Divination, or looking into the future (in fact, looking into various dimensions of time and space) is important to witches.

--Positive Magic by Marion Weinstein

 

Most people at Hogwarts found their best friends during their first year. In fact, Hogwarts practically does it for them, sorting them into houses, dorms, and classes, so they’re together all the time. Which is why most Gryffindors are best friends with Gryffindors, and most Slytherins are best friends with Slytherins, and so on. It has nothing (or, in the case of certain people, little) to do with house prejudice, and more to do with simple, unending exposure to each other. You either become best friends or you kill each other, and if you’re sharing a room you’d best do one or the other very quickly.

 

During her first year at Hogwarts, Parvati’s best friend is Padma, and she cries a little when they’re sorted into different houses. Padma just wrinkles her nose at Parvati’s tears and goes to sit with the rest of the Ravenclaws, but sometimes they sneak into each other’s dorms and stay up talking all night, like they used to at home. In the morning, they braid each other’s hair before breakfast, and Padma checks Parvati’s work for mistakes.

 

Lavender spends her first year writing letters to her best friend Melody, who goes to Muggle school and wouldn’t know a wand if it turned her into a boiling cauldron. Lavender hates lying, but she does it, and writing with an ink pen on lined paper feels increasingly unnatural to her throughout the year.

 

 

Chartomancy: Divination using writing papers.

 

Lavender chews on the end of her pen as she writes, because most of the time she can’t think of anything to write. I agree—learning English is a truly stupid thing, especially as we already speak English. My English class is awful. The professor is head of my house, but she still never goes easy on us, especially when it comes to homework.

 

She’s talking about McGonagall and Transfiguration of course, but she can’t write that she finds it both nearly impossible and pointless to turn a turtle into a decent drinking mug, and that Snape is allowed to be incredibly biased towards his own house whereas McGonnagal just never bothers. So instead she makes up lies and half-truths, and just tries to keep the meaning pure.

 

Parvati (or is it Padma?) Patil notices her writing and comes over to chat. “What’s that you’re writing with?” she says loudly, ducking her head when Madam Pince looks up with a sharp glare in her direction.

 

“It’s a Muggle pen,” Lavender whispers. It feels strange in her fingers, too thick and strange and she can’t tickle herself under the chin with it when she gets bored.

 

“It looks uncomfortable.” Parvati (because her Ravenclaw sister would never be so nice to Lavender without a reason) wrinkles her nose. “Why don’t you just use a quill and parchment, then enchant it to look like Muggle writing things?”

 

Lavender looks down at her single piece of lined paper, with ragged edges from where she tore it from a notebook, and bites her lip. “No,” she decides. “I don’t want to forget how to use them.”

 

Parvati shrugs and gets up, dragging a ridiculously heavy-looking book with her. Maybe it is Padma. “Your choice.”

 

She leaves, and Lavender goes back to her letter. The paper feels too thin between her fingers.

 

 

Pegomancy: A form of hydromancy which in this case is divination using a sacred pool or spring.

 

That summer, Padma studies all the time, even when Parvati tries to draw her outside for sunny days and the gorgeous patch of purple flowers growing in their backyard. Eventually Parvati leaves her be and ventures out on her own, spending hours gazing into the small pond just past their house. Sometimes, she thinks that she sees things there. Faces, blurred by water, but faces that actually look back at her, not into empty words written in books. She always decides that its just an illusion, though, and goes back to gathering wildflowers that her mother will place in a vase in the middle of the table.

 

Summer is long, and warm, and lonely for her.

 

Lavender goes back to the Muggle world, and has to learn to live without Chocolate Frogs and pumpkin juice, without soft owls to pet and ginger under her fingernails all the time. Melody has a new best friend, a pretty Muggle girl with short brown hair, but they still let her play with them. They play Truth or Dare, and Lavender always, always lies.

 

Sometimes, while Melody and her new friend are whispering secrets to each other in the corner of the yard, Lavender will kneel down next to the swimming pool and look into the never-ending blue of the water, looking for something that always alludes her. Once, she though she saw the face of a girl, both slightly familiar and alien, but it was only Melody coming up behind her, distorted by the water.

