Aham… so the books aren’t here because there is no more spece in the library for them, the girl realized. Now… how are we going to use them? Judging a book by the cover? Nah… that can’t be it. But then… what other explanation could I give? Hmm? After some time, the young ravvie finally had an idea.‘Maybe we could… tell something about a person’s personality by judging the book they pick?’, she answered. Probably it’s wrong, but it was the best idea I could come up with!

There he was...

It was another Divination class and Josh Carter was, of course, present in the classroom sitting silently on a random seat in the middle he had chosen the moment his eyes caught it. Yet, when the boy bothered to look around at the people answering Professor Bishop's question to see who were speaking every time a voice was raised, he saw his beloved she-snake sitting at the back row, as usual, next to her friend Destiny who had just spoken out to answer the question.

Divination books having info about divination. Well...was not this kinda obviously Destiny?

Whatever...

Smirking at his girlfriend (the one he sees as Evelyn), the Gryffindor boy stood up and slowly left his own seat, only to claim the empty one next to Evelyn. Hehe...

Now it was the time to answer this question ''We can burn the books and try to read the smoke...'' Bwahahaha...yea he was not going to read any textbooks and he was sure that his she-snake was going to love this answer. Therefore, looking into her beautiful hazel eyes and smiling warmly, he expected a nice reaction from her.

Selina sat up as Kurumi walked in the room and smiled at her friend, the Common Room had been a real revelation to Selina as of late. She knew the value of her friend's friendship, especially in this class. After all of the trouble Selina had gotten them in throughout the past two years in Divination she was still a fierce friend and was always there to lend a hand... of course since the Common Room incident she had a slightly better control of her issues.

Then she directed her attention to Professor Bishop and rose her hand, "Well ma'am, I suppose you could use books for research. To get more specific, we use books to learn information so that when we put the practical knowledge into practice it is not as confusing. I mean if you try to just do something without any information on what you are doing isn't that counter-productive. So I guess this could relate to Divination because everything dealing with the future or interpretations of that future need to be dealt with in a manner of deep studying. The future is such a tempermental thing that isn't it just smarter to learn about how to deal with it then just be oblivious?"

William raised his hand. " The books on Divination can be used for learing about everyone's religion" William said to the professor.

Penny raised her hand...Professor, books can be used to read short term of the future, where the person uses a book and with eyes closed and flips it open, open their eyes and the first word the eye sees is the used for the reading.... although it can be done on new years eve with the bible to see the future year", taking a breath.

couldn't help myself.
 

Treyen looked towards Kurumi as the Professor asked her if she was alright. His eyes managed to look to the door who had probably suffered more than Kurumi, though. But soon looked to Bishop again. And raised his hand.

"Well, books can be related to anything, actually," any field of research that is, "Whether to pass knowledge on, or simply throw them at people," like Josh, that was going to be burning books, apparently.

"But in Divination, the books that are used have to have some meaning, or being sacred somehow," he nodded, putting down his hand.

Then his eyes followed someone's voice. THE GENIUS. Of course, she was RIGHT about that, Treyen winked towards her and nodded, as if to say 'Yes, there are books about Divination'. Good, Destiny.

Ooh! Ooh! Savannah knows this!

"You randomly open the book," Savannah started to say. "Then you point at something random. The words or picture that you are pointing is the answer to the question that you asked. People usually perfer bibles or Shakespeare." But of course, there are a lot of uses of books. "You can also use books to find the meaning of the shapes and patterns you see in tea cups, clouds, crystal balls, etc."

Ariella raised her hand. It was a difficult question - she wasn't sure she had a right answer or not. "Books with pictures would probably be more related to Diviniation. By looking at certain shapes and meanings in pictures, you could find out what certain objects might mean in a crystal ball." She paused for a moment, thinking. Come to think of it, she did have a question. "Could a book give a hint what may be coming in the future?"

Maria thought for a minute. She raised her hand. "Well, usually a book has a lesson to learn. Sometimes you can predict what that lesson is before you finish the book" she guessed.

new question, at the end.
 

