dimmed by swirling mist on the cover.
Inside, it covered palmistry, tea-leaf reading, crystal balls, and other branches of Divination.
Since the late twentieth century, it had been one of Hogwarts' standard Divination textbooks.
"I can't make sense of what this book is even trying to say,"
Hermione muttered to Sean as they entered the classroom.
And then they found themselves in a room unlike any other.
In fact, it hardly looked like a classroom at all. It was more like a cross between an attic and an old-fashioned tearoom.
There were at least twenty small round tables crammed inside, each surrounded by chintz armchairs and overstuffed poufs.
Everything in the room glowed with a hazy red light. The curtains were tightly drawn, and deep crimson scarves had been draped over many of the lamps.
It was stiflingly hot.
A roaring fire blazed beneath the overcrowded mantel, and on it sat an enormous brass teapot, giving off a thick, sickly scent.
The curved walls were lined with shelves packed full of grimy quills, candle stubs, battered packs of cards, countless glittering crystal balls, and piles of teacups.
"The book says those are all teaching aids,"
Hermione said skeptically.
Sean nodded and could hear the other students whispering all around them.
"Where is she?"
Hermione lifted her head from the book.
A voice suddenly came from the shadows, a soft, vague, floating sort of voice.
"Welcome,"
it said,
"How lovely to see you at last in the physical world."
Sean's first impression was that he was looking at some enormous, glittering insect.
Professor Trelawney stepped into the firelight.
They saw that she was very thin, and the huge glasses she wore magnified her eyes to several times their normal size.
She had on a sheer shawl hung all over with glittering metallic spangles.
Her long, skinny neck was covered in chains and beads, and her arms and hands were loaded with bangles and rings.
"Sit down, my dears, sit down,"
she said, and the students awkwardly clambered into the armchairs or dropped themselves onto the poufs.
Sean, Neville, and Hermione ended up sitting around the same table.
"Welcome to Divination,"
Professor Trelawney said from an armchair by the fire.
"I am Professor Trelawney. I do not expect you have seen me before.
I find that descending too often into the hustle and noise of the main school tends to cloud my Inner Eye."
After such strange remarks, no one said anything.
Professor Trelawney gracefully adjusted her shawl and went on:
"So, you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts.
I must warn you at the outset: if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I can do for you.
Books can only take you so far in this field..."
Hermione looked deeply shocked to hear that books were of so little use in the subject.
As for Sean, he already knew that not only books, but even ordinary study itself had limited value for Divination.
He quietly set the book down.
He had been looking forward to this class for a very long time.
Not to put it too strictly, every prophecy Professor Trelawney made in this lesson would eventually come true.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 120 Chapters Ahead of Others!