 

For Lavender, summer is wistful, filled the with knowledge that things have changed.

 

 

Runes: The symbols of an ancient alphabet that are used for divination.

 

Second year at Hogwarts, Padma mostly keeps to her Ravenclaw friends, and only sneaks into Parvati’s room to make sure that she’s doing her homework, which Parvati already has Hermione for, thank you very much. She has no choice but to follow around the older Gryffindor girls, who tend to move in groups where the younger girls break into pairs. They’re nice to her, of course, but she knows that they only think of her as a cute little tag-along. They mostly talk about Quidditch and boys, and Parvati doesn’t really care about either. She spends a lot of time staring off into space, and actually studying, just to see the look on Padma’s face.

 

Lavender spends a lot of time with Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, letting them playfully tussle over her attention. She likes them both, of course, and she still has girlfriends—Gryffindor girls are both nice and everywhere, and Hermione Granger is always willing to help her with homework—but it’s not the same. It’s not like having a best friend at all.

 

At the end of the year they have to choose new classes, and something about just the word, Divination, jumps out at Parvati. She doesn’t know much about it, but seeing the future is too good an offer to pass up. She signs up almost immediately, despite Padma’s sighs that she’s wasting her time on thoughtless, useless magic when she could be studying Ancient Runes, or Arithmancy. Runes sounds interesting, so she signs up for it too, but Arithmancy is absolutely not in the picture.

 

Lavender signs up for Divination because she already knows about Muggles, and Arithmancy sounds enough like Arithmetic to make her shudder, and almost everything else sounds extremely boring. Besides, at winter holiday she’d gone back home to find Melody and her new best friend reading Tarot cards, and the almost magical images on them had held her fascinated. If she can’t talk to Melody about real magic, perhaps she can at least share this.

 

Summer is short and eventless, for both of them.

 

 

Catoptromancy: A form of scrying, which in this case involves divination by gazing into a mirror.

 

Their third year at Hogwarts, everything changes.

 

Parvati has always been good at magic, its true—she wouldn’t be at Hogwarts otherwise. But she doesn’t like studying, and she doesn’t like making potions which make her hair frizz out of its braid, and in Herbology she always gets dirt all over her robes.

 

She has these sorts of complaints for all of her classes. In some ways, she feels like she’s just waiting for a class that she both pass and enjoy, something she can excel at. Padma excels at everything that can be studied. Somewhere there must be something for Parvati to be good at.

 

Lavender is much the same. Being at Hogwarts is exciting—she hates lying, but loves having a secret, loves being part of a world where magic is everyday. She likes Herbology a lot, and hates Potions (but then, every Gryffindor hates Potions), and Defense Against the Dark Arts scares her a bit, because before Hogwarts she hadn’t known there were Dark Arts to be defended against. But none of those classes have really struck her fancy, made her really feel magical. 

 

Divination is different. Most classrooms are kept rigorously clean, so dust motes and bugs can’t intercept a spell being cast. Even Snape’s dungeon, as dark and dank as it is, is always scrubbed clean. Professor Trelawney’s classroom, though, is full of dust that swirls in alarming patterns, and the air is thick with mysterious perfumes. Divination just feels magic, with the right aura of mystery and secrecy surrounding it.

 

Lavender sneezes going in, but she feels she can accept it as an omen.

 

When Professor Trelawney says that Divination cannot be taught through books, but is simply felt by those who possess the Gift, Parvati’s ears perk up, and she actually opens her book to the correct page.

 

Professor Trelawney knows things. Both of them feel it, in their bones.

 

Later on, Harry Potter and his friend Ron Weasley loudly complain about Divination in the Gryffindor common room. Ron says that Professor Trelawney is a crackpot, and Divination isn’t real magic, anyway.

 

Lavender and Parvati both look up swiftly to correct him at the same time, and their eyes lock from across the room.

 

It’s the first time that either of them has really, really looked at each other. It’s also the first time that either of them have seen real magic, a kind of magic they understand, in someone else’s eyes.

 

Its like looking into a mirror, or a clear pool of water.

 

 

Tasseography: Divination using tea leaves.

 

“What do you see?”

