Foreshadowing the Past

Chapter Two

In dreams begins responsibility.
--William Butler Yeats

The following week passed without much incident. Connor's supposed failed stunt was talked about for a day or two, but was replaced in the gossip circles by the fact that Tamara Johansen from Hufflepuff had been caught kissing Josh Hamilton Slytherin in one of the broom closets on the fourth floor while they were supposed to be on Prefect duty. Life went back to normal.

Rachel had been highly amused by the fact that she had been forced to take a flying lesson with the rest of the first years, when she had spent a good portion of her childhood on various broomsticks.

"It's hard to avoid when your own father makes them for a living," Zack had said with a bit of envy in his voice. Not only did Rachel's dad have his own line of broomsticks, he had also enjoyed almost ten years as a professional Quidditch player after the defeat of Voldemort. Zack himself wasn't a very good flier yet, and was itching to get in some practice so that he could participate in the pick-up games of Quidditch that many of the students played during weekends.

"True," Rachel had said with a sigh. "But they still won't let me try out for the Quidditch team until next year. Jarod isn't happy about it either."

Jarod was her Uncle Fred's son, who was also a first year, but preferred to hang out with the other first years his own age. His older brother Aiden was a third year, and was on the Gryffindor team as a beater.

"Maybe they think you have an unfair advantage," Zack suggested by pointing out the obvious.

"Well they're right, aren't they?" she answered cheekily. "I'll bet Connor's already signed up to try out on Sunday."

"He has," Ivy confirmed. "I don't know how he did it, but he convinced me and Quint to try out as well. There are two Chaser spots open, so the best I can probably hope for is reserve, but it could still be fun."

"Connor will get chosen for sure," Rachel said confidently. "He's really good, but don't tell him I said so. Next year, they should probably just give us Weasleys our own team. There are enough of us here at the school, even if a couple of us are in Ravenclaw. Sarah will be leaving at the end of this year, and she's not on the Ravenclaw team, anyway. Maggie and Patrick will be first years when they come next year, and I'm guessing they'll be in Gryffindor, and that means there will be eight Weasleys - nine if you count Connor. Only Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur's kids are in Ravenclaw."

"There are too many of you to keep straight with out a chart," Zack complained.

Ivy nodded in agreement as she checked over her Defense Against the Dark Arts essay. Professor Lupin had given her extra work because her last essay on Doxies was so poor. She had left that one until the last minute, and had written the entire thing during breakfast on the day it was due. She didn't want to make that mistake again. After crossing out two lines in her second paragraph, she was satisfied with her work and got out a fresh roll of parchment to write her final draft. Quentin was especially good at Defense class, and she would have liked to have him look her essay over for her, but he and Connor had disappeared over an hour ago, and had yet to turn up.

"Does anyone know where Quint and Connor are?" she asked, wondering if it was worth her time to wait for him.

"They said they had some work to do in the library," Zack said. "But I think that they snuck down to the kitchens."

As if her question had conjured them, the missing boys came through the portrait hole, both looking gloomy. They spotted the others at the table by the window and joined them there.

"What's up?" Zack asked, seeing their expressions.

"Got caught," Quentin sighed. "Detention tomorrow night with Lupin. Why he Connor couldn't have predicted that Filch would be staked out there, I don't know. That man's just unnatural; my dad says that he was here way back when he was in school."

"Sorry," Ivy said sympathetically. "But at least it's not with Snape, which is who I had to serve mine with for a week when I accidentally flushed all of those dung bombs down the boys' toilet. I never want to see another rat brain for as long as I live."

"Accidentally?" Rachel raised her eyebrow at that statement. "In the boy's toilet?"

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Ivy said with a wink. "It was worth it to see Arnold Bulstrode covered in..."

"All right!" Rachel said, holding up her hands. "Not a mental image I want in my head."

"Well I'm going up to bed," Connor announced with a yawn. "I haven't been sleeping well the past few nights, and I want to get in an early night, or I'll be falling asleep in my cauldron in the morning."

