Looking around the room, there were only four students besides myself who had taken N.E.W.T.-level Divination in my year. I smiled slightly; a small class meant I'd be able to sit at a table alone and I wouldn't have to share with someone I didn't particularly like.

Professor Quinley, the Divination professor, walked swiftly into the classroom. The mousy woman surveyed the room, looking out at the room of only five students that was awaiting her.

"Just as expected, we have a small class again," she said, making the few other students glance up at her upon hearing her distinctive, nasally voice. "I don't know if that's because so many people failed or because I scared you all, but be sure that you will all drop out of this class by the end of the year."

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or become worried, because I really couldn't tell whether or not the woman was joking.

"This year, we're going to be doing the usual, only a lot more in-depth: crystal-gazing, palmistry, heptomology, cartomancy, catoptromancy, ichthyomancy, astrology, ornithomancy, tessomancy, prithomancy..."

She paused, looking at us expectantly. The other four students looked mildly terrified upon hearing all of the complex words she was using. Their eyes were widened with fright, and I probably had a similar expression on my face.

"Focus, people!" she said abruptly, snapping her fingers. "I was trying to see if you were listening. There is no such thing as prithomancy!"

I listened to the woman drone on and on about each method of Divination, wondering why I had taken this class in the first place. I liked Divination, but Professor Quinley still startled me sometimes, and being a smaller class meant she would notice me a lot more.

"Ornithomancy is the Divination method of reading omens by watching and carefully inspecting the actions of birds. We have mentioned this topic in previous years, but it is definitely on the difficult side and—I'm not going to sugar coat it—you're going to struggle with it." Suddenly, Quinley stopped talking abruptly. She walked towards me, looked me up and down, then said finally, "Beware the bespectacled one."

***

"'Beware the bespectacled one'?" James gasped, placing a hand over his heart. "Well, that's got to be me, doesn't it?" he said, grinning and fixing his glasses on his nose.

"Yes, James, oh Bespectacled One, I should definitely be terrified of you," I said, highly amused.

"Quinley is actually nuts," said Peter.

"Honestly, that woman is so scary," I replied shuddering.

"Fifty Galleons says that's you in twenty years," Sirius said to me, grinning mischievously.

"Padfoot, that's an insult. Quinley's insane," said Remus.

"Thanks Remus," I said smiling at Remus and then narrowing my eyes at Sirius.

"Bianca will have gone mad way before that," Remus continued. "I give her ten years."

"Hey!" I said, smacking his arm. "I thought you were actually defending me, but of course you weren't. Bah, with friends like these my sanity will only survive for five more years."

They chuckled, agreeing.

"OK, OK, back to the topic at hand... What is it exactly that I'm going to do?" James asked.

"Who knows?" I replied.

"You should, you're the Divination person of the group," he scoffed. "Anyway, it might not even be me. There are many blokes that wear glasses. Maybe it's one of them. Or it could be someone you haven't even met yet, that you have to beware in a few years, but not for right now."

"Right," I said disbelievingly. "Obviously you're going to do something. I don't know what it is, but you did it."

"But I didn't do it yet!"

"James, it's set in stone, so in my eyes you've already done it."

"Whatever," he huffed in mock sadness as we entered the Great Hall to eat lunch. "I'm hungry and my feelings are hurt. That is just a perfect combination, isn't it?" he said, running over to the table, grabbing a dinner roll and stuffing it into his mouth.

I looked over at the Hufflepuff table only to see a small group of younger students gathered. I craned my neck to get a better look, only to see Corey sitting right across from Ainsley, a game of Wizard's Chess set up between them.

"Huh, that's weird," I said, frowning. "I didn't know Ainsley knew how to play Wizard's Chess... or any kind of chess, for that matter... This is just like that time she crashed our Quidditch game in my backyard and made you all look like uncoordinated idiots."

I looked back at Sirius, Remus and Peter. Sirius stuck his tongue out at me childishly.

We all grabbed food from the table and went over to see how the chess game was playing out. Sirius grabbed James, who was dramatically sulking, by the collar and pulled him towards the Hufflepuff table.

