She woke in the morning still tired, body so heavy it hurt to move. Like she somehow hadn't slept enough, nowhere near enough. But she forced herself up anyway. Heather had long grown accustomed to pushing herself when she was long past the point of wishing to collapse, when the exhaustion had already turned bone-deep. She'd learnt to take it, embrace it, pull it under her skin until it became who she was, she endured not with any real energy or strength of her own, but out of sheer, bull-headed refusal to surrender, to be seen weak. First by her shite, sick excuse for a family, then all those faceless masses of idiot mages. No, she wouldn't let them see her weak, she wouldn't, so she learned to go through the motions even when she was thoroughly dead inside.

She wasn't even done dressing for the day when something happened that had never happened before. She… She cared. She cared that she'd always had to do that. That her shit life had forced her into a situation where she had to learn how to do that. That her family had treated her so cruelly, that people who were supposed to take care of her not only continually failed, but were more often than not the cause of her suffering. For Heather, that had simply been the way of the world. It had always been that way, she'd always been on her own. She'd never questioned it, just bore it.

But Ithera hadn't. The part of her that was Ithera knew that, remembered that, and was horrified. That anyone had treated her that way… It was awful. It left her hurt, and furious, and unbearably sad, but there was nothing she could do. Which just made it worse.

Mom had asked her why she was crying, but she'd just brushed it off, not at all sure what she could possibly say.

Before following Mom to help with breakfast — she was expected to help a little, even though at her age she really didn't contribute much anyway — she'd slipped away a moment, to catch a glimpse of herself in Mom's mirror. (She didn't often use the thing, she had little need to, but it was one of the few things she had of her own mother, so she kept it.) Ithera had been caught making faces at herself more than once, which is probably what anyone would assume she was doing if they caught her. Really, Heather was familiarising herself with her new face.

The instant she saw herself, she thought she might cry. Her eyes, they were…

Luna.

They didn't look exactly like hers, of course. They were a bright, almost glowing steel grey, yes, but not quite the silver of Luna's. But even so, they were similar enough the memories assaulted her in a flood, it was only yesterday, and she was seeing it happen all over again, over and over behind her eyes, and Heather had to wipe the tears away, take long moments to compose herself before she could look again.

She did look rather a lot like Dad, come to think of it, close enough it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to think she was his real daughter. She knew she wasn't, though, Dad just looked enough like her real mother, his sister, that it was noticeable. He had almost the same exact gray eyes, pretty close to the same hair color too. Ithera had always liked her hair. It was like that scraggly dirty blond a lot of people had, brown and yellow mixed together, but the light part wasn't actually yellow. It was a far lighter shade, looking just a bit off of white, like the pale underside of a rabbit, pure and bright. She'd always liked it.

Brom, the old storyteller, had said the Brodhern royal family, back when their people had first travelled to this land, had been known for their white-blond hair. That dynasty had died centuries ago, yes, but silver hair like hers was said to be a mark of one of their descendents, a lingering touch of the blood of kings. It somewhat unpleasantly reminded Heather of Malfoy, but the shade was different enough, broken enough by the splashes of light brown, that it didn't bother her too much, Ithera's appreciation overpowering the feeling after short seconds.

Her face was different though. Her cheeks were a bit rounder than Dad's — which could just be because she was a child and a girl, but she didn't think so — and her nose and her chin were entirely different. Because her real mother had looked a bit different than Dad, or from her real father? She didn't know, she'd never met either. Whatever, not that important.

After a while staring at herself in the mirror, she decided Heather had been prettier. Or, at least, she thought Heather had been prettier — it was hard to say for certain, since Ithera was only six, and Heather had always been thinner than was entirely healthy. She thought so, though. Not that she really cared. She didn't need to be a great beauty, not that she would care to put in the effort to truly take advantage of it, and it wasn't like she was ugly either. Homely was sufficient. She'd always been the type to do things, not just sit somewhere and look pretty. Everything in her short life so far pointed to Ithera being much the same. So, the mild hit to her looks was a disappointment, but not a major one.

