4:15pm, Tuesday the 14^th of September
Day after the Full Moon

The Headmaster of Hogwarts sat across his desk from a red-haired handful of a witch. He looked haggard and drawn, his normally warm olive complexion almost sallow and there were dark circles under his eyes. It looked like that even the low lamplight of the office was a bit too bright.

He had a frown and knit brows as he regarded a scroll of parchment in his hand.  He reached up and lowered his reading glasses and looked up at the student.

"Miss Oliver. Winifred. Dear child. How have you managed not to get murdered?"

Getting a summons to the headmaster's office was never a good thing. Winifred hadn't figured out what she'd done specifically to warrant it- the most prominent thing that came to mind was the fact she accidentally caught the curtains on fire in her dormitory while attempting to charm some hairbows to flash different colors and sparkle- but she'd put it out before any real damage had actually been done. There had been one or two mishaps in class with wand, too, but Winifred had always had mishaps with her wand. She was just bad with most magic.

Entering the headmaster's, she sat down in the chair across from his desk and did her best to look as innocent and non-plussed as possible. (She did not succeed.) The question that he asked, however, was not what she had been expecting. Winnie tilted her head to the left and furrowed her brows.

"I don't think I understand the question... Is... Is someone TRYING to murder me?" Winifred exclaimed. "I know people have been murdered at Hogwarts before! Is there a treacherous plot afoot?" ... She'd been reading mystery-romance novels lately. "I haven't had any premonitions about it! Wouldn't I, like, know?"

Professor Greyfriar blinked slowly as young Winifred reacted to his exasperated rhetorical. In a better mood, he wouldn't be so cruel to a student - calling them to his office without context and posing a homicidal hypothetical - but he was tired.

Greyfriar had her in N.E.W.T. History of Magic, and he should have expected this frantic, frenetic response. "No, Winifred, just -"

He raised his hand in an attempt to stop this willow from whomping. "You've managed to accumulate such a depth and breadth of reports and complaints in a fortnight that would  ensure any other student attract an insurmountable ire resulting in tragedy!"

He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Did you," he said, his eyes closed. "Winifred, did you tell Quince Kapoor that she was doomed to death by disintegration?"

He opened his eyes with a wince. It wasn't even the worst thing, just the most puzzling.

Winifred wasn't entirely surprised to hear that there had been multiple complaints about her. Although she did not exactly seek out trouble, the Hufflepuff was the kind of girl that seemed to find it. She was a dramatic individual, clumsy, and perpetually bored. It was just a bad combination of events. And without a full load of classes she had way too much spare time on her hands.

She preferred the way that Knox worded the future she had given to Quince Kapoor. The alliteration made it sound more somber than what she'd told her. "I did not say she was going to disintegrate," Winnie assured the headmaster. "I told Quince Kapoor that she would one day die from spontaneous combustion- but that I wasn't sure when. She paid me a sickle to read her tea leaves and I saw lots of doom in it. I might have... embellished, but she is doomed to have a really bad year. I saw it in her tea leaves. And usually when I see things they happen. But she paid me a sickle. I couldn't just be like You're going to have a sucky year and fail Charms. She is, you know, going to fail charms. Not by much- but she's going to flub the exam at the end of the year."

"Spontaneous--!?" The Headmaster began, but he stopped himself. He really didn't have time to go into all the reasons that divining a child's doom was of little use to anyone, let alone that it wasn't even true. 

"And you staged and impromptu sit-in during first year Charms? Citing..." he read from page too of The Winifred File, "...a lack of pears. Now I'm the first to defend the right to protest, but you really went from zero to a thousand there. The elves can get you pears."

"And this!" he went on. "Used a cipher to fill out your Astronomy quiz, caught brewing potions in the boys' toilets, and discovered napping in the Slytherin commonroom." 

He sighed and sat back. "Am I missing anything?"

Winifred frowned a little as he misinterpreted the mishap in Charms. "That's not exactly what happened, Headmaster. I was upset because they were practicing charms on live creatures instead of using something inanimate. And I know how easy it is for your wand to backfire. And I felt awful at the idea of innocent little beetles getting obliterated by accident so I thought it would be better to use something inanimate... And I said like a pear because it was the first thing that came to mind at the time. It wasn't that I wanted pears to eat.It's not so silly as you make it sound when you say that way."

