"I missed you guys!"

Oriane, Charlotte, and Emerald were immediately tackled by a lonely Calista the very moment they entered their dorm. Her hug was so bone crushingly strong Oriane found it difficult to breath as she was squished into her roommates. They had been absent for the better part of the last two weeks, leaving Calista alone to her own devices. And boy, had she been busy.

Paper chain garland hung from the walls, adding a pop of pink to the otherwise stone and yellow room. Various other arts and crafts projects laid out on the floor, some only half finished. She had even taken the liberty of decorating her roommates bed posts with some of these projects while they were gone.

Eventually the girls were able to pull themselves out of Calista's group hug, trying to look at her properly.

"Looks like you've been busy," Charlotte said, looking at her bed. Everything was just as she had left it two weeks ago, except for the paper butterflies that were stuck to her bed posts. They were even enchanted to flap their wings.

"There's hardly been anything to do here," Calista whined, looking back at her work.

Oriane turned her attention to her own bed. Just like with the others, she had paper cut outs stuck to her posts as well. Hers were little bees, with a few flowers to go with them. Their wings were also enchanted to flap, a talent she was surprised to see Calista show.

"It looks wonderful," Oriane admitted.

Calista grinned. "Emi, did you see the ones I did for you? I made you little dragons!"

And so Calista showed the girls around, pointing out everything she had made while they had been gone. Everything from the enchanted dragonflies on her bed, to some plant Professor Sprout gave her that she almost killed.

After the grand tour was over, the girls began to settle in, unpacking from their long holiday and rearranging some of their items. It was rather odd being back. After everything that happened over break, it felt like she hadn't ever left at all, yet so much had changed. Perhaps it was the weight in her chest. She felt it ever since her conversation with Esme. A terrible heaviness on her chest that just wouldn't go away.

Yet she paid it no mind, like she had with nearly everything else that had gone wrong in her life. Ignore something long enough and it would either go away or blow up in her face. Either way, she didn't have to deal with it at that moment.

"What's this?" Emerald spoke up. She looked at a piece of paper on Calista's nightstand. It looked to just be a blank piece of parchment. "Was this another project you were working on?"

Calista, who was busy messing with some enchanted birds on the bathroom door, turned her attention to Emerald. Her brown eyes blew wide the moment she looked at the parchment.

"Oh, no, that's nothing," she said quickly, turning away from the door.

But the smile had vanished from her face. A sudden terrified look overcame Calista's features. She was silently begging for the paper to stay where it was.

Yet, Emerald didn't see. She was too busy flipping the parchment over to heed the cries of her friend. And when she saw what was on the other side, a devilish grin crossed her face.

"Oh," she said teasingly, "it's your report card."

"Emi, please," Calista begged.

"Let's see how many T's you earned this year," Emerald poked.

Everyone stood around motionless as Emerald began to read Calista's report card. Oriane wasn't quite sure what to expect, but she felt a little awkward about it. Reading's someone's grades seemed to be some sort of privacy breach. She just kept telling herself that these girls knew one another for nearly three years, and that Calista probably didn't mind that much anyway.

However, as Emerald read her face slowly turned from amusement to anger. With each line she read, her expression changed more and more drastically. Finally, she looked up at Calista with a stone cold stare.

"What is this?" she asked through gritted teeth.

Calista stayed silent.

"What are you on about?" Charlotte asked, slightly peeved at the sudden hostility in the room.

Emerald's eyes returned back to the parchment as she began to read. "There's not a single A or E grade on here. In every single class, she got an Outstanding," she said, lowering the paper and looking back at Calista. "Even in Potions."

Confused, Oriane's eyebrows drew closer together. "Isn't that a good thing?"

"Are you joking?" Emerald asked, tossing the report card back onto Calista's nightstand. "Calista has struggled with the classes here since our first year. There's no way she could have gotten straight O's."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Calista asked, crossing her arms.

"What I'm trying to say is, I think you cheated."

All eyes were on Calista as the girls waited for her reaction. Oriane's head was beginning to pound at the sudden whiplash she was experiencing. One moment the girls were all enjoying being reunited, and the next, they were having a standoff.