And one she entirely forgot once she ran off to join Mom, and remembered she was apparently living in the goddamn dark ages. While rendering the pathetic little aid she usually did when Mom was preparing breakfast, Heather's many countless hours of experience cooking countless dishes of all kinds, some delicacies Ithera couldn't even have imagined before, was entirely useless. Heather was clueless what to do with a bloody woodstove, Ithera had a far better idea what she was doing than Heather and Mom had barely ever even let her touch the thing.

As she followed Mom's instructions, flitting about her as always, her mind wandered, thinking about how entirely different her life would be now. She was nobody important, true, just the bastard daughter of some no-name commoner of no account. Probably, anyway. Dad had said his sister had run off to marry some nobleman or something, but that she had run off all over again to hide her daughter away here implied she hadn't been her husband's in any case. It was possible her real father was another nobleman, a peer of her mother's husband, but then it was also possible he was a servant or something. Who could say? She definitely wasn't something so important as the Girl-Who-Lived, she doubted she had family of any import to come track her down. Ithera had idly dreamed as much, off and on since she'd been told the truth of her birth, but the part of her that was Heather, more realistic and pessimistic, knew it was unlikely. If no one had come for her yet, it was probable no one ever would at all.

Theirs was a hard life, she knew. They were poor farmers, yes, but even poor farmers in Heather's time had it easier. It didn't take a whole lot of time to keep a farm this size going — at least, not by twentieth century, forty-hour-workweek standards — but it was hard work. By the time she was grown, she'd definitely be fitter than Heather had been, if only from constantly doing things. And, well, eating better. Sort of sad, when she thought about it, that medieval peasant Ithera ate better than first-world suburbanite Heather. But anyway, with winters hard and cold, summers wet and mild, it was very possible Ithera wouldn't even live to adulthood, fall to illness or injury or even starvation, should the harvest fail.

At least, it would have been before. Ithera was magic now. Mages were far more resistant to illness and even injury, warming charms were very easy, and she'd picked up enough in Herbology they could probably manage a harvest in the dead of winter if they really had to. She'd need to explain the whole magic thing, and preferably practise a bit getting more complicated stuff to work, but it was possible. Ithera's odds of survival were far and away improved now that she had Heather's power and knowledge.

So, yes, it was a harder life here in the Valley, but she didn't particularly mind. Heather and Ithera were both accustomed to work. That there were far fewer comforts to be had here didn't bother her too much, and it probably wouldn't be long before she could get her magic to make up the difference anyway. It wasn't like there was a Statute of Secrecy and a Ministry to worry about here.

If there were one problem she saw sifting through what Ithera knew about this new world it was… Well, gender roles were rather more rigid here than they were in magical Britain. Heather had been a bit surprised at just how egalitarian mages were between the sexes — there was the occasional misogynist here and there, yes, but magic was the great equaliser, women having had level standing in magical society for centuries. Millennia, even. To put it briefly, the people of this world were not nearly so enlightened.

She knew she would be expected to marry eventually. And by "eventually" she actually meant comparatively soon. Earlier than even people in magical Britain did, which had always seemed weirdly early to Heather. It wasn't unusual for girls to marry as early as thirteen, but fifteen or sixteen was a lot more common. It was odd to see a girl reach twenty without marrying. It would definitely be expected of her. And this was a strong expectation, Mom would probably try to set her up with boys incessantly if she didn't take a fancy to someone herself. Which…

Despite herself, she was rather pleased. The part of her that was Heather and the part of her that was Ithera were in total agreement: she didn't like that idea.

She didn't want to stay here forever, in the Valley. She loved her parents, she loved her brother, but this wasn't the kind of life she wanted. She didn't want to be a farmer's wife, pop out a farmer's children and just...exist. She wanted to do things. And she couldn't do things here.

Sitting at the table next to Mom as everyone ate, idly kicking her feet where they hung above the floor, she watched Mom and Dad talk about something, Roran speed through his breakfast with unreasonable eagerness. And she wondered just what she was going to do with herself.

