Oneiromancy

"Well, go on then," said Oleandra. "What did you dream about last night, Trace?"

While Daphne and Hermione were having fun with numbers in Arithmancy, Oleandra and Tracey had begun learning the art of interpreting the future from their dreams, which was also known as Oneiromancy. Professor Trelawney's explanations had taken up most of the period, so they only had about ten minutes left to actually interpret their dreams.

Oleandra and Tracey had, of course, paired up, while Harry had paired up with Ron.

"You go first," she said, raising her copy of Inigo Imago's The Dream Oracle at eye-level to prevent Oleandra from seeing her blush furiously.

Oleandra's dreams most often did not have anything to do with the future, as far as she could tell. There was no doubt that Professor Trelawney and Professor Babbling would have a field day interpreting her dreams, but Oleandra was not tempted to give them the opportunity.

Ever since Viviane's incomplete sacrificial protection had failed to completely stop the Killing Curse from annihilating her very being, she would sometimes have strange visions. While she had managed to piece her broken mind back together after the fact, some pieces of the puzzle that was her mind kept slipping through the cracks. Fragments of shattered memories from her past incarnations would float up from her subconscious every now and then as she slept, populating her dreams with visions of the past.

And ever since her second year at Hogwarts, Oleandra would sometimes experience a recurring dream, in which she would stumble barefoot through the dark for a while, before happening upon the World Tree. A flash of lightning would reveal a figure hanging by the neck to one of its branches, which upon closer inspection would become a one-eyed corpse wearing Oleandra's face, reciting a poem she had come to learn by heart:

"Do you know how to carve?

Do you know how to read?

Do you know how to colour?

Do you know how to suffer?

Do you know how to ask?

Do you know how to offer?

Do you know how to sacrifice?"

For each of the corpse's questions, Oleandra would always answer yes. But when it would ask its final question:

"Do you know how to slaughter?"

Oleandra would inevitably shake her head, and disappointed, the corpse would finish by saying:

"Better not to ask than to sacrifice too much,

For a gift is always rewarded,

And a boon always demands a return,

Better not to offer than have to slay too many."

And then, she would wake up.

Oleandra had often tried to interpret this dream by herself. The first lines of the poem seemed innocent enough; they reminded her of a kindly teacher asking a student if they had done their runes homework.

The rest, however, was much more sinister— in short, the next lines of the poem taught that only by sacrificing something of value could one obtain something else of equal value.

If you weren't prepared to fully commit to a cause, then it was better to not even try, to spare yourself the pain of failure or the pain of loss. But if you truly were prepared to obtain the fruit of your desires… then you had to forge onwards and never look back, no matter the cost, no matter the pain, no matter what. You either stayed ordinary, or became extraordinary…

Originally, the British Isles had been home to Gaelic Celts and Brittonic Celts; their Wizards and Witches had used the magic of the Ogham, the runes of the earth for a thousand years. Then, two thousand years ago, the Romans subjugated the British Isles up to Hadrian's wall, bringing with them the magic of wands that is used to this very day and which has been popularized across the entire world.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the Angles and the Saxons invaded the British Isles from the east, bringing with them a new type of magic: the power of Ancient Runes, the magic of the stars. Unable to deal with these newcomers and the mounting pressure from within their own realm, the Romans had no choice but to abandon the province of Britannia; though their magic would endure there through the ages.

A few hundred years later, Vikings, who also used the magic of the stars, would in turn raid and invade the Anglo-Saxons countless times, turning their very own magic against them— which is extremely ironic.

But here's the thing: in their time, Viviane, King Arthur and the Round Table Knights had desperately fought to repel these Anglo-Saxon invaders. Oleandra's inner turmoil had to be related to this: her soul and her magic were at odds with each other on a fundamental level.

After all, the magic of the stars and its twenty-four runes had been made for conquest. Indeed, not content with the Earth, the Æsir Wizards had conquered the nine realms aeons ago, spilling an incredible volume of blood in the process, and enslaving an entire world's worth of House Elves from Alfheim.

That was the crux of the matter, Oleandra thought to herself— Greater Fairies are contradictory beings by nature, so this discrepancy suited her just fine. It was just that magic or not, killing and plundering were sort of frowned upon these days, and her good conscience had to agree.

However, her goal of truly changing society would inevitably require sacrifice, even bloodshed. And in the near future, the British Isles would be plunged in conflict and war. The day when people everywhere would no longer be able to afford Stunning over killing was fast approaching, and despite herself, Oleandra was looking forward to the day when she would no longer have to hold back.

The real question was, what was she willing to sacrifice in order to achieve her goals?

"For the greater good," Oleandra muttered to herself, earning herself a strange look from Tracey.

In the end, Oleandra and Tracey did not manage to get much dream interpretation done before the lesson ended. Professor Trelawney had come along and engaged Oleandra in conversation to ask her how she had managed to overturn her destined death at the end of the third task.

"You're the one who's always saying I'm a True Seer," Oleandra had responded. "Prophecies always have a catch, don't they? As long as you know what's going to happen, you can find a loophole, allowing you to fulfil the prophecy without sacrificing too much."

It was all pseudo-babble, but Oleandra technically hadn't lied when she had uttered those words. Professor Trelawney found them convincing enough… though that did not stop her from giving her homework: to hold a dream diary for the rest of the month.

In fact, it was more the opposite: Professor Trelawney was looking forward to interpreting a True Seer's dreams! Except, Oleandra and Tracey weren't especially keen on sharing their dreams publicly. Right before the lesson ended, they quickly invented a few dreams out of thin air and looked up their significance in the Dream Oracle.

Apparently, Oleandra would be taking up ice skating before the first snowfall, and Tracey would be expecting twins by Christmas.

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"If Professor Umbridge's class is anything like her speech, we might have a contender for most boring day of the year," Oleandra whispered to Tracey, as she took a seat in the middle of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom before looking at the woman in question. "Over here!" she added, upon seeing Daphne step into the classroom shortly after them.

"How was Divination?" Daphne asked.

"Good news all around, I'd say. Apparently, I'm going to take up a new hobby," Oleandra said, before looking at Tracey with a pained expression. "But Tracey, aren't we friends? When were you planning on telling us you were pregnant?"

"Congratulations, to the both of you," said Daphne without missing a beat. "I imagine you're the father, Sis?"

Oleandra had been planning to poke fun at Tracey, but now she was the one who was blushing!