Potter's Girl / Butterfly Effect.

70. A New Era

CHAPTER SEVENTY;

A NEW ERA

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Harry became considerably more interested in his copy of Advanced Potion-Making over the next few days. Every time Cassie saw him, he had his nose buried in the Half-Blood Prince's property, rarely looking up to even greet her as she sat across from him in the Great Hall.

"Have you ever heard of this spell?" Harry asked Ron, sliding the book over curiously and pointing to one of the many messy scrawls of ink across the page. Ron looked to Harry as though he were crazy before peering at the spell.

He shook his head. "No idea, mate," he said, returning contently to his mashed potatoes. Hermione was not as unperturbed and made it known by the amount of times she scowled at Harry a day.

She did so again (third time that day, Cassie had begun keeping score) and leaned in. "If you had any shred of sense, you would turn that book in!" she chided in a lowered voice, glancing around as though worried a teacher would hear her conversing with a felon.

"This Prince bloke does seem real odd," Ron added unhelpfully.

   Hermione shot him a glare as Harry replied, "He's made up his own spells! C'mon, Hermione, even you have to admit that it's–"

   "Or her," said Hermione. "It might have been a girl. I think the handwriting looks more like a girl's than a boy's."

   "The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," said Harry. "How many girls have been Princes?"

   Hermione seemed to have no answer, so Cassie cut in. "Anyone who's got the sense to create an entirely new spell must have some sort of... I dunno, intelligence."

"See?" said Harry, shrugging. "Cassie's on my side."

"I am not on a side," she replied, rolling her eyes, "I only think that this 'Prince' figure is smarter than Hermione's giving him credit for, but also that Harry needs to be more careful than taking instructions from someone we don't know."

Hermione lapsed into a gracious rant, though Cassie completely zoned her out as an all-too familiar pang of aching struck her in the head. She held back a wince and stood suddenly, gathering her books as fast as possible before rushing back to the common room. She had barely made it into the portrait hole when a wave of nausea hit her like a brick and she staggered up the stairs to her dormitory. Thank Merlin, it was empty.

One thing Cassie had noticed was that her visions didn't happen nearly as often as they had normally. She rarely ever got migraines that led to a glimpse of the future, but when she did, they were now a million times worse and ended with huge visions.

   Cassie drew her hangings around her bed and sat in the darkness, fiddling her wand between her fingers as she waited for the inevitable. When it did happen, she wouldn't have realized she was in the future if it weren't for the Dark Mark hovering above the Astronomy tower.

   She sprinted down the hall at top speed, running into many panicking students, teachers, and Aurors. In her haste, she ran directly into the chest of a man in dark robes. As she looked up to apologize, Cassie's heart nearly stopped as she came face-to-face with a Death Eater's skull mask.

   Cassie stumbled back, eyes fixed on the Death Eater before her, when a scream stole her attention and she looked back to the Astronomy tower. A body seemed to be falling in slow-motion, long white hair cascading behind it and mystical robes flying around in the wind... Cassie looked away just as Dumbledore hit the ground, her hand covering her mouth to stifle a scream.