Summary: Lavender takes one step forward and – just like the snap of a finger, the blink of an eye, the drop of a pebble – Hogwarts is left behind. There's no jump, no flashes of light, no whirlwinds of disconnected images. Just one little step; behind stood her war and in front stands 1947. "Huh," Lavender says to herself, "didn't see this in the tea leaves."
Warnings: Rated M because of (technically) substance abuse. Also, Tom Riddle is around, so some murder. And he's hot, so a bit of explicit content.
Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter belongs to J. and to whomever she's sold the rights to (which, sadly, doesn't include me). I don't earn a single cent from this, but it still makes me happy.
This story has six chapters and is fully written. I'll be posting once every four days until finished. It's very fast-paced and not my usual style, be warned.
A Little Step Backwards
Lavender opens the door and she doesn't know what she's expecting, but it's not a bunch of people drawing chalk lines on the floor. Hermione raises her head and her eyes widen. Professor McGonagall screams "don't" and Professor Lupin shouts "wait" and Ron steps forward with raised hands.
It's too late, though. Inertia drives her ahead.
She takes one step forward and – just like the snap of a finger, the blink of an eye, the drop of a pebble – Hogwarts is left behind. There's no jump, no flashes of light, no whirlwinds of disconnected images. Just one little step; behind stood her war and in front stands 1947.
"Huh," Lavender says to herself, "didn't see this in the tea leaves."
She doesn't guess the year immediately, since the change of locations is far more evident. Mostly because she was just running through a barrage of curses and now there's a busy, cheerful street where the Battle of Hogwarts should be. She notices the year is also off rather quickly; there'd be no reason for so many old-fashioned robes and happy smiles on a stroll through Voldemort's Diagon Alley.
Lavender stands in the middle of the street, modern school robes charred and ripped and stained with blood and dirt. Her right pocket holds her wand, two galleons, seven sickles and a knut. Her left, a half-used bar of pink lipstick and a hair tie.
It doesn't take a genius to guess that she's in trouble.
She walks ahead, because no one ever fixed anything by standing dumbfounded while looking at their pockets. Diagon Alley, she notices, has changed very little. Different businesses under different names, but the same kind and even in the same spots. She window-shops while wondering how long a young witch can survive on little more than two galleons.
Not very, that's how long.
She wanders around until she stands in front of a run-down little shop. "Attendant wanted," a hung sing reads. There's no name to the business, that she can see. She hesitates for a second. It's in Knockturn Alley, right in front of Borgin and Burkes – not the most scenic shop to work in. But she's seventeen and she doesn't have her O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s and she probably doesn't even officially exist yet.
She walks in.
There's nothing but little boxes on the dusty shelves in the front shop, and they're all closed. The large counter takes up a good fourth of the tiny room and there's little else to fill the space. It's not easy to deduce what sort of business this is.
She has to wait for twenty minutes. She doesn't mind, because she takes the chance to flip through a discarded fashion magazine that either has been there a long time or means she's landed in the late forties.
Tight-waist robes and victory rolls – not the worst decade to live in.
A woman covered in dark shawls comes out from the curtained door behind the counter. She doesn't look happy to see her. Then again, the age lines around her scowling mouth tell her she doesn't smile often.
"What do you want to know?" she asks her roughly.
Lavender thinks the woman could, indeed, use a polite attendant.
"I'm here for the job," she says.
"Can you read and write?" the woman asks.
Lavender nods, and just like that she's hired. Her salary is of four galleons a week, and she's allowed to keep tips if given. Whether that's high or low according to the time's standards she doesn't know, but in a week she'll still be twice as rich as she currently is.
"What do you do?" Lavender asks after she's taken her seat behind the counter.
"I See," the woman says. "Past, present, future – whatever pays."
"You read the tea leaves?" Lavender asks, perking up.
The woman – Cassandra Vablatsky, she'll soon learn – laughs a coarse, harsh laugh.
"Sure – If you pour enough firewhyskey on them, they might tell you the truth," she answers.
