Dear Calla,
I'm far from surprised that you were right about the Tournament. It sounds like exactly the sort of thing we all would have gone in for when we were your age, though I'm glad there's an age restriction. You and Harry have had enough trouble to last you both a lifetime.
That said, do take this year to enjoy yourself. I won't say specifics, but I'm aware there is meant to be a dance in a tournament year, which will be what your dress robes are for. And if you can, get Daphne to take some photos of the night, we'd love to see them (if you can ever manage to persuade Harry to stand in a photo).
Beauxbatons and Durmstrang I don't know an awful lot about, but Sirius has some distant cousins who attended Beauxbatons. He just called them some very rude words, but I'm sure you'll get along nicely with the students. As for Durmstrang, I know even less, but it is known for its Dark Arts. They teach the arts themselves rather than defense, and it is the home school of Gellert Grindelwald, one of the darkest wizards of the century other than Voldemort. That isn't at all to say that the people from Durmstrang are bad people or that they are in any way dangerous, but you ought to be aware nonetheless. Sirius believes their Headmaster is Igor Karkaroff, someone who was widely believed to be a Death Eater in the days of the war. Whether he truly was or not we do not know for certain, but again, be careful. And tell Harry to be careful, I don't want him trying to get himself mixed up in this Tournament, and I know he's more likely to try than you are.
As for Professor Moody, if it's Alastor Moody then I'm sure you are all in for a very interesting year. Moody was one of the greatest Aurors we had during the war. Some call him mad and I can't say they're entirely wrong, but he has experience, lots of it, and most importantly, he is loyal to Dumbledore. We've heard whispers as I'm sure you have, and I know we have many of the same concerns. Stick to Moody, even if he may be off-putting at first.
Write soon.
Remus
Calla tucked the letter into her pocket to show Harry before History of Magic. She was sitting at breakfast, watching as Padma and Daphne debated firecracker spells, and as Isobel set one off, exploding Michael's morning porridge. She let out a howl of laughter, grinning at a very disgruntled Michael. "You girls are all so immature," said Lisa, as Mandy and Sue held in their own laughs. "Honestly, the rate you're all going I'll be the only candidate for Prefect for next year."
"Ugh, don't say that," Daphne said disgustedly. "You as a Prefect? I think I'd leave."
"There's more chance of me being a Prefect than there is of you," Lisa said tightly. "I don't blow up people's breakfasts."
"It wasn't me," Daphne said indignantly. "It was Izzy!"
"Aw, yeah, blame me," Isobel cried indignantly, as if they hadn't all just watched her set the spell off.
Terry grinned, catching Calla's eye and shaking his head amusedly. "You're all ridiculous," Calla said fondly, and Daphne tackled her in a very over the top hug.
"You say the sweetest things," she said, turning to lean her head on Calla's shoulder.
"Well," she said awkwardly, "I try my best."
Lisa was still bemoaning the girls' immaturity to Michael, Mandy and Sue when they left breakfast, and Isobel and Daphne were complaining very loudly about her. "I just thought it was funny," Anthony admitted to Calla, shrugging. "Lisa needs to chillax."
Padma snorted. "Anthony, did you just say chillax?"
"Terry - Terry says it's something the Muggles say." Calla giggled. "What? Does it - does it mean something rude?"
"No!" Calla assured him hastily, still trying not to laugh. "No, no, it's just - quite funny."
Anthony frowned. "It does mean something rude, doesn't it? What-"
"Chillax, Anthony," Terry said in mock exasperation, setting Calla into another round of giggles that lasted all the way to History.
That afternoon was their first Care of Magical Creatures lesson of the new year, and from what Harry had told her of Hagrid's new interest, the creatures they'd be tackling were not particularly friendly, or indeed, legal, probably. Daphne and Isobel both agreed this would be very exciting, but when confronted with the Blast-Ended Skrewts in class, Daphne looked utterly terrified and insisted that Padma handled the things, and not her.
Padma shook her head fondly, muttering under her breadth as she narrowly avoided being hit in the face by one of the things. "What do they eat?" She asked Hagrid, who frowned.
"Well, see, that's the thing, Padma. I haven' quite figured that one out yet. Bu' we'll... We'll be getting ter that."
Padma looked rather offended. "He doesn't even know what they eat? What if they eat us?"
"Hagrid wouldn't give us something that'd eat us," Calla said confidently.
"Probably," Daphne said weakly, as Isobel grinned at them and went to go and stroke the Skrewt, which hissed at her and reared.
"Jesus, Izzy!" Calla cried, dragging her back. "Are you mad?"
