Glrasshopper: I haven't gone into extensive detail in-story because Hazel herself doesn't know much beyond "I can't talk, and it's because of this scar on my neck I got the same time my parents died". What I will reveal is that her vocal cords are ruined, to the point she can't make any vocalizations whatsoever. (Even when whispering, you still need your cords closed to create air turbulence. She can't even do that.) An electrolarynx would have helped that, but do you really think the Dursleys would buy her something that expensive?

RedShirt1453: My overall plan is for Hazel to learn or recreate a few different skills that never showed up in the books. As for the Wizarding World, they mostly have forgotten these places for a number of reason. First, blame Binns. When you have not one, not two, but several generations of Hogwarts students who never got a good grasp of history, that causes lots of issues. Hogwarts isn't the only school of magic in Britain, but it is the best and the one other schools base themselves on. Second, wizards who ARE in the know don't want to talk about other magical traditions on the island. Part of that is a superiority complex and not wanting to admit they needed help for stuff like taking down the Gurt Wurm, and part of that is guilt about something else they did (which WILL come up in-story). Third, at least with regards to "places of power", using an external source of magic isn't something that wizards by and large do. That was more a druidic tradition.

jh831: Hazel's jumping works the same as Apparation, namely that she has to have an idea where she's going to get there. It was too dark to see anything besides the very entrance to the cave, which still puts her at risk of being slammed into the rocky shore by the waves. She also wouldn't be able to keep people out of the cave. Merlin's Cave at Tintagel is an actual seaside cave you can visit and walk into, so somebody would notice.

Winlyn: Keep in mind that Hazel is only nine years old. The epitome of grace she is not. XD

"Where's the bird?": Morgan was smart and stayed out of the rain. Also, I keep falling into the same trap as I did with Loki and JKR did with Hedwig, namely not mentioning them except when they play a direct role in the story.

Chapter 7
The Circus

Raindrops pelted Hazel's head, and she took a moment to look up at the sky and glare. After two days at Tintagel waiting for the rains to stop, she had left the island and the cave that still taunted her with the mysteries she was sure were hiding within. The rain and the cold ocean waters together were enough of a deterrent that she planned to put off swimming into the cave until sometime in the summer, when it was not freezing cold.

And then the blasted rain followed her as she walked back east.

Her thoroughly filthy trainers squelched through the mud, and she looked up the slope of the hill towards the stone tower that sat at the top. She had actually been excited to visit Glastonbury Tor, but the pictures she had seen in various books were all taken during the day. It was much less impressive seen behind all the rain coming down. She hoped the tall St. Michael's tower would provide some little respite. On the plus side, the rain meant that fewer people were here than she expected would be here on a normal day, currently just a smattering of umbrellas huddled around the tower.

Glastonbury Tor was the site of several myths of different types, and she was eager to discover which one was true. She had read that it was connected to the Isle of Avalon, the island where the dying King Arthur was brought to be buried. Another book had said it was the place where the Holy Grail was kept, the sacred cup that would give eternal youth. Yet more books talked about it being an entrance to Annwn, one of the Otherworlds of the Celts and ruled by a fairy king named either Gwyn ap Nudd or Arawn. Or maybe it was a portal to the realm of the dead. There was no telling which story was true, and she knew even less which one she wanted to be true.

If she were honest with herself, she would admit that finding a doorway to the land of the dead would be… worthwhile. To be able to find her mother and ask questions, just to be able to see her? Hazel knew that was surely not going to be the case, but part of her could not help but hold out the tiniest sliver of hope.

Her hopes for getting dry were dashed into nothingness when she arrived at the tower itself. The walls were intact, of course, but the same could not be said about the roof. It was not as if it had recently be damaged, either; where the tops of the walls ended was just a square hole. The stones that made up the floor were slick and smooth from years and years of water pounding them, and remembering her relatively recent experience in the ruins of Tintagel she carefully watched her step while walking around the interior.

One corner of the building was drier than the others, sheltered beneath a low overhang that had almost crumbled away through the centuries, and she huddled underneath it. Morgan, apparently noticing that it was not as wet as it had been, sidestepped out of the crook of her neck where he had done his best to avoid the rain. A flutter of wings and feather sprayed what rainwater had accumulated on him all over the place, and he turned his puffed up head towards her and gave her a birdy glare.

