Judas

Jovana’s first night back in her own bed at Hogwarts was a restless one. Her dreams, when she actually managed to get to sleep, were plagued with random imagines and voice that warned her to be careful. The rest of the night she spent awake and staring at the top of her four-poster bed.

By the time morning rolled around, she felt no better than she had the night before, and had deep circles under her eyes. She dressed and grabbed her bag wordlessly and followed Sarah down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

Sarah noticed that Jovana wasn’t as cheery as she normally was, but she wasn’t too concerned. She figured she’d just had a bad night, and didn’t concern herself with all the dark thoughts and ideas that had begun to form in her best friend’s head.

“A good schedule this year then?” She asked through a mouth of waffle.

“Nothing too exciting,” Jovana’s head snapped up and she looked over schedule, “Muggle Studies, Double Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against The Dark Arts, and Arithmancy.”

“Sounds like a full schedule,”

“Nothing too bad,” she relied weakly. For her, it wasn’t because she had always been a good student and was always one of the top students at school, “what about you?”

“Double Potions, Charms, Defense Against The Dark Arts, Divination, and Ancient Runes,” she sighed and shrugged her shoulders. Sarah had always been a decent student, but she never excelled because she never particularly cared about that. She wasn’t even sure of anything she wanted to do after Hogwarts yet.

“Sounds like you’ll be just as busy,” Jovana smiled weakly and could already picture all the nights she’d have to help Sarah out with her essays and papers. She didn’t usually mind, but sometimes she wished that her best friend would put out a little more effort.

“I promise I’ll try harder this year,” she stuck out her tongue.

“You say that every year,” Jovana laughed a little.

“And every year I do a little better!” Sarah raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“Fine. You win this one…for now,” Jovana smiled and forgot about all that had been plaguing her for the past night.

--

The first few weeks of the new term passed without much excitement or action. The students adjusted to their new schedules and for the first years, their new home.

Jovana attended her classes and spent time with her small circle of friends, just like she always had, but at night, she was still plagued by dark images. Now though, they meant something to her – they were always of Tom Riddle and his friends meeting in strange places and discussing strange things. Sometimes they even talked about how to hurt other people. Whenever she had these types of dreams, she hoped they were just that – dreams. And nothing more.

Things changed though, a few nights before Halloween when Jovana had another dream, but this time it wasn’t scary, it simply starred her and Sarah.

“Looking forward to the Halloween Feast then?” Sarah had asked her.

“As always, I’m hoping for lots of treacle tart, always my favorite,” she agreed.

“Did you want to do anything after? Maybe a midnight stroll in the Forbidden Forest?”

“Ooh someone’s feeling like getting into a whole of trouble,” Jovana laughed.

“We would never get caught!”

“Maybe…we’ll see,” she shook her head at her best friend.

When she woke up, she hadn’t thought anymore of the dream. It wasn’t until she got down to breakfast that she fully realized what had just happened.

“Looking forward to the Halloween Feat then?” Sarah sat down next to her and asked just as she had down in her dream.

“Of course…definitely hoping for lots of treacle tart,” she replied, getting a sense of deja-vu and wondering how similar to her dream this would end up.

“Do you want to do anything after? Maybe a midnight stroll in the Forbidden Forest?”

“Sounds like trouble,” she replied as she almost choked on her pumpkin juice.

“We would-“

“Never get caught, right?”

“How’d you know what I was about to say?”

“I know you so well,” Jovana laughed lightly, “I’ve got to go to the library, okay? I’ll catch you up in class.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Jovana called behind her back. What she didn’t notice was that Mordecai started following her.

“Ana! What’s wrong?”

“Nothing Morde,” she rolled her eyes and stopped in her tracks.

“Do you really expect me to believe that? We’re twins for goodness sake, I know you a little better than that!”

“Don’t do this Morde,”

“Tell me then, it’s that simple,”

“I’ve just been having some weird dreams is all,”

“What kind of dreams?”

Jovana wasn’t ready to tell him about all her wacky dreams, but she figured she could tell him about deja-vu one, “I had a dream last night and everything that happened in it, happened at breakfast today.”

“Ana-“

“It’s probably just a weird coincidence but I just wanted to look it up, you know to see if things like that happen commonly,”

“I don’t think they do,” Mordecai’s eyes widened, “is this the first time something like that has happened to you?”

Jovana tried to think whether or not it was the first time. If she was thinking logically, she would have just said yes and ignored any further interrogation but she couldn’t lie to her brother.

“No,” she sighed. If reality, when she thought about it, it had happened to her countless other times, but she had always regarded it as a strong deja-vu thing, “it’s happened since I can remember.”

“Ana, I-I think you’re a seer,” he said quietly.

“A seer! You must be mad,” she laughed at the notion.

“It makes sense Ana! We are descended from Inigo Imago after all,”

“He lived over three centuries ago!”

“So? The gift of seeing can be carried through generation,” Mordecai stood by what he said.

“You’re crazy, Morde. I’m not a seer,” she laughed and continued on her way to the library.

“Think about it Ana!”

As she turned the corner she took a moment and steadied herself. She didn’t want to think about it all. The more and more she did think about it, the more and more plausible it seemed: her dreams coming true, the things she had guessed at coming true.

That’s when it hit her: if she had the full blown gift, wouldn’t some members of her family have minor variations of it? Her thoughts turned to her father and “prediction” he had made when he had dropped them off at Kings Cross this past September.

“Things have been too good for too long. Something’s bound to happen soon.”

It wasn’t much of a prediction, but in her gut told her it was going to come true.

“Oh my God,” she said as she tried to control her heavy breathing, “they were all right.”