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Tasseography


Even from the corridor, the smell of incense wafted out of the Divination classroom. James and Sirius stood outside of it, waiting for Remus and Peter to come back from the toilets after lunch. Peter wasn’t feeling too good - James had a feeling it had something to do with how many plates of sausages he’d eaten at breakfast - and Remus had offered to take him to the loo. “Welcome to Divination class,” James and Sirius were taking it in turns to say to each student that arrived carrying Unfogging the Future under their arms, as though they were official tour guides or door greeters.

Severus Snape watched from behind a suit of armor, hoping he wouldn’t have to pass by James and Sirius on his way into the class. He sighed, his back against the wall, listening as they greeted each and every student walking past.

“What’re you doing back there?” Lily asked, suddenly appearing before Severus.

Severus hesitated, “Just, you know, waiting to go into Divination…”

Lily’s friend Marlene hovered behind her, “C’mon, Lil, we wanna get a good seat in there…”

“Sev, you should come and sit with us,” Lily suggested.

Severus glanced at the door.

Lily followed his gaze, “Oh bugger on them, they won’t pick on you if I’m with you.”

“You hold an awfully high - and rather false - opinion of them if you truly believe that,” Severus muttered.

Lily took hold on his arm and dragged him toward the Divination door. She wanted to be right, that the two Gryffindor boys wouldn’t dare be nasty to Severus Snape directly in front of her, but she could see the glint in James’s eyes as they approach and she felt Severus stiffen. She had a feeling he was using his legilimency to see inside James’s brains and it was probably not a very good sigh. “Ignore him,” she said strongly to Severus, then, a bit louder so James could hear, “He’s just a doffer.”

James grinned as Lily, Severus, and Marlene went by into the classroom. “Hullo, Love, welcome to Divination,” he said aloud.

Severus flinched at the word Love almost as hard as Lily did.

“For the hundredth time, Potter, don’t go calling me that,” Lily snapped.

“Of course, Evans,” James said, smirking.

Lily shook her head and Marlene led the way down to the front of the classroom, which was set up with low lying tables surrounded by little cushions for them to sit upon. They found one near the windows and Lily sat in the middle of three cushions with Marlene on one side and Severus on the other.

Remus and Peter made it just in time for the class to start and they hurried down to seats toward the back of the room, stealing a cushion from the next table over to make a group of the four of them. “I like this class already,” Sirius said, “It’s nice and dark, we’re far off from the teacher, and it’s the four amigos -- we can get away with murder in this class.” He grinned.

Remus looked a bit hesitant, “We’ll be needing to pay attention in order to pass, though, I’ve heard Divination can be rough because it’s a gift as much as it is a skill…” But Sirius was already distracted, making eyes at a Hufflepuff girl who had glanced over and was now turning red as Sirius waved and leaned back, shaking his long, dark hair, and popping the collar on the leather jacket that he had pulled on in lieu of his school robes. Remus rolled his eyes.

Suddenly there was a great puff of bright green smoke with dark purple sparks before them and in the clearing of the smoke was the form of a rather old woman, dressed in a long cloak with a bright poison-green scarf tied up into her thick white hair. She wore a monocle that her one eye clutched on the left and a great many of rings and bracelets that jingled with every move she made. Professor Vablatsky was a lot to take in all at once and the boys eyes widened, a bit overwhelmed.

“Good morning,” she said dreamily, waving her wand and closing the door to the classroom. She moved to the large cushion in the front of the room, “I do apologize, but the first thing I wish to do is organize you all into groups… I know already several of you will not approve of these groups, but I ask you refrain from asking me to switch, as I shall say no. These groups that I shall sort you into will be groups which together harness a good deal of energy, whose futures are in some way twined together… The energy you produce in working together shall assist in generating the results that you wish you have when working in Divination… so there shall be no switching.”

The four Gryffindor boys looked at one another uneasily.

Calling off names one by one, Professor Vablatsky began the process of regrouping the tables and the students began shuffling about, groaning as they were separated from their comfort zones, forced to work with hutter strangers. James looked at Sirius with wide, worried eyes. What if he got separated from his mates? He didn’t like the idea of this at all.

