A Harry Potter Quest: He who was not

Present Date: 25th​ September 1993
Current Wand: Fagus wood, Phoenix feather core

→ Monthly skill progress for September class-subjects added → 1/5 progress to next skill level

Peque was sitting on your shoulder, patiently waiting for you to feed him the next piece of raw fish. You took another chunk out of the small bowl Nally had graciously offered you and held it up for Peque to take it. She had earned it.

Your small owl had been away for quite some time, which could only mean that your parents hadn't answered right away. This was something that bothered you. They were busy people, yes, but they usually sent a letter back with Peque as soon as they got one from you.

A feeling of helpless worry spread through your body as you held their unopened response in hand. It was a baseless worry, but you couldn't help the fear that haunted you at times. All your peers had young and healthy parents and while your parents could still mostly run laps around you, you knew that the day would come when that wouldn't be the case anymore.

They were more than a hundred years older than you and age started to catch up - even with wizards. You feared the day a letter would arrive, informing you that one of your loved one's was not around anymore.

You took a deep breath, before you finally opened the letter.

Hijo,

I'd like to inform you that your mother found it vital for our communication to happen in plain English and not in Castellano (As if that had not been compromise enough. I still wish for you to learn Basque as I have in my childhood). And while your mother may have a point in that this language is important for your education – I see it necessary to teach you about the history of our ancestry.

We…

Your father had written that single words a few times over as if to make a point. You could almost imagine your mother's stern look on her face as she watched him over his shoulder. A pang of homesickness befell you imagining of such a familiar scene.

You really missed the both of them.

… came to the conclusion that you are old enough for the ancestral education that has been part of our name for as long as we exist.

While I can't answer your questions as easily as you would might like it, there is a good example for mind magic in this special lesson. It may help you to expand your horizons and find answers to solve your problem.

And before I forget it; Our neighbors send their regards. They are hoping for you to visit us during your Christmas vacation, but neither I nor your mother will be pestering you about it.

It is your decision as always, but we would be glad to have you around.

Ah, would you do me a favor and say "Basques" aloud?

Bueno, hijo.

Cuídate, amor mío, cuídate.

David Marvan Basques e Isabella Mia Cortez


You looked up from the letter. His words saddened you more than you would have thought, but they made you happy at the same time. Your parents were well and that was all you could ask for. Skimming over the letter, your eyes roamed over the most curious sentence:

Ah, would you do me a favor and say "Basques" aloud?

To be frank, you had no idea what they had been talking about in the letter. Your father had made allusions to mind magic but there had been no actual answers to find. So you simply followed the instructions of your father:

"Basques", you said aloud.

The letter in your hand started crumbling and moving. The edge started to fold onto itself. Then the paper folded closer to the center. It happened again and again, gaining speed with every passing moment. Startled by the sudden movement, you let go of it, but the parchment kept itself steady in the air even without your help.

Troubled by your sudden movements Peque had been forced to jump off your shoulder and onto the grass field you were sitting on just outside of the castle. The little owl watched unfazed as the letter was getting smaller and smaller by the second until it was nothing but a little pebble to the eye.

And with a loud - whush – as if air had rushed into a vacuum the what had been left of the letter disappeared and a large book appeared out of nothing. It floated in its place for a second, before finally losing its battle to gravity and falling to the ground.

"What did just happen?" you asked Peque as you looked at the old tomb that had appeared out of thin air. What kind of magic had that been? You'd never heard of such an exchange of objects. How did it work? What were the rules? Why…

No. Focus, Jacob.

Your eyes fell onto the book again. There was no adornment to decorate the old leather binding. There was not even a title to be seen. Lifting it carefully with your right, you used your left hand to sweep over the old cover. While it looked old and well-used, it certainly didn't feel like it. The cover was smooth and soft as if it had been redone quite recently.

Your fingers searched for the first page as you opened the old tomb to look inside, only to find it empty. Flipping through the book you could see that any following page was just as empty as the first one had been.

Another riddle?

→ New option available for next month's plan

---

Present Date: 27th​ September 1993
Current Wand: Fagus wood, Phoenix feather core

The weekend had come and gone with you not being able to locate Sally-Anne again. While the History of Magic's Professor levitating from one side of the class to the other, tried to explain you the causes of yet another Goblin rebellion, you were trying yourself at math.

