• Plans Are Made

  "Ron!"
  
  Harry shook his best friend awake. Ron had never been a morning person, and after the late night meeting with Dumbledore he was resisting all attempts to rouse him.
  
  "Ron, get up now or you'll miss breakfast completely!"
  
  It was a cheap shot, but it worked. Ron suddenly achieved verticality, and then looked at Harry suspiciously.
  
  "Whatimesit?"
  
  Harry grinned and steered his best friend towards the wash basins. Despite only falling into bed a few hours earlier Harry had woken up before the others in his room. He remembered having strange dreams, although he couldn't quite recall what they'd been about. When he'd woken that morning he'd been thinking about Professor Rosenberg. He had a feeling that she'd played a large part in his dreams, and he'd spent a while trying to recapture them. So long, in fact, that everyone else had made their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast, leaving him sat on his bed, and Ron snoring in the next bed over.
  
  A short while later they were both heading down to breakfast, dressed in jeans and t-shirts. Hermione was waiting for them, and waved them over eagerly.
  
  "I've been thinking about what Dumbledore was saying last night."
  
  Ron rolled his eyes, and started piling food onto his plate. It was a Saturday, and breakfast was later than during the week, but the Great Hall was still emptying quickly, and soon the house elves would want to come in to tidy away the dirty dishes, and clean the place up.
  
  "Think about it Ron, Dumbledore practically told us to find out more about Professor Rosenberg."
  
  "Library?" Harry asked, knowing Hermione's thought processes.
  
  Hermione nodded, and finished her pumpkin juice. "Maybe there'll be something in there about her. We can start by checking the old school yearbooks, see if she went to school here. The name Rosenberg can't be that common, so even if we can't find her, we might find her parents."
  
  "But she's come from America," Ron pointed out.
  
  "Yes, but there's nothing to say she's spent all her life over there. If she's powerful enough to even get close to ending the world, then she'll have to have been trained somewhere. Everyone knows that Hogwarts is the best school you can attend, so there's a pretty good chance that she came here."
  
  Ron looked sceptical.
  
  "I'm not sure, Hermione," Harry said, "I mean, wouldn't it make more sense if she went to somewhere like Durmstrang?"
  
  "They don't take girls at Durmstrang," Hermione pointed out. "But you do have a point. I think that Hogwarts is the best place to start, but obviously we'll try and check the other schools as well. There's quite a few in America now, but I think that the Roosevelt Academy and the Halston School of Magic only opened in the last few years, so that narrows it down a bit."
  
  Ron stuffed the last piece of croissant into his mouth and wiped his hands on his clothes. The hall was empty apart from them, and one or two other late comers on the other house tables. He got up from the table, clutching his stomach with one hand.
  
  "Ooof," he groaned, as his body objected to being that full and having to move as well.
  
  "Come on," Hermione encouraged, almost bouncing on her toes in her eagerness to get to the library. As Ron waddled towards the doors, she and Harry walked on ahead.
  
  "I still don't see the point," Ron objected, catching up as they walked through the corridors. "What's finding out where she went to school going to do for us?"
  
  "Well, maybe we could find out what she was like when she was younger," Harry said. "Even if it's just what house she was in. It's going to be a clue to what she's really like, isn't it?"
  
  "The plan is," Hermione said authoritatively, "Ron, you find the Hogwarts yearbooks for the years she might have been here. She's got to be at least twenty, and no older than twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Harry's going to see if he can find anything about the name Rosenberg, and I'm going to look for anything that makes reference to the witch who tried to end the world. It sounds like the kind of thing that'd be written down in a prophecy somewhere, and there might even be new books that talk about it, although I'm not going to hold my breath."
  
  Ron sighed, and shook his head. It was the first weekend of the new school year, the weather was perfect for flying, and already Hermione had found a reason to keep them all cooped up in the library. He wasn't in the least convinced that there'd be anything to help them in there, but he wasn't about to argue with Hermione when she was in research mode. He resigned himself to his fate with another heavy sigh.
  
  

  ---

  
  Willow had taken an early breakfast and, as the Gryffindor trio got settled in the library, she was curled up on her bed.
  
  Her kitten was chasing a small spider across the bedroom floor, batting at it when it stopped moving. She still hadn't thought of a name for the little creature, but was determined to name it by the end of the day.
  
  "After all, I can't keep calling you 'cat', now can I?" Willow giggled as the kitten snuffled at the spider, and then jumped back as it tried to climb onto her nose.
  