 

“I can’t see anything, as your hair is hanging in my face.”

 

Lavender blushes and self-consciously shoves a thick handful of hair over her shoulder. “Sorry. It always gets everywhere. That’s why half my potions go bang: stray hair.”

 

Parvati brightens. “Do you want me to braid it for you? I used to do it for Padma every morning, but...”

 

“But now you’re in different houses?” Lavender asks delicately, and Parvati nods. “Sure. That’d be nice of you.”

 

The girls shift until only Lavender is in front of the teacup, and Parvati is behind her holding Lavender’s long, thick brown hair in her hands. Parvati begins to braid. Lavender’s hair is soft, and scented by the incense in Professor Trelawney’s classroom. “Your hair is really soft.”

 

Lavender grins over her shoulder. “Thank you. One of the Slytherin girls showed me how to make a lovely hair-care potion.”

 

“And it didn’t turn your hair green?”

 

“I had Hermione check it first. Twice.” Lavender leans over the teacup again, and Parvati pulls back on her hair. “Ouch!”

 

“Well, if you’d just stay in one place…”

 

“I’m trying to see what shapes the tea leaves are in before they all just kind of…melt together.”

 

Parvati tugs again, on the pretense of straightening the braid.

 

“Ow! All right, I see…that’s odd.”

 

“What?” Parvati pulls out her wand and does a quick binding spell on the end of Lavender’s braid.

 

“Well, look at this.” Lavender moves over to accommodate Parvati, but they still have to share space to be able to see inside the teacup at the same time. They put their arms around each other’s shoulders so that they fit better.

 

The shape in the teacup is very clearly that of two girls with braided hair, shoulders merged and faces turned towards each other.

 

Lavender looks at Parvati, unconsciously mirroring the image in the teacup. When she speaks, it comes out breathless with excitement. “What does it mean, Parvati?”

 

Parvati looks at Lavender. Their faces are very close together, and she can see every small detail of Lavender’s face—the wide brown eyes, the fluttering lashes, the small scar on her chin. Her hair is pulled back softly from her face, but small tendrils still curl around her ears like baby’s breath around a flower.

 

Parvati bites her lip and decides, “It means we’re going to be best friends.”

 

Lavender’s face breaks out into a grin, and Parvati knows that she’s said the right thing, especially when Lavender wraps her other arm around Parvati’s neck and squeezes her into a hug. Parvati squeezes back, as hard as she can.

 

After a moment or two, they tip over from their combined weight, knocking over the teacup in the process. It spills sticky brown tea onto Parvati’s face and Lavender’s perfect new braid.

 

Neither of them care. They just keep hugging.

 

 

Onomatomancy: Divination by names.

 

Lavender does not smell like lavender, Parvati finds. Lavender smells like apple shampoo, and parchment, and chamomile tea. In fact, she gives away the lavender-scented perfume her mother sends her for Christmas to a first-year girl, who clutches it reverently in her small hands and smells it with wide eyes and a grateful smile.

 

When Lavender looks for Parvati’s reaction out of the corner of her eye, the other girl just nods approvingly. “My grandmother smells like lavender perfume,” she says, and Lavender laughs.

 

Once, Parvati catches Lavender leaning over to sniff her hair, for once hanging loose and free around her face. When Parvati turns to look at her, dark hair falling into her eyes, Lavender pulls back, the look on her face half-sheepish, half-scared. “S-sorry. Its just…you smell nice.”

 

Parvati wants to ask what it is that she smells like, but Lavender blushes and turns back to her Potions work, and doesn’t bring it up again.

 

 

Theomancy: Pretending to be divine by the revelation of the words of God.

 

For Professor Trelawney’s final exam, everyone has to go into her classroom one by one and gaze into the crystal ball.

 

All Parvati sees is herself and Lavender, together. But that doesn’t really seem to satisfy Professor Trelawney, so she makes a lot of stuff up. It’s okay, though. Just because you lie about one aspect doesn’t mean that everything else is a lie.

 

The vision of herself and Lavender is true, and that’s all that really matters.

