Meraki

Chapter 9: Consternation

There is no difference in how light it is in the Slytherin common room whether it be summer or winter, spring or autumn. Day or night. Being underground and the only windows showing the very bottom of a lake darken the place at all times, the only sources of light being lanterns and the fireplaces.

As soon as Avior awakens, a moment of remembrance hits her when she finds her arm wrapped around quite a large dog already awake next to her but eerily unmoving. Not to wake her, she assumes. Star is no typical dog, that is clear by now, and she hopes Nyx will get along with him. She will keep him after all. If anything, she could always bring the dog to Hagrid to stay with him and Fang until the end of yet another year at Hogwarts.

“Bonjour,” she whispers, a joyous smile on her face. She lifts her head, her hair a proper mess as she moves to sit up right and brush her fingers through his black fur. It is infinitely softer and smoother now compared to when she met him for the first time. “You will have to wait here until everyone has left to go home, I’ll be able to bring you out after. D’accord?”

Avior quickly gets up to get ready for the day, for a snowball fight and to eventually say goodbye to her friends. Each and every one of them are leaving to go home. Theodore was requested to go home by his father, Tristan will be off to spend it with his family, so are Terenzio and Eliana with theirs, and Juliette to be with her mother.

“We should do two teams,” Juliette decides as they stand in a circle together. Eliana and Terenzio have opted out of playing, watching them from a distance as they sit on a bench together, while Graham has joined them, along with Angelina Johnson, another one of Juliette’s friends. Avior automatically wants to tell them that Angelina should be on the opposite team to herself, wanting to bring a Quidditch rivalry into a simple snowball fight.

“Hey!” A familiar voice interrupts the moment Avior opens her mouth to speak her mind. They all look up from their circle to see an identical set of twins approaching them.

“Planning on having a fight without us?” Fred grins. Theodore scoffs beside Avior, but she returns the favour with a cheeky grin of her own.

“Want to join? We were about to pick teams,” she explains and he is already nodding, George glancing around the circle.

“We could technically do Slytherins versus Gryffindors,” says George, though his brother shakes his head.

“Let’s leave that to Quidditch. L-B is on my team,” he decides rather quickly.

“Who says I want to be?” She retorts, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’m with Ava,” Theodore butts in harshly as Fred and Avior descend upon a stare down, before either of them can turn this into a fight of its own.

“Me too,” Tristan pipes up, much calmer to his friend and roommate as he stares defiantly up at Fred, who is in turn looking down at his girlfriend.

The two teams divide, stalking off to each discuss tactics after agreeing on no use of magic in this snowball fight. Majority of them are Quidditch players, though only Angelina, Avior and Tristan are Chasers. Tristan hadn’t tried out for the team this year, but he promised Avior that he would be the next when she complained about his absence during training.

They quickly fall into a heavyset fight, laughter rising up from the group as they take these last minutes together before they each go their own way for the Christmas break. Eventually the teams break apart and Theodore is barrelling Fred with snowballs, while Avior is shoving a heap of snow in Tristan’s face when she has him on the ground, and at the same time Angelina is attacked by George.

“Yield!” Avior exclaims through her laughter, leaning over to the side to gather more snow while Tristan splutters beside her, rushing to free his eyes, nose and mouth from the snow she piled on his face.

“Never!”
She is still pushing together more snow when she is suddenly shoved to the ground by him, a squeal escaping her when it is her turn to defend herself as he pushes a ball of snow in her face.

“I will never be defeated!” She screams, muffled under his advances, struggling to push herself back up from this vulnerable position. Tristan is cackling above her and he grabs her wrist to pin it to the ground when he notices her reaching for her wand.

“That’s against the rules!” He says and he is only met with laughter. Ironic to say to someone that would rather break rules than follow them.

“You yield,” he goes on, grinning boyishly when she stills beneath him, heaving with the efforts of trying to fight him off while laughing hysterically. Her beanie is barely on her head, covered in snow along with the short strands of her raven hair. Her pale skin blends into the snow, but her cheeks and nose are bright red, the shade making her right eye stand out starkly with its green colour, while her left is fit to be painted against snow.

