All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Fourth Year : September

Classes began with all the usual fuss—professors lecturing about how this year was really crucial for their futures, Madam Pince scowling at the anxiety-ridden students that flocked to the library, increasing numbers of dirty looks from the upper classmen trying to study in the common room when Sirius dared to challenge Peter to games of exploding snap in front of the fire.

Potions was just as boring as usual, History was a doss, Astronomy was mind-numbingly rote. In Herbology they were starting off with a unit on carnivorous plants, which was at least somewhat more interesting than usual, and Sirius could always count on McGonagall to provide challenging coursework in Transfiguration. Still, though the professors warned that their schoolwork would only get more difficult, Sirius couldn’t help but be disappointed at what was shaping up to be another year of drudgery. The older he got, the more he questioned whether classes were really so important as everyone would have him believe – half the time, he thought he’d be able to accomplish more with an hour of unfettered access to the library than in an entire year of sitting and listening to his professors drone on.

Their first divination lesson did nothing to disabuse him of this notion. They were beginning with ovomancy, which Sirius was pretty sure their professor had made up – despite her insistence that it was a deeply rooted historical practice which originated in ancient Greece.

“For our first foray into the ovular mysteries of the future, you shall be needing partners…” she croaked at them, hauling a massive wicker basket of eggs onto her desk. When the old professor turned and peered out from under her shawls, seeing that none of them had moved, she flapped a gnarled hand at them.

“Go on, go on, pair up!”

Peter heaved a resigned sigh and stood to go find a partner as Sirius scooted his chair closer to James. He ended up next to Desdemona Lewis, a Ravenclaw girl with a slight overbite, who smiled cheerfully at him.

Although Sirius was sceptical at first, he quickly decided that he had been too quick to judge ovomancy—each pair was given a basket of eggs and told to practice finding omens using the key in their textbooks. The key in question was little more than a page of vaguely drawn blobs, each of which was supposed to mean something different. This left quite a bit of room for interpretation, and Sirius felt completely in his element cracking eggs open on top of a desk and trying to read his friend’s future in the splattered yolk.

“Let’s see, let’s see…” he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, frowning down at the mess of yellow on their table. James rolled his eyes as Sirius clucked his tongue, saying,

“I’m afraid it’s not looking good, Potter…not looking good at all…says here that Evans will never love you, and you’ll die a lonely old man, never having known the touch of a woman…”

“Oi!” James shoved his shoulder, “It does not! Look, right there, that little runny bit—it clearly says that Evans is going to fall madly in love with me within the year.”

“No, according to the key that bit means…” Sirius scanned the page, then gasped in horror.

“What?!”

“I’m so sorry, mate,” he shook his head mournfully, “Says here you’ll be bald by the time you’re thirty.”

They spent the rest of the class making increasingly dire and ridiculous predictions, stifling their laughter and trying to look serious whenever their shrivelled professor tottered past. At the end of the lesson, they reunited with Peter – Sirius expected him to be resentful and withdrawn (as he often was when James and Sirius partnered up without him) and was pleasantly surprised to find that Pete seemed instead to be in just as good a mood as the rest of them.