Author's Note: I know, I know…it's been a really long time. Any excuses I'd offer won't change the anxiety you may have felt over waiting, hoping and…giving up on an update. Once again, I will state I am not nearly wealthy enough to own Harry Potter. And yes—a few reviewers noticed names of actual famous people, or names with other meanings among the sorting. It was completely intentional, after all, we just don't know enough about Wizarding names..so why not see who catches famous names (or humorous mis-spellings of them)? And now, without further ado….
First Year Part I
Diara woke up on the morning of September 2, 1974, with a bubble of excitement in her chest. Her dreams during the night, the most common way she Saw the future, had been full of optimism. Of late, her visions had been dark and of increasing anxiety to her as she knew a war was brewing. Her vision when she met the Black family the day prior had been of that very trend. Yet today, she woke up with images of Quidditch teams, friends, and classes.
The other girls in her dorm were stirring. Diara's four-poster bed was one of five in the room, arranged in a neat circle with two windows in the tower room and a door leading to the circular staircase that led down to the common room or up to other girl's dormitories. One of the windows was to the right of Diara's bed in between her space and Grimelda's. Grimelda had sleek brown hair, rosy cheeks and brown eyes. The bed on Diara's left was already empty.
Courtney Fischer was up and getting ready for the day, combing wet blonde hair. Diara grinned and hopped out of bed, disturbing Fiend who had joined her in the bed sometime in the early hours of the morning. She had probably been out hunting mice for a portion of the night. By the time Diara got out of the shower, all of the girls in the door were waking up. Terry and Nancy were gossiping and Courtney looked out of her league—both girls were Purebloods and, as such, were exclusive talking about things and people that Courtney knew nothing about. Grimelda must have been quicker in the shower than Diara was, as despite waking up after her, Grimelda was already dressed in her school robes.
Within a few minutes, Diara too was in her school robes and (completely ignoring her permanently messy hair) she grinned at Courtney. "Hungry? I'm hoping for griddle cakes." Courtney nodded eagerly. "And sausage! Lots of sausage."
Grimelda laughed. "Are you still growing? You're the tallest girl here!" Soon the three girls were trying to find the Great Hall for breakfast. After two staircases moved underneath them, Courtney walked into a fake door, Grimelda tripped into a disappearing step, and Diara had a ghost walk through her, they finally found the Great Hall. By that time, most of the older years had arrived—despite the First Year girls having been so excited they left before most of the others!
Diara was just sitting down, in fact, when Professor McGonagall, the Head of Gryffindor House and Transfigurations Professor, walked up to the girls. "Your schedules." The stern professor handed each girl their schedule. Quickly Diara realized that her first day of classes would be a double period of Herbology in the morning with Transfiguration in the afternoon. To top off the day, they had Astronomy that night!
After finishing off their breakfast, the girls ran back up to their dorm for their bookbags, now knowing their schedule. After debate, Diara advised her new friends to carry both their Herbology and Transfiguration books. "Personally, I don't need to See to know we're going to get lost again…I'd rather carry an extra book than be late to Professor McGonagall's class because we had to get our books and got lost…again!" With a consensus reached, the girls met up with the other First Year Gryffindors and started down toward the ground floor. Professor Greene, an older wizard with a warty nose, met them in the Great Hall. Already standing with him were the Hufflepuff First Years.
"Greenhouse One today children," he said in a monotonous voice. "Follow me." Professor Green sounded like he had never had any fun in his life, his voice was so dull and his eyes devoid of the sparkle of life. Diara wasn't looking forward to the class.
When all of the students reached the greenhouse they were led to a few long tables with backless stools. Diara found herself next to a short redhead named Sierra Blue. The two girls smiled at each other tentatively. Diara's smile in grew in confidence as she looked at Sierra's grey eyes, which tickled her memories of her dreams.