Gone was the magic inside your head, blocking your memories of Sally-Anne. You could remember your own experiences with her. You remembered the small Hufflepuff from two years ago, because you had been astonished by her. She had been ahead from the very first school lesson, using her wand as if she had been born with it and quietly taking over the top of the talent pool.

There had been no one that had been able to compare to her. That you remembered.

You remembered the envy you had felt back then. It was a treacherous feeling now that you had seen the way her short life had left her hurt and broken, but the girl had just been on a different level to you in mind and magic.

You remembered the feeling of inadequacy. Something you thought alien to you even now… but confronted with someone that much more talented than you had humbled you.

You emerged the feather in your hand out of the ink to keep protocol of your thoughts.

Sally-Anne was sorted in 1797 and died two months later at the mere age of eleven years old. Her brutal death by the hands of her older brother defined the window in which she seems to appear in Hogwarts.


She starts on the 01st​ of September and stays in classes until her death at Halloween. It leaves me one month to solve this problem, before she disappears again.

After her first death she disappeared for thirteen years, only to then return on seven consecutive years.

Those were the time frames. Thirteen-year pause, seven years activity for the first two months of each year. You drew the timeline up, comparing it to the dates of entry you remembered from your Professor's entries in the archives.

Death in 1797.

The feather was plunged deep into the ink, before it came back to write on the parchment again.

Active in 1810-1817; 1830-1837; 1850-1857; 1870-1877; 1890-1897; …

Dumbledore had been sorted in one of her active years. How had he compared to her? Had he been able to best her or had she overshadowed even the most powerful wizard alive?

McGonagall had been sorted in an inactive year, which meant that she had only been confronted with Sally-Anne as a teacher. The question was if she remembered her? Was Sally-Anne's magic so strong as to even work on teachers?

… ; 1970-1977; 1990-1997.

Sally-Anne had come back out of her slumber in your first year and would likely repeat it every year until your sixth year.

There was still a month left to her reoccurring death on Halloween. This explained why you had seen her in person; right now, she was a first-year again.

Somewhere in the castle, there were classes with her and that made the case only more captivating. Did people remember her during the active months outside of classes?

"Ehm… Professor?", someone said, pushing you out of your thoughts.

You had to blink a few times to readjust to your surroundings before looking up. It was not that the girl with the brown bushy hair had been loud. No, that hadn't been what had broken your thought stream and brought your spirit back into the classroom that you had been sitting in for the last hour. It was just the unexpectedness of someone participating in the class.

"Yes, Miss Grant?", the Professor for History of Magic asked.

Professor Binns - and being a ghost certainly did him no good there - looked ancient and shriveled. He wore glasses which were small and thick, and had a dry, reedy voice that sounded like someone was softly humming to you.

It was no coincidence that half of the students were sleeping for most of the two hour block you had with him. Which was why no one ever participated… not even you Ravenclaw's. Never.

"It's Granger, Sir", Hermione said, letting her hand drop to the table in front of her. "Sir, I tried looking through old newspapers, but I couldn't find anything", she said. The redhead sitting behind her had only one eye open as he raised his head from the table, where he had most certainly been sleeping for a while.

"Has It ever happened before that Dementors were stationed around Hogwarts, Sir?" the girl with brown bushy hair asked. Her eyes didn't waver when half of the heads in the room – mostly those who were not dozing off - turned around to her. Instead she pushed her back straighter and kept her focus on the ghost that was hovering in front of them.

Professor Binns paused, pursing his lips, looking like a wrinkled old tortoise.

"Ah, well… yes, I understand your question, Miss Grant. One of utmost importance as I understand", the old ghost said, slightly spinning around in place to turn the Hermione.

"One point for Ravenclaw for this good question", Professor Binns said. You heard Michael and Terry laugh behind you. It wasn't the first time the old ghost had gotten the houses wrong.

You'd always thought him senile and just not fully there anymore for mistakes like these. Your new experiences with death and the afterlife gave you another perspective, though. What if he was fully there, but just living through his past life right in this second. What if he was not seeing Hermione Granger, the Gryffindor ace, but a Miss Grant, who had been sorted into Ravenclaw?

You added one more sentence to your notes:

Do ghosts see the same world we do?

Then you let your feather drop on the parchment and simply listened.

"Dementor's have not been part of our society for as long as you might think, Miss Grant", Professor Binns said. His voice sounded different, more alive and energetic. It was like those moments when someone who had been sickened with senility, had a good episode with a clear and sound mind.

