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Chapter Twelve

Ignus Fatuus / The Seer Out of Sight

Part Two

A gentle clinking of glass and the sound of shuffling footsteps echoed down the hall and Hermione, still emotionally on edge after her conversation with Lupin, whirled around to face her pursuer.

“You!”

Sibyll Trelawney looked up at her, eyes magnified ten times by her thick spectacles. As she drew closer, Hermione distinctly heard the sound of two of sherry bottles chinking together, barely concealed by her many shawls.

“Dear child, what troubles you so? Have you read the fates?”

“I am not a child,” Hermione said acidly.  

“Tsk, tsk. Nasty temper – only to be expected when one is born under the tempestuous sign of Virgo.”

Hermione veered off down a secluded passageway, but Sibyll Trelawney trailed her.

“The hour draws near…” Trelawney said in her misty voice. “Already your young life is marred by tragedy, blighted by fate…”

Hermione ripped aside the tapestry that concealed the shortcut to the Gryffindor Common room and hastened toward the portrait of the Fat Lady.

“Too rash you are, too confident in your own brilliance. A grievous error awaits you and reveals your darkest secret--”

“Password?” the Fat Lady rasped, eyeing the sherry bottles under Trelawney’s arm with envy.

“Holus bolus!”

“Beware, that which you fear shall come to pass–”

Hermione elbowed her way around the swinging portrait of the Fat Lady. She tried to shake off Trelawney’s haunting words as she ascended the stairs to the girl’s dormitory. She collapsed on her bed, unwillingly recalling the Prophecy. As she fended off exhaustion, she wondered if Trelawney didn’t know something she ought not. Before she could reason her way out of her creeping anxieties, she had drifted into an uneasy sleep. That night, her dreams were punctuated by images of Lavender weeping over Binky, Neville breaking teacup after teacup, and the Grim lurking in the shadowy, soggy depths of Harry’s drinking mug.

* * * * *

HARRY

“Ron, you don’t reckon you could be descended from Godric Gryffindor, do you?” Hermione queried, looking up from behind the cover of Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy.

“Doubt it,” Ron said, sounding supremely disinterested. On a typical Sunday evening, the threesome would have been outside practicing spells by the lake, but tonight the windows were slicked with rain.

“Hermione’s got a point, Ron.” Harry said, latching on to the idea. “All your family’s been in Gryffindor for ages – even Percy!”

“A Slytherin if I ever met one,” Ron muttered darkly.

“Come on, Ronald – think about it!”

“Nah, mate. I think we’d have a bit more in the way of Galleons if we were,” Ron said good-naturedly. “There’d be no point, anyway, Hermione.”

“Au contraire,” Hermione said briskly, paging to the back of the book and running her finger down the index. “It could be terribly important.”

“How so?” 

“There’s still an unaccounted for Horcrux, Ron,” Hermione said, though her eyes were on Harry, awaiting his reaction.

Harry ticked them off slowly on his fingers. “The ring, the diary, the locket, the cup, the snake, and something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s…but what? Dumbledore said all the Gryffindor relics were accounted for.”

“Did he say that?”

“Sure, he said it! He said the sword was the only known item of Gryffindor’s and that’s been in Dumbledore’s office for ages.”

“It’s hardly been ages, Harry. Four years.”

“That’s just a technicality,” Harry said testily.

“That’s not what my point is either,” Hermione said, shutting the book with a snap. “My point is, Dumbledore forgot one…at least one.”

“Can you think of nothing?” Hermione demanded, hardly giving Harry time to think. “The Sorting Hat!”

“Come on, Hermione, you don’t think Voldemort would make the Sorting Hat into a Horcrux, do you?” Ron rolled his eyes. “And what would the Hat have to do with my family, besides? It’s been at Hogwarts for over a thousand years – unless your beloved Hogwarts, A History says something about a strange Magical Artifact Diaspora!”

“Be fair, Hermione,” Harry admonished. “If Dumbledore thought the Sorting Hat was a Horcrux, he would have said something—besides, if it did have a piece of Voldemort’s soul in it, wouldn’t it strangle any Muggleborn that tried it on?”

“For your information, I don’t think the Sorting Hat is a Horcrux. My point is, Dumbledore forgot about it – so he very well could have forgotten about something else of Gryffindor’s.”

“Like what?” Harry snapped. He knew he shouldn’t be angry at Hermione, but the mere suggestion that Dumbledore’s judgment was questionable upset him. “A bejeweled sheath for his sword? A sacred bootstrap?”

“…Magical…Artifact…Diaspora…” Ron gasped, clutching a stitch in his side.

Hermione ignored him. “How about the tiara?”

“WHAT?!” Now Harry lapsed into fits of laughter.

“If you’ll shut up laughing, you two, I’ll explain!” Hermione retorted.

“Seriously, Hermione - a bloke with a tiara?”

Ron wrinkled his nose in disgust. “What are you insinuating?!”

“But it all makes sense!” Hermione protested.

“Enlighten us, then,” Harry replied, as Ron muttered, “If you say so.”

“Remember how upset Gabrielle was on Bill and Fleur’s wedding day? She threw a fit and tried to steal the tiara.”

“That’s your great unimpeachable evidence?” Ron scoffed. “She could have just been jealous.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed in exasperation. “Don’t you see? She was Imperioused! Someone wanted her to take that tiara! Ron – didn’t your mother say the tiara had been in your family for ages?” Ron nodded in bewilderment. “Possibly a thousand years? It could have been Gryffindor’s! It would explain everything, and – let me finish –” she hissed, for Ron showed every sign of wanting to interrupt her – “all your family’s been in Gryffindor for ages, and active in the Order and whatnot, and targeted…Ginny and the diary, your dad and the snake, and your uncles…”

Ron paled at her last words. “How do you know about them?”

“The Daily Prophet, back issues, you know…” Abruptly, she realized what she had said and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Ron, I’m so sorry, I just – I wasn’t thinking. I was just trying to – just trying to make a point.”

“You made a point, alright.” Ron muttered, clearly stung. “Is that all that matters to you – making your point?”

“Ron!” Hermione cried out, startled to the verge of tears. 

Ron shook his head in disgust. “I’m going to bed,” he announced loftily, not looking at Hermione’s horror-struck face. Without a further word, he stormed out of the Common room and up the flight of stairs to the boy’s dormitories; Harry distinctly made out the sound of a door slamming shut.  

“What was that all about?” Harry asked, aghast.

Hermione sniffled and wiped her streaming eyes on the sleeve of her robe. “His uncles…Mrs. Weasley’s brothers…” and she recounted the entire grim account.

Moody’s haunting words echoed in Harry’s memory; Gideon Prewett, it took five Death Eaters to kill him and his brother Fabian, they fought like heroes…budge along, budge along…

“I didn’t mean…you know, I didn’t mean to make light of his…his lost relatives.” Hermione looked up at him, her eyes swimming with tears. “I would never…”

“I know, I know you wouldn’t,” Harry whispered back, taking her in his arms and patting her back consolingly until the incessant rain lulled them both to sleep.

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