In the chaotic flurry of media reports, Albus Dumbledore's reputation soared to a new peak—the first time since 1945.
The story of how he defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald was dragged out and polished all over again.
The Ministry of Magic was run off its feet. Delegations from magical governments around the world arrived one after another, demanding answers—or, more accurately, demanding compensation. During Voldemort's brief resurrection he had hardly been idle: several giant clans in remote mountain ranges had been forcibly merged, an entire French vampire enclave had vanished into thin air, the werewolf packs of the Black Mountain had disappeared en masse, and Belgium's largest gathering place of dark wizards had been wiped clean off the map… Naturally, the moment Voldemort fell for good, all those forcibly recruited groups scattered to the winds, causing riots and mayhem in half a dozen countries.
To make matters worse, it was revealed that Barty Crouch Sr., former head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, had quietly stepped down days earlier. He was currently lying unconscious in a sealed ward at St. Mungo's, with no one able to say when—or if—he would ever wake up.
That left Cornelius Fudge and Amelia Bones to deal with the outraged foreign delegations, and both of them were at the end of their tether.
The trouble didn't stop there. Reporters were working themselves into a frenzy trying to dig up every last detail, because every clue pointed to the same conclusion: Voldemort's sudden, total collapse had been meticulously planned and executed with ruthless efficiency. They were desperate to know more. After relentless digging, the press finally discovered that, aside from Dumbledore, select members of the Order of the Phoenix, and a handful of Ministry Aurors, the only other eyewitnesses to the battle included several Hogwarts students—among them the Boy Who Lived and the Muggle-born boy who had awakened to magic during a magical accident.
That was about the time the new school year began, which spared Hodge and the others from the worst of the journalistic hounding.
Still, the absence of reporters didn't mean an absence of attention. Plenty of students had read the papers. They swarmed the compartment where Hodge and Harry were sitting and bombarded them with questions.
At first Harry tried to deflect with half-truths. "Sirius is one of the higher-ups at the Order's headquarters," he said mysteriously. "As his godson, I'm privy to a few secrets…"
He put on an expression that said he really couldn't say any more and hoped that would be the end of it.
Hodge had to fight not to laugh. Harry was clearly trying to steer the conversation toward the Order of the Phoenix—and thanks to the papers, Dumbledore's once semi-secret organization was secret no longer. Everyone now knew it had been founded by Dumbledore himself during the First Wizarding War specifically to fight Voldemort and his followers. Some members had been personally invited by Dumbledore; others—Aurors mostly—had joined during the war and left when victory came.
Unfortunately, Ron let something slip. Harry, he blurted out, was one of only two people who had directly confronted Voldemort. True, Harry had only been there because he had literally "died once on a bet," but no one else knew that, and the secret would stay buried forever. After Ron's careless remark, the students in the compartment started looking at Harry as though he might sprout a second head and declare himself the next Dark Lord at any moment. Otherwise, why would Dumbledore have bypassed dozens of seasoned Order members and chosen to bring Harry along?
The rumors grew more ridiculous by the minute until Harry finally lost patience, scowled, and asked everyone to leave. Far from taking offense, the students filed out with expressions of profound awe.
"They just think you helped a bit, Harry," Hermione said soothingly once the compartment was empty again.
Harry's face remained stormy. "This lie won't last a week. Snape's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher—he'll be only too happy to tear it apart."
He could already picture it: Snape using "teaching demonstrations" as an excuse to humiliate him in front of the whole class, followed by the inevitable cold sneers and house-point deductions…
Yet, to everyone's astonishment, Snape did not single Harry out for punishment during the first two days of term. After the second lesson, Ron offered his usual irresponsible guess: "Maybe he's turned over a new leaf."
Hodge thought it far more likely that Snape was simply… lost. Ever since Lily's death he had been drifting, drowning in regret with no direction. Now that Voldemort was truly gone, a huge piece of Snape's life had vanished with him. Taking the Defense Against the Dark Arts post was probably his clumsy attempt to start over.
Still, being gloomy, venom-tongued, and hopelessly biased toward Slytherin had nothing to do with Lily. Hodge very much doubted Snape could keep up the restraint for long. He had already caught Snape glancing several times at Harry—who was, as usual, whispering with Ron and Hermione—and Hodge would have bet galleons that it was only a matter of time before the man reverted to type and started docking Gryffindor points left and right.
Hodge found the prospect quietly hilarious; Ravenclaw and Gryffindor were rivals, after all.
What really interested Hodge, however, was Divination.
He knew history inside out because he was a traverser, but he had also genuinely been affected by what seemed to be Sebastian Sallow's influence. Ginny, the members of the Whimsy Club, and several others had experienced the same thing: fleeting visions of possible futures. It made Hodge suspect that Sebastian had survived into the future and then used a Time-Turner to send memories—or perhaps his very consciousness—back into the past.
Why Sebastian would do such a thing was still unclear. Perhaps changing history outright had proved too difficult, so he prepared a backup plan instead.
One fascinating detail Hodge had realized was that Time-Turners could genuinely alter history—but the price was catastrophic. The resulting chaos was so severe that it usually destroyed whatever goal the time-traveler had in mind in the first place. That was why the Ministry kept them under such strict lock and key.
In the Restricted Section Hodge had found a hidden record of an Unspeakable named Eloise who had once tried to push a Time-Turner beyond its limits. She was flung into the torrent of time itself. When she finally staggered back to the present, she had aged five hundred years in the space of five days spent trapped in 1402. She died in St. Mungo's shortly afterward. During those five lost days she had irreparably altered the lives of everyone she met. At least twenty-five well-documented modern wizards and witches simply ceased to exist—their ancestors' timelines rewritten. On top of that, her presence had fractured time itself: the Tuesday after her return lasted two and a half days, while the following Thursday was over after only four hours.
Hodge had already obtained a Time-Turner from Professor McGonagall. He intended to be excruciatingly careful—never crossing the approved limits—but he did plan to experience the magic of time firsthand, to peek behind the curtain of temporal mystery. And to do that, he believed Divination was the necessary bridge.
Divination had always been considered the flimsiest, least respectable branch of magic. Almost every truly gifted seer throughout history had carried the blood of the ancient prophet lines. A real Seer was born with the Inner Eye, able to perceive true glimpses of the future from childhood. By comparison, even the best student in Hogwarts' Divination class was lucky to end up making a living "prophesying" fashionable names for newborns" in Diagon Alley.
Unsurprisingly, the field was thick with frauds.
Hogwarts Castle, North Tower.
Hodge climbed through a round trapdoor and stepped into the Divination classroom—a peculiar cross between an attic and an old-fashioned tearoom, heavy with the scent of incense and too many cushions.
There, surrounded by fluttering shawls and clinking crystal balls, sat Professor Sybill Trelawney.
"Welcome," she intoned in her soft, misty voice. "How pleasant to see you all at last… in the flesh."
Who would have guessed that this dramatically eccentric woman—so impressive at first glance—was in truth a sherry-swilling, often incoherent fraud whose genuine prophetic gift surfaced only once or twice in a lifetime?
The thought that he would have to endure five years of lessons in this room filled Hodge not with dread, but with a strange, eager anticipation.
He was ready for the challenge.