Neither Harry nor Calla could fathom any more from his vision, and Calla wasn't entirely sure how to wrap her head around the fact that Harry seemed able to feel Voldemort's emotions. He spoke of a necklace, apparently silver, but couldn't describe any more than that no matter how Calla probed.

But she could almost feel the shift in the air. Most likely she was being paranoid, but something about the world simply seemed off. She tried leaning into a vision, letting the world slip away, but Uncle Vernon's loud snoring from the next room shook the house, and she was jolted from her vision just as she thought she might get somewhere.

"I'll try again tomorrow," she promised her brother, who nodded numbly. "Unless you... I don't suppose you can find out more?"

"And how would I do that?"

"Well, I don't know. I just have to sort of lean into it, you know. My mind. I have to close my eyes and clear my head and then welcome the vision in. If it's there, at the edge of your mind, all you have to do is open that door to it."

"What door?" Harry asked, frowning. "I don't know how I see this stuff, Calla."

She huffed and rolled over in her bed to stare at the ceiling. "Well, there's obviously a reason. Dumbledore probably knows but just won't say." She scoffed. "We can figure it out. It could be a good thing."

"It would be better if it were clearer."

"I know." She shifted a little, smiling wanly at him across the room. "But magic really hates making anything easy."

"You don't say."

Sighing, Calla curled up under her duvet and closed her eyes. "Try and get some more sleep. We'll write to Remus in the morning. With any luck, it'll mean he can come and see us sooner."

"I hope so," Harry said, but Calla knew that neither of them got to sleep for a long time.

Xx

The story broke in the Daily Prophet early in the morning: a post owl dumped it on Harry's bed, stole three knuts from the windowsill, one of Hedwig's owl treats, and took off just as they woke up.

The Triwizard Tournament has long been a memory of a forgotten time in our Wizarding past, when soon to be heroes vanquished terrible beasts and competed for the glory of their school. The last academic year saw the Triwizard Tournament hosted for the first time in centuries, at Britain's very own Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But the Tournament ended in tragedy for Hogwarts' young champion, Cedric Diggory.

Overshadowed throughout the Tournament by the two surprise Hogwarts entrants - Harry and Calla Potter - Diggory had to try harder than anyone to claim a space in the spotlight, thwarted at every turn until the end of the final task. Reports of the night are fuzzy, reliant on the memories of the Potter twins and the handful of Aurors who arrived at the scene some time after Diggory's body was returned to Hogwarts. The claim by Harry and Calla Potter is that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named returned that night, and that the Tournament was a conspiracy against them, something which Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, has vehemently denied.

"This was clearly a stunt," he told the Daily Prophet, "by the same group who targeted the Quidditch World Cup. We are conducting an enquiry, but our Aurors report only Death Eaters, not You-Know-Who, were at the scene. They also succeeded in capturing Peter Pettigrew, a great feat that must not go ignored. He is currently in Azkaban, where he will remain. I repeat, the story of You-Know-Who's return is false. The Ministry is very much on top of the inquiry."

But many have criticised Fudge's handling of the situation. In 1992, some readers may remember that Hogwarts school came near to closure due to attacks against students, in particular Muggleborn students. While Hogwarts was, and remains, under the control of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, some believe Fudge ought to have intervened earlier in the case. Similarly, he has been criticised for allowing - after a great miscarriage of justice against the innocent Sirius Black - Peter Pettigrew to not only evade the Ministry in the aftermath of You-Know-Who's downfall, but to escape from Fudge himself the evening that his misdeeds were uncovered. The disappearance of Ministry worker Bertha Jorkins in the Summer, as well as the despairing mental health and stability of Head of the Department of International Co-Operation, Bartemius Crouch, as well as the attack on a Muggle family at the 1994 Quidditch World Cup, have also cast a long shadow onto the Fudge administration.

Perhaps these events are all unrelated, and indeed, I and many others would argue that ideologies of blood purity and superiority are still rampant among the Wizarding community regardless of the actions of You-Know-Who, but they cannot be dismissed. There are many who would support Harry and Calla Potter, the former of whom vanquished You-Know-Who himself many years ago. But we must be cautious in believing the word of fourteen year olds. No one knows truly what occurred that night, though our greatest sympathies go to the family and friends of Mr Diggory. The Daily Prophet advises its readers to proceed with caution against unverified sources of false news and reporting, and the Ministry would like to assure the Wizarding community at large that there remains no evidence of a threat from You-Know-Who. He remains dead as he has been for thirteen years.