"When Damocles Rowle was elected Minister for Magic in 1718, he insisted on utilising Azkaban's dark pedigree, seeing the Dementors as a potential asset", the ghost said, for once not reading from his ghostly notes.

"He argued that putting them to work as guards would save expense, time, and lives. This plan was eventually put into motion and, despite protests, Azkaban remained the prison of the wizarding world."

You saw the rest of the Ravenclaw's turn to the Professor, their faces intrigued. Su Li, sitting in the first row, had even started to take notes.

"From that point on, the Dementors served the Ministry of Magic as the guards of Azkaban, as the arrangement allowed them to feed on the emotions of the prisoners within its walls. In 1735, Minister Eldritch Diggory visited Azkaban and was horrified at the sheer despair and insanity that the Dementors induced within the prisoners. He formed a committee to find alternative solutions, the least of which was to remove the Dementors, which met opposition from those who feared a mainland invasion by the dark creatures if they were deprived of their food source."

"Alas, Diggory died of Dragon Pox while in office…" he said, without any further emotion in his voice. The way he had formulated those words, though… was Professor Binns instigating that there had been foul play? Was this the sort of man he had been in his youth? Someone trying to school his students into ask what parts of history made sense and which were likely wrong?

"… and thus the campaign to find an alternative to Azkaban's Dementors stalled. Though their primary function was to guard Azkaban, Dementors also performs other services for the Ministry, such as being sent to guard other locations, escort prisoners to trial or even hunt down certain criminals", he said, finally coming back to the question that Hermione had asked.

"The use of Dementors developed to being accepted more freely over the centuries… but no, Miss Grant", he said.

"This is the first time Dementors have set foot on the grounds of Hogwarts."

---

Present Date: 30th​ September 1993
Current Wand: Fagus wood, Phoenix feather core


Understanding Magic (CRT + INT + Magical Theory) → 1D100+6 → 85(79 + 6)


It was Thursday and the last day of the month, exactly one month away from Halloween – which marked the gruesome death of an innocent little girl, whose life you remembered as if you had lived partly through it yourself.

Mother was swinging back and forth… back and forth. Brother was watching you with those vibrant blue eyes. Father screamed in agony.

You had waited for today, because the night would be marked as special not only by a full-moon, but by the half-time mark of her seven-year active phase. Sally-Anne's slumbers gave her enough power for seven years – but not really. It was only ever two months each year, which made her active phase exactly fourteen months long. Which meant that tonight with the end of her seventh month, half of her time would be over.

A numerical advantage that you'd like to use as her magic had made those numbers relevant to her existence.

Still, you had to sit through Snape's class first… and with Snape's class you didn't mean Potions, but DADA. Professor Lupin had called in sick and it seemed as if the human bat had been ready to jump in. The class had been educational, but you had been the first to leave the room when it had been finally over.


Do you make a connection? DC 80 (INT + EMP) → 1D100+5 → 96(91 + 5) → Uncomfortable Success for the GM…

→ Perk Gained: My name is Riddle – You have a keen mind that shines the brightest whenever it is confronted with a riddle. +5 to all detective work


While it had been interesting to see how different Snape acted in a subject that he actually wanted to teach, one other thought hadn't left your mind for a second during the entire lecture.

Teachers called in sick at times. Not often, there was rarely a thing that Madam Pomfrey couldn't solve in minutes, and Wizards didn't simply catch a cold – but it happened sometimes. Most of the times you suspected them to need a day off for personal business, but who knew what a teacher's life entailed? Maybe they just went on vacation for a day or two.

Professor Lupin had been looking worse with each passing day for the last week. Either it was the curse over his position catching up to him earlier in the year than it did with his predecessors or… or, you had to face the possibility that it wasn't simple happenstance that he was sick on the day of the full moon.

A shiver went down your spine in fear as the smile on your face grew in joy. Had Hogwarts always been so fascinating?

Your hand reached out to knock on the door.

Knock. Knock.

Before you could hit the door a third time, you heard someone call: "Come in." You didn't hesitate, pushing the door open to enter the office of the head of your house; Professor Filius Flitwick.