Isobel shrugged. "Eh, I was curious what's happen."
"This is why Snape wants you banned from his classroom," Daphne muttered. "One day, you're going to get yourself blown up."
"I'll mind and take you with me when I go then," Isobel said cheerfully, and Calla and Padma kept a very close eye to make sure she didn't set a Skrewt off and burn half the forest down.
Xx
"You didn't tell me about the curses," Harry whispered to her on Thursday evening as they sat in the library working on their star charts, which both of them, and Ron and Padma, had been putting off. Daphne was making use of Isobel for Muggle Studies homework, while Hermione darted to and from bookshelves and a table in the corner nearby them. She didn't want to be disrupted by them, apparently, which Calla thought was quite fair, as they didn't do much except talk, and Madam Pince had glared at them very many times.
"I didn't really want to talk about it," she whispered back. Padma glanced up, nodded a tiny bit - whether to herself, Calla, or the boys, she wasn't sure - and went back to drawing her star chart. "Are you okay?"
"I... I didn't like it," Harry admitted. "I just kept thinking about - about Mum, and Dad."
"Yeah," she said hollowly. She'd just absently drawn Venus where Mars was meant to be, and had to erase it with her wand tip. "So did I."
"D'you think... D'you think Moody's a bit... Strange?"
"His nickname's Mad-Eye, Harry," Calla reminded him dryly. "I don't think a... not strange person would often be nicknamed as Mad-Eye."
"I suppose not."
"And Remus says he's loyal to Dumbledore. He says we should - should stick by Moody, so if he thinks he's alright, I suppose he must be, somewhere."
"This is a nonsense," Ron declared suddenly, glaring at his star chart. "I'll never know what any of it is meant to mean."
"Make it up then," Harry told him, and Calla rolled her eyes.
"Boys," Padma muttered, shaking her head.
"Like you know what it means," Ron said shortly. "Didn't Trelawney say Parvati got all the Sight?"
"Shut up," Padma muttered, cheeks flaring.
"I think I'll be in danger of burns on Monday," Harry said mildly, and Calla shot him a glare, scoffing as she returned to her own chart.
"Yeah, you will," Ron said. "Don't forget the Skrewts."
"Don't even talk to me about the Skrewts," Padma muttered darkly.
"You too?" He winced sympathetically. "On Tuesday, er, I'll..."
"Fall asleep in History of Magic again?" Calla suggested, and Padma and Harry both laughed.
"Everyone falls asleep in History of Magic," Ron told her. "Everyone except Hermione."
"How about you lose a treasured possession?" Harry said, and Ron scribbled it down obligingly.
"Good one. That'll be because of, er… Mercury."
"That'd be accurate if Mercury was in retrograde," said Calla, and Ron grinned.
"See? We're not totally hopeless at this thing. Right, Harry, why don't you get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend?"
Trelawney would love that one, Calla thought glumly. "Yeah, yeah, cool," Harry said. "Because Venus... is in the fifth house."
Calla rolled her eyes but let the boys get on with their homework the way they wanted to, even if they were being entirely wrong. They were approaching library closing time when she finished her star chart and three weeks' worth of predictions, as accurate as she thought she could make them. "I'm going to go to bed," she said tiredly, just as Padma yawned. She glanced over at Harry and Ron's charts. "You seem to be drowning twice," she informed Ron. "And Harry... You know what, never mind. Goodnight."
"Boys," Padma muttered again as they left. Calla grinned; she'd lost count of the amount of times she, Daphne or Isobel had said that in the last few days. Boys seemed to be getting more and more annoying.
Xx
Their next class with Moody was even more disconcerting than the first. Calla was horrified when he announced that he would be placing the Imperius Curse on each of them in turn, to see how well they defended themselves against it. "This can't be legal," Padma murmured as they cleared the desks. "Can it?"
"It must be, if Dumbledore's letting it happen," Calla whispered back.
"Mind you though, Calla, Dumbledore doesn't necessarily know." They all regarded Moody warily.
"He must do," Padma said decisively. "Mustn't he? He - he wouldn't do something like this without Dumbledore's permission."
"I'd hope not," Calla said.
"It must be an important lesson, though," Daphne said, rolling her shoulders back. "It's something we ought to learn, I suppose."
Still, Calla shuddered as Moody beckoned Mandy over to the centre of the room to cast the curse on her. One by one, everyone had the curse put upon them, and were made to do things she knew they never could or would have done otherwise. Mandy sang a hymn, Malfoy did hopscotch around the room, and Daphne did a Highland fling, much to Isobel's delight. Then it was Calla's turn. She shivered as she stepped forward, Padma murmuring words of advice and comfort. No one had managed to throw off the curse, and she didn't suspect she'd have any more luck than they had.
