Visions of Other Worlds

by inwardtransience

In the Good War, it was revealed that Dumbledore had blatantly ignored the Potters' wishes as to what should be done with Liz. Events might have gone very differently if someone had managed to check his ego, and Liz was placed with responsible guardians. (Spin-off of The Good War ; part 1/5: the Longbottoms ; batch 1/3 posted!)

10. Longbottom — In Dreams

17th August, 1993

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Her wand hand finally dropping to her side, after what felt like hours, Mum gave her a nod and a little, pleased smile. "Good."

Hazel was absolutely covered in sweat, her clothes damp and clinging to her skin, her hair glued to her cheek and her neck — shorter than it'd been at the start, she'd just chopped it off with a charm when it'd started getting in the way. (It'd grow back overnight anyway.) Her breath was thick and harsh, her throat burning, as were her legs and her back, her muscles tingling and twitching from exertion, starting to feel heavy and clumsy, exhausted. And she was sore, dull hard aches from bruises scattered all over from head to toe, sharper twinges where her skin had been tweaked by stinging charms. She was tired, and she hurt, and she felt more than a little gross, she didn't know how long she'd be able to keep standing before she needed to rest.

But despite all that, she still felt herself grin.

Last year at school, Hazel had joined the duelling club — she would have earlier, but first-years weren't supposed to be in clubs at all, instead expected to familiarise themselves with their classmates and the routine at Hogwarts. There was a big tournament organised by the ICW, between teams from various schools of magic throughout Europe, one event in the winter and the other in the summer. Hogwarts sent two teams, one for each division, one team for OWL students and one team for NEWT students. It was somewhat unusual for a third-year to get into the junior team, but it did happen occasionally. Hazel's goal for this year at school was to make the team.

She knew she would get on the team, in the same way she knew a lot of things. She'd dreamed of it, she knew it would happen — facing another team of seven in a huge arena, the flashing of cameras at some press event, fighting another girl on an outdoor platform, a light snow wafting in the air — but she didn't have a clear feeling of when. She thought some of the flashes were soon enough it should be the junior team, but it was hard to be any more specific than that.

Since Mum was a rather talented battlemage herself — she might be a little out of practice now, but she'd been a wartime Auror, she'd fought Voldemort himself and survived, and she'd been on the Hogwarts duelling teams with Hazel's birth mother and the actual Cassie Lovegood before that — she'd offered to give Hazel some lessons, so she'd have better odds of making it. One of the disadvantages of being younger was that Hazel couldn't channel as much raw power as mages even only a year or two older, so she had to be cleverer, and faster. The most powerful curse in the world was completely useless if it didn't hit anything, so the most effective way for Hazel to stay in a match long enough to win was to never stop moving. Her shields were going to be flimsy compared to the hexes older students could cast anyway, and once she stopped moving to cast one she was leaving herself open to follow-up spells — and once she let an opponent get into the flow of flinging hexes at her, she'd probably already lost.

Mum said this wasn't just good advice for duelling, either. The Ministry had had special combat training for DLE officers during the war, and their teachers there had told them pretty much the same thing, except in much more serious terms — in a real battle, once you were pinned in one spot, you were dead. Never stop moving.

They'd been playing a little game, where Mum would throw jinxes at her, and Hazel was supposed to dodge. She didn't even have her wand on her, so she wouldn't be tempted to cheat and block something. This wasn't the first time they'd played this game, and Mum had been making it harder and harder on her — she'd gotten hit plenty, as the bruises proved. But she was getting better, faster. Previous times they'd done this, Mum would say she was improving, or that that was a nice effort, something like that. This was the first time she'd said, just, good.

Despite how heavy and gross and tired she felt, Hazel couldn't stop smiling.

"I think that's enough for the day — I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get a little tired." That wasn't quite true. While they had been at it for a little while now, tossing spells around wasn't nearly as exhausting as trying to evade them. It was a warm day, there was a little bit of visible sweat around Mum's collar, but that could just as easily have just been from standing out in the sun the whole time. A quick swishing wave of her wandless hand in the air, and the duelling wards she'd set up (to stop them from messing up anything in the garden) dissolved away into nothing. "How about we take a couple days' rest before trying again? Even taking breaks, there's still enough time before the start of term to fit in a few more practices."

Suggesting they ramp down on the intensity of her lessons, Mum meant. They'd been going for an hour or two...well, not quite every day, but pretty often, ever since early July, a couple weeks after Hazel and Neville had returned from school. As intensely physical as some of Mum's lessons could be, it'd been pretty exhausting at times, she'd spent a lot of time rather sore, but she didn't really mind — it was something she wanted to do, and she wasn't exactly complaining about spending a lot of time with Mum. Even if some of it involved Mum hexing her, still nice. "Okay, sure. I have a few invites from friends to meet up anyway."

There was a flicker of shifting unease, Mum frowning a little. "I hope you haven't been neglecting your friends to practise duelling with me."

"No, no, just— Some of them want to do a last couple things before we go back to school, you know? We were thinking of bringing the muggleborn girls out somewhere on our side, and—" Still a little out of breath from running around, Hazel had to break off to catch up for a moment. "Ah, and Hermione's parents wanted to do something, like an early birthday. Since hers is in September, you know."

"Right, good. Don't go out alone, remember — Voldemort is still out there, and we don't know what he's up to."

Hazel tried not to roll her eyes. It wasn't as though she'd ever gotten out much — what with her fame around that Hallowe'en, her parents had always been cautious about public appearances, just in case — but they'd been almost paranoid after Quirrell had turned out to be possessed by Voldemort the whole time. Which, yes, scary, she understood that, but she was pretty sure she wasn't going to be kidnapped straight off of Diagon Alley or something. If nothing else, being as famous and recognisable as she was meant it'd be kind of hard to snatch her without anyone noticing.

Also, she didn't think she was ever going to meet Voldemort again, in person? She hadn't dreamed of it, and she'd never had a feeling that... She didn't know. That didn't necessarily mean anything, it wasn't as though she dreamed of literally everything that would ever happen, but if she was in danger of being kidnapped and murdered by Voldemort, she was pretty sure she'd get some kind of warning, she'd See something. But she knew what her parents would say if they thought she wasn't taking the threat seriously, so she kept that suspicion to herself.

What she said aloud was, "Susan should be coming along, and Aunt Amy always sends a bodyguard or something with her when she's out in public." Susan's mum had also become especially paranoid since Voldemort's wraith was discovered, but it wasn't actually that much of a difference — Aunt Amy's career as an Auror and her political importance meant she had a lot of enemies, she'd always been careful about Susan's safety. She swore Susan knew like half of the women in the Hit Wizards by their given names, it was a little ridiculous.

"Well, good. I know us old people breathing down your necks can get a little annoying, but it really is important."

...Apparently Hazel hadn't done as good a job of hiding her annoyance as she'd thought. "I know, Mum. We'll be careful, it's, just, a little annoying to be told the same things over and over, when we never actually break the rules."

"Oh, lovely, I don't mean to— Come here," Mum said, holding out her arms and coming in for a hug.

Hazel stepped back, though, raising a hand. "Er, not right now."

Her lips curling in a smirk, Mum said, "What, getting too grown up to hug your mother?"

A lot of the time, Hazel didn't much like hugging, but that was mostly for Seer reasons — some of her school friends were a little touchy, which could set her off pretty easily, if she was having a bad day. Her parents had never really been a problem though, and she wasn't sure why. She'd think they should be — both of them had killed people before, in the war, which was the sort of thing she picked up on pretty easily — but that never actually bothered her, she normally didn't even notice. Maybe she was just used to them? But the reason this time was because, "I'm feeling really sweaty and gross right now, that's all. I was going to go take a shower..."

"Ah, of course. I was only going to say, it isn't that I don't trust you but, well, parenthood makes you a little mad sometimes. You'll understand when you're older." Smirking, vicarious warm fluffy amusement fluttering in Hazel's chest, Mum reached over to muss up her hair — as wet as it was from the work-out, Hazel felt droplets shook loose spatter her shoulders, ugh. "Go on and get cleaned up, then. It's about time I check in on Alex anyway."

They both left the little cleared spot in the orchard they practised duelling in, though Mum took the long way to the house, looping through the garden. A lot of plants had been pruned back or dug up already, but there were still fruits on some of them, new growth on the herbs. Some things were finished for the season in July or August, but some could keep going well into the autumn, or in a few cases even through the whole year — they did have a greenhouse, which helped, but Mum could cheat with greenspeaking to keep up the herbs especially, so long as they didn't have a hard winter. Hazel guessed she was probably planning on picking berries to have at the table with afternoon tea or dinner or whatever. The kitchen door was hanging open, as it often was in the summer, Hazel paused to charm the bottoms of her feet clean before continuing on.

There was music playing in the salon, she wasn't surprised to find Neville and Victor and Rhonwen in here. She'd barely shown her face before Neville glanced up. "You look wiped out. How did the lesson go?"

"All right — I'm still getting hit, but I'm doing better." She glanced around quick, taking in Rhonwen on the floor in the middle of the room very seriously stacking up some blocks — she was four years old now, and had gotten past the age where she was very noisy and demanding attention all the time, but the very intense focus she got on things sometimes was different from Victor at that age, it was interesting — and the game of tables Neville had going on with Victor. Rhonwen didn't seem to notice Hazel had turned up at all, focussed on her blocks, but Victor didn't look up either, pouting down at the game board. Victor had been moping a bit lately about having to wait one whole more year before he could go to Hogwarts with them, both Neville and Hazel had been making a point of doing things with him to try to make up for it. Not that it seemed to make any difference, he'd hardly even lightened up on his birthday a couple days ago. "Anyway, I really need to get cleaned up, be back down in a bit."

