Winifred had been trying so hard this school year to get better grades. She had started to actually study, do her homework, and practice her spells. She was able to cast a lot of third year spells now on her first try! That was super amazing! But the last few weeks, after Zel had broken up with her, it had been harder to focus and keep up with things. She had been convinced it was some kind of April Fool's Day joke... but it hadn't been. And she'd been really upset about the whole thing. Winnie had really liked Zel. He was so nice and a good boyfriend and didn't think she was super weird or anything and was always sweet to her. Until he dumped her.

She had moped for a couple of weeks. Her Spring Break had been ruined. (Of course, her Uncle Archer had been happy about things and given her the whole "more fish in the sea" speech and told her she didn't boys anyway. But it hadn't helped.)

But it was time to get over it and move on and get back to work. She had an essay due in History of Magic the following day- one she hadn't even started- so she headed for the library after dinner to get to work on it. History was so boring but she needed to do her best to keep her marks above a failing grade.

After finding the books she needed, Winnie saw Juni sitting at a table working on homework of her own. She plopped down next to her and offered a smile. They'd drifted apart a little when she had been dating Zel- Juni hated werewolves- but now that she and Zel were no longer a thing they'd been talking a lot more. "I can't believe I haven't even started this stupid essay," she said. "I'm going to get such an awful grade on it doing it last minute. And I mean, I get awful grades anyway, but I've been trying to do better. That counts for something, doesn't it?"

Juni was glad to have Winnie back, but she couldn’t help but think that her friend’s decision to date a werewolf was not the brightest. To be fair, Winifred didn’t make a lot of bright decisions. Even when advised by people who obviously knew what they were talking about. The Ravenclaw so hoped that Winnie wouldn’t try to get back with Zel, but part of her suspected that she was going to try to win him back somehow. Ugh.

She was focused on the most recent Ancient Runes assignment, and her parchment was covered in all sorts of circles and angular symbols.

When Winnie sat next to her, Juni examined the books she carried. History.

“Wait, you haven’t started the essay yet?” She couldn’t even act surprised. “Winnie. You need to stop procrastinating or you’ll fail!”  Juni realized that could have sounded mean. “But, you’re trying. That’s good.” That’s more than she had come to expect from her friend. “Try, harder?”

Winifred groaned loudly at Juni. "I know, I know. I'm starting late. My mistake. Don't remind me." She spread out the books in different piles, making sure to leave Juni enough room at the table, then emptied her bag of ink, parchment, and quills. "Besides, I'm sure I am not the only person who hasn't started their History homework." Lots of kids put stuff off. At least she putting forth some effort into trying.

"I've just been distracted and depressed and haven't felt like working. But finals are soon and fifth year is super important so I have to suck it up and be mature and do my homework. Whether I feel like it or not." She most definitely did not. But she opened one of the books and flipped to the index, finding the pages she needed about the specific goblin rebellion she was assigned to write about. "It would help if goblin rebellions weren't so boring. It's the same stuff every time! Goblins want to be equal. Wizards won't let them. Blah blah blah death gore blah blah blah magic."

Winifred opened a few more books to the right pages, then titled her parchment and put her name on it. "I've gotten most everything else done though?" she offered. "I mean, I practiced my wand work and did my Herbology and Potions already so that's something. I can't wait for OWLs to be over so I can drop all the classes I have no use for." If she even passed enough of her OWLs to move on to her sixth and seventh years. "I don't see why I have to do all of this stuff anyway. I have a gift. How is history of magic or potions or herbology or defense going to help me with being a seer?" she asked.

"I'm going to be like, a great DIVINER and tell fortunes and have people come to me to want know their FUTURES. That's not something I need all his stupid stuff for. Especially not knowledge on goblin rebellions. Blugh." Winnie scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue. "Gross."

Distracted and depressed. Juni understood why Winnie felt that way, but in a way she felt like her friend had brought it on herself. What did she expect by dating a werewolf? Something was bound to happen, and if Winnie had any shred of intelligence or foresight she would have broken up with him. But that wasn’t the case. Instead, her heart had been broken by  Trumble. Who knew he had it in him?

She patted Winnie on the back in a way that was supposed to be comforting. Then her friend went on about her homework. Goblin rebellions actually were interesting to Juni, though she was not sure what her position was regarding them.

Then Winnie actually impressed her. “You got your other homework done?!” The Hufflepuff really was trying then. “That’s great!” 

Annnnd there it was. Winifred brought attention ribght back to being a seer. Juni was happy for her, if not a bit jealous. Seers were cool, and she and her father did put weight into Divination. More so than some other wizards did, anyway.

“Okay,you great diviner.” Juni straightened up. “Tell me my future. Show me your divining powers.”

