The paths converge.

The future spills out.

Without a moment's notice they diverge, spinning the future with the past.

The paths, the arrows and the wayward directions.

Ever changing, omnipresent, never-ending.

The future, it's always there. Always messily waiting for the hesitated action, the mistaken path, the thoughtless decision. Waiting to change before her eyes. Waiting to ruin, waiting to destruct. Never providing hope. Occasionally loving, never hopeful. Rarely showing glimpses of happiness to overshadow the misery.

Rose is witness to it all. The arrows are constantly playing games with her mind; promising serenity, delivering fear.

She can pinpoint the exact moment when the realization hit her. The realization that she could see things that weren't meant to be seen; the realization that she wasn't normal. That knowledge doesn't fix the situation, not by any means.

Still, it would be nice to know when or why or how this situation came to define her life. Why the arrows existed, what they meant, and how their knowledge helped anyone.

The paths define her life; define everything she was, everything she is.

Rose Weasley, three years old and fascinated with depicting everything she saw. Enthralled with capturing it and storing it away. Three, and believing nothing could change once she drew it. Having the power to erase the negative and exaggerate the positive had always been a security blanket of sorts for her.

Five when she first drew out the paths in primary school. Carefully, sketching her teacher. Just a simple drawing of her short, blond hair and plump figure. It would have been a normal picture, wouldn't have raised any eyebrows if it wasn't for the arrows over her head. If it wasn't for the maze of arrows spinning and interweaving.

The first time she drew the arrows it felt better. Felt less congested, felt less pressurized…it cleared out her head.

So, Rose did it again.

And again. Anytime she could, she would pull out a piece of paper and start sketching the paths, carefully writing the words lining the paths. Eventually, her teacher noticed her odd behavior. Noticed all Rose's sketches involving her classmates or the teacher and always had paths on top of their heads.

When she wouldn't stop, the teacher talked to her mum. Her parents questioned Rose about the drawings. Rose told them she just drew what she sees.

They thought it was creativity.

She thought they were blind.

She remembered being told to decrease her sketching in school, and that had been the end of that.

Occasionally, she still draws out the arrows, mostly from memory, not daring to do anything too revealing in public.

Seven and carefree, wandering through Paris. She saw so many people, so many paths and so many ever-changing arrows. They were everywhere. Among the beautified sculptures, juxtaposed next to the sparkling fountains and ravishing hotels there lay so many unique people, so many distinctive paths, so many erratic directions. It was the first time so many people, so many words and paths collided; the first time it made her dizzy with the knowledge.

There were so many extremes, so many possibilities and so many changes from person to person. It was the first time life scared her; the first time the pressures of success and the consequences of failure appeared right before her eyes. From the man in a Muggle suit, carrying a briefcase, walking briskly out of the hotel to the woman a couple blocks down, gathering money in a dirtying plastic container. She couldn't keep it in anymore; she needed to know why everyone ignored the arrows.

She had to know how their eyes flickered past the arrows without a passing thought.

It seemed impossible, yet her mum, dad, and Hugo had done it; they managed to look past the man's arrows. The man they blatantly passed without a thought would die on the same street the next day, and her family did not even take a second look.

It was positively puzzling how everyone disregarded the women asking for work, overlooked her inability to find food for her child tonight. How they could close their eyes to the family starving yet another night. Mystifying how everyone wrapped their head around the future, dealt with the paths changing so fast.

It was awe inducing how even taking a left turn instead of a right changed all the arrows, changed the future mercilessly. The arrows always resulted in sadness, in endless, circling thoughts. Drawing them out helped at first, but now she didn't have any paper, didn't have any crayons to make sense of all the life, change and death right in front of her eyes.

Her first thought had been to ask Mum, but she remembered bringing the topic up couple of times before (with the drawings), remembered the creativity incident. She wanted to ask Dad, he always seemed so happy. She wanted to know how: how to block out the misery and death and sadness following everyone everywhere. She needed to learn how to ignore the arrows, how to block them out like everyone else.

They stayed at a hotel that night, Hugo, Dad, Mum, and Rose. The next day she made sure to pass the street corner, made sure to acknowledge the man on the corner in his final hours. She saw him slouched on the corner of the same building, with the same splotchy, tan trench coat, same tangled grey beard, same half-open blue eyes…same look of sadness. This time he was different, though.

His path, the only path headed straight toward death the previous day had been replaced with various other arrows. Arrows saying he would move in with his grandson in a couple of days. Inscribed words explaining his eventual job at the hardware store, his gradual happiness. Seven when Rose realized the ability of the arrows to change so drastically, change so suddenly.

It gave her hope.

She remembered smiling and her mood instantly getting better. Recalled the sudden urge to climb the Eiffel Tower and run through the Palace of Versailles. Upon the questioning of her parents on her sudden mood change she replied, "Everything is going to be okay, he's going to be okay and it's a good life after all."

Her parents laughed at Rose's childish theatrics and continued their walk through the city.

