The first class of the new term was Divination.
The professor teaching it was Professor Sybill Trelawney, and just like in the films, one look at the woman was enough for Kate to decide she was more than a little unhinged.
Most of this professor's family had been famous Seers, but by her generation the gift seemed to have thinned out. She drifted about in a permanent daze, and the prophecies she produced weren't worth much.
And yet it was this very woman who had made the prophecy that shaped Harry's entire life — and it had come true, every word of it.
So really, only the predictions she made when the gift surfaced on its own were worth trusting. The rest of the time, well...
Might as well sit in the classroom, pick up a bit of Divination theory, and farm the credits.
Kate kept her attitude perfectly respectable and paid reasonable attention, though the parade of dubious prophecies Professor Trelawney delivered during the lesson had her snarking nonstop behind a straight face.
It wasn't until Trelawney handed Harry an omen of death that Kate's mouth curved before she could stop it.
That one small smile pulled Trelawney's attention straight off Harry and fixed it on her.
"My dear, let me see." Trelawney swept over in quick strides and took the teacup out of her hands — the standard classroom prop, used for reading tea leaves.
Kate handed it over obediently and watched her rotate the cup anticlockwise.
"A dragon shape... my dear, I must say, this cup shows a very fine future indeed. Everything you wish for will come to you."
She lifted her head and stared at Kate for a while through those thick-lensed glasses, then said with something like delight, "Wonderful. Yours is the brightest aura I have ever seen around a person. Child, have you considered becoming my student?"
Ah. That was—
Kate, who had only meant to coast through Divination, went blank for a second, then waved a hand awkwardly. "Professor, I already have a Teacher."
"What a pity. Had you studied Divination, you would surely have become a great Seer." Trelawney shook her head regretfully, and as she turned away she found Hermione staring straight at her.
She paused, glanced back at Kate, and looked between the two girls for a long moment before shaking her head. "How singular. Two people whose Inner Eyes sit at absolute opposite extremes—"
Hermione had already been furious about the prophecy that Harry was going to die, and hearing this on top of it brought her to her feet. "Professor, what exactly do you mean by that?"
Trelawney studied Hermione, and only after a pause did she turn away. "That will be all for today's lesson."
The students handed their teacups back without a word and gathered up their books.
Trelawney's compliment clearly interested them far less than Harry's death sentence.
Still, somebody did care about that unfinished sentence.
"What was that supposed to mean?" Hermione demanded, hugging her books all the way down the stairs. "She said you and I were two extremes, and then she didn't even finish!"
She didn't believe a word of Trelawney's so-called prophecies, but where she and Kate were concerned, Hermione was itching to know.
"She probably just noticed how close we are," was the best comfort Kate could offer. "I don't believe any of it either. Don't take it to heart."
Hermione pressed her lips together, and the hand hooked around Kate's arm tightened a little.
They hurried into the Transfiguration classroom just in time. Professor McGonagall's lesson that day was on Animagi.
Kate listened closely to this one. She'd long since learned from various books how an Animagus was made, but McGonagall was a master of Transfiguration in her own right, and hearing it from her always clarified things.
After lunch came Care of Magical Creatures.
They filed down toward Hagrid's hut one after another, and found a mild, scholarly-looking middle-aged man standing beside him.
"Everyone, I'm David Scamander, and I'll be teaching your Care of Magical Creatures class this year."
There was no denying it — David looked a good deal like Newt, and some students had already guessed from the surname what his connection was to that legendary master of magical creatures.
With him holding the ground, not even the Slytherins made a move to disrupt the class.
"First, we'll need to open our textbooks... ah, it seems you don't quite know how to tame them yet."
David searched the crowd for a moment before singling Kate out. "Look here — Student Shafiq has done it correctly. I'd guess you stroked your finger along the spine to soothe it. Am I right?"
They knew each other perfectly well, and here they were, playing strangers.
Kate managed a small nod, and then heard him award her five points.
Damn it. Was Care of Magical Creatures going to be her main source of house points this year?
"You earned that fair and square," Hermione whispered beside her. "You're Mr. Newt's apprentice!"
Apart from David himself, who here knew more about magical creatures than she did?
Kate produced a thin smile. True enough, but still...
While the two of them were murmuring, Hagrid led out the subject of the day's lesson.
A Hippogriff.
"For a first lesson, I ought to have introduced you to smaller creatures — Nifflers, perhaps, or fairies.
"But our teaching assistant suggested that the first lesson should make you fall in love with this subject right away, so he recommended this one to me."