“I will save you!” Theodore appears out of thin air and tackles his friend to the side and away from his girlfriend, giving Avior the room to raise herself to her feet with a fight glittering in her eyes.

“That was my fight, Nott!” She follows the two boys as they start wrestling in the snow and dives between them to push Theodore over with a wicked grin.

“This will teach you.” Avior is already laughing before she finishes her sentence, pointing her wand at the snow beside them while Theodore is distracted from being tackled by her and then the fact that she is now on top of him, trying to reach up for a kiss when he is met with a large quantity of snow raining down on him. He attempts measly at blocking it with his hands above his face, yelling out a shocked Ava!, going muted by the amount of snow falling down on his head. Avior scrambles to get up and snatches Tristan’s hand where he stood by and watched with unstoppable laughter, tugging him along as she runs away from Theodore before he can get up for a counterattack.

When their fight has finally come to an end, leaving each of them out of breath, but happy. They go back inside for them to grab their luggage and eventually it comes to saying goodbye to Avior, all of them leaving to go home but her.
Avior hugs her sister a little longer than usual for not being with her during Christmas for the first time ever since growing up together in France. They both dread it, but neither girl wants to leave their own parent to spend it alone.

“Don’t miss me too much!” She yells after her when Juliette disappears into the throng of students moving to the large entrance doors. Theodore pulls her into his arms for a last time. “Write to me,” he says, planting a kiss on the top of her head, “and don’t get into trouble here.”

“You know I won’t.” Avior exhibits a grin that speaks of the exact opposite. It makes him laugh before he is off too, following the last few students to trail out of the castle. She releases a deep sigh. Already, it feels like she is missing out on a large chunk of Christmas by knowing that she won’t spend it with Juliette nor Theodore. Avior spins around when the last student disappears out of her sight and takes her time making her way back to the common room. The castle is much quieter, even now only seconds after nearly the entirety of the amount of students has left. There is a realisation in the walls that there are significantly less voices to be listened to, so they seem to move closer to hear better the few that are left. At the same time, Hogwarts feels immensely bigger with less people living under its roof. It is a temporary thing and thus Avior declares this the time to explore like never before.

Being the only Slytherin left at Hogwarts has its perks. A freedom like no other, being able to walk around the common room without a single other student that she might trip over or have to glare at.

“Star!” She exclaims with bursting excitement upon pushing her dormitory door open. “We are the only ones here! Come on!” Avior nearly rips the drapes clean off as she pulls them aside to take Star out of his misery of only staying in her bed. “We will get some breakfast in the kitchens and—” She shuts herself up abruptly.

Star is gone.

“Non,” she gasps dramatically and instantaneously drops to her knees to look under her bed, but he isn’t hiding there either. Avior then spends at least an hour searching her dorm and the bathroom, then running past each room, pushing every door open and calling for the dog. She has swept through the entire common room by then like a Firebolt racing through the sky, and her beloved Star is nowhere to be found. Sullenly, Avior finally makes her way to the Great Hall. Her stomach is rumbling with hunger because she skipped dinner the day before, so she decides to continue looking for him after having breakfast. Which she does. Mincy the elf stays by her side as she eats on the floor in the kitchens, listening to her ramble on about Theodore, the snowball fight and Star, about which Mincy promises not to tell anyone.
It proves easier to look around when she doesn’t run into others while walking through corridor after corridor. She searches for the entire day, it feels like. Up until she reaches Remus’s classroom and he steps out after he hears his daughter’s voice calling the word ‘star’.

“What is it that you are doing, my darling?” asks Remus and she spins around swiftly to face him. To tell him the truth, or to lie. That has never been much of a hard decision to make for her.

“I snuck in the dog that I met last Hogsmeade visit before yesterday, but he disappeared,” she blurts it out at once. “I think he left me.”

“Come here,” Remus gestures for her to get closer to where he stands in front of the classroom door. He has left his cane for the time being now that he feels a little better again after the full moon and last transformation. Avior stops when she stands right in front of him. The resemblance between the disappointment in her eyes now to the look she would always have on her face when she was only a child in France looking for a dragon in their backyard, never succeeding, is great. Notwithstanding the simple fact that she is growing up, there are moments like this one where Remus can at least pretend that she is still that little girl in France with her favourite overalls on and two braids in her hair, strands sticking out all over.