Madam Cassandra allows her to sleep in a tiny dwelling upstairs, which barely fits a bed, a table and chair and a kitchenette. She needs to squeeze inside the adjoined bathroom to have a shower. The only window she has faces the cramped back-street, which is worse than Knockturn Alley itself; she can hear hags whispering and men fighting at nights. Neither of which is at all reassuring.
In her first weeks in the forties, she'll cry more than she has in her short life. Loneliness is worse even than her dire room – she'll miss her family and Parvati and the resistance that fought against the Carrows. That first day, however, she pushes through with all the Gryffindor bravery she possesses.
Not a single client comes.
Her second day starts a bit more uplifting. A couple rays of sunshine filter through the narrow Knockturn Alley in the first hours of the morning, and it makes it look more charmingly decadent than downright nightmare-inducing.
She opens the shop – hangs an 'Open' sign and tries to tidy up the uninviting front door – and sees a young man doing the same for Borgin and Burkes. He smiles at her, and with just that she knows he's the most gorgeous person she's ever seen. She walks inside feeling cheered, fantasizing of holding his dark curls between her legs.
The first client arrives a little after ten. It's a middle-aged woman covered in jewellery bigger than Lavender's perky nose. She asks for the Madam, and Lavender knows to let her walk in.
"If they're minor clients," Madam Cassandra told her yesterday, "deal with them yourself."
"How do I know if they're minor?" Lavender asked.
"They are if they're satisfied with you."
And so Lavender learns which clients are to be taken seriously and which need only "to hear what they want to hear." Not that she feels very confident in her own abilities to grant them that. So, that evening, Lavender shares her worries with the Madam. She gives her three precious pieces of advice, which will help her survive the forties in ways she, right now, cannot even imagine.
Number one is to speak with ten times the certainty she feels.
Number two is to be as evasive as allowed.
And number three is to use the fumes whenever in doubt.
"The fumes?" Lavender asks.
The Madam opens one of the boxes closest to the counter and removes a long, narrow pipe. She fills its bowl with three drops of liquid – blue, yellow and red, poured from dusty, little bottles. She presses the mix with a tamper and a whirl of colour lifts. She lights it with a spark of her wand, and takes a test draw. She slowly exhales a cloud of purplish fumes.
She then passes the pipe to Lavender. She inhales three times.
She closes her eyes and sees music and whispers and the howl of the wind. She hears acidity and saltiness and chocolate pudding. She touches reds and yellows and light. She tastes cold and roughness and velvet.
She could know anything right now.
"The Inner Eye is only true when not occluded," Madam Cassandra says.
Lavender suddenly understands the strong incense in Professor Trelawney's classes. That, and the troubling cherry addiction.
Her third day starts worse, because it's raining and muddy and she doesn't want to ruin her only pair of shoes. The handsome man has opened before her, and the doors to Borgin and Burkes are tinted with dirt and covered with the posters of a missing girl – they completely hide the inside.
No sane person ventures their alley in this weather, and so Lavender waits behind the counter until it's time to brew tea for Madam Cassandra.
"Do you only use the fumes, Madam?" she asks. "Never the crystal balls? Palmistry?"
"What matters, girl," she answers, taking a sip, "is that you try to see. The means aren't important – the Inner Eye tells the truth."
Lavender doesn't quite understand. Professor Trelawney taught them with rules and instructions.
The Madam can see her doubts. She stands and takes another box – this one from the upper shelf. Inside lays a crystal ball more opaque than Lavender is used to. The Madam places it between them on the counter, and then fetches a large bottle. The label on it is in Russian, but Lavender doesn't need to understand the language to tell it's strong liquor – the smell gives it away.
"Drink," she is ordered.
She does. And when she finishes her glass, she's served another.
She looks into the ball and sees shifting, blurry shapes. The figure of a woman collapsing. The dark shadow of a man. The number seven. A crowned boy growing taller, larger. A little girl on a broom.
She asks the Madam what all those mean.
"How would I know?" she answers, and leaves.
On her fourth day, she gets her first minor client.
"I love him," Joyce Fawley says, tears on her eyes. "Oh, but the bad tongues… The rumours… They say he is evil. But is he? Such a sweet man?"
Lavender offers her tea, and takes her own with a generous pour of absinthe.
"Should I marry him?" the client asks.
Lavender turns the client's cup once.
