Chapter Text
Somehow, she wasn’t dead.
Harry was lying on the forest floor, a twig nicking her neck, a ladybug lazily climbing on a leaf nearby. The ground was cold. She sat up, brushing the hands on her pants. The ground was damp, but Harry’s clothes felt dry.
She was alive.
Harry remembered the Killing Curse, the smug expression on Voldemort's face, how cold and weak she felt right before it touched her. It was worth it, of course. She was a Horcrux herself, keeping Voldemort tethered to the world of the living. They had to sever the connection, so her friends could finally end him.
Her face was wet. She brushed at it with her sleeve and froze. It wasn’t sweat, it was blood. Her scar was bleeding. In a conjured mirror her reflection looked like a vampire, pale and streaked with blood and bruises. She performed a quick evanesco and checked again. Was it her imagination, or did the scar look different? It wasn’t bleeding anymore, and the angry red had faded. Visibly thinner, its closed edges made it look more like a papercut than a cursed scar. A white line in the shape of a firebolt.
It meant they succeeded, Harry thought. The Horcrux inside her must be dead, but wasn’t she supposed to die along with it? And why was she lying in the Forbidden Forest like a forgotten body, while she was clearly very alive?
She put her wand back in her pocket, next to a Gringotts pouch, an assortment of coins, a bezoar, and god knows what else.
The sun was beginning to set when, after two hours of picking a wrong direction, she walked into Hogsmeade. The village looked normal, too normal, as if there wasn’t a battle just hours ago. The snow lingered on the ground, surprising for May. The people were walking around, oblivious. She raised some eyebrows, but as if there was something strange about her appearance, not as if they recognised her as a Girl-Who-Lived. Maybe she wasn’t so recognizable without the scar. Harry could hope.
The Three Broomstick was closed, strangely, a memo clipped on the doors. Closed until further notice. Harry tried to remember if she heard anything about Rosmerta recently. She hoped she was okay.
A feeling like something was wrong continued to rise through her. She was supposed to be dead. Harry couldn’t imagine the afterlife being Hogsmead, just with Three Broomsticks closed.
It was getting colder faster than she thought, her teeth starting to chatter. Her jeans and jacket weren’t much protection against the wind, and the belatedly remembered warming charm didn’t help when the chill had already settled inside her.
Harry saw the Hog’s Head before she even heard it, surprised to find it open. Surely Aberforth Dumbledore had more important things to do right now than run a pub. Or had it already been days? Had she really been lying there, unconscious? It didn’t feel as though much time had passed at all.
She stepped cautiously into the pub. It was blessedly warm and not too overcrowded. Sketchy individuals wrapped in black robes stared into the distance. A group of disheveled witches and wizards clutched their pints, laughing.
Harry slid onto the barstool, torn between wanting Aberforth to recognize her and tell her what had happened, and hoping he wouldn’t acknowledge her at all. There was no one at the counter yet. On the other side of the bar lay a copy of the Daily Prophet. She rose on tiptoe and snatched it toward her, hoping it might tell her what had happened after the battle. Had they won? Hermione and Ron would know. Surely someone had managed to kill Voldemort now that he was vulnerable.
St. Mungo’s had been attacked. Harry blinked. She leafed through the pages. Sirius Black arrested proclaimed a title on the second page. What?
SIRIUS BLACK ARRESTED FOR BREACHING SECRECY
Sirius Black, widely regarded as the presumed heir to the ancient and affluent Black fortune, was taken into custody late last night after performing magic in the heart of Muggle London. Black maintains that he acted in defence of a Squibs’ Society under attack by unknown assailants on April 12.
Ministry sources confirm that the Auror Office has yet to apprehend the perpetrators. Two individuals were injured in the incident; one has been confirmed dead.
“Wait, April 12?” Harry turned back to the first page, stared at the date, and then thumped her forehead on the bar top and groaned.
No.
That wasn’t happening to her.
“I’m not serving kids alcohol,” said a familiar rough voice. Harry looked up to see Mr. Dumbledore push a Buttlebeer towards her. She scrambled for her pockets to pay.
“I’m almost eighteen,” she muttered, taking the bottle anyway. God knew she didn’t need to get drunk on top of everything else.
Harry stared at the bottles behind the counter, sipping her drink, when someone else joined her. She almost toppled from the barstool when Professor Trelawney, smelling of overly sweet wine and wearing her myriad jingling bracelets, ordered her infamous sherry.
Harry was starting to casually slink away into the corner, when the professor turned her head to her.
“A word of warning, traveller, if I may,” she said in that theatrically trembling voice of hers, Harry’s startled expression comical in her glasses. “I am compelled to tell you that a great danger has loomed over you this evening.”
No shit was on the tip of Harry’s tongue but she managed to swallow it. “Good evening, erm, Madam Trelawney?” She couldn’t imagine addressing her as Miss, and she was pretty sure Trelawney wasn’t actually married.
