Gwyn Swann and the Goblet of Fire

by Lady Dawson

Chapter One: Musing and Dinner

As the sun started rising in the east and turning the streets of Rosemary Grove from night to day, a teenage girl sat in her bedroom, her desk facing the window, the quill in her hand scribbling across the piece of parchment that she had in front of her as she consulted the book next to her, pausing briefly before she added another point to the paper.

The light began pouring into the bedroom, illuminating Gwyn Swann's blonde hair as her blue eyes flickered upward to meet the coming day. She gave a small yawn as she glanced across the room towards the clock.

It had been a long night, she thought tiredly. She'd had another nightmare and then, once she had woken up at about three in the morning, she had been unable to get back to sleep and decided that she might as well put the time to good use.

Usually, her nightmares weren't so frightening. Okay, usually they were, but she'd had the usual ones long enough that they didn't alarm her as much. Not last night, though . . .

Oh, it had started usual enough. Gwyn had seen her long dead mother Aurora Toren-Swann run into a street that was being attacked by a man in a skull mask that she now knew to be her mother's cousin Gawain. She watched as her mother duelled with her cousin, only to be engulfed by green light and leaving her daughter motherless.

Usually, when the green light faded and she saw her mother's dead body, Gwyn usually woke up. Not this time, though. No, this time, she had turned to find herself in a graveyard. There was something eerie about this graveyard, as though something inside her was trying to warn her about something. Gwyn turned around to see a deadly mark in the sky, illuminating the heavens with its green light. A skull and a snake.

Gwyn had woken up then, her heart beating in her chest and then she had fallen back against her pillows, trying to rid herself of the image. For some reason, she was scared to death of that mark in the sky and Gwyn knew all too well that when she had particularly strong feelings about things, especially when it came to her dreams, they usually were right on target.

Because Gwyn wasn't an ordinary teenage girl. Like her mother before her, Gwyn was a witch, a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Three years had passed since Gwyn had discovered the truth about her mother's heritage and the legacy that she had inherited. Three years since she had left her father's home forever and followed in her mother's footsteps to become a witch. And in those three years, she learned more about her mother than she had ever hoped or wanted to.

Before Gwyn had even been born, when her mother was still at Hogwarts, years before she had even met Gwyn's father, a dark wizard named Voldemort came to power and began recruiting witches and wizards for his regime. Aurora had come from a dark wizard family, so her family naturally was on board when he started hunting down those of no wizarding families, also known as Muggle-borns, like Gwyn's friend Hermione Granger.

Instead of joining up with her family, Aurora instead left and began fighting Voldemort with her friends. She was luckier than some of them. At least she survived Voldemort's reign, which had fallen when Gwyn was a year old, stopped by her own best friend Harry Potter. Somehow, Voldemort's curse rebounded onto its caster, leaving the year old boy unharmed, save for the lightning bolt scar on his forehead.

But Aurora still would never see her daughter grow up into the woman that she was slowly becoming. When Gwyn was two years old, almost a year after Voldemort's fall, her mother was killed when one of his followers attacked Diagon Alley, leaving Gwyn to be raised by her father.

After losing his wife, William Swann had vowed that Gwyn would never become involved in her magical heritage, which was why until she was eleven years old, she never knew she was a witch. It was only when she received her letter inviting her to Hogwarts that the story came out. Gwyn learned the truth from her mother's friend Madeline Harris, who was now Gwyn's guardian. She had been acting as the housekeeper in her house before Gwyn left her father.

And Gwyn never regretted leaving. She felt closer to her mother now than she had in all those years in that lonely house. And she also had three of the most wonderful friends that anyone could ever ask for. Hermione Granger, her only female friend, who apart from giving Gwyn advice as only a woman could give to another woman, was the top of their year. Ron Weasley, who knew the most about the wizarding world, as he was the only one of them raised in it. And then there was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

Gwyn's heart gave a leap as she thought about Harry, whom she now thought of as more than a friend.

During the past year, her feelings for Harry had grown past that of friends or even best friends. She began to realise that her feelings for him were growing to that of romance, but it took awhile for her to take a chance and act on those feelings.

It wasn't until the very last time that they had seen each other, right at the end of term, when they were saying goodbye to each other, that Gwyn had caught him by surprise and kissed him, right where everyone could see.

She hadn't exactly given him a chance to say anything or even recover before she had darted off to leave with Madeline. Gwyn wasn't sure what she wanted him to say or if he regretted the kiss, but she had felt him kiss her back when they had kissed.

And someone didn't kiss a girl back if they didn't have feelings for the other person, right? Kissing someone meant that they felt something! If it didn't, then people would go around kissing every person that they met instead of giving them a handshake or something.

A kiss was intimate, personal, it was—

"Oh!" Gwyn groaned, leaning her head back. Letting herself muse on things had led her to the thing that she had been brooding about all summer; what Harry had thought about their kiss. As she hadn't exactly given him the chance to talk to her about it, face-to-face, the only letters that he had sent her were brief and to the point. Gwyn couldn't decide if this meant that he was upset about the kiss or that he didn't know how to write about it.

Of course, given that this was Harry, it was probably the latter.

With a sigh, Gwyn replaced her quill and laid her homework aside to dry as she stood up, peering out as the streets started to grow brighter and brighter.

What was with that dream? she thought as she sat down on her bed, brushing her hair out absently. What did it mean?

The problem with Gwyn was that she wasn't a normal witch; she was a seer, gifted with the ability to see things before they actually happened. And Gwyn had much stronger Seeing powers than most of her kind, who usually developed their powers at the age of sixteen.

Gwyn had had hers since she was eleven.

