A/N: Hey fam, so yesterday I made some minor edits in previous chapters just to keep the plot goin' a lil better. So hopefully you're not confused by them? Idk. Happy summer.


October 19, 2015

Rory sat by herself at shiny black lab table in front of a classroom full of pairs of students all anxiously awaiting the return of their most recent Astronomy assignment. Rory tapped her fingers against her leg and glanced anxiously around the classroom. In the back row, she saw Fay whispering gossip into Abigail's ear. At an adjacent table, Matt sat drooling with one arm propping up his chin, and Jerry stared at the floor and twiddled his thumbs. There were a few other pairs of Gryffindors sprinkled in the back of the classroom, none of whom Rory knew particularly well. They all seemed to be distracted by something, be it by daydreaming, playing with their hands, or even inspecting recent purchases from the Hogsmeade joke shop. Directly behind Rory, composing the majority of the students in the front of the classroom, were several Ravenclaws, all of whom were restlessly staring straight at the professor in anticipation of receiving their most recent grades. The boy seated directly behind her glared at the front of the front of the classroom while simultaneously attempting to find the balance point of his quill by shimmying his two bronze fingers from the quill's ends toward the center. Rory's eyes temporarily caught with those of one Ravenclaw girl with a sharp nose, only to have her nudge her chin in the direction of the silent professor as if to remind Rory to pay attention to whatever was happening in the front of the room. Rory obeyed the girl's command and looked up in time to see the professor place Rory's assignment face-down on the table.

"Not your best," tutted the professor before making her way to the next row of Ravenclaws. Rory's heart pounded and she felt blood rush to the surface of her cheeks, spreading to the tips of her ears. I know I've been a bit distracted lately, but the assignment couldn't have been that bad, could it? she asked herself. She glanced around her to make sure nobody was paying too close attention before peeling up the corner of her assignment off the table to reveal a horrendous red letter D. Rory slammed the corner of the paper back onto the table and her jaw dropped. A D? In astronomy? Had she really done that? Rory shook her head and lifted the corner of the paper again, slouching to obscure the burning red mark from her peers. She squinted at it, as if preventing it somehow from scorching her eyes. Indeed, when she looked at the paper, the poor mark was still there, and she hesitantly peered at the rest of the assignment to see where she lost so many points. Her heart sank as she noticed the plethora of arithmetic errors spoiling her work. There was an instance where she wrote that 2+1=2, and another where she wrote that nine cubed was twenty-seven. Flipping to the third page of the assignment, she noticed that she based an entire problem off of an unmarked incorrect result from the first part of the problem. She was disproportionately marked off for using it in the rest of the problem.

Rory took a deep breath. Okay, she reassured herself. This might not be as bad as you think. Some of these points can be rectified. On the next page of the assignment, she had been marked off for writing an equivalent expression, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she realized that she could probably persuade the professor to restore her grade to either a high C or a low B.

After class, she brought her grading concerns to a professor who restored her grade as Rory had predicted. While it was still drastically below her standard for this class, and seeing as astronomy was truly the reason she had decided to attend this dreadful school, the small victory was short-lived. The minute she stepped outside of the classroom, Rory felt a sharp pain in her chest. Angry thoughts raced through her head.

You need to do better than this. How did you mess up this badly on arithmetic? Shouldn't you have mastered it by second grade? Wow, you have almost no friends. A few acquaintances in your house, Jane who is four years younger, Debbi who only keeps you around for your ability to boost her grades, and Nate who is under too much pressure from his house to really be your friend. It's pathetic. You're pathetic, and you're doing poorly in your most important class. You don't even deserve to be at this school. And on top of that, you don't even know who you are. Hemmings? Jones? Figure it out!

Rory ferociously shook her head, trying desperately to quiet the criticisms coursing through her head.

You spend too much time thinking about that group of Slytherins, reminded a voice. You spend too much time talking to the Superficial Four, too. If you can't handle making smalltalk with them on top of achieving the grades you need in Astronomy, you should just become a social isolate. As if you aren't one already.

Rory reached her hands up to her head, beginning to pull at her auburn hair to bring herself back to sanity. After a minute the criticisms faded to reveal fast footsteps approaching her, as if someone was running toward her.

"Rory, Rory!" came a high-pitched squeal from the base of the spiral staircase in the Astronomy Tower. Rory dropped her hands and opened her eyes to a panting Jane a few steps below her.

"Jane.. what..." croaked Rory.

"She's. Chasing. Me." Jane panted.

Rory felt extremely disoriented, still half dwelling on the astronomy assignment. "What? Who? Huh?"

A second later, another set of footsteps clambered up the stairs. Rory peered down the stairs to find Fritz's sister. She sighed, recalling the week before when she overheard Fritz accusing her of preventing the two from hanging out. Maybe Rory had been interfering too much. And Rory could not even think of the proper way to interfere now. She should be studying. Rory closed her eyes and turned back to Jane. "I'm sorry Jane, I really can't help you right now," she apologized before retreating down the stairs.

"What?!" shrieked Jane. "No! Come back!"

Rory ignored Jane's protests, passing Fritz's sister on her way out the door connecting the tower to the rest of the school. As the door to the stairwell creaked closed, Rory's stomach sank. She really hoped Jane would be okay. She would feel so terrible if Fritz's sister had malicious intents and Rory had done nothing to stop her. Rory had probably just lost her only real friend here. Sure, that friend was a full four years younger than her, and she definitely did not seem to care about anything but quidditch, but now Rory would probably become a true social isolate.

