Harry Potter sat up in bed, staring at the open Divination book on his lap, open to the page about the Grim.
Invisible to all but the person to whose death he predicts predicts, the Grim is a dark omen, a symbol of what is to come. Those who see the omen need not to run or panic - there is no stopping it's coming, after all, so they might as well sit back, relax, and wait for death to come to them.
"Well, that's comforting. Thanks book," Harry said dryly, lowering his illuminated wand. The tip went out and Harry lay back in the pillows.
He wished Ron had woke up when he tried at shaking him out of his slumber, but waking Ronald Weasley up was about as easy as waking up a rock. Impossible, in other words.
Harry hadn't slept a bit. He stared out the window as the sun came up. He fell asleep for a grand total of about fifteen minutes before Ron, who had finally woken up for the day with enough energy to power a small muggle town, woke Harry up and urged him to get ready for breakfast and the morning's quidditch match. "It's going to be great, Harry! It's going to be great!"
The House Championship game was that morning and Harry worried that he ought to have gotten more sleep than fifteen lousy minutes, but the grim had consumed his mind and made it simply impossible to rest. He left the Divination text book open on his bed when he and Ron headed down for the Great Hall.
As they passed the third floor, they saw Professor Lupin standing off to the side of the stairs talking to a short woman who stood two steps ahead of him and was still shorter than Lupin, who was slouching against the banister, trying to make them more evenly matched. The professor's eyes followed Harry as he walked past and if it hadn't of been that strange little woman was there, Harry reckoned he might've just stopped and asked Lupin what he made of dark omens and if he'd ever heard of a Grim that was visible to cats as well as the person whose death was predicted. Perhaps cats were simply more spiritual, Harry thought, and they could see omens.
He decided he'd approach Lupin with the question after breakfast before he went out to the pitch, but the energy surrounding the Gryffindor quidditch team was such that Harry didn't get a chance to talk to Professor Lupin after all.
Oliver Wood was a nervous wreck, pacing about the Gryffindor locker rooms anxiously as he went. Every now and then he paused before an ancient chalkboard with half-faded chalk game play markings - something which Wood always referred to as the Bell Board - and pressed his palm against the edge of it and muttered something about help on the pitch before shuffling back and forth a few more times... Harry didn't understand the superstition that Oliver had with that old board, but he found himself looking at the board and asking for a bit of help with being so tired.
If he was going to be silly and question the legitimacy of one sort of superstition - the Grim, that is - then he might as well adopt belief in a positive one and ask the Bell Board for some help as well.
The match was a spectacular one - and although Slytherin played rather ruthlessly with an immense amount of dirty plays and horribly bad manners, the Gryffindor team won out in the end. The stands erupted in celebration and screams following Harry catching the golden snitch, and he was carried across the pitch high on the backs of what seemed like the entire school (apart from the Slytherins, that is, of course) and deposited along side a shaking, excited Oliver Wood at the grandstand where Albus Dumbledore waited with the enormous Quidditch Cup, already emblazoned with the Gryffindor 1993-1994 Team names on the silver placard at the base, Oliver Wood's name as Captain forever immortalized.
Perhaps, Harry thought, omens weren't all bad, and he grinned, deciding he would make it a ritual in the years going forward to be sure and put his palm against the old Bell Board before every game from then on.
"Professor?"
Remus Lupin looked up from the pad of paper he'd been leaning over at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. He was taking in a mid afternoon meal, being halfway through the moon cycle and positively starving. A sandwich and some crisps sat by his elbow, as well as a quartered orange in a bowl. The elves had even given him a tall glass of chocolate milk. He was the only person in the Great Hall, and hadn't expected to hear anyone to come up to him. He looked up in double-surprise when he heard Harry Potter's voice.
"Harry?" he asked.
"Hullo," Harry said. He slid onto the bench opposite Remus at the table.
"Hello... What are you doing down here? I should think you'd be upstairs, celebrating with your team mates in the common room!" Remus smiled. "Congratulations, by the way, you did a brilliant job..."
