All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Fourth Year : Partings

Thursday 29th May 1975

Exams were a doss—they always were. Well, except Potions—but Sirius didn’t give a toss about Potions and hadn’t for the past four years; he wasn’t about to start. He planned to drop the class as soon as OWLs were over with, and it wasn’t like his parents would act any different if he got good marks, so what was the point in worrying over it?

Their Divination final did not include ovomancy (much to Sirius’s dismay—it had ended up being his favourite subject), but was a partner exam focused largely on palmistry. Their shrivelled professor called each pair into her office one by one, where she sat and watched as they attempted to read each other’s futures in their hands. It wasn’t very difficult; Sirius had gotten quite good at wording statements that were just vague enough to make it sound like he was saying something important when he was really saying nothing at all, and once he’d memorized all the lines and planes from the text, it was just a matter of putting the two together.

Still, it was strangely intimidating, sitting across from their professor in her dark, cramped office. None of the students had ever seen it before, and Sirius understood why—the place was a complete tip, crammed with mildewing books and various odds and ends; empty teacups with leaves dried at the bottom, small, oddly shaped crystals, strange masks and stones with runes scratched into them. She had draped shawls over the windows, so that the sunlight weakened and came through tinged with pink and orange. There was incense burning, somewhere, filling the room with sickly-sweet smoke that made Sirius feel a bit dizzy.

He squinted down at James’s palm, trying to see in the dim light. Their professor sat, blinking placidly, almost inhumanly still.

“Er…let’s see…long head line, indicating a broad range of intellectual pursuits, but it isn’t particularly deep, so you might not spend much time on any of them…deep heart line, beginning below the index finger; relationships will be a very important part of your life, then, and you’ll draw a lot of happiness from those close to you…erm…long lifeline, which also indicates that the people you encounter will have an important impact on your life, and it’s…fairly deep? So…a rich life, influenced heavily by others.” He let go of James’s palm, looking up at their professor to indicate that he was done.

“Fate line?” She croaked, in her tremulous, warbling voice.

“Oh, right.” Sirius snatched his friend’s hand back, “Er….it’s sort of faint, lots of breaks…so…you’ll be encountering significant changes, soon.” He glanced back at their professor again, hoping this would be enough to satisfy her.

She hummed, stretching out a gnarled hand. After a moment, James realized what she wanted, and placed his palm on top of hers. She dragged him closer, squinting as she studied the lines that Sirius had just attempted to analyse.

“Mmm…” she murmured, poking and prodding at James’s palm, tracing the lines with her fingers. She frowned, glanced up at him, then looked back down, still frowning. After a moment, the old witch sighed, patting James’s hand gently before releasing it. She didn’t say anything about what she’d found, though, only waited expectantly for the pair to repeat the entire process with Sirius’s palm.

In the end, they both got Acceptables, which was perfectly satisfactory—Sirius had no intentions of becoming any sort of seer or fortune teller. In fact, he preferred to think about the future as little as possible, especially with summer coming up.