Chapter 18: The Violet Seer

Myles's bed was empty when he woke, the sheets where Cecilia had slept cool to the touch. He threw his robes and shoes on in a hurry, rushing down to the common room with the impression of his pillow implanted firmly into his hair. A steady trickle of students were making their way to the Great Hall, but Cecilia wasn't in sight.

"Hey, Alexa!" Myles called out to the fellow first-year Ravenclaw, who was walking out of the common room with her nose buried in a book.

Alexa's head jumped out of the pages of her book in startlement, turning to Myles with a slightly reproaching look that might have come from a less severe Madam Pince. The expression was mirrored by a few other Ravenclaws perched in the blue and bronze couches with assorted tomes in their laps.

"Sorry," Myles muttered to them as he hurried over to Alexa, who lost the librarian expression as he neared and smiled lopsidedly at him. All of Alexa's smiles were lopsided, the right side of her lips eager to rise and left reluctant to bare any teeth. It was that smile, along with her muggleborn status, that made her a target for bullies like Tor and his glazed eyed followers.

"Have you seen Cecilia?" he asked.

The right side of Alexa's mouth drooped back down to match her left. "She was getting ready when I left the dorm, are you looking for her?"

"Yeah, I need to ask her something," Myles replied. "I'll just wait in the common room for her."

"She's sure to be going to breakfast, if you want to come to the Great Hall with me and wait for her there," Alexa offered, her hands clutching the thick cover of her book.

"I'll wait here, I don't want to miss her," Myles responded, he didn't want Cecilia to slip away without explaining last night. He paused, realizing that Alexa had been sitting alone during mealtimes that past few weeks. "Is Rose is still angry at you too? For the potion you made Al?"

The left side of Alexa's mouth turned down, as eager to frown as the right side was to smile. "She won't even talk to me, and Kory won't either if they're together and they're always together."

"She'll get over it," Myles said doubtfully, Rose was slowly convincing him that she'd never let it go. "I'll see you later."

"See you," Alexa replied quietly as Myles turned back towards the dormitories.

"Hey, Alexa," Myles turned back to the Ravenclaw girl. "Come find me at lunch, I wanted to ask you about that healing potion."

"Okay," Alexa said, her lopsided smile again claiming her face, the right side of her mouth tugging almost painfully up.

Myles walked back towards the dormitories and picked a comfy armchair facing the exit of the girl's dormitory and sat down to wait. Cecilia walked out only a few minutes later, her face clear of the ashen weariness of the night before. She looked… oddly well. Myles had only gotten a few hours of sleep and he looked it, his hair was in disarray and he knew that if was to look in the mirror his face would be groggy and his eyes puffy. He'd woken to find her gone, so Cecilia had to have to gotten less sleep than him, yet there was no sign of it.

Her face was pale, but a flush and healthy pale as opposed unlike her ashen skin last night. Her hair was neatly arranged under a bright purple ribbon that matched her eyes, eyes that didn't betray a hint of sleeplessness. There wasn't anything unusual about her appearance, it was how Cecilia always looked, but Myles finally realized that there was something unusual about how usual she always looked. She never had a bad hair day or went to breakfast with the last night's sleep, or lack thereof, worn on her face. He'd never thought of it before, but her appearance was just a little too perfect, a little too manufactured.

"Are you done staring?" Cecilia asked him amusedly.

"Are you okay?" he asked, wholly ignoring her question.

"I'm fine, just needed a night of sleep."

Myles looked at her doubtfully.

"Really! Come on, let's head to breakfast," Cecilia strode off and Myles followed behind. He wanted to press the issue and get a real answer out of her and he more than wanted to know what in Merlin's name had happened last night, but there were a pair of upper-year Ravenclaw girls walking behind them and he didn't want them to overhear. He reserved himself to wait until they'd made it to breakfast.

The Great Hall was filled with talk about the upcoming Quidditch match. Only Slytherin and Gryffindor were playing, but all four tables were discussing it. From what Myles has gathered in his House, Ravenclaw was largely interested to see if Slytherin would be beatable this year after losing their two best Chasers last year. Gryffindor's team was something of a joke; they hadn't won a single match last year and only Gryffindors held any hopes that that would change this year.

They sat down at and space at the end of the Ravenclaw table and began to eat. Well, Myles began to eat, he watched Cecilia, and while she put food on her plate and shuffled it around with her fork and knife, none of it was going into her mouth.

"Are you going to eat?" Myles asked pointedly. He was eager for answers, but he remembered how thin Cecilia had been under her robes last night. "There's always food on your plate but I've never seen you really eat it."

"I eat enough," Cecilia scowled at him. The expression was so at odds with her usual cheerful and innocent guise that Myles smiled to see it.

"No one else notices," she complained, skewering a piece of sausage on her fork. She looked up as if to continue speaking but noticed Myles's eyes on the skewered sausage and scowled again.

