Sowing Season- I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Vi38- Thank you! :)

Danni nodded a bunch of times, until the nurse finally released her with a slight look of annoyance on her face. Danni grinned, and then ran out into the corridor. It was right in the middle of class time at the moment, and Danni had the rest of the day off. She wasn't expected to be back in her classes until tomorrow morning, in case she needed a bit more time to rest or get back into the swing of things. She took her time, wandering around for a bit before actually heading back to her house.

Back in the Ravenclaw common room, Danni found herself almost immediately surrounded by a gaggle of girls. At first, she smiled at them, thinking about the fact that they'd been worried about her. Then they started going on about what work she'd missed, and how many exams she'd need to make up. And then the conversation quickly moved onto the girls quizzing each other on things that were going to be on their next exam.

When Danni extracted herself from the group, it didn't appear that any of them even noticed. She just gave them all fond smiles, and gently told them that she was tired, and wanted to take a nap. A few of them acknowledged that, and then they continued to study.

Sometimes Danni wondered why she'd even been put into Ravenclaw. She wasn't nearly as obsessive about studying as the rest of these people, though she did always make sure that she studied enough to have top marks. The others weren't satisfied with that much, though. They all felt the need to always be doing better. It was something Danni just didn't understand about them.

Then again, to be fair, Danni had been more like them, once upon a time. Still not to the same extent, but a lot closer than she was now. When was it that she'd suddenly changed? When she'd realized that she didn't need to hate Harry Potter for things that happened that were outside of his control? When she actually befriended Harry? When she learned that her aunt was in on the plan to have Harry murdered? When she learned that she'd never even technically been born in this world? Or maybe some combination of it all?

Danni wasn't exactly sure. All she knew was that at some point, she'd realized that there were so many things that were more important than studying. After seeing some of the things that Danni had seen, it would be crazy if she even pretended for a moment that grades were still her highest priority. Right now, her priority was figuring out how to save Harry's life, even if that meant she had to die in the process.

And if she really wanted to preserve her grades, then she still wouldn't have to study at all. It would be as easy as peeking into the minds of her peers and pulling out their answers. Yes, that was technically cheating. But there was a murderous psychopath parading around the school pretending to be a teacher so that he could help kill one of Danni's closest friends, so she'd already passed beyond the point where cheating actually seemed like a bad thing.

After a while of just lying on her bed, Danni knew that there was no way she was tired enough to be napping in the middle of the day. So she got up, and easily slipped past her peers, out into the corridor. If she could actually sneak into another house's common room, then sneaking out of her own house was really no problem.

The only real problem was now that Danni was out in the hallway, she wasn't quite sure where she wanted to go. There weren't really a lot of options. Danni was plenty smart and pretty, and had a lot of people that probably thought of her as a friend, but she didn't have anyone that she could really talk to.

Wait, that wasn't true. Now that the entire golden trio was in on her secret, it would be only too easy to go and talk with them about whatever she felt like getting off of her chest. As long as she could keep pretending like there was nothing wrong whenever she looked at Harry, she'd be just fine.

It was almost funny to think about, really. Harry, who was the golden boy, always throwing himself headlong into danger if it meant protecting his friends, was now going to be the one to not sacrifice himself. Danni wondered if Harry would find that as amusing as she did. Probably. He had a pretty strange sense of humor sometimes.

There was a small flutter in Danni's stomach at the thought that maybe, no matter how unlikely it seemed, Danni dying could make Harry sad. There was no denying that the two had been growing closer as they spent more time together. And now Danni was helping Harry to not get killed off. That was bound to make people come a little closer with each other.

But Danni clenched her hands into fists, and stood there resolutely. No way. There was no way that she could ever let herself fall down that rabbit hole. If she let herself believe, even for a second, that there was a possibility of something between Harry and her, then she'd have to just forget about it. All that Danni needed to focus on was keeping Harry alive. Everything else had to be shoved to the backburner. If Danni kept thinking about Harry, then she'd find it awfully hard to let herself die when the time came.

