Chapter Text
Hermione Granger had always loved books.
Her parents used to tell her that instead of falling asleep with stuffed animals, she had preferred falling asleep clutching The Very Hungry Caterpillar . They said that her first act of accidental magic was summoning her favourite books after her parents put them away so she would go to sleep. They would leave her tucked in alone in her cot and come back to her covered in books and sleeping soundly.
Books were comforting to her.
She loved everything about them: the smell of the old books in the Hogwarts library, the physicality of turning the pages, the noise that new books made when they were opened for the first time. Even now in her Third Year, the library was her safe space in the castle.
Which was why she was now staring open-mouthed at Professor Trelawney.
“Books only take you so far”? In a class? How could things designed to pass down knowledge and information not help to learn new information? Why did the professor even have them buy the textbook if it didn’t matter?
Hermione’s cheeks heated to a dull red, and she found she could not concentrate on Professor Trelawney’s whispery voice. It was drowned out by an angry buzzing in her ears. She tried to focus, blinking hard and shifting her body towards the professor.
It didn’t work.
Harry and Ron both shot her worried looks. Her mouth was pursed, and she refused to make eye contact with anyone.
Books don’t help. Preposterous.
Hermione was feeling rather put out and contrary by the time that Professor Trelawney leaned over Harry’s teacup, peering into it. It didn’t help that the boys weren’t taking the class seriously, their snickers loud in the overheated, claustrophobic room.
“Let me see that, my dear,” Professor Trelawney said, disapproval evident in her voice. She plucked Harry’s cup out of Ron’s hand, and Hermione twisted her body to watch.
Professor Trelawney peered into the teacup, rotating it counterclockwise.
“The falcon...My dear boy, you have a deadly enemy.”
Hermione didn’t bother to resist her impulse to roll her eyes and just did it. “But everyone knows that,” she said, not truly bothering to keep her voice down.
The look that Professor Trelawney gave her was downright frosty.
“Well, they do.” She felt the urge to defend herself under the glare of a professor. “Everybody knows about Harry and You-Know-Who.”
The looks that Harry and Ron gave her were downright worshipful. She worried the inside of her cheek for a second, wondering if she had gone too far. She had never spoken that way to a teacher in her life, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it.
Professor Trelawney pressed her lips into a thin line and returned her attention to Harry’s teacup.
“The club... an attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup...”
“I thought that was a bowler hat,” said Ron, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand.
“The skull... danger in your path, my dear...” Professor Trelawney’s voice was higher and breathier than before. Hermione had a very bad feeling about what was going to come next.
The room was silent as the whole class watched Professor Trelawney turn the cup a final time, gasp, and then scream.
Hermione winced and a nearby crash let her know that Neville had broken his second cup.
Professor Trelawney sat heavily down on a nearby pouf, her bejewelled hand at her heart and her eyes fluttering closed.
“My dear boy—my poor dear boy—no—it is kinder not to say—no—don’t ask me...”
Hermione bit the inside of her cheek again to keep from saying something that might get her detention. Surely this was overdramatic.
“What is it, Professor?” Dean Thomas asked. The class had gotten to their feet, pulling in closer around Harry’s cup.
“My dear,” Professor Trelawney took a shaky inhale as her hand fluttered from her heart to her mouth and then back, “you have the Grim.”
Harry blinked, obviously confused. “The what?”
The reaction of most of the rest of the class was immediate. Ron went pale and Neville’s hands visibly shook, while Hermione was still rather nonplussed. She knew what the Grim was. She had completed reading the textbook a few days after she had purchased it, but she hadn’t actually believed that omens were real. It seemed too close to what the fortune-tellers who would frequent the boardwalks of Blackpool would say to be actual magic.
“The Grim, my dear! The Grim!” Professor Trelawney was clearly dismayed that not everyone had appreciated the drama of her prediction. “The giant, spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear boy, it is an omen—the worst omen—of death!”