Article by Aila Farley.

"I'd have thought Fudge would cover it up," Calla said, when she and Harry were finished reading.

"He couldn't," Harry said. "People were bound to wonder, and he can't keep the Aurors quiet if they were on duty - they'd have had to make a report on what happened. But it doesn't really seem like people believe us, does it?" He glared out the window. "No one knows what happened... We know what happened! We saw it! The Aurors saw the Death Eaters, why did they think they were there?"

"I don't know," Calla said quietly as Harry got up and started pacing. "A stunt. Clearly."

"He's glad he's got Pettigrew, how come there's no confession out of him, eh? They didn't even try!"

"I know."

"How can you be so calm?"

"I'm not calm," she said, brittleness in her chest and her words. "I'm just tired."

It felt odd, all of a sudden, to be at Privet Drive. Calla had thought for a while she wouldn't return, but she supposed it had always been inevitable that she had. For Sirius to have care of them under the Ministry, he would have to tell them where they were staying, and that was, for now, the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix who, from what little Remus has said, were not friends to the Ministry. It seemed, Calla thought bitterly, like the perfect solution to Dumbledore's problems of what to do with them. She wondered if he just didn't want them to be happy at all. He'd made them live here for so long that it was starting to feel again like they could never truly escape it.

So she put her books back on her cramped bookshelf and stacked the rest up on the floor by her bed. She placed a photo of her parents on the desk next to their photo album, stuck up a picture of her, Padma and Daphne from the Yule Ball, and slowly and wearily unpacked.

The morning was one of those rare Summer mornings where the sky is blue as far as anyone can see, and the sun is never hidden. Calla still felt cold. She'd never hated the sun before, but decided she did today. Everything just felt wrong. Summer was supposed to be fun and cheerful. She didn't feel either. She just wanted to sleep for the rest of her life.

Stonewall still had two weeks before their Summer holidays, too, but Smeltings students had returned and Dudley was taunting her all morning about how she'd been screaming in her sleep the night before, before her brother had woken her. He cornered her in the hallway when Harry was upstairs.

"What's wrong with you then?" he taunted, and a coil of frustration built in her chest. "Finally gone mental at that freak school of yours? Huh?" She didn't reply, just tried to go up the stairs, but he caught her wrist and she flinched. His eyes landed on her forehead and he smirked. "What's up with your face? You're even uglier than usual."

Even like this, he was taller than her, practically loomed over her, and her breath came too quickly. His grip was tight around her, trapping her, holding her down, and panic welled in her throat. "Have you gone dumb on me? Used up all your voice screaming last night did you?"

She stared at him. It turned to a glare and the panic in her chest turned to ice cold fury as she stared him down. She'd faced a lot scarier than Dudley. She'd survived.

"Take your hands off me," she hissed, and he blinked in surprise. "Or I'll be the one making you scream."

"What are you going to do?" he jeered. "You can't do magic out of school!"

"Not with a wand, no," she whispered. "But it's awfully difficult to detect Potions."

The very word made him pale and Calla felt an unexpected twist of satisfaction at the confused fear in his eyes. No one had looked at her like that before, and especially not Dudley. "Now take your hand off me."

He did so, and she looked down her nose at him, trying to hide her trembling. "If you really want to know what's happened," she said, "ask your parents. I'm not scared of you, Dudley."

"Never said you were," he muttered.

A smirk crept onto her face. He wasn't meeting her eyes and there was a strange satisfaction in knowing that somehow, she scared him. "Now leave me alone. Alright?"

She didn't wait for an answer, just strode up the stairs and then hurried across the landing, sweeping into her room and closing the door behind her. Harry looked up. "What have you done?"

"Possibly threatened Dudley with poison?"

"You did what?"

"He deserved it," she snapped, even though she didn't really have any intentions to poison him. "He's just... You'd think he'd grow up. But he was - when I was talking to him, it was almost like I scared him."

"You know he's scared of magic," Harry said, frowning. "He always has been."

"Yes," she said, a little breathlessly, as she slumped down onto her bed and stared at her feet. "But he's never been scared of me."

