Neville Longbottom stood at his desk late at night, his head bent over at the book framed by his flat hands and three lit candles. Professor Trelawney stood peeking over his shoulder, holding her own dripping candle and looking impatient.
"Well, is she or isn't she?" she asked.
Neville remained quiet, pressing his lips together. The words in the book were pure fact. Harmless, even. But their implications were earth-shattering. He'd been researching for weeks, months...he'd seen this book countless times and read through it. He'd disregarded the answer at first, thinking that can't be right...but things were different now. It was the only explanation. And, now that he knew the answer, he wished he hadn't found it. Hogwarts was a unique place, but he wasn't sure the school was ready for this.
"I don't even understand how it's possible. I thought this ran in families."
Trelawney shrugged. "You can never predict magic with too much certainty. Otherwise life sinks into the doldrums, Neville."
She always had a way of making things melodramatic, he thought. But he was too worried to ruminate on this. Boring or not, magic was about to potentially ruin the life of someone he deeply cared about. Multiple someones.
"Why is it always me? Why do I have to be the one to tell her?" he muttered under his breath, flipping forward a few pages as if it would change the outcome of what he was to do.
"What was that?" Trelawney asked, adjusting her shawl. She smelled overpoweringly of incense and cooking sherry, and it was making it hard for Neville to think clearly.
"Uh, nothing. I just...want to be sure. This isn't something to take lightly."
"I am well aware," she said stiffly.
"You're sure it was the divining roses?"
"Oh yes. I experienced firsthand - the reaction is just as terrible to feel as it is to behold."
"And there's no other possible scenario to explain her symptoms?"
"Of that I am certain," Trelawney huffed. "Do you doubt my expertise?"
In Herbology? Yes. But Neville trusted his own research. And he trusted Trelawney knew what she was talking about when it came to this. After all, her experience was personal.
"No," he said softly. "It's just...she's so young."
"Youth does not mean weakness, Neville. You may find she will be accepting and strong."
"I know," he sighed. "But I'm afraid it will be a burden. She's only eleven."
"It is a burden. There will be horrors in her future, and she probably already has seen things well beyond her maturity level. But she will bear it, regardless of whether or not you tell her who she is. You must make sure she is prepared."
"I know," he said again, closing the book and blowing out the candles. "I just wish it hadn't come to this."
Amelia was dreaming again. She saw the same images as before: a gold cup, a green snake, a bunch of sickeningly sweet red roses…but this time something was different. This time, it felt more real. The images were less blurry; they were more of a memory than a dream. There were more images now, and more sensory details. This time, she could smell the fog as she ran through a dark wood, and she could feel her breath rake against her dry throat.
But, just as something raced at her viciously from out of the dark trees, she awoke with a start, flicking her eyes upward to stare at the drapes of her four-poster bed. She told herself she was safe in Gryffindor Tower. There was nothing to be afraid of.
Except there was.
A letter from Harry Potter had arrived late last night. Its contents had sent James into a frenzy - he'd started packing to go home the moment he heard about what was probably happening to Bridget, only to find a warning at the bottom of the letter to stay put and pretend nothing was wrong. The letter had asked the trio not to tell Bridget anything. It would make her panic, and might make her vulnerable to attack by whatever was following her.
Apparently dark magic was involved with whatever shadow was haunting Bridget, but the letter didn't share too many specifics. It was probably too gruesome to share with eleven-year-olds. Nevertheless, Amelia, James, and Scorpius didn't like be kept in the dark. Something terrible was going to happen – that much they knew – and Bridget was their friend; they didn't like keeping secrets from her after she'd been through so much.
"So I was right, it did have something to do with what happened to her in Salem," Scorpius had murmured, his eyes skimming over the sentences, picking up words like "casualty" and "haunted" and "closed the school."
"When did you ever say that?" James had given him a funny look.
"Never aloud..."
"Yeah, sure. I think you just like to be right."
"Guys," Amelia had chided. "Not really the time."
They decided to follow Mr. Potter's instructions to keep the information a secret between only them, although it still bothered Amelia that Bridget wouldn't get to be part of the plan.
Amelia sat up abruptly and looked around, but then realized she was holding something. She opened her right palm to find the white marble she'd gotten over Christmas. She must have fallen asleep gripping it tight - for some reason, this had been happening a lot lately. Amelia found the marble had a comforting element to it, like a worry stone, and assumed that with all her recent anxiety she had taken to holding onto it in her sleep.
She placed it on her bedside table, nestled behind the spine of her book so it wouldn't roll off while she got ready for her classes. After dressing, she tucked it back in her pocket.
She walked into the Great Hall for breakfast and spotted James, Scorpius, Bridget, and Bean sitting together at a distant table. She made her way over to them, casually diving to avoid a collision with a book that was being tossed across the aisle before stepping over an owl nibbling tossed carelessly on the floor. While she was well used to this kind of chaos at Hogwarts by now, she had a feeling that her first breakfast back home with her parents was going to be comparatively tame.
"You overslept," said Bean, surveying her as she finally sat down across from him. "I was wondering if you were going to miss your classes."
"I woke up just in time. Sorry," she told them.