Winnie nodded enthusiastically. "I did! I've been trying awfully hard. Fifth year is coming up and if I want to stay at Hogwarts I'll have to do better than I have. I mean, I don't want to do so badly on my OWLs that they kick me out of school! Right now the only thing I'd manage to do well enough to NEWT in is Muggle Studies and Divination- and that's hardly good enough to stay at Hogwarts after my OWLs, is it?" She sighed a little, disappointed. Some of her other grades had been slowly and agonizingly brought up to Acceptable level, but not every professor considered that good enough for NEWT level classes.

She perked up even more when Juni asked about her future. "Well, I can't always do it on demand you know." Which meant that Winifred could really never do it on demand. Apart from using things like tea leaves and tarot cards. "But I'll think on it and see if anything comes to me."

"My inner eye is all clouded right now," Winnie carried on. "You have to be able to focus and have a clear mind to divine on demand. And I'm all distracted by this stupid goblin essay." And she didn't want to make a fool of herself by having her abilities not cooperate as well as she would want them to. "I can't believe you've already gotten it done. It's so boring." Boring was apparently the word of the day.

"You think if I only, you know, put half effort into it that I could manage to at least get an Acceptable on it? I'd like to just get it done as soon as possible so I can do something more fun with my time than sit in the library with books. You Ravenclaws are weird. I don't get how you like this kind of stuff."

 “I don’t think they’ll kick you out of school if you do badly on your OWLs.” Juni replied, though it could be that they would hold her back a year until her grades were satisfactory. Winnie had never been very book-smart, but at least she was finally putting effort into raising her grades. That was more than Juni would have ever expected from her.  She was not proud of Winnie, as much as she was relieved.

“Your inner eye is clouded.” Juni repeated dully, raising an eyebrow. “Is that so? What does that mean, that you need to use tools or something?” She did have some tarot cards in her bag, leftover from her third year. She hadn’t done well in Divination, which was why she was no longer taking it. It was unfortunate—her grandma was a seer and it seemed that Juni did not inherit her abilities. It was disappointing, but at least she wasn’t the only one who didn’t inherit the powers. Her dad and her uncles were very firmly, not seers.

“Of course I already got it done. I don’t procrastinate! It allows me to do the things I want to do, without worrying about a deadline.” She sighed, “No, don’t put half-effort into it. You’ll probably get a T. Just… Put your full effort into it. Even if it’s boring.”

"But don't you have to have a minimum number of NEWTs?" Winifred asked. "Maybe I can just leave school when I turn seventeen. I don't know. I mean, classes just aren't my thing. Even when I try really hard I don't always pass. And that's really disappointing. I'm still not up to par with fourth year spells, even with all the work I've put in!" But she hadn't stopped to consider the fact she was playing catch up for three years worth of a shoddy wand and zero effort.

Winifred shrugged. "I mean... It means I can't always just have visions or know things? Like it comes and goes. I have a lot of dreams that happen. But yeah, I'm better with tools. I'm really good with tarot cards, now that I know how to do it right. I got a lot of books about it. And sometimes I can actually see stuff in the crystal balls. And tealeaves are pretty good too. I don't know how the gift works, really," Winnie told her. "I'm still new to it and stuff. Thought Librarian Morgan was just being mean to me when he told me what happened. That he was playing some kind of cruel joke. I don't think he likes me much... But he's always helpful when I need books for studying and I don't know what to get."

"But since I've been stressed and depressed my readings aren't as accurate. You have to clear your mind to open your inner eye. I don't know how to explain it." Mostly because she was regurgitating information she had read in a book. Winnie was a seer, and did have a genuine gift for divination, but she didn't understand anything about it.

She groaned. "Full effort? Ugh. I don't want to. I wish I had enough money to just pay someone to write it for me. Maybe I can get my brother to ... help me. He's good at this stuff. Better than I am." She half-heartedly turned the page of her book. "You'd think history would be more exciting. Muggle tv has a channel with history stuff and its FASCINATING."

“If you leave school when you’re seventeen, all your hard work will be for nothing.” Juni frowned, “And besides, you’ve only been working hard recently. It’s going to take a long time for you to catch up. That’s what happens when you’re lazy and procrastinate. It’s all about getting your priorities straight.”  Juni didn’t intend to sound mean, but she had never been the type to bite her tongue. “Right now your priorities are your grades. That’s good. But that was never a thing in the past. Ever. And now you’re trying to climb out of the hole that you dug for yourself.”

Juni gave Winifred a sympathetic look. “Things are hard right now but if you keep working the way you are, then they’ll get easier.” She rested her hand on Winnie’s arm. “You were too good for Zel anyway. You deserve better.” 

