Prologue
Althea Holmes had a gift.
When she was five years old, she'd ran to her mother and told her she should take better care of her flowers. When asked why, she'd simply shrugged and reasoned that fire burned flowers. Her mother paid her no heed - she wasn't planning on setting her white roses on fire. Two days later, the scorching summer heat ignited a small fire in their garden. The roses burned down to a crisp.
When she was six years old, she'd approached her father, who was watching the semi-finals of the World Cup sprawled on the sofa, and declared with certainty that England would win. But that was absurd, her father noted dismissively, England wasn't playing at the moment. Then five days later, the England National Team was holding the World Cup and parading it around after Hurst had scored a hat-trick.
When she was seven years old, she'd asked her parents to get her baby stuff for Christmas. Her father looked at her with utter confusion, and her mother laughed out loud. She'd said, "You're a little too old to shop at the baby section, honey." Althea had scoffed adamantly. "It's not for me," she'd said, "It's for the baby." Ten months later, her baby brother, Archie, was born.
When she was eight years old, she told her parents to tidy up the living room. When her mother questioned her, Althea answered plainly that she didn't want their guests to trip on Archie's walker. This time, her parents didn't question her. They didn't ask her about the guests she spoke of. They listened. They devoted the afternoon to cleaning out not only the living room, but the entire home. Come morning, they were visited by Albus Dumbledore and Cassandra Trelawney.
Dumbledore, headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, wore his best smile, and offered Althea's parents a bag of lemon drops as an apology for dropping in unannounced. Then, without much fanfare, he gave the Holmes family news that the lemon drops couldn't have prepared them for.
Althea was a seer, apparently. No, it made sense, really. How else would she have known the '66 World Cup winner, or about her mother's white roses burning, or about her brother being born before he was even conceived? But her parents struggled to believe it still.
Her father, a Muggle, was at a complete loss for words. It had taken him years to get used to the idea of magic, and his wife and daughter being witches. But his little Althea, a seer? That was a harder pill to swallow. Seeing flying pots every morning at breakfast was one thing. His daughter seeing the future was a whole other thing.
Althea's mother, while familiar with the concept of seers, was no more receptive to the news than her husband. Her mouth was opening and closing again and again, but no words were leaving her mouth. Althea, standing in the corner with her little brother cradled in her arms, had the funny thought that she looked like a gaping fish.
"But how?" Althea's mother had asked when she'd regained her composure. "Seers speak prophecies. Althea- Althea doesn't. She hasn't made any prophecies. Absolutely not. No, she's just... unusually perceptive."
Dumbledore had laughed gently with sparkling eyes filled with amusement. "Not all seers speak prophecies, Amalia. Some are just unusually perceptive."
"But Althea-"
"Althea has a gift, Amalia. A gift that she will use to help many," Dumbledore said calmly, a promise dangling from his lips. These weren't just encouraging words. There was a premonition in the headmaster's eyes - one that didn't go unnoticed by Amalia Holmes.
She wanted to argue. Amalia wanted to enquire about Dumbledore's words. She wanted to ask questions, and make him tell her everything he knew about her little girl. But, she didn't. And the headmaster, along with the tag-along seer Cassandra Trelawney, disapparated with a pop.
The Holmes household was quiet for a while after that, until Archie woke up from his nap and started screaming his little heart out. His screams helped restore a sense of normality in the home. For that moment, as Amalia took him from Althea's hands to feed him, there were no seers and no premonitions. There was just a hunrgy little boy, a doting mother, a fussing father, and a smiling sister.
Althea Holmes also had a curse.
While blessed with the gift of insight and premonition, while able to see what others couldn't, she had no control over what she saw or when she saw it. Her visions came to her at random times, without any warning whatsoever, or any tangible or traceable origin. They were usually small and insignificant visions - something about the neighbor's dog escaping, or Archie performing accidental magic and blowing up his orange custard at lunchtime.
And to add insult to injury, most of the time, Althea had no idea what she was seeing in her visions. The older she got, the more complicated they got. When she was younger, the future would unfold before her like a children's story-book, with vibrant colors and clear illustrations. But with time, the visions got more convoluted and unclear.
Instead of amusing children's stories, she saw complicated narratives and weird enigmas. Everything was a puzzle that, no matter how hard she tried, she could never put together. A puzzle piece was always misplaced, or lost, or broken. The puzzle gave her a headache. It made her want to bang her head against the wall. Repeatedly.
After many headaches and equally as many head-bangs, she gave up trying to decipher her visions. She never saw anything important anyway. All her visions were insignificant and childish and... useless. The gift that the headmaster of Hogwarts had told her family about was not a gift at all. It was a useless puzzle with no solution. It was a headache. It was an eye-sore.
Or so she thought. Until some years later, two months shy of her tenth birthday, little Althea Holmes predicted her brother's death.