“Remus Lupin and Severus Snape,” called Professor Vablatsky.

Remus stood up and made his way down to the front where Severus sat beside Lily and Marlene, looking deeply uncomfortable with the assignment. Sirius leaned over to James and muttered, “Bloody hell. At least it isn’t me, I’d end up slugging him if it was me.”

“Me, too,” James agreed.

“Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew.”

“Thank Merlin!” Sirius said, turning to Peter. “Good on you, mate, we’ll do splendid together!”

Peter nodded, just thankful that he didn’t end up with a stranger… though if he were to be stuck with one of his fellow Marauders, he wouldn’t have chosen Sirius. Remus was so much smarter and better at learning things, he would have chosen Remus for sure.

Lily was looking around at the slowly dwindling people left that she might be paired with. There were still several very good options, including Marlene McKinnon. Any one of them would do as long as it wasn’t --

“James Potter and Lily Evans,” Vablatsky announced.

Lily closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids. Marlene patted her arm apologetically before she got up and moved to sit with another girl named Emma Vance that she’d just been paired off with across the room. Lily was counting to ten when she felt a tap upon her shoulder, “Well will you look at this, Love,” James said, grinning down at her when she looked up to see him, “Looks like you’re stuck with me. And if Vablatsky is right, then it seems you may be stuck with me for some time, too.’ He grinned. “Like, in your future.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “You are not in my future, Potter,” she said.

“I am, though,” he said, settling himself onto the cushion that Severus had vacated and grinning at her widely, “Professor Vablatsky says so.”

Lily frowned and moved over to put a cushion between them.

James smirked, “C’mon, Love, you can’t really think that’s such an awful thing, having me about…?”

“The worst I can imagine,” she answered.

James laughed, “Well, pity. What’ll you do when you’re married to me one day?”

“I will never be married to you, James Potter,” Lily replied.

James grinned. “How can you be so sure, Evans?”

“Because, you’re horrible, why would I ever want to marry you?” Lily demanded.

“Why wouldn’t you?” he said, eyes twinkling, “I’m good looking and I have a promising career in Quidditch ahead of me…”

“Good looking?” Lily asked, “Do you have a shred of modesty in that lanky body of yours?”

James ran a hand through his hair, “Perhaps.”

“Use it, then,” Lily muttered, turning to look at her textbook, keen to ignore him being there at all.

James watched her as she stared down, her red hair falling over her shoulder, her green eyes roving the page, trying desperately not to notice the smirking grin playing upon his face just a couple feet away from her. “You know,” he said in a tone of appraisal, “I think I will marry you, Lily Evans.”

She looked up. “You do know it’s a mutual agreement we need to come to for that to happen.”

James nodded, “Oh I know. But I’ll wear you down. Slowly, maybe. But I will. And one day, if I ask you enough times, you’ll say yes. Even if it’s just to shut me up from going on about it on and on. Mark my words in your book there, Evans. One day, I will marry you.”

Lily stared at him, her green eyes piercing him. “You mark my words in your book, Potter,” she said pointedly, “I will never marry you.”

“I hope you like the taste of crow, Love,” he said chuckling.

Lily was about to make a smart remark when Professor Vablatsky interrupted them by beginning the lesson, commanding them all to get up and go and collect tea cups from a large cupboard of them in the back of the room - for they would be learning the art of reading the leaves in the dregs of a cup of tea. “Tasseography an ancient Asian method of divination,” she explained as the class stood and shuffled into a line to collect their cups, “We’ll be drinking of a black tea, Spring Pouchong, whose leaves are bitter… I do have lumps of sugar for those who wish to use them to sweeten the taste… You’ll see the cups we’ll be using have a series of symbols on the bottoms… These will aid you in the reading of the leaves. Once you’ve practiced, you’ll be able to read the cups without these symbols printed upon them, but with your own eyes and intuition…”

Sirius was inspecting his cup at the cupboard when James came up and took one down for himself. Sirius grinned at his mate, “So you and Evans are paired up. How’s that going?”