Not that getting married would even be a sure thing, when she thought about it. Ithera knew dowries were a thing here. Not just something that happened sometimes, but it was the expected way of things, what everyone did, couldn't get into a proper marriage without one. Mom had had many siblings, and by the time she married Dad her family had had little left to give, but Dad had grown up dirt poor, and loved Mom, so he didn't care. But chances were, when it came time for Ithera to marry, her family would have nothing to give. She'd either have to find someone poor enough he didn't expect anything, or infatuated with her enough he'd overlook it. The chances of that were respectively unappealing — she wasn't so shallow as to care that much about wealth, but the people that would apply to would be like Dad, desperately poor farmers, and she didn't want to do this all her life — and unlikely — the people here were very hard, very practical.

But that was fine. She wouldn't be getting married. She didn't want to. She would wait, until she was old enough. Fifteen or so? And then she would leave. A woman travelling, living alone was weird, yes, but she didn't care. And she would have nothing to her name, true, but that was fine. She had magic. She would need to practice, to make sure she knew what she was doing, but she had years to figure out how to make her magic work like she was more used to. It was fine.

She would be sad to do it. She loved her parents, she loved her brother. She knew nothing else but this place, the people here — excluding Heather's memories, of course, which didn't really matter. She would be sad, it wouldn't be easy. But she'd do it.

Yes, she would do it. That was the plan. A plan that would be mostly irrelevant for years, but a plan.

So, she should get to work experimenting with her magic, then.

Once she and Roran were released, free to do whatever they will, they both scrambled to dress for the outdoors. In moments they were dashing across the snows, glittering crystal flung dancing in their wakes. Roran, she saw, was moving north, to meet with his friends, probably. He called to her, asking what she was doing, they were supposed to be going this way, but Ithera waved him off, said she'd be fine on her own.

She pushed out east toward the Anora, about a half-mile past the edge of the farm. It wasn't long before the wind was biting at her ears, at her nose, chill carried by the snow soaking in toward her legs and feet. Normally, she would bear it, it wasn't that bad, but there wasn't any reason to now. A quick order to the magic tight about her to keep her warm and it did, wreathing her with dry, comfortable air, the assault of winter immediately halted.

Ithera smiled.

A bit more trekking through the open snow, then a bit further under bare branches, picking with some difficulty through tight walls of skeletal bushes, and she reached the edge of the water. A glance behind confirmed she couldn't see through to the clear plain on the other side, the trees completely hiding her. A glance around and she saw no one. She was in the middle of nowhere, it was very unlikely anyone would stumble on her.

Alright, then. Time to see what she could do. She had never been great at wandless magic, but she had a suspicion it would be easier. Might as well try.

She tapped her lips for a second, trying to decide what to do. Her eyes randomly wandering came to a pile of snow, drifted somewhat higher than usual against the rocks lining the river. Her smile stretched a little wider. She didn't think of the incantation exactly, no — she knew from her mother's journals they weren't strictly necessary. Instead she thought of pushing, of hitting, of a solid force racing to strike against what she wanted gone. She pushed her mittened hand out from her body, straight at the pile of snow, willed her magic into motion, to slap the thing away.

The energy orbiting her whipped into motion, felt almost as a high whistling in her ears, stretching out toward the pile of snow. She could almost see it as it went, a shimmer in the air, striking the snow after barely a second. With a dull thoof noise, the pile suddenly exploded, clumps of ice and flakes of snow dashing into the air with violent speed, scattering before her and flying dozens of feet away. It took long moments for it all to fall again, light skittery noises like rough cloth against cloth, a few plops of bigger bits falling into the partially-iced water. Even when it was all done, sunlight still glinted on ice newly suspended in the air.

Ithera couldn't hold in a gleeful cackle, practically jumping up and down in place.

