The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

CXXVIII: This Year's Grim

Professor Trelawney had her third years for a double-session of tea-leaf reading just before heading into the forest with the sixth years to learn about the divination discipline of xylomancy. Now, she walked with a bit of a warble and her voice was broken by the occasional hiccup as she called out instructions for the students who were gathering twigs from amongst the bracken at the edge of the forrest.

"This is malarkey," Herbert Fleet was saying as he, Cedric Diggory, and Roger Davies were rooting through moulding leaves.

"Utter and complete thestral turd," agreed Roger.

"Reckon if thestral turds are invisible?" Cedric asked.

Herbert let out a hooting cacophony of laughter. Roger was about to answer correctly when Herbert said, "Imagine if they aren't invisible and you're walking along behind a thestral and he's invisible but he takes a shat and you just see the turd appear in thin air!"

Cedric laughed to the point of tears as Roger Davies shook his head and decided not to justify their stupidity with the real answer.

"How the blazing many sticks do we need for this stupid exercise?" Herbert asked.

"Thirteen," Roger said.

Cedric sighed.

"That's it, I'm making my own fortune," Herbert announced and he reached into a tree and started snapping twigs off.

"You can't do that," Roger said, "That's not how xylomancy works. They have to be naturally fallen twigs you happen upon and --"

"I'm sorry, xylomancy is divination," Herbert said, "Which means it doesn't work."

Roger shrugged. Once, he'd been a disbeliever, too, but then again in fourth year his crystal ball had forseen his parents divorce before anyone else had done. He was a skeptic, sure, but one with a healthy respect for the possibility that there may be some merit to the art of fortune telling on some level, perhaps, sometimes.

"I'm just saying," Roger said, "It takes like two extra seconds to get twigs off the ground."

"Ah but my twigs aren't covered with invisible manure."

Cedric grabbed the last of his twigs, sending a whole nest of spiders running off in all directions from where he'd pulled it out of the bracken and he tossed it into the pile he'd formed by the edge of the path next to Roger's. Roger was organizing his own pile and Cedric climbed back over a fallen trunk to count the twigs on his stack. "Thirteen," he said gleefully.

Through the trees, Trelawney's voice was carrying on and on.

"On a scale of one to the whole bottle, how much sherry d'you reckon she's under right now?"

Roger said, "She had the third years before us - tea leaf reading - there's more sherry than there is tea in her cup during that."

Cedric chortled and followed Roger and Herbert back down the path to where the rest of the class was, some were still gathering their twigs, but most had finished and returned already to form a circle 'round  the rock that Professor Trelawney had set herself upon, her eyes wide and magnified behind her inch-thick glasses, her shawls hanging off her like colorful drapes.

"D'you reckon anything she's predicted has ever actually been accurate?" Cedric asked. "Remember last year, when she had half the school waiting for Harry Potter to drop dead in the corridor at any moment?"

"Poor bloke," Roger Davies said, shaking his head. "At least usually when she says she's seen the grim she does it to a student who's had her a couple terms and knows how she goes on about it every year.... Knows it's a tradition." He laughed.