"Anchor," she says, "steadiness and rest."
She turns it a second time.
"Ivy," she sees, "faithfulness in love."
She turns it a third time.
"Moon," she ends, "romantic attachment."
The young woman thanks her and leaves the shop already making wedding plans – asks her to call her Joyce Bellchant the next time they see each other.
As the Madam says, always tell the clients what they want to hear.
The week passes and Lavender uses her first pay to buy herself a couple outfits suitable to the epoch, and a new pair of shoes. She's tired of covering her school uniform with shawls – they make her look old. She learns, satisfied, that her salary isn't half as bad as she'd feared. She's also attended a couple more clients, and she's allowed to keep that pay – even if it's just a few sickles per reading, everything helps.
Her second week starts with a slightly more optimistic feel. She likes her new robes, and that always puts her in a good mood. She should save for a new lipstick.
One of the important clients – the rich ones – comes back looking for the Madam on a day she's not available. She won't take a no for an answer, though, because she needs to know this, it cannot wait.
"Aren't you the apprentice?" Mrs Plunkett asks, "Try your best."
Lavender gets her pipe, inhales three times, and Mrs Plunkett's eyes shine with acknowledgement – she must have seen the Madam do the same.
"When will my husband pass?" she asks.
Lavender tries not to wonder in which circumstances such a knowledge could be urgent – she's already learnt divination is a business of answers, and not questions.
She opens another box from the stacked shelves and takes out a leather bag filled with small bones. She hopes they belong to animals and not little children, but she's never dared to ask. The bones are the most precise – which doesn't necessarily mean correct – means of divination. If Mrs Plunkett wants the exact date, Lavender will give it to her.
Because she already knows it. She learnt to gossip looking at family trees at a young age, and she doesn't have a half-bad memory. Osterick Plunkett will die in about three weeks – Christmas day, easy to remember – of a heart attack. Although his wife's insistence makes her suspicious of the diagnosis.
She gives her the date and Mrs Plunkett leaves looking satisfied.
Two weeks after, Lavender gets one of the disturbing visitors.
"My dear daughter," the distraught man says. "I need to talk to her. Please – please help me talk to her."
Lavender was shaken the first time, but she's slowly getting used to the clientele.
"We're Seers in here, Sir. Necromancy is two streets down and to the left."
The man leaves just as desperate as he came in, and Lavender knows the hag two streets down will make huge profit tonight.
Christmas approaches and Lavender strolls often through Diagon Alley, trying to warm herself up with the festive mood. She buys herself a little present – a bag of Fudge Flies, a thicker coat and a couple obscure books on Divination. She doesn't think she'll need them, but they'll look good on the shop shelves.
She eats mince pie with Madam Cassandra, and they enjoy a couple glasses of mulled wine. Lavender learns Palmistry using the Madam's hands – her life line is the longest she's ever seen. The Madam laughs and tells her nothing is ever fixed, that her husband had a line just as long and choked on a pumpkin pasty.
"Seeing the truth is harder than measuring the length of a line," she tells her. "Never trust a prediction anyone with eyes could make."
"Only the Inner Eye can see the truth," she repeats what she's learnt.
Palmistry doesn't make much sense, she decides.
Lavender wakes up the day after Christmas to an insistent knock on the door of the shop. She covers herself with her new cloak and, nursing a headache from too much mulled wine, squints at Mrs Plunkett through the blinds.
She's dressed in a funeral gown. She leaves Lavender a tip big enough to get herself a decent wardrobe, and as many lipstick bars as colours exist.
Lavender uses the chance to open up the shop early. It's freezing cold outside, and she gets a good chance to practice her heating charms. She sets the new books on the stands, together with some old ones she convinced Madam Cassandra to let her expose. She's prettying up the front shop when a visitor walks in.
It's the gorgeous young man from Borgin and Burkes. Lavender almost falls from the stool she got herself onto. She hopes he can't see how flustered she is.
"Good morning," he says. "My name is Tom Riddle."
A/N: Weird pairing, weird fic. Came up with the whole plot on a night I couldn't sleep, so this is the result of 5h of insomnia. I rather like it though, so I hope someone enjoys reading it :)