"The second half sounds sort of decent, but what on earth was that at the start?" Fred folded his arms and commented. "You must've remembered it wrong, right? Let me see!"
He snatched the parchment out of Ron's hand, took one look, and felt a headache coming on.
Those messy loops and lines—surely even the writer himself wouldn't recognize them? No wonder Ron had been reading it so brokenly just now.
Ron glanced uncertainly at Harry and asked, "Did I get it wrong?"
Harry hesitated. This time Trelawney's Prophecy wasn't nearly as straightforward, and she'd used some obscure words that went beyond the vocabulary Harry actually knew.
So he said, a bit uncertainly, "The latter part should be about right… that line in the beginning about 'marriage'—I think it was about weaving the web of time?"
He looked over at Vid again.
Vid nodded. "That's what it sounded like to me too."
Ron awkwardly scratched his face and muttered, "By the time I got my quill out, she'd already finished that sentence, so I didn't get it down clearly…"
But right now, no one was all that interested in how he'd messed it up—they were much more eager to know what this Prophecy was actually saying.
"The woven web of time," Hermione frowned. "That might mean some kind of causal link formed by things in the past, present, and future, or…"
She flicked a glance at Vid and said, "Or maybe someone is using time Magic to set some kind of trap?"
"I think the shadows crawling out of the grave might be Vampires," Padma guessed. "Or some kind of ancient Dark Creatures being resurrected."
"Walking through flames… everybody, I've thought of someone." Michael rubbed his chin, then looked at the others. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Padma nodded, Fred and George nodded, Padma shivered, and Harry caught the unspoken name on all their minds—
"Gellert Grindelwald."
He said it with a heavy expression.
In the Flow Mirror's cut-ins of "Witch Pure Party Daily Life," the audience had seen several times the scene of Grindelwald stepping through blue flames.
"But a golden crayon? How does that tie in with that Dark Wizard?" Hermione frowned. "Is it hinting that he'll use something made of Gold to rewrite the world?"
"And 'scissors cutting off life'—that's really horrifying." Theo's face was pale. "Does that mean a lot of people are going to die?"
"A person standing on a bridge… the autumn of the abyss… the porch of blinding light…" Hermione grabbed onto the muddled information and forced herself to think hard. "What do all those mean?"
She thought for a while and still couldn't figure it out, and finally said in frustration, "No wonder Prophets are full of frauds—if real Prophecies are all written like this, I doubt many people could ever make sense of them!"
"Return to the original difference…" Leian repeated the line quietly, turning it over in his mind.
Everyone was tossing out random guesses one after another, and they even started arguing; no one could convince anyone else.
Vid sat quietly in his chair, casually rolling a coin between his fingers, the light throwing dappled shadows across his face.
To Vid, this Prophecy wasn't actually that hard to parse; he already had associations formed from his own experience and what he'd seen. But for the moment, he had no intention of saying them out loud.
It would sound too arrogant. And there were parts he hadn't sorted out yet, anyway.
After they'd debated for quite a while, Hermione slammed her palm down on the table; the chatter cut off at once.
"I think that whether this Prophecy is true or not, whatever it actually means, it's not something we can just sit here and randomly guess at!"
Hermione lifted her chin and said firmly, "The fact we don't understand it might simply be because we don't yet have the conditions or the opportunity to interpret it. Maybe the person this Prophecy is really meant for isn't us at all…"
"It's like someone telling you, 'The moment you see a tree growing upside down, you have to turn back'—you'd first have to actually run into that tree!"
"So the best, most correct thing we can do right now is go tell Professor Dumbledore."
...
Out in the corridor, Ron grumbled, "Do you think Hermione cut us off just because afternoon classes are about to start? I really feel like this Prophecy is a huge deal. Compared to it, one Magic History Class is hardly important at all…"
Harry sighed. "Leave it. The fact she agreed to help us get a note is already pretty good."
Vid said in surprise, "How come I've never seen you two listen to Hermione so much before?"