It's not my fault everything's wet, she scolded him. He had settled himself into a tree when she was trying to explore Tintagel, but there were no trees close to the hill of the Tor. Her pet was okay waiting a short distance away, but when she had suggested he wait in a dry bush just over a kilometer away his response had been to peck the lobe of her ear and squeeze closer as if he were trying to slip beneath her skin. Besides, you're a bird. You should be used to getting wet. I doubt your flock only flew around when it was clear and sunny.

He ignored that entirely and settled back down. Hazel, on the other hand, looked around with a grimace. It seemed that the few people who had made the trek up here were already leaving, and if she had any money worth betting she would guess it was because the rain was only getting heavier as the day wore on. The sky was not getting any less grey, that was for sure.

For all her chiding, she would not mind getting dry either. As it was, she was going to be stuck in wet clothes for the rest of the day. Wet and dirty clothes, she reminded herself with a look at everything from her knees down. A grass and dirt hill was fine for walking when it was not being turned into a pile of mud.

Plus, she was getting tired of having to wash her clothes in sinks. She knew that proper washing machines used special soap to clean clothes, but that also was just one more thing to keep in the limited space in her backpack. She had tried a few times to imagine a washing machine, even an iron, to clean her things, but the mental picture never took. She supposed it was because unlike a hand or a key, both of which were simple to picture or feel, she had no idea how either machine worked. Or maybe her mental tools just could not be machines and had to be simple. She could not know for sure, not when she was still making this all up as she went.

Pools of water had formed on the floor, and she watched as raindrops fell into them and sent ripples spreading out over the surface and crashing into each other. She was a little tempted to wash her shoes off right here and now; the motions just make it look so clean, even if she knew the water was dirty from hundreds and thousands of dirty feet walking all over it. It was just so unfair—

Her thoughts stopped in their tracks, and she watched the ripples more intently. It did look clean. Just seeing it, her mind went to getting clean, washing dirt and grime off everything and leaving it pristine.

Not all her tools were copies of real things. Doctors did not use lighting to heal people. Being covered in smoke did not make people unnoticeable. They were pictures in her head to give her magic something to focus on. If lightning and smoke worked, why not rippling water?

You might want to settle in, she told Morgan. This is going to take a while.

Hazel was happier than ever that this corner of the tower was more or less dry. She slid down the wall onto the ground, the rear end of her jeans becoming damp from the water that was there. Still, it was not so bad that she could not close her eyes and try to focus. If anything it helped get her started.

First things first. Water is wet. As obvious a statement as it was, that was to be the basis of her newest spell, assuming she could get it to work. Hazel thought of the wet on her pants, then about how it felt when her hands were fresh from the sink. Water washes away dirt. She remembered how her hands felt when she finished working in the garden for the Dursleys only to stick them under the faucet and let the water wipe the dirt away. She added soap to her framework, thinking about how it felt slick in her hands and the almost nothing weight of the bubbles that accumulated when she washed her clothes. Then the water dries. Clothes straight from the sink, still dripping wet, went from being heavy to dry and returning to their normal weight.

That was what she wanted. Not just to get things wet. If that was all she was capable of, she might as well keep sneaking into buildings to wash her clothes in the sink. She still did not know how many spells she could learn to cast before she had to rely on special items to help her out like so many wizards and witches in books did. She was not going to waste what might be a limited resource on something that was not useful.

Taking those feelings she had, the memories she had called up, she stared at her trainers, the white toes and sides invisible under days of caked on dirt, and the brown smears covering most of her lower legs. I want them clean.

Something shifted at the edge of her jeans, barely peeking from the other side of her leg. Another mental push, and ripples of pale blue swept over the dirt and mud. Slowly at first, but quickly getting faster, they bounced back and forth and off each other, just like the ripples in the pool had done. Where they moved, the layers of brown lightened, and they kept going and going and going until every speck of dirt was gone.

I did it. Morgan, I did it! She scrambled to her feet and jumped in joy – her spell worked! – and slammed the top of her head against the stone shelf that was providing protection from the rain. Her butt hit the ground again as she covered her aching head with her hands. Ouch!