To help create the balance, with the whole 'one must die and one must live' thing, Danni could always just climb up to one of the towers of the school and fling herself out. But that wasn't a guarantee that everything would be okay. That wouldn't stop Voldemort from trying to murder Harry once he won the tournament.

Which is why Danni would need to keep going until she found the right time to die. Maybe it would be jumping in front of a fatal spell directed towards Harry. Maybe it would be shoving him out of the way of a large falling object. It definitely wouldn't be killing Voldemort, since Danni wasn't egotistical enough to think that she was that important in the grand scheme of thing.

The point was that it could be anything at any moment, and Danni had to keep her eyes peeled. Though she did figure that it would be alright to relax a little bit for right now, at least, since Harry wasn't going to be killed until after the tournament.

Danni was surprised to find that she'd wandered up to the seventh floor without even really thinking about it. She'd been so lost in her own thoughts, she hadn't even realized that her feet had started moving. This had to be a sign of some kind. Danni was here so that she could hang out with the golden trio, though Danni would really prefer to only see Harry.

No! She scolded herself. She wasn't supposed to think about Harry. At all. Thinking about him would only lead to trouble for everyone involved. Besides that was the famous Harry Potter she was thinking about. He had loads of admirers. So many girls and guys who would eagerly pay a lot of money just to kiss the boy for even a moment.

Danni hesitantly stood in front of the portrait of the fat lady. She looked pretty good considering what had happened to her last year. Danni was tempted to just knock on the frame, and hope that there was someone in the common room who could let her in.

But Danni wasn't a Gryffindor, so really, it would be unfair of her to expect to be allowed into the area that was sacred to the Gryffindors. She couldn't imagine any of her friends letting other houses into their common room. It just wasn't how things were done.

So Danni headed downstairs, to the first floor. That's where the largest amount of common areas for students could be found. So if Harry wasn't in the Gryffindor common room, and hopefully he wasn't, then she should be able to find him somewhere around here.

It was all rather annoying that Danni had made that promise to Harry. The promise to never peek into his mind for even a second. If she hadn't made that promise, then she'd easily be able to find his location. And while she still could do that, and it's not like he'd ever know and it's not like she'd be reading any of his actual thoughts, it would still be wrong, simply because a promise had been made.

Danni searched through the library, then the great hall, then the grand staircase, then the greens outside, and she couldn't find him in any of those locations. Which meant, most likely, that he was up in his dorm room, and Danni felt a bit silly searching all around for him when he'd been there the entire time.

Maybe she was more tired than she'd thought? Whatever, though. It was no big deal. If she'd just let herself seek out nothing more than the presence of his mind, then she could've saved herself the trouble of traipsing all around the school like some kind of idiot.

Danni decided to return to the Ravenclaw dorms. It's not like she really had anything better to do. She could still sense all of her friends sitting around, working, but she didn't really care whether they saw her or not. In fact, they didn't even glance up from their notes for a second when Danni strolled in.

She rolled her eyes, and headed into the girls' fourth year dorm room so that she could flop down on her bed, and draw the curtains closed around her. She pressed her face into her pillow, until she could no longer breath, and then she turned her head and let out a long sigh.

Danni wasn't entirely certain what she would've said to Harry even if she had been able to track him down, so maybe it was for the best that she hadn't been able to find him. She would have looked pretty silly seeking him out and then having nothing to actually say to him.

So she just let out a frustrated groan, and peeled off her cape. They were stupid things anyways, always getting tripped over by the shorter students. Danni rolled onto her back, and crossed her arms over her chest indignantly. She was not that short, no matter what anyone else said. She was pretty average height. There were plenty of others in their fourth year at the moment who seemed to be on the short side.

Danni closed her eyes, and accidentally opened her mind up a little bit more than she'd meant to. She didn't want to let in every arsehole in the vicinity who was thinking about anything.

There were random flashes of facts from History of Magic, and people practicing their silent spells, and people practicing their normal spells out loud. There were a few murmurs that couldn't be heard entirely, but some of them sounded angry while others sounded happy.

