Halfway through breakfast, Harry and the others finally arrived.
"Harold, so this is where you are!" Ron stormed over, looking furious. "Can you do something about your cat? Tell it to leave Scabbers alone!"
"Scabbers?" Harold blinked, doing his best to look completely innocent.
"It's like this—your Tom and Crookshanks nearly ate Scabbers alive this morning," Harry offered, helping to explain.
"Crookshanks would never eat Scabbers!"
"Tom doesn't eat coworkers anymore."
Hermione and Harold spoke almost at the same time, both utterly confident in their pets.
Ron was livid.
"Then what do you call what happened this morning?" He glared at Hermione. "Harold might not know, but you saw it with your own eyes! You saw what they did to him—Scabbers is too scared to even come out of his box now!"
Hermione opened her mouth but hesitated. As much as she believed in Crookshanks, Ron wasn't wrong.
Harry, meanwhile, had latched onto something else.
"Harold… did you just say 'coworkers'…?"
"Other pets," Harold explained calmly. "Tom's a pet too, so it's fair to call them colleagues."
"He's eaten other pets?!" Ron's face went white, and his voice cracked.
"Not on purpose," Harold clarified, trying to defend Tom. "There was that one time when Penelope from Ravenclaw lost her rabbit—it wandered into the Forbidden Forest and… well, Tom found it.
"And then there was an owl. It kept stealing Tom's prey and dive-bombing him at night, so eventually Tom yanked it down and plucked it clean."
"He even goes after owls?!" Ron looked absolutely devastated.
He'd thought Crookshanks was Scabbers' biggest problem, but compared to Tom, that ginger furball seemed positively civilized.
"But didn't the owners complain?" Harry asked, curious.
"They did," Harold said, shrugging. "So I bought them replacements. A new owl, a new rabbit—problem solved."
"Wait, you bought them new pets?" Ron blinked in disbelief.
"Of course," Harold said matter-of-factly. "Pets are personal property. If yours gets damaged, you pay compensation. And I can afford it. If Tom ever did eat Scabbers, I'd buy you a new rat."
"Anything I want…?" Ron blurted out, then quickly backpedaled. "I mean, Scabbers isn't just a rat—he's my friend. I've had him for years!"
"Ah, I get it. You want extra compensation, huh?" Harold raised an eyebrow. "Anything you like, pick from the shop in Diagon Alley."
"That's not what I meant!" Ron's face flushed red. "I mean—you should just keep your cat under control!"
"No problem." Harold nodded. "Tom doesn't usually hang around the dorm anyway. He prefers the Forbidden Forest.
"Honestly, if Tom wanted to go after Scabbers, your rat probably wouldn't even have a chance to fight back."
"Scabbers is tough, okay?" Ron grumbled, a little defensive.
At the very least, he'd survived longer than most rats. That had to count for something.
"Compared to Fang?" Harold asked casually. "You know, Hagrid's dog. He's Tom's number-one flunky now—completely beaten into submission."
Ron had no comeback to that. As much as he wanted to defend Scabbers, even he couldn't claim the rat could take down a dog.
"What on earth does that cat eat?" he muttered under his breath.
"Who knows." Harold just smiled.
After that, the three of them sat down and started eating. Ron didn't mention keeping Tom under control again, as if he'd already forgotten the entire argument.
Hermione, meanwhile, circled back to the rabbit story.
"Wait, I thought Hogwarts only allowed three types of pets?"
"That's the official rule," Harold explained. "But if someone brings a rabbit, a weasel, or a harmless snail or something like that, the professors usually don't care."
Since they'd arrived early, Harold finished his breakfast first. But since there was still some time before class, he didn't rush off. He waited for the others to finish so they could leave together.
"What's our first class?"
"Divination," Hermione answered from Harold's left, startling Ron.
"Wait, weren't you just on my right?" he said. "When did you move over there?"
"I've been here the whole time," Hermione said impatiently. "You're obviously still half-asleep. You must've imagined it."
Harold felt a strange sense of déjà vu… He was pretty sure he had used that exact excuse on Neville earlier.
Hermione ignored Ron's confusion and continued briskly, "We should hurry. Divination is in the North Tower—it takes at least ten minutes to get there."
They all picked up the pace.
Hogwarts was huge, and even many graduates didn't know every nook and cranny. Despite having been there for two years, none of them had ever ventured to the North Tower.
Luckily, Harold had.
When he'd been running around the castle yesterday in his cat form, he'd done a full loop—and that wasn't an exaggeration.
He led the way, guiding the others up seven long staircases, across a broad landing, then up a dizzying spiral staircase. By the time they were all feeling light-headed, they finally heard muffled voices above.
Most of their classmates had already gathered on a small platform at the top of the stairs. Above them was a trapdoor with a brass plaque:
"Sybill Trelawney, Divination Classroom"
As the start of class neared, the trapdoor opened and a silver ladder descended.
"Bit theatrical, isn't it?" muttered Justin Finch-Fletchley from Hufflepuff. They had the class together with Gryffindor today.
Harold climbed the ladder first, emerging into a space that looked more like a tearoom than a classroom. The little round tables were obviously their desks.
Thick curtains blocked the windows. Scarlet scarves were draped over the lamps, casting everything in a dusky red glow.
A fire blazed in the hearth—an actual, old-fashioned one without a Flame-Freezing Charm. The room was stifling.
Harold found a random table and sat down. Nearby, a shelf overflowed with dusty candle stubs, ragged tarot cards, and a mountain of teacups.
The entire room had a worn, outdated feel—like someone had recreated a 19th-century "prophetess aesthetic" and hadn't updated it in decades… or centuries.
Harold suddenly had a hunch: maybe choosing Divination hadn't been the best idea. Sitting through this was already an endurance test.
Good thing it was September. In July, this heat would've sent kids straight to the hospital wing with heatstroke.
And even now, several students were already sweating buckets—and class hadn't even started.
"Welcome…" came a soft, misty voice from the shadows.
Professor Trelawney drifted out dramatically, stepping into the firelight. She was extremely thin, and her enormous glasses magnified her eyes to an almost insect-like size.
"Wanna have some fun?" Harold whispered to Harry.
"Huh?"
"Divination, of course," Harold said. "If I'm right, that copper pot over there is brewing tea, and in Unfogging the Future, the first section is all about tasseography—tea leaf reading.
"And we're seated in pairs, which means we're probably going to read each other's cups."
"So you're saying… we could plan ahead?" Harry's eyes lit up.
"No, no," Harold wagged a finger. "Planning would ruin the mystique. Let's just say it's part of the magic…"
…
(End of Chapter)