Moody raised his wand, pointing it at her, and she swallowed deeply, blinking. "Imperio."
She at once felt all of her stress and worries leave her; she could only feel happiness and relaxation, quite at ease with the world around her and not caring at all that her whole class was looking at her. It could only be truly described as bliss. Then she heard a strange voice in her head. Jump onto the desk. She obliged with barely a thought, not even stumbling as she landed. Her head felt very fuzzy, rather like how she imagined being drunk would be. Then the voice said, do a backflip.
She didn't think she could do a backflip, but she blinked and then she did it anyway, landing perfectly on the floor. Dance, Potter, said the voice, and she hesitated a moment. The feeling in her head was very empty, but slowly she was beginning to see things again, with more clarity. Dance!
She danced, not even realising it until she stumbled out of a turn, clutching onto a table. The classroom vanished before her eyes and there was only darkness, sweeping like a cloak over her visions. She could feel herself moving but it was disconnected, like she was being merely controlled by puppet strings; she supposed it felt rather like a dream. In her mind there was a green light, growing stronger and stronger, and when she moved she felt like she moved towards it. She didn't even know what she was being told to do anymore. And then from the green came a red light, this one stronger, brighter, and yet still it was kinder to her eyes. The word erupted in a shimmer of gold around her and she felt herself stumble back, the classroom reappearing again as she turned on top of a table, held on her tiptoes in a perfect pirouette position.
Moody was looking at her intently, something clouding his face as she stepped down rather dazedly. "Interesting, Potter," he said gruffly. She stared at him. That empty, clear feeling in her head was gone and now she could see the world around her, and feel it. She went over to Padma and Daphne with a shudder, glancing back at Moody warily. She hadn't expected the curse to do that. And she wasn't very sure, either, if Moody had expected it.
Calla was rather conflicted about her next private Divination lesson. She'd finished her star chart on Thursday which had meant that she had had the whole weekend to worry that she hadn't done it right and would have to start all over again. Trelawney had given her an appraising look when she handed it over in class. Apparently, her Sun was in Virgo and as the Sun was her ruling star, this meant she would soon see a new need for practicality.
When she went up to North Tower after dinner, it was with a rather unusual sense of unease. On a regular occasion, she enjoyed her Divination time with Trelawney, even if some of the things she discovered were rather unsettling. "I believe it would serve us well to begin a study of Cartomancy. Your Seeing seems largely focused on symbols and omens and portents and imagery... So, cartomancy."
Calla had come prepared, and withdrew two decks of cards from her bag - one of playing cards, the other of tarot cards - and set them out on the table before her. Trelawney withdrew her own, too, putting them on the table. "Your cards are important to you," Trelawney told her. "They must have a connection with you."
"They do." She'd picked the tarot cards out herself in Diagon Alley, and had stolen the playing cards from Dudley once when he was eight and discarded them as rubbish. They were a bit tattered, as they had often been all she and Harry had to occupy themselves with in their cupboard, but as a result they meant a great deal to her. They had a connection, as Trelawney said.
"Good. Now, my dear, which deck shall we start with? Which draws your soul the most strongly?"
She glanced between the two decks. She didn't really know, but she said, "The playing cards," and hoped that worked.
"The playing cards," Trelawney said mysteriously, "offer insight into the workings of the soul with fate, into the world and circumstances that surround you, if fortune is willing to play its correct hand. Each suit holds different broader symbols, hearts for emotion, diamonds for finance, spades for good fortune and clubs for bad. Face cards often pertain to relationships and yourself, while number cards often tell of external events yet to come."
"Right," Calla said, glancing down at her battered deck.
"Shuffle the cards, my dear, in any way you like. You may first draw three and then draw seven, and uncover the secrets within the cards." Calla wondered how many of those secrets Trelawney would rule as a tragedy.
Trelawney nodded and Calla set about shuffling her deck, splitting them and slipping them back together, eyes shut until she felt it was right and they had been shuffled to satisfaction. Then she opened her eyes, still holding the deck, and spread it before her on the table. Trelawney watched her carefully. "Now the three, for personal fate," she said. "The cards do not lie, but it is what you see within them that is the most important. What you feel they represent through their connection to you and to your own path."