“I think she hates me,” James said with a laugh in his voice.

“I know she does,” Sirius answered, nodding.

James looked back over his shoulder at her. “I told her the reason Vablatsky stuck us together was that I planned to marry her one day,” he chuckled.

Sirius raised an eyebrow, “And do you intend to?”

James snorted, “She’d never do it.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Sirius replied.

James shrugged. “You’re lucky you ended up with Peter,” he said.

“Am I?” Sirius asked, looking over as Peter tripped and spilled a good deal of the tea leaves across the carpet as he hit the floor. Vablatsky hurried to help him pick them up. “We’re sure to fail.”

James laughed, “Well, whatever lot we both got… I think Remus got the worst of it.”

“Maybe he could tell Snivellus’’s fortune by the patterns in his hair grease,” snickered Sirius.

“Probably he could!” James snickered back.

As Professor Vablatsky returned to the front of the room, the two boys broke apart to return to their seats. Sirius snatched up the boiling pot of water that the Professor had put upon each desk before Peter could. “Here,” he said, “I’ll pour so you don’t end up scalding us both.” Peter flushed.

Meanwhile, at their table, Remus and Severus were both silently pouring their own water and sloshing about their tea, each having read the entire list of directions in the book and moving ahead of the rest of the class. Remus drank down his tea and lowered the cup, sloshing about the leaves at the bottom that remained, inspecting the way they landed out of curiosity himself as Severus did the same thing.

“Do you see anything?” Remus asked Severus amicably.

Severus frowned at him. “Perhaps.”

“Want to trade? I’ll read yours, you read mine?” Remus suggested.

Severus was hesitant, but he handed over his cup slowly and took up Remus’s himself, eyeing the other boy with a distrusting face. He wasn’t sure what his cup contained - he just hoped it wasn’t telling, whatever it was. Little did he know that Remus was thinking exactly the same thing. Each turned to look at the other’s cup, nervous about what the other might see in the reading.

Severus studied the leaves at the base of the cup and flipped through the book to the chart of symbols. “I see… the moon… in the center, so I s’pose that’s in every month… Says the moon might stand for introspection or, uh, maybe honor - or who knows, it could just be the moon, too.. I dunno. Maybe it stands for night time?”

Remus cleared his throat, “Perhaps whatever else is there happens in the night time?”

Severus tilted the cup slightly to see better. “Looks like a goat? In… er… eight months, maybe?...There’ll be… some new experience with an element of danger or risk to it? So in eight months you’ll be doing something new that’s dangerous at night.”

“Well that’s uplifting,” Remus chuckled. He turned to Severus’s cup. “Let’s see what you’ve got going on in here, shall we?” He turned the cup the appropriate direction and hummed as he looked down at the leaves, trying to decide what it was he saw for shapes among them, then turning to the text, “Alright, then. So I see in your cup a uh candlestick… which says you’ll need to see things from a wider perspective. But there’s also these two parallel lines here which symbolizes a duality or maybe smooth running plans, one of the two. They’re both sort of across the whole bottom of the cup, so not in any particular time… But in your fourth month there’s a keyhole.. Says that could mean somebody you don’t suspect is untrustworthy may be… and… it looks like… I dunno, either a letter L or a scythe, I can’t tell… If it’s an L, there’s somebody important by that name, that’s involved. Or else, if it’s a scythe, you’ve got grief or pain in your future. Maybe both?” Remus looked up. “Sorry about that, mate.”

Severus shrugged. If there was one thing he was certainly used to - it was grief and pain.

Suddenly, from across the room, there was a great commotion as Lily stood up, “WILL YOU TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY?” she shouted, throwing her textbook to the table with a thump that rattled the lid on the kettle. “YOU DO NOT SEE ME GOING ON A DATE WITH YOU IN MY CUP! THAT ISN’T EVEN ONE OF THE OPTIONS IN THE BOOK!”

James looked about the room with a wide grin and his eyes met with Sirius’s, winking, as Professor Vablatsky rushed over to calm Lily down.