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!
14/10/2028
Welcome to another terrifying Thursday at Hogwarts which means it’s time for yet another edition of Weekly Portents.
Last week we asked a set of runes what spooky scary ordeals awaited us in this, the most terrifying month of the year. We were promptly advised of some great challenge or conflict awaiting us this month and were warned that teamwork would be needed to get through it. Perhaps this portrait and skeleton war business we keep hearing about is part of that conflict. Either way, I’ve definitely seen many of you working together to make sense of it all so keep at that, I guess.
Now onto the future! All things considered, it does seem pertinent that this week we try to shed some light on these mute and mysterious portraits that seem to have all the non-mysterious portraits up in arms. This week we’ll be asking for some guidance on all these skeleton portraits and to do so I’ve decided to use bones to find our reading
Not exactly for the faint of heart but today we’re going to be using a technique called pyromantic-scapulimancy for our reading. I have a nice big turkey leg that I nicked from the leftovers in the kitchens which made for a nice midnight snack but now that I’ve cleaned it up I have a blank canvas to work with.
According to a dusty old book I found in the Ravenclaw library you just write your question on the bone itself and toss it in the fire then the resulting cracks give us a sort of image with our answer. Bones and fire? Sounds pretty wicked to me so let’s get to it.
Before tossing it into the flames, I’ve written my question on the bone and just for good measure I asked it aloud as well, “what’s up with the skeletons?” It’s well after midnight now and the empty common room is quiet save for the crackling from the fireplace but the bone seems to be making its own creaking and whining and hissing sounds as it’s warped by the heat.
I’m not sure how long I’m supposed to leave it in the fire so I just go with the good old Divination standard of waiting until it ‘feels right’. And so, after a while of staring deep into the flickering flames and watching the occasional crack splinter across the surface, the time did feel right and I decided to pull the bone from the fire.
However, at this point I realised that tossing the bone into the fire was easy but getting it back out was going to be a little more challenging. Guess you’re supposed to plan for these things beforehand but I managed it with a levitation spell and wrapping the burning hot thing around my sweatshirt. Now I have bloody scorch marks on my favourite hoodie and as far as I’m concerned you lot owe me a new one but I suppose I’ll forgive you this once.
Alright let’s check this thing out. Lots of cracks here and there, dunno how better to describe it really. Guess it’s not really an exciting thing to write about but I’m just looking it over and running my fingers over the new lines on the surface
Once I get a feel for each and every one of them I check the book and try to interpret the cracks along the bone. There’s one long crack pointing down the length that seems to represent a sword. According to this, since it’s pointing down the length of the bone that’s bad but there’s another one pointing at it from the opposite side of the bone so that’s double bad. The clashing of swords.
Then around the other side I see several smaller notches and cracks with a small one off to the side of them. Book says it’s meant to represent a swarm of some kind. Means an attack maybe? Or Invasion? Is that what we’re dealing with from these paintings? Are they some kind of door that’ll let an invader into the castle? Or maybe they, themselves, are the invaders. Instead of facing a sentient pipe organ, this time we’re dealing with some kind of sentient painting beast? Is there one painting to rule them all somewhere in the castle that’s behind all this!? Or perhaps is it something even more terrifying at work!? Whatever it is doesn’t sound especially pleasant.
Alright, let’s break this down then. Same as last week we see conflict on the horizon. I know a load of you don’t believe in all this Divs business but getting that sign two weeks in a row has to mean something. What’s new though is this “swarm.” Sure, we’ve had a bunch of new paintings all over the place but could that be the swarm or is there more to it? Hard to say just yet.
So what do we do about it? First off stay alert and second keep your bloody wand handy for Merlin’s sake! You never know when you’ll need it and it sounds like you might need it very soon. If you find anything strange make sure you chat with your prefects or the head students. I guess the professors too but your mileage may vary with them.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading yet another cheerful, upbeat, and optimistic Portents.
If you have a question you’d like 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.
