I was waiting for the knock on my door by my mother or for my curtains to be yanked open by best friend Penny Weasley, but when neither came I slowly opened my eyes. The curtains on my four poster bed were an odd color it was a deep red. This made me nervous that I had once again fallen asleep while studying with Ron but I noticed that the room was lacking the normal snores of the other boys in the room.
"Where am I?" I asked as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. The curtains were pulled back from the bed I was in and I caught an image of my mum before being blinded by light. "Mum!"
"Nope sorry I'm not your mum," the cheerful voice of my mum came back to my ears.
"Yes you…" Tea, throwing up, Aunt Poppy, Gryffindor…it all came rushing back towards me. "Bathroom?"
She pointed towards a door opposite my bed and I scrambled for the safety of being alone. I needed time to pull together my thoughts. I needed time to be able to remember what part I was supposed to be playing.
"Okay," I splashed water onto my face as my hands trembled. "You are a Potter, pull yourself together. Potters' don't fall apart at the tiniest of things. So get your act in gear and go out into that room ready to face your seventeen year old mother."
Twenty minutes later I was once again submerged in the hustle and bustle of the Great Hall. It was slightly unnerving to see some people I had thought of as dead all my life and then there were the others who I thought of as family. Hermione got greeted several times in our walk down to the section of the table the seventh and some six years had claimed.
"Everyone this is Jillian," Hermione said and I smiled sweetly as I recognized most of the faces from last night. For instance there was my father and Uncle Neville, Ron, whom I met last night, and Aunt Ginny and Luna.
"Where are you from?" A dreamy voice asked and I saw it was Aunt Luna speaking.
"France," I responded.
The dreamy voice was slightly unnerving and I remember Uncle Neville saying that Aunt Luna lost all of her quirkiness this year when her father was attacked but not killed by several Death Eaters. This was the year she became serious and had a complete reality check. This was the year she and my mother became best friends.
"So what is the DA?" I asked as I remembered from last night.
"She knows about the DA," Aunt Ginny sneered in my direction. Obviously her dislike for me traveled through time.
"Jillian knows more than it seems," Luna said as she stood up and walked back to the Ravenclaw table.
"I like her," I said with a nervous laugh.
"Luna is great," Ron said as he stuffed a scone in his mouth.
I made a face but before I could bring up the subject again I noticed Lupin approaching our apart of the table. My attention went to making sure my mental walls were in place and completely buttering my toast and then adding cinnamon onto it. I then applied a simply heating charm to make my meal complete.
"Miss Pomfrey…Miss Pomfrey…Miss Pomfrey…"
"Jillian," my father's voice cut through my thoughts and I jumped. My eyes met his and he glanced behind me. Turning I came face to face with Remus Lupin.
"Oh I'm sorry…um Professor…um,"
"Lupin," he supplied for me and I glowered at him. "After breakfast we need to go over your schedule to make sure you have the appropriate classes."
"Joys of all joys," I said as he walked away. I slumped my head down on the hard wooden table in defeat of the meeting I couldn't escape, but I might as well make it worth wild and get caught up on some of the pieces of the puzzle I seemed to be missing.
As everyone was finishing up breakfast I stood up to go to find Professor Lupin's office. I was just about ready to leave when Neville spoke up. "I'll show you where you need to go." For a minute I didn't think he was talking to me but as then he grabbed my hand. Quickly I yanked my hand out of his gripped.
My face by now was bright red and I had to strain to keep the stutter out of my voice as I nervously spoke. "Thanks, Neville. That would be nice." I grabbed an apple and met my dad's eyes. They held a sort of curious expression about them and I could tell he was wondering why I had reacted that way to sweet Neville.
Neville and I walked the halls in silence. As we did I thought of the millions of times I had walked these same halls with his son. I wondered vaguely if Ron was walking this same hall right now in my own time.
"Do you know where you're going because you are three steps in front of me? Jillian, just how long have you been at Hogwarts?"
"You don't lose that inquisitiveness," I said with a touch of fondness.
