Many thanks to Keel the Swift for editing this chapter.

Fate/Tea Cup

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The next morning, Iris joined up with Hermione and Sakura, and they made their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

They were early today since it was the day that schedules got handed out. Not that they wouldn't still get their schedules if they were tardy, but McGonagall was always a bit irritated when she was interrupted during breakfast to pass out the papers to late students. That, or she would hand out the papers to trustworthy peers and then Iris would have to track down whoever had her schedule.

Showing up early was just easier. Even the Twins arrived at a reasonable time on the first day of school.

They sat down at the Gryffindor table and Iris's usual plate, already full of food, appeared before her. Iris nodded her head in thanks to the House Elves, who always went above and beyond for her.

She had wondered last night whether they would continue to portion out meals for her in the new year. Apparently, the feast had been an exception and she could expect personalized meals from now on, including, she noticed, a chocolate croissant.

Out of paranoia, she still waved her thumb ring over the food, checking for anything off about it.

When everything came back clean, she began to dig in.

Shortly thereafter, McGonagall came around to their table, distributing everyone's schedules.

Iris glanced at hers and smiled to see that Potions wasn't on it. Not that she had less class time, since she'd be working with Leysritt to prepare herself to test out of next year's Potions class as well.

Beside her, Hermione sighed.

"What's wrong?" Iris asked, leaning over to take a look at her friend's schedule. "Oh, wow. Do you have any free time this year?"

"I do." Hermione nodded sadly. "I just wish I could take more classes."

"Hermione, your schedule is literally full. Oh, except right here." Iris pointed to the one open spot on the schedule. "I guess that's where Potions would have been."

"Yes, but there's just so much to learn. If only I had more time."

"Maybe self-study," Iris suggested. "Though I guess you're already doing that with Sella and Leys. No need to completely fill up your evenings."

"I could do that, couldn't I?" Hermione rubbed her chin in thought. "Though I don't have the books for it."

Iris's eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together.

"Birthday present!" she said.

Hermione paused in surprise.

"Iris, you really don't have to–"

"No arguments! Do you know what books you need?"

"No, I–"

"Gotcha." Iris waved off any further arguments from Hermione. "I can find out from Professor McGonagall."

A litany of emotions passed over Hermione's face, but eventually, she sighed and turned back to her schedule with a small smile. Iris took that as a win.

"Anyway," Hermione said. "Our first class is Divination. It says it's in the North Tower. I'm not familiar with that part of the castle. Do you know how to get there?"

Iris shook her head and then turned to address the table.

"Does anyone know where the Divination classroom is?" she asked.

"I do." Lavender Brown waved her hand from farther down the table. "It's a bit of a hike, so we were going to leave soon. Do you want to come with us?"

"Yes, please," Iris responded.

A few minutes later, the group stood from their seats and exited the Great Hall.

On their way out, they passed Hagrid, who was on his way in. As opposed to the man's normal scruffy appearance, he was rather well dressed today. He had his wild hair and unruly beard combed into a semblance of order and was wearing the nice coat that Irisviel had bought for him.

"Mornin'," he called out to their group.

"Moring, Hagrid!" Iris called out to him. "I'm looking forward to your class today!"

"Ah." The large man suddenly looked very bashful. "Yeah… bin up since five gettin' everythin' ready… Hope yeh like it."

"I'm sure it'll be great, Hagrid," Iris said as the group passed by him. "I'll see you after lunch!"

Hagrid waved at them briefly and then continued into the Great Hall.

The group of Gryffindors followed Lavender through the castle and up a rather excessive number of stairs to reach the North Tower. By the end of it, Iris was the only one not breathing heavily.

They were the first to arrive at the tower and Lavender pointed up to a circular trapdoor in the ceiling with a brass plaque that said 'Sibyll Trelawney, Divination teacher' on it.

"What are we supposed to do about that?" Iris asked.

"According to some upperclassmen, she will open it when it's time for class," Lavender replied.

Iris nodded her head and settled in to wait.

Over the next few minutes, more students arrived including a rather surprising addition.

"Draco." Iris's eyebrows rose when she spotted the Slytherin student.

"Miss Potter." Draco nodded toward her in acknowledgment.

"I didn't think you would go for this kind of class, Draco," Iris said as she walked a bit closer to him.

