"He wanted to[…] no[,] he needed to know why the sun of his best friends never asked him about them." –HHrPie, summary to "The Reason"

The late-October afternoon was unseasonably warm and bright – a thing for which Remus was grateful, as it would make the communication he had to perform that much easier. He shut his eyes tight and focused all of his distinctive psychic power on the blazing orb that shone down above him; his consciousness soared up along the path formed by its calefacient rays, and after a few seconds he began to hear its voice in his mind. Well met, Star-Speaker Lupin, it said. What would you with me this day?

"I would learn, Lord Sol," said Remus, "why you have expressed no interest to me in the fate of Lily and James Potter. When Dumbledore sent them and Harry to a parallel world to be hidden from Lord Voldemort, all the other stars in the Milky Way besieged me with queries about them; even Alpha Lupi the Wolfstar roused itself from its perverted dreams long enough to inquire into their well-being. How is it, then, that you, their own sun, have alone seemed to be indifferent? I must know, for my own peace of mind."

He felt Sol chuckle. Well, that's simple enough, little one, it said. Why should you suppose that I need ask you, or anyone else, how James Potter is faring? Is he not a Sunday's child, blithe and bonny and gay – and, occasionally, even good? My influence has been a part of him from his first moments of life, and it is a part of him to this day; thus, however far he may travel, he can in no wise be hidden from me.

Oh, don't worry, Star-Speaker, it added, noting Remus's alarm. I have no intention of betraying his secrets to Voldemort. Even if one of that creature's servants happened to share your gift, what have I, the ruler of day, to do with a Dark Lord? It paused, and then added, mildly, Saturn and Mars, though, you may wish to make sure of.

"The confusion will pass once you get your Barings." –limapickle, "Sirius' Letter"

"If you say so, Professor," said Harry with a shrug. "I find it hard to believe, myself. The contradictions in our world are so fundamental and irreconcilable, how am I supposed to be able to make sense of them just because someone gives me a few books by Maurice Baring?"

"Oh, no, Harry, it's quite true," said Hermione earnestly. "For the longest time I'd wondered myself how 1 November 1981 and 31 July 1991 could both fall on Tuesdays, or how anyone could see Orion from northern Scotland at midnight in May – but then Professor McGonagall came by on my seventeenth birthday and pressed Robert Peckham and The Coat without Seam into my hands, and suddenly it all became so beautifully clear. And the same thing will happen to you, you'll see."

Harry grunted noncommittally. "What about you, Ron?" he said. "Did the world start making sense to you once you got your Barings?"

Ron shrugged. "I guess so," he said. "Of course, I never really worried much about the stars and the calendar to begin with, but I think they did help me understand other things – like why Fred and George so love the sound of breaking glass."

"He watched as the rain showered around them with all its lilting sorrow as the minister read her last rights." –NeatStuff, "Time and Again"

"Miss Delacour," said the Rev. Tobias Shaw (who, as it turned out, was an undercover Auror as well as an Independent Baptist clergyman), "I must warn you that anything you say may be used as evidence. You therefore have the right to remain silent at any and all times, because…"

The familiar litany rolled on, but Fleur seemed hardly to be aware of it. As her silver-blonde hair fell in rain-sodden strands about her ivory cheeks, she continued to stare off vacantly into the distance, and Harry almost managed to feel a pang of pity for her. He wondered what she might be thinking of, on this occasion of her fifth arrest in as many months for cat burglary – and an irrepressibly cynical part of him also wondered what she would be thinking of during her sixth.

He didn't realize, of course, that there would be no sixth – that Fleur's recent crime spree had, from the beginning, been born of despair at the knowledge that she had fallen prey to a certain terminal malady common to those of veela blood, and that the time was now less than a week away that she would be beyond the reach of any merely human justice. None of those present, save Fleur herself, knew this; even Shaw, shrewd as he was, had no suspicion that he was reading Fleur Delacour her last rights.

"But didn't you read my interpretation of this dream? The owl's specie made all the difference." –CaptainYellow, "Thursday Afternoons"

"All right, let's see," said Harry, chewing thoughtfully on his quill. "You say you dreamed that you were watching the Austrian retreat at the Battle of Wagram, when suddenly a voice came from the sky saying, 'Let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of Heaven,' and an owl flew down and gave you five pounds' worth of gold ingots."

"Right," said Dean Thomas.

"You're sure it wasn't a five-pound note it gave you?" said Harry anxiously. "It was the actual specie that backs up the currency? You're certain of that?"

"Positive."

Harry smiled. "Well, it's simple, then," he said, and leaned over and began scrawling furiously on his parchment. "That means that you're going to marry a lady submarine captain in the Chinese navy. And may I be the first to extend my felicitations?"