The house was bigger than it used to be, when Hazel was little. She'd been told that it used to be only a single storey, the only bedroom Mum and Dad's — two floors, including the bath belowground — but when they took in Hazel they'd temporarily moved back to the Manor so another level could be added. (And good thing they had, their wards here wouldn't have held up nearly as well against the Lestranges' attack, and they wouldn't have had Grandmother to help fight them off either.) She didn't remember living at the Manor, though, her earliest memories were here. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, and a nice little library, though in her earliest memories two of the bedrooms had still been empty, Neville and her sharing a nursery; and then when they'd still been little they'd moved out into the bedrooms, Victor moved to the nursery.

Hazel remembered feeling very ambivalent about that. Having her own bedroom had been pretty exciting, especially since she'd been able to furnish and decorate it however she liked (though she'd ended up going back on some of five-year-old Hazel's sillier decisions), but also sleeping alone had been difficult at first. She'd literally never done that before, ever. Mum knew that, when she'd been a baby, she'd slept with Lily — apparently her birth parents had slept separately then, because James found the idea of having a baby in the bed with them odd, Lily had told Mum all about it — and then she'd at least been in the room with Mum and Dad and Neville, and then she and Neville had been sharing the nursery after that. The memories were pretty old and fuzzy now, but she remembered she really hadn't liked it at first — it'd been pretty common for her or Neville to slip over to the other's bedroom in the middle of the night, lonely. They'd gotten over it, of course, it'd just taken time.

That set-up had worked just fine for a time...and then Rhonwen happened. Honestly, Hazel had kind of expected she'd end up sharing her room with Rhonwen — about the time she'd be old enough to have her own room, Hazel would be spending most of the year at Hogwarts anyway. And, well, she was Lady Potter, if she didn't like sharing a bedroom with her baby sister she could always sleep at Rock-on-Clyde instead. She probably wouldn't be living here very much longer? That was a sad thought, yes, she didn't want to move out, but she'd probably be getting married not long after Hogwarts anyway. That was just normal, Mum had married Dad the August after finishing academy (Dad was a couple years older), her birth parents had married the summer after that. People usually started formal courtship when they turned fifteen, so, even if they put off the marriage for a few years, Hazel would probably be betrothed before she finished school, anyway. Under those circumstances, staying in this house with her parents and younger siblings just seemed like it'd be...kind of awkward?

(Hazel was certain she'd have children, but she hadn't Seen her future husband yet — she assumed who it ended up being was just too uncertain, too dependent on events that hadn't happened yet for her to get a clear picture, the future could be fuzzy like that sometimes.)

But, instead of expecting Hazel and Rhonwen to share, or maybe Neville and Victor — they were closer in age, so maybe that'd be less awkward? — Mum and Dad had had another addition to the house made. They hadn't added another floor on top, because the family would have had to temporarily move out to accomplish that, an addition being made to the side instead. On the ground floor, the office space Dad used for paperwork and Mum kept her potions and enchanting stuff that wasn't safe for children had been greatly expanded into a rather nice potions, alchemy, and enchanting lab. Hazel thought this had kind of been overdue? This little house hadn't been intended to be a permanent, primary residence, more a little country retreat, there was some magic stuff that it was simply more convenient for a family like theirs to be able to do without leaving home. The space was maybe a bit nicer and better equipped than was really necessary, but they had the money, and Mum had been angling toward getting back into academic work, so. On top of the lab, connected to the hallway of the upper floor with some complicated space-bending work (the original hallway hadn't been built with the addition in mind) were a pair of additional bedrooms, once of which was now Rhonwen's, the other a nursery for Alex — though not a permanent bedroom yet, she still spent the night with their parents.

Part of this last addition was a bathroom on the upper floor, they used to have to go downstairs for that. Though, perhaps "bathroom" wasn't quite the right term — there was no actual bath, though there was a shower, which was good enough if she just wanted to wash off quick. Hazel dipped by her bedroom to grab a change of clothes quick before heading to the shower.

She noticed the smear of red in the mirror first — incidentally, while undressing. Her heart jumping up into her throat, she moved to get a closer look, a blotch on her knickers, a bit escaping onto her right thigh, mostly in a big smear from her moving around, but a few bits starting to trail down her leg...

She was confused — she'd been hit with several spells, but nothing that should cause this — but only for maybe five seconds before she realised what was going on. Right, that made sense, the instinctive nerves that had sparked off at the sight of her own blood easing away.

Over the last few days, she had been feeling rather sore, and...bleh, but she'd kind of written it off as a Seer thing? She tended to assume any unexplained feelings she had were some manifestation of the Sight, even if she couldn't guess what it was supposed to mean — a lot of her Seer feelings never got an explanation, so not knowing what it was about wasn't suspicious in itself. It wasn't always her Sight acting up — a couple times she'd assumed she felt off for Seer reasons, only for it to become clear those had actually been early symptoms of an illness — but assuming it was was normally a good bet.

That she was having her first period also worked as an explanation, though. Much more mundane.

Hazel hesitated for a moment, before just shrugging it off and hopping straight into the shower. Taking off her bloody knickers in here was less likely to make a mess. The next problem came at the end of her shower — there wasn't a tonne of blood or anything, but she didn't want to get it on her towel...or her fresh knickers, for that matter. She solved the first problem by cheating with some charmwork, and for the second, after a bit of thought she cast a doubling charm on a hand towel, and then transfigured it into a wad of fluffy cotton. (Any significant amount of conjuration was a bit much for her, but there were ways around needing to do that if you were clever.) That should hold long enough to get to Mum, at least.

She found Mum in the first place she looked: in the nursery, feeding Alex. It actually wasn't typical for noblewomen to nurse their own children, mostly people had wetnurses and the like. When it did come up (which admittedly wasn't often), the feeling Hazel got was that it was considered... "Demeaning" didn't feel like quite the right word. That it was somehow inappropriate, at least, in a class sense, like it was beneath her station somehow. When she'd first come across that kind of sentiment, it'd seemed almost bizarre to her, because Mum did it all the time. Hazel even had vague memories of Mum doing it with her, though she would have been very young then, so it was pretty fuzzy.

After learning about how other people felt about it, Hazel had asked, and apparently Mum had found the idea off-putting at first, but she'd been talked around on it by Lily and Liz — Mum's sister Elizabeth, Susan's mother — who'd been having their first children around the same time. The Boneses had their own traditions around this sort of thing, and Liz had decided to play along with her in-laws' expectations, and had ended up being won over actually doing it. Lily had been super into traditional witchcraft starting a couple years into their time at Hogwarts, and there was stuff to do with that, but also she knew of some muggle medicine and mind healing reasons why it was a good idea — Mum had actually found the latter more convincing, that's why she'd decided to do it herself to start off with. By the end of the conversation, Hazel had come away with the feeling that the opinion they had on nursing your own children in noble circles was very strange, but people did a lot of strange things sometimes, she guessed this really wasn't special.

(Hazel had had scars all over her chest from that Hallowe'en, but they'd been fixed when she'd still been a toddler. So she could nurse her own children someday hadn't been why they'd done that — there had been health concerns, and Mum in particular had been worried how she'd deal with them emotionally — but she was still glad the healers had made it so it was an option anyway.)

She'd been quietly peeking into the room to make sure Mum was awake — sometimes she'd fall asleep while she was at it, and one of the rules of the house was to try to let Mum sneak naps when she needed them — when she saw that she was awake stepped the rest of the way inside. "Hey, Mum. Can we talk quick?"

"Of course, sweetheart — you don't have to ask, you know that."

Well, sure, but she always did when Mum was in the middle of something anyway. She stopped a couple feet away from Mum's chair, before just saying, "I started bleeding, I noticed in the shower and I wasn't sure what to do."

"Oh!" Mum's eyes going wide, there was a little flicker of surprise, along with a slippery squishy feeling Hazel couldn't put a word to. "Well, I suppose you are getting... I'm sorry, lovely, we probably should have talked about this earlier, but I thought we had more time. I didn't start until I was already fifteen."

"That's all right," Hazel said with a little shrug. "And, we did talk about this stuff, ages ago, just, I didn't want to make a mess."

"Right, we can— Let me just take care of that quick." Mum shifted her hold on Alex, so she could free up one arm, her wand appearing in her hand. She asked for permission before casting a charm on Hazel.

A charm that felt really really weird. She could feel whatever it was doing, warm and sharp and prickly, inside of her — cringing away a little, one hand reflexively went down low under her stomach, letting out an oooh noise without really meaning to. The feeling faded quickly, at least. At the look from Mum, a flicker of concern, Hazel said, "I'm fine, that just felt weird." Mum had conjured a chair while she'd been distracted by the charm, so she sat down. "What did that do?"

"Vanishes the blood. I'll teach it to you later. It takes some practice to get good at it, so you might still get a little bit of leaking afterward — I should have gotten rid of everything, though."

"Right, good." Hazel quick cast a dispel on herself, vanishing the cotton she'd stuffed down her pants. Because that was uncomfortable, she'd just had no better ideas at the time, she felt significantly better when it was gone. Still a bit sore — and not just from their duelling lesson, even if it was sort of similar to the ache in her muscles? — but she assumed that was normal.

