Karen finally managed to stop laughing, although she was still giddy with joy and small tears had formed in her eyes. She sat down on the edge of a chair and looked at Flitton. Suddenly she remembered the odd exchange earlier where her father hadn't seemed to be able to make a connection between Hogwarts and… well Hogwarts.

"So what was this stuff about a seer?" She asked, still unable to be completely upset about it as the thought of Hogwarts and magic being real ran over and over again through her mind. "I said Hogwarts and it was like you couldn't make the connection, dad."

"But you said two different things, sweetie. You said Hogwarts, the place from the book, and then this Hogwarts school." Her father was still clearly confused by the magic and this didn't help him at all. He usually liked to be on top of things so it was rare to see him this confused, which helped to bring Karen back down from her cloud a little.

"That's the same word!"

Flitton coughed politely. "That is why I believe it comes from your seer abilities. You see, you are actually saying two different words yourself, miss Makarov." Karen stared at him in confusion. Of course she wasn't saying two different words, she'd be able to hear it if she was. "Tell me, miss Makarov, what is this book you've read about?"

"It's about Harry Potter, of course. It's a really famous book series."

"Of course. Now tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Flitton, what did you hear her say the book was about?"

Karen's parents looked at each other, clearly as confused as Karen was. "About Michael Davids, like she said."

Karen's eyes widened. "I didn't say that, I said Harry Potter!"

Mr. Flitton smiled slightly. "Yes, I believe the reason must be that the spell has messed with your seer abilities." Karen and her parents looked at him in confusion so he explained. "Miss Makarov, you had a very powerful spell placed on you which not only subdued your magical powers but also rendered us, the wizarding community, completely unable to detect your whereabouts. It seems that in order for your abilities to come forwards despite the spell your mind created an illusion to make it work. You have been reading a book series about this Michael Davids, but you have in fact been seeing it as a series about Harry Potter. When you believed you had said Hogwarts twice earlier, you were in fact saying Bronzhill and Hogwarts. I presume Bronzhill is a place from the actual book. Most likely your hearing and others were manipulated by the spell so that no one could find out what you were really reading."

Karen was completely baffled. Bronzhill? She had never heard of the place before. And she had had conversations about Harry Potter with people, how could they have been talking about something else? Unless this other book was exceedingly similar it didn't seem possible at all. Could it be that they had really been talking about different things all this time?

"But… how come I heard you say Bronzhill just now but I heard my dad say Hogwarts?"

"There is a chance that there were traces of the spell left. It was a very strong enchantment after all. Or perhaps your mind merely did not want to confuse you and so went on letting you say and hear different things until you were told the truth."

"But… that's…"

"Quite a lot for you to take in, yes. I apologize for all of this, miss Makarov, but it seems to have been your parents will that this would happen. One cannot really blame them, they did this while being prosecuted after all."

"Wait, what?" Now Karen was thoroughly confused. She looked at her parents. "What does he mean?"

Karen's mother suddenly went pale. "Oh dear," she whispered, sounding more frightened than she had been by the magic.

"Mom? What's going on?" Karen asked. Seeing her mother like this scared her.

Her father took her mother's hand. She looked like she was about to start crying, barely holding herself together. "We were going to tell you when you got older…" She began.

"There's no easy way to go about this," Her father continued. "Karen, sweetie, you're… you're adopted."

Karen felt cold, like all the heat had been drained from her body. No, this wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

"You're still our daughter, honey, and we love you." Of course they were still her parents, her mother didn't have to point it out. But… Well this was completely unexpected. Karen had never been one of those who wished for a different family or thought she might be adopted. She loved her family. She might not be as pretty as her mother but she had always believed she had some of her fierceness in her. And she had her father's eyes. Her grandmother was where she got the small spray of freckles from and she got her love of reading from her grandfather. How could all of that be a lie? Those features she had always believed to be from these people actually came from someone else?

Karen's eyes suddenly focused on her parents. They were staring at her and she realised that they were afraid. They were terrified that she would reject them. Didn't they know she would never do that? So what if somebody else gave birth to her? They were still the ones who raised her, they were her real parents. Shaking slightly Karen moved to the couch and buried her head in her mother's hair. She felt her mother's arms tighten around her and she squeezed back. The words wouldn't come out just now but she wanted her mother to know that she wouldn't accept anyone else as her parents, not ever.