To that, Harry didn't have an answer. "So. About last night."

"Yes." She sat down quickly, preparing herself. "Have you gotten any further?"

"No. But I thought... I know that usually what I see is pretty literal but I thought maybe there was some sort of omen in it?"

That gave Calla pause and she frowned, folding her arms in thought. "I suppose it is possible. Like you said, your vision are usually very literal, but that doesn't mean it is completely exempt from omens. I'm not sure what a necklace is meant to symbolise though." She reached for her copy of the Dream Oracle, looking through it quickly while Harry fidgeted on the edge of his bed. "Have you written Remus yet?" she asked, trailing through the 'M' section.

"Wrote Sirius."

"Ah." She frowned down at her book. "A necklace in a dream is meant to symbolise commitment. So. I suppose that would fit with the whole betrayal theme going on there, in a subverted way."

"That doesn't exactly get us any further forward," Harry complained, and Calla shot him a look.

"Well, I don't know what else I can do if I can't even see what you saw. Maybe then I'd be able to clarify a few of the details, though without context these things can be tricky anyway."

"Yeah, well." Harry sighed and leaned back to glare up at their ceiling. They hadn't put up their usual house decorations yet, and the room was ratherbare of colour. "You're not exactly a mind reader." She gasped. "What?"

"I... I mean, I'm not. And I've never actually consciously done it on someone else before, but I might be able to make it work, and since it's a matter of the mind the Trace can't pick it up so it's more or less legal if we just don't let on to anyone, right?"

"What is?" Harry asked, sitting up sharply.

"Occlumency."

"What?"

"Well, Legilimency."

"That's... Didn't you say Voldemort used that on you?" He looked vaguely horrified.

"Yes, but I won't use it to hurt you. It isn't dark magic, Dumbledore and Snape can both do it."

"Snape does it?" At this, Harry looked even more horrified and Calla was quick to intervene.

"And Dumbledore. That's how taught me Occlumency in the first place, and he's never taught me Legilimency but from what research I've done, they're similar processes and it's made easier with someone who trusts you and doesn't have very good mental defences, which you don't."

"Oi!"

"Well, you've never practiced Occlumency, have you?" He shook his head. "So, no mental defenses, at least not of a magical nature." She smiled at him for a second before she saw the stark confusion and disconcertation on his face. "You don't have to," she told Harry quickly. "But it was just a thought. If I could see what you saw, I might be able to control what you see though it in the same way I can control my own visions."

Her brother considered her warily, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. "Would it hurt?"

"I don't think so. If it does, tell me and I can stop immediately. That is, if it works at all. But it might be worth a try at least?"

Harry frowned. "Okay," he said slowly. "But how do you do it?"

"Well, I don't really know."

"Oh, brilliant."

"But I'm going to figure it out!" she promised. He gave her a dubious look. "I made notes on the subject ages ago, if I can find them, then I can work on it. I know it can be used verbally and non-verbally, and with or without a wand, and I think it would be best to do without a wand and non-verbally due to the Trace."

"You're going to try wandless magic?" Harry raised his eyebrows. "Calla, this isn't going to work."

She glared at him, not wanting to agree. "Well, at least I'm doing something. If it doesn't work, then fine, so long as we don't get into trouble. Leave me be and I'll figure it out. Oh," she added quickly as he turned away, "speaking of, I have some books I need to get soon to read over the holidays. The only place I can think of to get them's Flourish and Blotts but I don't know if they deliver."

"How would I know?"

"I expected Hermione might have tried before."

Harry shrugged. "I'll find out. But if they don't, we'll go when we move back in with Remus and Sirius, won't we?"

She put on a firm smile, though in truth she was uncertain. "I'm sure we will. I'd just like to make a start sooner rather than later. For my research."

He frowned at her but didn't press further about what that 'research' might mean, and instead relaxed back onto his bed, picked up a fake snitch that he'd laid on their bedside table, and played a game of one-man catch in silence.

Later in the day, he took to wandering around the town on his own while Calla sat up in their bedroom, listening out frustratedly for any signs of life from the Dursleys and drawing out the night before's nightmares until they turned into furious, terrified scribbles and her scar started burning as her pencil tore through paper. She drew every image of a necklace she could imagine, conjured from past visions and memories, but with no idea if any of them were correct, and even if they were, what they could do with it.