Harry suddenly looked much more distressed, and everyone in the room was looking at him with concern, fear, pity, or a mix of those emotions in their eyes.
Hermione barely refrained from clicking her tongue. This was absolute rubbish. The textbook clearly said that interpretations of tea leaves were best done by someone who knew the tea-drinker well or the tea-drinker themselves. If Ron hadn’t seen a Grim, and Harry didn’t see a Grim, it obviously wasn’t a Grim.
Hermione made a quick decision and pushed in closer so that she could see Harry’s teacup more clearly. The tea leaves clumped together to make some sort of shape, but really, it was more of a misshapen blob than anything else. The irritation that had been simmering all class spurred her to open her mouth.
“I don’t think it looks like a Grim,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice no-nonsense.
Professor Trelawney’s lip curled in distaste, and her eyes held no warmth. It was by far the nastiest look Hermione had ever gotten from a teacher in her life. It was very clear that Professor Trelawney expected the entire class to go along with the show and was irritated that Hermione was spoiling that.
“You’ll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future.” The professor’s voice was tart, and her mouth was tight around the corners, perhaps holding back a scowl.
To Hermione’s great delight Seamus Finnigan chimed in.
“It looks like a Grim if you do this,” he said, squinting his eyes until they were nearly shut, “but it looks more like a donkey from here.” He tilted his head the other way.
Hermione did her best to resist the urge to laugh. It got easier when she caught sight of Harry’s face. He looked genuinely distressed.
“When you’ve all finished deciding whether I’m going to die or not!” his teeth were gritted, and he spoke loudly enough to startle their classmates. Hermione winced.
“I think we will leave the lesson here for today,” said Professor Trelawney, her voice going high and breathy again. “Yes... please pack away your things...”
Everyone returned the cups to the cabinet and packed away their things in silence. Ron was still pale and avoiding looking at Harry. Others were giving Harry looks that ranged from alarmed to pitying. Hermione even though she heard Lavender tsk sadly at him.
“Until we meet again,” the professor said, waving a hand dismissively through the air, “fair fortune be yours. Oh, and dear—” She pointed at Neville, “—you’ll be late next time, so mind you work extra-hard to catch up.”
Hermione still couldn’t stop thinking about the class as they made their way down the ladder and out of the tower.
Books—not matter—preposterous.
“Hermione?” Harry’s tentative voice shook her out of her furious distraction.
She had been trailing behind the group, so distracted that she had almost forgotten to use her Time-Turner to ensure she could attend all her classes. But Harry’s voice reminded her, and her hand curled around the pendant under her jumper.
“Hmmm?” She turned to look at Harry, brow still furrowed.
“We have Transfiguration, do you have the book? I think I forgot mine in the common room.”
Harry gave a hopeful smile, and she grimaced in response.
“Oh—uh, no, I need to run and grab mine. I’ll meet you there.” She turned on her heel and hurried around the corner, seeking a safe place where she could hide while she used her tTime-Turner. She needed to go back in order to attend Arithmancy.
She always aimed for alcoves behind tapestries, or if she could manage it, the safety of her own bed, behind her curtains. Professor McGonagall had warned her not to use bathroom stalls because you never knew who was in there two hours before you, and the last thing you wanted was to land in someone’s lap while they were on the toilet.
She made it to Arithmancy—then to Muggle Studies, Transfiguration, and then the rest of the day’s lessons—with no problem. However, half her mind remained in an uproar about a type of magic that she could not study the theory for out of a book and that the professor openly said she could not really teach. Even as she time travelled back and forth, trying to attend all her classes, Hermione still couldn’t shake off the strange twisting feeling in her gut she got from Divination. How could books be of no help?
The idea that books would be of no help made her miserable and more than a little nervous.
She was still stewing when dinnertime came. Ron’s continued edginess after seeing the Grim or whatever it was certainly didn’t help her sour mood, and she couldn’t help the biting comment that came next
“You didn’t seem quite so confident when you were telling her it was a bowler hat.”
