stardust ⋮ george weasley

thirty-nine :

T H I R T Y - N I N E

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With the winter holidays over and class now back in session, it made sense for the library to be packed to the brim with people studying for their classes. Estelle had only managed to steal a small table in the corner of the room earlier that afternoon, and now all four friends were crowded around it.

"Why did I decide to take Transfiguration..." Estelle muttered, clunking her forehead against the table. "This is an absolute nightmare. Can I transfigure myself into a rock, and one of you can throw me into the Black Lake so I don't have to write this exam?"

As the girls giggled over Estelle's statement, two boys ran through the aisle on the other side, and through the stacks of books, Adeline managed to see that both of the boys happened to have flaming red hair.

Adeline peeked up from her Charms notes and her eyebrows furrowed together. "George?" She called out quietly, not wanting to attract the attention of Madam Pince but also wanting to make sure he heard her. "Is that you?"

The noises of movement suddenly disappeared and was replaced by the sound of boys whispering. George then peeked his head around the corner and smiled nervously. "Addie! How are you doing on this wonderful winter afternoon?"

"Are...are those dungbombs?" Adeline questioned, squinting to get a better look at the contents peeking out of George's messenger bag. "Why do you have so many?"

"Is there any chance you can you just act like you never saw us?" George asked hopefully. "If it makes you feel any better, the target is all the way on the other side of the library."

"I'm just pretending I don't see anything in your bag..." Adeline sighed, covering her eyes with her hands for extra emphasis.

George pressed a kiss to the top of her forehead. "You're the best, Addie," He said with an affectionate grin before running back off again with Fred.

Ophelia joking rolled her eyes at the interaction between the couple. She was quickly distracted, however, when she noticed that Melanie had been quiet for an usually long amount of time. She looked over at Melanie and was a little surprised to see her staring confused, yet worried and terrified, down at her parchment paper on the table in front of her.

Nudging Melanie in the shoulder, Ophelia laughed and joked, "You're glaring at that parchment like it's Professor Snape. What's up?"

Melanie debated on whether to tell her friends what had her so concerned. But with all three of them staring at her expectantly, clearly waiting for an answer, Melanie knew she couldn't really hide anything from them.

"At the start of every year, I like to plot out my astrology charts and just see what the year has in store," Melanie eventually explained, gesturing to the elaborate diagram on the table in front of her. "Every time I've done this, it's been perfectly normal. A few weird things here and there, but nothing to cause alarm. And for about half of this year, it's just the same as usual. But, in late June it just turns...dark."

Frowning, Adeline asked, "What do you mean by that?"

"The past few years, there's usually been some strange activity around late spring and summer. Some sort of tumultuous conflict, but it always seems to be very quickly resolved. But this...it just seems so much bigger than that, and there seems to be awful, major losses too. It stretches all the way through the end of the year, and it doesn't seem to be resolved by then. I've never seen anything quite like it, except for some example charts in Professor Trelawney's class. And all of those were from really...awful periods of time."

"Isn't divination super inaccurate though?" Estelle questioned hesitantly. She didn't want to completely discredit Melanie and call her ridiculous, but divination was something that had never really made sense to Estelle, and she had rarely ever seen it be correct. "So there probably isn't a need to worry, right?"

Melanie knew that divination wasn't the most accurate of magic. However, there was also the fact that looking at the future using astrology had been constantly seen as the most accurate branch of Divination. On top of that, Melanie was known for her canny ability to read the planets, which made her diagram all the more concerning.

But in attempt to keep her three best friends from worrying too much, Melanie chuckled awkwardly and, "Yeah...you're probably right. I'm sure it's nothing."

Yet Melanie's mind couldn't stop going back to what she had seen on her astrological chart, an unsettling feeling slowly growing inside of her as she wondered about what event could be so horrible for her map to show such darkness.

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a/n:

i've decided that scheduling my updates is not really working out for me?? so i'm just updating whenever i have a new chapter finished lol

i hope you all enjoyed the chapter!! it's short, but i think it hints a lil bit as to what's to come. i love you guys, and i hope you a lovely day!!

- g ♡