At four o'clock, Harry came back inside. Calla nodded silently to him, but couldn't face answering his questions. She went around to Mairi's house, but was hesitant to knock. It had been almost a year since they had last spoken face to face, and she hadn't sent a letter in two weeks. Still, that wasn't too long of a time, was it? She had said she'd tell Mairi what happened in the Third Task - or at least, a Muggle proofed version of events - but she never had. She didn't know how to translate what had happened into terms Mairi might understand without breaking the Statute of Secrecy or scaring her only Muggle friend off for good.

Still. It was here or Number Four and Harry's questions and those suffocating walls. Swallowing nervously, Calla knocked twice on the door and stepped back hurriedly, eyes darting about in an attempt to look casual. The door opened and it was, to Calla's relief, Mairi who answered, still in her school uniform. She stared at her a moment before breaking into a shriek and jumping the two steps at the door to engulf Calla in a hug that sent her nerves on edge, but in a strangely good way. "You're back! You didn't say when! I never got your last letter about the triathlon, how did it go?"

Calla chuckled weakly, but stepped out of the hug quickly. "I know, I meant to, I just... A lot went on."

"It's not to do with this Zacharias guy, is it?" Mairi asked, tugging Calla's hand. She hollered over her shoulder, "Mum, it's Calla, we're going for a walk!" and then shut the door behind her, leading Calla down the path. "Is it?"

"No," Calla said softly. "It's..." God, how was she meant to explain it? She was already regretting having come by. She didn't want to talk about it, she just wanted to see Mairi. "Just stuff." Mairi looked at her weirdly.

"You're upset," she said. "You can tell me about it, you know."

"I know," she said, but she knew she couldn't. "It's not that important, I kind of just got swept up. I ended up drawing the triathlon, but I still reckon I should have come lower."

"Drawing for first place, though? That's decent, Calla. You must have done great in the last part - what was it, the cycling one?" Calla nodded numbly. Cedric's face flashed before her eyes again. "See. It's good. I wish Stonewall had a triathlon, they're making us do this rubbish sports day thing like we're kids, egg and spoon race and everything." She giggled half-heartedly, and Mairi looped their arms together. An unexpected rush went through Calla. "Andrew thinks it's bloody hilarious I have to do it. He's got an apprenticeship for next year, he's not going back to sixth form now, gave it up."

"You still planning on leaving as soon as?"

"See," Mairi said, looking uncertain, "I thought so, but... Oh God, promise you're not going to laugh? It'll sound so swotty."

Calla laughed. It was easier when they were talking about Muggle things; it almost undid the knot of dread in her chest. "Promise I won't."

"You just did!" Mairi was grinning.

"Yeah, only because you think I'm in a position to judge someone for being a swot."

Now it was Mairi's turn to laugh and Calla felt a rush of relief at the sound, a perfectly normal sound from a perfectly normal person laughing at a perfectly normal joke. She loved Mairi's laugh. "Right, well... I kind of really enjoy history at the moment? And I thought about maybe going to uni, but... I don't know. Is that weird?"

"That's really not that swotty," Calla said. "I was expecting you to say you were trying to teach yourself Elfish or something, my friend Terry..." She swallowed, remembering their last conversation. "He's doing that."

"He sounds fun," Mairi said, and Calla laughed loudly.

"He's alright. But wanting to go to university isn't exactly weird, Mairi."

"It is back home," she said with a shrug. "No one goes to uni from where I'm from but... I mean, I don't think Stonewall has a massive group that typically go either, their sixth form is pretty small, but I thought - it might be good? God knows what I'd do with it, mind."

"You've still got ages to decide," Calla reminded her, envying the idea of university, the opportunity to just study and learn for the sake of it rather than to try and save her life. To study somewhere she felt safe. "But I'd say if you want to, and you can, then why not at least give it a try?"

"Yeah," Mairi said, biting her lip. "Andrew said it was swotty."

"Who cares what he thinks?" Calla said. "Brothers say stupid things sometimes. Trust me."

Mairi laughed now and Calla found herself grinning at the fact that she'd made that happen. "You know the other day he came in after being a mate's drinking? Mum was raging, he threw up in the living room and tried to hoover it."

"No!"

"Yup. She's still furious, he says he was just trying to save her the bother."

"That's not even stupid," Calla said, "that's just plain gross."

