Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Sixty-Two

Harry gave me an incredulous look. "Why are your eye descriptions so creepy?"

"Creepy?"

"Yeah, you told us that Luke's eyes looked like if you put — how much was it again — seven drops of blue food coloring into eight fluid ounces of water, or something like that?"

"Exactly seven drops into exactly eight fluid ounces," Luke said. "Did you actually use food coloring and measuring cups and stuff to figure that out?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed, "Why are they so specific? Do you spend that much time looking at people's eyes?"

"She told Fred that his eyes were the color of the crap that comes out of his mouth," Ron said, grinning in amusement.

"Stop ganging up on me," I grumbled, but I was pleased that they were all getting along. "I can't help it that I'm observant."

"It's a little more than observant, Ash," Hermione said. "It's kind of... stalkerish."

"Ash needs help," Luke said in a solemn voice. "Let us all come together—"

"Shut up," I punched his shoulder as Harry, Hermione, and Ron cracked up.

"Anyway," Ron said, calming down a bit. "Double Divination after lunch. Who's excited?"

Harry and I sarcastically raised our hands.

"Oh, is Divination a bad thing?" Luke said, squinting at his timetable. "Because it looks like I have it too..."

"It's not that bad," Harry said. "Not if you like crazy old frauds who tell you you're going to die every lesson."

"Sounds like fun," Luke deadpanned.

"Hermione's lucky, she had Arithmancy instead," I said. "She was smart enough to leave Divination when she had the chance. I just use it to catch up on homework when I'm behind."

Despite all of that, we thoroughly enjoyed double Divination that afternoon; we were still doing star charts and predictions, but now that Harry and Ron were friends once more, the whole thing seemed very funny again. Professor Trelawney, who had been so pleased with the pair of them when they had been predicting their own horrific deaths, quickly became irritated as we snickered through her explanation of the various ways in which Pluto could disrupt everyday life.

Luke was clearly unimpressed; he kept giving me looks like: Is this lady for real?

"I would think," Trelawney said, in a mystical whisper that did not conceal her obvious annoyance, "that some of us" — she stared very meaningfully at Harry — "might be a little less frivolous had they seen what I have seen during my crystal gazing last night. As I sat here, absorbed in my needlework, the urge to consult the orb overpowered me. I arose, I settled myself before it, and I gazed into its crystalline depths... and what do you think I saw gazing back at me?"

"An ugly old bat in outsized specs?" Ron muttered under his breath.

Harry and Luke fought hard to keep their faces straight.

"Death, my dears."

Parvati and Lavender both put their hands over their mouths, looking horrified.

"Yes," said Professor Trelawney, nodding impressively, "it comes, ever closer, it circles overhead like a vulture, ever lower... ever lower over the castle..."

She stared pointedly at Harry, who yawned very widely and obviously.

"It'd be a bit more impressive if she hadn't done it about eighty times before," Harry said as we finally regained the fresh air of the staircase beneath Professor Trelawney's room. "But if I'd dropped dead every time she's told me I'm going to, I'd be a medical miracle."