David walked to its side. "His name is Buckbeak, and as you can see, he's a Hippogriff. My grandmother once bred these creatures for a living."
From there he began working his way around Buckbeak, explaining as he went.
Say what you liked — the lesson was actually going well.
With David keeping order, Hagrid, as the assistant, naturally wasn't about to let the creature get too familiar with any of the students.
Even at the end, when quite a few students had been won over by David's careful explanations and wanted to approach Buckbeak, he turned them down.
"As I said, following the proper teaching order, it isn't yet time for you to handle a medium-sized creature like Buckbeak. I'm responsible for your safety."
As he spoke, his eyes drifted back to Kate.
Sensing what was coming, Kate took an instinctive step backward — and got called on anyway.
"Shafiq, if you go back any further you'll fall over," David said with a mild smile. "Come along, give your classmates a demonstration."
So the points hadn't been free after all. She had to go up and perform.
Kate could already picture the tragedy of the coming year, held up as the model student in every Care of Magical Creatures lesson.
She wailed about it inwardly, but she still walked over to Buckbeak of her own accord and glanced back at David.
Whatever else, a Senior Brother's face had to be given its due.
"Begin," David said, nodding with a smile.
Kate was quiet for a moment. She badly wanted to ask whether Buckbeak was female, but on reflection she decided to just follow the procedure.
First came the eye contact.
She met Buckbeak's orange eyes, and barely a few seconds had passed before the thing walked straight up to her and started rubbing its feathery head affectionately against hers.
She'd known this would happen...
Kate wrestled the head back around and hissed at it under her breath, "Could you please follow the procedure!"
Under a field of astonished stares, the Hippogriff that David had described as immensely proud backed up two aggrieved steps.
Its orange eyes were even starting to well up.
"Oh, good grief." Hagrid, standing to one side, was frankly dumbfounded. Taming Buckbeak had gone nothing like this for him.
David looked a touch helpless himself. He had always known that this little apprentice of his father's was extraordinarily beloved by magical creatures, and he'd seen her getting along splendidly with his father's animals.
But he hadn't expected her affinity to run so high that a Buckbeak who'd never laid eyes on her before would behave like this.
"Ahem! Let's continue!" Kate coughed and pressed on with the procedure herself.
Next came the bow.
She bowed lightly to Buckbeak — and watched Buckbeak bend its knees and lower its head in return, then push its head forward on its own, begging to be petted.
Kate: ...
You're a Hippogriff. Could you show a little backbone?
No. He could not.
Speechless, she reached out and ruffled its head a few times, then stepped back. "Professor, that's probably enough?"
"Very well." David laughed helplessly for a moment, then announced that Kate had successfully earned Buckbeak's trust.
And before the lesson ended, he threw another ten points her way.
By dinner, Malfoy was still leading the discussion of her exploits in class.
"Even magical creatures adore you, Shafiq. Looks like you're quite the popular one."
Kate ate her steak in silence and said nothing.
"No answer? Still thinking about that winged beast of yours, I suppose. Why don't you go ask Professor Scamander to give him to you as a present?"
Kate took a sip of juice and didn't make a sound.
"What? Am I wrong?" Malfoy was enjoying herself now, and started drifting.
"Or is it that you just enjoy having everyone's eyes on you? Maybe you're hoping someone will adore you the way that animal does?"
There was a sharp clack as Kate set her knife and fork down flat on the table, face cold, brows drawn, and lifted her eyes to stare at her.
That stare made Malfoy's body give an involuntary jolt, but with this many people watching she still wanted a few more defiant words — and then Kate simply got up and walked out, expression thunderous.
"Ka—" She was halfway out of her seat before she remembered where they were, and sat back down with her teeth clenched.
Kate knew perfectly well Malfoy only said such things to keep up the act of being her rival in front of outsiders. But the words had landed on something real, and it was hard to keep her mood steady.
Since last year, one question had never stopped nagging at her: who, in the end, would she fall in love with?
Once she ruled out everyone in her immediate circle, there were only one or two candidates left.
Malfoy, for instance.
After all, up to now Malfoy was the only one who had shown her any regard that went beyond friendship.
It wasn't that Malfoy was a poor choice. It was that whoever it turned out to be, dating her before she was truly safe meant dragging that person into danger.
And this particular person was a main-plot character. Boy or girl, she was certain to be swept into the war that was coming.
Bad mood. Time to go eat some XP.
At the castle entrance she looked up at the Dementors drifting across the sky, and her eyes narrowed.
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