Communication Check (INT + EMP) → 1D100+5 → 86(81 + 5)


Flitwick was distinguishingly short and had been frequently described as "tiny little Professor Flitwick" by your housemates. He was kind, caring and you had never seen him lose his temper even once. It was all the ingredients needed for a recipe called: pushover Professor…

Gladly, that was not what your head was seen as; he commanded respect in spite of his sensitive nature and small stature.

You knew him well by know. More than that, you felt deep respect for the man who was rumored to have been an international Dueling Champion in his youth. There was no need for beating around the bushes with him. He understood when you spoke to him.

"Ah, Mr. Basques. What an honor! Please, come in and sit", the tiny Professor said, sitting in a chair that was higher than usual, only for it to allow him to be able to work on a table of normal size. There were papers on it that he had been working on, but you did not get to see what was on them. A swish of his wand and they sorted themselves by a ghostly hand to end as a neat staple in a corner of his table.

"Hello, Professor. I hope that I'm not bothering you", you said, as you closed the door behind you and began to walk over to the chair the Professor was offering you.

"My doors have always been open for my students, Mr. Basques", he said with a kind smile on his face. "How can I help you?"

You took a moment before you started speaking: "I have a few questions, sir", you said, sorting through the different ways you had imagined this to play out. "How many Hufflepuff girls have been sorted into Hogwarts this year, Professor?" you asked him.

Professor Flitwick's eyebrows rose above the frame of his spectacles in surprise.

"Why are you asking that, Mr. Basques?" he asked, his surprise turning into a frown.

"Just see it as a riddle by one of your students, Professor", you simply answered, having imagined the course of this conversation countless times over the last few days.

Your Head of House seemed to consider what you said, and you could see in his face that he was only humoring you because you had never been the type for pranks and misleading actions.

"There are five girls in Hufflepuff's first year", he said.

"How many girls have been sorted into Hufflepuff last year?", you asked.

"There are currently four girls in Hufflepuff's second year", the Professor said, clearly not understanding what you were leading up to.

"There are three in third, four in fourth and fifth, three in sixth and four in seventh year", you said, going through all active classes. It had been interesting to see that Sally-Anne had even been manipulating Hogwarts into keeping her spot free in the thirteen-year frames that she had been too weak to manifest.

Had you been sitting across a different person; the individual wouldn't have caught on so fast. But you were sitting across the man that was Head of a House that reigned over traits as intelligence and wisdom.

"That is… curious", your Professor said, frowning before raising his hand to massage his temple as if in pain.

"Houses limit themselves to ten children per year. Five girls and five boys", you said, repeating the fact more for yourself than for him. "Sometimes there are too few a number of new students and a house falls short, but…", you started. It was Flitwick that ended your sentence.

"For six consecutive years?" he asked aloud, before suddenly grimacing. The tiny Professor rubbed his eyes, before he refocused on you. "How long?" he asked. How long has this going on for, he meant but you could see that he was in pain.

Was he fighting the magic? You hadn't been sure if it had even befallen him, but it seemed as if not even the Professors had been safe.

"For two hundred years", you said.

Silence fell upon the room as Flitwick was likely trying to remember a year in which there had been five Hufflepuff girls.

It was you who broke the silence again.

"Imagine a powerful wizard", you started. "Say, Professor Dumbledore. Now imagine him falling victim to a spell that he may be able to detect in his later years, but not as a child, still without education. The spell would take hold of him for the rest of his life, dormant and safe under all his prowess, because it was as large of a part of him as Hogwarts was."

The Professor wasn't responding anymore. Both of his hands were rubbing his eyes. When the spell had broken for an instance, it had left you dizzy and weak. You had carried Sally-Anne's magic inside you for only two years… how must it feel for someone who had been walking around with it for decades? A hundred years? It had to be part of your mind by then. Part of the construct that you had built for yourself.

You'd gone through the Archives to find Sully-Anne, but you'd seen the birthdays and the year of sorting for most of the Professors in your searches. Dumbledore had been sorted in 1890. Sally-Anne's first year after another thirteen-year disappearance.

Flitwick had been born in 1958, but only in October, too late in the year to be sorted exactly eleven years later. So, he had been sorted in September of 1970, when he was almost twelve years old. It was again Sally-Anne's first year after a pause of thirteen years.

Snape had been sorted a year later in 1971. Most teachers had gone through a similar fate, being bewitched on the first day of their first year. They had no chance of escaping the spell. There were some that did escape that fate: Professor McGonagall for example. She had fallen into a year in which Sally-Anne had been dormant. But it seemed as if she had still not been able to fight the magic as it had hit her when she started her teaching position.

