Passing Sky

Lying on my back in the middle seat of the mini-van I watch the sky pass from out of the window. It's strange noticing how the trees zip by, but the stars don't move an inch. It is impossibly surreal.

When I notice how bright Mars is, gleaming on the horizon as the conifers speed past I start to think back on the very first time I saw that planet.

I had never questioned the visions or the memories. Not once. Many others like me did, often so, and wondered why now? I didn't seek for answers because I felt like I had them. At twenty-five years old I knew more than most people could ever imagine. I knew it because I had lived over a hundred different lives and I could remember every single one.

There was France at five years old, receiving the first Christmas present I can remember. There was the life spent running in Kenya, because there was nothing else to do there. There was that horrible time during the holocaust, being killed because I was the daughter of gypsies in a caravan traveling at the wrong time and place.

Then there was Mars. It was so long ago it seemed hardly like it would be my most prominent memory. Yet there it was, gleaming again on the horizon, a thousand years back.

I can't recall the exact moment that I knew what it meant; it seemed like such a natural progression. The centaurs would stand near the edge of the forest back then, before the students, before the castle was even properly built. They would stand nearby looking stern and graceful and comment mournfully on how bright Mars was. They could see the changes over time being wrought by man's hand. They could see the evil that would come despite the good efforts and intentions.

We brought it here by building our great school. Helga, Salazaar, Godric, and myself.

Mars was the planet of war and its arrival, clear and bright on a cloudless and stifling summer night signaled that war was soon in coming. This was not some war fought on a battlefield with piles of dead and rivers flowing with blood. This was a great intellectual war and it would carry the world well into the twentieth century.

Muggles would carry on as they had before, some educated, some not. Wizards and witches would make great changes in the world, behind the scenes with magical education ever growing and expanding to fit the current needs of society.

We couldn't claim that we had started magical education, but we could claim, and rightly so that we had introduced it to a new form: magical education on a massive scale. Instead of one pupil for every tutor, a single apprentice to a master we could now introduce many students to magical learning in a classroom setting. It worked for muggles; it could work for wizards and witches.

The idea was simple; putting it into action was something entirely different.

We needed to find a location that could be hidden from muggle eyes. We needed to hire teachers who had never taught on such a scale before. We needed to find a purpose, break up the learning in subjects, and most importantly name our new school.

How we decided upon Hogwarts was rather an interesting side story. It had to do with native animals residing on the land we wanted to use for the school and a banishing charm that backfired horribly.

All of these things fell into place and there was Mars, shining bright, smiling over us with a warning.

The school was almost finished, the last bricks being laid into place. I had not known then that Salazaar was being sneaky. I did not know that he had built a secret chamber and laid to rest there a baby Basilisk. Had I known I might have stopped the school from opening. Had I even a moment to think about it I might have asked Dumbledore not to admit Tom Riddle, the last of Salazaar's line.

Even though I had been in another, different life in that time I was watching still. I had always been able to remember. It was because as Rowena Ravenclaw I had cast a spell upon myself. I had cast a spell so that as my soul was reincarnated it would always remember itself; it would always contain the former memories that most reincarnated souls carried yet forgot.

The students now would not recognize me. They mistake the Gray Lady for me. I can see why. She's quiet and demure, very much like I was in living as Rowena. I'm certain that if I ever make it over to Hogwarts I will sit down and talk to her, learn who she is so that her story will not be lost.

It is not now in my nature to tinker with the events taking shape at Hogwarts. I am a country away, far enough over in a land where I do not have to deal with the repercussions of forming Hogwarts. It is not a decision I regret. It is possibly, a decision that I would still make today, even given all I know.

Of course Hogwarts is in danger again. Harry Potter is a student there and Mars is bright once more. He can avoid death all he wants, but in the end the great evil that we raised out of ignorance will fell him. Of this I have no doubt, because the stars never lie.

The tears that sometimes fall for these memories are confusing, because I'm not really sad. Those tears are for someone else, someone I once was. Rowena Ravenclaw is dead, long dead and I am simply a different incarnation of her soul with the same hopes and dreams and a laundry list of memories cautioning me to slow down and enjoy the stars before they pass out of sight again.