  The kitten looked round the floor, but the spider had made good its escape while she was backed up, unnerved by the tickling sensation on her small nose. Willow stretched out across the end of the bed, and scooped the bundle of black fluff up.
  
  She put the kitten on the bed in front of her, and stroked its soft fur. It was still young enough to have the fuzzy baby fur that made it look twice its actual size, but even so it was a tiny little thing. It mewed quietly, and Willow's heart melted at the sound.
  
  "You're just a little ball of cuteness, aren't you?" she cooed to it, and scratched its ears.
  
  It meeped at her, and batted at her fingers with a paw the size of a twenty pence piece, before losing its balance on the uneven bed covers and sitting down abruptly.
  
  Willow giggled, and smoothed between its pointed ears with one finger. She picked it up again, and cradled it gently against her chest. It started to purr quietly, and she could feel the rumbling vibrations all the way through its body.
  
  "What to call you, what to call you," she mused to herself. "You don't look like a 'Queenie' or a 'Sheba'. You need an unusual name, don't you little one?"
  
  She held the cat up in front of her face, one hand under its back legs, the other supporting its chest. It reached out with a front paw and poked at her nose.
  
  Willow giggled, and studied the small cat's face. It was an entirely black cat, with sharply pointed ears and pale blue eyes that showed an almost human intelligence. She let it pad at her nose and cheeks a few more times before placing it gently on the floor.
  
  It mewed again, and looked up at her briefly before wandering under the bed. Willow pulled herself further forwards, and hung her head off the bed upside down. The kitten had curled up against the wall under the head of the bed, and it eyed her sleepily before deciding she wasn't going to bother it, and tucking its head under its tail in a little circle.
  
  Willow pushed herself upright, and went to make a cup of tea. The room which served as study, living room and kitchen had come equipped with a small stove and kettle, as well as a sink, and on rummaging through the cupboards she'd found tea bags and sugar. The small cupboard to the left of the stove had been magically charmed to stay cold, and there was a small bottle of milk in it, as well as a few basic foodstuffs.
  
  She quickly conjured a fire on the stove and filled the kettle. She bit her lip, thinking of the kitten that she and Tara had shared; Miss Kitty Fantastico. She'd already thought about naming her new kitten after Miss Kitty, but decided against it. It would have been nice to have some tangible way to remember Tara, but the kitten just didn't look like a 'Miss Kitty Fantastico', and perhaps it was for the best that she had a whole new beginning in a new place.
  
  The kettle was soon whistling, and she grabbed a cup and tea bag, and poured in a drop of milk. As she poured the hot water into the cup, she heard a mewing from the doorway. The kitten, disturbed by the whistling of the kettle, had come out to see what was happening.
  
  It was leaning against the doorway, looking up at her with a calm expression. Willow stirred her tea, and disposed of the tea bag, moving to sit down on the couch. She put the tea on the table just in time as the small cat ran over and tried to climb up her legs to reach the couch.
  
  "Ack," Willow winced as the needle-like claws dug through her trousers and into her legs. She quickly grabbed the cat, gently unhooking its claws and plopping it on the couch next to her. It meeped its distaste at being moved, and turned its back on her, deliberately cleaning its back feet one after the other.
  
  "Fine," Willow said, and stuck her tongue out at the kitten, "you sulk if you like, but you're not getting away with climbing up my legs!"
  
  The kitten gave her a haughty look over one shoulder and returned to its cleaning.
  
  "Maybe I should be thinking of calling you 'Cordelia'!" Willow laughed, and reached out a hand to scratch its head. It stretched and tilted its head so she could rub its ears. As she fussed it, it started to purr again, a deep rumble that originated in its tiny chest and vibrated outwards.
  
  Willow sipped her tea slowly, thinking of other names that would suit the kitten. It was quite a dignified little thing, although playful as any young animal would be. She was a pretty cat as well, and Willow searched her memory for any witchy names she might have read that would fit the kitten's personality.
  
  "How about 'Athena'," she mused out loud. "Or 'Thalia'?"
  
  The kitten was ignoring her again, cleaning itself industriously.
  
  "'Aradia?"
  
  Willow put her empty cup down, and sighed. The kitten was still preening, licking her tiny paws and drawing them over her head.
  
  "'Calliope'?"
  
  The kitten sat up and looked at Willow.
  
  "Calliope? Is that your name?" Willow smiled and reached out a hand to the small cat. It turned round and rubbed up against her hand, rumbling again.
  
  "Well," Willow said, satisfied, "I'm glad we've finally got that sorted."
  
  
  -: Chapter 10 -:- Chapter 12 :-
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