It was so much easier to talk about Muggle things with Mairi, Calla quickly realised as they did a lap of what felt like most of Little Whinging before heading back for tea. It was easy - sometimes - when she did to forget there was another, non-Muggle world, so much scarier than the one she was hiding away in now. "Come by tomorrow afternoon as well," Mairi told her just before she headed inside, sliding her arm from Calla's and leaving it cold. "You can have dinner with us, if you like, it's just Bobby's got football tonight and Andrew's having a mope about his girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend." She pulled a face. "I'll tell you the details later."

"I'll see about it," Calla replied, but she felt warm inside at the invitation, and something nervously excited fluttered in her stomach. "My aunt and uncle probably hate the idea of me having friends, but I also think they'd love to not have to feed me." She shrugged, and grinned at Mairi. "What time..."

"Just same as today, or whenever's fine. I get home at about quarter to four ish, usually. I promise I'll get dressed into something less grey." Then she smiled, a wide smile, and said, "It's really good to see you again."

Calla found herself smiling. "You too."

Xx

Calla made a point of still getting her subscription to the Daily Prophet but she was starting to regret it. For the first few days of the summer holidays after the Tournament article there had been nothing of note in terms of her, Harry or Voldemort, which had honestly been rather unnerving. Aila Farley, she noticed, hadn't written a single other piece for the Prophet.

Then she started noticing other things; the way that certain articles would mention them. Anything from a dubious source would be made fun of by referring to them - 'pulling a Potter' seemed to be the most popular punchline - and she didn't fail to realise that people who performed any slightly impressive feat would again be compared to them. It all seemed to suggest that they were making it all up for a bit of attention.

She considered burning her copies in unseen protest. Maybe she could burn her schoolbooks too. Destroy it all. The idea appealed, but she thought Aunt Petunia would scream at her if she tried to start a bonfire in the back garden, and she was furious enough with Calla after Dudley went running off accusing her of making poisons in the kitchen sink, which was just untrue and a gross exaggeration of what she'd actually said. For now she was just glad Harry wasn't reading the paper too deeply, taking the stance that anything to do with Voldemort or Pettigrew would be headline news. Calla was scouring the paper for any hints, but even then, there was nothing more suspicious than the Prophet's attempt to paint them as liars. She'd expected Fudge to try and cover things up but surely he couldn't stop information getting to the press, or at least stop the obvious speculation. She was quickly growing frustrated with it, and frustration soon turned to the same apathy she'd felt about almost everything that wasn't terror.

"I don't get why no one's telling us anything," Harry said, chucking that morning's copy of the Daily Prophet onto the floor between their beds. He was still clutching his most recent letter from Ron, who had been the exact opposite of helpful. He, like Hermione, Remus, and even Sirius, had been evading their questions all week. Remus hadn't even said when he'd be visiting, and that made Calla more bitter than anything. He'd always promised he'd be there for them, but he wasn't. She didn't want to blame him, knew that his condition wasn't his fault, but what was stopping him or Sirius now? Except Dumbledore. She didn't like to think about him anymore. He'd betrayed her, too. In fact, her only useful contact had been Trelawney, who had sent a letter detailing the work of her ancestor Cassandra, a famed Seer, along with a most useful book about the relativity of precognition in dream interpretation. "I know they know something."

"I know," Calla said quietly. She had yet to hear back from Daphne and Padma, whom she'd written to a couple of days prior asking if they'd heard anything. She wasn't expecting anything much from Padma, but hoped Daphne might know a bit more. Her only other correspondents were Terry and Isobel, neither of whom were likely to know anything, due to being Muggle borns.

"Have you Seen anything else?"

"No." She sighed, rubbing her eyes. She saw more than enough in her dreams as it was, and she wasn't much inclined to attempt anything vaguely magical. "If I had, I'd have told you as soon as I did."

"Yeah." Harry scowled at the latest letter from Ron. "Look at this. It's like he's trying to be deliberately unhelpful."

"I'm sure he's not," Calla said with a sigh, taking the short letter. She read it once, and shook her head. "Write him back."

"Like that'll do any good."

"You might as well, though." Calla sighed, and leaned back on her bed, glaring at the window through which the sun streamed, hotter than ever. "I'm roasting in here."