You deserve it, one of the voices said. Rory shook her head and shuffled toward the library. On her way, she passed Fritz and Nate. She carefully avoided eye contact and practically ran the rest of the way there. Once she finally found herself among stacks of books that reached over twice her height, she plopped down on the floor in an obscure, dusty corner and cracked open her Astronomy textbook. She was determined to resurrect her Astronomy grade, even if it meant studying all night.

After sixty pages of angstily glossing over the textbook, Rory's eyes drooped and her head plopped straight down into the crease of the pages.


Rory sat beside a young girl in the back leather seat of a Ford Fiesta. The girl was laughing hard, and she was focused on two figures in the front seat. Rory instantly recognized the dream as one she had a few weeks earlier. Rory quickly followed the young girl's gaze to the front seat. Yellow hair was visible above the black leather of the driver's seat, and in a cup holder between the front two seats, Rory spotted a brown wallet with a transparent pouch carrying a shiny driver's license that read "Jasper Hemmings." There was that surname again. Hemmings. Just like Fritz had said. The picture on the license featured a man with light hair and olive green eyes, a similar shade to that of the young girl's eyes. The left hand of the driver was intertwined with the hand of the lady in the passenger seat, whose large blue eyes stared back adoringly at the young girl.

"Aren't you excited, though?" asked the lady in the passenger's seat. Her voice sounded like bells and calmed Rory instantly, and she had dark brown hair flowing over the edges of the seat.

"I'm so excited!" squealed the girl, auburn pigtails bouncing. Her face fell suddenly. "Do you think I'll be able to make friends?

A deep laugh echoed from the driver's seat and the driver glanced quickly toward the young girl, olive green eyes also filled with love for the child. Rory assumed that she must be sitting with a close knit family, and her heart ached for one of her own. The driver reassured, "honey, I've never known any girl to make friends faster."

The smile instantly returned to the young girl's face. And she bounced slightly, throwing her auburn pigtails around her cheeks. "You're right. I'm going to meet so many new people! And they'll all understand what I can do!" exclaimed the girl. Rory still wasn't certain what the girl could do, but something told her that the girl almost definitely had magical abilities.

The driver glanced back at his daughter and gave her a knowing nod.

The mother scrunched her eyebrows together. "That's right sweetie," she said uncertainly. The mother clearly wasn't as comfortable with magic as the father was. Rory wondered if this meant that the father was also magical, but the mother wasn't. Nonetheless, the woman's voice once again calmed Rory instantly, and she wondered why this stranger's voice had such a pleasant effect on her. She was itching to see her face, but when the turned around to smile at the girl, the figure's face was missing. All defining features had been blurred, and for some reason, Rory felt an aching in her chest.

All of a sudden, she heard a terrible screeching noise. Screaming from the passenger seat. A sharp acceleration to the right. A flash of white light from the front of the vehicle. Screeching of brakes. A cracking sound. The sound of crumpling metal, breaking glass, more screams, and then silence. Everything went black.

When Rory opened her eyes, she was in King's Cross, on the mysterious Platform 9 ¾ to be exact. She shook her head, disoriented, and heard a cry from her right. She glanced over to see the young girl, tears streaming down her face. The girl's upper arm was bleeding profusely, as if a chunk of skin had been suddenly sliced away by an invisible knife. Rory instinctively grasped her right upper arm, where a scar stretched from the bottom of her deltoid to the point of her elbow. She shook her head in disbelief. This was too weird.

The young girl was covered in dirt and scratches, and there was a certain emptiness now in her olive green eyes. Unsteady on her feat, the girl wobbled toward the wrought iron archway. Rory followed silently, remaining unnoticed by the little girl. The two carefully passed through to the other side into the main station. As soon as they passed through, there was screaming and shrieking, and some adults nearby asked the young girl. "Are you alright? What happened? What's your name?"

The young girl just looked up at them with empty eyes and fell to the ground. Someone phoned the ambulance, and after a few minutes, the young girl was carried out of the train station on a stretcher. The scene faded away.


Rory blinked her swollen eyes as she returned to consciousness. She traced her scarred arm with her left pinkie finger. The similarity between the girl's injury and her scar had to be completely coincidental. What a weird dream, Rory thought, hoping to dismiss her disturbing recurring dream. However, for some reason, she couldn't shake the feeling that the dream held more importance than she wanted to recognize. She considered the name again- Hemmings. Lifting her head from her Astronomy textbook, Rory realized that the old school yearbooks were on the bookshelves directly in front of her. She picked one up at random and flipped through to the section that featured students with surnames starting with the letter H. If there was no student with the last name Hemmings, and probability said that there wouldn't be, especially since she didn't know the years the last Hemmings' were in school, Rory would quit thinking about the dream. If not… she didn't really know what she would do.

To Rory's chagrin, the first moving photograph on the page of students with H surnames was a handsome blond boy with wide olive green eyes that matched his green robes. The caption read "Jasper Hemmings. Slytherin Prefect." Rory's vision blurred with tears. She shut the yearbook and dashed out of the library as quickly as she could.