"It's fine. We waited for a little while, but then Claire said you were still asleep so we left. She set an alarm charm for you, but it looks like you woke up before it went off."
"What makes you say that?"
Scorpius smiled. "An alarm charm dumps water on your head."
Amelia patted her curls self-consciously. "That would have been bad..."
"Claire has a sense of humor, I'll give her that," James said. "It sounds like something I would have done."
"You have done it. To me," Scorpius objected indignantly. Everyone laughed at this, even Bridget, who had been morose and reticent for days. It was almost like she was a completely different person than the girl they'd met in Diagon Alley. Amelia surmised the stress was getting to her, and felt a pang of guilt that she couldn't tell her friend anything they'd learned.
She heaped food onto her plate, noticing Bean's was empty save a goblet full of something red. She didn't have to guess what it was. He was sipping it slowly, regarding everyone's full plates with a disgusted shiver.
"Any luck finding your amulet?" she asked.
"None so far…" he said sadly. "Haven't seen a priceless ancient artifact around anywhere, by chance?"
"No," she smiled apologetically.
"It's okay. Bridget is still looking up antidotes in the library, and Teddy's still helping too. It takes a village sometimes, right?" he said, in an attempt to be good natured that just barely failed.
He took a begrudging sip from his goblet, and something about the gesture echoed in Amelia's mind. Hadn't she seen that somewhere before? It was like déjà vu, but not quite; it was like she'd dreamed it and it was now actually happening. Bean had been in her dream last night, clutching something gold with a repelled look on his face…maybe that was what she'd been thinking of? Was it a prophetic dream? But then the feeling of familiarity passed again, and Amelia was left feeling rather silly for thinking her dream had told the future. She was being ridiculous.
She ate quickly, realizing that some of the eager Ravenclaws were already leaving to go to their first class. As she and her friends finally stood up from the table, a firm but gentle hand fell on her shoulder.
"Miss Dursley," said Professor Longbottom kindly, "may I have a word in private?"
Amelia sat, feeling perplexed and flushed, at an empty desk in a deserted classroom on the first floor. There were two people standing across from her, positioned before the large oak desk at the front. One was Professor Longbottom, who was wearing velvety green robes and an uncertain, nervous smile. He was searching in one of his pockets to make sure his wand was still stowed safely. Amelia knew he was often forgetful, and somehow this movement made her more comfortable. It made the professor seem more human, more relatable. If anyone else had grabbed her shoulder, she would have assumed she was in trouble, but his presence reassured her she was not.
The other person in the room also confirmed that Amelia was not here for a disciplinary purpose. Standing before her was a strange woman she'd never met before. Professor Longbottom had introduced her as Professor Trelawney. Apparently she preferred to stay up in the tall towers of the castle, so she hardly ever interacted with students outside of her classes. Despite this, Amelia knew who she was from James and Scorpius, who intermittently mentioned her. She remembered talking about the professor on Halloween, when the subject of prophecies had come up.
But Trelawney was not at all what Amelia had been expecting. In her mind, she'd pictured the professor as boisterous and laughing, with long shiny black hair and a generous grin. But the bespectacled, frizzy-haired woman before her was the complete antithesis. She was bony, withdrawn, and timid, with a downturned mouth. She was draped in three different shawls, each a different shade of purple. There was a heavy scent of incense that permeated the air.
Perhaps that was why Amelia found herself developing a headache as she waited for the two professors to explain what she was doing there. She stuck her hand in her pocket and rolled the marble between her fingers.
"I'm supposed to be in Charms class by now," she said cautiously. "Is something wrong?"
They shared a look and then turned back to her. Professor Longbottom took a weary breath and began.
"Amelia, do you remember when you fainted in the greenhouses just before Christmas?"
"Of course," she said, rubbing her throbbing temple. "It's not easy to forget."
"Well, since then I have been researching the plants in the greenhouse that might have provoked some kind of allergic reaction for you."
Amelia knew this, but had long ago forgotten. She'd just added it to her list of ongoing mysteries, although Bridget's predicament had most recently taken precedence over her own strange ailment, whatever it had been.
"Did you find anything?" she asked hopefully. "Am I allergic to some kind of magical turnip?"
Professor Longbottom looked oddly pained. "At first, I couldn't find any connection, but last night I came across a definitive answer…" He trailed off, glancing at Trelawney in an anytime you want to jump in kind of way. She just gave him a blank stare, and he exhaled sharply. "Amelia, you're allergic to Divining Roses."
He flinched back a little, as if expecting Amelia to have some sort of outburst, but she still sat there, feeling underwhelmed. "Oh," she said. "Is that it?"
"Amelia, do you know what Divining Roses are used for?"
"Of course, you had us do an assignment on them. They can be made into a tea that stimulates prophetic dreams. So…if I'm allergic to them, I should just stay away from them, right? And obviously avoid the tea?"
Professor Trelawney's wrinkled face puckered in trepidation. Professor Longbottom hesitated then said, "Not exactly. The situation is a bit more serious than you imagine."
Amelia's headache was growing worse, making her feel impatient. "What do you mean?"
