Skyl was drunk in exactly the right way. At this point, if he just closed his eyes and lay down for a bit, he could fall asleep.
Hagrid had been gone a long time and still hadn't returned. The charcoal in the hearth gradually cooled. Skyl fed the fire twice, but in the end he lost patience. It was nearly midnight now, and the road back to the castle would be wet and pitch-dark—he might as well stay the night in the hut. The storm outside could serve as white noise.
Fang had already eaten his fill, curled himself into a lump, and was snoring in the dog basket at the foot of the bed. Skyl swayed as he lay down. Hagrid's bed looked a bit cramped for a half-giant's frame, but for an ordinary human it was basically a shared sleeping platform.
He drifted in and out for who knew how long. The rain had stopped, the stars had come out, and the wind still brushed lightly. Skyl was startled awake by a few sharp barks from Fang.
He didn't open his eyes.
The barking quieted quickly. Someone squeezed into the hut, then stopped by the door and spoke to someone outside.
"…No. You can't take a student away. Firenze, there's nothing to discuss."
A different voice answered from outside. "Hagrid, this is for his safety."
"Hogwarts will protect every student."
"Then you need to warn him. From now on, he mustn't come into the forest again."
"…Sigh. Thanks for coming all the way. I'll tell Professor Dumbledore about this."
The person outside left. The footsteps sounded like hooves—clip-clop, clip-clop—trampling the rain-softened mud as they went.
Hagrid turned around. He saw Skyl sitting up on the bed, his eyes dimly shining in the dark.
"Who was that?" Skyl asked, his voice still a little hoarse.
"A friend," Hagrid said, hesitating. "Listen, Skyl… something happened, and I hope you won't take it the wrong way. From now on, try not to go near the Forbidden Forest."
"That friend of yours was a centaur?"
Hagrid shook out his beaver fur and hung it on the coat hook, muttering, "Yeah. They don't really like wizards. Firenze is… special, for a centaur. But you need to be careful of one of them—Bane. He was planning to come find you tonight."
"Let them come," Skyl said, amused. "What do I have to be afraid of? Are they trying to deal with me?"
"Hard to say. Centaurs are always doing divinations, saying a bunch of airy-fairy things."
Skyl rubbed his temple. "They're not going to try to kill me, are they?"
"How could they?" Hagrid jumped. "Centaurs won't hurt young wizards. That's part of the agreement with the school. It's just that they want you to…" His words stuck there, and he couldn't go on.
"Hagrid, if you won't tell me what's really going on, then we can't even have this conversation."
"Skyl, just sleep here tonight and leave first thing in the morning," Hagrid said, still refusing to explain.
It wasn't a pleasant night. Skyl chose to take his leave of Hagrid and sleep in the Tower of Tomes instead.
For the next few days, he really didn't go to the Forbidden Forest. He stayed in the castle and revised other subjects step by step, and he almost forgot about the centaur visit in the middle of the night.
Before he knew it, June arrived. Skyl began studying Divination, suspecting that his inaccurate divinations and his inability to dream came from the same cause. In all occult disciplines, dreams and divination were strongly linked. If he was rejected by dreams, then naturally he couldn't probe deeply into the future.
Even if he couldn't dream himself, he could try interpreting other people's dreams—another way to train divination skill. So whenever Skyl had time, he'd chat people up in the common room. This made a lot of girls delighted.
But since his results were always disappointing, everyone quickly agreed on one thing: Skyl was a terrible seer.
"Mate… maybe you're just not cut out for this," a lot of boys said sympathetically—after Skyl predicted for the seventh time that someone's parents had died horribly years ago. That didn't even make sense. His divinations were that bizarre. He also divined that a certain young witch had been, in a past life, the daughter of a wealthy businessman in the Victorian era, and that a certain wizard would live his entire life in the Amazon rainforest, covered in magical-creature tattoos.
Because he knew he was lacking in this area, yet refused to accept failure, Skyl decided to consult a professional.
The Divination professor was Trelawney, a witch who dressed in bizarre, eccentric layers. When she saw Skyl, she looked shocked. "Oh, my dear child—quickly, sit down. Let me have a good look at you."
Skyl had seen many fanfics describe Professor Trelawney: a witch with the gift of a true Seer. Usually unreliable, but the prophecies she blurted out by accident always came true.
Trelawney stared at Skyl's palm for a long time, then suddenly said, "You've never attended my class, have you?"
Caught skipping, Skyl's face heated. "Sorry, Professor." He admitted the mistake, and absolutely did not repent.
Trelawney read his palm and said he was a wanderer with no home. Then she brought out a teacup, had Skyl drink it, and told him to examine the leaves at the bottom.
"Mm, I see…" she murmured. "It looks like the sun, surrounded by many stars. But these stars are panicked—coerced by the sun…"
Skyl quietly leaned in. All he saw were a few blotches. Going by the textbook's reference shapes, he'd rather call it a unicycle—an omen of travel.
"My dear, you must be careful. Use your gift cautiously, or you will become very, very… lonely."
"I think everyone is lonely, in the end," Skyl said.
Trelawney rotated the cup again. She said she saw a cloud of mist, meaning Skyl was entangled in sorrow. "Is the pressure too great? Child… perhaps you need a good night's sleep."
Sleeping couldn't solve anything. If Skyl was going to fail, he would still fail. That kind of feeling had become rare ever since he obtained the Tower of Tomes. Fortunately, Skyl was good at regulating himself. He allowed himself to fail—and that, in turn, made people like him more.
Because whenever Skyl divined, he always spun it into a story. He described the "prophecy" so vividly that even though everyone knew it would never happen, they still found it fun. They'd think: oh—if that were real, maybe my life would turn out completely differently.
With the exams looming, Skyl decided he should give up on Divination and Arithmancy—meaning: aim for a pass, and give up on excellence.
On the morning of June 9, thick fog rolled in over the Black Lake. As usual, Skyl went there for a morning run. During the time he'd been missing, many students had kept up the habit. But with finals approaching and stress rising, the once-massive jogging crowd had become sparse and quiet.
In the fog, Skyl lost sight of his companions. Then he heard a rapid pounding of hooves, so sudden it made him suspect he'd stumbled into some ancient battlefield.
A moment later, a group of powerful centaurs burst through the fog and surrounded him.
"What do you want?" Skyl stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a towel, and called out to the centaur at the front.
"Come with us, human." The centaur who spoke was covered in red hair, like a living blaze. "The stars have marked you. This trouble must be resolved."
"This is how you invite a guest?" Skyl hung the towel back around his neck. "Since you aren't carrying weapons, I'll let it slide this time. Talk. What trouble needs resolving?"
The centaurs exchanged looks, then told him the stars had foretold it: this world would fall into enormous chaos two years from now—and both the source of that chaos, and the chance to resolve it, pointed straight at this fifth-year transfer student.
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