"You haven't been hanging out with us much lately, that's why you don't know," Ron lowered his voice, still a bit shaken. "OWLs year, mate! Hermione's like a balsam seed pod right now—touch her and she explodes! Who'd dare go against her?"
Harry didn't deny that Hermione's temper had been short lately, but he spoke more objectively. "She's worried about too many things, so she's really anxious. But even so, she's kept SSC meetings going the whole time and she's never missed one."
Exactly because Hermione, Harry, Theo and the others had kept at it so diligently, SSC hadn't fallen apart into scattered pieces during the stretch when Vid was too busy to join them, and Umbrella House still showed traces of their lives and study.
Otherwise, Harry couldn't imagine it—Vid finally dragging himself out of that self-sealed 'research' of his, only to find Umbrella House covered in dust and his friends turned back into familiar but ordinary classmates. How upset would he be?
...
The familiar quiet filled the Headmaster's Office. Dumbledore happened to be in; he warmly invited the three students in and handed each of them a few Fizzing Whizzbees.
"Well then," Dumbledore sat down behind his desk and said, "I'm guessing you got permission to skip class because you have something important—something that absolutely couldn't wait—to tell me?"
Harry spoke up first. "We were with Professor Trelawney this morning, and just as Divination Class ended, she suddenly went really strange… just like that time I saw her back in third year."
"We think… she might have given a real Prophecy."
Once he'd explained why they'd come, Harry shot Ron a look. Ron took out the parchment he'd written on (now with bits he'd modified based on everyone's input) and then recited the contents of the Prophecy, fairly smoothly.
He paused for a moment, then also went through the analysis and speculation they'd all come up with together.
After listening, Dumbledore didn't immediately offer an authoritative interpretation. Instead, he said, "May I have a look at what you wrote down, Mr. Weasley?"
"Of course, Professor." Ron quickly handed the parchment over.
Dumbledore read it carefully twice, then steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair, falling into brief contemplation.
"Professor," Harry asked, mustering his courage, "is this Prophecy talking about Voldemort and Grindelwald? What are they trying to do?"
Dumbledore began slowly, "Professor Trelawney does sometimes enter a peculiar state and speak true Prophecies. But carelessly matching a Prophecy to some person or event in the real world is an extremely dangerous and error-prone practice."
"'Crawling out of the grave' might refer to the resurrected Voldemort, or it might symbolize death and rebirth more generally."
"As for 'the web of time,' Hermione's reading was quite reasonable. All I can say is… there are many possibilities, and we simply have no way, right now, to know which answer is correct."
"Wizards skilled in advanced Flame Magic are indeed few, but it's not as if Grindelwald is the only one… As for 'creation' and 'kingdom,' those might point to some new order or new ideology. Such symbols are not uncommon."
"The latter part… sounds like a warning and reminder directed at a particular person. When one feels lost, returning to one's true self and tracing back to one's original intention is often the best way to find direction and steady oneself. That's beneficial advice for anyone facing major life choices."
Ron couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed—he'd been hoping to get a straight answer out of Dumbledore. And Dumbledore himself was being just as vague as they were?
Then Dumbledore sat up, his expression grave as he looked at the three of them and said:
"I must insist, very seriously, that you do not spread this Prophecy's contents around casually. A hazy Prophecy, once twisted and exaggerated, can easily stir up needless panic and speculation within the school and even beyond. Can you promise me that?"
Harry felt instantly awkward. He shifted in his seat, exchanged a look with Ron, and muttered, "Well… Hermione and the others already know…"
Dumbledore smiled at that. "In that case, please pass my message on to everyone who is in the know—handle it with care, don't over-interpret it, and absolutely do not spread it further, all right? I'm sure you all understand how important discretion is."
"Y-yes, Professor." Harry and Ron both breathed easier at once and nodded hurriedly in promise.
"All right," Dumbledore glanced at the time and said, "I believe your next class is about to begin. Off you go—don't be late."
"Vid, would you stay for a moment."