“You are aware of who I am?” Trelawney’s eyes gleamed at that, self-satisfied, like a cat enjoying a sunny spot. It didn’t last wrong. “Would it be… the sacred post of Divination that calls you here as well?”
“The sacred post of…” Harry paled. The interview! The prophecy! It must be the day that Snape overheard it, exactly that day.
She had to do something. She had to lure Trelawney out and hide her in the bushes.
Mr. Dumbledore put the sherry on the table.
“Oh no,” rambled Harry. “But you are quite famous, in certain cir-, well, I’ve heard a lot about you, please, allow me to buy you a drink!”
The bartender looked at her, sighed deeply, as if praying for strength, and shifted his gaze to Trelawney who positively beamed. “Of course, my dear! Abe, a bottle of Amontillado from 1958 would do nicely,” she announced, bracelets jingling as she gesticulated.
‘Abe’ didn’t look overly happy with her decision but went to the back room. Harry knew that alcohol was supposed to be more expensive - and supposedly better - with age. He returned with an amber bottle with faded gold letters that look surprisingly non-magical to Harry.
Mr. Dumbelore didn’t put it on the table top right away, even though Trelawney was practically rubbing her hands in anticipation. She seemed to have forgotten about the upcoming interview.
“Ten galleons,” he said to Harry, who blushed and scrambled for her Gringotts pouch, hoping she had enough. It wasn’t like she had a lot to spend it on, especially with the last year on the run.
She put the coins on the table and looked Mr. Dumbledore in the eye. He grumbled something about teenagers with more money than sense and let them have the bottle.
“I’ve seen in my crystal ball what other treasure you are hiding,” Trelawney shout-whispered to him before turning back to her generous patron. “I’ve inherited it from my great-great-grandmother, have you heard of her as well?”
Harry nodded with as much enthusiasm as she could master. “Yes, Cassandra Trelawney. A Seer.” The depth of her own knowledge ended there. She regretted not paying closer attention in Third Year, but apparently it was enough for the professor to continue recounting everything worth mentioning about her ancestor.
About many of her ancestors.
Enough of her ancestors, that they finished the terribly-tasting bottle, and started on cheaper, worse-tasting, sherry by the glass, although still paid out of her pocket, Harry felt like she was balancing a cup in the shape of her head, careful not to spill it. The world itself swayed. Trelawney was giggling, giggling, thanks to Harry's effort having drunk a better share of the alcohol. She was trying to be subtle but, judging by Mr. Dumbledore’s unimpressed stare, her angle was obvious enough to sober witnesses.
The professor was saying something about how she was an actual Seer, thank you, and deserved recognition, instead of having to slave in Scotland winter nine months out of the year.
Harry gave a rambling agreement, lending her full support to Professor Trelawney’s wish for sunshine, warmer waters, and increased prosperity. To her horror, she hiccuped twice mid-speech.
Somehow, they were hugging, well, Trelawney was hugging her on the front steps of Hog’s Head, and then the seer was off, swaying and singing to the music only she could hear. To Harry, it sounded suspiciously like All I Have to Do Is Dream - a song that Aunt Petunia hated, always turning the radio to another station.
Right. Somehow, dying meant getting drunk with your professor and ruining her job chances before she could even interview.
Harry shook her head and the world swayed. She pulled a bezoar from her pocket and hoped that it worked against alcohol poisoning as well.
She stumbled back inside on trembling legs, only to collide with someone very tall.
“Oh, sorry, I…” Harry froze. It was Professor Dumbledore, coming down from the inn stairs into the main room. He was also supposed to be dead and was currently alive in this strange Wonderland.
The interview. Right. Her head throbbed. What if Trelawney woke up tomorrow and decided that Scottish winters sounded fine after all?
“Headmaster Dumbledore. My third eye told me I should meet you here, for an interview. Erm, today,” she said, failing miserably to imitate Trelawney’s drawl.
He looked momentarily taken aback but smiled obligingly. “Did it happen to mention which position this interview might be for, my dear?”
“Divination, sir.” She shouldn’t have said sir. She probably smelled strongly of sherry.
Harry waited, expecting rejection.
“Well, let’s go upstairs and have ourselves an interview, then,” said Professor Dumbledore instead. “I was just informed that my awaited candidate would be unavailable this evening.”
She followed him, trying not to blush, trying to remember what the Divination curriculum even consisted of. Hell, she at least had actual knowledge of the future. She was kind of qualified.
The interview, predictably, went terribly.
She struggled to recall most of the lessons, stumbled over what her favorite medium was, and ended up saying she had dreams of the future and current events, like when someone was in danger. She was so hopeless at keeping up the conversation about Divination that Dumbledore eventually threw in questions about boggarts and werewolves, of all things.
In other words, Harry was not expecting the owl that arrived shortly afterward, bearing a letter accepting her as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for the upcoming year.