Everyone at the table bid him goodnight, and Ivy turned her attention to convincing Quentin to look over her essay. Connor climbed the stairs to his dormitory; one of two rooms assigned to the second year boys. He had been a bit disappointed that he hadn't been given the room his father had slept in when he went to Hogwarts, but he had eventually settled into his own room nicely. Quentin was in the drape-surrounded bed across from his, and Zack's bed was next to him. The fourth boy in their room was Andrew Tillman, who was friends with the other second year boys, as they called them. Right now, the room was empty, and so he changed into his pyjamas and pulled the drapes around his bed to block out the light as he lay down. He had been waking up in the middle of the night for the past couple of weeks with strange dreams, almost since his first night back at Hogwarts, in fact. He kept telling himself that it was because he was anxious about Quidditch try-outs coming up in just a couple of days, though he wasn't sure he believed it. He willed himself to relax, and closed his eyes. Before he could even resort to counting sheep, he was asleep.

It was that strange dream again. He was in a long corridor, and there was a room at the end of it that was lit with a blue light. He walked until he came to it, and when he stepped inside, he barely had time to notice that the room was round when the torches that had been the source of the light extinguished themselves. The darkness was absolute, except for the lines of light leaking through the cracks in the many doors that lined the walls of the strange round room. The walls began to spin, making the lines around the doors blur and they went fast enough to make him feel queasy. He fumbled in his robes for his wand, and when he found it, the walls had slowed to a stop. He whispered 'Lumos,' relieved by the light the tip of his wand produced, and studied the many doors around him. How would he find his way back again? Which door should he choose? He had the undeniable feeling that he was running out of time, and needed to act quickly. He turned in a circle to see the rest of the room, and found that Quint, Ivy, Rachel and Zack were all in the strange room with him, looking excited and apprehensive.

"What do we do now?" Zack asked him as the torches sprang to life again and washed them all with blue light.

"I think we should..."

"Wake UP!"

Connor blearily opened his eyes to find Quentin bending over him.

"What's going on?" he asked sleepily, the details of the dream already fading away.

"It's time to wake up," Quint repeated. "You're not going to have time for breakfast if you don't start moving now. Everyone else has gone."

"Breakfast?" Connor asked, bewildered. "I just barely got to sleep!"

Quentin chuckled and said, "It might seem that way, but you were snoring pretty hard all night long. It's past seven. Are you going to get up, of should I just meet you in Potions?"

"I'm getting up," he decided, throwing his covers aside. "Give me two minutes."

He used the washbasin in the corner of the room to splash cool water over his face and head, and quickly dried and pushed a comb through his unmanageable hair. With in minutes, he and Quentin were hurrying down to the Great Hall to grab a quick bite to eat before rushing off to Potions class. They were discussing the upcoming Quidditch trials, and who else from their house would be trying out for the two available starting spots on the Gryffindor team. He didn't even think twice when he grabbed Quentin's arm and pulled him to the opposite side of the hall without breaking stride or missing a beat in what he was saying. Quentin turned around in time to see Peeves hovering in a dark alcove, and an enormous water balloon bursting onto the floor where the two had just been walking. With a shake of his head, he kept up with his friend, glad that a slight disaster had been avoided, and amazed that Connor hadn't even seemed aware of what he had done. The incident with the Ashwinder eggs had been successfully smoothed over, but it was this sort of careless inattention that was eventually going to set people's minds to work on how he managed to avoid minor pitfalls and major troubles all the time. Quentin made a mental note to discuss it with Connor and the others later.