"Eat it!" Myles lightheartedly exclaimed, now laughing at the his stubborn friend's mannerisms. Cecilia reluctantly put the sausage in her mouth and chewed at a glacially slow pace.

"And don't think you're off the hook," Myles said. "What was that last night?"

Cecilia glanced about around at the table full of chattering students and pulled out her wand. Myles heard 'Mufialato' as she made a motion under the table and the noises of the Great Hall around them became muffled and distorted. He raised an eyebrow at the spell but waited for her to continue.

"It was a prophecy," she said bluntly. "Or half of one at least."

Myles, eyes widening, tried to remember anything concrete he had learned about prophecies, coming up with close to nothing. He'd seen prophecies mentioned a few history books, most notably one involving Al's dad and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but details were scarce and quotations nonexistent. He had gathered, however, that they were important.

"You're a seer?" Myles asked, trying to make sense of the implications. He hadn't had much time to think about it yet, but now that Cecilia had mentioned it, it was obvious that it had been a prophecy. What little he'd seen and heard about prophecies had led him to believe they would be delivered in a tame and controlled fashion, rather than the sudden, almost violent, outburst of magic that he'd seen last night.

Cecilia nodded. "You're the first person I've told and the second to know."

Was this why Cecilia was so secretive, why she was always putting up an act? And who was the first to know?

"But prophecies don't just happen for anything, do they?" Myles didn't ask the personal questions, he wouldn't press if she didn't want to tell him. "They're supposed to be important."

"Usually," Cecilia nodded. "But we don't always see what's important about them. There was once a prophecy about a cat getting sick off spoilt milk."

Myles thought the words Cecilia had given last night. He had trouble imagining anything as innocent or small as spoilt milk coming from them and by the way Cecilia was looking at him, neither did she. "What did you mean by 'half of one', was the prophecy you gave not complete?"

"One," Cecilia said in the tone of a professor starting off a lecture. "It was hardly a prophecy I gave; it was a prophecy Fate gave. Most people have the idea that Fate is a gentle woman, perhaps one who enjoys knitting quilts while she isn't changing the future of all mankind on her brief excursions into our world. But Fate isn't a woman, or a person at all, it's a primeval Force. It doesn't trickle into our world like a stream, but builds and builds until the seams of our world can no longer withstand the pressure and it comes flooding in. Seers are a fray in the seams, Fate's path of least resistance into our world. It's almost like a crack in a dam, and the water flooding through is Fate."

"But its not quite as simple as that, prophecies can leak through even without Fate filling the dam's lake. There's a reason prophecies tend to happen around those it references, but it's not the only factor. For one, last night was All Hallow's Eve, and for another, I wasn't the only seam that Fate flowed through last night. Part of the prophecy came through elsewhere. I've never even heard of it happening before, but I doubt it was like taking a piece of parchment with the prophecy on it and splitting it in half. At best it would be like splitting the parchment diagonally, but tearing it with your hands so that it's jagged and uneven."

"Okay...," Myles said slowly, trying to take in everything Cecilia had said. The obvious next question was what the prophecy meant, but he wanted to get the rest of it cleared up. "What is All Hallows' Eve? I thought it was just a holiday, another name for Halloween?"

Cecilia nodded. "Nowadays, Halloween is an excuse to eat candy and have a good time. Centuries ago, however, All Hallow's Eve was the most important day of year. Midnight of All Hallow's Eve is when the borders of our world reach their thinnest. It was when all the greatest works of magic were planned for, the time at which the possibilities of magic could be stretched the furthest. Something changed, no one agrees on what, and it doesn't work like that anymore, but the night retains some of it's magic."

Students had started filing out of the Great Hall on their way to the Quidditch pitch. Myles had barely started on his plate of food and, more importantly, Cecilia hadn't eaten anything other than the piece of sausage he had forced her too.

"The letting of the candles has been a tradition for centuries," Cecilia continued. "And the spell to enchant them passed down along with it. It only works on All Hallow's Eve, but the spell is fundamentally different from Vanishment Charms. Most pureblood families and towns still follow the tradition, and the teachers turn a blind eye towards the students going out to the lake on All Hallow's Eve. I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a few teachers amongst the students at the lake."

"Come on," Cecilia said, breaking off her lecture and making to rise from the table. "We can talk at the match."

"Eat first," Myles said adamantly, giving Cecilia's plate a pointed look.

Cecilia sighed, sitting back down and returning to her plate. After a moment, she looked up at Myles, who stared back, exaggerating the chewing of his food. She raised an eyebrow at him, but resigned herself to eating the breakfast she'd put on her plate. Myles thought about Cecilia's words while they ate, he'd never even heard of most of the topics she had described. She was right that books, especially storybooks, described Fate as a gentle, almost sentient, thing. He was curious how she'd learned all of this, nothing he'd seen in the library described it as she did. The Great Hall was nearly empty by the time Cecilia had eaten all of the food on her plate, something Myles doubted she did often. All of the students had hurried through breakfast, eager to claim good seats for the Quidditch match.