"What was that you just cast?"

"Just a dispel. I didn't want to make a mess, so I doubled a hand towel and transfigured it into a wad of cotton."

"Ah, clever. You know, a dispel wouldn't have gotten any blood that was already on the cotton — my charm only targets the vagina and the womb, nothing external."

...No, actually, that had totally slipped Hazel's mind. "Oops?" She couldn't feel anything, but that could just be because of the way she was sitting, she'd have to check later.

Mum just smirked, still feeling all warm and squishy, but also kind of laughing at her on the inside a little. "Oh well, it'll come out in the laundry. Are you feeling all right besides that? I remember Lily would get terrible cramps, at the worst she could hardly even get out of bed."

"I'm a little sore, I guess, but it's not that bad. Honestly, I just assumed it was a Seer thing."

"...A Seer thing?" Mum repeated, with an odd cool, unpleasant shuffling.

"I don't know, I get a lot of random pains sometimes, and most of the time it is just the Sight." At the continuing cold something from Mum, Hazel just gave her a helpless shrug. "It's normally not very bad, I can ignore it most of the time."

Hazel couldn't actually read her mind, but she was pretty sure Mum had almost said she wished she didn't have to put up with that sort of thing, before realising that was a pointless thing to say and deciding not to. Nobody could do anything about Hazel being a Seer — she had to put up with stuff like this, that's just how it was. "Well, if it does become intolerable, there are potions you can take for it. I still have Lily's formula filed away. She didn't find the standard one very helpful, so she altered it herself — I never felt so badly as she did, but I swear, that woman worked miracles with potions. I'll brew a couple batches, you can bring them with you to school."

That probably wasn't a bad idea, just as a precaution, but she also rather liked the idea of taking a potion invented by her birth mother. It wouldn't be the first time — Lily had taught Mum several of her formulae over the years, Hazel had taken some now and then — but it was still a nice thought. "Okay, we can do that."

"I am sorry I'm not better prepared, this sort of snuck up on me. There is a book I meant to..." She glanced down to Alex, still hanging on to her breast. "Well. I suppose we can talk through the important things, if you have nothing better to do just now..."

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October 1993

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Things were a little different at Hogwarts this year.

Hazel had been aware of the developments being made in the administration of the school, in part thanks to Aunt Enid being on the Board of Governors. There had been a need for reform for some time — the school hadn't quite kept up with the changes in academia and the rest of the country for about a century now, a number of upkeep matters had been neglected, made worse by the decline in the student population starting in the first half of the century and worsening as it went on — but the coming baby boom from the end of the war with the Death Eaters had been the kick in the pants the Board had needed to take care of it all. Changes were going to be implemented in multiple phases over the next decade or so, ramping up to accommodate a roughly tripled student population and a number of curriculum reforms.

A couple of them being put in place this year were to deal with the beginning of the baby boom — just the children born around July and August, conceived in the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, had the new first-year class ballooning to double the numbers of Hazel's year. The population was going to continue increasing for the next few years before peaking at four to five times, before levelling off at around three times. This was partly due to the baby boom, yes, but apparently they were also adjusting the maths by which they calculated the available slots at the school going forward, as part of a general plan to reform education in the country, there were talks going on about that, it was complicated. Even if they didn't change anything, the population would level off at a higher number than Hazel's year, but not that much higher, they'd decided to use the opportunity to expand the student population permanently.

Which, honestly, did just make sense — Hogwarts was huge, and much of the Castle went completely unused. At the moment there were plenty of people who had to go to other academies instead, or simply didn't go to academy at all, there was no reason they shouldn't open up more slots here. They were also finally instituting public primary education, like the muggles had, and funding craft schools, and the Caoimhe and Frideswith Academies were expanding as well. It would be years before they started seeing results, though, still in the planning stages, but it seemed like their country was finally building up a modern education system, which was long overdue.

The first thing most people noticed, when they arrived at the beginning of the term, was that the Great Hall had been reorganised. Hazel was pretty sure the internal dimensions of the room had changed somewhat, if not larger at least shaped differently, but the tables had also been entirely redone. Instead of way at the other side of the Hall from the doors, the staff table was now along the left wall; where there had been four long tables, one for each house, there were now four rows of seven shorter ones, one row for each house. It was also far more obvious which house the tables belonged to, banners hanging over each row, the wood hidden under colourful tablecloths — Gryffindor's were a vivid red, with golden embroidery along the edge, curling Celtic knot designs interrupted every few inches by a leaping lion or a hippogriff with its wings spread. Even with the double-sized first-year class, there were many more empty spots at the tables, allowing more space for people to move around and find comfortable spots with their friends, but also presumably in anticipation of the even larger first-year class they'd have next year.

There were a few grumblings about the altered layout, but not very many — the dominant opinion among everyone Hazel talked to was that it was an improvement.

Gryffindor Tower was a little bit of a mess at the moment, in the process of being expanded to accommodate the increasing student population. It wasn't as much of a problem in Slytherin and Hufflepuff — they were sort of already in expanded space anyway, and could easily be projected out into the surrounding bedrock if they needed more room — but Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had more limited space, bound by the geometry of their respective towers. Hazel knew from her parents, indirectly through Aunt Enid, that there'd been discussion of constructing a second or even third dormitory for each house elsewhere in the Castle, but in the end they'd decided to directly expand the existing complex instead. Gryffindor's common room had been a bit cramped for the house's size to begin with — when the student population had been larger, a lot of the rooms along the halls of the seventh floor had been used by Gryffindor and Ravenclaw for socialising — so the plan was to add on another section, a blob conjoined to it making a sort of 8-shape, and also add a second floor. They were also expanding the baths, and there'd be additional dormitory towers, with two shared bedrooms for each sex of each year, each with somewhat more personal space (though still not that much). The plan was to remodel the old towers to match the new design, once the new ones were ready all the students would be temporarily moved over there while they did the necessary work.

Of course, even with magic, this sort of construction took time, so none of that was ready yet. When they arrived the first evening, there was a heavy canvas sheet hung up to one side of the common room — not directly along the curve of the wall, but in a straight line, actually slicing off a little bit of the space. The other half of the 8-shape would be over there, as well as the stairs between the two floors of the expanded common room. They didn't see any of the construction ongoing, the sheet pinned into place and perfectly opaque, signs up warning the students to keep away. Hazel assumed the supplies and the workers were getting in through some other entrance, because she never saw anyone or anything coming through.

There were also to be some changes in the staffing. A class of twenty students, like in Hazel's year, was already pushing it in certain subjects — particularly in Potions, the reason Professor Snape normally had them work in pairs in the first place was because twenty cauldrons was too many for him to keep an eye on at once — but forty would be far too many. (Again, particularly in Potions — Aunt Enid said Professor Snape had insisted to the Board that students would literally die if they didn't act quickly to manage class sizes.) Starting this year, there was a junior professor for all of the core subjects, classes split up between the two. This meant that, even with the doubled first-year class, these professors had fewer classes to teach, but this was actually a very a good thing: fourteen classes, assuming two for each year, had already been far too much for one person to manage. They'd had basically no free time, or attention to spare for students outside of class...or for managing the houses, for Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Snape, and Sprout.

There were going to be changes there, too. One change they were already starting this year was hiring adults to live in the dorm with the students and be on hand to deal with issues that came up — they had two for each house, one woman and one man, though there would be more as the student population grew. The idea was for them to back up the heads of house, but also be a closer, more casual presence than the formal authority of the professors, and to deal with more personal issues, like children getting homesick and the like. Hazel hadn't had much to do with theirs — they were starting off focussed on the younger students, mostly leaving the older students alone — but she thought it was a great idea. Gryffindor was sort of a mess at times, she was aware there could be issues with bullying in the dorms, and some of the parties got out of hand...

It turned out there was a rule on the books that professors weren't supposed to hold multiple full-time positions at the school — like, for example, being a professor and a head of house...or a head of house and Deputy Headmaster, for that matter. (The Headmaster and Deputy Headmaster were supposed to be neutral parties, a Deputy Headmaster also being head of Gryffindor was a conflict of interest.) The Board had "politely suggested" that Dumbledore begin to enforce this rule — read: threatened to fire him if he didn't — so that was part of the planned changes going into next year. The rumour was that most the heads of house were going to reduce the classes they were teaching to the point they technically weren't considered full-time instructors, so they could hold on to their positions as heads of house — they'd still be the most senior professors, continuing to manage the junior professors, but they wouldn't teach as much. Hazel had also heard that Professor McGonagall had chosen to give up the Deputy Headmaster position so she could stay on as head of Gryffindor, Dumbledore and the Board were working on finding a new Deputy Headmaster, and looking for another round of junior professors to bring on in the next year or two, it was a whole complicated process.

Classes didn't change that much for Hazel, though — for the most part, her classes were still taught by the familiar professors...at least in part. It seemed like most of the professors were taking their subjects on rotation, she thought kind of teaching the new people what they were doing here? So, sometimes they would have both professors in a class, the senior teaching and the junior just observing, sometimes the junior took over completely, but then sometimes they had the old professor like usual. It depend on the day, and which class they were in, different professors managing the situation in their own ways. The exceptions were Potions — the junior professor, a young Sicilian witch named Curinna Vitale, attended every single practical lesson alongside Professor Snape, to help keep an eye on the brewing students — and Defence, which of course had a new professor every year.

