Flame || F. WEASLEY

Chapter 9 - Visions

The whole school buzzes with giddy excitement. The Goblet has been moved to the middle of the Great Hall, the white age ring stark against the dark wood floor. While I ate breakfast, people strode up and placed their names in with such confidence. Viktor Krum was one of them and Cedric Diggory, to my surprise. He'd turned 17 only a week or two before.

Now sitting in divination, the only thing anyone wants to talk about is the Tournament.

"Professor, can we try to scry who the champions will be?" Asks a Hufflepuff girl.

Trelawney frowns. "I do not understand your obsession with this tournament. All I can see is death and sorrow that will come from it."

As much as I love divination, Trelawney has a habit of predicting death every year of school. With Harry Potter around, it's not much of a surprise though. He brings trouble to Hogwarts every year. Thankfully, he isn't even allowed to enter his name into the Goblet, being only 14.

"We'll be working on crystal-gazing today," Trelawney continues on, "I want you to place both hands on the ball and focus your mind. Let the smoke show you what it wants to. Remember your breathing exercises."

Out of all the methods we use, crystal-gazing is the most fickle. I prefer reading tarot cards or tea leaves, it being more exact in the only way divination can be exact. The white smoke inside the crystal ball swirls lazily and when I press my hands to either side of it, I find the surface warm.

Trelawney drones on. She knows we're not listening but the sing-song quality of her voice helps us concentrate. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, slowing my heart rate and my mind. Besides helping with divination, the meditation we learned helps with the constant anxiety I deal with.

Once my heart rate slows to a steady beat, I open my eyes. I concentrate on the crystal, letting the classroom fade away. Soon all I can see is the smoke swirling inside the ball. It's deathly silent and it feels like the air around me is pressing down, keeping me rooted in place. The smoke swirls faster, becoming a storm cloud as it presses against the crystal. A crack splits through the surface, the sound of it ricocheting like thunder.

My brain screams at me to pull out. Nothing like this has ever happened before. My skills only afford me the logic of knowing what tarot cards correspond to what meanings and how certain forms in tea leaves can predict a storm. I never had visions.

The crystal ball splinters. The small shards dig into my palms, blood welling up, and I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. The smoke swallows me and I find that I'm no longer sitting.

I'm stumbling in the dark.

Huge hedges rise up on either side of me, the vines and leaves reaching out to me in agonizingly slow motions. I swat them away and hurry forward. Where was I? What was happening? I have no idea how long I stumble along until I fall out of the hedges into a large open space.

A graveyard.

There's a bright flash of green light and someone's yelling. I can't see them though. What name are they yelling? It feels like my head has been dunked underwater. I fall into a gravestone, clutching the edge of it. I bow my head.

When I lift it, I'm somewhere else. There are people pressing around me but I can't see their faces. They are everyone and no one. Two forms lay on the grass in front of me. One has dark hair, their face hidden by the grass. The other one is hard to tell, except the hair looks almost red in the torchlight.

My heart constricts. I try to open my mouth, to yell, to scream. Smoke, the same smoke from before, pours out. It swirls around me as the dark-haired figure lifts their head. It envelops me before I can see who it is.