"What was that spell you cast, Mufialato?" Myles asked as they rose.

"A privacy spell," Cecilia responded. "Muffles sound around the caster. Handy for stopping eavesdroppers."

"Do you use it often?" Myles asked, wondering how often Cecilia had clandestine conversations.

"Nope," Cecilia grinned at him. "But I had a feeling Hogwarts was going to be interesting." After the conversation they'd just had, Myles wondered if Cecilia's feeling was only that, a feeling.

They turned out of the Great Hall and Myles felt a tug at his elbow. He turned around, expecting Lyla - it was commonplace for her to ambush him around corners - but instead saw Ambrose Malfoy. Myles had never seen the near infamous Malfoy alone before. Half of the Slytherin first-years surrounded him throughout the day, he'd even overheard a pair of gossips say that he didn't even go to the bathroom alone. Myles had competed against him in Defence Club, and even been on the same team as him once in a group competition, but he didn't know Ambrose very well.

"Hey," Ambrose said, his voice hushed. He glanced towards Cecilia and then looked back to Myles, an obvious attempt at being discreet. "I heard you're a Healer."

Myles inwardly sighed. Now that he looked, he saw Ambrose's wand arm dangling awkwardly at his side. He hadn't considered this as a possible consequence when he'd healed Al. "Not much of one. Have you been to the infirmary?"

"How much?" Ambrose asked, ignoring his question about the infirmary. Myles didn't understand, how much what?

"Three galleons," Cecilia answered without hesitation.

"Deal," Ambrose said, and Myles realized that his services as a Healer had just been sold.

"It's much safer to go Madam Pomfrey," Myles protested, uncomfortable with healing someone and even more uncomfortable being paid for it. Ambrose ignored him again, leading them to an alcove - Hogwarts was filled with nooks and crannies for anyone looking - in the hall.

"I can always go to her after you mess up," Ambrose replied. It was true, Madam Pomfrey and her assistant could heal off just about any trouble a Hogwarts student could get into. But if something went wrong with the Healing, Ambrose's stay at the infirmary would be much longer and much more painful.

"Let me see your arm first, I might not even be able to heal it," Myles said, drawing his wand and secretly hoping it would be too complex for him to fix. If it was anything other than a simple break, he would refuse and stand his ground.

"Echofluctus," he cast, using the same diagnostic spell that he'd used to check Al's broken ribs. Ambrose's wrist had a clean fracture on the radius, simple enough that Myles couldn't argue himself out of the situation.

"Are you sure?" Myles asked, looking back up to meet Ambrose's eyes with his wand ready at the injured wrist. Ambrose nodded back, his face tightening.

"Ossiumen," he cast, and the fracture in the bone welding together. Ambrose let out a small yelp at the sensation, his cheeks coloring in embarrassment at his undignified reaction.

"Thank you for your service," Ambrose said, holding his head high and straightening his robes in an effort to reclaim his composure. He pulled three Galleons out of his pocket and handed them to Myles, barely sparing a glance for the gold coins.

"Take it easy on your arm for a couple of weeks, it'll feel fully healed and you might force it too hard but it still needs time," Myles explained, repeating what he'd heard Ms. Lenore say to a client. Ambrose nodded disinterestedly, giving Myles little confidence he would heed the warning. Ms. Lenore had voiced that it was a rare client who followed a Healer's instructions.

"Who won?" Cecilia asked, intentionally glancing down at Ambrose's healed arm and back to his eyes.

"None of your business," Ambrose replied stiffly. He walked out with a dignified stride that was at odds with the red that had crept onto his pale cheeks.

"What was that about?" Myles asked after Ambrose had left.

Cecilia raised an eyebrow at him. "What do you think?"

Myles thought about it, Cecilia had implied Ambrose had been injured in a some sort of competition, likely a duel. It wouldn't have been in Dueling Class or Defence Club, Ambrose would've gone to Madam Pomfrey if that was the case. So he had dueled outside of class... and now that he thought about it, the answer was obvious.

"He dueled Ambrosia last night." Every first-year knew about the Malfoy twins' rivalry. Myles hadn't realized what the drama was until after the Sorting, but the whole school had expected both of the Malfoy heirs to go into Slytherin. It was said that the twins, purportedly inseparable prior to their Sorting, hadn't spoken to each other since. Based on the glares they gave each other during Defence Club and Dueling Club (Myles and the Malfoy twins were in the tenth and had all their practices together) he believed it.

"Exactly what I think," Cecilia said, pausing for a moment before looking back at him with a grin. "What are the odds she comes to you next?"

He groaned and Cecilia antagonized him further. "I'll bet you three Galleons on it." Myles laughed but didn't take the bet; it couldn't be a good idea to bet against a Seer.

The two of them made their way to the Quidditch stands. Myles tried to continue his line of questions from lunch but Cecilia was adamant that they continue at the Quidditch match and not in the hallways. He didn't understand how the stands, which would be packed with students, would be any more secretive than the hallways but he acquiesced.