Another bit of basic magic occurred to her. She spotted a rock just at the edge of the river, and she pointed at it, ordered it to come. She felt her magic reach out and grab it, then drag it over toward her. Dragged it very fast, right for the center of her chest. Ithera barely managed to duck in time, the rock winging over her head. She turned around, saw it spinning away into the trees. She ordered it to come again, and it abruptly turned around, again shooting right for her heart. When it was close, an instant before it hit her, she held up a hand, ordered it to stop. It obeyed, hovering inches from her palm, floating unsupported in the air.

It took a bit to get her levitation skills down. Without a wand to help focus, direct her intent more effectively, it was a lot harder to get the rock to go exactly where she wanted it. Eventually, she figured it out, just using her finger to point where she wanted the rock to go. She was still far more clumsy than she'd been with her wand, but this was fine. It was still useable.

Still useable enough to do this! She spun on her heel, the rock spinning with her, picked a tree at random, and ordered the rock to go, as hard as she could. It went off like a shot, hitting the tree she picked dead-center, the impact sending little flakes of wood scattering into the air, falling onto the snow like so much hail. When it cleared, she saw the rock had blown a hole straight through the trunk! The damage was enough the tree groaned, teetered, then started falling over. Falling over rather too close to her. Ithera skipped out of the way, the tree collapsing across the shore of the river, empty branches plunging into the water, the air filled with wood noisily snapping, water jumping and crashing.

Ithera grinned. She'd knocked over a whole tree, in an instant, just with a little rock! Magic was awesome!

A thought hit her, and she frowned down at her finger. She wondered if that would work. Carefully, she cast a stunning charm, performing the motions with her finger instead of a wand. Nope, didn't do anything. She tried it again, actually saying the incantation out loud. Nothing. She tried a handful of other charms, one after another after another, before finally deciding it wouldn't work. Must need a wand to do those. Maybe she should see if she could make one sometime, or at least a primitive substitute. Ithera knew Heather had always been powerful for a witch her age, it wouldn't have to be perfect.

Over the next hours, Ithera raced through the magics Heather had been taught, trying first this, then that, then the other thing. Some things worked, some things didn't. It seemed the simpler an idea was, the easier it was to do it without an actual spell. Throw things around, easy. Cut things apart, set them on fire, melt ice or freeze water, all those were easy. More complicated charms were hopeless, she couldn't even get some she'd learned in first year to work. Of course, even with simple concepts, there was still a lot she could do. Her abilities were less than they'd been yesterday, yes, but not reduced to nothing, not even close.

Transfiguration was damn weird. She'd tried it with a twig for near on five minutes, and hadn't managed to change it a bit. But then she'd levitated up a bit of water, and tried to transfigure that, and that she could actually do. It was a lot harder than it used to be, and the results looked a lot sloppier, but she could do it. She wouldn't be using it for anything sensitive any time soon, she'd have to practice. It was weird that she could transfigure water with some effort, and a twig not at all, but that wasn't the really weird thing.

Conjuration was fucking easy.

Not as easy as it used to be, true. Simple things, in simple shapes, that was all she could do reliably. Anything too complicated and it came out looking wrong. But her conjurations came out even better than her transfigurations! That made absolutely no sense. How did that work? She tried with water again, to see if she were just getting better as she practiced but, no, conjuration was just easier now for some reason. She didn't get it. Fucking weird.

Not to say she could conjure anything really useful, not even close. She'd tried making a knife — probably something she should learn how to do, if only to defend herself — and that hadn't gone very well at all. Every time, it came out all weird, so misshapen she could barely hold it, the blade crooked and dull. And not always out of the material she meant them to be, the different parts blurred together strangely. No, she would need to work on this. Improve her visualization, her concentration. Practice, practice, practice.

Though she did squeal with delight when she discovered runic casting still worked. That solved everything! She didn't need to be able to do charms if runic casting worked! All she had to do was draw the word for the spell she wanted in the air and…

The thought made Ithera freeze, blinking to herself. She… She knew how to read! That was so cool!

She was only slightly disappointed when she realized the only languages she could read nobody else here spoke anyway.