She cleared her throat, “I’ll help you with the essay, if you have any questions. Sometimes it’s more interesting to hear people talk about  it instead of reading it.” Juni looked at Winnie’s book, “Have you tried reading the text out loud in funny voices?” She had no idea if that would actually work for anybody, but it sounded like a Winnie thing to do.

Though… She was curious what Winnie would see if Juni pulled out tarot cards.  Juni picked up her bag and began to rummage through it, though her ears were open to whatever her friend would say.

Winfred sighed. "I know. And I'm going to keep trying. I want to graduate. My dad would be so proud. He blames himself all the time for my bad grades. He thinks because he's a squib is why I'm so bad at magic. And my wand didn't help. I had that weird core. It was a diricawl feather. You know those birds like appear and disappear? Someone told me one time that maybe my wand core was doing that and why it was making everything so unpredictable." Winifred shrugged. "But my new wand seems a lot better! And my grades are like, not my biggest priority, but I'm trying!"

The harshness was the truth. And normally Juni's words would make Winifred cry. But after working so hard this year she'd heard something similar from more than one of the people who had tutored her. "Maybe next year you can help me out some with my wand work if we have classes together?" Winnie asked. "Maybe I'll be good enough by then to be hit or miss instead of constantly miss." She had to be the only student in history to have "average" as a goal.

"I don't know what to write about," Winnie lamented. "Like I want to find something weird or interesting about the goblin stuff to focus on? Instead of just dates and battles and boringness. Do you know anything like that?" Winnie asked. "You know, like weird battle stories. I could maybe read about that and write something that's not dreadfully awful.

Juni thought for a bit. She needed to think of a goblin battle that would interest even Winnie. And that was a challenge. She dropped her bag and her box of tarot cards fell out.  “I’ll be right back.” She said slowly, before getting out of her seat, running through the aisles and grabbing a book for Winifred to examine. She carried it back to the table, cheeks flushed. It made her freckles stand out even more than usual.

She opened the book--  a history text that focused on goblin battles and plights from 1800-1850. It wasn’t very common, but she had picked it up for some fun reading awhile back. She had almost used a specific event in her essay, but decided to focus on more current issues regarding goblins and wands.

“Why don’t you write about the Buckingham Siege? You know, that one time that goblins held Queen Victoria hostage. It was a few years after her coronation…  1841 I believe. It was the biggest disaster that the obliviators ever had to deal with.”

Winifred watched as Juni got out of her seat, and ran back through the stacks. "BETTER NOT LET MR. MORGAN CATCH YOU RUNNING!" she called out... Even though being loud was equally against the rules. When Juni returned, she set a book down and opened it up.

"The goblins HELD THE QUEEN HOSTAGE?" Winifred was in awe. "Can they do that? How'd they do that?" That definitely got her attention. Winnie grabbed the book from Juni. "That sounds neat! See, why can't we learn about that kind of stuff in class?" she asked. Not that she paid enough attention in her classes to always hear the interesting bits. She had a habit of tuning out the stuff that bored her- and forgetting to tune back in.

"That's perfect, Juni! You are the best!" She began to scan the page and make note on her parchment. It was easier for Winnie to write down stuff and then organize it into an essay. Otherwise she forgot things or mixed stuff up. "I can't imagine how hard it is to be an obliviator..."

"I'll have to check this out so I can work on my essay in the common room tonight. See, with this I actually want to take my time and work on it. Because it's interesting. "

She didn’t care that she ran in the library.That rule made no sense to her anyway. Running made everything faster. Besides, she had been excited that she thought of something that would potentially interest Winnie. “Obviosly, they could hold the queen hostage if the managed to do it once.” Juni sat down next to the Hufflepuff and tried to stuff the contents of her bag back where they belonged. She never emptied the poor thing, so it was mostly full of old assignments and junk.

“Read the text and find out how they did it!”  Juni replied, “We touched on it a little bit last year but we haven’t had any lectures about it since.” The turnover rate was so high in all of the teaching positions that Juni was surprised that there was any sort of consistency in the quality of their education.

“My dad says that being an obliviator is easy, once you know what you’re doing.” Juni picked up her tarot cards. “When you’re done, you should do a reading for me.” She was curious about what would turn up—though if there was any sort of bad omen she’d probably be sending plenty of panicked letters to her father.

"I can't imagine someone holding the queen hostage and people not remembering and obliviators doing it. I mean, imagine if they did it now!" Winnie was excited. Something better to write about than anything else she had come across.

But her attention was entirely diverted when Juni produced tarot cards and asked her to read them. "Ooh! Yes. I'd love to." She took the cards and shuffled them, handed her friend the deck. "I'm going to do a more broad reading," she said. "Cut the cards." After Juni cut the cards, Winnie spread them out in front of her. For dramatic effect she grew quiet and let her hands hover above the cards for a while, making a quiet humming sound. "Pick six cards," she said to Juni.

