true loves poison • james potter

62

It was hard to grapple with the shift within the students, even among the students. They could all feel how the energy around the castle had darkened, by no magic other than general emotions.

Although, some certain students felt the energy had darkened so quickly and considerably because emotions hold a sort of raw magic.

Voldemort had once been a far off danger, but the increase in media coverage since the start of the new year was showing how powerful coverage could be.

Hundreds if not thousands of muggles, muggle borns and even some unlucky half bloods were being murdered by Voldemort and his armies.

Lorelei noticed with a but of anxiety that the Runcorn girl had disappeared in early February. A quick chat with Dumbledore revealed she had dropped out in favor of joining Voldemort's uprising.

The fact she was gone to do Godric knows what to Godric knows who made Lorelei queasy.

James wrapped his arm around her as they sat together for dinner. "I'm sure the aurors will capture her quickly. She's just a teenager, how much damage can she do?"

Slowly peeling her eyes away from her now cold pasta, Lorelei met Jame's gaze. "It is unwise to underestimate a teenager, James. Considering you are one yourself, I would have assumed you would understand that."

James gave her a confident smile, "But not every wizard is as proficient at magic as I am."

His joke settled horribly on her poor mood. Standing up, she felt the loss of his arm around her as she crawled out of her seat to walk to the door.

She recognized James was only trying to lighten the mood in the school, especially her mood considering they were dating, but joking about people being murdered wasn't quite the way she wanted to be made to feel better.

Going to her dorm, she pulled out Slytherin's Diary. An increasing habit, as she found the book provided a point of view much different than her own.

And with a war on the horizon, learning some spells from Slytherin's perspective couldn't be a bad thing, right?

An illustration of a clock caught her eye. Upon further inspection, it was not quite a clock but an image of the moon phases. The eight phases fanned around a globe in the center.

She noticed small symbols under the image, clearly illustrated quickly as they were hardly detailed.

The first was a circle with a small dot in the center. The second of a small crescent moon. Then on a circle with a cross beneath it and a u coming off the top. Then the same symbol without the u. A circle with an arrow coming off the upper left.

Glancing over the five remaining symbols, she finally recognized the symbols.

Grabbing her book bag, Lorelei dumped the contents out until she found her astronomy textbook. Flipping to the first page she smiled softly at the first assignment the professor did with the class: calculating their star signs.

The same symbols scribbled haphazardly in Slytherin's diary were scrawled into her textbook. The one difference were that she had her own signs drawn and written next to the symbols.

The short sentence in the reflection section of the page caught her eye, and her slightly sloppy writing spoke in the dialect of younger Lorelei.

There's something unsettling about the stars predicting our future.

The sentence made a thought appear, but just before she could fully understand what she was trying to think about the thought stepped just out of her grasp.

While the thought stayed at the tip of her tongue, she glanced over her star signs beginning with her sun, moon, and rising: Aquarius, Cancer, and Pisces.

A small note pointed to her moon and rising: According to Pandora two water signs is a sign that I'm emotional...

Glancing back at her reflection sentence, Lorelei remembered her thought as her eyes caught on the word 'predicting'.

Slytherin was contemplating the stars around the same time he was opposing a seer. He was looking to the stars for answers regarding the future.

Picking up Slytherin's diary she flipped to the page following the illustration. Sure enough there was a short entry about how the stars corroborated Ranulph's prophesy. How he was indeed going to lay the dark foundation for destruction at Hogwarts.

Her discovery from the week before washed over her again, and the puzzle pieces she'd already decoded fit into place among the newest ones.

Slytherin had, somehow, left Hogwarts vulnerable to Voldemort. In his diary, Slytherin had said Ranulph predicted this, was he referring to her old runes homework? Or was there a seperate prophesy?

Her stomach flipped and nausea came on so strong she felt the urge to cry.

The pieces were fitting together a bit too well, and all the pieces were pointing to the fall of Hogwarts.

Her physical troubles made her drop Slytherin's diary.

Bending down to pick the book back up, Lorelei paused when she noticed the book had opened to a spell.

Gently picking the book up as she read, Lorelei sat at the edge of her bed.

After reading through the page, it became clear what the spell would do, and why Slytherin had written it down for practice.

He was morphing blood magic and defensive magic to try and interrupt a prophesy.

A small skull in the corner made the dark energy already pouring from the spell increase. It was clear the spell wouldn't end well.

Feeling torn between tossing the book across the room and never setting it down again, she settled with putting a scrap piece of paper as a bookmark.

Sliding the book under her bed, Lorelei decided to try and go to sleep early in an attempt to settle her stomach.

Her astronomy textbook, abandoned on the ground, would later remind her of her birthday the following day.