Harry frowned at Ron, a small crease forming between his brows. Something about the way Ron had said it felt off, there was a coaxing undercurrent to it, a faint but deliberate tug at the heartstrings, as if Ron were using his time as a practice dummy to guilt-trip Harry into compliance.
But Harry had always been soft-hearted. Watching Ron look at him with those earnest, pleading eyes, whatever slim resistance he'd been holding onto simply dissolved into guilt, and the refusal he'd been ready to give died quietly on his tongue.
In the end, he sighed and let go of the idea of heading to Arithmancy with Sherlock and Hermione.
"Fine," he said, nodding slowly. "I'll come to Divination with you."
Hermione, seeing that Harry had already made up his mind, didn't bother trying to change it. It wasn't as though this was the first time Ron had talked Harry into something through sheer emotional leverage, it was practically a recurring event.
Still, the thought of heading to her favorite class with just Sherlock for company made her eyes light up unexpectedly, and the corners of her mouth curved upward before she could stop them.
"See you both at dinner, then!"
She grabbed Sherlock by the wrist and turned briskly in the direction of the Arithmancy classroom, her footsteps noticeably lighter than usual, her robes swaying with a quiet buoyancy, as though she were carrying some small, private joy.
Golden sunlight poured through the tall corridor windows on either side, laying wide bands of warmth across the stone floor. Tiny motes of dust drifted through the light, turning lazily in the air as if bewitched.
Outside, the sky was the clear, flawless blue of freshly glazed sapphire, without a single cloud in sight. Every now and then, an owl spread its broad wings and swept silently overhead, trailing a soft dark shadow before vanishing behind a distant tower.
Harry and Ron, meanwhile, made their way toward the North Tower at roughly the pace of people walking to their own executions feet dragging, shoulders already slumping with pre-emptive defeat.
"Why does Hermione look so happy?" Ron asked, watching the two of them disappear around a corner, one hand ruffling absently through his untidy red hair.
Harry shot him a withering look. "She's laughing at us because she knows what we're walking into."
"Come on, mate." Ron immediately put on his most winning grin and slung an arm around Harry's shoulders. "Best mates stick together! Look, next Hogsmeade weekend, I'll buy you a butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, how's that?"
Harry sighed again, shaking his head slowly, and thought to himself, not for the first time that this hopeless softness of his was never going to change. He knew perfectly well that Divination was going to be stuffy and dull and vaguely oppressive, and he'd agreed to go anyway.
He sighed once more, softer this time, and spoke.
"Actually, there's another reason I hate Divination."
"What reason?" Ron asked, genuinely curious, his hand trailing along the banister as they started up the creaking wooden stairs toward the silver ladder and the trapdoor above.
"Trelawney's classroom is always like a furnace," Harry said, already wincing in anticipation. "She never puts out the fire, not even now, when it's nearly June."
As it turned out, Harry was entirely right.
Despite being so close to the end of May, the dim Divination classroom at the top of the North Tower was stuffy enough to take your breath away the moment you stepped in.
The air hung thick with incense, laced with the smell of old fabric and dust, even more pungent than usual. Harry wasn't sure how Ron and the others were managing, but the moment the smell hit him, his head began to swim, his temples started to throb, and every instinct told him to turn around and walk straight back out.
He glanced quickly around the room.
Professor Trelawney was busy arranging the fringed shawls draped over one of the lamps, her back half-turned. Harry seized the opportunity and crossed swiftly to a window hidden behind a heavy velvet curtain.
In the brief moment she wasn't looking, he slipped two fingers through the gap and eased the window open, just a crack.
A thread of cool air stole immediately inside, brushing against his face, and he felt himself come back to life a little.
By the time Professor Trelawney finished adjusting her shawl and turned back around, Harry was already settled in one of the chintz-covered armchairs, sitting with exaggerated uprightness, the very picture of an attentive student.
