Cassiopeia's Tale

Outside the sky was getting dark with rain clouds rolling over the mountains and settling over the school, covering everything in a dense blanket of ominous silence.

"The silence before the storm."

Cass wrote in one of her journals, reflecting that the weather must know exactly how she felt. Now everything was quiet and calm, but in a while it would change, and nothing would ever be the same.

She sighed and closed her journal. It was only days before the start of the N.E.W.T. examinations, and she still had loads of revision to do. It was pure torture, since she found it hard to focus on anything. Her mind wandered aimlessly whenever presented with schoolwork, and the futility of staring at her books had long since sunk in. Cass went to the library every chance she got, but it was only to ease her conscience. She felt guilty for not making good on her promise to work harder, and tried to make up for it by spending hours in the library. It failed spectacularly, since the library presented an infinite source of information, and Cass spent all her time copying text into her journals that was, needless to say, not in the syllabus.

"Oi!" Mara said loudly and snapped her fingers in front of Cass' nose.

Cass was, by now, too used to this kind of behaviour to react or even be mildly irritated.

"Where did you come from?" she asked, looking up at Mara. Her hair was as wild as ever, and she stood in front of a lamp so that it created a rather fearsome silhouette.

"I was in the common room, and then I came looking for you," Mara said, and then, taking a quick look at the table littered with books, added, " I swear, it's unhealthy to revise like this."

Cass snorted. "Don't worry, I'm not revising. In fact, I'm so far behind in all my work that I'll probably never catch up."

"Great!" Mara exclaimed. "Then you can take a walk with me in the grounds."

"Firstly, it's not great, it's a tragedy. At this rate I'll have to repeat my seventh year. And, secondly, it's going to rain."

"Bah! No one's going to fail. Not even Farnsworth, and he's the real borderline-case," Mara said, pulling a leaf out of her hair. "It's also not going to rain until tonight."

Cass paused with her hand halfway to her bag and stared at Mara. "Do you know that? For sure?"

"Yep."

"No, I mean, do you know it for sure?"

"Would I make revelations like this if I was only speculating?" Mara asked, suddenly sounding impatient. "Now come on, a brisk walk would do you good."

"All right, all right, I was only asking," Cass said as she threw the last of her books into her bag and followed Mara out of the library.

Outside it still looked like the sky was going to fall on them at any moment, but if Mara said it wasn't going to rain, Cass believed her. That was Mara's gift. Jealous, untalented people like Trelawney would never admit it, but Mara had that most ridiculed of gifts. She could See. It went largely unnoticed, however, since she failed Divination spectacularly. Mara peered into teacups and crystal balls and managed to come up with shockingly accurate results, but the fact that everyone was going to pass their N.E.W.T.s and that it was only going to rain in the evening were considered far too mundane to be real prophecies.

Mara's gift was only worth anything because it was accompanied by a sharp mind and a skill for interpretation. She believed that everyone can divine the future, if only they could interpret the signs correctly. Seeing a lion in the orb didn't mean you are going to be eaten on your next trip to the zoo. It didn't even mean that you are ever going to see a lion. It might simply mean that you are going to run into a Gryffindor student on your way to dinner. It was saying things like that in front of Trelawney that got Mara a T in Divination.

But the truth was that Mara didn't always need cups and palms and good interpretations, she sometimes just knew. Mostly she knew things minutes before it happened, but other times she could see it coming months or years in advance. Cass thought it was a wonderfully peculiar gift, and wrote down most of Mara's everyday prophecies in one of her journals.

"So..." Mara said, stalling. "I didn't get a chance to tell you yet..."

Cass gave her a sideways glance as they walked around the lake, their robes whipping in the wind. Mara blushed to the roots of her hair, and Cass smiled at the sight. It was so weird to see Mara at a loss for words.

"You and Art? You go together now?" she asked after the silence had stretched out between them. She could see Mara suddenly relax.

"Well, yeah...."

"I'm glad. You are both equally weird. It should be a match made in heaven," Cass teased and after a while Mara laughed.

"How did you know?"

"Well," Cass said patting her bag. "I do a lot of observing. All those leaves in your hair means that you've been on a 'long walk in the grounds' recently."

Mara went beetroot-red and punched Cass on the arm. "You're making fun of me, shame on you!"

Cass laughed and ran away form Mara's attack, but stopped again when she realised Mara was not following. Turning, she saw Mara standing a little way off, suddenly looking anxious. "What's wrong?"

