Chapter Six

Jen was glad when the day was over as it had been a really long day. The house elves had furnished an old office and personal rooms for her use; the rooms were bare but serviceable. That didn`t matter much, being part forest creature she somehow doubted she would spend much time indoors unless she had to. Today at least she probably should stay in her rooms; father had said that if she found her mate she should expect an increase in her powers. It might not be safe to be in the forest if this was the case. Not that she expected much, she had never been very powerful, it would surprise her if she gained anything at all. Generally after her experience part humans seldom were very powerful. Musing about this while she took out her bottomless purse, Jen made short order of unpacking the most necessary items before going to bed.

In the middle of the night Jen woke up feeling like she was prickling all over, the feeling was uncomfortable so she decided to get up and sit in the living room until it faded. This plan lasted until she saw the state of her things. Everything was floating in mid-air, her books were mutating wildly while the room itself was expanding and contracting rapidly. Hugging herself she looked at this disbelieving for a while, giving up all thoughts of going to sleep again this night.

After what seemed like hours the wild magic finally quietened, and Jen started to experiment with her powers. It was imperative that she learned to control her powers as well as she had before this happened. Feeling glad the others slept, she forcefully built up her mental walls anew as she didn`t want to risk reading the emotions of people around her accidentally.

Re-learning to control her powers took the rest of the night, and Jen quickly realized her gifts seemed much stronger than she would have expected. Seeing that her spells seemed quite overpowered now, she`d even had to scale down on the amount of power she used, something that had never been necessary before. Feeling curious she now tried doing a simple accio with her wand, instantly swearing to quit using the wand in public until she a lot more control.

Luckily her heritage made her naturally inclined towards wandless magic, and she only had a wand because it would look strange if not. Normally she would therefore almost never use her wand much.

Hoping that people still were asleep she also gently stretched out her awareness, she could dimly sense the dreaming inhabitants in the castle. Daringly she searched out Snape, and got the shock of a lifetime. Yesterday she had barely been able to sense him in this way despite standing in close proximity, now however she could see more than she ever had with another person before and it made her both sad and mad. No wonder the man was a grouch, living through all this with scant recognition of his talents and abilities.