"Who's winning?" Sirius asked loudly.

Nobody answered him.

I looked up just in time to see Ainsley's knight smashing Corey's castle to pieces.

Sitting right beside Ainsley, her two best friends, Emma and Isobel, both appeared extremely bored and annoyed; however, upon seeing the boys join to watch, they perked up and kept glancing over at them and batting their eyelashes. None of my four best friends took any notice to them.

"Who do you think is going to win?" Peter asked Remus.

"I say Corey," he said quietly.

"I'm going with Ainsley," said Peter.

"Ainsley, hands down," Sirius agreed.

"Nah, I'm sticking with my mate, Corey," James contradicted.

"Really, Ainsley, where'd you learn to play Wizard's Chess?" I asked her loudly. I had played the game with Corey before, but never with my sister because she had told me she didn't even know how to play.

"I dunno," she replied with a fake sweet smile, before ordering her bishop to move to the B1 square.

Between Corey's concentrated face and Ainsley's smile that showed she was so certain of herself, I really wasn't sure who was going to win. At first, I had thought that there was no way Corey wouldn't win, but then Ainsley quickly wiped out all of his pieces. Suddenly, she had his king in check.

"And... checkmate," said Ainsley. She stood up immediately and yawned as everyone gawked at her. "All right, I'm going to go take a nap. Bye, guys!"

With that, she left an absolutely bewildered Corey behind.

"Aw, Corey, don't cry," I said, wrapping my arms around my younger brother's neck.

"I'm not crying," he said seriously.

"It's OK, I thought you would win to be honest," I told him.

"I didn't know she knew how to play!"

"That little, sneaky, cheeky devil..." I chortled, patting Corey's head as I watched Emma and Isobel hurry after Ainsley. "That was just mildly suspicious."

"Well, I think it was interesting, and now I'm two Galleons richer," Sirius said, holding up two gold coins to demonstrate he had been betting with James on the winner of the game. "Shall we go to Quidditch practice now?"

"Shut up, Padfoot," said James. "I decide when we go to Quidditch practice since I'm the captain." He pointed at the badge on his chest.

"James, we're going to be late if we don't go now..." I pointed out.

"And I say we go now!" he said loudly, turning on his heel.

James, Sirius and I made our way onto the Quidditch pitch, Remus and Peter trotting at our heels. We normally dragged them along to watch our practices because they didn't have much else to do either way.

While Remus and Peter sat in the stands, James, Sirius and I went to change into our Quidditch uniforms and then walked onto the pitch, holding our broomsticks. The rest of the team—unsurprisingly—hadn't arrived yet.

"We may have a good team, but none of them are ever punctual," said James, kicking off from the ground and soaring quickly through the air, high above the Quidditch pitch.

Sirius and I followed suit, waiting for the others to arrive. Pattie came first, then the other three—Elliot, Kate and Cal—showed up some five minutes later.

When practice finally started, James resisted the urge to finish singing his Quidditch song at the entire team's request. He gave us a long, dramatic and expected speech about the previous year's victory and how we needed to not only do as well as we had done, but ten times better.

Then we began the real practicing. First, we tossed the Quaffle around. I hated this exercise because not only would it not come in handy for my position as Seeker, but I was also terrible at it. It was embarrassing because I always fumbled with it and sometimes even dropped it when someone threw it to me, but the rest of the team was used to it by now. They were no longer bothered or annoyed if they had to swoop down to retrieve the Quaffle after I had dropped it.

"Bianca, come on, we've really got to work on your catching skills," said James, muffling his laughter behind his hand. "Here."

James chucked the Quaffle at me with an extreme amount of force. I held my hands out, knowing I couldn't possibly catch this throw, when the Quaffle collided with my outstretched hands and caused three fingers on my right hand to move in a way they shouldn't have.

Pain shot through the same three fingers and I gasped. "OW!" I yelled out in pain, cradling my right hand to my chest.

