Divination in the British wizarding world is largely treated as a wooly, imprecise art, relegated to the dusty, perfumed towers of Hogwarts and taught by frauds draped in excessive shawls. To look into a crystal ball and predict a bad grade on a Charms exam was the height of their prophetic ambition.
For Grandmama Frump, divination was not a gentle prediction. It was a violent interrogation of the cosmos.
The sub-basement kitchen was an inferno of heat and noxious fumes. Grandmama had banished Lurch to the upper floors and locked the heavy iron doors. The room was lit by a roaring fire in the massive stone hearth, the flames currently burning a sickly, unnatural shade of violet.
Sunshine sat on a high wooden stool at the center island, the golden sunflower locket resting heavy against her bandaged chest. She watched as Grandmama paced frantically around a cast-iron cauldron, her wild gray hair standing on end, muttering curses in dialects that hadn't been spoken since the fall of Babylon.
"The sight requires a sacrifice," Grandmama rasped, her single good eye rolling wildly in her skull. "The universe does not give up its secrets to those who ask politely. We must tear the veil!"
On the wooden counter between them lay the bleached, perfectly clean skeleton of the Blood-Hawk Sunshine had vaporized hours earlier.
In her past life, the sixty-year-old survivor had believed in fate only as a mechanism of despair. She had believed she was 'fated' to be abused, 'fated' to die unhappy and alone. Fate was the excuse society gave victims to keep them passive. The idea that a prophecy could dictate a life was a philosophy she despised with every fiber of her being. She refused to bow to the narrative.
"Crush the skull," Grandmama commanded, sliding a heavy stone mortar and pestle toward Sunshine.
Sunshine didn't hesitate. She placed the delicate avian skull into the stone bowl. She gripped the pestle with both hands, raised it, and brought it down with brutal, mechanical efficiency. The bone shattered with a sharp crack. She ground the shards into a fine, white powder, the rhythmic scraping sound anchoring her racing adult mind.
"Good, good," Grandmama cackled, snatching the mortar. She tossed the bone dust into the violet flames of the hearth.
The fire roared, swelling upward, the violet shifting into a deep, bruised black. The temperature in the kitchen plummeted, the heat violently sucked out of the air.
Grandmama grabbed a handful of dried grim-weed and nightshade leaves, tossing them into a shallow silver bowl filled with boiling, stagnant swamp water. She leaned over the bowl, inhaling the deeply toxic steam.
Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing only the yellowed whites. Her body went rigid, vibrating as if hooked to a live electrical current.
Sunshine gripped the edge of the wooden counter. She maintained her unnervingly calm, dead-eyed expression, but internally, she was bracing for impact. If the burst of Addams magic had alerted the Ministry's Trace, Grandmama would see it.
"I see the ripples," Grandmama hissed, her voice dropping into a terrifying, unnatural baritone that echoed from the walls rather than her throat. "A stone dropped in a stagnant pond. The necrotic flash... it pushed the ether apart."
"Did it reach the ocean, Grandmama?" Sunshine asked softly, her knuckles turning white. "Did it cross the Atlantic?"
Grandmama's head whipped back and forth, her hands gripping the edges of the silver bowl as she stared blindly into the toxic steam.
"The ripples travel far... but they are confused," the old witch moaned. "The signature is twisted. The golden curse... the locket... it fractured the frequency. They heard a scream, but they cannot find the throat."
Sunshine let out a slow, controlled exhalation.
The locket had done its job, even in failure. When the magic burst forth, it had been forced through the goblin-silver and the blood-ward. To the Ministry's monitoring charms, it wouldn't have registered as an underage witch casting a spell. It would have registered as a bizarre, untraceable atmospheric anomaly. A ghost in the machine.
But Grandmama was not finished.
"The ripples fade," Grandmama chanted, her body shaking violently. "But the gaze is drawn. The Old Country stirs. A bearded man sits in a tower of stone, spinning webs of spun sugar and lies. He watches a board of black and white squares. He is looking for missing pieces."
