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TWENTY-TWO GET FREE
(OUT OF THE BLACK...)
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... AND HOLLY OPENS HER EYES, finding herself in the same place she had been for the first time months ago, when the drawing room in Malfoy Manor was still reflecting a green light around her body, her heart stopping for the first time of many. She looks around, expecting it to be Durmstrang — but it isn't anymore. Her mind thinks back to her revenge on her old professor and she presumes that's why this place has changed. Durmstrang no longer has a hold on her; she hasn't thought the words Do you not have the stomach for this? in months. It was the professor that brought them back, and then she severed the ties, like she's been dreaming of doing for years.
Instead, the white space turns into somewhere else. It fades into the house she grew up in, the house belonging to Gus and Eugene, the place she hasn't seen for almost two years. Holly chokes out a sob, the sheer memory of the place she last saw her father enough to bring her to tears. She misses him, so much. She wants this all to be over. She wants to see him again.
Holly looks around, at the photos on the walls, pictures of herself and her dad beaming brightly. There's a remain of what the space used to be, a small Deathly Hallows mark etched into the skirting board, but Holly doesn't care. She'll always have a piece of Durmstrang lingering, but this place proves that she's moved on for good.
She has a thought. "Why am I here?"
"You said you wanted to return."
Holly thinks back to the last hour or so, talking to Atticus and Draco. When did she say that she wanted to go back? She said she thought she was going to, but that's completely different to wanting to...
A memory appears in her mind: her telling Harry that she'll personally get him back from the afterlife if Voldemort kills him. Holly frowns, and thinks aloud, "Is Harry dead?"
"Currently."
Currently? The frown stays on her face, as she looks around. So Harry will come back to life, and this place knows this... She supposes that makes sense, in a way. Seers exist, of course the afterlife will be omniscient.
"Can you tell me the future?" she asks.
"Yes, but you will be forced to forget."
"Why?"
"It is murder knowing the future... Having knowledge of it whilst in the mortal world would kill you, slowly... Why do you think Seers suffer like they do?"