"Go outside then," Harry snapped, and Calla turned her glare to him. He sighed. "Sorry."

With a sharp nod, she turned and picked up her book, sitting on a shadowed part of the floor. Harry came and sat opposite her, legs crossed, so that their knees clashed. She ignored, as she had ignored many times, the prickle in her scar when they sat so close to one another. "You haven't heard from Dumbledore, have you?"

"Again," Calla said tiredly, glancing over the top of the page, "I'd tell you if I had."

Harry huffed, and took from the table Calla's copy of their Potions textbook, flipping through it. She tried not to laugh; he was clearly bored already, even after barely a week in the Muggle world and resorted to the habit they'd both had when they were younger; reading books because they had been the one thing Dudley never wanted or noticed missing. "I'm sure someone'll let us know what's going on soon," she told Harry, though she wasn't sure she believed it herself. "Remus or Sirius must do."

"Yeah." He didn't look convinced either.

There was a very loud slamming of the door across the landing, from Dudley's room, and heavy footsteps thudding to the stairs. The twins exchanged a look. It seemed Calla's last encounter with Dudley had shaken him enough that he'd stopped trying to taunt them the last few days, but Calla had picked up from Mairi that he was now making a habit on picking on ten year olds half his size. She sighed, looking to the slightly ajar door through which she could see her cousin.

He seemed to feel her gaze, and turned around, jumping. She raised her eyebrows, and then looked back at her book, which - despite being perfectly Muggle - seemed to confirm that she was up to no good. Dudley scurried down the stairs yelling for his mother, and Calla shook her head. Harry grinned over at her. "You know you shouldn't antagonise him."

"I'm not doing anything remotely magical," she said, and it was true. She was reading Little Women again, which, while magical in its comfort to her, was pretty well grounded in historical reality. "You should probably put away the potions textbook, though."

Harry didn't need to be told twice. To be honest, Calla thought he might have been looking for an excuse to put it down the moment he had picked it up. "You know, if your visions aren't happening anymore, Remus will want to know."

"It's not that they're not happening," Calla replied, eyes fixed decisively on the pages of her book. "I just... Don't have the energy to make them happen right now."

"Calla-"

"Harry." She said his name in a way to silence him. There was a sharp rap on their bedroom door, and Calla glanced up. Harry kicked their Potions textbook under the bed as Aunt Petunia stuck her long neck around the side of the door.

"You two," she snapped, sharp and suspicious eyes going immediately to Calla. "What are you reading?"

"Little Women," Calla said simply, not looking at her. "It's a classic."

Aunt Petunia's lips thinned. "Get in the garden. Someone needs to water the plants with all this hot weather. Quickly!"

Clearly, Aunt Petunia's orchids were the most urgent matter at hand. Calla almost envied her such a concern. She grimaced at Harry, setting the book aside as the pair of them trudged, hiding their scowls, down to the garden.

"Have you gotten further on that... Legili thing you were talking about?" Harry asked as they worked side by side tearing out weeds.

"I don't know until I try," she replied, shaking her head. "Dumbledore just does it by looking at me and wanting it to happen. But I'm very much not Dumbledore."

Harry gave a small half-smile. "Suppose not. It might not do any good anyway."

"But it might," Calla said, trying to sound confident. She turned to her brother, looking him in the eye. Their aunt and uncle were watching the news, quite ignorant to the twins, and Dudley was out with his gang doing whatever it was they did nowadays. "Keep looking at me," she told Harry, who blinked in surprise but then did as he was told.

She kept her gaze fixed on his eyes, relaxing her shoulders and letting out a small sigh as she tried to imagine her mind reaching out to his, reaching through his thoughts and memories. Her scar prickled in pain but she ignored it, willing her mind to move towards his, their thoughts connecting, and she felt something open at the edge of her mind. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and in the dark of her calm, empty mind she willed her consciousness slightly to the side, to a pale green light, and then the image shifted.

Memories of other people flew before her, bright and burning. A snake, brilliant green and red and golden light, and she pushed forward, searching for a vision of a necklace, and then a burning pain shot through her head, like it was carving out her scar, and she reeled back, landing flat on the grass and staring, dazed, up at the sky, heart hammering.

"Ow," Harry said, appearing above her and clutching his scar. "That hurt, Calla."

"You don't say," she muttered, wincing in pain. "Your brain is a mess!"

