Chapter 21 Family Roots

"George has been avoiding me." I sat down in the library at Hermione's table she had set up.

She looked up in shock.

"Uh -" Was all she said.

"When I see him, he won't look at me, he doesn't like it when I go to touch him." I put my head in my hands.

"Um…" Hermione looked back and forth between me and her books.

"Don't worry, I'm here to study too. I just don't know what to do about George." I sighed.

Hermione just looked at me and kept shifting her eyes around. I squinted at her and saw a necklace hanging down. I tilted my head to look at it. It had an hourglass in a strange plate with a circle with engravings I couldn't make out.

' "It's just turning time and all. Nothing Hermione can't handle." '

"No way!" My eyes widen and I felt the excitement in my chest.

Hermione groaned and put her head in her hands.

"What are the rules?" I asked, forgetting about George temporarily.

"I can only go back five hours otherwise it'll do everlasting damage. I have to use it only for my studies. And I'm not supposed to let anyone else know." Hermione finally said something.

"That is so cool!" I grinned widely to her.

"No you can't use it." She sighed.

I pouted to her. Hermione rolled her eyes and went back to studying. I sighed and pulled out my own books to study. I grabbed the Defense Against the Dark Arts book and got started on the essay about kappa's.

Lupin was doing amazing as a teacher and only Malfoy seemed to have any issues with him. Only the Slytherin's bothered with his opinion.

I was just about to finish the last few inches of my essay when Hermione slammed a book closed, causing me to jump.

"How do you know things?" She finally asked.

"I'm sorry?" I put my quill down in my ink bottle and pushed it away from my essay.

I didn't want to rewrite it.

"You know things. In our first year, you knew we couldn't follow Snape when we thought it was him who was trying to take the Stone. In our second year, you knew Ginny was being possessed by You-Know-Who. Now this year! You knew our Care of Magical Creatures class was going to be about some creature with feathers, the Hippogriffs, and you just figured out how I'm getting to my classes!" Hermione hissed.

I shifted my eyes to avoid her look.

"And I know about your journal you keep with you. I've seen you writing in it, and it's full of predictions!" Hermione sat up and crossed her arms over her chest.

I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands.

"Okay, it's only fair." I got up from the table and walked through the library.

Hermione got up and followed me to the section dedicated to Family History.

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked, sounding a bit irate with me.

"When I was with Trelawney my first lesson, she helped me to unlock my memory, right?" I walked down and pulled out a couple of books from the 'B' section.

"Right." Hermione nodded behind me.

"Divination has been helping me hone my skills." I explained quietly while I pulled out a couple of books from the 'Z' section and handed them to Hermione.

"What skills?" Hermione asked suspiciously.

"My 'Seer' skills." I answered in a monotone.

"You're not a Seer." Hermione said immediately.

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, it could just -"

"Be a coincidence?" I asked, with my eyebrow still raised.

"You knew what I was going to say." She rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, you're right." I shrugged as we walked back to our table.

"But how can all of these just be a coincidence for three years?" I pulled out my journal and handed it to her.

I let her flip through the pages of my journal while I pulled up the Black and Zwart lineages in the books I had grabbed.

"I mean, there's got to be an explanation." Hermione huffed when she got done.

"You're willing to believe in witches and wizards, trolls, goblins, dragons, and time travel," I whispered the last part. "But you're not willing to believe that some people can predict the future?"

She chewed her lip and sat back with her arms crossed.

"If you can't read about it -" Hermione started.

I grabbed the first Zwart book and spun it and pushed it to her.

" 'The Zwarts are an original Seer Bloodline. Starting from the First Witch, Morgana, they have been able to see into the future and accurately predict what will happen.' " I read the first line out loud.

"But -"

"When the muggles were afraid of magic, and started to hunt down witches, we took on a last name so that we could better blend with them." I interrupted her.

She proceeded to read the rest of the passage. I had read it so many times that I almost had it memorized.

'Zwarts have been prosecuted and sought after for the Seer like abilities for years. They are experts in all forms of using their Sights. They use the stars and the different elements to help with their predictions.'

"What is this?" Hermione stopped and pushed the book away from her.