 

Lavender has never been much good at crystal gazing. She prefers palmistry and tea reading, but it’s all right. Professor Trelawney knows all that and does most of the predicting for her, and when she says that she sees Lavender and Parvati together in the depths of the ball, Lavender smiles hugely and doesn’t care if she passes or not.

 

 

Graphology: A method of assessing a person’s character from his or her handwriting.

 

That summer, Parvati and Lavender owl each other until their mother’s both ask that they please just let the poor thing rest for a while. They write to each other about Divination, and their families, and about the coming year at Hogwarts. The one thing they don’t say to each other is, I miss you.

 

Parvati has really never missed anyone before, except Padma, and that doesn’t really count because Padma is always there, she just isn’t…there. Lavender, though, is alarmingly absent. Words on parchment are not the same as living, breathing Lavender.

 

Lavender knows how to miss people, but after she realized that Melody wasn’t a part of her anymore, she thought she wouldn’t have to, that she was done with missing people. She misses Parvati, though, like she never remembers missing Melody.

 

She never has to lie to Parvati. She likes that.

 

 

Astrology: Divination using stars and planets and involving signs of the zodiac.

 

In their fourth year at Hogwarts, Lavender and Parvati are inseparable, because whoever said that absence makes the heart grow fonder was clearly very good at Divination, at least in their case. They still love Divination (even if most everybody else seems to think its not even real magic), and they’re still best friends. They even check their star charts against each other to see if they’ll be best friends forever.

 

Everything matches up.

 

 

Theriomancy: Divination by beasts.

 

After Transfiguration, Seamus pulls Lavender away from the rest of the crowd and into a shadowy corner, which Hogwarts is simply full of. Lavender rolls her eyes at his dramatics. “Well? You said you wanted to talk to me, so talk to me. Although why you couldn’t talk to me in the common room, where its nice and warm …” She glares at the staircase they took out of the corner of her eye. Its looking remarkably shifty. Sometimes she misses floors that don’t move beneath her feet, but that’s a wizard school for you.

 

Seamus doesn’t bother with formalities, he just comes right out and says it. “You never spend time with me and Dean anymore.” Lavender opens her mouth to speak, and he cuts her off. “And don’t correct me on my grammar, because I don’t care. You don’t. You’re always off doing girl things with that Patil girl.” Seamus is quite obviously making a concentrated effort to be serious for once, and not to joke about it. It’s a bit disconcerting.

 

Still, she can’t help but focus on technicalities. “Her name is Parvati, and she’s my best friend. And we’re not doing ‘girl things,’ you git. We do the same sort of things I used to do with you and Dean. Just…different.”

 

“But you don’t do things with me and Dean anymore. You don’t paint with us,  and you don’t do Dark Arts work with us anymore, and we never even got around to sneaking into the Forbidden Forest, because you’re always off doing Divination work with Parvati. You don’t even play football with us anymore.”

 

“That’s because two against one isn’t fair, you cheater. Besides, last time we played you elbowed me in the chest, and when the other girls saw me undressing, they thought it was a…” Lavender’s cheeks flame and she can’t finish, but its all right. Seamus’s lips try not to twitch themselves into a smile, and Lavender can feel her own mouth following. “You great awful brute.”

 

“How was I supposed to know it’d hurt you? You have all that padding up there…” Seamus grins full-out, and Lavender glares at him, pulling her robes more tightly closed. Seamus is the only boy she knows who can leer at someone covered head to toe by thick black fabric. And a uniform underneath that, besides.

 

She rolls her eyes. “Look, Seamus. I promise I’ll spend more time with you. But Parvati’s my best friend. How’d you like it if I asked you to stop hanging around with Dean?”

“But Dean and I both like spending time with you,” Seamus says, raising an eyebrow meaningfully. Of course, what that meaning is she’ll never know—this is Seamus the Deliberately Perverse, after all—but she sighs nonetheless and settles on her own interpretation.

 

“Fine, then. I’ll see if Parvati will do something fun with us sometime. All four of us.” Which sounds sort of strange, because its supposed to be two and two when it comes to boys and girls, isn’t it? But at the same time, it sounds somehow right.

 

“Good.” Seamus grins again, and elbows Lavender in the side. He pretends not to see Lavender’s scowl. “Parvati’s the prettiest girl in school. I’ve always wanted a reason to talk to her.”