"Amelia, being allergic to Divining Roses is uncommonly rare," he continued. "There have only been about five confirmed cases of reaction in Britain in the past century."
"Oh."
"And what can be established from those cases is that each of them had one thing in common. They were all Seers. Only those who can predict the future have this particular allergy. Amelia, your reaction symptoms perfectly match those of an allergy to Divining Roses and nothing else. This has lead Sybill Trelawney and I to conclude that…well…"
"You think I might be a Seer too?" Amelia felt the room start to spin. Her lungs felt too small – she couldn't get enough air to fill them properly. "But…I can't be…I'm just. I'm just me. Just Amelia. I'm not-"
But then somebody grabbed her hand. It was Trelawney. Her bony fingers were surprisingly warm and comforting.
"You are," the woman said, her eyes made gigantic from the magnification of her glasses. "And you are not alone."
Amelia didn't know what to say. There was a soft buzzing in her ears from the shock of it all.
"Some may consider me a fraud," Trelawney continued dramatically, "but I know how to recognize the Sight. And you, Miss Dursley, have it."
Amelia was glad she was sitting down. "So…if I am…what you say I am…what does that mean? Where do I go from here?" She really was at a loss. What would her parents say? What about her grandparents? She was already a freak to them…a witch…what would they say if they knew about this too?
Stay quiet. Be normal. The words from her childhood echoed in her head again…too bad she could never really be normal now. Not knowing this. Not being this.
Trelawney gave her hand another comforting squeeze. "The art of Seeing has been in my family for generations, and I will gladly share this respectable and lofty tradition with you. You can train with me. I will teach you how to control your gift, to use it, even to suppress it when it becomes too much to bear. While I may have never trained another Seer before, I have taught many students, and think I might be of some help to you."
She nodded slowly, not knowing how else to respond. She was going to need help. This was big news. It was like in one of those old cartoons where somebody drops an anvil on the hero's head. But, unlike a cartoon character, Amelia wasn't sure she could bounce back from something like this without some outside help. She had never been too proud to ask for assistance. That might have been something James or Scorpius would avoid doing, but not her. She knew she was in way over her head and was practical enough to acknowledge when she needed a life raft.
The part that scared her the most was that being told she was a Seer actually did explain a lot. There were things in her past she had always been unable to rationalize. At those times, she'd assumed it was just magic, or a fluke. And…there was one specific memory that stood out to her now, illuminated with new light. She knew she'd Seen something before. Something important.
She didn't remember doing it, or what she saw. All she knew was that everything had gone a bit fuzzy in her brain for a few seconds. But she remembered what had happened after she regained control of her body. She saw her father's scared, sallow face; her trembling mother spilling lemonade on the white carpet. And then three days later, a call came that confirmed it. Aunt Marge was dead of a heart attack. According to what her parents had told her later, Amelia had even predicted what Marge had been wearing, right down to the locket at her throat with a photo of her prized dog, Ripper, inside. She didn't remember it, but she must have Seen it.
She'd never told anyone about that prediction. It could have just been a really big coincidence. But it had shaken her parents badly. After the funeral, her father had started to wonder if she was peculiar somehow, like her father's relatives. Amelia had begun to hear the first stories about his weird recluse cousin named Harry, the one they never used to talk about. She knew her father had started asking him things in letters, and then in furtive meetings. It wasn't hard to guess that he and Harry were discussing her.
When she found out she was a witch, Amelia thought that being magical explained everything strange about her, once and for all. But she learned early on that, at Hogwarts, no one else had predicted a death. That kind of magic wasn't normal. So she stayed quiet about it. She tried to be normal.
She thought about the strange inkling she'd received about the missing cloners…she'd felt it months before they actually went missing. At the time, she'd thought she was just being paranoid. But if she was a Seer, maybe she'd foreseen it and not even realized it.
How many times had this happened? Had the Sight driven her into Bean and Teddy's path in the middle of the night? Were her dreams actually predictions? How much had she overlooked because they were just "weird feelings" or "dreams"? What was reality and what was the future? Amelia wasn't sure anymore.
But as she stared at the two professors, she realized she was going to have help. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad. If she could get a better handle on this ability, maybe she could tell her friends and her family. Maybe they wouldn't be scared. Maybe she could make this a new normal for her life.
She swallowed her fear and willed her hand to stop shaking against the hand holding it. A fire began to burn in her blue eyes as she looked up at the kind face of Professor Trelawney. She took a deep breath.
"When do we start?"
A/N: Hi everyone! I know it's not June yet...but I finished it early. I was just too excited to share this one. I've been holding onto this major secret since the first chapter of Dudley's Daughter, and it has taken a long time to get to this reveal. I hope you guys enjoyed the surprise!
In other news, there's now a poll up on my profile for what kind of story you'd like to see after this fic is complete, so please vote with your choices. I figured it might be easier that way.
Special thanks to my awesome beta, bloodyrose1294, for helping edit. And second, if it strikes your fancy, check out my friend/longtime reader idly-daydreaming's HP fanfic Shattered Glass. We're almost to the end, guys. The last chapters are already taking shape, and I look forward to sharing them with all of you this summer. Thanks for reading!