"I should ask you that," Mara replied uncomfortably. "You've been strange lately. You know you can tell me."

"I'm fine," Cass lied calmly, but her mind was reeling and her heart hammered against her ribs. Didn't she hide it well enough? Did anyone suspect anything?

"No, you're not," Mara replied and sat down heavily on the grass. "Everyone can see you're being eaten up on the inside."

"I... oh," Cass said lamely and sat down next to Mara. "It's nothing, really." This time it wasn't a lie. Cass had promised herself that it was nothing, that it had come from nothing and that it was based on nothing. And that, eventually, it would fade back to nothing once she was free of this place.

"All right, all right, you don't have to tell me, as long as you don't go crazy on me," Mara sighed, staring out over the lake.

Cass suddenly thought of something and began delving in her bag for a particular journal, while Mara stared in mild amusement at all the rubbish and oddities that Cass carried around with her.

"Here it is!" she said triumphantly and held up a small purple book that used to be a guide for housewives. Cass had cleared the pages of all ink with a nifty spell, and used it to write down some of her more secret or incriminating thoughts.

"O goodie, your journal," Mara said mockingly. "I've never seen one of those before."

"This," Cass said, holding up the small purple book by one of it's corners, "contains my poisoned ramblings that you wrote down so faithfully."

Mara eyed the book suspiciously. "So?"

"It's really, really weird."

"Yes, I know, I wrote it down."

"Anyway," Cass said, clearing her throat mockingly. "I'll now read you some of the more lucid bits."

"Bah!" Mara snorted. "There's nothing 'lucid' about the whole thing. It's the kind gibberish only someone as insane as you can generate."

"Why, thank you," Cass said and clearing her throat again, started reading from the journal.

In the third decade of the new order, a dark shall rise again.
Five there would be, one reminiscent of fearsome Gwythienne.
...this dark quintet shall follow, where others choose to flee...
...one shall be definer of who this leader shall be...
The eagle shall soar in the blood thought lost...
...the eagle returns in the blood of the prince.

"That's about all there is that makes any real sense...if it can be called that," Cass said, skimming trough the scribbles on the page. "I tried to put it in more or less chronological order, or at least, I think I did. There are all sorts of other words, but they make no sense just like this. So what do you think?"

"Sounds promisingly creepy," Mara mused, clearly trying to avoid the one obvious thing about the words.

"You know," Cass pressed on. "I asked Snape what was in the phial, and he told me it was a prophetic elixir..."

"Yes, but it was badly made, and turned into sightblinder once it came into contact with the fire. Sightblinder has the opposite effect of a prophetic elixir," Mara said matter-of-factly, digging her heels into the soft dirt.

"No, I looked it up, sightblinder doesn't have the opposite effect at all. It's only called 'sightblinder' because it's mostly seers who get killed by it after making bad prophetic elixirs. The name doesn't mean that it takes away the second sight, but that it takes away the Seer."

Mara stared at Cass. "Well, in that case I will have to agree that your ramblings look suspiciously like a prophecy."

"I know. It's not a good prophecy either. It speaks of darkness..."

"My advice would be to keep it quiet. Don't say anything about it to anyone," Mara said, suddenly deadly serious. "Prophecies are dodgy even when they are perfectly worded. They are nothing to go on where the future is concerned, since they can mean anything. Yours doesn't even have all the words, so there is no way we can even begin to figure it out. Also, no-one wants to hear of a coming darkness after what just happened. People are still suspicious and scared, and you can find yourself on the wrong side of a bunch of angry Aurors."

Cass was stung by Mara's briskness, but had to agree: it was better kept a secret. Now she had two. Two secrets that felt so big, but were so insignificant. Cass wanted to reply, but the silence stretched on and on, until it became pointless to say anything. After a while they both got up to return to the castle for dinner.

Later that night, when Cass was laying in bed, listening to the rain thundering on the roof of Ravenclaw Tower, Mara opened the curtains of her four-poster and looked very seriously at Cass. She wanted to say something, but Mara silenced her with a wave of her hand.

"I know you don't want to tell me what this obsession of yours is all about, but I would be an awful friend if I don't tell you this: it will cause everyone a lifetime of trouble."

Cass stared at Mara. "You saw this?"

"Yes," Mara said, taking Cass by her shoulders and looking straight into her eyes. "I don't know what it is, so I can't understand it better, but I know it will cause everyone a lifetime of trouble. Let it go."

"What?"

"Just let it go."