Harry flushed. "The whole team did great," he agreed humbly.
Remus smiled, picturing the amount of inflation on James's ego a statement such as Remus's might have made and how much differently Harry's reaction was in comparison. "You were really very good, Harry." He paused, then added, "Your father would've been very proud of you today. Everyday, really. But he would have been particularly proud of you winning the Quidditch cup."
Harry looked up at Remus with wide eyes behind his round glasses, his face positively radiant at the thought of his father being proud.
Remus pushed the dish with the quartered oranges closer to Harry, and Harry happily took one of the sections and took a bite from it, chewing thoughtfully as Remus took a bite of his sandwich and shifted his weight with a groan and a wince as his knees unfolded. He'd been sitting so they were bent under the bench - the bench being a wee shorter than a grown adult really needed to be comfortable - and he stretched them now, the knee caps popping slightly.
"Are you alright, Professor?" Harry asked.
Remus nodded, "Just feeling a bit sore. The usual... Nothing to mind yourself with." He smiled. Then, before Harry could ask anymore questions about Remus's condition, Remus said, "So why aren't you upstairs celebrating?"
"I wanted to come and see you, actually."
Remus stared at Harry. "Me?"
"Yes. I was wondering... about the omens thing."
"Oh Harry. Is Trelawney still on about that?" Remus frowned, "I'm really sorry she keeps on about that to you. That crazy woman needs to leave you be. She's bothered you enough. If you like, I'll go and have a talk with Professor McGonagall about --"
"No, it's not Trelawney this time, really," Harry said, shaking his head. He paused, looking very uncomfortable suddenly.
"What is it, Harry?"
"I really have been seeing the Grim about, Professor. I mean it really was a Grim shape in my tea leaves that day in Divination - that part Professor Trelawney didn't make up. And I've seen the grim about the castle. I saw him at quidditch practice once and at a couple of the matches. I've seen him slinking about in bushes and around the tree line at night, by the forest, and just last night, I saw the Grim and Crookshanks together out on the lawn."
Remus stared at Harry.
Like really stared at him.
It wasn't until Harry squirmed uncomfortably that Remus realized he'd been staring an improper amount of time while he tried at wrapping his mind around what Harry was saying. "Wait. You've seen - actually seen - the Grim?"
Harry nodded.
"A black dog, you mean?"
Harry nodded again.
Remus's heart raced. "A - a shaggy black dog?"
"Yes, Professor, just like the one in the Divination textbook."
"And it was out on the grounds, you say? Just last night?"
"Yes Professor," Harry's voice was a bit annoyed with the repeated confirmations he was needing to give.
Remus rubbed his chin. "Just last night, so he is still here, and he's getting out of the Room somehow... bloody hell, how's he doing it? With Tonks up there and Savage before that... there isn't a passage..."
Harry stared at Remus. "What? How is who doing what? A passage where?"
"Nothing Harry, nevermind. I --" Remus hesitated, then, "Harry, it's not the Grim you are seeing."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because omens like the Grim are rubbish, Harry."
"But Ron said his Uncle Bilius saw a Grim and then died because of it."
Remus inhaled sharply. "No, Harry. Ron was very young when - when Bilius passed away. That... is not what happened."
"No?"
"No." Remus's voice was firm. He paused, thinking. "Harry, things like omens - superstitions and such - they aren't real. Usually what happens is that the person believes in them so much that they manifest things that wouldn't have happened. For example, most of the stories about the Grim are just made up, but there are some that are true. The true ones, though, are because people believed in the Grim so much that they scared themselves to death worrying about it, or else were so distracted obsessing with the idea of the Grim that other things happened that caused their deaths that would not have happened if they hadn't been so busy thinking about the silly omen. Does that make sense?"
"I suppose so," Harry nodded.
"I promise you that the dog you saw was absolutely not the Grim," Remus said firmly.
"So it's a real dog you think?" Harry asked, then, "I thought it might be, since Crookshanks can see it."
"Yes, I believe it is most likely a very real dog," Remus nodded, then added, "And -- there is no reason to believe that dog has any intention of bringing about your death."