"Today, I will be demonstrating the standard technique to transplant magical herbs. This is a most basic task, however, it does differ from muggle gardening." Professor Greene droned on about properly removing an herb from a small pot into a large pot, and how magical herbs benefited from a fertilizer composed of flobberworm compost. Flobberworms, apparently, were a highly magical creature that left behind magical traces—it was also a common ingredient in potions.
By the end of the lesson, Diara was holding back a giggle as Sierra had managed to get herself covered in compost. Diara's glasses, too, were speckled with soil. Diara did, finally, break out laughing, when Sierra threw up her arms. "Whoever said that witches don't get dirty!" The girl mimicked a woman's voice—Diara would later learn it was Sierra's mother—"Young lady! Why are you covered in mud! I sent you out to the garden to pick a bouquet for our dinner with the neighbors tonight…and here I find you with mud up to your knees. You're not a boy! Girls don't get dirty like that!" The two girls soon became good friends.
_DP_
Transfiguration was after lunch that day. Diara had been fairly excited for that class, knowing that James always brought home great grades. However, Diara hadn't been able to get her match anywhere near a needle. The match had gone all silvery, but was still soft like wood, and the head of the match had a hole, but was still shaped too widely. A Ravenclaw in the class had gotten the match to turn into metal but couldn't get the eye.
Later that night, Diara trudged sleepily along behind Professor Galilei. The ancient old professor directed them in how to set up their telescopes and focus on an object in the night sky. For the first lesson, she chose the moon which was currently full. As the professor lectured on the moon, Diara fell asleep.
The full moon was in the sky. A howl rent the night. Diara could hear the sound of panting and the bark of a dog. The grass glittered silver under the moonlight. And there she saw a wolf with a tufted tail. Its eyes looked intelligent and seemed playful as three other animals came into view. A big black dog pounced on the wolf and the two rolled in the grass, snarling. A stag, with a large rack of antlers, and a small brown rat clinging to the antler also came into view and chased the two canines…
"Ms. Potter! If you feel the need to sleep in my class, I expect you to nap earlier in the day. That is why you have only a single period afternoon class!" Diara started out of her vision guiltily. Two Slytherins, one whom she recognized as Isadora Marshbanks and the other who she would later recognize as Barbie Summers, snickered at her. Despite her best intentions…Diara was doomed to repeat the pattern of dozing off in Astronomy.
_DP_
Diara's first week continued on. She quickly found that, despite Professor Slughorn being a decent professor and kind to her, she had no talent whatsoever for Potions. She would carefully read the recipe, she would try to follow all of the steps properly…but her potions never came out quite right. The color was always slightly off. Once, she began to sneeze as she added in some powdered snail shell. The resulting potion started fizzing and dripped over the edges of her cauldron.
The worst part about potions was that it was another class she was taking with the Slytherins. Isadora Marshbanks and Barbie Summers were becoming downright nasty. Despite that Diara was making friends well in Gryffindor, her oddness had been noted by the school. Once, she had avoided a prank by the Marauders by refusing to sit to eat breakfast. She'd been the only student on that bench to be able to leave the Great Hall without charmed words written on the backside of her robes. At first, students had thought she merely knew about the trick from her brother (who had already become known as a pushover when it came to Diara) but then she had grabbed Courtney and Grimelda and ran across the Potions classroom yelling for everyone to move. A moment later, a cauldron had exploded. The students who had stood near the cauldron went to the hospital wing covered in boils. Her becoming known as a Seer, which Diara had never had any delusions about hiding, had become a bullying point. And Isadora Marshbanks and Barbie Summers constantly ridiculed her over it. A small consolation to Diara was that Barbie had gotten quite a few boils on her face when she'd refused to listen to Diara that day.
Charms, on the other hand, was going wonderfully. The Gryffindors had that class with Hufflepuff. Diara, Grimelda and Courtney would often sit with Sierra for this class. Diara was very talented in the class and always turned in her assignments to Professor Flitwick and received good grades back. Not that she wrote more than she needed to, of course. Diara might be a Gryffindor, but she wasn't stupid. Why on earth would she make her essay longer than needed?