Ron’s face got red, and his mouth twisted in a scowl.
“Professor Trelawney said you didn’t have the right aura. You just don’t like being bad at something for a change.”
Hermione glared at him. She would prove him and Professor Trelawney wrong.
Books could be useful.
After all the day’s lessons were done, she used her Time-Turner just one more time, this time to go to the library.
Technically, she wasn’t supposed to do extra trips with it, just lessons and sleep, but she figured that this counted as a lesson, seeing as she had learned nothing at all in Divination class.
Nodding respectfully to Madam Pince, she made a beeline to the Divination section of the library.
The first book she pulled from the shelves was on the history of the study of Divination, A Historical Overview of the Art of Divination . She skimmed through the parts about Morgan le Fay, one hand tangling in her wild hair while the other quickly flipped through pages.
It yielded few results. The book focused mostly on famous Seers and their prophecies, and not how they learned or documented the craft. Most of the Masters of Divination mentioned seemed to have learned the craft from another Seer, not from books. In fact, there was almost no mention of books in the whole volume.
The next book she pulled was Divination: The Secret Craft , which also provided little guidance. It was too involved in the minutiae of the development of the popular Divination techniques and had nothing about how Divination actually worked or anything about other books that could help her learn.
She finally removed her own Divination textbook from her bag: Unfogging the Future by Cassandra Vablatsky. She had already read through it twice, but the first time she just skimmed, and she didn’t recall all the details. She cursed the lack of index and instead settled on skimming through it once more.
She was most of the way through the book when she came upon a section that made her pause. It was small and only had one line, easy to overlook, but her eyes caught on it. It was titled Bibliomancy.
Flipping the book open, her eyes caught on the first page.
Bibliomancy, the seldom-used art of using books in the practice of Divination. Though not covered in this text, it was once the favourite method of divination of Märet Jonsdotter prior to her execution in 1672.
Hermione’s hand untangled from her hair, and she smoothed her finger over the short paragraph, before returning to the stacks.
Instead of a direct and purposeful search for a book she wasn’t sure would even exist, she let herself wander through the Divination section, waiting for something to jump out at her. Despite Madam Pince’s fanaticism about taking care of her books, the organisational system of Hogwarts’ library left a lot to be desired. Most of the books didn’t have titles on their spines, and the order was based on loose word connections that after three years, Hermione still didn’t understand.
She didn’t mind, really. The search for books was invigorating and allowed her to discover new knowledge. Finding books she wasn’t looking for was half of the fun. After all, she always found the book she needed in the end.
Her fingers trailed across the spines of the books as she walked the aisle idly, half-reading what few titles there were. Nothing was calling to her, so she turned and did the same down the other side of the aisle.
Two thirds along she stopped abruptly. Her eyes were drawn to the second shelf from the top, and her gaze focused on a slim blue volume whose title had been worn away by time on the spine. It stuck out for some reason that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and she trekked to the end of the aisle to get a step ladder so she could reach. Hermione cursed that she didn’t know the summoning spell that older students used, even though Madam Pince always frowned when she caught them doing that.
She carried the step ladder over. It was almost bigger than she was, but she was careful not to drag it or make any excess noise. Setting it down and making sure it was sturdy she climbed up and grabbed the book that had caught her eye.
The title was also worn down on the cover, but she could tell it had once been embossed in lovely gold script.
She descended the stairs carefully and returned to her desk, the book clasped to her chest. She opened the blue volume to try to determine what it was about and to see if it had a table of contents.
The pages were yellowed with age, and Hermione’s hand hesitated, not wanting to damage the fragile thin sheets by flipping through them too aggressively.
The first page said, “ Bibliomancy and its Uses. ”
Bibliomancy. Hermione mouthed the word, letting it roll over her tongue. The same phrase she had seen in her textbook.