She'd had dreams that became reality, she had sensed the basilisk roaming around the castle and attacking Muggle-borns, she had prevented Professor Lupin from leaving the Shrieking Shack a few months ago and thus preventing him from becoming a werewolf and turning Peter Pettigrew, the guy who had actually betrayed Harry's parents, into the Ministry of Magic. Sirius Black, the man who was thought to be the actual betrayer, was set free and now had custody of Harry. Gwyn had been thrilled for the both of them and was happy that something good had finally happened to her best friend, but Pettigrew still escaped.

After attacking some of the Ministry officials, he had fled, vanishing from sight, and Gwyn had no doubt that he was going back to his former master, who had been alone and friendless for thirteen years.

Suppressing a sigh, Gwyn pulled her hair into a ponytail and stood up, heading down to the kitchen to pour herself some cereal. Madeline was nowhere to be found, but that wasn't unusual lately. With the Quidditch World Cup coming up, she was needed in the office a lot, seeing as she was in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. She had already gotten tickets for themselves and for Harry, Sirius, the whole Weasley family, and Hermione.

Gwyn couldn't wait until then, because she was looking forward for something to get her mind off everything, plus it was going to be great to see her friends again and it would give her a chance to talk to Harry and maybe she could find out what he thought about the kiss . . .

"Argh!" Gwyn let out an annoyed sigh. Why was it that every thought that she had just led right to that kiss?

And what if he really was upset about it? What if he didn't see her the same way that she saw him? Then she might have thrown her friendship away for absolutely nothing!

"I've got to get out of this house," Gwyn decided. She had done nothing except brood on that kiss with Harry and it was not doing any good. Suppressing a sigh, she walked back upstairs to where her cat Tabby was still sleeping and fed him before she stowed her wand in her pocket. While she might not be allowed to do magic outside of school until she was seventeen, Gwyn didn't like going anywhere without it.

Stepping out of the house, Gwyn headed down the street, still quiet in the early hours, and didn't even bother to see where she was going. She just walked and pretty soon, she found herself walking upon a familiar sight.

The Swann manor had changed over the past year since Gwyn's father had gotten married. Christmas during her first year, Gwyn received a letter from her father, informing her that he had met a woman, Vanessa Taylor. Last year, he had married her and her son, Gwyn's stepbrother, Evan was pretty much the only person in the household that even so much as spared a kind word to Gwyn. And he was the only person around here who knew the truth about her, that she was a witch and why her father had disowned her.

Walking away from the manor, Gwyn sighed as she headed away from it, wondering not for the first time if she and her father would ever come to terms with everything. Would he ever forgive her for choosing her own path? And could she, in turn, ever forgive him for turning his back on her and throwing her out to the wolves?

Who knew? Even Gwyn couldn't see everything in the future. Only time would be able to tell.

Gwyn walked into the Rosemary Grove Park, climbing onto the swing and pushing herself back and forth, her musing catching up with her. She wished that she could just stop brooding about everything, but when she was alone with nothing but her own thoughts to occupy her time, that was one wish that was never going to come true.

"I've got to stop brooding on this," she grumbled, pushing the swing higher and higher.

"You know, talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity."

It wasn't until that moment that Gwyn discovered that she was not alone in the park.

Jumping a mile, Gwyn spun around to see a grinning Evan Taylor standing behind her and she relaxed, rolling her eyes at him. "Don't you know better than to sneak up on people?" she demanded, but wasn't annoyed with him. It was good to see him.

"During the summer? Not likely," he snorted as he walked over to her, sitting down on the swing next to her. "Finally decided to get out of the house."

"The silence was kind of getting to me," Gwyn grumbled. She glanced at him. "How's Dad and your mum?"

Evan shrugged as he kicked a stone with the toe of his shoe. "They're all right, I guess. Mum keeps pressuring him to invite you over to dinner or something. She's still in the dark about why he exactly abandoned his daughter, so . . ." Gwyn couldn't even manage a smile. "Maybe you should go talk to her. I mean, maybe she can talk to your dad for you. Mum's good at that stuff."

"Trust me, this is one thing she won't be able to fix with a few magic words," Gwyn said dryly.

"Well, since you haven't been able to fix it with magic, I wouldn't expect her to," Evan joked.

That did it. Gwyn cracked a grin and laughed, her blue eyes sparkling with amusement. "Moron," she countered. "No, I'm fine. Dad's just stubborn and when he sets his mind to something, there's little that can change it." Gwyn brushed a stray hair out of her face and looked at him.

"You sure about that?" Evan asked her quirkily. Gwyn gave him a curious look. "Because what if I told you that your dad gave in to having you come over for dinner . . . say tonight?"

Gwyn stared. "I'd say that you're crazy."

"Well, then, I guess you'd better have me institutionalised, because William said yes. Took him almost all summer to say it, but he said yes." Gwyn just stared at him.

"I don't know, Evan, Dad and I aren't getting along, I don't even know your mum. I only met her once and that was at her and Dad's wedding, so I really don't know if—"

"Do you really have anything better to do with your summer?"

Gwyn sighed, making a face at him. "No," she admitted.

"Well, then suck it up, because you're coming," Evan told her, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Look, it's just dinner. You show up, make nice talk with your dad, say a few good words to Mum, you go home, end of story. Just because you're not normal and you and your dad aren't speaking doesn't mean that you can't have a nice dinner with him."

"You're kind of making it sound too easy," Gwyn pointed out. She sighed. "All right, I'll go, but I'm only going because 1, Madeline's not going to be home and I'm getting sick of leftovers and 2, because you asked me."

"Fair enough," Evan said, pushing himself off of the swing. "Mum said to just show up around seven-ish."

"See you at seven, then," Gwyn said, smiling as he gave her a wave and headed back in the direction of the manor. She sighed, glancing towards the sky and pushed the swing back and forth again. "Please, please don't let tonight be a disaster," she muttered.