Professor Albion watched Cullen North hesitate for as long as he could before taking a seat at the table with Miss Rush. That the boy had a crush on her was obvious to any observer. Doing anything to publicly call attentaion to it would have been cruelty in the extreme.
"All right, let's get started," Albion said, and his students drew parchment and quills from their book bags.
There was a saucer and tea cup on the desk; he picked them up, taking a drink while he waited for the students. To his right was a portable blackboard, and as the students watched, the word
Divination appeared on the board in a bright blue script.
"Divination is the attempt to discover information about the future by interpreting omens, portents or signs," Professor Albion said. "It is, in short, an effort to tell the future.
"You may have seen people use different objects in an attempt to do this," he said. He waved his wand almost lazily and a series of images appeared in the air beside him. "Tarot cards, for example, or sticks or bones carved with ancient runes and tossed like dice . . . that sort of thing."
"These are examples of
cleromancy or
sortilage," Professor Albion said, and these words appeared on the blackboard as well. "That is, they are attempts to sort out information, valid or not, from a number of possibilities.
"
Augury is a type of divination that takes given possibilities and ranks them in order of likelihood.
"One form of augury is
hepatoscopy, which is inspecting the internal organs of animals, such as sheep, goats, or poultry in an attempt to tell the future. For whatever reason, the liver, in particular, seemed to be favored for this type of inspection. The diviner who engaged in this type of augury is known as a
haruspex . . . the plural is
haruspices."
Professor Albion paused and reached for his tea cup again. He took a drink of the tea and paused, hearing the scratch of his students' quills on parchment as they took notes.
"Over time," Professor Albion continued, "haruspices developed their beliefs in depth, creating elaborate clay and wooden models of the liver, showing it marked into dozens of parts. Each part was assumed to represent some specific element of health, happiness, etc., and haruspices would examine the liver and place wooden pegs in holes in the clay model to record whatever features they believed they found in the animal's. They then used these features to predict how to treat the patient's illness."
He smiled. "Since I rather doubt the Headmistress would appreciate me leading the class in raiding the kitchens for the raw livers of sheep and goats," he said, "we won't be attempting this particular type of divination."
He waved his wand again, and the words on the blackboard dissolved to be replaced with others.
"Dowsing," the professor said, "likely developed from hepatoscopy. You've probably seen pictures of dowsing rods--that is, a forked or Y-shaped stick. In ancient times, diviners used a dowsing rod in combination with other objects to try to tell the future. The idea was to ask a question that had a "yes" or "no" answer. For example: "Will my baby be a girl?"
"The diviner would use objects of some sort, perhaps a white stone to indicate yes and a black stone to indicate no. You place the stones on the ground or on a table in front of you, ask your question, and hold your arms out in front of you while holding the dowsing rod. If the rod swings toward the white stone, it is assumed to be predicting the baby will be a girl. If it swings toward the black stone, it is assumed the baby won't be a girl . . . that is, that the baby will be a boy.
"Of course," he added, "it could also be taken to mean No, you'll give birth to twins, or No, you'll lose the baby before it can be born or any number of other things. That's the trouble with a yes or no question," he told the class. "Interpretation is everything."
Again he sipped from the tea cup. "In some places and times," he said, "Muggles have used dowsing rods to try to find water underground before digging a well, to find lost objects, or to search for buried treasure. In fact, some witches and wizards swear they can successfully use their wands in this way, and there are several spells to help you find lost objects, such as Invenio defluo."
There was an abrupt pop and several of the students in the front row jumped.
Professor Albion frowned slightly at the interruption, then raised one eyebrow at the set of keys that had abruptly appeared on the desk. "Oh," he said. "And about time, too. Mrs. Albion and I have been looking everywhere for these."
He stood, pocketed the keys and continued. "It's a bit of a stretch, but I suppose the traditional Four Point spell can be considered a sort of dowsing spell, causing your wand to point north, acting like a compass.
"Now . . . I've told you what we will not be trying, so let me tell you what we will be trying:
Tasseography. Sounds complicated, doesn't it? Actually, it's just reading tea leaves. In fact, I remember being taught to read tea leaves by Professor Trelawney in this very room when I was a third year student at Hogwarts."
Pippa Rush