Ithera got so distracted playing with magic, even just drawing runes in the air because she could read and it was magic and it was pretty, that she hadn't realized near so much time had passed when her stomach suddenly started yelling at her. Instead of walking all the way back, she just apparated to the edge of the clearing around the farm — apparently, that worked too. She did have to walk the rest of the way, though, she wasn't ready for her family to know yet. It wasn't until she got inside and Mom was all worried that she realized she was a couple hours late for lunch.

Heh heh. Whoops.

Ithera was getting so tired she could barely see straight. Everything was all blurry, like there was something in her eyes, but blinking and rubbing at them didn't fix it. She could barely focus, she'd nearly run into the wall on the way to the kitchen and it was just...it was just bad.

She slumped down to a seat at the table, her muscles quivering with relief. Elbows against the surface, she rubbed at her face with both hands, the feeling of it all wrong, like her skin had been covered with a thin layer of rubber, not quite her. She'd been sitting a couple seconds when Mom was there, her hand rubbing Ithera's back, which also felt fuzzy and wrong, muttering in her ear. It took Ithera a couple seconds to figure out what she was saying. It didn't help that part of her still expected to hear English. "You should stay in bed, sweetheart. I know you had another bad night."

Ithera winced. That was a downside to sleeping with her parents, she'd noticed — they could tell when she didn't sleep. She couldn't help it, though. She'd been trying. She'd even knocked herself out with sleeping charms a couple times, but… "No point. I'll just…" She trailed off, shrugging.

"The nightmares aren't getting better?" Her voice was thick with concern. Heavy and warm, and almost pained, as though Ithera's discomfort physically hurt her.

"No. They're not." It had been almost a week now, since whatever happened had happened, she'd stopped being just Ithera and just Heather and became Ithera-and-Heather. The nightmares had started that second night. She dreamed of dragons, and giant spiders, and basilisks, and Veils. Evil men in their shiny masks, a purple-faced man with cruel eyes and heavy fists, a demon with glowing red eyes climbing out of the remains of a cauldron, a younger ghost of the same man, beautiful and silver-tongued, floating out of a life-sucking book. She dreamed of curses, from the wands of murderers and arrogant children alike, she dreamed of graveyards, she dreamed of dark forests, she dreamed of locked cupboards.

And she saw Luna. She'd died, right in front of her, and there had been nothing Heather could do. And Ithera saw her die, her blood staining her clothes, the light going out of her shining silver eyes. Again and again and again.

She couldn't make it stop. She woke up what felt like a dozen times a night, gasping, sometimes screaming, and she couldn't make it stop. It got to a point a part of her didn't want to sleep anymore, because she knew the nightmares would come, and she would be scared, and she would hurt, and it wouldn't stop. After two nights, she'd gone out into the forest, trying to track down ingredients to make a dreamless sleep potion. She might be able to improvise one if she found the right components. But, no, there'd been nothing, nothing useful, and by this point she doubted she had the concentration to do it even if she had the precise proper ingredients for the one Heather remembered, she'd needed to brew it so many times she'd had it memorised. If she tried she'd be more likely to just poison herself. She could barely even manage that sleeping charm anymore. Not that it mattered.

Ithera wondered how long she could go on like this. Heather had known people needed sleep, it started getting really bad if they went too long without it. Like, going insane bad. Like, dying bad. She'd been getting more than zero sleep. Not a lot, probably only a couple hours a night. But she couldn't help it. It wouldn't stop.

Mom had asked what she was dreaming about, but she hadn't known what to say. How did a little girl explain to her backcountry medieval farmer mother that the nightmares weren't hers? That they belonged to another girl, a girl who had been neglected and abused, tortured and assaulted, again and again and again, until she'd been an inch from breaking, until, at the end, death had been a relief? There was no way to explain that. There was no way Mom would believe it.

But, apparently, they'd watched her suffer enough. Ithera had barely been able to eat her breakfast, her hands shaky as she tried to feed herself, the food thick and tasteless in her mouth. She didn't really feel hungry anyway. Apparently that was enough for them, because it was hardly ten minutes after Mom and Roran had the dishes away that Dad had come back in from outside, said he had the horse hitched, get dressed to leave. Roran, who had been a bit down to match the mood, suddenly brightened, grinning as he read what that meant quicker than Ithera, barely listening, had managed.