 

“Oh, you—” Lavender says something she would absolutely never repeat in polite company, and Seamus whoops.

 

“Ha! Not such a girl after all, are you?” Lavender smacks him on the arm.

 

On the way back to Gryffindors chambers, Seamus throws his arm around Lavender’s shoulders. “Hey, don’t worry. You’re pretty, too.” He leers again. Lavender smacks him again. “Parvati’s just the prettiest. Her and Padma, anyway.”

 

“Parvati’s prettier,” Lavender informs him, and he laughs.

 

 

Psychometry: A form of clairvoyance which in this case involves divination about a specific person, brought about by holding an object belonging to them.

 

Lavender comes into their dormitory while Parvati is in the middle of searching for one of Padma’s shoes, borrowed nearly a month ago but Padma must have them back now.  Lavender collapses onto her bed and tells Parvati, “Harry’s going to ask you to the Yule ball.”

 

Parvati barely looks up. “Harry who? Potter, you mean?”

 

“Of course Potter. Who else d’you think?”

 

“You mean he’s not asking Hermione?”

 

“Please, Ron would kill him. He’s asking you.”

 

Parvati pauses, belly down on the floor and halfway beneath her bed. “How do you know?”

 

“I saw it,” Lavender said, raising her eyebrows to indicate a vision. “I was holding your lucky quill when Harry passed by me, and I saw it. In my mind.”

 

“Oh.” Parvati thinks for a moment. “Well, why would The Boy Who Lived ask me?”

 

Lavender rolls her eyes. “Because you’re the prettiest girl in school, you idiot.”

 

“Hey!”

 

Lavender grins. “What? I said you were the prettiest, not the smartest.”

 

“You little…” Parvati leaps from the floor onto the bed, and tickles Lavender until the other girl is squirming. After the giggling stops, she remembers something. “Wait. Who will you go with, then? I thought we were going together.”

 

“We’ll go together. Just…apart. Seamus asked me the other day, but I told him that I was going with you.”

 

“What did he say?”

 

“His eyes got very wide and he muttered something about taking both of us, but then McGonagall started lecturing again.”

 

Parvati snorts, then pretends that she didn’t, because it’s inelegant. “Seamus is completely mad.” Lavender sighs her agreement, and Parvati reaches over to squeeze her hand. “You should go with him. But you will save a dance for me, won’t you, Lavender?”

 

Lavender smiles sweetly, and squeezes back. “Of course.”

 

 

Oinomancy: Divination by wine.

 

Parvati awakens to someone shaking her vigorously and whispering her name into her ear. “What?” she manages to ask, and then yawns.

 

“Parvati, wake up,” the voice hisses again, and she rolls over and opens her eyes.

 

Lavender is sitting next to her in the dark, wearing her dress robes and no shoes, knees curled up to her chest. Parvati realizes as she sits up that she fell asleep in her dress robes, too, and they’re tangled around her legs in a sweaty, hot pink heap. She quickly unbuttons them and pulls them off, throwing them off the side of the bed. “Lavender, are you all right?”

 

Lavender nods, but she looks a little strange. Parvati leans forward to see her expression more clearly, and pulls back once she gets a whiff of Lavender’s breath. “You’re drunk!”

 

“Shh!” Lavender claps a hand over Parvati’s mouth. “Don’t wake everyone up, I don’t want to lose points for Gryffindor!”

 

“Then you shouldn’t have been drinking,” Parvati hisses back, but it’s quieter than before. “Who gave you alcohol?”

 

“Seamus, of course,” Lavender says quietly, and hiccups. “But I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone, so don’t…tell anyone.”

 

Parvati rolls her eyes. “I suppose he’s in a worse state than you are.”

 

Lavender makes a face. “I had to help him into the boys’ dormitory. He threw up in Ron’s slippers.”

 

Parvati pretends she isn’t laughing.

 

When she finally recovers from her non-laughing fit, Lavender is smiling, just a little. “So what happened? You left with Seamus before I had a chance to dance with you.” Parvati pretends not to be just a little mad about that, and smiles wider. “Did Seamus get you drunk and take you out to have his wicked way with you?”

