Chapter fifteen
Tilly grilled Holly for details about the class period, but the girl didn’t have much to say as they made their way to the dining hall. She found she was having a hard time looking up from her feet, and tried to push the hurt down. Normal teenage boys were annoying, and they often were foolish too. Now teenage boys who were essentially royalty? Those were a whole different breed, and something about their cruelty hurt just a little more.
Once the two had made it to the dining hall Tilly took to filling in Mia with all the exaggerated details, as she forced Holly to eat some food. She found she really wasn’t all that hungry, but had a few bites to calm her maternal friend anyways. She caught the eye of the Marauders across the dining hall and was reminded of their seeming friendship when Peter waved happily at her. This, of course drew the rest of their eyes, and soon she had a gaggle of boys grinning and waving at her. Smiling, she gave a small wave back.
“Hey, maybe you should talk to Black about his arsehole brother.” Mia interjected, watching the interaction. Holly shook her head immediately.
“Sirius and Regulus don’t talk. I think they’ve got some issues.”
“Yeah who wouldn’t, coming from that family,” Tilly huffed, grabbing the pumpkin juice from in front of Holly.
Mia and Holly nodded their agreements, and the girls ate the rest of their dinner with friendly conversation. When they finished, Holly began to head up to the astronomy tower, her last class of the day. It didn’t begin until midnight, but she enjoyed being in the tower to read or draw. She made conversation with the portraits as she moved up the stairs, happily letting them regale her with tales from their time. She traded them stories of her own, just little bits about the modern world, but they seemed entertained.
Finally she made it to the top of the tower where the class would be held in just a few hours. Reaching into her bag she pulled out a tablet of drawing paper, and some muggle style art supplies. Try as she might, Holly was horrible with a quill and ink, and hated writing (or drawing) with them.
Settling herself in a nice corner by the edge of the tower, she let her pencil trace mindlessly over the paper. She thought back to the dreams she’d been having recently. Each night seemed to bring new, vivid images to the forefront of her mind. She had always had strange dreams, but they were typically fuzzy and didn’t happen nearly as frequently as they seemed to now.
As she let her pencil wander mindlessly, she watched the shape appear. The curve of an ear, the softness of some kind of fur. She studied the drawing as she went, with curiosity. This was from her dream from the other night, when she had been in the forest. She continued to sketch messily and finally realized what she had drawn. Holly traced the werewolf on her page with a finger. As a Hufflepuff she liked animals, but she was much more in tune with plants then she had ever been with creatures; magical or otherwise. Still, she knew enough about them, and couldn’t help her confusion. Why would she be drawing- or dreaming about- werewolves? She wasn’t sure she’d ever thought much about the creatures before now.
She continued like that, lost in her thoughts and graphite, for what seemed like forever. A few students had filtered in at this point but she didn’t look up. That is until someone cleared their throat next to her.