Mom had had to tell her, while pulling a too-large coat over her head, wrapping her up in a quilt. They were going into town, to see Gertrude. To see if Carvahall's resident healer could help.

She probably couldn't. Heather doubted any healer was schooled in how to handle this sort of thing.

But Ithera went along with it, as though she had any choice in the matter. She sat bundled up in Mom's lap, on the cart Dad had the horse pulling. This was the one time she'd seen this thing not laden with surplus grain or vegetables to sell in town, seemed somehow small with only herself and Mom back here. Ithera just sat there, ignoring Roran wildly alternating between excited chatter and concerned questions, Mom and Dad occasionally muttering to each other. She just sat, watching the rolling drifts of snow scroll by, keeping her eyes open with every gram of will she had.

She knew what would happen if she closed her eyes. She didn't want to sleep, not even for a second. Because it would only be a short moment, she knew. A horrible moment. She may be weak, she may be pathetic, but she didn't want to. She'd avoid it as long as she could.

By Heather's standards, Carvahall was a village so tiny as to be nonexistent. A tight collection of simple houses of wood and stone and thatch, huddled close so as to present a single face against the blowing winds, there couldn't be more than a hundred people living here. Ithera didn't know exactly, but Heather guessed, knowing there were just under thirty buildings in the whole thing, seemed about right. It was one of the larger villages in the Valley, though. There were several others, she knew, dotted here and there, but they were usually about half the size, more a place for a few farming families to winter together than a true village. There was Therinsford to the south, of course, which Ithera had heard was much larger, enough to be a town. Ithera hadn't been there, so couldn't say herself, but she doubted Heather would be much more impressed by that one either.

The place was very quiet, still in the winter cold, as though all energy had been drained out of them, weighed down by the snows, hibernating in wait for spring to come. Smoke trailed from every roof, footprints and the occasional line of a wheel crisscrossing the narrow avenue, but Ithera didn't see a soul on their slow plod through the village. It was still early in the day, she guessed, but it was winter. Not really worth going outside, was it?

Before they had quite gotten to Gertrude's, Mom had pulled Roran aside, told him to run off to Horst's. Ithera knew the blacksmith had a couple boys, Roran could play with them until it was time to go home. For a second, Roran gave Ithera a heavy, worried look, but she nodded, and he was running off in an instant.

A minute later, Dad was pulling the horse to a stop, jumping off to tie her to a post outside the healer's. Ithera wriggled, moving to stand up, but apparently she wasn't required to do even that much today — before she'd even gotten out of Mom's lap, Dad was there, effortlessly lifting her up, gently clutched against his chest.

Normally, Heather might be slightly annoyed about them treating her like an invalid, slightly uncomfortable just with someone touching her. But she was too tired to even notice right now.

Not too tired to notice anything at all, though. At the door, waiting for Gertrude to answer Dad's knock, she stared blinking at the long bundle of greens she recognised as dittany hanging just outside. Apparently, Gertrude knew what she was doing.

Considering how important she was to the life of the village, Gertrude had an extremely simple home. A little one-room hut of wood and straw, an open fireplace in the center, a bed and a chair. Ithera was pretty sure Gertrude didn't technically live here during the winter — she was getting old, Ithera had heard Horst had started looking after her. It still seemed nice enough, warm and cozy, air thick with incense, plants recognisable as potion ingredients and some not, both fresh and dried, hanging in bundles from the ceiling.

The part of her that was Heather was uncomfortably reminded of Trelawney. But she was mostly just sleepy.

She wasn't really keeping track of what was going on around her. There was a lot of prodding, and questions being asked, and talking. She couldn't really keep track. The world was going all...swirly. Again. It would stop in an hour or so. Or she would temporarily pass out. Which would be bad.

