The Bug Collector | marauders

Bug Collector

Rose hadn't slept much that night, when she and Sirius parted it left a melancholy in her that stole her sleep and poisoned her dreams.

The next morning she shared breakfast with the Marauders as usual. A cup of tea held tightly in her hands. Sirius threw his head back laughing, James went on and on about Lily, Peter sat pulling at the strings of his sweater, and Remus watched them all as he usually did.

As Rose sat there that morning, a regular morning, she finally grasped the fullness of something James had said to her on the day he asked to marry Lily.

And I just kept thinking, I'm never doing this again, not here, not with these lads.

Those words echoed in her conscience until her presence became only a physical one. Her mind detached.

—

"Bonjour, ma belle." Regulus whispered a greeting as he took the seat across from Rose in Divination. She sat with her arms crossed and her head down.

"Mon chér" She responded weakly.

"You're learning." He whispered, an air of smugness to his words, as if he'd really said "You're learning for me."

She tilted her head to the side, catching a glimpse of him with her drowsy eyes.

"I borrowed a french novel from Odette, it was Dorcas'. It's got her shitty handwriting all throughout it. It helped me learn some common expressions."

"I'd like for you to call me ma chérie as well, Rose."

"What's the difference?" She asked, sitting straight up and facing him properly.

"I'd prefer you didn't know the difference."

"Well that's not very fair."

"It's fair to me, for the moment."

"Fine. Keep your illusive truths to yourself." She said, perhaps a bit more bitter than she'd meant to.

Any further line of questioning would have been cut off anyway. The lesson was beginning at the front of the class.

The divination classroom was relatively small and circular, vibrantly coloured fabric lined the walls and ceilings, the windows were covered in a less opaque material causing the morning light to enter the room in prismatic streams.

The room was filled with circle tables, all but one of which had a single crystal ball in the middle. For today's lesson each table was also equipped with a small tea set.

The day's lesson was on Tessomancy. Tessomancy is the name for the art of reading tea leaves, usually for the purpose of predicting the future.

The method the professor taught was to go as follows:

Student 1 prepares a single pot of tea, pouring it into a tea cup, and allowing Student 2 to drink it.

When Student 2 has finished their tea they will stir the leaves before gently placing the cup open-side down onto the small plate the teacup previously rested on.

When the tea cup is lifted with the open-side up once more the tea leaves remaining in the bottom are "read" with a list of symbols they might represent by Student 1, thus predicting the future of Student 2.

Regulus decided he was Student 1.

He poured Rose a cup of tea, conjuring a sprinkle of cinnamon into it with a whispered incantation and subtle hand movements.

To Rose's left was the open textbook. It's pages were old and brittle, but had illustrations of what to expect from the tea leaves within it. Each example had a name atop it, the illustration itself was done with individual dots of ink, and the explanation was written beneath it. Seven different possibilities were drawn on the two pages.