Biblio- from the Greek word, biblion, meaning paper or scroll, commonly used in English words referring to books, and -mancy from the Greek word, manteia, meaning oracle or divination, used in English to denote “divination by means of."
Together they were Bibliomancy , divination by means of books.
Well take that, Professor Trelawney , Hermione thought, more than a little smug. You can use books in divination.
She looked through the book to try to find a table of contents, but there was none; it just started at chapter one. Flipping to the back of the book, she checked to see if there was an index, but unsurprisingly, there was nothing there.
Her palm stayed flat on the title page of the book, and she looked up into the middle distance, contemplating what she should do now. Half of her was tempted to run up to Professor Trelawney’s tower and wave the book in her face, but that would probably do more harm than good. The other half wanted to hold the information back and use it to write an extra credit essay later in the term.
A smug smile played at the corners of her mouth. At least she had soothed her own ego; she wasn’t wrong about books being useful in Divination, even if it wasn’t in the way she thought they would be.
Flipping to the beginning, she suddenly withdrew her hand from the page with a sharp intake of breath. The words on the page had shimmered and twisted, and instead of Chapter One , the text now read Introduction .
She bit at the inside of her cheek, frowning. Books that changed text and responded to an unvoiced desire worried her. It was a touch too close to Tom Riddle’s diary that wrote back for her taste. But this had just been in the stack in the library, and she didn’t think that Madam Pince would allow something dangerous in her collection. More importantly, she did want to know what was in the book, and it was correct in assuming that an introduction would be of use to her.
She began skimming the introduction and found it surprisingly thorough.
Bibliomancy emerged only after the advent of the printing press, though may have links to older Divination techniques. Bibliomancers may practice their craft in multiple ways. Sometimes a practitioner specialises in one type of practice, sometimes more than one. One method of utilising books in Divination is simply finding the right book. Such a method functions best when the Bibliomancer has access to a library, a bookstore, or a larger collection of books. Intentions may be set at the beginning of a search, either for a book that is needed for a specific project, or a book that is to serve as an omen or sign about the future. More advanced Bibliomancy involves asking a question and being drawn to words or phrases in a specific book. Either way, Bibliomancy is a method of allowing the practitioner to be shown what information Magic thinks that they need.
Well, that sounded sillier than she had hoped.
Hermione drummed her fingers over the text, trying to decide what to do. This was certainly enough information to write an extra credit essay about, but maybe she needed more. It was clear even from just that one class that Professor Trelawney valued practical experience over pure research. Hermione was going to have to at least attempt Bibliomancy so she could note that she did so in her essay.
She read over the instructions in the slim volume. They were barebones, but the idea was simple enough: concentrate on the question you want answered and allow Magic to guide you. That seemed vague, though. What did it mean, let Magic guide you? Was there supposed to be some sort of sensation or feeling? Was there a bell from the beyond that would ring?
Closing her eyes, she tried to decide what she wanted to know. Maybe how she would do in Divination? That would be straight forward, but it seemed shallow. If this was real, if this worked, why would she waste time on that when there were more pressing and more urgent concerns? Harry’s face floated in her mind's eye and suddenly, she knew what she wanted to ask.
How could she help prepare and protect her friend who was a magnet for danger? What would Harry need to know about this year?
Focusing on the question she breathed deeply, trying to mimic the techniques she had read about in her mother’s books on meditation. After about a minute, she opened her eyes. She felt no different, but gamely stood and began wandering the library.
Soon, she found herself in the Potions section. The book had said that she would be called to the right choice. She didn’t feel anything calling her, just a growing sense of frustration and impatience.
Maybe Professor McGonagall was right; Divination was a rather wooly subject.
There was a book that was bound in dull orange leather that stood out to Hermione. It didn’t pull at her, or at least she didn’t feel anything special or strange, but she was reaching out to grab it before she had given it any thought. On the cover it had a full moon.
The Development and Uses of Wolfsbane Potion and its After-Effects.