"Tell me Professor", you said. This time you felt the magic tingling around you. It was so thick in the air that you could smell it. The spirit that had been part of Hogwarts for two hundred years knew what you were about to do.

"Do you know a student called Sally-Anne Hudson?"

For a moment the magic around you froze. Just for a second you felt as if time had stopped. Nothing moved, nothing could move even if it wanted to. You were frozen in place. The chipping of the birds outside, which you had heard only moments earlier was cut off instantly.

Sally-Anne was not happy about the fact that you wanted to break her secret.

Everything froze for just a moment. Then the table between the Professor and you exploded.


Reaction Check (Charms + INT + CRT + Wand) → 1D100+14 → 32(18 + 14)


There was nothing you could do.

You were catapulted backwards in a speed that you had never reached even on a broom before. The moment your shoulder crashed against the stonewall behind you, you felt a crack that blinded you with pain.

A scream filled the air and it took time to realize that it was you who was screaming. You had to fight against the darkness that threatened to win you over. Unconsciousness was calling for you again.

"Sally-Anne!" you shouted as loud as you could. Screaming your pain out to keep your consciousness.

Most of Professor Flitwick's furniture had been ripped apart by the force that was pushing and holding you high up against the wall. The pieces of broken wood and glass were swirling around as if creating a storm, getting faster by the second. In the center you could see a little girl. Her eyes and skin were so bright that you couldn't even look straight at her.

Only when you evaded looking directly at her did you see the small form of the Professor on the other side of the room, held up against the wall and mirroring your position. His eyes were wide open, but you could see that he was not fully there. Neither his face nor his body showed any movement. He had fallen unconscious.

If he was living through the memories that you had seen when you first spoke her name, then he would be out for a while.

"I don't want to hurt you!", you shouted at the spirit that had become an axis of magic of Hogwarts. She had become what she had always wanted to be. Someone who was important and who got praised… and right now she thought that you wanted to take all of that from her.

"Sally-Anne," you said again. "I am sorry for what your brother has done to you."

For a moment the magical storm stood still. The pieces of glass and wood that had started cutting at you stayed immobile in the air.

Then there was a cry. This time it was not yours.

The window and the door exploded out of their frame as Sally-Anne exited the room screaming as if in pain herself. You heard another explosion in the corridor, followed by screams of panicking students.

Trapped in your position inside Professor Flitwick's office the storm of glass and wood started moving again, cutting your skin as you tried to keep your eyes shut for most of the time. Magic was still keeping you up in the air as if held by an iron fist.

There was another explosion, now farther away. More screams followed.


Free yourself, DC 90 (Charms + INT + CRT + Wand) → 1D100+14 → 24(10 + 14) → Failure!


Sully-Anne's magic was beyond anything you had ever been confronted with. Even with her moving out of your reach and creating chaos inside the castle, there was nothing you could do. She wasn't even focusing on you and still…

"Professor!", you shouted as you opened your eyes again, giving up on the hope of freeing yourself with your own capabilities. You tried squinting to cover as much of them against the avalanche of splinters that were cutting at you.

Flitwick didn't react, his eyes still wide open as if in trance.

"Damnit, Professor", you said, trying to move your wand against the constraints. It was hard, but it was possible. The storm inside the office had calmed down with Sully-Anne's exit, but you were still bleeding from a dozen little wounds the splitters had caused. The little Professor didn't look any better.

You took aim at him, before using the only spell that could help you right now:

"Rictusempra!", you shouted with all of your might, trying to fight the limited window of movement you had with an excess of will.

The tickling spell hit the unconscious Professor, but nothing happened. You repeated the spell: "Rictusempra!" Then you did it again and again, layering the spells on top of each other until his eyes started to move.

Laughter filled the room as the Professor came back to life. He couldn't move from his place, but he was laughing as uncontrollably as one did when hit with four times the dose of the Laughing Spell.

"Professor", you said. "You have to free me. I think I can stop this!"

You didn't know if he did hear you, because his eyes had closed, and his laughter had not dwindled in the least. But after a few seconds of uncertainty, you felt the strong grip of the magic around you wither away.

