That makes Bella intensely curious! She raises an eyebrow at Sherlock and then shreds the wrapping paper.

"Ooh." Bella promptly turns the cover white, and casts the same refuse-to-open-for-arbitrary-people spell she uses on her notebooks. "Thanks!"

He smiles.

"Hmm," says Sherlock.

"Any conclusions?" she asks, sticking her wand back into her hair.

"Not yet," he says. "But at least I know I'm looking for information in the right places."

Bella chuckles and settles in to read a chapter before the welcome feast.

Bella reads this one, partly over lunch and partly after classes, and tries again under Sherlock's supervision. Mist yes, but worse than the inferior Philosopher's Stone books.

"I am sensing a theme," says Sherlock. "Are you sensing a theme?"

"Well, yes, but this is also the only theme we've investigated; there could be something neither of us has thought of that would also work, or it could be some kind of placebo effect."

"Why this placebo effect?"

"I don't know. It's a very weird placebo effect. I mean, it does make me happy that there has been prior art on immortality and only some of it is obviously a failure or harmful to others? But - it's really weird."

"Yes," says Sherlock.

"When I asked a teacher about it the other month he just offered to make me an appointment with Healer Song if I wasn't feeling 'emotionally comfortable'," says Bella. "If there's something other than being depressed or incompetent that can block a Patronus it must be very uncommon."

"Clearly," says Sherlock. "And yet, here you are."

"I am very uncommon, I guess," shrugs Bella. "... I just realized I completely forgot to give you and Tony your Christmas presents, I was going to do it right away but then I got distracted." She dives into her bag and produces a thick volume of onionskin paper. "Here. I hope you didn't think I just forgot. Actually one time when I was falling asleep I managed to mostly convince myself that you would have figured out what and where your present would be and just quietly collected it but by the time I woke up I had forgotten again and didn't think to check."

The book is entitled "Prophetic Utterances and The Surrounding Events: A Comprehensive History". It is divided by time period, nationality of prophet, and prophecy subject matter; there is a chunky index in the back.

"It's beautiful," says Sherlock. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. You didn't think I forgot, did you?"

"Not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

He shakes his head. "Never mind."

"Speaking of things we have forgotten to mention," he says, "Tony and I got our second wands over winter break. Spruce and cedar, respectively, and unicorn hair. They'll be coming by owl any day now; they were still being fitted for handles when we saw them in the shop."

"Ooh, nice. What do those woods mean?"

"Cedar: loyalty, perceptiveness," he says. "Spruce: boldness and a sense of humour."

"But not so much perceptiveness that you noticed your present."

"Aww." She hugs him.

School swings back into session. On the second weekend Bella unilaterally declares that she and all of her friends should spend Sunday morning flying around.

This is an excellent plan and Sherlock fully supports it.

Feral doesn't have a broom! But he can borrow one from the school.

"Why don't you have a broom? I should get you a broom," says Tony. "Sherry, remind me to get Feral a broom."

"Will do," says Sherlock.

Bella giggles and kicks into the air. Wheeeeee!

Whee.

Feral chases after Tony and attempts to hug her in midair.

"Far less interesting than the book," he says. "There's enough evidence to strongly suggest that prophecy is a perfectly legitimate phenomenon. Tea leaves, less so."

"Can you learn to do any of it or do you just have to be born prophetic?"

"No data, but I suspect the latter. Because there is no data. Genuine seers are often but not always people with the obvious set of related interests. It's not quite clear whether or not being one makes the rest of the trash actually work."

"I don't suppose you've gotten any of the trash to behave interestingly."

"Not that I'd give any weight to. But then, I have no indication that I am a prophet."

"What are the indications, anyway?"

"Giving a prophecy is considered a pretty clear sign. Beyond that, nothing especially consistent. But prophecies themselves are interesting. They have recipients, did you know that? As far as anyone can tell, each one is intended for a specific listener who is present at the time the prophecy is given."

"Weird. Is it usually one person per prophecy?"

"Only one recipient per prophecy has ever been clearly identified, but sometimes there are too many people present and not all of them follow up afterward. In the clear-cut cases, it seems the recipient always gets something useful out of the prophecy, although not always soon enough to do any good. And of course they all come true, but some of them are vague enough that that's not saying much."

"I had heard about the vagueness thing," says Bella. "I wonder why they're like that."

"There are competing theories. One of the better ones is that they are meant to be useful to the recipient at a specific moment, and too much clarity would lead to them going off early. But prophecy is not a voluntary exercise, so the seers aren't much help in figuring it out; they don't choose the wording. Some of them don't even remember it afterward."

Sherlock is a little slower waking up than usual, and his hair is a mess when he answers the door mid-yawn.

In comes Bella. "Sleep well?"

"...What?" says Sherlock. "Is someone throwing Memory Charms again? I just lost another few seconds."

"I would never. You just said, um, 'The light of hope will erase the shadow of death".

"Extremely!"

"I just gave a prophecy," he says, blinking. "I was not expecting that. Write it down - exact words - you can't extract your memories yet and it might apply before you can."

Bella promptly writes down the exact words. "I have no idea what it means, though."

"Nor do I. But I am not supposed to. You're the one who is meant to understand it - not now, but at some future time when it will either be of some use to you or let Fate say 'I told you so' after the fact."

"I guess it at least sounds - promising?"

"That's not always a reliable indicator. But yes, it does."

"Huh. Do you think we should tell anybody else?"

"No. Well, we can tell Tony and possibly Feral. We should not tell any adults. I don't want anyone knowing I'm a seer yet."

"I didn't mean adults, I don't think they'd be useful about it at all," shrugs Bella.

He snorts. "They so rarely are."

"And this isn't anything like Healer Song's specialty."

"It is not."

"How secretive do you want to be about your prophetude? Like, can we tell them at breakfast or do we have to draw them aside and swear them to secrecy?"

"Secretive," he says. "Definitely secretive."

"Okay. Secrecy-swearing it is. After classes tomorrow?" proposes Bella.

He nods.

So after classes the next day, Bella (presumably accompanied by Sherlock) pulls aside Feral and Tony someplace nice and quiet, hopping with excitement.

"This has to be something good," says Feral, gesturing to Sherlock, "or you'd be in bed, right?"

"I might debate 'good', but it's interesting. And important."

"He gave me a prophecy," says Bella, after making quite sure they are unobserved, and she opens to that notebook page and shows them. "We don't know what it means though."

"Whoa," says Tony. "Seriously?"

"As far as I can tell," says Sherlock.

"Which is pretty far. Wow," says Tony.

"Yeah. We aren't telling any grownups," Bella adds.

"No kidding," says Tony.

Feral snorts.

"Do either of you have a guess what it could be about?"

"Nope," says Feral.

"Well... it sounds like it's about your immortality thing," says Tony doubtfully. "But it's pretty vague."

"My immortality thing also vaguely seems to be related to when I do and don't get mist trying to cast a Patronus," Bella muses.

"That's weird," says Tony.

"It's really weird!" agrees Bella. "But I still can't get more than mist, or mist with anything unrelated, so - I don't know what's going on at all."

"Me neither," says Tony.

Feral looks at Sherlock.

"Insufficient data," he says, shrugging.

"But I get lots of interesting presents while he data-collects. Best kind of experiment."

Sherlock grins.

Feral giggles.

Bella hugs Sherlock.

Sherlock hugs back!