Danni bolted upright a moment later. Wait just a second. One of the thoughts that had been mixed in with the others in the onslaught wasn't right. It was familiar, even though it had no right to be there. Danni knew that she was not just imagining things when she reached out searchingly, trying to find a particular mind.

There it was, clearly standing out amongst the other minds. It was too weird to think about, though. Because the mind she was feeling definitely belonged to her mother. The one that raised her, not the one that was a copy of the one who'd given birth to her. Man, that was rather confusing, wasn't it?

But there was no reason for Danni to be able to feel her mother's mind. There was no reason for her mother to be in Hogwarts. And as Danni put out some feelers, she knew for sure that her mother was nowhere on the grounds of the magical school. In fact, she was at home, reading a newspaper and talking with Danni's father.

None of this was making any sense. Danni usually had trouble keeping connections that were more than a couple of floors away from her. And now she was reading her mother's mind from almost a hundred miles away. That had to be impossible. Danni had never done anything like this before.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the connection to stay, while she let all of the others fall away. She didn't care much about the random thoughts of her fellow students. Most of them weren't really smart enough to be thinking about anything worthwhile.

"Sometimes I get a little worried, you know? Like what's with this article? There's no way that this makes any sense. Why would I find out that my daughter went missing via newspaper article rather than actually hearing from the school? We've got to go and talk to them about this. It's just offensive, really." And then there were lots of pictures of Danni growing up throughout the years, and a few of Jacob too.

Was the reason she could hear her mother's thoughts because they centered around Danni? But surely there'd been other times before where her parents thought about her while she wasn't home? It wasn't making any sense. There was no reason to think that she'd suddenly grown any stronger and yet, she must've.

When Danni first came to Hogwarts when she was eleven, she'd been terrified out of her mind. The only thing that mollified her was the fact that her brother was also going to be there, going into his fifth year. But even that hadn't been very helpful. Danni had been very scared that someone would find out about her even though her parents were always reminding her to never tell anybody.

Danni had kept reading her parents' minds from the moment the train left the station, though it was only a few minutes later that the connection was too weak and then gone altogether. Jacob had wanted to sit with his friends but he didn't want to leave Danni alone, so he ended up sitting with his little sister. He told her that she couldn't just go peering into anyone's heads, because that would be considered rude, even if they didn't know it. But he did say that she could stay in his head for as long as they needed to.

She'd ended up spending that entire train ride focusing on her brother's mind. She knew better than to dig too deep into his head, but it was nice to have a single place to focus on rather than every single student on the train clamoring for her attention. That was how Danni had learned that there was no way she could possibly be able to read the minds of her parents from all the way up here, and yet, that was undeniably what she was doing right now.

Danni got up, and began pacing back and forth across the dorm room, trying to think. She hadn't done anything that could suddenly make her stronger, had she? Danni closed her eyes for a moment, and forced her mother's voice out. She wasn't in the mood to be listening to her mom at the moment. Though she did have the feeling that she'd be getting a letter soon enough asking how she is.

A few minutes later, a girl popped into the dorm. She smiled at Danni. "Hey. It doesn't look like you're getting very much sleep."

Danni sighed. "It's hard to. I just can't stop thinking, you know? Like I can't shut my brain off?"

The girl nodded. "Oh, I get it. That's like whenever I have a big test coming up, and I just can't stop thinking about all of the information, because I'm always afraid that I'm going to get things wrong. And then once I've finally taken the test, I'm constantly thinking about all of the questions, and the things that I probably got totally wrong, or things that I suddenly remembered the right answer to."

Danni nodded. "Yeah, I guess it's something like that. Except right now I'm mostly thinking about what other people are thinking."

The girl nodded sympathetically. "You think that people will see you as weak or lame because you got yourself trapped down there in the lake? I totally get it. But don't worry. I promise that no one's thinking of you like that." "All we can think about is how cool that experimental spell of yours is, and whether or not you'll share it with us at some point."

Danni smiled. "Thanks. I think that there's someone I need to talk to right now. I'll talk to you later." The girl nodded and watched Danni hurry off. It wasn't until she was halfway down the hall that Danni even realized she wasn't wearing any shoes. Oh well. She had places to be.