Though they were also doing the senior/junior thing in Defence, if not for the same reasons. By some bizarre miracle, Professor Dumbledore had managed to convince senior Auror Alastor Moody to take the Professor of Defence position, which was just weird. He didn't actually do much of any teaching, though: it was thought that the position was cursed, and Sir Moody's primary job was to find it and break it. It was a little mad to try to track down the source of a curse by actively triggering it into acting against you, but Sir Moody was a little mad — Hazel had only met him briefly a couple times, but she'd heard stories. It honestly wasn't even a little surprising that he might do something like this.

The vast majority of the actual teaching was done by the junior professor, Remus Lupin, who happened to be a werewolf — that was supposed to be a secret, but Hazel had figured it out almost immediately. She'd had a very odd, vivid dream on the full moon of the 31st of August, confusedly scribbling details in her notebook, she thought she'd been seeing from the perspective of an animal of some kind? maybe a cat or a dog or a polecat or something? And then when she first laid eyes on Professor Lupin afterward, it instantly clicked. She couldn't even quite explain how she knew, she just did.

Not that she was concerned about that, the popular fear around werewolves was somewhat exaggerated. The curse itself was terrifying, of course, but for the rest of the month werewolves were basically just normal people. Mum was an old friend of Professor Lupin's from school, along with Hazel's birth parents, she'd told Hazel and Neville about it ahead of the start of term...possibly because she'd realised they might find out he was a werewolf at some point, and had wanted to reassure them that she trusted him, without giving the secret away. Hazel had quietly informed Neville, just in case he accidentally outed Lupin when he eventually figured it out for himself.

Of course, Hermione also figured it out, after Professor Lupin missed classes around the full moon of 31st August and 30th September, because that girl was just uncanny sometimes. She hadn't even known werewolves were real until just last year...

The biggest difference for her classes personally was that she had electives now. So far, those had been...mixed. Runes was interesting, Arithmancy was okay, but Divination was an awful disappointment. She was seriously considering dropping the class at the end of the year — just taking the two electives would be fine, especially as they got closer to exams.

Besides the changes at the school, things had been changing a bit in her social circle too. First year had been a bit difficult at times, but she and Lavender had mostly managed to keep the peace since then — though this year they'd had a very frustrating argument about Trelawney. Hazel didn't doubt that Trelawney probably was a Seer, but that didn't change the fact that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing teaching the class, it was bloody useless. She'd thought they'd be learning, she didn't know, scrying or something! Things that non-Seers could actually do, not, just...whatever they were supposed to be accomplishing in class, she didn't understand. The Heir of Slytherin stuff had caused some issues between her Gryffindor and Slytherin friends, but as the situation died down and everything went back to normal it'd eventually smoothed over. Besides, it wasn't really a secret that Tracey and Dorea were half-bloods, and neither Olivie nor Daphne were from Death Eater families, they were the last people you'd expect to have anything to do with that sort of nonsense, honestly.

The issues they were having this year so far were mostly on sex lines, which was honestly just confusing. She guessed some of the girls had started getting a little silly about boys last year, but she hadn't really noticed that much? It hadn't come up very often, and there'd been a lot going on with Chamber of Secrets nonsense and all, and the muggleborns being understandably nervous about that, Hazel had been distracted. She guessed she'd noticed people being silly about Lockhart, but that was mostly older students, not so common in their year — at least partly because Hazel and Neville and Susan knew from their parents that there were suspicions about just how legitimate his stories were, so they were able to nip it in the bud.

There was a lot more of it this year. It wasn't everyone in her friend group, but it was enough that it could get really distracting — they'd actually decided to split up when doing schoolwork, so they could actually get anything done. Well, Hazel said they'd decided, but there hadn't been a decision, really. It'd just sort of happened? Hermione had been getting obviously frustrated with people acting all weird and giggly, and one day she'd just...gotten up and left. Lily and Susan had ended up joining her — Lily had always been shy, and there was something going on between Susan and Hannah around Hannah's very obvious crush on Neville, it wasn't Hazel's business so she hadn't asked — and from there it'd built up until one day they just had two separate groups, almost without Hazel realising it was happening.

Which was rather frustrating, honestly — their group splitting up meant she practically needed to go out of her way if she wanted to spend time with her brother outside of class. Also, Neville was their expert on Herbology, and Airnéas was really good with Transfiguration, so it just made getting their work done that little bit more difficult. And even if the boys weren't around, there still ended up being gossip — more about fourth- or fifth-year boys than theirs, granted — which was another unwanted distraction, and, just...

She didn't really get it? Honestly, she was about as bemused by this change in behaviour as the boys seemed to be, it was weird. It was only more confusing when the focus of all this silliness turned to focus on her one day.

They were sitting in a corner of the library one day in the latter half of October, Hazel with some of her girl friends. The Slytherins weren't here today — they had some internal house matter, not her business — and Hannah was off somewhere, she wasn't sure doing what. (Susan and Hannah used to be inseparable, but their friendship had been oddly strained lately, she didn't know why.) Hazel had finished her work for the day early, occasionally helping with a question someone had but for the most part sitting back quietly scribbling at a drawing.

She'd been rather tired lately. Her Seer dreams had been getting more intense, sometimes interrupting her sleep. The feelings she picked up from other people were also becoming stronger, she could feel people from further away, and that could be overwhelming, could wear her out pretty quickly if she wasn't careful. She'd been warned her Sight would get more sensitive as she grew up, so that wasn't a surprise, but her mind magic hadn't even properly triggered yet — at this point, she really wasn't looking forward to when that eventually happened, she suspected it would only make it worse. She could maybe be reading, or working a little ahead, but her thoughts were feeling a bit fuzzy at the moment, unfocussed, she just didn't have the attention for it. So, filling the time with drawing it was.

Her artistic skills weren't excellent, it wasn't something she'd focussed on that much, but she thought Professor Babbling was recognisable, at least. A little bit of the work she'd done hanging around Lily and Dean, borrowing some of Dean's books, that had all probably helped — drawing people with the correct proportions to not look weird was actually rather difficult. Earlier today, they'd had a mini-exam in Runes class, and Hazel had finished early — Runes had been dead easy for her so far — and she'd found herself idly drawing Professor Babbling. Waiting for the period set aside for the test to finish, she'd been sitting behind her desk at the front of the classroom, her feet crossed at the ankle up on a corner, an academic journal of some kind resting against her legs, her reading glasses low on her nose.

Professor Babbling presented herself in a somewhat peculiar manner, compared to the other professors. Hazel was aware that the Babblings were one of the Mistwalker Clans, and they could be peculiar in general, so that wasn't really a surprise. Perhaps, she might have expected Professor Babbling to look more like a Mistwalker, colourful beads in her hair and piercings in her face, but instead she looked...well, muggleish. She guessed that did make some sense, since Professor Babbling had spent a fair fraction of her life in the muggle world — she had multiple advanced degrees from muggle universities, in fact — but denims and loud eye-catching tee shirts did look very odd next to the more traditional robes most of the professors wore. But as mundane as she looked, her classes were always fascinating — the quality of the instruction at Hogwarts was somewhat mixed, but Professor Babbling was one of the ones who clearly loved her subject, like Professor Flitwick and Professor Vector, you could feel it in her voice during lectures. It was compelling, impossible to not pay attention.

Hazel thought so, anyway — some people found Runes class boring, which she personally couldn't imagine. At least she wasn't the only one hanging off of Professor Babbling's every word, Hermione and Susan loved her too, so.

She was brought out of her work by a nudge at her arm from Hermione next at her. Twitching with surprise, she nearly smudged her drawing, glanced around. "I'm sorry, did somebody—" She cut herself off in mid-sentence, blinking — Oz Bagshot was standing over the table nearby, a crooked, amused smile on his face. "Oh, Oz, hello."

His head tilting in a little nod, he said, "Hazel. I was hoping I could talk to you for a second, if that's okay," a jerk of his thumb indicating the stacks nearby.

Bafflingly, Lavender and Parvati, sitting together across the table, giggled. Hazel frowned at them for a moment, before tearing her eyes away to look back up at Oz. "All right." Folding her notebook closed and setting it down on the table, she pulled her gloves back on — the other girls watching either her or Oz, a mix of slanted fluttery feelings she couldn't pick apart, too much from multiple people all at once — before pushing herself up to her feet and followed him off through the shelves.

Once they were away from the table with all the other girls, Hazel could properly pick up the warm, prickling, nervous anticipation from Oz. That was odd.

Hazel waited until they were definitely out of earshot, before muttering, "So, what did you want to talk to me about? something to do with the duelling club?" She couldn't imagine what else it could be — the duelling club was basically the only thing they had in common. The Bagshots were well-known enough, thanks to the famous historian of the name, but they didn't exactly frequent noble circles. Oz was a Hufflepuff in the year above her, she hadn't met him until she'd joined the duelling club last year. He was quite talented, in fact, he was in the junior duelling team now and everything. The duelling team members ran the club, so they'd interacted a fair bit during meetings, but she honestly didn't know if they'd ever spoken outside of the club. Maybe saying hello in passing a few times?

Coming to a stop in the middle of an empty aisle, bookshelves tall to either side, Oz turned to face her — still smiling, his hands crossed behind his back. "No, actually. Did you have questions about something?"