After Juni picked her cards, Winnie looked at the first one. "This one represents you- how you feel about yourself right now. You picked The Fool. This indicates that you want to change your life in some way, that you want a new direction- or adventure. You don't want to stay where you are- but you don't know where you want to go, either. But the fool means it is time for optimism and major decisions. Making the leap to change things..." She flipped the second card. "This is The Chariot. This is what you want the most right now. And that is success. You're successful, assertive, and if you haven't gotten all the success you want- you're going to get it. This one also shows that it's time for movement and change."

The third card was flipped. "This is your fears. Things you're scared of. And it's Temperance. That means that you're afraid that the harmony and peace you've had isn't going to last. That you're scared a rival is going to cause conflict or outshine you. But it also means any fights you have will be short lived."

"The fourth card is what's going for you. And this card is... The Devil. That means there's a possibility of permanence. But you need to question your motives, because the Devil represents temptation and addiction and a desire to be controlling. And if you aren't feeling sincere about things in your life- the cards are saying, yet again, that now is a good time to make changes in your life."  She laid her hand on the back of the fifth card. "This card is what's going against you- or what's standing in your way in your life right now." When Winnie flipped the card over, she wasn't surprised to see Death on the front of the card. "This shows that you're feeling anxiety and fear and turmoil. And that it's time to kick life in the butt. And that the bad things that you might have been experiencing have come to an end. And- it's another card that says it's time for brand new beginnings."

Winnie flipped over the last card and displayed the emperor. "This is the outcome- what's in your future. And it says to expect success and achievement. That now is the time to fulfill your ambitions. That you are going to win  in the end."

She grinned. "Wow, Juni. That's such a good reading! That means it's time to shake things up, because you're going to come out on top if you do. I can't think of a better way for a reading to go. Have you been thinking about making any big changes?" Winnie asked.[1]

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What if Goblins took the current queen hostage?

Juni wasn’t so sure she wanted to imagine that , but she nodded for Winnie’s sake.

She felt a fluttery giddiness in her chest when Winifred finally agreed to do a tarot reading! Although other witches and wizards were rather skeptical of divination and seers in general, Juni was not. To be fair, the Zamperias tended to take that sort of thing very seriously. Juni knew that her father was a firm believer in seers, though he did tend to question diviners who were not seers. Their readings, as he and Juni both believed, tended to be less accurate. It only made sense.

When it came to tarot, Winifred certainly seemed to know what she was talking about! It was interesting to see her actually seem competent for once.

But… Shake things up? How could she shake things up? That sounded so vague. Maybe this summer she would try new and different things. Summer break seemed like the perfect time for change. “I haven’t thought about making any big changes.” She admitted, “But nothing encourages change more than a summertime’s worth of growth, right?” Juni looked down at her cards, “Thank you Winnie. I’ll keep all this in mind.” She couldn’t wait to write a letter to her dad all about it! She had already told him that she was friends with a seer and he was happy that she was making connections with important people.

Juni didn’t have the heart to mention that said seer was someone as ridiculous as Winifred Oliver.

"What about you? Are you going to make any big changes soon?" Wasn't that common after a breakup?

"That's true! Summer is a big deal. Next year we're going to be fifth years, can you imagine that?" Winnie asked. "Fifth years and studying for OWLs. You know, you'd be a really good prefect. You think they'll pick you?" She could see Juni wearing the badge and being responsible and well liked by her house. "I'll never be. But that's okay. It's not something I really want. I'll be so busy trying to keep up with classes and get ready for my OWLs that I'd never have time for that kind of a responsibility."

"It will be kind of nice for the tournament to be over, too," Winnie said. "That's so distracting. I don't see how people with big tests can stay on top of things with that going on. It's so distracting. I'm glad I'm not old enough to be a champion or have to worry about that. I guess I should be more excited about the tournament... But mostly I don't really care. I mean, it was exciting and cool at first. But now I'm over it." She felt horrible saying that, like she wasn't supporting her school enough, but it was the truth.

"I don't know if I'll make any big changes or not," Winifred said. "I don't know yet what I'm doing this summer. Mostly I'm just trying to be more responsible and get better at classes. But I've been doing that most of the year. Next year will be the same."

"I don't know, though. I turn sixteen at the start of my fifth year. That's a pretty big deal, you know? That means I'll be nearly seventeen and nearly legal. I want to learn more about divination. Maybe I'll see if another seer or someone else who does that stuff would be willing to teach me some things over the summer. That would be a lot of fun!" Yes. Winifred just said learning something would be fun.