Welcome to Weekly Portents, your one and only source for all things prophetic! In Weekly Portents I, the one and only Riven Redwhisper, will be giving a special reading to let you know what to expect at Hogwarts in the coming days, weeks, months, and beyond! But that’s not all, dear reader! The cards tell me you should expect much much more in the future including personal readings to answer questions you’ve submitted, tips and tricks to improve your own Divinations game, and I even have an interview lined up with a real live seer!
What are the Sooths saying? What are the Oracles orating? What are the augers articulating? Check in each week to find out!
23/09/2028
Good afternoon, my lovely readers, and welcome to a brand new edition of Weekly Portents!
It seems that my reading last week was correct! It was a busy weekend! Perhaps not for all of us but sounded like the lively little lions were active enough to make it a busy weekend for their prefects, healers, and professors alike.
But enough about the past! Here on Weekly Portents we only care about the future! Except, of course, when the past informs the future but you know what I mean.
What strange tales or mysterious meetings have I had over the past week?
None, actually. The Council of Friendly Seers (CoFS) brings no message but, as always, offers their aid to any seers who need it. Just owl me and I’ll put you in contact. Otherwise, no grim tidings or mysteriosities have come to my attention so this week I have something extra special in store for you all!
A plain old reading!!
Simple and straightforward, perhaps that’s exactly what we need right now. Today I’ll be using the rather unique form of Divinations known as Aleuromancy, which uses flour to predict the future. More specifically, I’m in for some delightfully delicious Divinations because I’m using fortune cookies for tonight’s reading!!
A friend of mine has an American relative who sent a big bag of these little things and they’re quite popular in Chinese-American cuisine. It’s just a folded dessert shell thing with a little slip of paper inside which holds our future. Can’t say I’ve ever tried this before but it seems interesting. If we’ve learned anything it’s that Divinations comes in many forms from falling leaves to a blot of spilled ink on the floor so why not a little cookie thing?
Anyway, I sit here with a big huge bowl of them in my lap. Since we’re dealing with floury Divs, I felt the empty Homemaking Magic classroom was the proper venue for tonight’s reading. Tried to sneak into the kitchens but the house-elves got all cross with me for sampling too much of their hard work. Fine by me, it’s much quieter in here anyway.
Alright, onto the reading!
My eyes are closed and I focus my mind on the question at hand: “What can we expect at Hogwarts over the next week?” I take a long breath then open my eyes and pour all my senses into this bowl of sweets.
My sense of sight: the many wrapped fortune cookies bunched up together.
My sense of hearing: the lightly crackling plastic as my hands brush over the wrapping.
My sense of touch: the light and delicate feeling of the assorted treats sifting between my fingers.
My sense of smell: the soft and sweet aroma escaping their wrapping.
My sense of taste: ok, not this one yet… but soon!
My hand stops! There it is! The right one! I pluck it between my fingers and peel away the wrapping! I break it in two to reveal the little slip of paper within! I resist the urge to eat the whole thing, paper and all!
It’s at this point that I realise that I have no idea how this works. Am I supposed to eat the cookie first, then read the fortune or the other way round? Divinations practices tend to have rituals and rules, after all.
In the end I decided to eat the cookie first, not because I skipped dinner and I was dying for anything to eat but because I wanted to! It was quite delicious. A bit hard and dry but sweet with a soft vanilla flavour. With that out of the way I read the fortune.
“Pursue your dreams with vigour”
Ok, the bloody hell is that!? More like advice than a proper reading, innit? Ok ok… so that was a practice one! Here’s the actual right one!
“You might want to run, but you should stay and fight.”
More like it, I guess. Sure, that’s also advice but sounds a bit more prophetic. Maybe I should’ve actually looked into this whole fortune cookie thing before I started writing.
Well then, what did we learn? First off, pursue your dreams with vigour. Sure. Fine. Whatever. You should always be doing that and you didn’t need me to tell you.
Hmm…
Oh wait! The first fortune wasn’t practice after all! The divine fates of the everlasting mystical cosmos and et cetera and so on put that before me for a reason! The two are connected! The message is clear!
This coming week you may get a chance to make your dreams a reality but there are going to be some tough obstacles in your way. It’s not going to be easy and you might want to give up before you even get started but you need to fight your way through it! Now is not the time for procrastination and doing so will only lead to your downfall! Probably. Maybe.
There you have it. Chase your dreams. Don’t run.
The real question is, can I eat more of these things without changing the future?
If you’d like your own future read or a question answered in Weekly Portents please send a self addressed stamped owl ((notecard)) to Riven Redwhisper ((luka5555 resident)). Your identity will remain anonymous unless you specifically request otherwise. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee the results of these readings and we also regret that we may be unable to answer everyone’s questions every week. Rest assured, however, that we’ll do everything in our power to answer as many people as we can as accurately as we can.