"What does that mean?" Draco smirked at her. "Don't take me for one of the fools who jumps at this class in the hopes of finding their destined love."

Several of the assembled girls frowned at Draco's mockery, including Pansy Parkinson, who was standing close by.

"Then what are you here for?" Iris asked. "Hoping to find out that you have some great, unfulfilled destiny?"

A secretive smile appeared on Draco's lips as if he was laughing at some joke only he knew.

"There's an even better explanation." Draco shrugged his shoulders. "Third years have to take at least two electives, and this class is notoriously easy to pass."

"Oh."

"What did you expect, Miss Potter? Some nefarious plan? I'm afraid I'll be leaving those to—what was it?—Dark Lady Kickface for the foreseeable future."

Iris's mouth opened in shock. Before she could even wrap her mind around the idea of Draco making a joke, the trapdoor above them opened and a silvery ladder descended.

"Pardon me, Miss Potter." Draco nodded towards her and then broke away towards the ladder.

Pansy gave Iris the stink eye before quickly following in Draco's wake.

Iris shook her head, she still equated Draco with the git that he had been in the first year. They had barely spoken in second year, and the few times they did, he had been well-mannered. Now she saw that the trend continued, and he seemed to have completely forgotten about the nasty rivalry they'd had less than two years ago.

She glanced over, to see Draco climbing the ladder with Pansy right behind him. Something clicked in her brain and she glanced around at the assembled students.

Crabbe and Goyle were nowhere to be seen.

Glancing at Draco again, she saw him disappear into the trapdoor and let out a tired sigh.

Perhaps she was the one who was too attached to the way things had been. If Draco could mature and let bygones be bygones, then she could do the same.

Dismissing that line of thought, Iris joined Hermione in queuing up to climb the ladder.

When they reached the top of the ladder and climbed out into the classroom, they both took a moment to take stock of their surroundings.

The room was packed tightly with round tables and overstuffed couches and stools. The combination of too much incense and red lamps throughout the room created a thick red haze that hovered at the ceiling. It was also sweltering. All the windows were closed and covered, and a roaring fire filled a large fireplace at the front of the room.

Sitting in a winged chair beside the fireplace was their teacher. She was a thin woman who was covered in shawls and bangles and had large, thick glasses that made her eyes look much larger than natural.

Iris and Hermione sat next to each other on one of the couches and waited for the teacher to start.

"So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts," Professor Trelawney said. "I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field…"

Iris glanced at Hermione.

Her friend was frowning with a bit of a rebellious look in her eyes. After Lockhart and Snape had broken her trust of teachers, she was even more certain that books were where the truth lay. Now a teacher was telling her that books could only go so far. At this point, Hermione was much more likely to trust the book than the teacher that made them buy said book.

Professor Trelawney carried on in a speech that vaguely reminded Iris of Snape's introduction speech. She talked about how Divination was a more subtle art and didn't involve bands and smells like other fields did.

"You, boy." She turned suddenly towards Neville, who nearly fell out of his chair. "Is your grandmother well?"

"I think so," Neville replied, confused and worried.

"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you, dear," said the professor. She started to go into the syllabus, only to cut herself off and turn toward Parvati Patil. "Beware a red-haired man."

Everyone in the room turned to look at Ron Weasley, who raised his hands with a bit of a panicked look on his face.

Unperturbed by the results of her sudden predictions, Trelawney continued reciting the syllabus, including predicting that the class would be disrupted in February by the flu.

Finally, the class began in earnest, with their first assignment being to read tea leaves with a partner.

Everyone rose from their seats to get the cups and fill them with tea. Neville, however, was grabbed by the teacher before he could get his cup.

"After you've broken the first cup," she said, "please use one of the blue cups. The pink ones are my favorite."

Hearing that, Iris sidled up to Neville as he reached for one of the pink cups with shaking hands.

Before he could touch them, Iris grabbed his arm, causing him to flinch and nearly knock a cup off the shelf.

Iris quickly corrected the cup before it could fall and gave Neville an exasperated look.

"Just start with a blue one," she said, grabbing a blue cup and saucer pair and holding it out to him.

"Right." He nodded shakily and reached out to take the cup from her as she let go of his arm.

As soon as Iris was certain he could hold the weight of the cup, she let go, only to watch as Neville's grip failed and the cup and saucer plummeted towards the floor.

