Chapter- 46 : Fraudulence Part - 4

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Harry stared at her as she ranted. He'd come to accept moving portraits as simple curiosities like any other Hogwarts student but never really wondered about their limitations. Still, that was not quite important right now and her advice did have merit.

Accompanied by the sound of groaning stone the wall on the left moved backwards to make way for what looked like an entire library wing. Two parallel paths between shelves filled to the brim with books led to a raised dais displaying three full bookcases like kings and queens on thrones overlooking the common people.

With quiet apprehension Harry meandered through the stacks, his fingers trailing over old and dusty spines. How I Saw and Changed the World. The Dream that Destroyed the Danish Druids. Practically all of the tomes in the stacks were on historical events that this or that Seer – no, Diviner, he corrected himself – had foretold or claimed to influence. Divination appeared to have had an incredible impact on the History of Magic and yet he could not recall a single time Binns had mentioned one of them. Had he been that terrible a student that he'd missed the importance of Divination in two independent courses?

Fortunately the dais held books other than history. Instead it was a collection on various disciplines encompassed by Divination. Harry was taken aback at the breadth of material available that the Room of Requirement considered fitting in the field. There were books on things he'd never heard of and others that he had never expected to find in this particular selection. Scrying, Farsight, Mind Arts, the list went on and on.

Taking Cassandra's advice to heart he wondered about a book list as prescribed by his various predecessors in the position of Professor of Divination, hoping for something both eye-opening and understandable. His attention was promptly drawn to several sheaves of parchment on one of the shelves.

Leafing through them he discarded them one by one. Nope, Trelawney's predecessor had done much the same thing she did. So had the one before her and the one before that, incidentally another woman by the name of Trelawney. Several hundred years ago, however, the course had been radically different.

Harry searched the shelves until he found Opening the Inner Eye: An introduction to Divination, the volume assigned to third years in the early eighteenth century and returned to his desk to read it under Cassandra's approving stare.

"Hey!" he said half an hour later, pointing at the portrait accusingly. "You say that Seeing has nothing to do with the future, but it says here that you are famous for your ability See just that!"

"True," she said soothingly, "but I became famous because I am the only one for whom the talent worked like that. A Seer's talents are unique. Some people gain the ability to see heat, like snakes. Others can do something hard to explain, like hearing smells. It's really all extrasensory perception and my talent happened to be future related."

"Oh. Is that where the confusion first started, you think?"

She snorted. "I know I wasn't the one who started that nonsense; I was perfectly aware of the difference, thank you very much." She shot him a pointed look. "Weren't you doing something with that crystal ball you haven't touched in a while?"

He rolled his eyes but dutifully returned his attention to the book – which was surprisingly interesting, for a Divination tome anyway. He leafed ahead and sought out instructions for the crystal ball.

Harry found himself surprised within five minutes of reading as the book called for him to use his wand.

Never during his time as a student had he drawn his wand in Trelawney's classroom. According to his book it was essential for beginners. Adepts at the art could just pick any crystal ball and gaze away, but for those just starting out the thing needed preparation.

The revealing spell to check the state of its enchantment – recommended prior to every viewing session – was complicated, with a wand movement that took him ten seconds to complete after practising it over and over for fifteen minutes.

"Paratus Aspiciet," he said with quiet confidence when he finally judged himself ready to try, a little surprised that he was having fun. Then again, his interest had always been more geared towards the practical.

The crystal ball lit up very faintly with hints of burnt orange bordering on bronze, while there was a definite disconnect with the stand, which didn't glow at all. It was a very large difference from the rainbow of colour the book described as ideal.

Cassandra snorted from her spot up on the wall. "Yeah, that one's not going to work. Don't you have a better one?"

"I don't think so," Harry said doubtfully. "I mean, nobody ever used their wand in that classroom. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I honestly doubt Sybill knew one end from the other. If she didn't check the damn things, who would have?"

"Well then you're going to be learning some more skills, Professor," she called down mockingly. "Congratulations, you get to enchant it all by yourself."

The process was indeed described in an appendix, but the book assumed that readers would have access to properly prepared crystal balls. Sighing, Harry rolled up his sleeves and shot a pair of Finite Incantatem's at the ball and stand, removing any remnant of the old enchantment. Time to get to work.

It was quite an involved process and over the next couple of hours he made plenty of mistakes. Two hours into it he even blew the whole thing up, showering the room with crystal shards and melting the stand into a puddle of slag that burned itself in the desk. Fortunately the Room had no problem cleaning up the mess and providing him with a new one.

The results were encouraging though, when he could actually see something happening, as opposed to a typical lesson in Divination. His wand flashed with every spell he cast and the ball shimmered and gleamed whenever he cast a spell correctly. The stand displayed periodic bouts of rattling, like it was brimming with energy and eager to run off.

Yet another thing he hadn't known: a properly prepared crystal ball was matched to its stand. He remembered Dean juggling four of the things when Trelawney wasn't looking before haphazardly putting them back. No wonder he had never seen anything in the past if these kind of basic preparations weren't taught. With that kind of sink or swim attitude it was Snape's class all over again.

Three hours later he was done and he took a shaky breath, quite nervous about checking his first ever enchantment. "Paratus Aspiciet."

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