Professor Flitwick had been hit as hard as you had, collapsing against the wall behind him and damaging his body. He had been unconscious, living through memories of old, had lost his wand and had been hit by three Laughing Spells… and he still had been able to free you of something that you had not been able to get out off even with your wand in hand.

You could only pay your respects for such a master of his craft by solving the problem that you had caused.

When your feet touched the cold stone below, you hit the ground running.

You grabbed your wand tighter in your hand as you exited the office into the corridor. Chaos surrounded you from the beginning. Paintings had been ripped out of their places, windows had been destroyed and students had been thrown around. Some were hurt, but you already saw how other students were helping them.

You didn't stop for them.


How fast are you? (+ Constitution) → 1D100+1 → 25(24 + 1) → So very slow!


For the first time in your life, you regretted not having taken more care of your body. Your shoulder was hurting, you were bleeding from wounds all over your body, but what slowed you down the most was that you simply weren't used to moving as much.

Your lungs started cramping after a few short corridors, your legs felt shaky and weak. It felt as if every step could be your last one.

Turning another corner, you saw only more chaos. A door had been ripped out of its frame and thrown across the corridor where it had penetrated the wall. Magic had to be at play when a wooden door could do that to the castle walls.

"Help me!", someone screamed from behind you. You didn't mind them. There was only one thing with which you could help; stopping the madness.

"Professor Snape is unconscious!" someone screamed.

"Someone come fast! She broke her arm."

You hit the staircase. Always following the chaos, never able to use a shortcut because you simply didn't know where she was heading to. Another corridor. A corner right. A staircase and two floors down. Always following the chaos.

And then you heard another explosion and more screams.

As your feet touched the ground-floor, you finally knew where Sally-Anne had been heading to; the place where everything had begun for her: The Great Hall. The Place where she had been sorted 196 years ago, a few short months after she had turned eleven years old.

One of the large doors to the Great Hall had been ripped out and was moving in a wide circle around the creature that had walked to the center of the great Hall. Screams filled the hall as Sally-Anne's magic grasped for everything in their vicinity.

You sprinted inside to see the many students in there as fear and panic was hitting the crowd.

The long benches and tables were slowly rising to meet the books, candles and paintings that Sally-Anne's magic had taken with her. If every teacher that she had been in first class with reacted the way Professor Flitwick had to the broken spell, then Sally-Anne was in full control of the castle. There was no one to contest her but the students.

Which meant that you couldn't hesitate.

"It's ok", you said as you stepped through the crowd. Even the long tables were starting to lose their footing on the ground. Everything else was already high in the air, circling around what was the eye of the storm.

Had you looked into the faces of the students, you would have seen how afraid they were. But they weren't your focus. The thing that shined most brightly in the Great Hall was one little girl that had been in a state of fear and loneliness for far too long already.

"Sally-Anne!", you shouted through the storm as a book passed by your head. You weren't afraid of her. She didn't want to hurt anyone. She had snapped and caused damage to some… but she didn't want to truly hurt anyone. She was keeping a tight grip over her magic that wanted to leash out against the world.

Your legs carried you further down the Great Hall, past the bravest of upper-years that had positioned themselves between the younger students and the silvery presence that was ripping everything out of its place with her magic.

"Sally-Anne Hudson", you repeated now that you were closer to her. Her magic reacted just the way her magic inside your mind had reacted when you had heard her name for the first time earlier in the month. Every object circling in the air around you came to a full stop.

"I know who you are", you shouted, when her eyes fell on you. You could feel her icy presence inside your mind as if she was roaming through it to look for memories relevant to her. You would feed her how sorry you were for what had happened to her, if you knew how to. Instead, she took what she wanted. Images of your life flashed into existence in front of your eyes.

"I know that you don't want to hurt anyone, Sally-Anne", you said lowering your voice this time. The screams behind you lost in volume as the thick magic that was in the air found a moment of pause. It was as commanding a present as you had ever felt.

"I would never… hurt" the little girl said, who had been eleven years old for far longer than your parents had been alive.

"I know that, Sally-Anne. You would never hurt anyone. You just want to go to your classes and learn about magic", you offered, when she stopped talking. "I know that, because I am like that, too. I just want to learn new things and see all that Hogwarts has to offer."

Her eyes brightened at your words. Someone was shouting something from behind you, but you kept your focus on the brightest mind in the room.

