Friday morning, Morgana is sat at the top table for breakfast as she has the students for the first hour. As she's tucking into some black bread, butter, and a selection of meats, a moulting grey owl flies into the door and manages to catch itself before it falls to the floor. Drunkenly it makes it's way to her carrying a glowing red letter that's trailing smoke.
At the Gryffindor table, the Weasley twins share a glance before hustling over to their younger brother. The eldest Weasley sees them doing that, glances at the owl and then hustles over as well. There seems to be a heated discussion starting as the owl reaches her.
Curiously she takes the owl and places it on her shoulder, before taking the letter.
"What a curious piece of magic. Severus, what is this magic?"
Severus looks up from his breakfast, and then scoots away from Morgana, "That, is a Howler. They are especially designed to allow the sender to 'Shout at the target of their ire'. They tend to also explode afterwards."
"I see, and why would the Weasley's be having such an urgent conversation with the youngest?"
"This particular owl belongs to the Weasley family."
"Ah, I see. And is this considered acceptable in your culture?"
"Most would consider it as rude as the person actually walking up to you and shouting in your face. I do have to wonder why the letter hasn't already activated."
"How does it know when to activate?"
"I'm not sure, I'd have ask Filius. However, I'd imagine it's supposed to react to the recipients magic in some way."
"Thank you, excuse me a moment."
Morgana gets up and walks around the table to Filius, who watches the letter in her hand apprehensively, "Mr Flitwick, would you mind if I asked you about the spell used on this letter?"
"Erm, certainly, and call me Filius. It's an interesting charm as it is essentially an incomplete spell. Once the spell is cast, it will naturally decay withing at most a minute. However, when the caster picks up the letter, the spell matrix absorbs magic from the casters aura. This then primes the spell, and gives it enough magic to last a couple of days. When a different magical aura touches it, the magic is absorbed and triggers the spell to complete. This then causes the letter to levitate, unfold, and deliver the message in a loud voice. At the end of the spell, any excess magic is expelled explosively."
Morgana nods, "I see, and is there anyway to disarm the letter?"
Filius nods, "Indeed there is, though it's more complicated than the initial spell. The standard counter doesn't actually work on this charm because the reservoir of magic is inside the spell rather than clinging onto it. Instead the counter spell punctures the spell matrix, allowing it to deflate and unravel."
Morgana hums as she looks at the letter intently, suddenly the trail of smoke disappears and the letter goes from glowing red to the colour of parchment, "Thank you for the explanation, it was most helpful."
Moving back to her seat, she unfolds the letter and reads it. Her expression darkens as she gets closer to the end. Her lips thin, she resists the urge to find the author and skewer them on her spear. That doesn't stop it from appearing beside her, leaning against the table, though. Severus looks curiously at the spear until his mind makes sense of the dark stains near the tip. At that point he scoots his chair back, picks up his plate, and casually leaves the Great Hall by a side door. Carefully controlling her anger that someone dared to write such a thing to her for telling someone their doom, she stalks down the top table to Minerva's seat.
"Deputy Headmistress, would you know if I have any legal recourse against the author of this letter?"
Minerva takes the offered letter and reads it. Frowning, she shakes her head, "I'm sorry, I am unaware of anything, even though you are an unrelated adult."
The headmaster rumbles softly, "Apologising to the boy for giving him nightmares would probably be a start."
Morgana rounds on the headmaster, "Mr Dumbledore! I will not apologize for things that I cannot control. I am a seer. The Celtic people had a specific name for the sort of seer that I am, I am a doomsayer. I can no more control that talent than you can stop using magic. Like most well trained seers, I can keep the talent suppressed to a certain extent, or I can open myself up to it. Now, I would like an apology from you for your spurious comment."
Suddenly, acutely aware that he has inadvertently added insult to the injury that a witch powerful enough to not only fully power the sacrificial wards, but also raise the strength of the protections on the school as much as the entire rest of the school does in a year. Yet, she only released her magic for a matter of minutes.
"I apologise, I was unaware of your talent." He grinds out.
Further down the table one of the professors says to their neighbour, "It's not like the glowing eyes were a give away." Quirrell chuckles in response.
Ignoring them he continues, "I will also write to Mrs Weasley and strongly suggest that she sends you an apology for her accusations. If I may have the letter so that I can better address the specific language she used?"
Morgana shakes her head, "Not until I have photocopied it. I will leave a copy on your desk later."
Once she sits down, one of the older Ravenclaws nervously, "Excuse me Professor, but I'm taking divination, and I've never heard of a Doomsayer."
Morgana takes a sip of drink to cover the fact she's calming herself down, though she has to grimace as she accidentally picked up a goblet of pumpkin juice rather than water. Having taken a moment, she puts a smile on her face, "As you know, a seer is anyone with the gift for seeing the future. The type of seer that most people are familiar with is an oracle. They tend to give cryptic prophecies that may or may not be self-fulfilling. The oracle at Delphi, blessed by Apollo, is one famous example. The second type of seer is a fate sayer, they will get a very clear and direct vision of one or more possible futures. Doomsayers will always see someone's doom, In many cases this is their death, but it could equally be a defining moment in their life that involves violence. Unfortunately, I have a very strong track record of being accurate. However, what I see usually relies on not knowing how those dooms are going to be achieved."
"Do you not need to use tarot cards, or a crystal ball?"
"Ah, the art of the diviner. The Celtic people had similar, though they used bones or animal entrails rather than cards, crystal balls, or tea leaves. This is a skill that anyone with a modicum of magic can learn, and the props are just a tool to aid you. Far more important to the development of the skill is learning how to let go and just feel the world around you. Many people were unable to do this without the aid of certain herbs and mushrooms either burnt as smoke, or drunk as a potion. Some have found good luck with alcohol, though it tends to leave them less able to be understood. For people with as much magic as you need to use a wand, you shouldn't need more than the right training to start to feel the world around you."