"I worked hard for those grades," Calista finally spoke. "I did all my work and I did well, that's how I got those grades. Not by looking off of someone else's papers."

"Weren't you complaining about nearly failing your classes during midterms?" Emerald retorted. "There's no way you could have gotten all the way up to an O. Maybe an E, but certainly not that high with that little time." She sighed, and then let out a bitter laugh. "Not even I managed to get an O in Potions."

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I'm smarter than I let on?" Calista questioned bitterly. "You know, anyone who's actually intelligent doesn't go around boasting about it."

Oriane's eyes began to wander away from the fighting, and instead she looked to Charlotte. She watched the two argue with a blank expression on her face. However, after a while of her staring, she turned her attention to Oriane, who looked at Charlotte like a child begging for her parents to stop fighting.

Charlotte sighed. "Knock it off already, will you?" she said sternly. "Hogwarts has several measures in place to prevent cheating of any kind. It's a new year, we shouldn't be starting it off like this."

"Seriously?" Emerald asked. "You don't think this is fishy at all?"

She shrugged. "I don't care how the girl gets her grades, honestly. It's none of my business. But if you'd like to take it up with the professors, then be my guest. I'm sure Snape would love to hear how you think a student managed to fool him."

Red began to flush Emerald's face. Whether it was from anger or embarrassment, Oriane couldn't tell. After a moment of thought, she threw her hands up into the air.

"Fine. Whatever." She then turned back to Calista. "But don't think for a moment I'm letting you sit next to me in classes anymore."

Emerald stomped out of the room without another word, leaving the girls to stand there in silence. After a moment, Oriane looked back to Calista, who had made her way over to her nightstand.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

Calista was silent for a moment, but then she picked up her report card. She looked over the paper, eyes scanning through the words that proved she had done well the previous semester. Then, she tore it to shreds.

"Just peachy."

Classes started the next day but things were far from normal. The argument between Emerald and Calista proved to not be just a one time thing. They distanced themselves from one another in nearly all their classes, refused to speak during meal times, and hardly looked at one another when all the girls were gathered in the dorm.

The burden of conversation and keeping things lighthearted fell to Oriane and Charlotte. Yet Oriane was growing exhausted with it, and Charlotte only grew more annoyed at their incessant arguing. She had never really been in the midst of an argument like that. Even with Esme she only had very few disagreements her entire life. The ones she did have, she managed to resolve rather quickly.

"I can't believe she's still looking at me like that," Calista whined.

The girls had just finished their Herbology class and were racing to get to Divination on time. After a whole semester's worth of climbing up several flights of stairs several times a week, Oriane was getting rather good at it. She was hardly out of breath by the end of their journey.

"You just need to give her time," Oriane advised, "she'll come around eventually."

"It's been a week and she still refuses to talk to me. It's getting old," she complained.

The ladder that led up to their classroom came into view. Several other students had begun their ascent into the room. Oriane was rather happy to have a low effort class that day. Despite having to deal with Professor Trelawney and her antics, it at least didn't take much thinking power.

Once they entered the room they took their normal seats. Oriane had long grown used to the strong perfume scent of the class, yet she still hated how she would smell like that room for the rest of the day.

Professor Trelawney had just started the class with a new segment on Palmistry, which was a great relief from looking at mushy tea leaves all afternoon. And so she sat there, hand out as Calista meticulously looked at the palm of her hand, attempting to read the traits of her future with help of their textbook.

"Let's see…well, looks like you've got a strong head line, so you're not stupid," Calista teased. "And you've got an abnormally long life line, so don't expect to die anytime soon."

"Oh good," Oriane sighed.

"Let's look at your love life, shall we?" Calista grinned. "Oh, oh no. Look how short it is! Well, that's just terrible. You should expect to get a boyfriend by next year only to be broken up with… probably about a week later."

Oriane pulled her hand away from Calista, rolling her eyes. "At least I've got my whole long life to find another one, then."