There was a rather horrified look on her brother's face. "What did you see?"

"A whole lot of mess," she muttered, rubbing the space around her scar in the hopes it might diffuse the pain building up inside it. "But that... Did not go so well as I'd hoped."

"You - how did you just jump out of it? That felt weird."

"I didn't jump out of your mind," Calla told him. "You pushed me out!

"How did I do that?"

"Well, I don't know, do I? You did it."

He stared at her. "I didn't mean to."

"Well, you did," she grumbled, and he gave her a hand to get back up to her feet. "And it hurt, by the way."

"Sorry." Harry winced. "Did you at least See anything?"

"Nothing of use," she said, though frowned. "I saw a lot of light. Red and green and gold." He paled. "Was that - is that from - in the graveyard?"

Harry looked away from her and nodded. "Yeah."

She didn't know what to say to that now that she'd received confirmation. Instead, she took a great interest in the rosebush. "So, I don't think is going to work. How about we just wait for Remus and..."

"Forget?" Harry finished heavily.

"For now. There's nothing to be gained from Legilimency clearly, and I've no other ideas."

He kicked a stray stone over the grass. "Sure."

Xx

The days started slipping by and Calla barely knew what to do with them; nor did she know what she was doing, half the time, except fumbling through interactions with the Dursleys and arguments with Harry which led nowhere, and running to Mairi's whenever she was welcomed for a reprieve. With no news, and only a vague promise from Remus that they would tell them more soon, Calla settled for avoiding any thoughts of magic as much as she could - for at night she was haunted by it, and she wasn't sure she would ever escape Voldemort's cold clutches. Even the book Trelawney had sent her gave her no reprieve, not that she had truly expected it to, and she sank into the idea of Mairi, spending as much time with her as she could. A perfectly normal girl.

Perhaps, she thought sometimes, when Mairi took her arm and trailed her hand down to lock their fingers, there was something... More, there. On drowsy summer days, she was like a fresh stream, one that Calla was more than happy to drown in.

The rest of the holidays seemed to pass in this similar stifling fashion. Harry and Calla seemed continuously treading around one another, worried to say the wrong thing. The Prophet only gave the same style of reporting, and Harry eventually caught on to Calla's scrutiny and read for himself, at which point he promptly blew up and, Calla suspected, would have stormed right out of Privet Drive if she hadn't stopped him. "We have to keep lying low," she said. "Write to Sirius, or Remus or Ron and Hermione, if you want, but calm down before you do something you regret."

"Well, according to them, trying to tell the truth is something I should regret!" Calla recoiled a little, not used to being on the receiving end of her brother's anger, and not like this. "You've been reading this all Summer?"

"Yes," she said as calmly as she could, too tired to talk. "It's all nonsense. They're trying to discredit us."

"And you're just fine with that?"

"I don't think everyone is so easily influenced," she said slowly. "Or they certainly shouldn't be. And I know the truth, Dumbledore knows, and the Prophet may be a big newspaper, but just about every wizard or witch has been taught by Dumbledore, haven't they? You think they won't give some credit to what he says?"

"And you think people don't pay attention to the news?" Harry asked, eyes wide and angry.

"I don't know," Calla muttered in response. "They do, obviously. But there's nothing we can do about it, not at the moment." She handed the paper back to him and sighed. "I'm going to-"

"Mairi's?" Harry was almost glaring at her, and it wasn't the playful sort of glare she was used to.

"And what's wrong with Mairi? She's perfectly nice, and she's my friend!"

"You're always there."

Calla glared at him like he'd glared at her earlier. "I wonder why."

She yanked her shoes on sharply and hurried down the stairs, not knowing why she was so upset. It had been, what, not even a fortnight and already they were arguing again? She hated arguing with Harry and yet it seemed they couldn't stop it. The sun was burning hot on her face as she paced down the street towards Mairi's house.

"You're in a way," Mairi said from the garden before Calla even went to turn. She was frowning like she was trying to puzzle Calla out. "What's wrong?"

"Harry," Calla said simply, and Mairi nodded sympathetically. "We keep arguing."

"I mean, that's pretty normal."

"Yeah, but... We said we wouldn't anymore. We argued so much last year and then... stuff happened... and I don't want to argue with him now especially since... things aren't exactly normal, our friends aren't writing much especially his, and it's-"

Mairi hugged her tightly, and Calla made a faint sound of surprise. "Please don't cry," she whispered and Calla shook her head.