"Are you a seer?"
"Me?" I said with shock. "No my mother thinks divination is rubbish. She doesn't even know why my dad took it for so long."
"Who are your parents?"
"Oh look Professor Remus's office. Why don't I just avoid this question and go inside to fix my nonexistent schedule." At this I waved Neville off and knocked on the door. When no one answered I took out my copy of Elite Charms, for the ONE who wants to know it ALL and started to read. It took Uncle Remus ten minutes for him to join me outside his office. "You're late," I said not looking up from my book.
"Terribly sorry, but I was helping a first year find her way to the Transfiguration room, and I didn't
think you would get here so quickly."
" I don't like being late."
"A good quality to have," He undid the charm on his door and held it open for me. I casually got up from the floor and entered the room. It looked almost exactly the same. The room I was use to had a few more books and a new person occupied it but beside that it was exactly the same.
"Nice room. I like what you did with it." I couldn't keep the smile off my face as I knew that Uncle Remus was and never would have any say in the decorations now that Tonks was in his life. Aunt Tonks liked to change the house as much as she liked to change her nose at a dinner party.
"We should be discussing the classes you will be taking. I see you've had time to take your OWLs."
"My mum and dad made me take them," I said carefully.
"That was interesting of them," I could tell he was searching for something to ask me next. "Classes?" I said helpfully.
"Right," he cleared his throat. "Well you can take Advance Defense, Transfiguration, Charms, Arithmancy, Potions, and Herbology. Do you think you can handle six classes?" He didn't even wait for my answer as he tapped a schedule sheet and handed it over to me.
"This looks fine. I heard you had a centaur teaching Divination and was wondering where I could find him. I need a question answered."
"Classroom eleven, ground floor, I believe he even has a free this period as do you."
I got up to leave when I suddenly remember something Uncle Remus had told me. "Oh and before I forget don't accept any Wolfsbane potion from Slughorn." Before he could ask me why I just said what I has just said I left the room and rushed down to classroom eleven.
The doorway to classroom eleven was open. No doubt the centaur was waiting for me. You could hardly surprise a centaur for they knew the past, future, and present. I had taken private lessons from Firenze since I was eleven. He had approached me in this same hallway way on my second day in the castle. Predictably, I was lost and at the sight of a centaur before me scared me even more then not being able to find my class.
"I'll write you a note for you teacher but come inside we need to talk." His voice was ethereal and so were his blue eyes. I knew better then to refuse the help of a centaur or any magical creature so I had no choice but to go in and hear what the magnificent creature before me had to say.
The room was a miniature forest. It was filled with trees; the ground was covered in a mossy like grass, and a small broke wound its way through the trees and into a small pond. With a casual wave of his hand the bright blue sky that shone above quickly became darker and I found myself starring at the stars.
"I was informed by the stars that you need to be taught their words. Never has such an honor been bestowed upon the lesser race."
My face must have shown my astonishment. I knew all about centaurs and their ways. They rarely even spoke to humans. Firenze was the first to live among them, ever. "You are offering to teach me how to read the stars?"
"Yes," he said slowly. "Now you'll come here every Monday and Friday for lessons."
"Every Monday and Friday," I repeated as I left the room.
"Are you going to come in Miss. Potter?" Firenze's voice came from the forest and I entered the classroom I had come to love. Even when I didn't have lessons with the centaur I could sometimes be found in his room just relaxing by the pond.
"Thank you," I said taking off my shoes and placing them just outside the doorway. "I was wondering if I could take a look at the sky."
"Yes of course," he said. I knew better then to be surprised at his lack of asking what I was looking for. He already knew all the stars told, and I knew he was going to let me figure out their riddle on my own.
The sky became dark as I looked up to see the constellations forming. I saw the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, Orion, the star Sirius, and I even saw Andromeda. But I quickly started to look beyond the constellations and started to read what the stars had to say.
"Something is wrong," I whispered into the still room. "The stars are wrong."
"The stars a never wrong," Firenze said as he came to my side. "They can only be interpreted wrong."