James swore loudly, flying over to me. "Oh, damn, I'm so sorry, Bianca! Is this what Quinley meant when she said...?"

"I guess so," I wheezed, grimacing. "But it's not that bad, it can't be that bad. It's not like you broke my fingers or anything."

"Let me see," said James. "Take your glove off."

The rest of the team seemed to have noticed what happened and flew over to me.

"Did you just break her fingers, mate?" Sirius asked, shock written all over his face.

"Sirius, they're not broken," I snapped, wincing as I attempted to pull the glove off of my hand. "It's not a big deal and—wow, these gloves feel like they're getting tighter... That can't be a good thing." I pulled it off, looking at my fingers. All three had begun to swell and were turning purple. "Well, that's nice," I said, shrugging.

"Oh gosh, you need to go to the Hospital Wing," said Kate.

"What? No I don't. It's fine! Look, they're going to go back to normal soon."

Cal grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand towards him. "They might be sprained... You really should go to the Hospital Wing. Doesn't it hurt?"

"No, it's fine," I insisted. "Why is everyone acting like I'm dying or something? It's just three sprained fingers! Let's just go back to practicing."

Everyone just continued staring at me.

"What?" I demanded. "Look, it isn't like I can't move them." I was beginning to lose feeling in my fingers and they had inflated. I tried to bend them, wincing as I did so. "See? I can move them. Now let's just finish practice. I'm not leaving until we're done."

"Bianca, are you sure?" James asked, concerned.

"Of course!" I said loudly. "Yeah, it's fine. Release the Snitch or whatever... I just won't put my glove back on until the swelling goes down."

I knew deep down that the swelling wouldn't go down if I didn't do something about it, but I didn't want to go to the Hospital Wing again. I was a witch, after all, and I was sure I'd be able to go to the library and find a spell to heal my fingers after practice was over.

Never before had Quidditch practice felt so long. Apparently, I had still caught the Snitch rather quickly, but that was probably because I was so anxious to get off my broom and head to the library. All throughout my search for the Snitch, I pushed down the pain and the way I could feel my heartbeat in the fingers on my right hand. Luckily, I usually caught the Snitch with my left hand, so that was no problem for me.

"Beware the bespectacled one," Remus said with raised eyebrows when he met up with us after the practice was finally over. "Makes sense now, huh?"

"Sorry, Bianca," James mumbled, embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it," I said calmly.

"You should go to the Hospital Wing," he told me. "I'm sure Madam Pomfrey can fix that quickly." He gestured to my sprained fingers.

"No, nonsense," I said, grimacing. "I don't feel like going to the Hospital Wing. I can figure it out on my own. First, I need to change out of this uniform and then I'm heading to the library. Anyone coming with me?"

"I'll go," Sirius volunteered.

"I thought you were scared of the library," I said pointedly.

"I am. But I'll go to help my poor friend with three fat fingers..."

"How kind of you. Any other offers?" I said, looking around at them.

"I'll come too," said Peter. I noticed he couldn't look at my right hand.

"I'm going to go to the Owlery to send a letter to my parents," said Remus. "I'll meet you guys there later on."

"I'll come with, I had to send a letter to my parents as well, anyway," said James to Remus.

I changed out of my Quidditch room with difficulty since my right hand was throbbing, but I tried not to let it show. Then Sirius, Peter and I headed back up to the castle and made our way to the library.

"What exactly our we looking for?" Sirius asked me, running his hands over the spines of the books.

"A spell to fix sprained fingers!" I said. "They aren't broken; that I can tell. They must be sprained. I just don't know a spell to fix them."

The three of us gathered up books that we thought would be useful and sat at a table, flipping through them; but we found nothing.

"All I found is a spell to fix broken bones," I said, sighing. "Should I try it out?"

"Might work. Why not?" Sirius shrugged.

I grabbed my wand and pointed it at my right hand, which was all sorts of shades of blue. I preferred to use my wand when it came to spells I had never used before instead of using wandless magic.