A gentle breeze sighed in from the cracked window and touched his cheek. The faint scent of grass from outside reached him, and he felt the tightness in his shoulders ease, a small and involuntary smile tugging at his mouth.
That cool thread of air was, in the circumstances, absolutely delightful.
"My dear children, here we are together again."
Professor Trelawney settled herself in her winged armchair and let her enormous, swimming, fog-hazed eyes travel slowly over the class.
"We have nearly finished our study of planetary divination," she said in her usual tone of breathless mystery. "But today presents a particularly auspicious opportunity to examine the influence of Mars, the planet is currently in a most intriguing position, and so I have decided to revisit the subject in greater detail. Now, if you will all look this way, I shall extinguish the lights..."
She gave her wand a gentle flick. Every lamp in the room went out at once, leaving only the fire crackling in the corner. Its restless orange light threw long, wavering shadows up the walls, giving the whole room the feel of a cave.
Professor Trelawney bent slowly and drew from beneath her chair a small model of the solar system enclosed in a glass dome. A miniature sun burned at its center with amber light; the nine planets and their moons hung suspended in the glass, each one turning in its slow, silent orbit. Their surface markings were finely detailed and caught the firelight in tiny glints.
As a piece of craftsmanship, it was genuinely impressive.
Looking at it, Harry found himself thinking of the far more elaborate orrery that Sherlock and Hermione had bought together in Diagon Alley, one that could simulate the rotation and revolution of every celestial body with clockwork precision.
That model had proven enormously useful to Sherlock, who, armed with it, had stopped attending Astronomy lectures almost entirely. Not that anyone could complain about his grades, which remained consistently excellent.
Professor Trelawney launched into her lecture, a meandering, enthusiastic explanation of the remarkable angle being formed between Mars and Neptune, and what that angle apparently portended for the fate of humankind.
The incense pressed against Harry again, mixing with the smell of burning coals from the fireplace. The dim, drowsy warmth of the room settled over him like a blanket. The breeze from the window continued to stir softly against his face, just barely cool enough to be pleasant.
Harry slouched gently back into his chair, watching Professor Trelawney's face shift strangely in the firelight, listening to the thin, unhurried song of an insect somewhere behind the curtain, and felt his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, as if weighted with lead...
Then, somewhere in the haze between waking and sleeping, he found himself on his broomstick.
His Firebolt. His favorite.
It moved beneath him with the same swift, sure power he remembered, wind screaming past his ears, the brilliant blue sky stretching open in every direction, clouds scrolling far below him like tufts of cotton. Harry's heart soared. He spread his arms wide, laughing into the rushing air.
On and on he flew, until a large, old, imposing house materialized before him. Its silhouette had a certain gravity to it, a sense of weight and age. He felt himself descending as the Firebolt slowed, and then it carried him clean through a broken upstairs window, glass fragments glinting around him as he passed inside.
He flew on through a corridor buried in perfect darkness. At the far end stood a fine wooden door. He passed through it and found himself in a room — large, but lightless; all the windows had been boarded shut, not a single ray getting through.
And then he realized, with a start, that he was no longer on the Firebolt. The broomstick had simply vanished from beneath him. He was standing on a cold stone floor, staring at a high-backed chair facing away from him, draped in dark velvet.
Beside the chair, coiled and watchful, was an enormous snake. Its scales caught what little light there was and shimmered with a cold, green iridescence. Something about the sight of it made Harry's chest tighten with a recognition he couldn't quite name.
"We have been fortunate, Mr. Riddle."
A voice reached him, it was familiar, and oddly eager beneath its hoarse surface.
"Your servant has performed admirably. The Third Task is almost upon us."
Harry turned toward the sound. A slight, unremarkable-looking man had entered through the door. He wore a black robe and dark brown leather gloves.
"You are kind to say so, Mr. Smith."
The voice that replied from behind the chair was cold and cutting, the kind of voice that set your teeth on edge, sharp as a fingernail drawn across glass.
"I trust my servant will continue to prove worthy of that loyalty."