Renée had pretty much expected to receive some answers regarding simple reading of books to learn about Divination, that sort of thing, so when she heard the students answer that way, she merely nodded. “Of course books can be read to learn more about other forms of Divination. If you look in the right places, you can research anything. And yes, some books are rather obvious in relaying the message it’s meant to give. However, this wasn’t exactly what I was after, or at least not what we’re going to be discussing this lesson,” she replied gently, noting everyone to give them a point anyhow. They’d at least tried to come up with an answer, and she hadn’t been specific, really. There was no need to say they were completely wrong and disregard the answers. They weren’t.

Of course, then there was Simon. Dear, sweet, naïve Simon who she still suspected tried to give crazy answers to her questions just to get a response from her. Sadly, it worked, if only because Renée still wanted to try and get him to realize he actually knew things about Divination, but he just needed to let it come out. “Not quite, Simon,” she replied gently. “Books can only be used to ‘read people’s minds’ if the person has written their thoughts down inside. Although you’re correct that books can tell a person about Divination. They can’t do much more than tell us about it without interpretation, though.”

Moving on from Simon, Renée regarded Gwen with another smile, especially since it had seemed a lot of thought had gone into her answer. The young Ravenclaw did have an interesting idea, even if it wasn’t necessarily Divination-related. “True,” she said slowly. “A person’s choices can tell something about their personalities. That isn’t necessarily Divination, however.” It was still a good answer, so she made a mental note to give the girl a point. Even if stereotypically a good answer should be expected, from a Ravenclaw at least. But they were still looking for the subject of the lesson.

That was definitely not what they were going to be discussing in the lesson today, and Renée gave Josh a bit of a look. If he brought any of her books near a fire, she was definitely going to be a bit, well, angry. However, she wasn’t that surprised at him giving that as an answer, just as she wasn’t surprised when he’d shifted seats to sit near Evelyn and Destiny. Even if she wondered what would happen if he discovered the little secret that was going on between the two girls. She wasn’t going to say anything about that, though. The pyromania was another thing. “We are not going to be burning any books in this lesson, Mr. Carter,” she said succinctly, especially inside the classroom. Or ever, at least around herself. “I’d imagine someone might have tried that as a form of pyromancy, however.” Once again, not around her.



Renée took a breath to get back into her normal mode as several others tried their hand at answering her question, and she had to smile at what they were saying. “It seems we’re going to be getting into the specific topic of this lesson quicker than we thought,” she said with a bit of amusement, her glance landing on Kurumi, Penny, Thea, and Savannah. “What you all described is the basic idea behind bibliomancy. Literally, divination by means of books, and yes, most historical instances, especially in the Muggle world, involve the use of the Bible. Although, any book can be used, if the proper methods are followed.” She lapsed into silence for a moment, wanting to discuss the methods after a few more topics of discussion.

“Before we go into the basic ideas of how to go about using bibliomancy, although in general we already know the method,” since most of the answers she’d responded to had delineated a loose idea of that, “I have another question for you, and this relates more to the idea of bibliomancy than anything else. It can be compared to a couple other forms of Divination, almost directly. Can anyone give me at least one of them?” Of course, she was aiming for two forms, although she had a feeling Tarot might also be mentioned yet again. That was fine, even if she wasn’t about to bring Tarot up yet again on her own. There wasn’t really a need to keep going back to her preferred method of Divination. It just seemed to happen, one way or another.

Simon looked at the Professor. "Is rhapsodomancy one of the two other forms of Divination." Simon had a feeling it was wrong he had heard that word and like the sound of it and so had decided to use it.

Penny put her hand in the air, she was unsure of her answer though "Professor, would Paper Geomancy, be one of those other forms.....i think its something to do with a loaded quill, closed eyes and paper..the shapes the ink makes on the paper or something like that?"

Maria nodded. She thought for a minute. She raised her hand again tentively. "Well, Seeing is a form. Like, Seers. My stepsister was actually a good friend with a true Seer, and she had accurate visions quite often" she said. Although, it hurt Maria's heart to speak about Cass like this. Just talking about her talent rather than who the raspberry-haired girl was in actuality. But Maria had no choice.

Bibliomancy.

It... made sense, now that professor Bishop said it.

As for the two other forms... Helena had no idea. However, she'd heard of something, so she raised her hand. "Does stichomancy count? Or is it the same thing as bibliomancy?" Well... for stichomancy, you need poetry and paragraphs from books, right?