It quickly became a contest among the First Year Gryffindors to have Exploding Snap matches each Friday night. Diara was a frequent winner, which greatly annoyed her friends Gawain Robards and Shield Merrythought, who everyone had quickly begun to call "Merry." Diara didn't spend as much time with the two boys, as they were thick as thieves, but every Friday night she would join the boys in Exploding Snap. Most of the time, she got away with her eyebrows intact. Merry lost his most days and spent a few minutes each Saturday morning in the hospital wing having them grown back. Gawain and Merry had sworn they would beat her even if they had to jinx the cards. Sometimes, the Marauders would watch the game for a bit, James chuckling at the increasingly-incredulous threats.
One weekend Merry had gotten fed up and thrown his cards across the table, inciting a small explosion. "Is this part of your Seer thing, won't you ever lose!?"
Diara had a big grin on her face and shook her head. "No. Being a Seer doesn't really help in games—I See myself win sometimes sure…but I never know how I got there! Plus, the future isn't set in stone, especially the little things."
James flung himself into the seat next to Diara at that point, Sirius, Remus and Peter arguing about something in a corner nearby. (Diara suspected a prank on Slytherin in the next few days.) "Sorry gentlemen. It's my fault. Taught her every cheat in the books I know!"
Diara scowled. "You're such a toe-rag, giving up my secrets like that." A redhead across the room, caught the term "Toe-rag" and caught the siblings' eyes for just a moment, then quickly turned away and resumed talking with another 4th year girl.
_DP_
The morning of Diara's first flying lesson, which occurred about two weeks before Halloween, Diara and her friends walked into the Great Hall to see James on his knees in front of a redheaded Lily Evans. In his hand was a white lily. Diara had to chuckle at what James was wearing. He had clearly attempted to look cool for Lily…but had gone about it all wrong. His tie was undone, and his hair was particularly wild as if he had just gotten done with a game of Quidditch.
"O beautiful Lily-flower, please be mine! Together, a Hogsmeade trip would be divine! I'll take you wherever you wish! We could…" James didn't get an opportunity to finish. Lily poured oatmeal over James' head to laughter from the rest of the school.
"You big-headed arrogant bullying toe-rag! I wouldn't go with you to Hogsmeade if you were the last male on the planet!" Lily got up and stormed off.
Diara quickly slipped onto a seat at the table near where James was moping on the floor. Peter was patting James on the shoulder, Sirius was howling with laughter and Remus was shaking his head. "Dear big brother…that is NOT how to win a girl's heart."
James glared at her with all the dignity of a scolded puppy. "And what do you know about that? You're eleven! You still think boys other than me have cooties! …Don't you?"
Diara just smiled at her brother. "Oh, it'll be a few years before I date yet…I don't mind." The girl fixed herself up with two slices of wheat toast, marmalade jelly, and some scrambled eggs along with an orange. As she mumbled she hummed to herself, trying to ignore Courtney batting her eyelashes at Sirius. Diara just didn't understand how the other first year had a crush on her brother's best friend. Sirius was a menace.
Sirius was a bit dense, however, so she needn't worry about him noticing. And James was keeping the Marauders plenty busy. Grimelda elbowed Diara, and muttered to her, "He's saying something about trying to train Fiend to chase boys away from you…" Diara just chuckled and shook her head. Did her brother really think he'd be able to train her kitten to chase away boys? Already over the term, Sirius and James had shown an aversion to spending time with her cat—who was quite happy to scratch the two boys.
As James and his friends finally finished their own breakfasts (Diara noticed James had scourgified his head, leaving his hair worse than ever), Diara smiled. "Have a good day brother. It's too bad about Lily. It looks like you'll be stag that day." James scowled at her for rubbing in that he had been turned down on his offer a date.