She was not entirely sure what Wolfsbane potion was, but she tucked the book under her arm anyway and continued her path through the library. She might as well keep trying and get a robust sample size of books. After all, Professor Trelawney would want to know that she had tried to use her inner eye more than once.
Her next stop was the Transfiguration section. She lingered a minute. Professor McGonagall had already given her the list of essay topics for the term; maybe she could kill two birds with one stone and find a resource for one of those papers. It would count as something Harry would need to know, after all, because he would have to write the same essays she did. There was a book on switching spells on the bottom shelf, and Hermione reached out to grab it, but when she drew her hand back there were two books; the larger book she had meant to pull and a slimmer volume that seemed to have come along for the ride.
Famous Animagi.
Well, that could be a resource for an essay too, she supposed.
She meant to go back to her desk, but got waylaid in the History of Magic section. One of the few books with titles on the spine right at eye level was A Legal History of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures . She picked it up on a whim. It didn’t seem likely that Professor Binns would ever get past the Witch Burnings or the Goblin Wars, but on the off chance they actually covered history that was relevant to their real lives, this could be useful.
Returning to her worktable, she laid out the books in front of her. There was not a cohesive message she could discern from the books she pulled. Maybe these would all be useful for their final examinations? Maybe Professor Snape would have them brew Wolfsbane? Probably not; she had read the entire Potions textbook, and there was no mention of that potion, but Professor Snape could be unpredictable.
Hermione shook her head. This was useless, just like her attempt to read tea leaves this morning had been. Divination was hogwash,and trying to read meanings into books selected at random was mad.
At least the books she had chosen were moderately interesting. She checked them out and stored them in her bag before going back to the common room to see if Harry was back from Quidditch practice.
He wasn’t, so she ran up to her dorm to store the books she had checked out in her trunk and promptly forgot about them.
It was only when she was unloading her trunk to return all of the library books before the end of the year that she recalled checking those books out.
The entire contents of her trunk was splayed across her bed, and Hermione was attempting to repack her trunk and make sure she didn’t accidentally steal any library books, thereby earning herself the eternal enmity of Madam Pince. She was trying to avoid thinking of Sirius out there somewhere with Buckbeak, trying to avoid being caught, avoid dying. She shook her head sharply, trying to refocus on the task at hand.
There were about a dozen books she needed to return. She unearthed them from the pile of her clothes and loose parchment one by one, not paying much attention to the titles until they were laid out in front of her.
It was the book on animagi that first caught her eye. Then Wolfsbane. And then—
The blood rushed out of her head, and she was suddenly dizzy. She sat down hard on the floor in front of her bed, eyes glued to the books.
She had—
No, it couldn’t be; that was ridiculous. She reached out, her shaking hand touching the cover of the slim blue volume she had checked out nine months before. She clenched her hand into a fist to try to stop the involuntary movement, but it didn’t help.
But the book had surely said something about feeling called, and she didn’t remember feeling called when selecting the books; they had just been books she had happened across. She would have felt something if it was more than nonsense.
She bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood, and she swallowed, but the taste of copper lingered in her mouth.
Hermione had quit Divination before the subject of Bibliomancy was ever even mentioned in class. She snatched up the blue book about it before she could give it much thought and practically ran to Professor Trelawney’s office.
She was knocking on the door, out of breath with the book clutched tightly to her chest when she realised she had no idea what she actually wanted to ask her former professor.
There was no answer for more than thirty seconds. She was about to turn away when the door swung open silently.
The interior of Professor Trelawney’s office was much like her classroom. Tapestries hung from the walls and gauzy scarves covered the windows, giving the room a close, suffocating feeling. Instead of the hardback chairs that Hermione had seen in every other professor’s office, there were poufs and even a reclining chair. The room was lit by so many candles that Hermione worried about the fire hazard posed by the combination of fabric and flames.
“Come in” said Professor Trelawney in an airy tone. “I knew we would meet again.”
