"Welcome, my children!" Professor Trelawney greeted with her usual trembling voice. "I was predicting one of you would not come to class today!" She announced while searching the room. A few seconds later, a boy's head peeked inside through the door.

"Sorry." He apologized shyly and sat down on a free cushion. 

"...Would not come on time, I meant to say." Trelawney corrected herself and brushed some bushy strands of hair from her face, tucking them behind her ear. The professor walked over to a sizzling cauldron in the middle of the room. "Today, my dears, we are seeing the timeline of your life through the fog! Oh, bless you, Mr. Barnes." Trelawney stopped to say. There was a pause and then Nicholas Barnes sneezed. He blushed, the eyes of the entire class on top of him. 

Professor Trelawney's gaze turned back to the classroom. She grabbed a small leather bag from her desk and held it out for everyone to see. "Now with the ingredients that I asked you to bring in last week, I want you to crush them with your mortar and produce a very fine dust. You will then add a teaspoon of this special Gloom powder that I have here and stir until you begin to see the fog! Oh, any liquid ingredients can simply be poured into the cauldron. And, as I told you, the ingredients that you brought must have some connection to your past. The stronger your feelings and nostalgia are to these ingredients, the more powerful your visions will be. Everyone got it? Then lets begin!" 

Issa went to grab the special ingredient from Trelawney and then from her bag she produced three more ingredients. The first one she held was a lily of the valley. She dried up the flower with spell and then placed it in her mortar. As she crushed it, the smell of her yard outside her house filled her nostrils. Issa remembered laying on the grass with her mother on the first days of spring. Lilies of the valley tickling their bare feet. They grew wild outside her house. One time, her father Draco came outside to meet them -dressed in all black like he usually did- and sat between them. Her mom rested her head on his lap and Issa pretended to sleep on him as well. They stayed like that for what felt like hours. It was the most time she had ever spent that close to her father. 

Once the flower had been crushed, Issa inserted the second ingredient, a bezoar stone. Its acid smell reminded her of her parent's bedroom. Even before Issa had been born, her mother had already been weak and sick. A medicine concocted mainly with the bezoar stone was something that was always brewing in her house. At night, her father was normally upstairs, tending to the cauldron. Her parents had never told her or Scorpius what her mother was really sick of growing up, not until they were both in Hogwarts. Her mother had blood malediction. A curse that had been put on her ancestors and that had been carried on through the Greengrass family. Her mother had to drink a bezoar potion every few nights in order to prevent her from turning into a snake, but the ingredients made her body extremely fragile. Now that she was older, Issa was not afraid for her mother, she wasn't in any more risk of dying than anyone else. The curse and the potion only made her very feeble. But growing up and seeing her mother like that caused a lot of hard moments in Issa's life and worry. 

Then, Issa poured the last ingredient into the cauldron. It was a teaspoon of jet-black ink. Not any kind of ink though, it was a special one that her brother used to buy from Zonko's called the Rewritten Ink. Not so long before Issa's first year at Hogwarts, her brother Scorpius used to call her to his room. He would tell her about Hogwarts and what it was like, and then he would give her his books for her to learn from. In order to prepare her for school, Scorpius would make her do his homework with the special ink so that her handwriting would morph to look like his. She did this every Christmas and summer holiday, late at night while her brother watched over her. During the day, Scorpius would give her book after book to read. 

When the ink had settled into the cauldron, Issa scraped in the Gloom powder in with the rest of the liquids. She turned the mix 11 times and slowly a purple vapor began to consume her surroundings. It's scent began to seep into her brain. Then, though the fog, she began to relive her childhood. 

Her mother had just finished pouring water into a vase and then placed it on a granite counter by the entrance of their house. Issa handed her some freshly cut lilies of the valley to her mom, and she placed them neatly in the vase. Then, with her wand, she ignited the fireplace underneath. Issa stayed there for a moment, watching as the wood crackled with the heat and the sparks flew out. 

Her father came through the door, cold air swooped in from behind him. The Daily Prophet was wrinkled in his hand. His forehead blooming with a pumping vein. 

"Everything he does, I bloody swear..." His father cursed. Issa moved out of the way as he paced. Astoria, her mother turned around to look at her husband. "He could be shitting , and it would be on the front page."

Astoria rolled her eyes away from Draco's gaze but despite his bad mood, she walked toward him to kiss him hello. Draco kissed his wife back and loosened his hold on the paper. With her wand, Astoria shook the Daily Prophet out of his grip. Draco placed both his hands on her hips and gave her another kiss. 

Issa didn't need to ask her father who he was talking about, they were all well aware of the man that always got his on his nerves, Harry Potter. 

"How's Scorpius, dear?" Astoria asked when Draco let go of her. Her father had just returned from King's Cross Station to drop Scorpius off. Astoria had not gone with them, she rarely left the house. Crowded and loud places always made her uneasy, but she had promised she would be there with Narcissa on her first year. 

"He's forgotten his D.A.D.A. book." Draco said, pouring himself a cup of dark tea. 

"I told him to check underneath his bed." His mother shook her head. "I'll be sending an owl this afternoon." Issa stayed quiet. Scorpius's book was actually laying open in her bedroom.

Astoria unfolded the Daily Prophet. "So his second son just started his first year at Hogwarts? Ah, And he's a Gryffindor." She smiled. Underneath the text was a picture of Harry Potter waving goodbye from inside the train. But this Harry Potter wasn't wearing glasses and there wasn't a lightning bolt scar on his head. He also looked much younger, almost around Issa's age. "Albus Severus Potter..." 

