The I-Ching of It All

----------------------- The I Ching of It All by Amand-r -----------------------

Her classmates couldn't be more correct: Lavender Brown is a daft cow with no common sense and nought a spare thought in her head.

Lavender likes to think that such attributes are beneficial to her, as being flighty and imaginative give her a leg up in divination. Oh and boys. The secret to understanding boys is to empty one's skull of all practical thought and then toss in some Quidditch.

Lavender closes her earmarked copy of The Dream Oracle and sticks her quill in her ponytail. Seventh year has been far from the terror fest that she'd imagined. Everything is as it should be, she supposed:

House Points-- still awarded New DADA professor-- still inept Voldemort-- still lurking Quidditch--still inexplicably popular Seamus-- still clueless NEWTS-- still mysteriously looming Pansy Parkinson-- still using the wrong shade of blush

Everything is the same.

Lavender crosses her legs and uses her wand to kick up the fire in the hearth. It's cold, and she hates warming charms because they make the air dry and she can't breathe, like the time her Mum and Dad took her to Cairo and she'd had to stay inside because every time she went outdoors the dry heat made her hyperventilate.

The Dream Oracle slides off the duvet onto the floor, flopping open to the A section. She studies what page is laid out: Absence-Acrid. An illustrated picture of Absinthe being poured into a glass by a very drunk looking wizard tells her that this time she's on to something.

Hermione is on her way up from the dungeons, and she's inebriated. Lavender sighs and checks the clock, which reads two-thirty. Curfew was two and a half- hours ago, but that really means bugger-all to the Head Girl. She sighs and throws her blankets off, jams her feet into a pair of slippers that look like unicorn hooves and grabs her robe.

Knowing where her roommate is has nothing to do with divination, and everything to do with routine and psychology. Oh, and sheer dumb luck. The book fell on a certain page, which is the luck part, Lavender knows. What she takes from the page is the divination part. And her knowledge is the result of multitudes of times like this one, where she has to pull Hermione's carcass up the stairs to the seventh year girl's dorm and tuck her in.

Lavender opens the door to the dormitory and looks down in front of the portrait. No Hermione. She steps out of the door and into the hallway. Who's going to punish her for being out after curfew? Snape has been neglecting his late-night hallway expeditions since he and Hermione started...well doing whatever it is they do, besides imbibe hallucinogens and alcohol and try to ferret out the secret of the universe, in between shaggings, Lavender supposes. There better be shaggings, because nothing is worth this unless sex is involved.

A whispered Lumos illuminates too much, so she swathes her glowing wand in her robe and uses the dim light to walk the path from the tower to the dungeons, peering behind statues and suits of armor for her roommate. It takes her back to the matter she had been pondering before she had had to make her midnight excursion: the lack of change at Hogwarts this year.

Lavender is sure that everything has changed. Perhaps, she muses, she should think of it as people changing inside themselves. Is she the same girl she was four years ago, starting her third year at Hogwarts, eyes shining with excitement for touching a crystal ball?

Perhaps not. Lavender's research into her subject of choice has changed lately. She believes less in divination as an art these days and more in the psychology of it. It is not to say that she begrudges Parvati's insistence on reading cards only after they've been blessed with incense, or Lydia Ashwaite's demand that the third eye of all parties be anointed with mugwort oil before crystal gazing; rather Lavender understands that divination is the subconscious, and understanding the properties therein unlocks the power to see all.

After all, Lavender may be daft, but she has eyes in her head. Dumbledore isn't the slightest bit psychic, and he knows everything. (She'd *really* love to read his cards.)

She passes Gregory the Barmy, who makes horrible noises. "I can smell you," he says.

"Sod off," she responds, hurrying past and pulling her robe about her. A distinctive mewling echoes down the hallway and Lavender freezes. She's forgotten the bacon. Hermione owes her big time, she decides and throws the one thing in her pocket, a double package of chocolate frogs, far ahead of her and away from the stairwell to the dungeons. Mrs. Norris cuts off her alarm and turns to follow the noise of candy bouncing off Sir Mateus's armor. Lavender takes advantage of the distraction to slip down the stairwell and into the dungeons.

Parvati would call her mad for doing this, but Lavender believes that loyalty to one's roommate should be sacrosanct. Hermione had covered for her all those times when she'd snuck out to meet Seamus, and that one time when she and Ernie MacMillan had used the Room of Requirement to explore interhouse relations. Hermione had helped her write way too many papers, and Hermione had suggested the psychology aspect of divination, even providing a few Muggle textbooks for her when she'd exhausted the library's supply of information on the subject.