Morgan, who had jumped off her shoulder at the sudden movement, twittered at her in a manner that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Still, she had succeeded! Never again would she have to hide somewhere just to get clean or scare nice old men because she looked like something that crawled out of the dumpster. You can quit laughing now, she told her bird with a frown when she realized he was still chirping at her. Besides, we haven't figured out what this place really was. There has to be something here. It wouldn't have as many stories about it if there weren't.

…Then again, there was story after story about Stonehenge, and she had found absolutely nothing there. This could be the same way. She hoped not, but she could not rule it out.

Shoving those thoughts from her head, Hazel settled back down in a cross-legged position and closed her eyes. She knew from her experiments in Wistman's Wood that reaching 'roots' into the ground had connected her to the forest. Could she do the same thing with the hill? It was worth a try.

She had to adjust herself a few times before she managed to ignore the wet, but eventually she managed to get herself in the right frame of mind. Almost immediately her eyes popped open again. There was something here. She could not describe just what it was, even to herself; the closest she could manage was that there was an itch on the inside of her skull coming from one side. It had pulsed and throbbed in her mind as soon as she reached into the ground. No subtlety or welcoming like the Woods had offered her, either. This was right there, standing apart from everything else.

Hazel picked herself off the ground, avoiding the shelf this time around, and waited for Morgan to flap back to her shoulder before she left the tower. This itch was on the steep side.

Glastonbury Tor was not the tower at the top of the hill. It was the entire hill, a strange structure of seven steps or terraces that had smoothed out and been covered by thick green grass. The hill itself had two sides. One, the side she had climbed to get here, was longer with a gentler slope. That was the side most everybody climbed. The side opposite was steeper, the terraces nearly merging into each other. That was where her feet and her feeling carried her. She could not tell just where it was outside the tower, and even looking back and trying to compare where she had felt it coming from while she was sitting down was ineffective.

Scuffing the ground, she sighed. It was a good thing she had figured out now how to clean her clothes. She was going to need it.

Three times she had to sit down in the rain and mud in order to feel out where the itch was located, each time moving closer to the source. Finally she stood on the middle terrace and looked at the side of the hill. Her last brief meditation told her it was supposed to be right here, but no matter how hard she looked, she could not find anything. Was it inside the hill, not on the surface?

Morgan chirped in her ear, and she shrugged. She had no idea what she was doing. But since she was already here and already dirty, there was no reason not to do something silly just in case whatever she was looking for was here but hidden from her sight. Closing her eyes, she pressed the tips of her fingers into the side of the hill and slowly walked her way towards the itch.

The dirt vanished beneath her fingers, and she almost fell into the nothingness in front of her before she caught herself. Her eyes opened up to reveal she had taken that one all-important step from the outside into a stone stairwell of all things. The meager sunlight piercing through the clouds was just enough to illuminate the first few steps, but beyond that there was nothing but darkness. Nudging Morgan from her shoulder to her opposite hand, she slipped the backpack off and pulled out her electric torch.

Her feet followed the stairs, twisting to the right and then to the left and back to the right in a serpentine pattern that quickly left the light of day far behind. It took five minutes or so to reach the end of the stairs, and her eyes widened as she stood on the last step and stared into the chamber beyond. The room had been a perfect sphere, smooth as anything she had ever seen, but that was before it was carved into. Lines crisscrossed along the surface, not random scratches but obviously intentional. The lines merged into triangle and squares and intersected with circles containing alien symbols, a diagram that would have been complicated enough drawn on a sheet of paper but made even worse covering a three-dimensional shape and overlapping with a second and a third and likely a fourth. It was a dizzying pattern she could not understand but was clearly meant to do something.

Something glinted to the side when she swept her torchlight around the chamber, and she brought it back to take a look. A metal plaque was pressed into the wall of the tunnel. The words were unreadable, some of the letters not even in the alphabet, but after a moment's staring the plaque became blurry and a little bit painful to her eyes. She blinked, and when she looked at it again the words had changed into something recognizable.