Albus Dumbledore.
Sunshine's heart hammered against her bruised sternum. He was already planning. He was already looking for variables to exploit in the coming war.
"I see a castle," Grandmama cried out, her voice rising in pitch, a shrill note of prophetic terror creeping in. "A massive fortress of ancient stone across the sea! A lion roaring in arrogance. A snake coiled in ambition. A raven hoarding secrets. A badger baring its teeth in the dark."
Hogwarts. The imagery was undeniable.
"I see a shadow without a face," Grandmama wailed, clutching her wild hair. "A broken soul dragging itself through the forests. It seeks to return. It seeks to consume. Blood in the corridors! Green light in the dark! The war is coming! The storm is breaking!"
Grandmama's blind eyes suddenly snapped down, locking directly onto Sunshine.
"The castle calls to the gold!" Grandmama screamed, pointing a trembling, gnarled finger at Sunshine's chest. "The threads of fate are woven! The anomaly is meant to walk the halls! The letters will fly! You cannot outrun the shadow of the stone!"
In the lore of the British wizarding world, prophecies were absolute. They were housed in glowing glass orbs in the Department of Mysteries, dictating the lives of men like Voldemort and Harry Potter. To hear a prophecy was to hear the inescapable verdict of the universe.
In her past life, the sixty-year-old woman would have accepted this. She would have bowed her head, accepted that her escape plan had failed, and prepared to be dragged into Dumbledore's meat grinder.
But she was no longer that woman.
Sunshine Addams stood up from the wooden stool. She did not look terrified. She looked profoundly, exhaustingly annoyed.
She walked over to the roaring, black-flamed hearth. She picked up a heavy iron bucket of dirty mop water that sat near the stone archway. Without a single word, she hoisted the heavy bucket and threw the filthy water directly into the magical fire.
With a deafening, hissing shriek, the black flames were extinguished. A massive cloud of foul-smelling gray steam filled the kitchen.
The connection was violently severed.
Grandmama gasped, collapsing backward onto the stone floor, coughing and hacking as her eyes returned to their normal, crazed state. The oppressive, prophetic weight vanished from the room.
"What in the name of the horned beast did you do that for?!" Grandmama wheezed, sitting up and rubbing her head. "The vision was peaking! The fates were speaking!"
Sunshine set the empty iron bucket down. She walked over to her grandmother, offering a small, impeccably polite hand to help the old witch to her feet.
"Fate is a narrative construct designed for people too lazy to dig their own graves, Grandmama," Sunshine stated, her high voice echoing with cold, absolute authority. "I do not care what the threads are doing. I do not care what the castle wants. I am not going to Scotland."
Grandmama dusted off her ragged shawl, staring at her eight-year-old granddaughter with a mixture of shock and feral pride.
"You can't just throw dirty water on a prophecy, kid," Grandmama cackled, though she sounded a bit unsure. "The universe has a plan."
"Then the universe is about to experience a severe logistical delay," Sunshine replied, her bright blue eyes as hard as diamonds.
She reached up and touched the golden sunflower locket. The burn beneath it throbbed, a sharp reminder of the cost of failure. The burst of magic had drawn Dumbledore's gaze, however vaguely. The timeline was trying to correct itself, trying to force the crossover protagonist back into the established plot.
She would not allow it.
"If the letters fly, I will burn them," Sunshine vowed, the words a chilling, quiet promise in the smoky kitchen. "If they send the bearded man, I will serve him hemlock. I am officially a Squib. I am officially off their board. I will double the wards on my locket, and I will be so entirely, aggressively boring that their magical destiny will simply forget I exist."
She turned and walked toward the heavy iron doors of the kitchen, the velvet of her pinafore swishing against her knees.
The divination had confirmed her worst fears. The narrative of Harry Potter was a gravity well, attempting to suck her in. But the Golden Child of the Addams family had spent the last eight years learning how to be a black hole. She had died once for following the rules of monsters. She was not going to do it again.
Let the prophecy scream. She was going to ignore it.