_DP_
Later that day, Diara was grinning from ear to ear as she tried to tame her hair in the bathroom mirror. (The mirror told her, "Give it up deary. You should just consider a wig.") Flying lessons had been amazing! It had been joint with the Hufflepuffs. She and Sierra had a great time and their brooms had instantly responded. Of course, Diara had been flying for years, but it was always good to know she'd been flying properly. A few other students had their grips corrected despite years of flying.
Courtney too, had looked very confident on the broom (though she thought Quidditch was really dumb). Grimelda had hated flying and been too afraid to go fast or get high up in the air! Gawain and Merry had both been fairly good, flying confidently, though Merry had apparently learned wrong. He just laughed and corrected his grip as instructed.
After fifteen minutes of brushing her hair, Diara finally gave up. Her shoulder length wavy black hair was no longer completely tangled, but still wouldn't fall properly. Quickly she grabbed her hair into a braid, which a few pieces escaped from, but overall looked at least slightly better. Diara popped her favorite Snitch barrette back into her hair. She dropped her robes off on her bed and ran downstairs in a green sweater-dress over a white collared shirt and woolen leggings. It was officially the weekend and she could wear whatever she liked. Despite never having blended in well with the muggles in the nearby village where she had grown up, Diara knew a fair bit about what their clothes looked like. She really didn't understand why some wizards couldn't seem to match colors…it's not like many wizards didn't wear trousers and sweaters as casual wear in the winter! And many witches wore dresses!
As she entered the common room, where her friends were waiting, laughter broke out as her friends saw her. Diara couldn't notice anything different about herself. Finally, after a few moments of laughter, Grimelda smiled gently. "I think your brother got you with a prank…he doesn't seem terribly happy with you." Grimelda pulled out a small pocket mirror and offered it to Diara: she saw that he had somehow turned her hair purple! Diara had no idea if it was a charm or a potion, but either way, she was going to kill her brother.
"JAMES! JUST YOU WAIT! I'M GOING TO GET YOU FOR THIS!"
_DP_
The day after Halloween, which was a Friday that year, Diara walked past her brother in the Great Hall as he was eating breakfast. "I told you that you'd be a stag." James was so surprised, despite knowing his sister's ways, that he put his elbow in the pat of butter that had been next to him.
Diara walked away from her brother grinning. Behind her she heard Peter, "What? You didn't tell her did you…" Then Peter squeaked, "Oh no! She really knows!"
Remus answered, "Yes, despite the rarity, it is clear that Diara is indeed able to see the future…" There was a nervous sound in his voice. "She doesn't know about me…does she?"
_DP_
The Christmas holidays rolled around and Diara and her brother both signed up to go home for Christmas. Very few students stayed for the holidays. As Diara got off the Hogwarts Express she saw her mother and father waiting for her. For a brief moment, her heart froze: Charisse Potter looked like she had aged in the short months that Diara and James had been at school. But Mrs. Potter opened her arms and Diara ran forward and hugged her mother carefully.
"How was school sweetie? We enjoyed your letters. Poor James getting rejected in front of the whole school," Mrs. Potter said with a smile.
Harald Potter laughed and winked, "Again!"
James walked up just in time to catch his father speak. "Again what?"
"Oh nothing, Prongs. Have you said your goodbyes yet?"
It turned out that James had not said his goodbyes—neither had Diara. Courtney's family was waiting outside the barrier, but Mrs. Harper was there talking to Grimelda and Sierra's dad was also on the platform. Courtney had already disappeared—Diara just hoped she'd get to introduce her parents another time. After introductions had been made, Diara and her parents looked around for James, who was still standing with Sirius. Remus and Peter appeared to have already left.
James and Sirius looked up as the family arrived. "Mom, Dad, can Sirius come visit over the holidays?" Diara noticed a hopeful look on Sirius' face which broke into a huge grin.
"Of course boys. Mr. Black our Floo is always open to you. Do feel free to step on through."
"Thank you very much Mr. and Mrs. Potter. It means a lot to me," the boy spoke politely. Despite Sirius being a complete prankster without a serious bone in his body, or so he liked to pretend, the boy did have manners…on occasion.