WITH THREEFOLD RITUAL
SEALED BY SALT AND BLOOD AND IRON
THE ROAD TO THE GREENWILD BANISHED AND BARRED
MAY THE GREAT FAE ROT IN THEIR GLORIOUS HALLS
NOT TO STEP UPON THE LANDS OF MEN FOREVERMORE

Hazel could only stare for a minute. Two. Eventually her brain caught up with her eyes, and she started breathing fast and heavy. The fae were real? The fae were REAL?! Every story she had ever read about the Irish fae depicted them as immensely powerful, stronger than she had ever believed any human could ever match. They were absolutely terrifying.

Her gaze and her light flickered along the pattern again. The fae were no joke, creatures with morality utterly unlike humanity and with the sheer magical strength to go with it. And somebody had just… shut down the portal from their world to this one? Closed and locked it as simply as if it had been a door?

This room and everything in it was the work of someone way smarter than her, standing so far above her own abilities that she could not find the starting point to get from here to there. Even if she assumed this was the utmost limit of what magic was capable of – human magic, anyway – she had a long, long way to go.

I guess it's a good thing I have something to aspire to?, she told Morgan, the sound of even her own inner voice wavering in disbelief and just a hint of mortal terror. If this spell, ritual, whatever it was ever collapsed, she somehow doubted the things that came out would be in a pleasant mood. But right now I just want to get out of here before I touch something I'm not supposed to.

Hazel skipped out of the Tesco the following day, her backpack full of food and her clothes brighter than they had ever been since she pulled them off the racks back in Greater Whinging. She had not realized before now just how poor a job she had been doing washing her clothes, but clearly she had been overlooking some spots. There was not a speck of dirt or mud anywhere on any of her clothes now.

A small, thoughtful frown crossed her face. I wonder where all the dirt went, she admitted to Morgan. It wasn't on the ground, so it didn't fall off, and it didn't make a big cloud of dust either. Making it all just vanish, poof gone, isn't the strangest thing I've ever done, I guess, but it's still curious.

Shaking that thought away, she kept walking down the street. It was not as if she was going to get any answers standing around.

As she walked, her ears picked up something other than the normal noise of a town. There seemed to be music of all things coming from several blocks over. A concert or something? But it's the middle of the day. She looked over at Morgan, who simply looked back at her. No help from that quarter, it seemed.

She was pretty much done with Glastonbury, she told herself. The Tor was the only reason she was here. There was nothing keeping her from taking a peek at whatever was going on before she headed north.

The music got louder and clearer the closer she came, and she scratched concert off the list of possibilities. The tune was too happy, not to mention it repeated itself very quickly. There were no words, either. The people there seemed to be having fun nonetheless, as the closer she came the better she could hear their cheers and laughter. She stepped around a corner and stopped in her tracks as she saw what she had been hearing, her eyes wide and a smile growing on her face.

This was a fair!

Her eyes greedily ate up the colorful rides swinging through the air, and her nose was picking up the smells of popcorn and all the treats for sale. She had never been to a fair before. Her aunt and uncle had been happy to take Dudley to them any time one passed through Little Whinging, but her they locked in her cupboard while they were out. A few times Uncle Vernon had thought about bringing her along to leave her there, something about how 'her kind' would be right at home with the 'carnies', but nothing ever came from it. The dark figure that lingered in their minds whenever they thought about doing something too bad to her was deterrent enough to keep her around.

But now? Now she was on her own, and that meant no Dursleys telling her she couldn't see what was so special about the fair.

Getting in was easy. She just had to wait until a family stepped up to the gate leading into the fairgrounds, and she slipped in behind them under her veil of unremarkableness. She did not want to risk the boy at the gate taking in the admittance fees paying extra attention to her if she tried to go in by herself. Her smoke had so far been successful in getting people to ignore her, but she knew she was not really invisible. Not bringing attention to herself seemed like it was the best way to help her spell along.

Once she was within the crowds, however, she split off and let her smoke fall away. With freshly cleaned clothes and among a bunch of other kids, no one was going to pay much attention to her anyway. She was just a girl and her bird, nothing to see here. Her gaze darted this way and that, taking in everything. There were rides to ride, snacks to eat, and performances to watch. So much to do, and only today to do it!

