I WITCH: A HOGWARTS TALE
by Lyda Mae (RavenDove) Huff
Chapter Two: The Line of Clarity
88888888
McGonagall and Snape had used Floo Powder to transport Ann to the Shreakking Shack, and from their they had used the secret passage beneath the Whomping Willow to transport her to the castle and into the hospital wing. Snape's potion had left the woman in a state of near Catatonia, but with the Muggle poisons still in her system that couldn't really be helped.
She had then been turned over to Madam Pomfey's care, where she would likely remain for some time. Though keeping her presence in the schools halls from everyone else's knowledge would have it's own difficulties. There was also the matter of how they would help her when or even if she could be brought to her senses.
88888888
It was about one month later that Ann sat in Dumbledore's office looking around his private observatory with Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick and Snape explain things to her. The things around her were like they had come from a story book. She fussed about the draping of the robe she wore and made it a point not to be the first to speak.
"Are you able to accept that you are not having a delusion child?" Dumbledore asked with just a hint of hope in his words.
"If I'm not having a delusion now," Ann said quietly, "then why did my parents send me to see those doctors?"
"Because they didn't believe." said Snape. "They we're squibs that found it easier to live as Muggles."
"There is a line in a Shakespeare play about a fool thinking himself to be a wise man." said Ann with an accent that was neither English or wholly American. "And a wise man knowing himself to be a fool."
Dumbledore smiled, "As You Like It if I am not mistaken."
Ann nodded, "The same logic can be put to sanity. I know that I am not sane." she said. "So for knowing I am not sane, I am sane, and in thinking myself sane for knowing I am insane, I am not sane."
Snape put his head in his hands and mumbled something to himself.
"I didn't quite understand that Severus." said McGonagall.
Snape gritted his teeth to keep himself from yelling. "I said that was a defeatist stance to take."
Ann looked right at Snape with a hurt expression that strangely reminded him of Star, even though she had none of Star's blood in her veins. "I have lived a defeatists life Mr. Snape,"she said, "no potion or incantation can change that."
She stood and turned her back to her interviewers. "There is a fine line of clarity that will always be beyond my grasp. A torment of two realties that I cannot reconcile, and have given up hope of ever doing so. The reality I know has no place for me, and the reality you present does not welcome me."
"Why doesn't it welcome you?" Dumbledore asked.
Ann turned again to face him. "Because I'm too old to learn how to live in it, and just as jobless and homeless as I was before my run in with your Mr. Hagrid."
"This is a school Miss. Begay." Dumbledore said. "We could teach you to live in this reality."
"I am too old for school." said Ann with certainty.
"Not necessarily." said Dumbledore. He pulled out the necklace that she had been wearing when she had been found.
Ann reached for her neck, "I thought I'd never see that again." She reached for the necklace. "It was a gift from great grandfather Begay on my naming day, when he declared I was the Morning Dove, because I would bring a new day to the tribes. Though I've never had any hope of actually doing that."
Dumbledore let her take the necklace and she put it back around her neck. She shrank down about two heads and found herself looking up at Dumbledore. "You shrunk me, ya bastard." she yelled up and found her voice had raised an octave or so to that of a child. She looked at her hands and found them uncallused. She then looked in a mirror to find herself, blond. Long silky dark-blond locks like she had when she was little.
"Puberty was bad enough the first time." she said to the eleven year old in the mirror.
"It is only an illusion." said Dumbledore. "Take off the necklace if you want to return to normal."
Ann undid the clasp and let it fall to the floor. She was twenty-three and life worn again, and it took her a moment to get use to being over five feet tall once more. "What did you do to it?"
"It is a simple charm." said Dumbledore. "So long as you wear it you will appear to be exactly twelve years younger than you actually are."
"And no one here would know I was older than a student." said Ann.
"Only those of us in this room, Madam Pomfrey and Hagrid." said McGonagall.
"But I am not eleven years old." said Ann.
Snape took a deep breath before he spoke. There was a part of him still convinced this was not going to work, even if they could gain the sanction of the Ministry. "Your Aunt Star named you and your descendants as her only heirs. We could call you by your middle name, claim that you are your own daughter, and admit you to the school as your guardians."
Ann took a seat and stared blankly for a second. "I think I'd like a ride back to the alley."
"This can only work if you do it willingly." said Dumbledore.
"It would seem that I have nothing to lose." she said. "Though I never much cared for the name Mae."
Ann picked up the necklace and looked it over again before putting it on once more. "Perhaps I should go by Alice instead." she said when she had adjusted to her diminutive form.
Dumbledore smiled at the joke. "Ann Mae Begay the II would make more sense."
"Ann Mae Begay Tah-sherit." Minni said firmly using the Egyptian term.
"The Younger it is then." said Snape.
88888888