"But here they say that they are going to fight the first part of Voldemort's soul tonight." I said pointing to the three stars off to the right of the star Sirius. "And they aren't ready."
"Miss Potter," Firenze said and I looked at him. His blue eyes bore into mine. "You have to finish your reading."
I took a deep cleansing breath and looked at the stars again. My line directly crossed the lines of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. In fact it seemed to intercept their lines right when they were going to be destroying the first horcrux. The realization of what I had to do hit me like a ton of bricks; sometime today I had to stop the trio from doing something incredibly stupid.
I gave Firenze a hug and with one last glance at the stars I headed out of them room. I didn't hear Firenze wishing me luck or him saying that I would have to hurry.
Once I was clear of classroom eleven I checked my timetable to see I had ten minutes to get to charms class and then in the afternoon I had herbology. Today was going to be easy and tonight was going to be hard, I thought as I made my way through the hallways and up to the charms corridor.
Dinner was an interesting affair as I was invited to once more sit with my parents and my aunts and uncles. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were oddly quiet this dinner and I could sense their hesitation about tonight. If they were hesitant, I thought, then why go through with it? And why was my mother not stopping them when I knew that she knew it wasn't going to work? But as I looked to my father I knew why. He wanted it to be done and over with soon so they could be one step closer to killing Voldemort. My father wanted to be out there fighting Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
As they left the Great Hall my eyes followed them. They looked dangerous and yet cautious. I wondered briefly how that could be but then I felt my senses being probed once more. I put my walls quickly up and scanned the table again. I knew it was someone in Gryffindor, I could tell, but I just didn't know who.
Quickly shoving the rest of my dinner down my throat I left the Great Hall. Rushing down the corridors I could barely stop the feeling of panic as it rose in my chest. Once up on the seventh floor I screamed the password to the fat lady and by passed the common room in a blur as I ran up to my dorm room. I grabbed my dad's invisibility cloak and the map. With a snap of my wrist I became invisible and then with a whisper of the incantation I knew where everyone was in the school. Taking count I saw my parents and Ron up in the boy's dormitory.
"Good I still have time," I said into the empty room. "Now where would they go that they could destroy such an object? What area of the castle would give them the protection they would need?" I thought over my questions as I stared at the three dots bearing their names. "Wow, how stupid am I? The room of requirement." I crashed down own the four poster that was now mine, and knew I would have to post the note now and then come back here to let my mum do a head check.
The wall where the room of requirement was made of stone. I wrote a note and stuck it to the wall with my famous sticking charm. They couldn't miss it, I thought, as I stared at the flashing piece of brightly colored paper. With one final flick of my wrist I placed an invisibility charm on the paper so that only four people in the world could see it.
Patience was a virtue that I was not fortunate to have. My dad told me that constantly. It was why I was always early for everything. So as I sat in my bed waiting for my mum to leave I had to force myself not to toss and turn. The waiting was going to kill me for I had a feeling it was all I was going to be doing this year.
Finally the time came; I heard the rustle of her drapes and then her quietly sneaking out of our dorm. I pulled the invisibility cloak out from underneath my pillow and waited ten seconds before leaving the room myself. Watching from the stairs I saw them meet up in the common room. They talked for a few minutes before leaving and I followed shortly afterwards. Vaguely I wondered if this constituted as stalking but quickly banned that thought I was I hurried to make sure that they followed my note's instructions.
"What is this?" I heard Ron say. "It won't come down."
"Let me see that," My mum's voice floated over to me as I rounded the corner to see them standing around the note. "It says `For the destruction of a horcrux you need to face your fear during the full moon.' Boggart?"
"Hermione?" I could tell my father was waiting for my mother's explanation. "Do we take the advice?"
My mother's voice was shaky when she answered but her face held resolve, "yes we do. It seems that someone out there knows our mission and for now we take their advice, but we must use caution. We don't know if this person is friend or foe." At her words I set the note on fire.
As they were looking around the corridor I left on cat feet. My first interference was over; I could finally get some sleep.
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