Dying silver eyes flashed before her own, she reflexively squeezed them closed. It didn't help much. She opened her eyes with a start, before she had time to fall asleep again. She would rather not. Then she'd have to actually see it.

She was so sick of seeing it.

She wasn't paying that much attention, but she was pretty sure the conversation was going badly. By the tone of Mom and Dad's voices, Gertrude's fidgeting. Something was wrong. Before she could catch up, Gertrude was on her feet, with a last exchange of murmurs with her parents, she was out the door.

The world was so blurry, she couldn't get it to make sense. Everything kept swirling, down and to the left, going and going and going. Her parents were talking, talking to her, but she wasn't really listening. Buzzing of flies in her ears. She could barely even think anymore. It was too heavy and thick and everything was all droopy and terrible, she couldn't…

He had silver-blonde hair, sharp nose and narrow lips, a severe sort of dip at the corners. His eyes were bright, but cold, chips of deep blue gemstone lit from behind.

Gertrude hadn't returned alone. Ithera knew who this was. He was the storyteller, Brom. She'd never really talked to him before, just listened to his stories. He was smart, and funny.

And there was something…

Far too sleepy to think straight, Ithera's mind randomly wandered. Or not too randomly. He was there. A lot. Ithera hadn't consciously noticed, but Heather was far more aware of such things, accustomed to watching her own back. He was there, in far too many of Ithera's memories. Practically every time she'd been to Carvahall. Following, watching. Standing there, looking like...like…

He sort of looked like...

The realization hit Ithera like a bludgeoning curse to the back of her head.

Brom the Storyteller was her father.

Huh.

Ithera was so busy with the twisting thoughts dancing around in her foggy head, blankly staring at the man who she was pretty sure had been her secret father this entire time, she didn't hear a bit of the conversation going on. They were talking, talking about her, but she didn't hear it. She just kept thinking, her father was real, he was alive, he was right here, this was really happening. She had absolutely no idea how to respond to this.

It didn't help that it'd been years, she couldn't remember Brom not living in the village, and he'd never said anything.

But she did notice, as he was talking to Gertrude, her parents, that he was staring back at her as steadily as she was staring at him. His blue eyes narrowed, hard and empty as diamonds.

And then she felt it. She flinched at the touch, but it wasn't really a touch, not a physical thing against her physical body. Instead it was magic, instead it was thought, reaching into her magic, into her thoughts. It didn't feel quite right, different than Heather was used to. Not with the same sharpness, the same nauseating grime legilimency usually had, instead soft, diffuse, like water sinking into soil. And she knew, instinctively, Brom was trying to read her mind.

Just as instinctively, without even really deciding to, Heather clenched her jaw, and gave the foreign presence a hard push. She may be sleepy, she may only be half here, but her magic jumped to her defense easily enough. Like steel doors slamming shut, Brom was blocked out.

Brom's eyes went wide, hand jumping to his head. He staggered back a few steps, staring at Ithera with obvious shock, obvious enough the other three in the room were chattering, probably asking what was wrong. But they both ignored them, staring steadily into each other's eyes. Brom moved first, the hand not holding his walking stick raising a bit above his waist. A tiny gesture, a muttered word.

Ithera felt the magic rise in the air, thick and warm, soothing, like the warmest and most comfortable of blankets. It settled on her parents, it settled on Gertrude, it tried to settle on her. But Ithera's magic, bound tight against her skin, simmered and sizzled, rising to resist. Brom wasn't weak, he'd put quite a bit into that spell, but Ithera pushed, showing no more than a twitch of an eye, and the sleeping charm trying to seep into her was burned away.

At least, she thought it was a sleeping charm. By the way her parents slumped to the floor, Gertrude passing out in her chair, it was a good bet.

Again, Brom jumped, wide eyes almost quivering with the intensity they had on her. Empty, far too dark for how light the color actually was. He raised his hand a bit higher, palm pointed at her. After a short silence, he said, voice low and harsh, "How did you do that?"

"You shouldn't do magic on people without asking. It's kin—" Ithera broke off for a second, choking back a yawn. "It's rude."