Calista giggled and held her hand out for Oriane to take. "Yeah, good thing you do."

The girls settled once more as they traded positions. This time it was Oriane's turn to look at Calista's palm, though she wasn't very enthusiastic about it.

"See if you can find anything about cheating in my palm," Calista muttered, "maybe Emi would listen to that."

Oriane was about to dive into her Divination book and attempt to give an accurate reading for Calista until a thought crossed her mind. Find anything about cheating? She was certain she couldn't do that just by looking at her palm. And she didn't exactly disbelieve her claim about not cheating but… well what if she could find the truth? What if she could look into Calista's future and see something? Of course she wouldn't be able to tell the others about what she saw, but she'd at least know the truth for herself.

If her mother could willingly look into the future, then why not her?

Of course she wasn't exactly sure where to start. All her previous visions seemed to come out of the blue without a sign of a trigger. Not something that she found, but something that found her. But she still wanted to try.

And so Oriane took Calista's hand in hers, finger running over the lines in her palm. As she glanced back and forth between her hand and the book, she kept hoping something would come to her.

Find me. Find me. Find me.

And then something did. Calista's hand slowly vanished and Oriane was instead left looking at her own hands, tracing nothing but the air in front of her. She looked around and found herself in an unfamiliar room. It was… disgusting. Old, peeling wallpaper covered in mildew sat on the walls of the room. The floor looked like it had seen better days with several scrapes of what appeared to be animal claws scarring the wood. Planks boarded up the windows, darkening the room.

Instead of sitting in her chair in the classroom she was instead on a bed. It was broken, severely sunken in the middle. Moth-eaten sheets lined the bed. She was certain those sheets had been there for quite some time, as a thick layer of grime coated them.

She wasn't alone.

A small critter sat in the middle of the floor. It was a rat, squeaking quietly as it attempted to wash its face. The longer she sat there watching it, the louder its squeaks became. Terrible, annoying high pitched squeaking.

Then, the rat began to grow in size. First was its arms. They slowly elongated, paws growing larger by the second. The body followed next. It bloated as if it were going to explode. Furr soon was replaced by clothing, and its nose began to squish. As it grew larger, the squeaking slowly went deeper in pitch. Soon it wasn't squeaking at all. Disgusting, pitiful crying. The snotty tears you would hear from a toddler.

The rat was no longer a rat, but a man. An ugly, terrible man who hid his face as he let out his guttural sobs. All he could do was mutter some apology she could hardly make out, but she ignored it. She just sat there, watching that strange man cry.

"Come on, don't tell me my life line is short or something," Calista sighed.

The man vanished. No, everything vanished. Once more she was back in class, still holding Calista's hand in front of her. She sat there, waiting for her to say something, and judging by her expression, she had been waiting for a while.

"I know that look," the airy voice of Professor Trelawney spoke up. She stood behind Calista, her eyes wider than normal. "You had a vision, didn't you child?"

A chill ran down her spine. Had the professor seen through her that easily? No, of course she hadn't. Oriane told herself Professor Trelawney was being her normal, odd self. Her words didn't mean anything.

"I didn't see anything," she mumbled, letting go of Calista's hand.

"Don't worry, my dear, there's nothing to fear here," the professor continued. "You must speak your prophecies into existence! Unless… you want them to eat you whole."

Before she fully processed what she was doing, Oriane pushed herself to her feet. All eyes were on her, as many students were taken by surprise at her sudden movement. Face turning red, she let out an uncomfortable cough.

"Excuse me. I'm feeling rather ill."

She didn't even wait for a response before she dashed to the ladder. Moments later her feet hit the solid stone flooring at the bottom, where she then put as much distance between her and that room as possible.

That vision certainly wasn't what she had expected it to be. Then again, none of them ever were. She thought back to her first vision, when she had attempted to read Calista's tea leaves on the first day of school. How she saw her battered. How that image of her had been burned into her mind ever since. She couldn't help but panic and wonder if that sobbing man was the one to harm Calista like she had been in her first vision.

"Mum," she whispered to herself, "how did you ever live like this?"