A stall selling candy floss was close to the entrance, and despite the cheery smile on his face she could hear the frustrated muttering in his head whenever he saw people pass by the stall without buying his treats, few though they were. While he was distracted with all the people lined up to pay, Hazel curled the fingers on her right hand one at a time and opened them all at once. Her mage hand appeared next to the cone of floss farthest away from the man and the crowds, and with a quiet breath she lifted the cone just enough to get it out of the plastic holder and lowered it to the ground.

A quick look around did not find anyone staring at her or the cone. No one had noticed a thing.

Rather than walk right by the front where the man could see her, she floated the floss closer to the back of the cart and walked nearer before jerking her right hand towards her. The motion shot the cone into her left hand, and she let her spell disperse. Her eyes almost bulged out of her head when she took the first bite. It was so sweet! She had never had anything like this, and by the second bite she was wiping her tongue around in her mouth and looking for something to drink to cut through the sticky sugar feeling.

The rides were the next thing that called to her, and she tried a few before making the mistake of climbing into a spinning bowl ride. By the time the minute or so the ride ran came to an end, she was staggering around and trying to hold down the candy floss and water in her stomach. No more rides for me, she said to Morgan when he fluttered back down to her shoulder. He had been smart enough to avoid that one, and now she regretted not following suit.

After a few moments, her feet felt steady enough to walk away and look for something not quite so nauseating to do next. A sign next to a darkened cart caught her eye, and she approached closer to stare at the hand with the eye in the palm. Madam Enigma's Psychic Readings, the words above the hand proclaimed, and below it continued, Learn what Fate has in store for you!

What do you think?, she asked her companion. Do you think it'll be worth it?

Morgan did not answer, his head twitching around and looking at all the sources of noise.

You're no help at all. She looked back at the sign and shrugged her shoulders. The Dursleys had been of the firm belief that fortune telling was a bunch of nonsense. That was reason enough to give it a chance as far as she was concerned.

The inside of the cart was filled with smoke, and she coughed at the strange almost-herby scent. A single woman with stringy brown hair held back by a bright blue headband sat on the other side of a table that was covered by a tie-dyed cloth, her brown dress fitting more with the overall darkness than the patches of loud color. She was also younger than Hazel expected for someone called 'Madam', maybe in her late twenties at most. Madam Enigma blinked her eyes a few times before her gaze finally focused on Hazel. "Well, well," she said in a slightly hoarse voice. "Hello, little girl. You enter the realm of mysticism and divination. And interrupted my me time," she added in a voice that did not sound at all like the one she spoke with. "Oh well, duty calls. Do you have a question, little one? A question that burns in your heart and soul?"

Hazel frowned and thought for a moment. She had many, many questions, but whether they were ones a fortune teller could answer? She finally shrugged again and nodded.

"A girl of few words, this one. Good. Sit, sit," Madam Enigma said, waving at the chair on Hazel's side of the table. "What question can I answer for you?"

Pulling out her pad and one of her pens, Hazel thought for a moment before writing something down and turning the pad so Madam Enigma could see it. "I need guidance on where to go next."

Madam Enigma looked between the pad and Hazel several times, her previously placid face now showing a little bit of concern. "Mute? How unfortunate. That can't be easy. And it takes anything interactive like the crystal ball off the table. I guess I could do some palmistry, but…" She turned around and rummaged in a short cabinet behind her before coming back with a thick deck of long cards. "For life in general, I have always felt the Tarot to have the clearest answers. Bob said we needed to raise the price for some of my readings, but for this girl it will be five pounds, and then we shall discover what the fates have in store for you, my dear."

A discount? She nibbled on her lip for a moment before reaching back into her backpack and straightening back up with a five pound note in her hand. She would not say no to that offer.

Once the note was secreted away, Madam Enigma started shuffling the deck with quick, practiced motions. "I want you to think about what you want. What you really, really want. Think about what you've done to try achieving that goal. Concentrate on it. It's a lot more useful than 'opening your inner eye'."

Hazel blinked in surprise at that. That last bit had sounded completely different than either the woman's voice or thoughts, instead being a high, wavering voice. It was almost as if she was quoting somebody. Her teacher, maybe?

How was it that people could find teachers for fortune telling, but she could not find one for magic? The world was so unfair sometimes.