Hermione had invited her to room in the Head girl apartment, even though she could have kept it and its massive bathing room to herself. But they had been sharing a room since their first year, and though Parvati wasn't with them anymore (she had her own one bedroom; better for the incense and the chanting), there is something between them that is more than cordial. Besides, Hermione knows how much Lavender hates chanting.

Seven years of sharing a room with Hermione Granger has not been lost on her. She knows all of Hermione's bizarre habits: she compulsively brushes her teeth three times a day. She flosses while she studies on her bed, leaving bits of used string all over the floor. She sings the same Ramones song about being sedated when she brushes her hair, which she NEVER conditions, and every night, she folds her clothes, despite that the house elves are just going to fetch them in the morning anyway and dump them in the wash. None of her family photos move except for one, which has no one in it except Hermione, because her parents have long ago run off to hide in the edges.

No matter how obsessed Hermione is with her pet projects of the moment, Lavender appreciates that she takes the time to call all the Gryffindor girls together once a month, usually on a Saturday night, and let them all vent and gossip and paint each other's toenails, though Hermione seldom ever paints her own toes. She talks to all the third and fourth years about sex, and she supplies contraceptive potions for the fifth and sixth years. It's more than any Head Girl has ever done before, maybe because Lavender has never had a Gryffindor Head Girl. She wonders sometimes if this is why all the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw girls in the past few years have been so much more chummy than her own House.

She misses Gryffindor girls' night. There hasn't been one in two months.

Three months ago, Hermione had disappeared for a detention in the dungeons and hadn't come back till sunrise. She had smelled like an Ogden's distillery and hadn't particularly wanted to talk about whatever had happened, but the following night had been a repeat of the same, minus the detention. At first Hermione had offered feeble excuses to her friends, to Lavender, saying that she was going to the library, then that she was working on a private independent potions project. Finally, she'd given up altogether and just said that she was going to see Snape, though whether or not she ever told anyone other than Lavender that was still a mystery.

In her sober moments, Hermione is defensive about their "research." In her drunken ones she often mumbles about love and anger and wormwood being alchemical parallaxes.

Lavender thinks to herself, with some sense of guilty satisfaction, that Hermione Granger knows nothing of love. That's why her life is currently a disheveled wreck at the moment.

Lavender has lost count of the times this year that she has found Hermione in the middle of the night outside the Common Room in front of the Fat Lady's portrait, unable to mutter the password for excess of drink, crying, or sullenly dozing, her back pressed against the feet of the painting.

And when Lavender finally gets her clean, hair washed, alcohol purged from her system, a teary Hermione tells her of the latest row, something so dramatic it could be from one of her mum's daytime "stories" on the telly.

Snape -no no, Severus-- disagrees with this (insert potion/magic/literary theory here), and they had argued and then it had gotten out of hand, and she had thrown a bottle of Ogden's...

It always goes on like this.

Hermione is halfway up the stairs from the dungeons, lying down, half sitting, head on her arm. There is something like vomit trailing up the stones, but even in this light it is awfully green. When she nudges Hermione's shoulder with her foot, she makes a noise.

Well, at least she's not dead. But then again, Lavender knows she would have seen that coming.

***

It is three o'clock in the morning, and Hermione is tucked into her bed, though she is still trying to brush her hands through her wet hair and mumble about hexagonal warding. Lavender picks up The Dream Oracle and makes noises like she's listening.

"And then he says that only McAlister's theory of warding with numerological progression will counter the effects of the Furnculus curse. That's bollocks!" Hermione tries to wave her hand madly, but her fingers are still caught in her hair and she pulls her whole head into her headboard. It's enough to make Lavender glare at her for being so drunk.

"Well," she says solemnly, "that's right out. I hope you put him in his place."

Hermione squints. "What d'you mean?"

She shrugs. "I mean, I'm sure this conversation leapt to violence somewhere, so why don't you just get to it?"

"Oh, not violence, but there were a few attempts at hexes, but those were only for research."

"Right."

Hermione sighs. "See, when you try to use hexagonal warding, it's like creating a five pointed star, but with six points. It's part of Kabalistic research, but of course Hogwarts doesn't encourage it because of cultural stigmatism. It involves..."

Lavender isn't clever, she knows this, much to her chagrin, and when Hermione starts to explain the finer points of their academic argument, Lavender stares at the space on the wall right above Hermione's left shoulder. It is in this moment that she usually hits upon something ground breaking in her own studies. Something about this whole situation should ring bells and whistles for her in the psychic understanding department, but it has never come.