The rest of the day was relatively boring. Potions and Charms were typical; though Zack had been excited to be able to produce the bluebell flames that Flitwick told him could be kept in a jar and used for warmth or faint light. Connor was pleased that he was among the few in Transfiguration class to succeed in turning his beetles into shiny black coat buttons. He decided that Potions and Transfiguration were his best subjects, but he might enjoy the first one more if Snape wasn't so disagreeable. During History of Magic, Connor's quill slipped through slack fingers and fluttered to the floor, shortly before his head hit the desk as he slipped into a sleep brought on by Binns's droning voice. Everyone had broken into quiet laughter when Connor had shouted, "ouch!" when his forehead made contact with his desktop, but Binns never even paused in his lecture, and soon they all settled into their usual stupor until the bell rang.

Later in the common room, they all dumped their books back in their dormitories and headed down to the Great Hall.

"I wonder what's for dinner," Rachel said to no one in particular. "I'm starved!"

"Shepherd's Pie," Connor answered immediately.

"You're doing it again," Quentin observed, seizing his opportunity to broach the subject.

"Doing what?" Connor asked with a furrowed brow.

"You're telling us about stuff you shouldn't know."

"So?" Connor raised a brow at his friend. "It's just the five of us."

"Yes," Quentin agreed. "But you do it without even thinking about it. It's become second nature to you, and if you're not careful, people are going to start to notice there's something different about you, whether you jump over the staff table or not."

"I've noticed that, too," Ivy added. "It's like you don't even know you're doing it."

"He's always been like that," Rachel said in his defense, but remembering her parents admonition just before leaving for Hogwarts not to draw attention to Connor's 'gift'.

"I can't help it," Connor said, wondering how often he actually did act on his premonitions without even realizing it. "It is just second nature."

"You'll just have to try to pay more attention is all," Rachel said. "And we'll help by pointing it out when you do stuff without really thinking about it."

They had dinner, and Connor was quiet as he ate, and let the conversations around the Great Hall flow over him. If he had been acting strangely enough to draw his friends' attention without realizing it, he would have to figure out a way to reign in his talents. And if his friends got the creeps over mundane predictions like what they were having for dinner, what would they say if he told them that he thought his recent dreams were trying to tell him something? He'd had the same dream, or variations of it, every night for the past couple of weeks now, and was beginning to have trouble continuing to dismiss it as Quidditch try-out jitters.

He had just finished eating a fruit tart, when Quentin nudged him and said, "We're due at detention in ten minutes; we should get going."

They said good-bye to the others, and walked out. Vanessa smirked at them as they passed, and Quentin pulled a face at her. Sometimes he wondered how it was that they were both from the same family.

"You know," Connor complained as the climbed a flight of stairs. "It just doesn't seem fair that Uncle... I mean Professor Lupin should give us detention for something as dumb as trying to nick food from the kitchens, when he and my grandfather used to roam all over the school under an invisibility cloak in their day."

"They did?" Quentin asked curiously. His own father was an only child, and his Grandfather, by all accounts had been a cold and hard man who had been killed by Lord Voldemort more than ten years before Quentin had even been born. His own father had spent a year in Azkaban during the war, before being released and working against Voldemort after that. He knew, from the stories that adults tell and don't think kids listen to, that his father and Connor's father had intensely disliked each other from the moment they had laid eyes on each other. They shared an uneasy acquaintanceship all of these years later, but would probably never be friends by any stretch of the imagination.

Connor nodded, and added, "So did my father and Rachel's parents for that matter."

"Is Professor Lupin really your uncle?" Quentin asked, impressed.

"No," he shrugged. "Just a close family friend."

"Any chance that your dad gave you that invisibility cloak?" Quentin grinned conspiratorially.

"No," Connor sighed. "And believe me, I asked."

They turned into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and found Professor Lupin sitting at his desk, reading student essays. He looked up from a scroll of parchment and glanced at his watch before standing and saying, "Right on time, boys." His voice was pleasant and he didn't look annoyed or angry, and Connor thought that they just might get off lightly tonight. "As your head of house, it's my responsibility to make you see the error of your ways. Sneaking out after your curfew is one thing, but getting caught is another." He sighed dramatically in feigned disappointment and continued. "Now I'm supposed to give you some sort of punishment to deter you from breaking the rules again."