They held each other like that for a few minutes before Mr. Flitton coughed again. Karen left her mother's embrace, although she only moved the sit between her parents, holding both of their hands.

"I'm sorry to have to cut this short, miss Makarov, but with the information that you are a seer things are a bit different." Flitton sounded genuinely sorry to have to bring her this news, but he continued anyways. "Can you tell me what exactly it is you have read? I heard you mention Harry Potter earlier, what is it you have seen, or read, about him?"

"Everything," Karen replied simply, "The books are about his whole life, from entering Hogwarts till after the Battle of Hogwarts, plus a bit from the time he got to the Dursleys and an epilogue that happened years later. But… um… why were my… my birth parents," the word felt strange in her mouth, "why were they being prosecuted?" According to the time frame of the books the Second Wizarding War happened when she was just a kid. Could they have been people who were involved in the war that were simply never mentioned? This thing about her having seer abilities was settling in as well. The only seer she remembered from the books was Trelawney and she had only told two prophecies. If Karen was a seer, how come she had been able to read every detail of Harry's life? Doubt was creeping back into her mind. She reminded herself of the sensation of the leg-lock curse Flitton had used on her earlier. It had to be real. There had to be an explanation.

Flitton looked uncomfortable. "I'm really not the one most familiar with the case," he began, "But what I do know is that your mother was a very powerful seer. She was Nordic, seer abilities have always been stronger up there, but she married an Englishman and they lived somewhere in Britain. It seems that during the Second Wizarding War Voldemort wanted to find your mother, amongst other people, and have her use her abilities to find out where the Elder Wand was located. Your parents must have heard of this and, in order to protect their family, vanished completely. They were believed to be dead, as were you, but it seems like they got away somehow. Most likely they placed you up for adoption and sent you to a muggle family they knew would take good care of you after placing the enchantments to hide your magic."

Karen sat quite still while she listened. She would have been two or three years old when they gave her away so it's not like she would remember much. They could even have cast obliviate or something like that on her to make sure she wouldn't remember a thing. So many new questions arose from this. Why hadn't they come back for her after the war? She loved her parents and wouldn't have wanted to have any others but… she was so little when the war ended. Why didn't they come and get her? Simpler thoughts also floated around her mind. What were their names? What did they look like? Did she look like them? Was there anything else she had inherited from these people who had given birth to her? Instead she asked;

"But then why did the spells stop working? I thought spells only stopped when…" Karen trailed off, eyes widening slightly. Spells wore off when the caster died. Her birth parents were dead, dead and they had died very recently. Suddenly Karen remembered the odd shiver she had gotten the night before. Could it have been?

"I'm afraid they must have passed away sometime last night. They never came back after the war, that was why they were believed to be dead. But magic was sensed here yesterday and, after investigation, you were found to be alive. This is all very unusual, had we known you were here we would of course have sent for you to start school at eleven."

The way he said 'we' made another question pop up, one she could at least ask. "Um… what do you do at Hogwarts?" She knew most of the teachers from the books. Of course there were some who she never knew and some who died during the war. Someone could have quit. And then there was…

"I'm the teacher of the Defence Against the Dark Arts class." Mr. Flitton said with a hint of pride. "I have been since after the end of the war." Karen smiled. Somehow she had the feeling he would be a fun teacher. "Now, I suppose the main thing left is to ask whether you accept our invitation to the school. Your studies would be rather irregular, seeing as how you need to catch up on three years. In fact, professor McGonagall wants you to come to school early so that we can begin teaching you some things before school starts. Only if you want that, of course." Flitton looked questioningly at Karen. Somehow she felt slightly odd being the one asked the question. Usually people asked her parents, not her. But she knew what she wanted. This was something she had been dreaming of since she first read the first book.

"When do we leave?"

A/N: Next chapter will be up tomorrow or the day after most likely. Please leave a review and tell me what you think, it would mean the world to me :)