When he said she'd used a cipher to fill out her quiz her brows furrowed. What was a cipher? She didn't even know what they word meant. Besides- she wasn't even taking astronomy. "That couldn't have been me, sir. I'm not in NEWT level astronomy. I failed my OWL for it because the maths are too complicated. I'm only taking a few classes- divination, muggle studies, history of magic, herbology, and somehow managed to squeak into charms. I wasn't  even going to take charms because I'm so bad with my wand but my mum made me do it because shes aid I needed to take a real class."

The mention of the boils toilets cause Winifred to blush furiously. She hadn't been brewing potions in the boys toilets. She'd put smoke bombs in the toilet as a joke- and the puff of bright colored smoke had been mistaken for a potion gone awry. But she didn't want to correct that notion because she had a feeling fireworks were worse than potions. "It was just a joke. I wasn't trying to brew anything serious. Just play a joke on the boys."

"And the Slytherin common room thing was a dare. Someone dared me to sneak into it and I did, then I was hiding out of the way so I could sneak out without getting caught but it was so full of people and I just kind of fell asleep. Besides- being in another house's common room can't be that bad, can it? It's not like I was vandalizing it or anything. Just having a nap."

Professor Greyfriar sighed and peered across at Winifred over his glasses. His grouch was ameliorating; on a few of these counts her explanation seemed logical enough. It wasn't hard to imagine how things got confused in Kesali's class, but then - how on earth did her name end up on one of Professor Singh's homeworks?

"Alright alright," he said. "It would be a personal favor to me if you would make a stronger effort to avoid places demarcated for those other than you. Stick to your own loo and commonroom? Really, it'd do this weary old fool some good."

He took another deep breath but it got caught in his throat and he spent a few moments coughing into his sleeve. "Merlin's hairy..." he swore under his breath when he was through. "Pardon."

There was still a number of libels, accusations, and disturbing phenomenon on the parchment. "There's more, Madam. Here:"

He passed it over to her so she could read the rest.

"Are things alright at home...?" he tried carefully.

Winifred took the parchment from the headmaster and glanced over it- but didn't see why most of the complaints were really that big of a deal. But how did you verbalize to someone in charge that part of why you were getting into so much trouble already was because you were bored? Going from a full load of classes to about half that amount was really a big difference and Winnie was just a restless, wandering soul. Or something like that.

His question about things at home kind of caught her off guard and the Hufflepuff gawped at him for a few very long seconds before responding. "Home is okay I guess? Both of my brothers moved out over the summer since they graduated and got jobs in London. I can tell my mum misses them and she worries a lot about them. And since they've been gone she's been worrying loads more about me than she used to. Dad's always been easy going- but mum is kind of neurotic sometimes."

"She was really upset I did so poorly on my OWLs. But it's not like she could have been surprised. Nobody else was. I'm rubbish at magic- it's unfortunate but it's true. She knew I'd been studying so I guess she hoped I'd place into more classes. But I didn't. I mean I finally can cast most spells meant for fifth years without too much difficulty but it's still very hard. My mum- she's super smart- so she doesn't understand that I'm just no good at it, she thinks I just don't try hard enough. And I did try very hard the last two years- I had tutors and everything- I'm just no good at it. She thinks being good at divination doesn't count as being good at something." Winnie shrugged again- obviously hurt by the idea that one of the few things she excelled at her mother didn't consider worth while.

Well, that explained a few things. It wasn't easy to do well when one had become convinced you weren't any good, or what you were good at wasn't worth doing.  And she certainly was right: her records showed she had an improvement last year over previous, but that it hadn't caught her up with most of her peers.

He smiled kindly. Winifred was a young witch who looked worse on paper than in person.

"I can certainly vouch for the value of Divination. As you've no doubt learned, it's practical application is nothing to be trifled with. Mothers are not, I would encourage you to throw yourself in with abandon. And maybe pay more attention to ... bedside manor."

Again, there was something a little bit pleading and weary in his otherwise confident and encouraging tone.

"I wouldn't forbid you from practing divining any more than I'd discourage charms practice or extra time in the library, but well, but involve an adult if you see tragedy in the chai. Can we do that, Miss Oliver?"