Her hands flashed out and she caught both pieces of china before they could break.

Looking back at Neville, the boy looked like the whole world was out to get him.

"Just go sit down, Neville," she said. "I'll bring your tea over in a minute."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yeah." She smiled at him. "Let's see if we can defy fate."

"Yeah." He smiled. "Okay. Uh… Thank you." With that, he turned around and walked toward his seat.

Iris watched him like a hawk the entire time. After all, Trelawney hadn't said that he would break his own cup, only that he would break one.

When he finally sat down, Iris let out a sigh.

She grabbed a pink set of her own to go with Neville's blue, then made her way to the front of the class to fill the cups with tea

With tea in hand, she swung by Neville's seat to drop off his tea before finally returning to her seat next to Hermione.

"What was that all about?" Hermione asked as she raised her tea and blew on it.

"I wanted to see if I could mess up her prediction," Iris replied, raising her tea to blow on it.

Hermione took a sip, and Iris mimicked her. Unfortunately for her, since she had taken so long to get tea, hers was still quite hot. On the other hand, Hermione's tea seemed to be at the right temperature. The girl took quick sips of her drink, trying to get to the actual practice of the course without actually gulping the hot liquid down.

This meant that Hermione was done with her tea while Iris still had half of a cup left.

"I guess I'll go first then," Iris said, putting her cup down to let the tea cool more.

Following the instructions in their textbook, Unfogging the Future, Iris raised Hermione's cup, swirled the remaining contents three times, flipped the cup upside down to dump the excess, then flipped it back up.

What she saw on the inside of the cup was a bunch of tea dregs. But now was the challenging part.

Taking a sip of her tea, Iris examined the inside of Hermione's cup, looking for anything that stood out to her.

"This might be a fish," Iris stated. She put down her cup and glanced through the textbook. "A fish indicates sharing knowledge or a teacher figure." She looked up at Hermione and smiled. "Well, we are in school, no shortage of teachers here."

"Or maybe I'll be sharing knowledge with you since we share classes."

Iris's smile broadened as Hermione added her own thoughts to the divination.

Turning her attention back to the cup, Iris turned it back and forth, trying to pick something out again.

"Some kind of bug?" she said, unsure of herself. Checking the textbook, there wasn't an entry for 'bug', but she did see an entry for 'ant', which matched better with what she had seen in the cup. "An ant, which indicates a busy but productive phase." She glanced up at Hermione again. "Imagine that, Hermione in school being both busy and productive. I'd say this has something to do with that overloaded schedule you have."

She spent another few minutes looking at the cup but only picked out one more thing.

"A cloud? Though it's awfully spiky for a cloud." She tilted her head a bit, trying to see the tea dregs from a different angle. "Maybe a bush?" Glancing through the textbook, she picked out the two options. "Well, it explicitly says 'clouds' in here, rather than 'cloud', so I'm guessing it's a bush. In that case, it means that there will be an obstacle to new opportunities."

Both Iris and Hermione hummed in thought.

"I can't think of what that might be," Hermione said.

"I guess we'll have to wait and see if something comes up that matches that description." Iris downed the last of her tea and passed the cup to Hermione. "Now do me!"

"Let's see." Hermione took Iris's cup and followed the procedure for the divination. As she did, Iris felt a small itching sensation through the Cloak.

Her eyes widened as she traced the feeling back to Hermione. Was it possible for her to hide from Divination as well?

Not wanting to spoil Hermione's first attempt at tea reading, she ignored the sensation and watched as her friend dumped the excess dregs and flipped the cup right side up.

Hermione then spent the next minute just staring at the cup. Slowly her look of concentration morphed into one of frustration.

"I don't see anything," she complained. "All I see are tea dregs." She glanced through the list of symbols in the textbook, trying to see if it soaked any kind of recognition, but ended up just shaking her head.

Iris patted her on the shoulder to calm her down.

"Don't stare so intensely," Iris suggested. "Let your eyes relax a bit. You aren't looking for a picture-perfect representation of the symbol, just the general feeling of it."

"Right right." Hermione tucked some of her hair behind her ear. "One more time."

Another minute passed as she turned the cup this way and that while also tilting her head back and forth.

"I think this is a bow and arrow." She pointed into the cup. Hermione then looked at her textbook, scanning to see if that had any meaning.