Kurumi scratched the back of her head as she listened to her classmates answer. She had read, very briefly, about a form of bibliomancy in the library, but all she could really remember was the name at the moment. It sounded very complicated and not really like something that Professor Bishop would be able to spend just one class period on, but throwing the suggestion out there couldn't hurt, right?

"Professor, I read something about I Ching being related to bibliomancy..."

William raised his hand." One part of Divination is Molybdomancy,an act of fortune telling" William told the professor.This can be traced back to Roman times, 17th Century Ireland and common practice in Scandanavia" William explained to the professor.

Oh, another question that I’m not sure how to answer… Hmm- now let’s think logically, the girl thought. ‘Um… there is Cartomancy? Cartomancy is fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards.’ Cards… books… meh- they don’t really have much in common, but it was the first thing that crossed my mind. Now think, Gwendolyn- THINK, the young ravvie told herself, really trying to find something smart to say.

‘How about… Runecasting or Runic divination…?’, she started saying and after a short break, she went on talking: ‘There is evidence that in addition to being a writing system runes historically served purposes of magic . So writing would be related to books and magic… well- that’s what we are doing here.’ And there is no chance I could add something or say something smarter. That’s all I know.

It was funny how much Ariadne enjoyed Divination lessons, given that she was always confused, way more clueless than the other students. Still, she attempted to answer the question, obviously not expecting to be right.

'Is bibliomancy somehow related to oneiromancy, the interpretation of dreams?' the Gryffindor first year suggested. 'Dreams are a product of our subconscious, which also determines the sentences or words we choose in a book. And also, in the Bible, dreams are often mentioned as omens or means by which God communicates with the mortals, and the Bible is also the most used book in bibliomancy.' A bit of explaination made the answer seem less dumb, at least. There were also lots of books on dream interpretation...

Josh's eyes widened when he saw the look Professor Bishop gave him. Was she...like going to attack him because of that? But the tought put a little smirk on his face, for actually he would like to see her try doing that. Attacking him. However it looked like that it was unlikely she would do that unless he did a move to burn a book and nope he was not going to try to burn her books. He could consider it if they were his own book but, nope, he would not be harming someone else's books even thought he did not particularly like books.

But everything else to do with books must have been boring, right? He supposed so as books were boring stuff if used for the right purpose. That was why he was feeling a bit disappointed. He did not want the class to be boring. ''I see, professor'' he said with a quick nod and closed his mouth before the comments about how boring books were could escape his mouth. Oh, but someone might have tried it ''Wise man that was then, i would say.''

And had he been thinking about disappointment because of not being able to burn the books? If he had been then he had to reconsider it since what had just happened was much more disappointing than anything else that might happen during the lesson: Evelyn was scowling at him and, oddly, she did not look so happy to see him either.

And just why was she moving away from him? That was...not good. So, the boy's happy smile vanished before she poked his face away telling him not to look at her. Now he was supposed not to look at her? But why? ''What do you mean contagious, hun?'' he asked and looked back at her despite the poking act, looking confused...and of course disappointed. ''Don't you know...'' yet silence fell on him when he realised that she was moving away from him more and more. ''Did i do something wrong?''

So Bibliomancy, huh? Though it sounded interesting in a sense despite his thoughts of anything else to do with books would be boring, Josh was not really paying attention to it. Well...to be more exact he was unable to pay attention because of the way his girlfriend was treating him. Plus, he had no idea whatever forms that Bibliomany had anyway.

... it was getting on her nerves. Louisa didn't like sitting around in a place where the only words she could understand were the 'is' and the 'the' :-/ which was why she rarely showed up for Arthimancy... and when she did, she'd brought some book to read while the teacher and students had their fun time with numbers. Meh.

But this was Divination! She should enjoy it! And this bibliomancy talking was no way near her interests. Being a Ravenclaw though saved her from sitting like a statue for the rest of the lesson. She did remember her mom talking about rhapsodomancy being related to poems and Divination so she raised her hand to give it a shot, "could it be reading a random passage from a poem, professor? Rha-pso-do-mancy?" the last word was said in syllables for the sake of no-embarrassing-situations during her last lesson.

Failing try?

"How about chartomancy?" Savannah suggested hopefully. "It's divination by doing things on paper." Paper...books...paper...books...that could possibly work. Though Savannah thought that the answers that the other students gave were better.