"No, I was just wondering. I don't really think it's a secret I'm aiming for the team this year."

A prickle of amusement, his smile slanted further. "You don't have a bad shot, I don't think. We've got a couple people dropping to focus on their OWLs, place well in the tournament before break and you might make it in."

"Right." That was the plan, she'd been practising. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"I was wondering if you had any plans for the Hogsmeade weekend at the end of the month." She noticed that Oz had avoided directly referencing Hallowe'en, probably trying to be tactful.

"Not really, no. I guess we might go to—" She cut herself off as something suddenly clicked. "Are... Are you asking me on a date?"

There was more amusement, warm and fuzzy, but almost lost under the crackle of anticipation, abruptly building to a fever pitch. "That's the idea, yeah."

"...Oh."

For a long, tense moment, Hazel just stared at him.

"Um, okay."

The anticipation breaking with a lurch, hard enough Hazel rocked on her heels a little, Oz grinned at her. "Okay?"

"Yeah, I mean, er..." All of a sudden, she felt intensely awkward. She didn't know why, just, this was not what she'd expected to happen, and she didn't know what to do with herself, what she was supposed to be saying right now. And she was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how she was holding herself, she crossed her arms around her waist so she didn't have to think about— She cleared her throat. "Um. Sorry, I'm just a little surprised, I didn't— Ah, what were you planning on? To do, I mean."

For some reason, Oz felt amused with her, but at least he was nice enough not to openly laugh. "Nothing too much. I was thinking we'd just hang out for a while, get lunch or something."

"...Right." Casual then, she could do that. She thought. "Okay."

His expression slanting more toward a smirk, he said, "You know, if you don't want to go, turning me down won't affect your chances of getting on the team."

"No, it isn't that, I'm not—" She cut herself off, practically biting her tongue — it wasn't as though he seriously thought that's what was going on, he was just joking. Kind of teasing her a little, for how awkward she was being about this...which was only making her feel more awkward, her stomach lurching, and also she was pretty sure her face was changing colours, uuggghhh... "I'm just surprised, is all. I didn't think you— Well." Not really Oz in particular, she hadn't thought anyone would ask her out. At least not so soon, anyway. She really had no idea what to do, she hadn't prepared herself for this...

"Nice to know I can surprise a Seer when I feel like it, I guess. Honestly I half-expected you to get out ahead of me or something." It was hard to say — she couldn't read minds, yet — but she thought he'd been worried that she would figure out what was happening and turn him down before he could even get the question out.

Her face feeling very warm — she really wouldn't have expected he'd have put that much thought into it — she muttered, "It doesn't work like that."

"I can see that," he said, an almost bouncy quality to his voice, mind still ringing with amusement but soft and warm and— She didn't know. "So. Meet you at the main doors on Saturday, around ten, ten thirty?"

She opened her mouth to say she had class then, before remembering it would be a Hogsmeade weekend — classes were cancelled on those Saturdays. "Um, sure. See you then?"

"See you then." There was a brief silence — Oz watching her, while Hazel just felt unbelievably uncomfortable — until he said, "I should let you get back to your friends then, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess." Oh no, Lavender and Parvati were going to be so annoying about this...

"Until next time, Hazel."

"...Goodbye." That somehow felt like the wrong thing to say, but she didn't know what she was doing, this was so awkward. After giving her a last bright smile, he turned and started walking away — he was only a few steps away when Hazel suddenly thought of something. "Oh! Hang on a second, I should, um— Let me just..." She pulled off one of her gloves — which was more difficult than it really had to be, fumbling loosening the fingers — walked over to where Oz had paused, halfway turned back to her with a questioningly raised eyebrow, and reached for his hand.

There were echoes on him, making her stomach drop, like missing a stair, her skin warm and prickly, but nothing really bad.

Right, okay. Good.

She let go of his hand after only a second or two, moved to pull her glove back on. While she was doing that, Oz just blinked at her, twisting confusion breaking through the ticklish tingly something going on in there. "What was that about?"

"Nothing, I was just making sure I can touch you." Suddenly realising what she was saying, she cringed back a little, her face feeling very warm. "Ah, it's, Seer thing, some people...feel bad. Just, thought I'd check, first."

The confusion melted away, and Oz started feeling amused again. "So, I feel good, then?"

And Hazel had thought her face felt warm a second ago. "It isn't like—" She cut herself off with a groan. "Can you just...go, before I embarrass myself any more. Please."

Oz let out a low chuckle, something tingling over her skin, a light fluttery feeling in her stomach. "If you want. See you next Saturday, Hazel."

"Yes."

That didn't seem like...enough, she didn't know, but thankfully Oz left without another word, before she could go on to make a complete idiot of herself. Hazel just stood there for a moment, staring off the direction he'd gone, fidgeting. She had no idea how to feel about this, she had not seen it coming.

...This was good, right? She thought so. Oz was...nice? She didn't know him that well — the only real social contact they'd had was in duelling club — but he was always, you know. And, she knew he was one of the more popular boys in fourth year, he came up in some of the gossip, but that was mostly, you know, just him being generally friendly (very Hufflepuff-ish), and kind of cool, what with the duelling and all, and good-looking, none of the gossip was normally very deep, so.

(At least, people said Oz was good-looking, but she didn't entirely get it. She meant, he looked nice, of course, she just didn't understand why this was worth discussing.)

After a little bit, Hazel realised she was just standing in the middle of the stacks not doing anything, lurched back into motion. What was one supposed to wear to a casual lunch date anyway? Dating was very much a modern, muggle-ish thing, it hadn't been covered in her etiquette lessons, obviously. She guessed she could write Mum about it...or ask Parvati or Lavender, if she were really desperate, they might have ideas. Since it was, you know, casual lunch date, she probably shouldn't be putting too much effort into it, but beyond that she really had no idea...

Oh no, she just realised, the next Hogsmeade weekend was next weekend, not the coming one — there would be a duelling club meeting between now and then, that was going to be so awkward...

Hazel slipped out of the shelves, and most of the girls immediately turned toward her, Lavender practically squirming in her seat as she approached. Once she was close enough they wouldn't have to raise their voices to hear each other — they were in the library, if nothing else Hermione would glare at her — Lavender squeaked, "So, what did Oz want to talk to you about?"

...That emphasis Lavender put on his name was weird. Maybe she'd noticed Hazel and Oz had already used each other's first names, all casual? But, that was just because of duelling club, that really was the only thing they knew each other from. "Um." She hesitated for a second — Lavender was going to be insufferable about this, she just knew it. But it wasn't like she'd be able to hide it from her roommates, at least not for very long, so she might as well just get it over with. "He asked me out to lunch? next Hogsmeade weekend?

Hazel flinched, the sudden burst of feelings from the group of girls was far too messy and loud to make sense of.

---

November 1993

---

Hazel woke up in pain.

When she came to, she was already curled up in bed on her side, hugging herself, gritting her teeth against the sharp tense hard hot clenching tight in her stomach. It wasn't a completely unfamiliar sort of pain, and even waking up with it wasn't that weird — lately she'd been waking up sometimes with muscle cramps, especially in her legs. A little worried something was wrong, she'd written Mum about it, and apparently that was perfectly normal, just something that happened to some people when they were growing. (Muscles catching up with the extra length added onto bones, sort of.) They could be pretty miserable, so intense she could only lay there trying to keep breathing normal and wait for it to die down enough that she could actually try to move, start stretching the affected area to work the knot out. Sometimes the knot was actually something she could feel, with her fingers, a hard spot in her leg, it would take hours to fully work it out, stiff and aching the rest of the day.

This felt a lot like that, a similar tense sharp clenching pain, but it was somehow even worse. Hazel had to clamp down on her throat to stop herself from crying out, her teeth grinding, tears squirming through her shut eyelids.

It wasn't until she woke up enough to pinpoint the source of the pain, rather lower down than her stomach, that she realised what was going on.

It was difficult to move, not because she needed to actually use any of the muscles making a nuisance of themselves, but changing the pressure on that part of her body made the pain even worse, and apparently she'd managed to pull some things a little curling up like that, twinges here and there seemingly at random. But she forced herself to move anyway, loosening out of her ball, peeling the blankets back — she was sweating pretty badly, it turned out, the air of the dorm icy on her skin — she squirmed to the edge of the bed, slid down onto the carpet, her arms shaking, making the things on her side table rattle a little. She opened the bottom drawer built into the side table, the motion making the glass bottles tinkle.

The middle of the night, it was too dark to see clearly — Hazel had to try three times before she managed to cast a little light, glinting off of glass, revealing the supply of potions she had sitting ready. She reached for a row toward the back, untouched, a rich purplish-pink with a faint silvery sheen where the light played off it. Her fingers were a little unsteady, it took some seconds to get the stopper off, she threw back the potion immediately, warm and smooth and sweet on her tongue.

Hazel waited for a few seconds, and then let out a shaky sigh as warm, soothing relief washed through her, starting at her stomach and swiftly surging out. She could tell there was still something wrong, a dull tight feeling between her hips, but the pain was more or less completely gone.

As awful as the pain had been, she wasn't really surprised. Her birth mother had been brilliant with potions, after all.