By the way Brom stared at her, eyes blinking, mouth silently working, he had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.

"Are they sleeping?" Ithera looked over at Mom, slumped against the foot of Gertrude's bed. It was hard to tell just looking. Biting her lip as she focused on the feel of her magic floating around her — she hadn't tried this yet, and she was really sleepy — she reached out toward Mom, trying to feel her. After a second, she felt herself relax slightly. "Oh, good then. I'd be mad if you hurt her."

"Who are you?" Brom still sounded angry, scared, but there was a note of confusion in there too. He was looking at her with this odd frown, cautious, like she were dangerous, but also some fascinating being he'd never even heard of before. Like a cat with pink stripes suddenly started talking and doing magic in front of him.

But Ithera just sleepily blinked up at him. That was a stupid question.

His teeth gritting just visibly, Brom reached for his magic, the air again tingling with it. Muttering to himself again, he cast some kind of charm, Heather had no idea what. But she could feel it settling around her ankles, her wrists, obviously a binding spell of some kind. It was invisible though, and it hadn't needed to cross the air to reach her. Interesting.

This was as easy to get rid of as the sleeping charm. She just stabbed a bit of her own power, vibrating with the rhythm of a dispel, into the restraints before they could properly form. The interference tore the things apart in seconds. "Stop that. I'm too sleepy for this to be fun."

And Brom's glare just got darker, his voice just got harsher. "Who are you?"

She blinked some more. "Ithera Manisdaughter. Hi."

"Don't even try to fool me," Brom hissed, the cold in his eyes turning colder, so cold they burned. "You are not Ithera. You don't even feel human."

"Yep, I'm Ithera. Dunno about the human part, I guess? I'm weird. There's the magic thing, and I think my magic is weird." Ithera squinted at Brom, looking for a copy of the halo of magic she had orbiting around herself. He didn't seem to have any outside of him, but he was definitely magic, he'd just been doing spells, coming out from inside himself. Inheriting Heather's magic from another universe must have made her different, but she wasn't sure if that meant she wasn't human. Maybe just a weird human? "But Ithera, yes, that I am."

Brom's eyes narrowed a bit further. "Prove it. Tell me something only Ithera would know."

"Like what?" Ithera was too sleepy to scoff properly, but she made some kind of displeased noise, at least. "For being my dad, you're never around, you don't know anything only I would know. And apparently mind-reading is a thing, if I'm not the real Ithera I could have stolen it." He was really quite bad at this paranoia thing. She could only imagine what Moody would say. It was embarrassing.

"I—" The cold fire in his eyes sputtered out, his mouth dropped open. His hand, previously held up toward her in what she assumed would have been a threatening gesture if she knew how magic was supposed to work in this world, dropped suddenly to his side, limp, like he were a puppet that had just had one of his strings cut. He stared at her for long moments, blinking, struggling for words. Even when he found them, all he managed to say was, "How? How long?"

She shrugged. "Just now. And, I dunno. Just kinda look like me, I guess."

Brom's sharp, pointy-nosed face squished into an almost pouty glare at that, clearly annoyed. Which was a bit silly. She guessed, just because he kind of looked like her wasn't a great reason to jump to the conclusion that he was her father, but, in all fairness, she really didn't look that much like anyone else in the village. She had more silver bits in her hair than most, her face was shaped subtly wrong. She was pretty sure she'd gotten that pointy nose of his too, but it was a little hard to tell when she was still so young. And Brom looked really different, when she thought about it, not at all like anyone else in Carvahall, totally foreign.

Really, and with the way he always followed her around, it wasn't that much of a leap. No reason to be all silly.

So, she was just going to ignore the issue, and move on. "Do you have some magic thing that will make me not have nightmares? I don't think Gertrude is good enough, and I'd really like to stop."

When Brom didn't answer, still just blankly staring at her, Ithera couldn't help feeling a bit irritated. With Heather's luck, she really should have known that, even if she did find him, her father would be completely bloody useless.