About this point, Mrs. Walburga Black walked up with Regulas, who was a 2nd year Slytherin. Diara hadn't really gotten to know him as they didn't share any classes. And Sirius didn't have many positive things about his brother who 'followed over the slimy snakes like a proper pureblood idiot.' "Come Sirius, it's time to go home. You've spent enough time with these blood traitors," the woman spoke coldly. Sirius looked like he wanted to object. James stepped on his toes.
If Sirius got grounded, he'd be stuck in that house with that hag all Christmas!
And so the families split up. Diara smiled and waved Sirius and his family off, "Happy Christmas boys," she called as they left. James looked at her oddly.
_DP_
Christmas morning dawned bright and cold. And Diara stayed in bed. She grabbed a book with one hand, and a toy mouse stuffed with catnip, and tormented Fiend with the other hand. The night before, James and Diara had met each other's eyes and by unspoken agreement had decided to pretend to sleep in an extra hour the next day. Their mother looked like she could use the rest rather than the traditional Christmas greeting of her two rambunctious children banging on their door yelling to come downstairs at 6 in the morning.
It was James who couldn't manage a full hour, however. At quarter 'til 7, James ran into Diara's room and flung himself onto the bed. With a hiss, Fiend was up and slashed her claws across James' nose, drawing blood.
"Ouch! Fiend! I'm sorry! Ouch! No!" Fiend scratched James once more for good measure.
Chuckles came from the hallway. Mr. Potter looked into the room. He was now 79 years old and silently impressed his son had held out this long. Diara shimmied out of bed around her brother who was lying there clutching his nose glaring at her cat. Fiend looked rather please with herself. "Don't think I'm going to fix your nose up son. I'm on Fiend's side, this time." Diara grinned at her father. "Your mother is getting ready and should be down soon. She'd like.."
Diara had already pulled a red sweater on over her nightgown and shoved her feet into soft slipper. "I'll get some tea and cocoa ready. And I'll ask Topsy to get breakfast going."
Harald sighed and shook his head. Diara didn't know everything, and sometimes he couldn't tell if she had Seen or if she just was smart enough to know Mrs. Potter would want the traditional Christmas breakfast fare prepared.
Diara bounced down the stairs as her brother moaned to their Mediwizard father about his "mangled nose" and hand. "They might scar! Lily-flower will never say yes to me then," he moaned.
_DP_
The family had just finished opening their gifts and were finishing the last of their breakfast when the fireplace flared a distinctive green and out stepped Sirius. His shoulders were tense and James immediately hopped off of his feet. "What's wrong pads?"
Instead of answering, Sirius looked over at Mr. and Mrs. Potter. "Can I stay here for a couple of days?" Although the boy didn't give a reason, it was clear: a Gryffindor in a family of Slytherin Pureblood supremacists was not welcome. A few days for tempers to cool down would be very necessary.
Mrs. Potter smiled. "Sirius, you're always welcome to stay here. Always."
Mr. Potter grinned, "Although, if you're to stay, perhaps we ought to allow Diara to have a friend stay too. Perhaps your friend Courtney?"
Diara blanched. She did not want to put up with Courtney flirting with Sirius all holiday! Diara loved her friends dearly, but Grimelda was a bit quiet and wasn't interested in flying, Courtney hated Quidditch but loved boys, and Sierra was in a different House. And Merry and Gawain were, well, the boys—they spent some time together, but weren't the best of friends. But of all her friends, she'd rather invite anyone other than Courtney! Ever since she'd decided she had a crush on Sirius, she'd been downright annoying!
"Not Courtney! Nope, not Courtney," she cried out. Everyone in the room laughed but for Sirius. Diara had been complaining about Courtney's crush on Sirius all holiday.
"Why not? She seems like a nice girl," Sirius commented. Diara just sighed, to the continued laughter of the room. It was a good Christmas.
_DP_