Her flushed forehead pressed against the cool wood of her bedside table, Hazel sat there kneeling on the carpet for a moment, breathing, waiting for the shivering in her fingers to go down. That had to have been period cramps — what else could it have been? She'd suspected it was coming again, she had been feeling a little off for the last few days...though that was far worse than the first time. It hadn't happened again since the first time which, again, she'd written Mum about but, again, had been told that was perfectly normal. Sometimes it could take a little while for people to fall into a regular monthly schedule. Though, apparently some people never did, but it was especially common for it to seem a bit random for the first couple years. Mum had said it was really only worth worrying about if it didn't settle by the time she was grown.

She remembered Mum saying that Lily had had a really bad time with cramps and the like, had bad days when she hardly left bed, couldn't even stomach eating much of anything. That was why she'd invented the potion Hazel had just taken in the first place, the standard one hadn't helped her much. While they had eased somewhat with time, it'd never entirely gone away — at least not until she'd been pregnant with Hazel, and she obviously hadn't been having periods anymore. Mum had been mildly concerned Hazel might have inherited whatever problem had been causing that.

If this morning counted for anything, she was getting the feeling she definitely had. Her first one hadn't been nearly so bad — she'd been a little sore, sure, but it'd been mild enough she hadn't really thought about it. This one, though, Mother Mercy, that had been awful...

She'd like to think this one had just been a fluke, and the rest would be more like the first time, but she had a nasty suspicion it was actually the other way around.

Once she was feeling more steady, Hazel got up, grabbed a change of clothes, and headed for the showers. She was a little surprised to find that she wasn't actually bleeding, much, at least not enough for the mess to be super obvious. Maybe it was just early in the process? Whatever, she cast the charm Mum had taught her anyway, a couple times to make sure it took properly. By the time she got back to the dorm room, it was well after five in the morning — despite how early it was, a couple hours until her alarm would go off, she was feeling far too awake to get back to sleep.

There would be no point in trying, and besides, she should write down what she remembered from her dreams before the details faded entirely. (It might have been better to do that immediately, but she'd been feeling kind of gross from the sweat, and worried she'd have blood all over her pants, cleaning up had been the more pressing matter.) Hazel sat in her bed with her journal, frowning out at nothing, the point of her pen idly tapping against the page. It had been...

Well, odd, it had been odd. She remembered she'd been chasing...something. A snake, except it wasn't a snake — she understood somehow that its snake-ness was supposed to be metaphorical — it would lead her somewhere, and she'd get distracted by whatever was going on there, and then she'd spot it and start chasing it again. There'd been glimpses of various places in Hogwarts, the train, an unfamiliar bedroom — Ginny's, maybe? she'd been there — and a graveyard somewhere, and a...wine cellar? Something like that, anyway, it was hard to say. There'd been other places, and people, too many and too fuzzy for her to remember. The snake (human-shaped, but still the same thing) on his knees cringing under drawn wands, running away from Hazel tossing hexes, a hand fisted in her dress standing too close, Hazel carrying him through the Gryffindor common room surrounded by silent onlookers, the snake coiling through the crowd at a party in the common room unnoticed, chased through the Forest by an unfamiliar man with wild black hair, Hazel watching as he was escorted by deadly-looking battlemages with a knife held to his throat, cutting into Hazel's arm — she was tied to a monument in a graveyard, part of some grisly ritual — walking through Hogsmeade with Hermione when the snake suddenly appeared and buried the same knife in her gut...

That last one wasn't a Seer thing — she was pretty sure that'd just been her brain mixing up the dream and her cramps. It felt different from the rest, not quite real.

Though, a lot of them hadn't felt quite real, honestly. Some of the flashes that'd included Hazel she'd seen from the outside, and it hadn't felt like her? It was her, looked like her, but it felt like she'd been watching someone else, from a distance. She suspected those had been flashes from other worlds.

One of the peculiar things about the Sight was that the future wasn't fixed — of course it wasn't, it hadn't happened yet. Generally speaking, the further one looked into the future (or even the past), the less reliable visions became. There were many different ways events could go, but a Seer might see any of them, whether they would actually happen or not. Even though only one possibility truly would come to pass — as far as they knew, anyway, Hermione had introduced Hazel to the concept of parallel universes — Seers normally spoke of them as though they were getting glimpses of other worlds. Unfortunately, there was no way to be absolutely certain anything one Saw was going to be the real world, it could be completely useless. Experienced Seers could get a feel for how likely an event was to happen, but it really was just a feeling, there was no firm way to know for certain.

This wasn't the first time Hazel had Seen things where she was looking at herself from the outside. She suspected that these were other worlds, ones that were so far way, so unlikely, that the person in them didn't even feel quite like herself — similar, yes, but far enough removed from Hazel as she was that she didn't see through her eyes. The flashes in this dream had been a mix, some from her perspective and some from the outside, really very confusing...

...but the snake had been in all of them.

She didn't know what it all meant, though. And there had been too much, dozens of different flashes, but the details were missing, the scenes blurring together, she couldn't make sense of them.

As little sense as it made, she was left with the feeling that she was missing something. Something important. But, for the life of her, she had no idea what it was.

The snake was a metaphor, but also a person, he was dangerous, but also mostly unnoticed.

Was he at Hogwarts? Or had that just been her brain filling in missing details to make sense of it? She didn't know...

Sometimes, being a Seer was terribly frustrating.

It didn't seem like she was going to be able to pull any more answers from the ether, so in time she gave up — by the time the rest of the girls started to wake up for the day, she was finishing up a letter to Mum instead. She didn't know how long the pink potions would last, she might need more. Thankfully, while a little tense numb ache was left behind, her birth mother's potion worked well enough that she could change into her uniform and carry her school bag without being bothered too much. Not to mention getting down all the stairs, it really was a very long way down to the Great Hall. Whatever had caused Lily's issues eating on her period sometimes, either it was covered by the potion or Hazel hadn't caught that part of it, because she made it through breakfast without any difficulty.

Oz came by the Gryffindor tables to say good morning, which was normal these days. Their date had been...fine, she guessed? Hazel had been terribly awkward at times, uncertain what she was supposed to do with herself, but, when she wasn't stressing herself out too much, yeah, it'd gone well. She thought? Oz was around more, and...

Were they, like, dating now? She honestly wasn't sure. They did talk rather more than they used to, and he'd sit or stand (or whatever) rather close and... What did dating entail, exactly? There weren't explicit rules for this sort of thing like there were for courtship, so she wasn't sure where the line between dating and friends was, exactly. Should she ask? She kind of thought she should maybe ask, but also she was worried that might be the wrong thing to say? like it should be obvious and she'd, she didn't know, accidentally insult him somehow, or...

Honestly, part of it was just that she was kind of nervous to. She'd gotten better about not being pointlessly awkward and being, just, embarrassing — she didn't know how to go about, you know asking, so she was worried she'd go straight back to square one. She liked being able to talk to him like normal without making an idiot of himself, and...well, the attention was honestly nice, even if it made her feel kind of bad admitting that to herself. (Especially since Lavender and Megan were both seethingly jealous, she tried not to rub it in too much.) She didn't know, it was easier to just not rock the boat. They had agreed at the end of their lunch date to do something again sometime, so, it could wait until then.

The other Gryffindor girls had interrogated her about it that evening, Lavender (jealously) gleeful, asking what kissing him was like...but she didn't know, actually, he hadn't kissed her yet. If he had, it'd be a lot easier to guess if this was dating or not.

(She had Seen herself, er, sleeping with him, but that had been an outside vision, so she was pretty sure that hadn't been real.)

It turned out to be a long, sort of miserable day, honestly. She started off mostly fine, she got through breakfast without any issues, but by the time they got into afternoon classes she was starting to drag. The pain had come back, so she'd taken a second dose of Lily's potion, but she didn't think that was all of it — she was a few hours short on sleep, and intense Seer nights didn't tend to be very restful anyway. People definitely started to notice she was feeling off by the time they were going up to Runes class. She was fine, really, future dreams just woke her up early, was all.

Honestly, she just didn't have the energy for History class — they actually had a real, living professor now, but she thought she'd have to skip it anyway...

She was feeling significantly better after a nap, enough that she showed up to their habitual study group in the library. After a couple years catching everyone up to more or less the same level, their classes had really started to pick up this year. Potions had been rather minimal on theory, but they were getting deeper into it now, some of their written assignments quite difficult to figure out how they were even meant to approach them, the written work in Transfiguration and Charms both picking up but the spell work also becoming far more complex, and at a faster pace, focussed on a new spell practically every week where they might have taken a whole month before. Since Hazel and Neville's private lessons with Mum couldn't continue while they were at Hogwarts, it'd gotten to the point that they were actually learning new things in class now. They were still more experienced than a lot of their classmates when it came to casting magic, so the practical lessons were still generally easy — more in Charms than Transfiguration, to be fair, they both struggled with the latter more — but the theory was definitely new.

But by this point, Hazel was long accustomed to the routine at Hogwarts, and they had worked up to it, so it wasn't really a problem. It just meant she actually had to work to keep up in her classes now — study group time was much less Hazel helping her friends who hadn't gotten lessons before school, and more like being part of the group trying to figure out things together. Which she thought she liked better, honestly, though it was hard to put into words exactly why.

Except Defence, of course — Professor Lupin was a much better instructor than the traitor or the fraud, but she was still far ahead in that one, very easy for her. Demons were an interesting subject to talk about, at least.

They were in a quiet patch, all working on their Transfiguration essay — they'd talked through the ideas already, just had to do the writing part — when the silence was broken by a disgusted scoff from Hermione. "I can't believe he brought that thing into the library."