Her consciousness wants to coo and call the man a bastard and let a still drunken Hermione cry on her shoulder, an action that might be expected for a girl her age and one which she might perform if this wasn't Granger and was oh, say, Parvati; but Hermione doesn't want this, and Lavender knows that her subconscious is trying to tell her something important about what she likes to call The Nature Of Things.

The Nature Of Things, unlike her girlish emotions, knows that Hermione and Snape will burn each other out soon, and that Hermione would probably kill him first, not out of temper, but just because she is that demanding. Lavender knows that Snape is made of strong stuff, but sooner or later the drinking and the fighting and the late nights and the cock wrenching sex is going to get the better of him, and he'll drop dead in the middle of a screaming tirade against Potter some day in double potions.

Hermione's liver has to be the size of a quaffle by now, and what is left of her stomach lining is, from how she eats in the Great Hall, protesting enough to pain her greatly.

Lavender isn't sure if Hermione or Snape would call what they have love, and she is sure that no matter what they call it, this isn't it. Love should be something that makes both parties happy. Lavender has long rejected the idea that love is hell, and that angst must abound on all sides. She's read enough novels on the subject to know that what a great deal of people call love is just emotional addiction that they don't want to break. And if love doesn't make one happy, one should at least be content when one has it. Otherwise the story becomes some moony adolescent drama that she no longer enjoys reading about, though Lydia Ashwaite says that Regency romances are the best and most educational in the art of love.

Lavender would rather snog and shag than have a boy give her cow eyes over the Gryffindor table all through breakfast.

Parvati says that this sensible attitude is the kind of rational thinking that will kill her tarot readings.

Hermione hiccups and rolls over on her bed, muttering something about Malachian runic mistranslation. Lavender takes a minute to hunt in her bag for a fag, using her wand to light it while opening the window with her other hand.

Outside, the snow is falling in a steady flow, an entire white blanket stretched out as far as she can see, almost made blinding by the full moon above. It allows her to see the lone robed figure trudging around out in the fields. She knows who it is, and resists the urge to yell from this distance, though she can't think of anything she could say to him aside from "This is God, you prat; stop fucking with your students!"

She'd like to read Snape's cards, and according to Madam Trelawney, she might very well be able to if she can get him to touch her deck. The mystical powers she isn't sure she believes in say that once someone touches the deck, the reader can cast an accurate reading. (Lavender fully plans to test this theory one day in class, if she can ever manage to her her Wykam Special deck to behave properly. It's the only sort of vessel that could work with that; her Ryder- Waite is too unreliable.)

The walking figure of Professor Snape stops and stares at her, though she is hundreds of feet above him and he shouldn't know what room this is or to whom it belongs. Perhaps he does. In any case, she tosses her ciggy out the window before closing it and drawing the curtains. It's three thirty in the morning and she needs to sleep if she's going to tutor those fourth years into finding their inner eyes.

***

Harry is making up his dream chart at the breakfast table. Ron has just told him that the sticky spill in the left-hand corner of the page means that he's about to die a horrible death, possibly by drowning in marmalade. Lavender doesn't say anything when Parvati mutters about them both being total berks.

Lavender isn't that fond of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. It's not because they aren't nice boys, because she is sure that they are, and it's not because of their flat out dislike of Professor Trelawney, because she really is an acquired taste. No, it's their flat out rejection of divination without any regard to the subtlety of it all. Ron Weasley, she is sure, expected to be able to look into his teacup the first day and see a major motion picture of his life. Lavender had looked into hers and seen the end of her virginity.

And damned if Seamus hadn't taken it three years later, the shadows of her hands and his back on the wall looking like eddies and swirls of tea leaves left at the bottom of the cup.

No, Harry and Ron have decided that divination is worthless because it doesn't seem like it requires work, and yet they are incapable of doing it. Every day that she sits next to them in class she starts to understand more and more why Professor Snape hates his students, mucking about in a science that takes work to appreciate, let alone excel in.

Despite this unwarranted sympathy, she still hates potions and Snape (though she still does long to read his palm. Parvati says she's a lunatic and busybody. She's one to talk.).

Harry and Ron, even if they hate divination, don't need it to see that Hermione is hungover. She looks at her plate of eggs and rashers and her face starts to match her green hair clasp. Lavender ignores Parvati's story of her dream last night and watches Hermione hand her plate to Ron and settle a mug of warm tea in her hands, clutching onto it for dear life. A cursory examination of Professor Snape shows that he is no better; his eyes are closed and one hand is over his mouth. Dumbledore is offering him a chipolata on his fork, holding it so close to Snape's face that it is almost touching him. Then Dumbledore's head turns and his eyes meet Lavender's. He nods, and his eyes shift slightly to the left, where she knows they rest on Hermione before coming back to her.