"My heritage." I said, this time pushing a Black book to her.

" 'The Blacks are an ancient family. Being one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight Families they are widely respected. It is rumored that they used to be followers of Morgana.' "

We poured over the books. Hermione was able to explain parts of the books to me that I couldn't understand. Together we discovered that most of the women in the Zwart line had some form of the Seer power. Some could accurately see into the future and predict what would happen next. Others could only just feel if something is going to happen.

"There doesn't seem to be a book about how to make this ability stronger." I said, flipping the pages again.

"Do you really want to do that?" Hermione asked, looking up sharply.

She had given up on trying to study her classwork.

"Well, I think it would be useful." I shrugged.

I honestly hadn't thought about it.

"But, what if you have to use your power for bad? Or what if you started predicting when your friends were about to die…" Hermione said slowly.

I sat back down and rubbed my face, "I didn't think about that…"

"In your journal, you have here 'not going back to Charlotte.' Do you know who's going to take you in? Whoever does may want to exploit you if you try to make yourself stronger." Hermione pointed.

I sighed as I looked over the books.

"Okay. Let's leave this between us, Ron might be the first person to use my power for 'evil' by asking for next week's homework questions." I smiled at Hermione as I started to pick up the books.

Hermione sniffed disapprovingly but also started to clean up her books.

Later that day, Hermione and I were walking back to the Great Hall for dinner.

Hermione was talking about her Ancient Rune's class to me, explaining how different symbols could represent up to five different words. I was interested in what she was saying but I couldn't help but notice the whispers.

"Um, Hermione?" I bumped her shoulder with mine.

Looking around, we noticed that every student had a copy of the Daily Prophet and were reading an article about it.

"What has their attention?" I asked.

"I don't know." Hermione answered.

As we walked down the staircase, Neville was the first one to meet us with a paper.

"Cassie, i-is it t-t-true?" Neville asked, his paper shaking in his hands.

"I don't know what you're talking about?" I told him gently, taking the paper from his hands.

On the front page was a picture of me. I don't even know where they got a picture of me.

Black's Daughter At Large

Cassiopeia Lily Zwart-Black is the mysterious child of Black. We found out earlier this summer when Black broke out from Azkaban he had a child. She was unnamed until now. Sources say Cassiopeia has been openly admitting to her fellow students that she is the daughter of Sirius Black.

"She has threatened to send him an owl to come and kill my friends!" One terrified student wished to remain anonymous.

"How can they let the daughter of a serial killer stay in school?" Another anonymous student asked.

"I don't feel safe while she's still here." Yet a third student said anonymously.

Should Cassiopeia be allowed to stay in school? Find out on page 4!

"Oh! It's finally out there." I said in a deadpan voice.

"Is it true?" Neville asked again.

"Yes, Neville, I am the daughter of Sirius Black." I nodded to him.

He gaped at me, his face paling.

"Neville, she's still Cassie." Hermione said slowly to him.

"I'm not really going to send him an owl to start killing off the other students." I was starting to realize what he was afraid of this time.

"But-" He looked down at the paper.

"Yes, I made an empty threat to Malfoy, but it was an empty threat." I said gently.

He took a moment to look at the paper and then look back up at me.

"Please, don't believe everything you read in the paper." I was slow when I put my hand on his shoulder, but he still flinched.

I sighed and took my hand off of his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." I said and I walked into the Great Hall.

All through dinner, I would get stares and angry whispers. I ate with my head high and ignored them as best as I could.

"How did we miss this?" Ron asked as we walked through the crowd back up to Gryffindor Tower.

"I don't know." I sighed.

Harry had made it a point to walk through the school with my arm through his. I was extremely grateful for that since a few students would glare at me.

Ron was also reading the article over and over again. I couldn't read it and I didn't want too.

"Don't worry about it. We knew it was going to come out at some point." Harry sighed as we passed some Ravenclaw students who glared.

"Exactly. It'll blow over by the end of the month." I waved my hand carelessly.

I worked on this chapter for a week. And I couldn't figure out how to make it more 'interesting' I guess would be the way I think. I wanted her to explore her mom's side of the family, but it's just not the right time for her to discover all that yet.

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