Chapter 122: Your Divination Is Truly Remarkable

In the Great Hall, students buzzed with noisy chatter, as Hermione and Ron exchanged a worried glance while they listened to Harry relay his unusual experiences.

"Are you certain? We've already tested it, Professor Forester's curses aren't always accurate. If the probability of the event was already high, then…" Hermione began, her tone sceptical.

"No," Harry cut her off sharply before recounting a hair-raising incident that occurred on a French motorway.

He shuddered as he recalled, "I I truly believed that Professor Forester's curse had somehow been lifted, but when he picked me up for my birthday he expressed his well wishes and wouldn't you know it, that very evening, en route to the Ministry of Magic, I knocked my head twice. Then I fainted during my first encounter with a Dementor. You think that's all? No, when I came to, I was greeted by the sight of a woman with a horse head and a clumsy Auror dousing my head with chocolate."

His voice trailed off as he contemplated his dreadful day. "When I woke up in the middle of the night, Forester and Shacklebolt hosted a birthday celebration for me, they almost sang 'Happy Birthday To You'. Thank Merlin I managed to convince them to stop or I might not be speaking to you now."

While Ron and Hermione expressed their sympathy for Harry, they mulled over the notion he had laid before them.

"So, what you're saying is that you challenged Forester about his curse on that highway, putting it to the test together, and the result wasn't successful?" Hermione asked, her brow creased in confusion.

Harry nodded and confirmed, "Exactly! We tried twice but things didn't go as we thought they would. Instead of the opposite happening, events unfolded precisely as Forester predicted."

Harry found it difficult to reconcile these turn of events in his mind.

"I distinctly remember an owl soaring in the sky. It seemed perfectly fine until Forester said something along the lines of, 'Why do I have the feeling it's headed in our direction?' At that moment, the bird abruptly changed its course and flew directly toward us!"

Ron appeared fascinated by Harry's puzzling anecdote.

"What if a condition was met which triggered Forester's curse causing it to boomerang back as a sort of wish-granting chalice?" Hermione's voice took on a thoughtful tone.

"I don't think there's any other plausible explanation. Most likely, the issue arose when Harry revealed the truth to Professor Forester which caused his curse to backfire," Hermione reasoned as she exchanged a knowing look with Harry and Ron.

After a long silence, Hermione cautiously opened her mouth.

"Should w... Do you want to do another test?"

...

Professor Forester was uncertain of what his students in the Great Hall were contemplating, and the antics of the mischievous trio, Harry and his friends, was usually an enigmatic puzzle to him anyways even when he overheard them.

In that moment, he was departing Hogwarts in the company of the mysterious Hilke, en route to Hogsmeade.

Herculine didn't seem inclined to explain what she'd seen, so Sherlock took the initiative to ask, "What exactly did you see?"

Hilke's reply was as terse as her mood, "Traces."

Forester interpreted her one-word response as meaning 'I saw traces of the creature.'

The art of Divination was a peculiar talent that granted wizards the ability to glimpse into the future and discern secrets undetectable to mere mortals, enabling them to see clues where there seemed to be no thread of logic — it was a matter of intuition, not something that could be learned.

In silence, the pair continued on to Hogsmeade's main street. There, Aurors were still conducting patrols, albeit, not as intensely as before.

The wizarding world persevered in its routine. Minister Scrimgeour couldn't afford to concentrate all his efforts in Hogsmeade — he required some staff for everyday case investigations.

The diminutive wizarding town was slowly regaining its affable atmosphere as the residents began to recover from their shock. After two days of tranquillity, they began to shake off their trauma and restore their usual lively demeanor.

Following Hilke to the outskirts of Hogsmeade, Forester found himself on a small hill overlooking the entire town. From their elevated position, they had an unobstructed view of the most notoriously haunted house in the wizarding world — The Shrieking Shack.

Although the vista from the hill was breathtaking, the surroundings were desolate with no other buildings or woodland to be seen. Puzzled, Forester couldn't comprehend why Hilke had guided them to this remote location.