She shrugs at him. Inwardly, she knows this display of psychic power on the Headmaster's part is psychology and logic. Snape is "under the weather" again. The Head Girl is likewise. Two and two make four. Or twenty-two, she figures.

She's never been sure why Dumbledore hasn't said anything. Surely, even if Hermione and Snape (oh dear God, Snape, of all people) aren't shagging, they're breaking some school rule; why hasn't Dumbledore stepped in? He's the one in charge.

Then again, why hasn't she said anything? She's known for weeks about this, cleaning it up, helping Hermione along, for what reason?

If she were petty, she might admit that if Hermione were to be expelled, she'd lose the Head Girl room and that the Ravenclaws would probably get it, and with it, House Girls' Night. But they haven't even had that lately, and Lavender knows now she does it because it's routine. She's been covering for Hermione for so long that now it feels like a duty only she can perform.

She wonders if she oughtn't to read Hermione's cards.

***

Hermione stands in front of the mirror in their room and brushes her hair, humming her Ramones song. Lavender flips the first card over and stares at the reversed Heirophant.

"Who are you reading?" Hermione asks as she puts her brush down and takes off her school robes in favor of a red jumper Parvati gave her last year for secret Santa. She knows enough tarot to understand the meanings of the major arcana, and in fact, if there is any divination Hermione might partially approve of, it would be the cards.

"You," Lavender answers, turning over the three of wands. It never fails; Hermione is always wands.

"Oh? You know how I feel about that, Lav." Hermione draws a string of floss and sits on the edge of the bed. "Besides, I didn't cut the deck."

Lavender raises her silk-gloved hands. "They marinated under your pillow last night. Besides, these," she wiggled her fingers, "keep me off them."

Hermione might have protested, but she looks too impressed to say anything.

"Besides," Lavender continues, turning over the ten of swords, "This is more about me than you."

Hermione stops flossing. "I said you could borrow the blue chenille-"

"I'm not coming to get you tonight, Hermione," she says strongly, deciding not to look her roommate in the eye.

"What?"

Lavender turns over the next card in the wheel and stares at the Hermit in disbelief before answering. "I'm just saying that so you know, if you choose to pass out in the stairwell again."

Hermione looks at the cards, reading the layout, but only for a second. She looks elsewhere as she throws her floss in the rubbish and shrugs on her robes again.

"Right," she says. "I'll be back up here in no time. Before curfew even." She winks at Lavender and shuts the door. She thinks to call after Hermione, to say something clever, make a good argument, but she doesn't have anything to say. Isn't she the one who had shagged Dean Thomas under the Gryffindor table after hours last year? She recalls that Hermione's reasoned arguments hadn't made sense to her, so why should this be any different?

Instead, she returns to her reading, wondering if she shouldn't retouch the colour on her fingers, maybe to another shade of blue--

Bollocks.

The page of wands. Right there in the middle of the whole thing.

"Right," she says softly to the air.

***

The stone gargoyle stares at her, but it doesn't say anything. She's actually never spoken to Dumbledore in her whole life. There's never been a need to, and she certainly isn't like Harry, getting into scrapes every year and defeating You Know Who every now and then. She's always spoken to Professor McGonagall before, and then only a few times for personal reasons, like the time she'd had that horrible fight with Parvati over Dean Thomas and Parvati had set all her star charts on fire, a whole year's worth of work up in flames.

This is considerably more complicated than an incinerated journal, and anyway, she has the feeling that Professor McGonagall would be horribly practical about it all, giving her that disappointed look that she would interpret as 'why haven't you said anything before now, you daft girl?' And really, she is giving herself enough of that already.

Even though she's never met him, she senses that Dumbledore will understand a bit better about it all, being that he's sort of psychic. It'd be really cracker if he'd let her read his cards, for the sheer research of it all, of course.

She doesn't say anything to the gargoyle because she doesn't know the password, but she sends up thoughts to him, along the lines of 'I need to talk to you, Sir,' and hopes that he is just a little bit telepathic, otherwise she must look rather stupid, staring down a stone gargoyle. She lays a hand on the stone of its face and asks it silently if she shouldn't forget the whole thing, no matter what she said to Hermione earlier. She could skive off, go upstairs and watch Parvati try to consecrate a new set of runes without the potion she was supposed to make for it. That would be a laugh.

But the gargoyle slides to the side, and a staircase descends in a lazy twist, and she is surprised when her foot is on the first step before the stone even touches the floor.

END