Cassandra

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Chapter Two – The Tower

Her tower. When her parents had brought her here at the age of eight, in an attempt to save her sanity, Dumbledore and the other professors had prepared the tower for her. It was one of the most secluded ones and she had the tip top room in it.

When she first came to Hogwarts, it reminded her of the tower Rapunzel had been secluded in in the old fairy tale. Her parents had told her the tower was to keep her safe. Not from other people, like Rapunzel, but from their thoughts. For prophesizing wasn’t her only gift.

At the age of eight, Cassie had begun to hear the whispers of other minds. Just tell tale murmurs at first, like the wind rustling through the last few remaining fall leaves.

But soon that gentle breeze had grown into a roar and then a deafening hurricane. Everyone’s fears, desires, obsessions, anxieties, and random thoughts rushed through her mind until she couldn’t form a coherent thought of her own.

It quickly became apparent as her talent manifested that she couldn’t control it.

The tower at Hogwarts was prepared. It was cushioned, padded and enveloped with every blocking charm, silencing spell and enchantment that could be thought of.

She arrived, sedated, and unconscious. When she awoke in the tower the silence in her mind was almost as deafening as the voices had previously been. She was able to breathe again and she didn’t leave the tower for the next two years.

She’d been at Hogwarts since she was eight. The first two years she spent in the tower. Her room was spacious, luxurious and secluded. Professors Snape, Flitwick, and at first Trelawney came to the tower to tutor her in her lessons.

Professor Snape worked with her on suppressing the thoughts of others so that perhaps one day she could lead a normal life. Professor Flitwick taught her charms to protect her mind in case her mental defenses broke from the stressful onslaught of others’ anxieties and fears. It quickly became apparent that there was nothing that Professor Trelawney could teach her.

At the age of ten, she began to take her meals in the great hall, usually when it was the least crowded. She hadn’t been sorted so she drifted from table to table. Sitting one day with one house, the next day with a different one. Watching, observing the other students. Analyzing their traits and behaviors, she tested her ability to keep her mind secure and their thoughts at bay.

At eleven, she began potions class with a group of first years, a trial period, to see how she would adjust to a schedule of classes, studying and socializing.

At twelve, she joined the new first years, of which Harry, Hermione, and Ron were a part. But she still wasn’t sorted. She had no house alliance. She needed the security and solitude of the tower each night. She needed to relax her guard and her defenses, without the worry of a school full of thoughts flooding into her tired mind.

Then last year, George had invited her into the Gryffindor common room at the end of term to discuss the upcoming World Cup.

An unnatural silence had greeted her when she had stepped through the portrait hole that first time. For though her ability to hear others’ thoughts wasn’t common knowledge, everyone knew of her ability to prophesize.

She hadn’t been as careful as she should have been those first few years.

If she brushed against someone in the hall and had a vision she thought could be prevented, she might whisper a few words of warning. “You’ve forgotten your potions essay and Snape will be furious. He’ll give you detention if you don’t run back to the library and get it.” Or “Don’t sit beside Neville in Transfiguration. He’ll have trouble today and accidentally turn all your sweater buttons into ladybugs. It’ll be quite awkward when they all fly away.” Now as helpful as these words of advice might seem, they were not greeted with the enthusiasm you might think, and the rumors spread like wild fire. Then when she offered condolences to Pansy Parkinson on the loss of her aunt before the woman had actually died, she might as well have been signing her own death warrant.

At first some thought she was actually causing the problems herself with jinxes and curses. But then some sharp eared upperclassmen with a good memory remembered the girl who had been secluded in the tower and why.

But George had quickly broken the silence in the Gryffindor common room that day by offering to negate anyone’s need to have their future told due to their very short lifeline. Fred had merely mentioned their need to practice a few new curses on any willing or unwilling volunteers. Before long everyone went back to their previous conversations, studiously avoiding Cassie’s gaze.

That day, when Cassie had pressed her fingertips to George’s in an attempt to gain knowledge about the upcoming World Quidditch Match, she knew she was losing her heart.

But she also knew she couldn’t tell him. For even though every encounter she had with him had great significance in her mind, she knew it was only a moment’s distraction for him.

So she had decided instead to be happy with the friendship they had and try not to read too much into any chance remark he might make.

That was why when he offered to walk her back to her tower, she knew she should treat it as only a courtesy and decline his help. No reason to bring awkward ‘goodnights’ into this equation.

Still, a girl could dream couldn’t she……?


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Gin