"It's like Potter named his children after every person he's ever met." Draco said with his harsh tone. Astoria only chuckled softly.

Then Issa's vision blurred and when she refocused it she was in her brother's room. Scorpius was unpacking his bags, he had just arrived home. Issa was excited to hear everything about his First year at Hogwarts, she was only a year away from starting. 

Her brother removed his clothes from his case and onto the bed with a certain aggression. "If you want to succeed at Hogwarts, listen to me carefully, Cissy." He told her. "No one there will like you, so you have to make yourself be liked. We're Malfoys, and we have a reputation. Trust me, from my experience, it's way easier to go along with what everyone thinks of you than trying to prove them otherwise." His voice was tight and grim. Issa could see in his eyes that he wasn't lying. 

"What if I get put in Gryffindor, or Ravenclaw, or-"

"You'll be in Slytherin. And there's no point in thinking otherwise." Issa stayed quiet. When her brother had left for Hogwarts, she had sent him letters. What he wrote back to her had made Issa so excited about Hogwarts, she had secretly written a letter to McGonagall asking the Headmaster to admit her a year earlier. She had been too shy to actually send it though. The way Scorpius spoke now about Hogwarts made her shiver. 

"But don't worry Cissy, their expectations of us only gives you and me the perfect chance to exceed them. I will help you." He said, and Issa looked up at her brother.

"Um..." Issa said tentatively. "When you were at Hogwarts...did you meet that boy Potter?" Issa called him by what she always heard her father refer to them as.

Scorpius's eyebrows lowered into a frown. "Yeah," he said, not looking at her. He continued cleaning out his suitcase. "There's two of them. The oldest one is in his Third year. Not much to say about him, his Potter fame has died down. The other one is in my year. And just like us, he's what everyone expects him to be." Issa wasn't sure if she was what everyone expected her to be. She didn't really know what anyone thought of her, to be honest. Their family didn't congregate much with the other wizard families. 

Before she could ask anything, her brother carried on, "He looks so much like his ridiculous father that everyone forgets that he's not him. They praise him for doing nothing." Issa could understand the type of jealousy that was radiating from her brother. It was the same thing she experienced when Draco spoke about Scorpius with his friends and seemed to forget about her. "They're all snobs, all of them. Including their cousins." Scorpius said, standing up. "They think their life is set for them because their parents are seen as heroes. And we..." Scorpius stood up from his bed and unfolded his green and silver robes. "We get seen as bullies even before they get to meet us." 

Scorpius pulled out a thick textbook and shoved it at Issa, who took it with both hands. "Read it and memorize it. When you're done, I'll give you another." Scorpius looked at her in the eyes. His were as grey as hers, and it seemed as though a storm were happening inside them. 

Then, Issa's vision hazed again and she was in her father's room. Her parent's large bed had their bedsheets unmade. The room was dark and it was raining outside. Only a few lights illuminated the room.  She was alone in the bedroom, her parents were at a dinner party and Draco had asked her to take care of the potion he was brewing for Astoria. Issa was putting all of her attention to this task. Her father had asked her, not Scorpius, to finish brewing it. 

Issa looked at the potions book and read the instructions again. In 7 minutes, she was supposed to stir 8 times counter-clockwise and add 2 grams of bicorn horn powder (which she had already crushed and scaled) into the cauldron. Her brother came in at that moment unannounced, and her concentration was broken so suddenly that she jumped in fright. 

"When are you going to finish my homework, Cissy? We leave tomorrow." Scorpius asked. 

"Scorpius, I don't think I'll have the time. Father told me to take care of mum's potion while they're away."

"I'll do it." He said. "You need to practice for your first D.A.D.A. class. Our professor is no joke."

"Well if you think about it, I'm practicing for Potion's class." Narcissa checked her time watch. A bead of sweat began forming on her forehead.

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "You don't need to worry about Potion's class. Professor Slughorn will include you in his stupid student meetings just for being a Malfoy." 

"Father asked me to take care of this. I can't let him down. It's for mother." Issa's eyes didn't leave the cauldron as she said it.

Scorpius's jaw clenched. "You're right, Cissy, you can't let them down. It you mess it up, you'll kill mum." He said roughly and left the room. Issa's hands trembled, the scent of bezoar stones filled her lungs. 

And then once more, Issa's vision blackened and when her eyes could see again she noticed that she was in a dark-lit place that she did not recognize. This time, she saw herself with her own eyes instead of seeing the events happen through her younger self. She didn't look much older or any younger, though. 

Issa could hear herself huffing from effort, sweat was streaming down her face but at the same time she was shivering. She was hauling something heavy, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust and notice that it wasn't something, but someone. Their face was unrecognizable but judging from their size she guessed that it was a man. Nothing she could see was clear enough to distinguish, it was like looking through hazy water. The more Issa tried to peer into the vision, the harder her head began to pump until she had to close her eyes and let it disappear. When she opened them again, she was back in the classroom and her ears began to open up to the fuzzy chatter of the divination students. People were standing up and gathering their belongings, ready to leave. Trelawney was helping some dazed Hufflepuffs stay upright. The blended fumes of all the cauldrons had created such a strong stench that Issa had to hurry up and leave before she became sick.