Honey Bee

Chapter 36

"Well, you keep missing the cushions, don't you!" said Hermione impatiently, rearranging the pile of cushions we had used for the Banishing Spell, which Flitwick had left in a cabinet. "Just try and fall backward!"

"Once you're Stunned, you can't aim too well, Hermione!" said Ron angrily. "Why don't you take a turn?"

"Well, I think they've got it now, anyway," said Hermione hastily. "And we don't have to worry about Disarming, because he's been able to do that for ages and Melissa's pretty good already... I think we ought to start on some of these hexes this evening."

"I've been doing them with Pansy and Blaise." I say with a smile.

She looked down the list they had made in the library.

"I like the look of this one," she said, "this Impediment Curse. Should slow down anything that's trying to attack you. Guys. We'll start with that one."

"I haven't done that one! Only one that will send people into maximum pain." I mutter.

The bell rang. We hastily shoved the cushions back into Flitwicks cupboard and slipped out of the classroom.

"See you at dinner!" said Hermione, and she set off for Arithmancy, while we headed toward North Tower, and Divination. Broad strips of dazzling gold sunlight tell across the corridor from the high windows. The sky outside was so brightly blue it looked as though it had been enameled.

"It's going to be boiling in Trelawney's room, she never puts out that fire," said Ron as we started up the staircase toward the silver ladder and the trapdoor.

He was quite right. The dimly lit room was swelteringly hot. The fumes from the perfumed fire were heavier than ever. My head swam as I made my way over to one of the curtained windows next to Pansy. While Professor Trelawney was looking the other way, disentangling her shawl from a lamp, I opened it an inch or so and settled back in my chintz armchair, so that a soft breeze played across my face. It was extremely comfortable. I could see Harry did the same thing so I gave him a smile.

"My dears," said Professor Trelawney, sitting down in her winged armchair in front of the class and peering around at us all with her strangely enlarged eyes, "we have almost finished our work on planetary divination. Today, however, will be an excellent opportunity to examine the effects of Mars, for he is placed most interestingly at the present time. If you will all look this way, I will dim the lights..."

She waved her wand and the lamps went out. The fire was the only source of light now.

Professor Trelawney bent down and lifted, from under her chair, a miniature model of the solar system, contained within a glass dome. It was a beautiful thing; each of the moons glimmered in place around the nine planets and the fiery sun, all of them hanging in thin air beneath the glass. I watched as Professor Trelawney began to point out the fascinating angle Mars was making to Neptune. The heavily perfumed fumes washed over me, and the breeze from the window played across my face. I could hear an insect humming gently somewhere behind the curtain. My eyelids began to droop...

I was riding on the back of an crystal white dove, soaring through the clear blue sky toward an old, ivy-covered house set high on a hillside. Lower and lower they flew, the wind blowing pleasantly in my face, until they reached a dark and broken window in the upper story of the house and entered. Now they were flying along a gloomy passageway, to a room at the very end... through the door they went, into a dark room whose windows were boarded up...

I had left the doves back... I was watching, now, as it fluttered across the room, into a chair with its back to him.... There were two dark shapes on the floor beside the chair... both of them were stirring...