"I won't. Promise, I won't." She leaned into Mairi, holding her just as tightly as Mairi was holding her, and it felt nice. She was warm, but pleasantly warm, not like this sticky summer air, and the gentle touch of her fingers to Calla's waist made her feel... Strange things. But nice things. Her arms tingled.

"How come your friends aren't writing?"

"It's just... complicated."

"I can get complicated."

Calla chuckled weakly, hands moving to hold Mairi's own, where they were fixed on her waist. Her thumb drifted over her knuckles. "Can we go inside?"

"Course." Mairi leaned back, and she looked even prettier and warmer in this light. Calla's throat felt suddenly dry, and her stomach fluttered. "And I bet you haven't got suncream on today, either, have you?"

Calla found herself laughing as Mairi tugged her inside. "You know me too well."

"Damn right I do." Mairi grinned, taking to the stairs. "So," she said, flopping down onto her bed. Her room was painted a bright violet, and there were posters of various bands and singers tacked up all over the walls, some Calla knew - like Queen - and some she probably couldn't have known even if Mairi sang their entire discography. "What's complicated?"

"Everything."

"Well, yeah." Mairi pulled Calla down to sit on the bed next to her. Her eyes seemed unusually blue and bright. "You've been off ever since you got back, I know you have. I can tell something happened, and it's bothering you."

Calla sighed. This was the question she'd been wrestling with for weeks now: where to begin? "We got into a bit of trouble after the - the triathlon. Someone got hurt. I got hurt."

"What sort of trouble?" Mairi asked, and Calla knew she was thinking of entirely different trouble, trouble of parties and drinking and laughing and dancing. She wished it had been that sort of trouble, wished all that had happened that night was a very big party, and wished that she could have laughed at anything to do with it.

"I can't really say. But, well, you know how it is. Not everyone knows what to believe about stuff, especially when someone - someone gets hurt. They're saying it was his - my friend, this boy..." She forced herself to say his name. "Cedric. That it was... That Harry and I are lying about what happened. For attention."

"And your friends don't believe you?" Mairi raised her eyebrows.

"No, they - they do." She smiled weakly at the memory of all the Ravenclaws crowded into the small boys' dormitory. "But they... I don't think they really know what to do with me. I mean, Daphne and Padma are talking to me but it's like, I've no idea what's really going on at the moment and I just feel so disconnected. And I know it's worse for Harry. His friends know stuff, that he doesn't, and they're not telling us." She shook her head, a little bitterly. "It probably sounds stupid."

"Nah," Mairi said, her hair brushing gently and comfortingly against Calla's shoulder. "It doesn't." Her voice was quiet and kind, and with her warm skin pressed next to Calla, she suddenly felt a lot calmer. This, unlike so much of Calla's life, felt right. "So you're both upset with everyone?"

She laughed huffily. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Well, that sounds fair." She looked at Calla in a gentle sort of way that made Calla's stomach flutter and her throat go dry in a way she definitely had not expected. For a moment she had no idea what to do and so just looked at Mairi, waiting for her to speak. "I know I don't know all of it," Mairi said, "but it sounds to me like you and Harry are on the same side, even if you fight. And all siblings fight." She smiled gently. "And I'm on your side, as much as that actually means."

Even though Mairi didn't know the truth, and had no way to know or understand the great confusion of life occurring in Calla's mind, she found that she didn't mind this. Rather, it was nice, to be around someone who was just normal, and just liked Calla because she did, and stood up for her because she was her friend and she wanted to. So she found herself smiling at Mairi, and said, "Thanks. Do you want to get ice cream?"

And Mairi grinned and said yes because, obviously, it was ice cream and it was Summer and it could have been a perfectly normal day.

Author's Note: Aaaand I think that marks chapter one hundred! It has been a long time getting here and this time last year I never would have believed I'd have gotten so far in the story. But all your lovely comments over the last year or so have really motivated me, especially in this dark time with covid, and I'm super excited about where Calla's story is going to take her. I've now written up to mid-November in the OotP-adjacent timeline, and I can't wait to share it with you all. Let me know what y'all think, any predictions you have for the coming year etc. and I shall see you for an update next week!