Calla looked at the overturned cards, trying to figure out what one to take. She didn't know how she was meant to decide, but she and Harry had performed card tricks for each other when they were little, being careful that they didn't refer to them as magic tricks or show them in front of their aunt and uncle, and she thought perhaps it was like that, where you just had to draw whatever card attracted you the most. Her fingers drifted over the deck, before she took one, two, then three cards out of the deck, separating them but not looking at what she had on the other side. She glanced up at Trelawney expectantly; she had her eyes closed and was making a very strange face like she was trying to think very hard. "Tell me, my dear, what your cards hold."
Blinking nervously, Calla turned the card on her left over first; it was the six of clubs. Then the right hand side, the ace of spades, and in the middle, the jack of spades. She read these out to Trelawney, whose eyes startled open behind her great glasses. "My dear," she murmured, looking quite frightful. She tapped her fingers upon the desk, staring between the three cards. "The six of clubs for important intuition... the ace of spades, a great change is coming to wipe away the old... and the jack... the jack of spades... My dear... You shall suffer a grave betrayal." Her eyes grew wider still and rather sorrowful. Calla's stomach twisted as she went to flip anxiously through her copy of Unfogging the Future. There, the six of clubs was meant to represent the importance of intuition and the trust of self. As for the ace of spades, it represented a time of significant change and upheaval, and because it was a spade, this was meant to be for the worst. Calla already had a horrid feeling she knew what these were all relating to. She wondered if she could ever see omens that weren't horrible or representative of something great and fateful and sweeping, but of something kind and small and something that didn't terrify her so much. She ran her fingers around the edge of the jack of spades. A betrayal. They had already been betrayed, many times and many years ago.
She wrote all of this down nervously in her Divination journal, hands shaking a little around her quill. "Alright," she said quietly, sweeping the three cards together.
"Put them back in the deck," Trelawney told her. "And shuffle again."
She did so carefully, making sure she didn't drop anything even though she was sure that she would. Again she splayed the cards out on the table, and looked up at Trelawney. "Now for the seven. They represent greater fates than yourself."
Calla felt she had seen rather too much of 'greater fate' in her own personal cards, but she did not say this as she glanced at the deck, moving over them until she felt the seven cards that were correct and removed them swiftly from the deck. With a nod from Trelawney, she turned over the card on the far left. The nine of clubs. (The end of things.) The jack of diamonds. (Bad news will be borne.) The six of spades. (Fate will strike.) The three of spades. (For fear.) Seven of spades. (An ill omen.) Ten of hearts. (A people gathering.) Seven of clubs. (Confinement.)
"Your cards..." Trelawney said with something like a shudder. "They do not spell... a happy fate... they tell of the endings... of the great losses and terrors yet to come... my dear... this is a terrible omen..."
"I know," Calla said quietly, and Trelawney's eyes snapped up to her. "I know... Something is coming, Professor. I can feel it."
"You can?" Trelawney leaned forward excitedly, eyes wide and urgent. "What is it, what do you feel? A tension? Is it a premonition arriving?"
"No, no," Calla said. "It's just... A feeling. Something is coming."
"The cards agree," Trelawney whispered in a hoarse sort of voice. "Great changes and the ending of all that is known... Great conflict on the horizon... Fear in the hearts of all those among us, throughout the world, spreading like a shadow... And a gathering of monstrosities... Of darkness."
She reached over sharply to grasp Calla's hands, eyes shut as she shook. "You see it too," Calla whispered. "Don't you? You can feel it, too."
"A great darkness," Trelawney shuddered. "Falling upon us all... Sooner than we may think... Yes, my dear, I have seen such things. The future often mimics the past, and I have seen the past too clearly..." She clutched Calla's fingers tighter, so hard Calla wouldn't have been surprised if they'd broken off entirely. "You, my dear, are in danger above so many others. You, my child... You must be careful. Your path is foggy, it is undecided by fate. But soon, someone must decide."
"Decide what?" Calla whispered, but then Trelawney shook her head, drawing away.
"My dear, it is late," she said. "I shall let you retire to your bed as I must to mine... And keep your cards close to you, my dear in more than one way. You will need them, when the time comes."
"Need... the cards?"
Trelawney shook her head, getting to her feet. Her shawl floated among the smoky red light. "More than the cards, my dear. Yourself."
Calla looked at her. "Professor?"
"Go, now, child," she said, and Calla hurriedly brought her cards together, putting the decks back into her bag. "And sleep on what I have told you... In dreams, we see what the sunlight blinds us to. We see what is in our souls and our fates."
"Professor?"
"Remember my words, my dear... Yes... Do remember..."
And Calla left the room, shivering still.