"What's a black dog doing at Hogwarts, do you reckon, Professor?"
Remus shook his head. "I don't know," he answered.
He stood up and waved his wand, vanishing the plate and the remainder of the crisps and the quarter of the sandwich he hadn't finished. "I need to check on something, Harry, would you care to walk with me back to my office?"
"Yeah, alright," Harry said.
Remus bent and collected the pencils he had spread across the table, slipping them into a case he kept them in, zipping it and sliding it into his suitcoat pocket before closing his sketchbook. Harry's eyes travelled over the parchment paper and then up to Remus's face. "I didn't know you could draw, Professor."
Remus felt his face go red. "A bit."
Harry had seen the drawing on the paper though before Remus had closed the book. "Well, that looked a lot better than just a bit. I'm bloody terrible at drawing." He paused, then added, "Not as bad as Ron, though."
"There are plenty of people whose talent for drawings far outshine my own," Remus replied, "And I've seen both you and Ron make drawings - in notes you oughtn't be passing about during class, mind you --"
Harry bit his lips, abashed.
"-- and I do say I agree with your assessment."
Harry laughed.
"Don't tell Mr. Weasley I said so, though," Remus added.
"I won't, Professor."
"Very good."
They walked up through the castle, and Remus told Harry about a class he took once for drawing and how he found interest in seeing the way other artists saw the world. "Even people who think they're terrible at art are actually very interesting to see. The world's standards for artwork and what makes a master piece and such are biased toward whether the mechanics of the thing align with a certain expectation of reality, but I think that art is interesting especially when it doesn't particularly reflect the reality that it represents. After all, it is then that the art can be interpreted by only what the artist has seen and not what is truly before them. Often, what we see and what is reality are vastly different things - and this is true not only with art, Harry, but also with the things that happen to us."
"Like different perspectives or views," Harry said, nodding.
"Yes, precisely," Remus said. "No two people see a thing the same way, and it is our ability to appreciate the ways that other people see that will determine how understanding we are able to be."
"That's really cool, Professor." Harry smiled and Remus smiled, too.
They'd reached the third floor landing. "Do you want to come and have a cup of tea, Harry?" Remus asked.
Harry shook his head, "No thank you, Professor. I need to get back up to the common room. They're probably wondering where I got to."
"Ah yes. The celebration cannot be sustained too long without the star player, I expect."
"Yeah," Harry shrugged, "Something like that. Ron tends to get into trouble when I'm not there and I don't reckon I fancy him and Hermione having another row so soon after they've made up from the last one. Bloody hell, nothing is right when those two are fighting. It drives me mad."
"I completely understand. I always felt that way when your father and -- our other friend -- were -- at odds." Remus wasn't sure why he hesitated to say Sirius's name. He didn't want to see the look of anger or disapproval or fear or whatever it may be that would cross Harry's face.
Harry hesitated, too, as though he wanted to say something more, but instead, he turned and said, "Well, see you in class, Professor."
Remus nodded.
Harry turned and bolted up the stairs.
Remus watched him go, then turned and hurried to his office.
He needed to see what passage ways might lead from the seventh floor to the grounds that Sirius might be using to get onto the grounds unnoticed by Savage or Tonks... and figure out how he, Remus, might intercept him on the next trip out.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," Remus announced the moment he was through the door of his office, unfolding the map from his pocket where he'd stowed it. He stood in the middle of the room, staring down at the parchment as the ink came into view, unfolding, refolding, turning it over and --
His eyes paused on a mark on the fifth floor.
He stared at it.
He squinted.
He leaned closer, holding the parchment near to his nose, eyes glued on the mark.
"What?" he whispered.
He lowered the parchment, rubbed his eyes, then brought it back up again and stared.
The mark was still there.
Moving, but there.
He stared, unable to think.
"It can't be."
He stared, unable to breathe.
"Im - impossible."
But there was no mistaking it.
Peter Pettigrew.
It was there in black and white.
"Peter?"