"It says that this symbol indicates rumors."

"About me?" Iris rolled her eyes. "That never happens."

Hermione smiled at having found something that seemed right and went back to analyzing the cup.

Shortly after that, she found something else.

"At the bottom, there's some kind of animal head." Hermione squinted and turned her head to the side. "A dog maybe."

Nearby, Professor Trelawney whirled towards them and made her way over.

"A dog?" she asked, peering over Hermione's shoulder. "Let me see that, my dear."

Taking Iris's cup from Hermione, she turned it counterclockwise.

"The falcon! And another beside it." Professor Trelawney turned her gaze toward Iris with an intense look in her eyes. "My dear, you have two deadly enemies circling you."

"Two?" Iris wondered aloud. After a moment of thought, she nodded along. "Voldemort and Sirius Black, maybe."

Most everyone in the room flinched at the mention of Voldemort's name.

Despite that, they all leaned in closer, the confirmation from Iris driving their interest up.

Professor Trelawney turned the cup a little and then nodded.

"The skull… Danger in your path, my dear…"

Iris nodded again. The castle was surrounded by dementors and there were apparently two deadly enemies after her. Danger made sense.

"The bow and arrow…" the Professor continued her reading. "Beware of rumors, my dear."

Iris smiled at Hermione and gave her a thumbs up. However, Hermione didn't seem at all pleased to have the teacher confirm her reading.

Professor Trelawney turned the cup once more then stared intently at it.

Without warning, she suddenly screamed and fell back onto one of the nearby seats.

All of the enraptured students flinched at the sudden noise and from a nearby table was the sound of breaking glass.

Iris's head snapped toward Neville and she gave the boy an annoyed glare when she saw that he had broken his cup. She quickly turned back when Trelawney started speaking again.

"My dear girl… my poor, dear girl… no… it is kinder not to say… don't ask me."

"What is it, Professor?" Dean Thomas asked as he leaned in.

At this point, the whole class had gathered around Iris and Hermione's table. Many leaning in towards Professor Trelawney, trying to get a look into Iris's cup.

"My dear." Professor Trelawney's large eyes opened dramatically. "You have the Grim"

The non-Muggle-born students in the classroom all gasped.

"Grim are dogs." Iris frowned. "How can you tell that it's a grim rather than a dog?"

"One must learn to trust their Inner Eye," Trelawney answered. "This is no simple dog sign, but an omen of death."

"The Grim isn't mentioned as a symbol in our book," Hermione pointed out, quick to the draw when challenging a teacher.

"My dear, there are more symbols in tea reading than those mentioned in a beginner's book."

"There's also the bow and arrow," Hermione argued, not willing to condemn Iris to death so quickly. "Maybe that means that it will just be rumors of her death."

Iris nodded along with the argument. After a teacher had proclaimed that she was going to die, she was certain that rumors would be spreading throughout the school.

"The signs do not always correlate with each other," Trelawney said dismissively.

Hermione scowled at the teacher who scowled right back.

"I think that will be all for today." Turning to address the rest of the students, Trelawney returned to the soft tone she had used at the beginning of class. "Yes… please pack away your things…"

No one spoke as the students brought their cups to the front of the classroom. Said quiet was briefly broken when Hermione used the Repairing Charm to fix Neville's cup.

Everyone avoided looking at Iris as they packed up their bags and climbed down, out of the room.

Iris rolled her eyes at their behavior, treating her as if she was already dead.

After descending from the classroom, they began walking toward their next class.

"I still think it was just a dog," Hermione said.

Iris grinned at her.

"What does that symbol mean?" she asked.

"A dog refers to a friend. A dog at the bottom of the cup indicates a friend in danger."

"Don't like that," Iris said as she frowned.

"Better or worse than an omen of death?"

"Point taken." Iris shrugged. "Maybe it's literal and it means that I'll meet a dog." She paused. "Or have met a dog. Maybe it's talking about that dog from Diagon Alley." She smiled. "Maybe I'll meet him again."

"Does that actually happen in readings?" Hermione glanced down at the Unfogging the Future book she was carrying under her arm. "I haven't read anything about that."

"It does happen." Iris nodded as she eyed the book. "Maybe the book addresses that kind of thing later on."

Hermione let out a long sigh.

"This subject is too ambiguous!"