Third year at Hogwarts came with something the first and second hadn't — choices.
The list of available subjects had expanded, and students were expected to decide for themselves what they wanted to take on.
Divination, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Ancient Runes, Muggle Studies — each one a different direction, each one demanding its own share of time and effort.
The professors were consistent on one point: register for what genuinely interested you, not everything that looked manageable on paper. It was sound advice.
The students who filled their schedules without thinking were always the same ones who quietly dropped subjects by midterm, worn down before the year had properly started.
The Divination classroom sat at the top of the North Tower, reached by a ladder through a trapdoor in the ceiling.
The room was stifling — overfull of poufs and small tables draped in shawls, every surface cluttered with crystal balls, tea cups, and objects of uncertain purpose. Incense burned somewhere, thick and sweet, and the fire kept the room warmer than was comfortable.
Professor Trelawney emerged from the far end of the room as though she'd always been there.
Thin, draped in a gauzy shawl, her enormous glasses magnifying her eyes to an unsettling degree. Bangles clinked at her wrists as she moved.
"Welcome," she said, her voice carrying the particular breathiness of someone who considered every word a prophecy in waiting.
"To the Ancient Art of Divination." She let that sit for a moment. "Few who begin this journey truly possess the Sight. It is a gift — and like all gifts, it cannot be taught to those not born with it."
"We shall begin with tea leaves," she said, settling near the front. "The art of Tasseomancy. Open your minds. Empty them of the noise you carried up here." Her eyes moved briefly across the room.
"The Inner Eye does not compete with distraction."
The cups were passed around. The lesson began.
Victor took the cup and turned it once before setting it down. Beside him, Hermione had already picked hers up, but she wasn't reading it — she was staring at it with open skepticism.
"I don't understand how this is supposed to work," she said. "Tea leaves settling at the bottom of a cup isn't a system. There's no basis for it producing consistent or verifiable results."
Victor glanced over.
"You signed up for the class."
"I signed up to learn," Hermione said. "Not to stare at tea and guess."
"That's the class."
She set the cup down.
Professor Trelawney drifted to the center of the room.
"Now," she said softly, "drink your tea. When you are finished, leave just enough liquid to swirl the cup three times with your left hand. Then turn it upside down onto the saucer and allow it to drain."
The room complied, some students more enthusiastically than others.
"When it is ready," she continued, moving between the tables, "you will pass your cup to your partner, and they will read what the leaves have left behind. Do not think. Do not reason. Simply look — and allow the Eye to guide you."
She stopped at one table, peering into a cup with great solemnity.
"Remember — the symbols do not always present themselves plainly. A cluster near the rim speaks to the near future. Toward the base, events further ahead. And here—" she tapped the side of a cup lightly, "—the handle represents the reader themselves."
She straightened and let her gaze drift across the room.
"Begin."
She set the cup down.
The room settled into an uneasy quiet, cups clinking softly as students turned them over onto their saucers.
Victor picked up Hermione's cup. She picked up his.
"Well?" Hermione said.
"Give me a second."
She was already frowning at his. "I can see what might be a cross. Which the book says indicates trials ahead. But that could just be two leaves that landed near each other."
"You're going to enjoy this class," Victor said.
She didn't respond.
Across the room, Trelawney had drifted toward Harry and Ron's table. She took Harry's cup without asking, turned it slowly, her enormous eyes moving across the leaves with practiced gravity.
The table went quiet.
"The club," she murmured, "an attack." She turned the cup. "The skull — danger in your path, my dear." Then she stilled. Her voice dropped. "The Grim."
The word landed across the nearby tables like a stone.
"The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards." Trelawney's eyes lifted to Harry over the rim of the cup. "It is an omen — the darkest one there is."
The silence that followed was different from before.
Hermione set Victor's cup down.
"The Grim," she said, under her breath, "is not a real omen. It's a shape in tea leaves that people have been misreading for centuries and frightening themselves over."
Victor glanced toward Harry's table, then back.
"Tell that to her," he said.
He could tell Hermione wasn't going to like this class—she didn't trust anything that wasn't grounded in logic.
*****
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