The Keep

39. Song of Gallantry

Hazel was the first who arrived on Ponderhead Place. She was about to take her seat in the drawing room like she usually does, but Tatiana heeded her into the office.

Both of Hazel's grandparents seemed as if they've aged for another century since the last she saw them. Even though she kept her strong and ready posture, Tatiana's eyes were surrounded in black circles and deepened lines of many wrinkles. And Sevrin, while still sitting as straight as the back of his chair, has grown very much thinner and paler.

Sevrin let out a train of coughs when Hazel walked in. The amount of stress her grandfather was enduring must have weakened his body, Hazel thought.

Suddenly, Hazel felt so very afraid. She cannot imagine a world without her grandfather. And she wouldn't. She refused to.

Gulping the bitter thought, Hazel kissed her grandfather's sharp and bony cheek. Hazel then took a seat on a chair across her grandfather's desk, with her eyes on her lap. She feared if her grandfather were to see her eyes, he would be able to see her overwhelming fear of losing him on them.

"Uncle Bill and Aunt Beth are in hospital now. It was a political attack," Tatiana explained.

"Colombian wizarding community has erupted to a civil war. Cartagena House was especially targeted because of your Aunt Beth's position in the Ministry, and her firm standing on not meddling with the Muggle's politic."

"I'll better go back, then," Hazel said. Grave fatality calls for the Mistress of the Keep to do her duty of welcoming Gillivray ghosts.

"They can wait," Sevrin said. "What about the prophecy, Hazel?" he asked.

"I uh.. it's still in progress," Hazel answered.

"Then tell us what you've found," Sevrin said.

"Well, I've found that the Old Man Seer was actually Gerald Gillivray, Grandfather Callum's Squib uncle who was also a Seer. Uncle Gerald foreseen the prophecy, and told the prophecy to Aunt Zebina, even though he had foreseen his own death if he chose to do that. Grandfather Gareth killed him, and made him as an example for those who would dare to try to barge into the Keep," Hazel told.

Both of her grandparents were listening in silence.

"Just now, I finished calculating the probability of the prophecy. It was totaled in 69,4% of probability that the prophecy was meant for Aunt Zebina and Grandfather Callum's generation." 

"For more than a century, the only living Gillivray bearing magical blood was Grandfather Callum. And he was living in a faraway land, that there was 'no more' Gillivray known here," Hazel explained.

"But," Hazel added.

"But?" Sevrin asked.

"I haven't calculate the prophecy further to determine whether it is one of those circulating prophecies," Hazel said.

"What do you mean by that, love?" Tatiana asked.

"Prophecies are foggy at its best. It's a prediction of a future which the Seer themselves couldn't precisely predict when, where, and to whom it would be meant for," Hazel said.

"To the Seer's Inner Eye, it was like a furthest splash of an energy of something that will happen somewhere in the future. They feel it as a collected emotions, without knowing what has caused for those emotions to come to them," Hazel explained.

"The very thing that caused those future energy to reach the Seer in its past could be of one happenstance, or of repeated events. The probability of an unmet prophecy could be heightening again and again, as it repeats itself through time, until it was met. Just like how history usually repeats itself," Hazel said.