Hermione felt her jaw tense but stepped inside anyway. Professor Trelawney was at her desk, gazing into a crystal ball while gently swaying to music that only she could hear. The scent of too much incense drifted through the open door, and Hermione rubbed her nose to rid herself of the urge to sneeze.
“Professor,” Hermione paused, wondering if she should apologise for how she had stormed out of the classroom a few months before.
She decided against it.
Instead, she took another step into the room, coming to stand behind a pouf. “I came across a book in the library about Divination and wanted to ask you about it.”
Something, maybe annoyance, flashed across Professor Trelawney’s face, but she reached out her hand for the book nevertheless.
Hermione hesitated for a second before handing over the slim blue volume.
She winced as Professor Trelawney flicked through the pages with seemingly no regard for the delicate paper or the age of the book.
After a minute, the Professor slid the book back across her desk to Hermione.
“My dear, it seems as if your clinging to the written word has led you astray again.” Professor Trelawney’s lips twisted into an unpleasant smile that Hermione suspected was supposed to look sympathetic.
It made Hermione bristle, offended.
“Bibliomancy is unreliable, and no one with the True Sight makes use of it. Those who believe they can use the technique are really just seeing coincidences and tricking themselves into believing that they see something. The written word can be deceptive in that way.” Professor Trelawney’s certainty came through loud and clear with her nodding firmly as she talked.
Hermione opened her mouth to tell this... this fraud that Bibliomancy was real, that she had pulled books that foretold what had just happened, that there was no way she was seeing things that weren’t there.
But she then shut her mouth so hard her teeth clicked. She couldn’t speak carelessly. No one but Dumbledore, Harry, and Sirius knew what had happened. If she told, she could go to Azkaban, she could get Sirius sent back, and she could jeopardise her entire academic career.
And besides, it was clear that Professor Trelawney didn’t believe in Bibliomancy or in Hermione.
Hermione was sure that even if she had gone into a trance and given a true prophecy right in front of Professor Trelawney, the witch would have dismissed her just the same.
Instead of arguing back, Hermione nodded. She forced herself to calmly take back the book on Bibliomancy and thank Professor Trelawney for her time, though she was internally seething.
Her steps took her first to her dorm room to collect the rest of the library books that were due, then to the library to return everything.
The anger at Professor Trelawney simmered in her veins, making her cheeks hot and her shoulders tight. She hated not being taken seriously, but she was almost more mad at herself for even trying. The Divination Professor had proven herself to be a fraud time and time again; the prophecy that Harry supposedly heard just a few days ago was once instance in an entire year of nonsense. Besides, Hermione didn’t need help. She could do this on her own.
Collecting all the library books from where she had laid them out on her bed, she made her way down to the library, determined to solve this mystery herself.
She was handing every book back to Madam Prince one by one when an impulse struck her.
“Madam Pince,” Hermione said, trying to make her voice sound soft and trustworthy, “would it be possible to borrow just one book over the summer? I know that I would have more time to study it, and I want to get a head start on next year’s class work.”
Madam Pince stared her down for a full minute, her thin lips pursed so tightly there was a ring of white around her mouth.
After what felt like forever, Madam Pince nodded once, sharply. “Yes, Miss Granger, you may borrow one book. But Merlin help you if there is so much as a dog-eared page when you return it in September.”
“Of course, Madam Pince.” The words spilled out of Hermione’s mouth, as she was slightly breathless and eager to reassure the librarian that she would never deface a school book. Well, almost never, she thought guiltily as she remembered ripping out the page about Basilisks the previous year.
“Very well then. Which book do you wish to take?”
With no thought at all, Hermione immediately grabbed the slim volume on Bibliomancy.
“This one, Madam Pince. Thank you so much.”
The librarian gathered the rest of the books back, and Hermione took the circuitous route back to the Gryffindor Common Room, trying to give herself enough time to think.
If Professor Trelawney wouldn’t help her, then books surely would. After all, she trusted books much more than she trusted anything else.