"What?" Hazel looked up, followed Hermione's line of sight — the boys were at another table a fair distance away, near the opposite side of the study area of the library. Some of the girls were still being very silly about boys, so on most days their group was still split by sex, Neville and the Gryffindor boys and Áirneas and Michael and Tony together over there. She hadn't stopped finding it frustrating, at this point she was starting to lose hope everyone would get over it and go back to normal soon. "Who brought what?"

"She means Scabbers," Fay muttered.

...Ah, right, that. "He still giving you a hard time about your cat?"

Hermione scowled, but didn't answer the question, glaring over toward Ron sitting with the boys. Which was just as good as a yes, really.

Before this year, Hazel had been vaguely aware that Ron had a pet rat, though it hadn't really come up much. He used to bring it with him to classes, but then Professor Snape had torn into him hard over contaminating his workspace, had threatened to poison Scabbers if he saw it ever again — since then, Scabbers had mostly remained in the boys' room, occasionally carried with Ron down to the common room or the Great Hall. Hazel hadn't been reminded of Scabbers's existence after the Potions incident until early this year: Hermione's parents had gotten her a pet cat as a reward for testing at the top of their class, and Crookshanks had immediately fixated on hunting Scabbers. There'd been a lot of drama over it these last couple months, it was honestly rather absurd.

Partially because, just, cats hunted rats? that's what they did? Crookshanks wasn't even the first student's cat to try to catch Scabbers. Sure, Crookshanks was oddly persistent about it — most cats only went for Scabbers occasionally as a target of opportunity, while Crookshanks almost seemed to be stalking Scabbers in particular by design — but he had more kneazle blood than the other cats in the dorm, and that could lead to odd behaviour sometimes. Ron was taking it weirdly personally, which was odd...and also taking it out on Hermione, which seemed inappropriate? Cats hunted rodents, Hermione wasn't responsible for the mechanics of the natural food chain and millions of years of evolution.

Hermione and Ron had never gotten on well in the first place, but lately they could hardly stand to be in the same room with each other. Which was an unexpected benefit of the girls and boys often sitting separately these days, Hazel guessed.

There was a little discussion then, about Ron and his rat — pretty uncharitable for the most part, honestly. Sure, he was being very aggressive about it, but Hazel understood why he would be so defensive of his pet...even if it was just an ugly old rat. She was only half listening, though, staring over at the boys' table. It'd been a while since she'd actually seen Scabbers, since it was mostly kept locked up in the boys' room, or hidden away in Ron's pocket where it'd be safe. Since there weren't any threats around, Ron had taken it out and set it on the table, Hazel had an angle around the boys where she could see it from here. It was rather less plump than she recalled — presumably stress, from the near-misses with Crookshanks — sitting there next to where Ron was writing, still and curled up in sleep...

She was getting a funny feeling. Her eyes drawn to Scabbers, like it had some weight that pulled her in, the voices at the table around her reduced to meaningless burbling, the rest of the library seeming to fall away...

There was something about that rat. She didn't know what it was, but she felt...something. It felt important, somehow, but she didn't know why.

"Hazel?"

She twitched, wrenched her eyes away from Scabbers to blink over at Susan. "Huh?"

"You okay? You looked out of it for a second, there." There was a low churning of concern — Susan suspected she might have been having a Seer moment.

"No, I'm fine, just...distracted. Hard day, that's all."

"As long as we've all stopped writing," Sally-Anne said, "I actually have a question about class mismatch, and how that affects formal resistance..."

Hazel tried to pay attention to the theory discussion going on around her, feeling distracted, her eyes pulled again and again to Scabbers, an echo of soil and grass in her nose and ash on her tongue, the harsh texture of rough rope scratching at her skin.

(Reaching to rub at a twinge of pain in her arm, she felt dimly confused when her fingers didn't come away bloody.)

---

December 1993

---

It was early, the house still heavy and dark and silent in the close winter night — but Hazel wasn't surprised when she came down to the kitchen to find Mum already awake, at the table with a book and a cup of tea.

Despite herself, Hazel felt a knot of worry in her chest loosen at the sight of Mum sitting there, perfectly fine. She'd known it wasn't real, but still.

"Hello, sweetheart," Mum said, her voice hardly above a whisper but still thick with warmth. "Couldn't sleep?"

Hazel shook her head. "Nightmare." She paused for a second, before admitting, "Or technically a vision, I guess. I know it wasn't real, though, one of those things that could have happened but didn't. Still scary."

A sharp twinge in her chest, "Ah, love... Here, how about I make you cup of tea and you tell me about it?"

...She kind of didn't want to, but she knew it would probably make her feel better. Keeping these things to herself didn't make them go away, and Mum could be good about helping, when she wasn't just trying to tease her. Especially given the content of the vision. After a moment of hesitation, she nodded in agreement.

A few minutes later she was sitting at the table inhaling the steam from her own cup of tea — fragrant with mint and honey, clean and soothing on her throat — in the chair right next to Mum's, near enough to feel her warmth, her aura making subtle sparks on the air. Mum let Hazel have a few slow sips of tea, before asking, "So, what did you See that was so bad you couldn't get back to sleep?"

Hazel didn't answer right away, staring down into the rich brownish darkness of her tea, her fingers idly tracing along the rim. "You know, you told us about that time the Lestranges attacked, with Crouch's son."

There was a flicker of some vague, mixed feelings from Mum, shifting in her chair a little. "Yes, I suppose that was a little scary. You Saw that night, at the Manor?"

"...Not exactly." The echo hovering over her, the events flashing behind her eyes again, she took a long, deep breath, trying to concentrate. It wasn't real, they were all fine. Mum apparently realised she was having problems, her arm coming around Hazel's shoulders, warm and solid and here. "Um. It wasn't at the Manor. It was here — the house didn't look the same, before all the remodelling. They got inside, took you by surprise, and... They were hurting you, you and Dad."

"Oh, love..." Mum trailed off, apparently not sure where to go with that, Hazel's stomach churning and her skin prickling. Instead of saying anything, she just shuffled closer, her arm tightening around Hazel, turning to press her cheek against Hazel's head, her breath tickling. Which was probably the best thing she could do, honestly, reminding Hazel that it wasn't real, that she was here, they were fine.

Her fingers still shaking a little, Hazel took another sip of tea, working to keep her throat clear. "It was...really bad. I'm not even sure if you lived."

"It didn't happen like that, Hazel."

"I know that — but it could have. It– It felt so real. And then I woke up, and, and I knew where I was, when I was, and that it wasn't real, but... I couldn't get back to sleep."

"I understand." Her arm squeezing around Hazel, Mum pressed a slow kiss on her head, unease and regret and love churning away. "I do wish there was something I could do to help you with the things you See, sometimes. We try to keep the house clean, and I found that ritual, but there's only so much I can do."

"This does help. Just...knowing that you're here, and okay. I'll be fine, I guess it's not so different from waking up from a nightmare. Mine are just, you know."

Mum let out a little hum, feeling somewhat sceptical. But she didn't argue, just, kept on holding Hazel, sitting here warm and soft and present, alive.

Because it hadn't happened, it wasn't real. Hazel realised that, obviously — if the Lestranges had killed Mum and Dad that night, her whole life would have been different — but the mind could be stubbornly irrational sometimes. Feeling her here, smelling her, clean and soft and always with a hint of soil and growing things from the garden no matter the season, it helped that silly coil of nerves ease. That other world could have happened, but it hadn't — she was here with Mum now, and that was what mattered, that's what was real.

A few minutes passed, Mum holding Hazel while she slowly sipped at her tea, before she spoke again. "I'm only looking in from the outside, but it does seem like your visions are growing stronger."

"We knew that was going to happen," Hazel muttered. Soon after she'd first learned she was a Seer, it'd been explained that she would grow more sensitive as she grew more magically powerful — the two went hand-in-hand, for reasons that were still not fully understood. People developed magically as they developed physically, so, this was pretty much just expected.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean—" Mum sighed, thick and heavy, her breath brushing over Hazel's head. "I do worry about you sleeping enough, as this goes on. We might want to think about grounding potions, to take just before bed, or... I know Seers often take cannabis, though my understanding is that it doesn't suppress the Sight, but helps to make what they See more tolerable."

"...I'll think about it." She was a little reluctant to try, honestly. Her first experiences with grounding potions had not been pleasant, and she didn't know if she wanted to try anything too...mind-altering. She didn't like the thought of not being in full control of herself. But maybe if it were only to help her sleep, that wouldn't matter so much. It was worth thinking about, at least, but she didn't know if she'd ever end up doing anything.

She was a Seer, there was nothing to be done about that. There was a point at which she simply had to accept this was what her life was like.

Mum perked up a bit, but Hazel could feel it was forced — trying to be cheerful, the feeling thin, the darkness of the previous topic still simmering underneath. "But I'm sure everything you See isn't all awful, is it? You hardly ever tell me about the good stuff, that happens too."

"Sure, it does. Probably more often, honestly, but... Well, things are fuzzy, and sometimes I don't want to give things away before they happen." Especially since her feelings weren't right all the time, she didn't want to disappoint people.

"Thoughtful of you, I suppose. Is there anything new that are you willing to tell me? Ooh, how are things going with Oz?" the name said with a teasing curl. "I haven't heard anything from you about him in a few weeks now."

Hazel shrugged. "Nothing much, really, it didn't work out."

