Disentangling certain threads on At Home

Selina Skies

June 21, 2022 6:37 AM

Disentangling certain threads by Selina Skies

Selina watched, keeping a hawk-like vigilance on the man who was evaluating Xavier. So far though, he had done nothing more intrusive or upsetting than Giselle had done and was—if Selina was being entirely honest—managing to do so in a less creepy and intense way than she had. He was standing over Xavier, wearing a neat set of grey robes, leaning in occasionally to peer at something intently through his spectacles. He had the air of someone who belonged in a library, examining old books. He wasn’t wafty or vague or declamatory like most people in the business of Seeing. He was almost too normal, as if the field, aware of its own reputation, had put forth its most acceptable member.

Acceptable didn’t mean reassuring though.

This meeting had been inevitable. Selina had thought long and hard about what to reveal to MACUSA regarding Giselle’s suggestion, given the lack of trust between the Lundstroms and the wizarding authorities. However, there was no way of getting the current thorns out of Xavier’s sides without proving to them that they were mistaken. If they were… Giselle hadn’t found any trace of obscurialism, but it wasn’t necessarily something she knew how to look for. Would it be worse for Xavier if he ended up being found to be a seer on top of being an obcurius? Selina had to believe in facts though, and the usefulness of having them. She didn’t trust the people handling them, but the more information everyone had at their disposal, the better armed they were to make good decisions for Xavier.

Especially if she was there to intervene.

Xavier’s parents were here too, though she knew they were relatively powerless in this world. His mother also looked absent, like she’d swallowed a large amount of draught of peace (or the non-magical equivalent) in order to stomach this interaction. However, at least they were here to form a line of defence between Xavier and anyone who thought bullying him into submission was in his best interests.

13 Selina Skies Disentangling certain threads 26 1 7

Xavier Lundstrom

June 21, 2022 6:38 AM

I See... by Xavier Lundstrom

Xavier sat in his chair, trying not to squirm as the grey suited man moved all around him. He even managed not to flinch at having a wand passed over him. Partly, he told himself it was just like a security wand at the airport… Partly he was getting more used to that sort of thing. He’d had other people’s wands pointed at him enough times in class to not automatically fear it, even if he trusted it a lot less coming from a MACUSA official.

One from a totally different department than the ones who’d hurt him. The whole seer thing seemed much more vague, and much less likely to need a tactic like scaring the magic out of him. It seemed to flutter gently in the ether and need sensitivity of spirit or something. It didn’t sound like him, but he’d take anything that made sense of the tangled knots in his life, and got him out of where he’d been before.

“Yes…” The man said, as he stepped back from Xavier. “Yes, I agree with your divination professor. Seer talent. Buckets of it.”

“And the obscurialism?” Xavier’s dad asked.

“Not a trace. The seer power is, obviously, unchanneled. It’s messy, but it isn’t destructive. It’s more like… that part hasn’t been sorted out yet, and it’s a big part of who he is and what he can do. Without that being brought into his control, the rest couldn’t follow.”

“So, if I start doing divination, I might get better at regular magic too?” Xavier asked. He’d let out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding, but it was more than just the immediate relief of having the examination finished. It was the two years he’d laboured under the fear that he was self-destructing. It was two years of arguing his family’s side, that they’d never made him push his magic down… He still couldn’t quite grasp the idea of this ‘seer’ thing, but grasping at the fact that the other label had been wrong, and had never fitted… That felt accurate.

“It’s a possibility. I wouldn’t bank on it—it may be that your skills just lie elsewhere. But it’s not a complete impossibility. Your wand is a seer’s wand. Your energy is a seer’s energy. I would say you haven’t been properly bonded with either until you’ve actively tried using them. You said you never experienced much accidental magic?” he confirmed with Xavier. “What if it fell under this category instead… People often don’t list it when giving examples, because seer ability isn’t common, and it’s so much harder to pin down than all the flashy, wavy stuff. But… premonitions? A sense that you’d already been told something before it happened? Frequent deja vus?”

“Like… vivid dreams?” Xavier asked. “Not all the time, but sometimes, when I was having migraines… And it happened once or twice at school, when they tried me on different medications, I’d get really vivid hallucinations as a side effect.” And more than once or twice when he’d experimented with the ingredients from those potions. But he would be sticking to the strictly school-sanctioned instances of having taken those. He tried not to glance at his mother, wondering whether the level of medication she was currently on had been the recommended dose, or whether certain traits ran in the family…

“Fascinating,” said the man. “Power like this very rarely manifests visually. And it seems like you were getting enough of it landing in one go to give you a headache.”

“His migraines—they’ve been this seer stuff all along?” Xavier’s dad asked.

“That’s my hypothesis. Can’t blame them that they didn’t spot it before. It’s very, very unusual…”

Xavier saw Professor Skies and his dad exchange a glance, fairly sure they were in accordance that it was going to take more than this one stranger saying so for them to decide that his predecessors in the Department of Massive Screw Ups were completely blameless. But it didn’t seem in anyone’s best interests to say so. Nor did the man seem particularly interested in debating those past interactions. His attention was still focussed on Xavier.

“If it was properly trained, it could be really be quiet astonishing!” he said.

“It’s attached to a fourteen year old boy, whose name is Xavier,” Professor Skies reminded him, a steely edge to her voice. Xavier hadn’t been able to pinpoint what exactly had been making him uncomfortable up until then. He had assumed it was his general distrust of these situations, but Professor Skies had hit the nail on the head; it wasn’t his past demons coming back to scare him, it was the way this current man was looking at him like an interesting bug.

“Yes.” The man paused in his inspection of Xavier, to raise his eyebrows at her. “I am aware.”

“Good. Just checking.” Professor Skies folded her arms, meeting his gaze steadily.

“But he’s certainly gifted. Gifts like these should be nurtured by experts.”

“Yeah,” said Xavier. “She said Professor Duell’s going to train me.”

“Your divinations professor?” The man raised his eyebrows at Professor Skies. “I’m sure she’s very good at the curriculum, but this is a specialist matter. We have experts here who I’m sure would be happy to work with him.”

Xavier couldn’t help but notice he was speaking to Professor Skies again, talking about him like he wasn’t in the room. It sounded like Xavier would be the prize bug in the collection, but still a bug.

“I want to keep going to Sonora,” he said.

“Well, of course. We wouldn’t want to remove you from your other classes. You still need those. But we could send someone in. I really think it would be best—”

“I think my family and my teachers know me best,” said Xavier. He wasn’t totally sure about Professor Duell. He was pretty sure the ministry people knew more than she did. But he trusted her not to hurt him or use him, and he trusted Professor Skies, and Professor Wright. “I want to try their way first. Thanks.”

“We know you’re here,” Professor Skies assured the man, before he could interject. “If we need your help, we’ll let you know. Otherwise, I can assume that Xavier, and by extension his family, will be left to do as they see fit? And Sonora will take care of his education. In which case this was a very productive meeting for us all. Thank you, and good day.”

13 Xavier Lundstrom I See... 1529 0 7