The rest of the trip was a blur of paths and laughter and tourist attractions, but it was the first time she recognized the speed of life. First time she recognized how quickly life could change, how quickly the paths shifted, how sometimes, everything worked out for the better.

At nine, revelation struck.

Rose heard Uncle Harry sighing to Aunt Ginny, "I wonder how hectic it'll get once the Head Auror comes back into the office."

Rose wondered how Aunt Ginny could keep the path to herself, how she could sit there and watch as Uncle Harry made himself grim with worry without saying anything.

Rose had been gaping at Aunt Ginny the next day when she squealed in surprise and delight when Harry told her the news. In fact, Rose seemed to be the only one at the dinner table who couldn't feign shock when obviously the arrows had shown the news for so long. When Uncle Harry exclaimed his new position as head Auror, everyone's jaw dropped. It almost felt as if they completely blocked out the arrows from their lives.

"Albus, Rose don't go in the lake! Stay out of trouble!" Rose's mum had called out as they ran straight toward the forest, straight toward the lake.

As always, they were panting and dodging logs and wayward twigs, shouting as they sprinted. They climbed toward their section of the backyard forest. Unusually, Rose paused. She did not follow Al to the cross-stepping stones the lake. She checked his paths and, sure enough, they showed him slipping on the third rock, falling, breaking an arm and getting in trouble for going to the lake.

"Al, maybe we shouldn't cross the lake today."

"But Rose…we have to! How else can we get away from invisibility-cloaked dragons following us? We need to get to our spot and wait for the fire to cease."

Momentarily distracted from the task at hand, she replied: "We fought the invisible dragons last time. And the time before that. It's my turn now. Now they have to be vampires riding on centaurs under the spell of a warlock."

"Rose , that's just stupid. Why wouldn't we be able to see the vampires? And vampires are boring. And stupid. Dragons can fly and breathe fire and Uncle Charlie always gets the coolest scars from them."

"No, they're always dragons. Dragons are the boring ones, Al. And the vampires are under a spell, we can't see them. Obviously."

"Fine, then! Rose, if we cross the lake then they can be your stupid vampires riding their stupid centaurs."

"They're not stupid and they're under a spell! And anyway, Al, you're going to fall on the stone."

"I never fall!"

"It's in your path though. Can you just skip the third stone? And hurry I can hear their hooves coming closer!"

"What paths? You always talk about paths. No one ever understands what you mean, Rose."

Shock, confusion. Was she really the only one? The thought had always circulated within her and she always feared the answer. Maybe Al was just kidding. Then Rose glance at his face and it lacked its usual grin.

"Wh-What do you mean you don't understand?"

"Okay Rose, whatever. Aunt Hermione will call us in soon; let's cross before it gets dark. It's just hard to keep up with you sometimes."

They continued to play, but Rose was in a daze the rest of the time.

Al couldn't see.

Her parents couldn't see.

No one dealt with the constant spinning paths and arrows.

Nine years old when she realized no one else saw them.

Nine, when she realized she was the only one.

Then she was eleven and Platform Nine and three quarters was a mesh of lives, arrows and paths. It felt like Paris all over again. Added to the claustrophobia however, was the anxiety of finally, finally going to Hogwarts, leaving Hugo, Mum and Dad and the reminiscence of her childhood.

She tried her best to avoid looking at too many people, especially students. Today the paths were changing especially quickly, and every decision made, every mistaken gesture or accidental eye contact determined all too much.

She watched as a short, brunette smiled shyly at an older looking, slightly muscular, black haired boy and with that small gesture both their arrows interwove, instantly changing friend circles, relationships…altering their future careers.

She tried to keep her eyes down after that, their encounter already had her head spinning. There were already too much pressure and too many people and none of it was helping her anxiety. After jokes and hugs and goodbyes and a few tears were exchanged, she boarded the train with Al by her side.

Rose ignored the lightning fast paths, currently changing madly in pace with the continuously opening compartment doors and frantically shuffling feet. She kept all of it to herself, kept the knowledge that her year was unconsciously picking their future with every glance and wayward smile.

She blocked most of it out. Much to her dismay, she found herself still concentrating on the blond boy her dad pointed out a few moments ago.

She made sure not to focus her attention on any one person, not before she learnt their names, knew them and their story. But her dad just had to go and point out that Malfoy boy. She could still picture his paths in her head. And maybe it was that slight rebellion thing Aunt Ginny always talked about, but now she wanted to know more about him, need to know more.

She craved to know why his paths were lined the way they were, diverging so oddly. Of course, that was crazy. That was precisely the absurdity that got people into trouble. Of course, she wouldn't act on that stupid thought.

So, she sat in a compartment with Albus circling endlessly in a mass of contradictions. Waiting for others to join, dreading the influence she would inevitably have on them, looking forward to Hogwarts, fearing the compartment door opening, and hoping that it would.

a/n: So the plan is to make this a 100k fic, we'll see how that pans out. But if you've gotten through this chapter, I would love to hear your thoughts, good or bad. Thanks for reading!

For: The Original Horcrux's 100k Multichapter Competition

Thanks to Raanah for betaing :)