I hope our story has a happier ending

in the space between

She'd hoped to escape the ruckus of the rest of the school, but the moment Hermione enters the room of requirement, both boys are bombarding her.

"Please tell me the rumors are true, Hermione, I won't even be mad if I lose the bet."

Hermione narrows her eyes at her boyfriend at Blaise's words. "You bet on me?"

"Only because I know I don't stand a chance of losing. I bet that you did do it," Draco informs her, looking smug. "Blaise didn't think you'd have the balls to disrespect a teacher like that."

"I don't consider that charlatan a teacher," she sniffs, crossing her arms and regretting nothing. "The whole subject is idiotic, and her class is a disgrace to the caliber of a Hogwarts education."

"Did I or did I not say that was exactly what she thought? Pay up!"

Blaise continues staring at her in disbelief. "So you just talked back to Trelawney and walked out? Dropped the course, just like that? Serious?"

"Why do I get the feeling I just gained more of your respect for being shitty to a professor?" she wonders aloud, earning a laugh from Blaise before he returns to his Transfiguration homework—the only class he bothers putting any effort into.

"I just don't understand why you have such disdain for divination," Draco admits, taking a seat next to her.

"How can you not? It's the most illogical, unscientific kind of—"

"Magic," Draco inserts dryly. "No more unrealistic than ghosts, or goblins, or turning yourself into a cat."

"Draco!" she hisses, scowling at him. "Stop bringing that up. It was one time."

"One time too many, but—sorry, love. It's an honest question, though, Mia—why is divination so much more preposterous to you?"

"It just..." she struggles to put her feelings into words; struggles to express why it terrifies her deep in her chest. "With other kinds of magic, there's some kind of system, or logic. The whole basis of divination is just—the right circumstances and you can see something that every other person might've interpreted differently. It's bogus, just—Freudian, practically!"

Blaise tunes out, but Draco leans closer to her. "I mean yes it's very coincidental, but how is that any different than the muggle monkey-with-a-typewriter hypothesis?"

(I can't control it! she wants to scream, because therein lies the issue.)

Divination is—chance, and luck, and interpretation. Nothing you can do to make it more or less successful—it's unreliable, unstable, unsecure.

(She can't handle one more thing outside of her control.)

Her expression makes it clear she's not going to say more, so Draco changes the subject. "I've had another letter from my mother about Sirius."

Hermione's head jerks upward, attention rapt. "What did she say?"

"Not much. But—she managed to bring it up with my father; he was more inner circle among the Death Eaters than her. And he said that Sirius was definitely never a Death Eater, or in any way in league with Voldemort—whatever made him decide to betray the Potters, it wasn't a shifted allegiance or anything like that."

"That makes even less sense than before." Her eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. "Blackmail, do you think?"

"No pun intended," Blaise mutters.

Draco rolls his eyes. "Maybe, although—if James was the closest person to him, who else could they be threatening to harm?"

Blaise clears his throat, rejoining the conversation once again. "Just a thought, but—Lupin is the only one of the four of them who things turned out alright for. I don't know about you, but to me that doesn't seem like a coincidence."