His bewilderment deepened when she crouched to pick up an ordinary piece of dry straw muttering, "It was here."

Appraising the seemingly insignificant straw in her hand, Forester let her words sink in before insensibly hypothesizing, "Is this from the creature?"

"The carrier," Hilke corrected in a soft voice.

From the way Hilke spoke of the creature Sherlock understood something, the thing must not have a physical body of its own. Sherlock began to piece together the grim picture--this 'thing,' compelled by instinct, had the capability to parasitize and assert control over any object.

Hilke, mimicking what she presumed to be a killer's stance, stood surveying Hogsmeade below, before her gaze strayed further, settling on the magnificent castle nestled among the mountains - Hogwarts.

In a whisper, she revealed her chilling conjecture, "It's searching for something.. but it's not in the village... it's in Hogwarts. Devouring seven souls was to satiate its hunger - not to grow more powerful. It came here just to find that thing."

Stunned, Forester took in Hilke's explanation. It was as if he was taken back to that haunting night when 'it' had arrived. He could envision 'it', having just fed in Hogsmeade, scrutinizing the village from the hill. When the object of its investigation was nowhere to be found, 'it' turned its attention to Hogwarts, a growing desire evident in its hollow eyes.

With a furrowed brow, he gazed at the distant castle and aired his main concern, "Will it consume more souls?"

With a faint shake of her head, Hilke admitted, "Uncertain."

Turning to face her, Sherlock stated sternly, "We must prevent it from committing any more crimes. If it perpetrates another, especially at Hogwarts, the Ministry will likely close the school, making things even more chaotic."

Hilke, apparently deep in thought, peered at the field behind them where nothing but uncultivated land stretched out. As a wizarding town, Hogsmeade naturally didn't have a tradition of large-scale crop farming.

"We can look elsewhere," Sherlock understood her intention.

"Since it discarded this straw here, it might have left other traces elsewhere."

As she began to descend the hill, he optimistically remarked, "Indeed, the weather has been dry since the downpour. We just might come across some remnants."

However, his positivity was stemmed by Hilke's abrupt halt at his words.

"What was that?" Her tone indicated disbelief and Sherlock responded, bewildered, "I said we may find some evidence."

"No, what you said before that!"

"About the weather?" He asked hesitantly. "You mustn't have ventured out from your chambers in the past few days. It has rained only once since term began."

Hilke stood there, her eyes, hidden beneath her hood and ribbon, looked at Sherlock in a strange way that made him squirm. Feeling her frosty gaze laying on him Sherlock asked, "Why are you looking at me like that? What's the matter?"

"No need for further investigations," was her sudden declaration as she pivoted and marched back to Hogsmeade, leaving a confused Forester trailing behind her demanding, "Why? What if we uncover something?"

Hilke halted again. In the world she viewed through her gift of prophecy, the future was a murky canvas, fostering but shards of coming events.

But with every prediction Sherlock voiced, the future morphed, that blank canvas twisted into a tangled vortex, transforming fragments of potential truths into jumbled litter. The anomaly lay in Sherlock's oddly inaccurate observations, she realized. Again, she shot him a sharp look that made him squirm, commanding, "No more talking."

Sherlock took offense but before he could argue any further, Hilke silenced him with, "It's about to rain. It'll wash away the any traces we might find. Let's head back to town now."

"Has that been revealed to you?" His voice betrayed his surprise as the sky in response opened its floodgates, showering them with thin sheets of rain.

As Hilke deftly cast the Umbrella Charm over herself, Sherlock recovered from his surprise to follow suit. As the steady beat of raindrops against the fabric of their magical umbrellas filled their ears, Sherlock tried to lighten the mood, "Your Divination is truly remarkable. You predicted rain, and it poured."

His compliment met another unsettling silence from Hilke. Stifling her frustration, she stared at him, grappling with crafting the perfect rhetorical response — "Why didn't you know?"