"His reliability is beyond question thus far," said Smith, stepping closer to the chair, his tone level and measured. "No missteps so far. That serves our purposes well."
"Nagini."
The cold voice rose slightly, calm and absolute.
"Be still. Your moment will come soon enough."
The great snake hissed softly, raising its head. Harry could see its forked tongue flickering rapidly in the dim light, its yellow eyes flat and full of a cold, patient hunger.
"Now we need only wait." Smith moved to the center of the room and surveyed the darkness around him with careful eyes. "Are you certain the spell will restore your body? The previous attempts were... not entirely encouraging."
"I am quite certain, Mr. Smith."
The tip of a wand appeared slowly from behind the high-backed chair, old-looking, roughly made, its end tapping the air with quiet menace.
The cold voice delivered each word with a slow, deliberate precision, every syllable edged with a chill that seemed to lower the temperature of the room.
"I am Lord Voldemort. I am all-powerful. Nothing will stop me."
"I have no doubt of your ability," Smith said, though a note of hesitation crept into his voice. "That is, after all, the foundation of our partnership. There is, however, one matter... Your servant seems somewhat unsettled by the student the one called Holmes. When the name came up in his last report, there was a noticeable hesitation in how he spoke."
'Sherlock.'
Harry's heart lurched.
'No. Voldemort has his eye on Sherlock.'
"SHERLOCK HOLMES!"
The cold voice erupted into a shriek, it was sudden, frenzied, like something had been torn open.
"CRUCIO!"
A blinding red light burst from the wand tip, lashing through the air like a whip and slamming into the wall, scorching a black mark into the stone. It hadn't hit anything alive, and yet in the same instant, Harry's scar ignited.
The pain was savage. It hit him like something, like a blade being dragged across the inside of his skull. Hotter and more violent than anything he had felt before, it radiated in pulses from his forehead down through his temples, as though the skin itself were burning from within.
"Ah—!"
The cry tore out of him before he could stop it, and it rang through the empty room.
He'll hear me.
He'll know I'm here.
Panic crashed over Harry in a wave. He tried to run, to move anything but his body refused. He could only stand there, helpless, as the high-backed chair began, slowly, to turn—
"Harry! Harry!"
"Wake up, Harry, what's wrong?"
A voice, sharp with urgency, detonated through the haze like a hammer blow, shattering the dream in an instant.
Harry's eyes snapped open.
His chest was heaving. Each breath burned with a faint, residual heat, and his forehead was drenched in cold sweat, he could feel it sliding from his temples, soaking the hair above his scar, plastering it to his skin. His school robes clung to his back, cold and damp, as though he had walked through rain.
He became aware, slowly, that he had slipped from his armchair at some point. He was lying on the classroom floor, the stone cold beneath him, both hands pressed tightly over his face. Between his fingers, he could feel something warm, tears, wrung out by the sheer intensity of the pain, sliding between his knuckles and dropping onto the floor in small, spreading stains.
His scar was still burning. The pain had begun to fade now, but it still radiated in waves in a deep, insistent throb like fire smoldering beneath the skin, accompanied by a steady, nauseating pulse at each temple that made him want to curl into himself.
Harry found himself genuinely wondering whether Voldemort's Cruciatus Curse had somehow reached him through the dream. What else could account for pain like that?
He drew several slow, deliberate breaths, the technique Sherlock had taught him, the one that helped settle his nerves in difficult moments and the world gradually came back into focus.
The entire class had gathered around him in a tight circle.
Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil stood at the outer edge, faces pale with alarm, whispering anxiously to each other.
Professor Trelawney hovered a few feet away, her enormous, fog-blurred eyes filled with an expression Harry couldn't entirely read, there was worry in it, but there was also something else, something that looked dangerously close to excitement.
And Ron was right beside him, kneeling on the cold floor, his face was a picture of fright.
He's probably starting to regret this, Harry thought, looking up at Ron's wide, stricken eyes. He probably wishes he'd let me go to Arithmancy after all.
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