Gwen's lessons were going very well. She was such a quick study; Dumbledore felt more than confidant that she would make an excellent professor. He offered her an assistant teaching position for after her graduation from Hogwarts and as soon as the position was empty she would step up to the plate.
She was finally settling back into the sway of ordinary life at Hogwarts, forgetting about Graves all together, returning to her playful nature with Harry.
Then one morning as she woke she felt a stab of pain cross her chest. It was brief, lightning sharp and gone as soon as it had come. She wasn't sure why, but she knew that something terrible had happened.
She was relieved to see everyone at the breakfast table alive and in good cheer (as good cheer as one can be in on a Monday morning). Something was nagging her in the back of her head however, someone she'd forgotten to think about. It wasn't Graves, she'd already thought about that possibility and just as quickly dismissed it. This was someone she hadn't thought on in quite some time.
She looked up to the head table and found McGonagall's place empty. Could it be her? No, Gwen sighed. It wasn't her. She went about her day as if nothing had happened, screwing up her face every now and then as she scrolled through a list of names in her head. She didn't mention it to anyone, but nothing seemed to be making sense in her head. It was on the tip of her tongue. How come she couldn't remember?
Minerva called her to her office at the end of Transfiguration. She seemed strained, but wouldn't say more about it until she had Gwen in private. She closed the door behind them and offered Gwen a chair. The girl looked at her with more fear than she'd ever known. She would not sit, she simply shook her head trying to understand.
Minerva opened her mouth to speak several times, but her voice seemed to stop working. She sighed, took a seat herself and looked deeply into the young woman's eyes.
"Guenivere, your mother�" Her face fell and she could not finish.
Gwen felt the ceiling drop once again. She didn't understand the power of her own prophecies. She had once thought that she would never be able to apologize to her mother about the terrible things she had said. She didn't realize that she would be right in thinking so.
She fell weightless into a chair and wept freely. Without needing her to say so, she understood. Her mother was dead.