All of this was only possible because of one little girl, who had left the world too early. She would have been a force of nature otherwise. Her magic had kept her in this world, disregarding the possibility of just merely being a ghost and choosing to cement herself as a force inside Hogwarts' walls.

She could have been one of the strongest witches to ever roam the world. But she wasn't. She had been robbed of that possibility. Instead her life had found a cruel end.

"I just want to do magic. Like my parents. Why wouldn't he let me?" she asked. She was looking through you, not really talking to Jacob Basques, but to her own destiny. It had given her a bright mind and all the talent in the world, only to take it all away and kill her after two months at Hogwarts.

"But you are doing magic, Sally-Anne", you said, stepping closer to her again. You were now only a few feet away from her. If she wanted to kill you, there was nothing that you could do to stop her… but you knew that she would not want to hurt you. All of her self-imposed rules had been there to grant her own wish of being part of Hogwarts, without hurting anyone else.

People forgot about her, because she didn't want to impact their lives. She just wanted to have some happiness for herself.

"I am?" she asked, her eyes never focusing on you.

"Yes, you are. I've never seen something like it before. You come back every year and live inside the castle and no one ever notices. You let people see you, but never remember you and you are so strong that not even the most powerful of us could do something against it."

Her magic had rules and it had power… but it was fundamentally centered around a little girl that just wanted to be in class and learn from the Professors. She wanted to hear her own name when they praised her. Which was the reason why her magic had failed the moment that you thought you'd heard her name in the kitchen below the Great Hall.

The magic inside your head had been affected by that for just a second, still weak because it didn't have the time to cement itself inside your being over the years. That short weakness had been enough for you to remember. It had been enough to get to this very moment.

"You are awesome and extremely powerful", you said, finally reaching her place in the middle of the Great Hall.

"So, I can go home?" she asked. "I am not a failure? I am not a Squib?"

"No", you answered, letting your hands fall on her small shoulders. You could touch and feel her, but she felt cold against your skin. She felt wrong. As if she wasn't supposed to be here.

The air was thicker the closer you got to her. For the first time in your life you could actually feel magic. It vibrated against your skin, pushing against you and making it hard for you to breath.

"You are the single most talented witch I have ever seen", you said. Sally-Anne took a moment to register your words, before she smiled. She was looking right through your chest as if you weren't even there.

"Don't you want to go home and tell your family how strong you've gotten? They will surely be missing you", you said.

"Yes", she answered as her skin turned silver. She looked up, locking eyes with you for the first time. Your mind was attacked ever so softly as she remembered her mother's last words to her.

I love you.

"Yes, I want to go home", she said.

"Then go home, Sally-Anne. Hogwarts will always be waiting for you. The doors will never close for such a bright mind", the tears that dropped down your face were not yours. They were hers as she tried to feel human emotions for one last time through your mind.

The tears dried up by the time that Sally-Anne had disappeared, never to return again as she left this world for good.

After one-hundred-and-ninety-six-years, Sally-Anne Hudson was free.

Everything fell into silence, only to be disturbed by the failing magic, dropping some smaller objects that the storm had carried.

You rubbed your eyes, before you turned around to look at the crowd around you.

There were two dozen students inside the hall looking at you and at the entrance you could see Professor McGonagall who had hurried in, following behind two Gryffindor's that had run for help. Only now did you see the doors, tables and benches that had been frozen in the air by her outstretched wand.

Ah, yes.

Professor McGonagall had not been bewitched by Sally-Anne as a child. That was a sensible choice for a teacher that would still be able to help right now. She would have been one of those least damaged by the breaking mind spell. Those Gryffindors had made a good choice.

"A few points to Gryffindors, I guess", you said aloud. Your voice was the only thing that penetrated the silence.


Some in this world are driven by destiny and prophecies. You are not one of those. There is no prophecy with your name on it as destiny had not thought your name worthwhile. Your way is not that of prophets, but that of curiosity. And what is there more curious than time itself, withering through all and every secret, letting them fade away or bringing them out of deaths grip when saw them worthy.

→ You have earned 5 Time Echoes.

→ You can use 1 of those points to raise the probability of any roll by +5… and some other interesting things. You may or may not see.

---

What have you learned from the first case?

[ ] Magic is All - There are people that can become extremely powerful under the right circumstances

[ ] The World is Cruel - Sometimes it is those that can't stand up for themselves who are left behind

[ ] Death is simply Change – You have seen that death may not be the end to all things