The shuffling came to an end, and Madam Enigma drew the first card and laid it down. Hazel could only stare at the picture of a man lying facedown on the ground, a number of swords stabbed into his back. She had no idea that Tarot cards were so violent.

"Oh my. That is an inauspicious start. This card symbolizes your self, who you are at your core. It changes just as you do," Madam Enigma said, keeping the surprise in her thoughts out of her tone. "The Ten of Swords represents loss and painful endings. Betrayal, even. You've lost someone close to you already, haven't you?" she added in her real voice.

Hazel could only nod. "My parents," she wrote.

"I'm sorry for your loss." Hazel nodded again, and Madam Enigma pulled the next card and laid it crosswise on top of of the first. She had to turn her head to see another man looking at a bush in the corner that was decorated with stars. "Here we see the problem facing you. The Seven of Pentacles reversed. You said you want to know where to go from here, but it is hard to see the path when you do not have any long-term goal."

The next card was above the other two. A hand coming from a cloud and holding a green stick. "The Ace of Wands. Your focus is the search for inspiration and growth."

She nodded. That sounded about right. Sadly, so did the comment about not having any long term plans. It was hard to have those when she knew so little.

The fourth card went below the crossed cards. "This card represents your subconscious. It is what is pushing you from behind, even if you don't know it…" Madam Enigma trailed off and looked a little harder at the man on the card who had turned his back on a stack of glasses. "The Eight of Cups. What drives you is a need for escape. You are not running towards anything. You're running away from something. This is not a happy spread."

Hazel picked up her pad to try arguing that, but before her pen touched the paper she hesitated and put it back down. That was right, as much as she did not want to admit it. She was trying to escape what her life was like in Little Whinging. She did not want a dreary life devoid of magic. She did not want to be stuck around people who thought her creepy and weird. Even sitting here listening to her fortune was because it was not something the Dursleys believed in.

Madam Enigma cleared her throat. "Let us look now at your past. Perhaps it will clear up what you are running from." This card went to the left of the crossed pair. A woman standing surrounded by more swords, a blindfold over her eyes. "The Eight of Swords?" Madam Enigma said in a voice less confident that she had been using. Her eyes flicked over at Hazel. "You felt confined, trapped. Imprisoned. That is why you are running so far and so fast even thought you don't know where to go. You need to spread your wings because you could never fly before now."

She could only grimace. That was way more true than she thought these cards could figure out. Maybe fortune telling was not a bunch of rubbish after all.

"I know it can be hard hearing things about yourself that you wish to ignore, but it is only through understand where we are starting from it makes sense where we are going. But the hard part is over," she said in a forced cheerful voice, pulling one more card from the top of the deck. "This card will show your future and what is waiting for you. Please be something good, for her sake. The—"

Madam Enigma stopped with a slight choking sound, her eyes glued to the last card. Hazel was not sure what was so special about it. It was more detailed than the others, showing a tall pillar against a dark sky. Lightning was striking the top, and it looked like someone had fallen or jumped off to get away from the bolt.

"The Tower," Madam Enigma finally said in a strangled voice, but her eyes were not on the card. They were on Hazel. "What the hell is wrong with this girl that she has the Tower as her future?! Change is coming, my dear. Something unlike anything you've ever known before. Yeah, change all right. Violent, chaotic, destructive change. I wouldn't wish this card on my worst enemy. But only you can make that change worth the cost."

Somehow, Hazel had the suspicion that this 'cost' was way more than Madam Enigma was implying it would be.

"Thank you," she wrote before putting the pad back into her bag. On that note, she had lost her taste for the fair. She needed to get moving through Gloucestershire to reach her next destination.

She stood up, but right as she turned around Madam Enigma spoke again. "Little girl?" She turned around to find the woman worrying her lip. It took her a minute to figure out what to say, but finally she said in a soft voice, "Be careful."

Hazel gave her a nod. Even before this, she had planned to be careful. After the reading? Absolutely.

I get to have entirely too much fun with this story. Seriously. Thankfully it also gives me a chance to pull stuff from my old notes for Deal with a Devil. The fae being sealed away was intended to be a major plot point in 4th year of that story.

Silently Watches out.