"Oh, sweetheart, I'm sorry." Mum said it somewhat uncertainly, a sort of reluctant feeling coming off of her — she'd probably picked up that Hazel didn't sound too broken up about it.

"It's fine. We had our second date a few weeks ago now, and, we agreed to just be friends." That kind of made it sound like they'd come to that agreement during the second date, which wasn't what had happened, that'd been a few days later. She wasn't entirely certain why Oz had decided to call it off? Though Hazel couldn't quite put into words why she had either. The second one had been more, you know, obviously date-like, there'd even been kissing and stuff, but it just...hadn't felt right. She couldn't say why, exactly, it simply hadn't been clicking with her. She'd come to that conclusion pretty soon after the end of the date, honestly, it'd only taken a few days because she'd been reluctant to bring it up with Oz, didn't want to do it wrong and hurt his feelings — he'd kind of saved her by starting that conversation himself, so, that'd gone about as smoothly and easily as she could have expected.

"Well, that's good, then. I got the feeling you two weren't very close before anyway."

"Yeah, honestly I'm happy with the way it ended. I don't regret trying but, you know, it might have been kind of awkward, if I do get on the duelling team." Draco had gotten invited, but she hadn't — if he hadn't beaten her in the last third-years' match at the club's duelling tournament it might have been her instead. It'd been a very close match, too, she'd kind of been beating herself up a little for slipping up. Draco had gotten private lessons from his mother, who'd also been on the team at the same time as Mum and Lily, so. A couple people would be aging out at the end of term, she thought she had a very good shot of making it next time.

"That's the best you can hope for, really, I know my early romances were a bloody mess. You'll figure it out," Mum said, giving her shoulders a little squeeze. "It takes practice, like everything else, and you're still young."

"I know." Hazel hesitated for a moment, before admitting, "I've Seen my daughter."

There was a flash of surprise, her hair almost standing on end from it, Mum stiffening next to her. "No! Really?"

With a little nod, she hummed. "A few times. Or, maybe those are different children, it's hard to say. Visions can be so fuzzy, you know. I haven't Seen her father yet, but I've Seen her. Or their father, if they're multiple people, I don't know."

"Well, I suppose that's not a great surprise, if I understand the Sight correctly." Mum didn't quite spell it out, but she meant that her children would sort of be part of her in a way her husband wouldn't be. They would be entirely contained within her aura for at least ten months, after all — that would have to create some pretty intense echoes.

"Yeah, it makes sense. I can wait, honestly I'd prefer to be surprised, I kind of hope I don't See too much about him."

"I can certainly understand that. I didn't expect to be marrying your father when I was your age — I hardly even knew him back then. Figuring it out is part of the fun." Memories were playing in Mum's head, but Hazel couldn't read minds yet, so she just got the feelings, a tangle of things too mixed up for her to pick anything out. It did make her feel rather warm, though, the presence Mum's arm around her weirdly uncomfortable all of a sudden. "What's she like? My granddaughter."

"I don't know, it's too far away, fuzzy. The feelings come through more clearly than the little details." That was also too tangled up for her to pick apart — very intense, but besides that it was hard to say. "Childbirth kind of sucks."

There was a flutter of surprise from Mum, letting out a shocked laugh, sudden and loud enough that it rang in her ear a little. "Yeah, it does at that. Worth it, though," she said, her mind turning softer and warmer, smooth and clingy, her face turning to press another kiss against Hazel's head.

Mum hadn't given birth to Hazel, of course, but she got the sentiment anyway. "Love you too, Mum."

"Mm."

The conversation lapsed into comfortable silence then, Hazel continuing to slowly sip at her tea, Mum sitting close at her side with an arm hanging around her shoulders, soft and warm and present. After some time, Mum pressed another kiss against the side of her head, got up to her feet and slipped smooth and quiet out the door, turning to go up the stairs — swinging by to check on the baby girls, Hazel assumed. She quick glanced at a clock, and morning was coming, so Mum might also start the process of getting breakfast on the table. Mum couldn't really cook much herself, obviously, but it was pretty common for her to apparate over to the Manor early in the morning to speak with the elves, go over what special perishable stuff they might have available and what ideas they had for meals for the day. Hazel was actually more familiar with the elves of the family than most of her and Neville's cousins and friends, for that reason — the relationship Mum had with the elves, coming by the kitchens to talk with them about whatever, wasn't exactly common in the nobility.

A lot of people didn't seem to like nonhumans, much. While Hazel could admit there was sometimes reason for that — some, like vampires, were a potential danger to other people — the degree to which a lot of the other children took it had always struck her as very strange.

Mum must have gone by the Manor to meet with the elves, because it was a good half hour before she returned, entering the house through the kitchen door from the gardens. In that time, Hazel had finished her tea, gone up to her room to retrieve a book to pass the time, and made herself a second cup of tea, still sitting at the table waiting. She could have simply stayed up in her room, but she might as well get something else out of the way while everyone was still in bed. "Oh, hello lovely," Mum said as she closed the door behind her. "It's going to be another hour and a half, two hours before breakfast."

"I know." Hazel had been woken up terribly early, she'd probably have to try to sneak a nap later. Though she was on holiday, it was fine if she didn't keep a perfectly regular schedule. "There was actually something else I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh? Is something the matter?"

"I don't know, it..." As she hesitated, Mum slipped back into the chair next to Hazel — she didn't go back to snuggling up next to her, instead leaning against an elbow on the table so she could see Hazel's face, her cheek smooshing up against the heel of her palm. Being stared at was making Hazel feel rather self-conscious, especially since the subject was, well. "It's sort of hard to explain."

"One of those Seer things?" Mum prompted her, smile tilting more toward a smirk.

"Yeah. Um, I've just been having a...weird feeling, about something at school. It feels important? but I don't know what it means."

"I see. I don't suppose you can be more specific?"

"...Not really." She could, but honestly Hazel didn't want to. That she was getting preoccupied and suspicious about a rat was kind of embarrassing — she was worried Mum would, well, look at her like she were mad. Which she realised was irrational, of course, but brains were stubborn sometimes.

"Okay." Mum was mostly keeping her face neutral, pleasant, but Hazel could tell she was feeling a bit bemused. "What kind of weird feeling?"

"I don't know, it... I've been feeling suspicious of something at school, that seems perfectly innocent? It's a perfectly normal-seeming thing, nobody else notices anything wrong, but... I don't know, it feels off to me, somehow. I'm pretty sure I've been having visions about it, but I don't know what it means."

As she talked, a more serious cast came over Mum's mind, hard and focussed, frowning at Hazel just a little. "Off like Quirrell?"

"...Sort of, I guess? I mean, it's not exactly the same, I don't think the Dark Lord is hiding at the school again, but..." She was very certain of that, if for no reason because she was pretty sure she was never going to encounter the Dark Lord again — she'd had visions of him, but she was pretty sure those were from other worlds, viewed from the outside. Scabbers was something else.

"Is it dangerous? Do we need to tell your father about it?"

"No, I don't think so. It's not immediately dangerous, anyway, it's not hurting anyone. But, like... I don't know, it feels like it could be. Like it's an enemy, just not one that's doing anything right at this moment. But that doesn't make any sense, it's just...a normal thing. I don't know what to do about it, or even if I should do anything about it."

"Well." Mum watched her for another moment, thoughts silently turning in her head. Before too long, she asked, "Do you trust this feeling?"

"Not really. I mean, I don't know what it means." Her weird visions about the snake-man, and being preoccupied with a bloody rat... "None of it makes sense, and... I don't think I'm imagining it, but it's weird, I don't know what to make of it."

"Sometimes it's not clear what something means, from the beginning. This isn't the sort of doubt only Seers need deal with, Hazel — sometimes an Auror will only have part of the picture, they may not understand what they're looking at, but they still search for the rest of the puzzle anyway. And sometimes you don't find anything at the end. You thought you were seeing pieces of a larger puzzle, when it was truly just...coincidence, your imagination. But you have to look, regardless of that possibility, in case there is a threat there. And it's different with you, you have an advantage we don't: your Sight might not be accurate all the time, but it doesn't have an imagination."

"...That's true." As long as it was an actual bit of divinatory insight, it was going to be legitimate in at least some world, even if that world wasn't the one she was in. It was never completely fictional, just possibly not relevant. So, if Scabbers was somehow also this creepy dangerous snake-man, then that was always going to be the case, whether those visions she saw with the snake-man would actually come to pass or not. Like how the Lestranges could have come to this house instead, attacked Mum and Dad here, they just hadn't in this world — they'd still been a threat either way.

"You may not trust yourself — I understand that can be hard, especially at your age — but I do." Mum reached over with a hand, her fingers gently wrapping around Hazel's wrist. "If you're asking me for advice, I would pass along something Alastor told me, back when I was in Auror training with James and the others. Trust your instincts, whether you can explain it or not — even if you get the wrong answer, I believe in you well enough to know it will be for the right reasons."

For a moment, Hazel just turned that over, staring down at her tea. Mum's thumb was gently rubbing over the back of her hand, the feelings coming from her mind warm and smooth and clingy, her aura large and thick enough to wrap around Hazel, like a warm, soft blanket.

Mum believed in her, anyway, even if Hazel didn't. If she did screw up, at least her parents would be there to back her up — what was the worst that could happen?

Finally, she nodded. "I'll do that. Thanks, Mum."