Emaline takes the final sip of her tea, nearly spitting it back out when a tea leaf hits the back of her throat.

"Done," she coughs, sliding the cup over to her best friend.

"Took you long enough," Cynthia huffs, eagerly peering inside.

"It's not my fault it tasted bad!"

"You're the one who made it," she counters. "Besides, your signs are more accurate if you actually drink the tea instead of pouring it out."

The two girls are seated on a rug in front of the roaring fire in the middle of the Gryffindor common room, one sort of doing her homework while the other does the bare minimum to help.

Cynthia covers the cup with the palm of one hand and shakes it vigorously, followed by a variety of other complicated movements Emaline can't keep up with. Her Divination assignment is to predict someone's future via method they've previously learned.

Emaline doesn't believe a person's fate can be foretold by something as silly as shapes in cups. But Cynthia does, so she's more than happy to play along to support her endeavors. She's merely glad the girl opted for tea leaves and not a crystal ball, for she most certainly would not have been able to keep a straight face if she had to watch Cynthia stare ominously into a cloudy glass.

"That's odd," she comments, her eyebrows furrowing together and piquing Emaline's interest.

"What is?"

"I've never seen a shape this clear before," she explains. "Tea leaves are usually more difficult to decipher."

Cynthia makes no movement to show Emaline, forcing her to crane her neck to see what she's talking about. In the bottom of her cup, arranged so perfectly she'd think someone did it theirself if she hadn't personally witnessed the process, the tea leaves sit in the shape of a downward pointing arrow.

"So what does this mean?"

No answer comes for several moments as Cynthia rapidly flicks through her copy of Unfogging The Future. She snaps through the pages so loudly it nearly drowns out the second-years playing a game of exploding snap only a few feet away. Emaline is beginning to worry she'll give herself a paper cut when the book stills and her finger points at a single paragraph in triumph.

"A downward pointing arrow indicates you're headed in the wrong direction, either literally or metaphorically," Cynthia reads aloud, her voice growing less confident as she realizes the symbol can't be interpreted as anything but a bad omen. "Or that you're not focused enough on the goal you're trying to achieve."

Emaline can't help but to scoff. This alleged sign couldn't be further from the truth; she's doing everything in her power to become a healer after Hogwarts, especially with her extra lessons with Madam Pomfrey every week.

"Let me hear it," she says, a smile playing on her lips. "What's your prediction?"

Cynthia frowns, not sharing in her friend's enthusiasm. "I think your relationship with Todd is destined to end badly."

Her smile falls and the situation is no longer funny. "That's a terribly mean thing to say."

"You know I'm right," Cynthia protests, meeting her eyes with a barely sympathetic gaze. She truly doesn't wish to see her get hurt, but it's also not a situation to sugarcoat. "You're using him as a distraction because your pride can't stand the possibility of Sirius being right after all these years."

Emaline shakes her head, stubbornly refusing to even register the words. A nagging voice at the back of her head tells her that Cynthia is right and the sudden rage that swells in her chest at this notion almost frightens her.

She takes a deep breath, silently counting to ten to calm herself down. She has nowhere to direct this unprecedented anger other than towards herself; she shared her emotions with her best friend and she's merely trying to prepare her for the pain she's inevitably going to put herself through.

"Sirius has nothing to do with me and Todd," Emaline finally argues, pushing herself to her feet. "Now, if you're done shaming me for decisions that make me happy, I've got somewhere to be."

"That was-"

"Uncalled for, I know," she finishes her sentence, having regretted the snarky comment as soon as it left her mouth. "I'm sorry."

Cynthia nods, accepting the apology. "Where are you off to?"

"The library."

"That's a weird way of saying the quidditch pitch."

"Am I not allowed to check out some books?"

"I have known you for seven years and you have never stepped foot in the library," Cynthia says, scooping her textbook and parchment into her arms as she stands up. "I don't think you even opened a book when everyone was studying for the O.W.L.s last year."

"Let's just say that now I have something to motivate me."

She winks and spins on her heel, hurrying to the library for the first time in her life as a Hogwarts student.

༻✧༺

Todd is utterly entranced in a book he's hunched over, drinking in every word and utterly oblivious to the rest of the world. The table he sits at is in the middle of the room and rather large, offering plenty of room for a group of students to take up half of the space only a few seats down; it isn't at all the private spot secluded from the prying eyes of others Emaline had imagined when he asked her to join him for a study date the day prior.

She peers over his shoulder to see what he's reading about, growing confused when pages discussing the history of memory-related spells and potions stare back at her.

"I thought you had an essay due over acromantulas," she whispers to make her presence known, pulling out the chair to next to him.

It scrapes across the wooden floors, causing her to cringe as the harsh noise echoes throughout the silent room. Madam Pince's head snaps up from her desk and she shushes the loud girl in lieu of a warning.

"I do," Todd agrees. He barely glances up long enough to acknowledge her presence before glueing his eyes back on the pages before him

"Am I stupid or is that a completely different subject?" Emaline questions, realizing he's not going to elaborate unless prompted.

"You're not stupid, this is just more interesting," he explains simply. "Did you know the obliviation spell was invented by a witch named Mnemone Radford?"

"I did not," she says, pulling out a piece of parchment to start on her essay over the symptoms of Dragon Pox.

If this is how her date is going to go, she might as well do something productive.

Much to Emaline's disappointment, it's exactly how the majority of the rainy afternoon passes. She works silently on her essay while Todd reads, only speaking every so often to share a fact he finds particularly interesting.

"A cure to reverse the effects of obliviate has yet to be discovered. However, in some studied cases, extreme trauma has brought back the hidden memories."

"So, technically speaking, there is a cure. You just have to be okay with a little torture."

Todd grimaces, fixating her with an odd look.

"I'm joking."

"Oh."

Cynthia's foul prediction, no matter how hard she tries to push it away, suddenly sits at the forefront of her mind and makes it nearly impossible for her to focus on anything else. The awkward silence hanging in the air does little to help, practically forcing her to ponder over the validity of her friend's words.

She and Todd hardly spoke during their Hogsmeade date and she considered it a great day; although, now that she looks back on it, the majority of their time had been spent partaking in certain scandalous activities in darkened streets and not ignoring each other as they do now.

"Listen to this," Todd murmurs, temporarily pulling her away from her worries. "Obliviate isn't always powerful enough to hide the memories of extreme breaches in the Statute of Secrecy. In fact, Newt Scamander was the first wizard to use the venom of the Swooping Evil to erase the memories of dangerous magical events from nearly the entire muggle - or No-majs, as the Americans say - population of New York in 1927. How cool is that?"

"Very cool," she hums in agreement, smiling slightly when he seems pleased by this response. "I wonder what the dangerous magical events were."

"Me too. I'll look into it when I procrastinate my Herbology assignment."

Emaline laughs quietly and turns back to her paper, truly pushing her doubts away for the time being. She decides that all couples, especially new ones, are bound to have an awkward date or two. It doesn't mean the relationship is destined to fail; they merely have to find a way through the awkward bumps they hit.