The student glances behind them at their friends, who have been scribbling notes while she was talking, "Thank you, I think I speak for all of us when I say this was far more informative than I expected."
"You're welcome."
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Marie groans as she hauls the bucket of water out of the brook, her muscles and bones protesting the treatment despite how much she has filled out over the last week. Briefly she gives thanks to Danu for Morgana's understanding nature, and willingness to hold her while she sleeps. Also for Airmed and Reginald, who have been modifying the Dreamless sleep potion so that it will only send her to sleep. If there's one thing she'd say about this process, it's that the pain isn't really that bad. It's not like stubbing a toe, cutting your finger, or breaking a bone. Instead, it's always there, you can't ignore it, and it never goes away. To the point she literally cannot sleep without the potion.
Marie pours the bucket of water into the large cauldron she's got suspended over the fire. Just outside the cottage is an old fashioned wooden bathtub, not only is she grimy, but it helps soothe the pain for a while. With a sigh, she heads back to the brook for more water for the cauldron. Once that's full, she'll need to fill the bath. Briefly, she considers cursing her burgeoning magic for stranding her here, but then she remembers the shopping centre bursting into flower when she was shopping for a new tracksuit with Dora. It was only her own familiarity with the mundane world along with the quick response from the DMLE that stopped this from being a massive breach of the statute of secrecy.
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Neville pants as he lifts his sword for the umpteenth time, all he wants to do is call it quits. But he's done that before, and then he beat himself up about it for the next couple of days. Being honest with himself, he probably wouldn't be doing this if Harry didn't wake him up every morning. Really, it's a bit like when he started working in the greenhouses at home with Loddy. There's a kind of freedom in running through the basic drills, both the stationary and in motion drills. Every time he gets close to quitting, he remembers why Harry denied him training in Celtic magic. He is determined to start to see personal progress by the time this Marie person is ready to start teaching them.
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Marianne is bored, so she's elected to explore the castle while the others are in transfiguration before Morgana arrives for their lesson. Oh, she could sit down with a good book, or so some more studying. However, she's already got all of the work done that Morgana wanted them to finish, so exploring it is. Well, poltergeist hunting anyway, as she figures that if one of the ghosts will be easier to find, it would be the one the actually likes to mess with the students.
There are supposed to be loads of ghosts here, and the others have all seen them. They've also been able to have conversations with them, however she's not seen a single one. And neither has anyone else if she's around. As she's walking down the main staircase, a flash of movement catches her eye. Racing to the banister, she spots a transparent figure dart down a corridor on the third floor. Pulling her cloak around her, she slips into the mist and comes out in the corridor below. As she does, the figure looks back and screams "She's going to eat me!" before it disappears through a door, the bucket it was carrying clattering to the floor and spilling its slimy contents.
Running down the corridor and through the mist and the door, she spots a trapdoor, but no ghost. Diving through the trapdoor, she finds herself in a dark hole. Staying in the edge of the mist, she drops down until she sees a glimmer of light.
As she follows the light, she emerges into a room that's far taller than it should be, that's filled with flying keys, on the other side of the room is a heavy wooden door with a large keyhole. Screwing her face up in disgust, she moves through the door into a large cavern with a monstrous chess set. Looking around, she's starting to get the feeling she's not actually supposed to be here. However, the same strength and stubbornness that has allowed her to not only bounce back from the trauma of Halloween, but also exceed Morgana's expectations with her progress developing her magic, pushes her forward. Passing through the pieces as though they're not stupidly deadly magical chess pieces, she also ghosts past a bored looking troll that's gnawing on a pigs leg, the rest of the pig lying dismembered in the room behind it. Next is a rather uninteresting room with a small cauldron and a variety of bottles, who's labels suggest they're partially completed potions in different stable states. When she spots the door, she has to laugh, as it's barely two inches tall and covered by a locked door.
"It was all very well to say 'Drink Me' but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see if it's marked poison or not'"
With a laugh, she crawls through the wall where the door is, keeping her head at the level of the door so that if it turns out to be a tunnel, she doesn't get lost. After only a couple of feet, it opens up into a bare room with a mirror in the centre. After looking around the room, and determining that there appears to be nothing else here, she steps out of the edge of the mist to look at the mirror. With a frown, she wonders why a perfectly normal, if ornate, mirror would be here. Curiously, she runs her finger across the glass to see if there's any dust. As she touches it, her reflection winks at her before taking a large red stone out of her hand bag and then putting it back in. As it does, the image dissolves and turns into a view of herself playing in Harry's domain with Morgana, Marie, Dora, Harry, and all the children she's met both at bowling, re-enactment, and in the mundane studies class. Off to one side the Greengrass family are tending to a BBQ. Stepping back in surprise, the image slowly fades and becomes a normal mirror once more.
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Astoria giggles as she sneaks out of her new mothers domain and into the mist, in her pocket she has some of the money she was given for Christmas. Sweetshop here she comes! All she has to do is imagine the sweet goodness of Honey Dukes chocolate and she can already see the shop ahead of her. Before she knows it, she's stepped out into the shop and is drooling at the display of fresh fudge, chocolate frogs, and her target, coco dusted chocolate bonbons.
Unnoticed behind her, Airmed and Reginald both step out of the mist with proud expressions on their faces. Though Reginald's has a tinge of worry in it as he starts to imagine how much mischief his daughter can get into. Along his forehead are fresh stress lines from the effort needed to lower his occlumency shields every day since Daphne returned to school.