"Episkey," I muttered the incantation under my breath, watching to see what would happen, but it had no effect on my sprained fingers.

I groaned, resting my chin on the heel of my left hand.

"Maybe we should just go see Madam Pomfrey," Sirius suggested.

"But I wanted to figure this out on my own!"

"Stop being stubborn, you should just go. C'mon, Peter, don't you agree with me? Look at her hand!" Sirius gestured frantically to my hand and Peter, who had been unusually quiet the entire time, took one glance at my swollen fingers and looked away, clutching his stomach.

"Oh, sorry Peter. I forgot you get sick easily at the sight of... well, things like this," I said, staring at my fingers and resting my hand on my lap, out of sight. "That's something that never happens to me. You know what job I would've had in the Muggle world?"

"What?" Peter asked.

"Neurosurgeon."

"What's that?"

"They cut people's heads open."

"For fun? That's sick!" Sirius interjected, wrinkling up his nose.

"No, not for fun," I snapped. "Again, you are such a pure-blood, Sirius. They do it to help people... they're kind of like the Healers of the Muggle world. They do surgery on a person's brain if they're sick and have some sort of disease... Anyway, you really won't understand if I explained the whole concept, but that was what I wanted to be when I was younger. Like, before I knew I was a witch."

"How could you possibly want to become that?" Sirius asked.

"Have you met me? I have no sympathy! I wouldn't have gotten sick over seeing someone's insides."

Peter looked as though he was going to vomit, so I let the conversation fade and instead looked back down at my hand, which Peter was avoiding looking at at all costs.

"You know what we have to do, don't you?" I said to Sirius.

"What?"

"We have to break my fingers so that we can heal them with that Episkey spell afterwards. Then they'll go back to normal."

"So..." Sirius started, "you want to break your fingers in order to heal them?"

"Exactly. It isn't a bad idea, right?"

"You've had better ideas."

"Well, it doesn't matter, I just don't want my fingers to be blue sausages anymore... sorry for the mental image, Pete," I added, looking over at him. He gave me a faint grimace before looking away once more. "So? Can you break them?"

I raised my eyebrows at Sirius, pointing to the hard-covered book in which I'd found Episkey in.

Sirius lifted the book and made to slam it down onto my hand; he tried a few times, closing his eyes and wincing, but eventually stopped short and whimpered. "I can't, it seems way too painful."

"Fine, I'll do it," I said, annoyed, violently grabbing the book from Sirius's hands.

Just as I was preparing myself to break three of my fingers myself, Remus walked in and yelped, "What the hell are you doing?!"

"SHH!" came Madam Pince's irritated shush.

"I was just going to break my fingers so that I could heal them," I said, then grimaced at how idiotic it sounded as Remus wrenched the hard-covered book from my hands. He scrunched his nose up and looked thoroughly weirded-out. "No, don't look at me like that, I'm not that stupid. It's just that I could only find a spell to fix broken fingers, not sprained ones. I've already tried it on my hand just now and it didn't work."

He decided to turn instead to Sirius. "Padfoot, what the hell?"

"Don't look at me, it was her idea. Although it wasn't that bad of an idea... You see, you've gone to break them in order to be able to heal them. Makes some sense."

"Peter," Remus began, "how could you possibly let them—oh, that's right... sensitive stomach," he sighed, glancing at his other friend who was still holding his stomach.

Remus sighed once again, rubbing his eyes. "Merlin, Bianca, did James also chuck that Quaffle at your head and give you brain damage? What are you thinking? Just go to the Hospital Wing at this point!"

"Don't make me feel stupid, it wasn't actually a terrible idea," I said. "No, he did not hit me in the head, by the way. I was really wanted to fix these stupid fingers myself... Besides, if I had broken them and then just used this spell I found, Episkey, they could've been back to normal in no time and it would've saved us the trip to see Madam Pomfrey. It's a smart solution, isn't it? Come on, it makes some sense."

Remus continued to stare at me.

"Fine, let's go to the Hospital Wing," I groaned, standing up from my chair and looking down at my throbbing hand once more.