Connor fought not to grin. His 'Uncle' was apparently in a good mood, judging by his teasing tone, and so he relaxed a little and waited to find out what sort of task he and Quentin would have to complete as punishment for getting caught. Twenty minutes later, he was not quite as comfortable, as he cleaned the slimy green film from the glass of a Grindylow tank. If this was the type of assignment kids got when the professor was in a good mood, he prayed he never had to find out first hand what happened when he was in a foul one. Still, things could have been worse; Quentin was busy across the room, cleaning Doxy droppings from the bottom of a cage, while it's inhabitants buzzed angrily at him. They had been told that they could leave once all of the creature enclosures had been properly cleaned. They could use magic for some of it, but others had to be done by hand. There appeared to be about twenty cages and tanks in all. Professor Lupin watched them with a crooked smile on his face for a while, but then went back to grading homework, chuckling when he heard his 'nephew' mutter, "Ugh! Gross!"

Three hours later, Quentin finished with the Streelers and went to help Connor finish up with the Jarvey cage. The Professor had apparently put a silencing charm on the animal, as it was chattering its mouth at them angrily, but no profanity was issuing forth at them. At last, they were done, and Lupin smiled at them. "Excellent job, boys. I think that you've learned your lesson. Quentin, you're free to go back to the Gryffindor tower. I'd like a word with Connor in private."

Quentin looked at his friend uncertainly for a moment before turning to go, and left them alone. Professor Lupin leaned back against his desk in front of Connor and studied him for a few moments before speaking. "How has your first couple of weeks back been?"

"They've been all right," he answered. He wasn't sure if he was having a conversation with his Uncle or with his Professor, and was unsure how formal he should be in his answers.

"I've been hearing some things about you around the school regarding the incident with the Ashwinder," he said quietly. "Some of the students have been saying that you planted them there on a dare, and then realized what a stupid idea it was at the last second."

Connor relaxed again, and smiled. "Good," he said, earning a raised eyebrow. "My friends and I actually started that rumor ourselves to cover up that I knew what was going to happen before it did."

Lupin nodded in acceptance and said, "I'd hoped it was something like that. It's just not like you to pull such a careless prank; covering up with a relatively harmless story a pretty clever idea."

"It was Quint's idea," Connor admitted

"Be that as it may," Lupin said seriously. "You want to be as careful with making up stories to cover up the truth about your abilities as you do about your abilities themselves. You don't people who don't know you to believe that you're the type to take stupid dares and behave recklessly."

Connor nodded at this chastisement. "I know."

Changing the subject to a lighter note, Lupin put an arm around Connor as he steered him out of the classroom and down the corridor that led toward Gryffindor Tower. "So do I even need to ask if you're trying out for the house Quidditch team?" he asked affectionately.

"Of course! Quint and Ivy are going to try out as well," he answered, comfortable in the knowledge that he was now speaking to his Uncle. "It'd be really cool if we all got on the team, even if we can only make reserve."

"You're spending a lot of time with Quentin Malfoy," Lupin observed without any judgment evident in his voice.

"He one of my best mates." Connor said. "Have you been talking to Dad again?"

Lupin chuckled. "No. But I did tell him that I would keep and eye on you. Old habits die hard, and you father has made it a habit to mistrust the name of Malfoy."

Connor shrugged. What did his dad's old conflicts have to do with him and Quentin? "Quint's okay," he said. "And from the way he talks, his dad is all right, too. Not like Vanessa."

"Has she been giving you a hard time?" Again there was no trace of emotion in his voice.

"Not really," he answered. "She bullies Quint a bit, I suppose, and us if we're around him when she does. I think it's just a big sister, little brother thing - it's nothing we can't handle."

"Well just be careful," Lupin said as they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady. "I don't want to have you in detention again."

"Thanks Uncle... I mean Professor," Connor flushed at the slip.

Lupin simply smiled and ruffled his hair before bidding him goodnight and leaving him alone.