 

Lavender blushes, and shrugs a little, looking away, but she’s not smiling now.

 

“Wait…he didn’t really try anything, did he? Because if he did something you didn’t want to, I’ll…I’ll…” Parvati searches her mind for an appropriate punishment. “I’ll turn him into a ferret like Draco Malfoy, and have Hagrid feed him to a hippogriff!”

 

Lavender giggles, and hugs Parvati tightly around the neck. “No, Par, its all right. He just…”

 

“He just what?” Parvati asks into Lavender’s hair.

 

Lavender draws back and shrugs again. “He just tried to kiss me, that’s all.” She’s looking away again, at Parvati’s blankets balled up in her hands.

 

“He tried to kiss you?” Parvati feels a little stupid now. “That’s brilliant! You and I are practically the last girls in our year to kiss anybody. Even Padma managed to pull her nose out of a book long enough to get kissed.”

 

“But…”

 

“Oh.” Parvati’s face falls. “But now you’ve been kissed, and I haven’t, still.”

 

“No, I haven’t,” Lavender moans, throwing her head back against the bedpost. “Ouch.”

 

Parvati rubs the back of Lavender’s head sympathetically, and says, “What do you mean, you haven’t?”

 

“I turned my head away at the last moment.”

 

“But why?” Parvati asks, mystified.

 

Lavender turns her head to look Parvati in the face, and she actually manages to look somewhat sober. “Because I didn’t want to kiss Seamus.”

 

“Why? Seamus is cute, and he likes you, and he’s sort of nice if you don’t mind having things explode on you all the time. Why wouldn’t you want to kiss him, when we’ve been talking all year about getting kissed?”

 

Lavender leans forward, and her rum-scented lips touch Parvati’s.

 

The touch is brief, and chaste, and it leaves Parvati’s eyes wide and confused. “What—”

 

Lavender makes a frustrated sound, and leans forward again. This time the kiss is longer, and a little rougher, and their noses bump but its all right because Lavender’s lips are soft and wet against her own. Lavender’s hands tangle in Parvati’s hair, rip loose the ribbons binding it until it falls free around both of their faces.

 

Parvati opens her mouth to speak, and feels Lavender’s tongue against her bottom lip.

 

And then it all slides together. Why Lavender didn’t want to kiss Seamus, and why Parvati hadn’t really been all that annoyed that Harry didn’t want to dance with her except for the whole sitting-in-a-chair-alone-at-a-dance thing, and why she had sometimes woke up in the summer smelling apples and missing her best friend late at night.

 

When Lavender pulls back again, she pulls away completely, and only looks at Parvati in sneaking little glances, until Parvati smiles at her.

 

“Come on, Lavender. We should get to sleep. That way we can get up in time to see Ron put his slippers on.”

 

That makes Lavender grin, and she pulls her dress robes over her head and throws them over the side with Parvati’s. “So…this is all right?”

 

Parvati smiles back, and pulls until Lavender lies down with her. “Of course it’s all right. You’re my best friend. I’ll even ask Padma to make you a hangover potion tomorrow morning.”

 

“You’re my best friend, too,” Lavender murmurs sleepily.

 

Parvati dreams that night of herself and Lavender, of the picture she saw of them in the crystal ball at the end of third year. She knows that Divination isn’t always correct, isn’t always real. A lot of it is guesswork and putting things together from vague clues that could pertain to anything, really.

 

The one thing that has remained constant in Parvati’s visions, though, is herself and Lavender, but she doesn’t need Divination to tell her that they will remain constant. She knows that they will spend this summer together in Lavender’s Muggle home, and next year they will still be best friends, and the year after that, and the year after that. She’s seen it. She believes it.

 

Magic only works if you believe in it. And this is magic.

 

Divination: The magical art of discovering the unknown through interpretation of seemingly random patterns or symbols… Divination isn’t necessary for those who can easily attain communication with the psychic mind, though they may practice it. many practitioners of Natural Magic may perform divination before a ritual to gain a true insight into the condition.

--Earth, Air, Fire and Water by Scott Cunningham

 

END

Definitions from The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Spells and Magic.