“Animals have a mind of their own, you know that.” He smiles and it makes him look less tortured by his condition. “And assuming that it was a stray dog, they simply didn’t know you well enough yet to stick by you. What if I promise you that I will try for us to one day get a dog of our own?”

The frown on her face clears up at once. “Really?”

“I will do my best,” Remus promises. With having a reliable job now, promises like this one feel less like impending disappointment. “Come in,” he says, turning around to push the door open, “we have something to discuss.”
Avior knows. She knows that it isn’t something casual and unimportant that he wants to talk about. The look in his eyes says enough, telling her that he wants this out of the way and he won’t wait on any excuses she might think of. Avior steps inside, past him, and he follows, carefully closing the door and walking towards one of the tables in the back row. He leans against it and she follows his example, picking a table to lean against and face him.
Several long seconds pass and they only look at one another. She studies his face, but she can’t tell which next words will leave his mouth. While he wonders where he went wrong for her first thought to have been revenge. Why she hadn’t come to him, her father, instead.
One side of him is proud. Proud that she stood up for herself. It is the way in which she did so that he does not approve of.

“You told me you didn’t care about what that boy had done that day, when you struck him.”

Avior had known it was coming, this talk. She knew he would find out about it one way or another.

“It was the principle of the situation,” she says and opens her mouth to continue, but Remus raises a hand for her to listen first.

“Just like it is the principle of you not having been entirely truthful with me when you said it didn’t matter to you anymore and that you were over it. Clearly, you weren’t over it. Am I right?”

Remus waits and in her silence, he has found his answer. “Maybe,” she replies a long beat later. “Un peu.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Parce que… at the time, I did think I had moved past it. But like I said, it was the principle of him doing something like that— acting like I have something to do with a person that murdered his friend and a dozen Muggles and betrayed his other friends…” Her chest is starting to buzz on the inside like an angry creature wanting to escape. “Only because we share a name,” she rambles in frustration, “only because I happen to look like him. I am not like him. I am not like the wretched family he comes from, because I do not.”

Regardless of Lorelei’s letter telling her to be proud of who she is, in this unanticipated small explosion of anger it suddenly seems much harder to have pride in coming from a family full of murderers, shortsighted people and Death Eaters.

“I don’t keep any secrets from you, Papa, and this is also no secret of mine. I hate the lot of them. There is nothing of me that resembles a murderous traitor. Je déteste ça.”

Remus is truly speechless. The insurmountable hatred in her eyes should not be possible to be seen in a fourteen-year-old. And he feels guilty for almost the whole of it. It nearly seems that he brought her into this world with this anger and hatred, rooted into a core of violence. First and foremost, she was born into a war.

“So if one of them annoys me, I will bother them. It is the principle.”

“Show them that,” Remus gets hold of his voice again, “show them that you are nothing like they were. My Star, you are not a child of violence and aggression.”

Her face contorts only momentarily and he pushes himself off of the table to step closer to her, to take her hands and make them unclench from the fists they have formed.

“I will forever be sorry.”

At once, her shoulders drop and her expression softens impossibly. “Papa,” she says, “it is not your fault.”

“Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t matter. You are enduring all of this and as your father it is my duty to—”

“No,” Avior cuts him off sharply, “no, you have no obligation in this, nor is it in your power to stop them. You might be their teacher, but they won’t quit. We both know that.” She pulls her hands out of his and wraps her arms around his waist instead, dragging him into a tight hug. “Please worry about it no longer.”

“I fear I won’t ever stop worrying about you,” sighs Remus and his arms automatically move to hold her securely in turn.

The two dropped the topic quickly after to spend a while longer together, having tea in his room and Remus telling her about what he will be teaching her class once the next term has started. He helps her distract from the fact that the dog disappeared without a trace, though when she leaves his room to go back to her dormitory, she is reminded once again by the spot he clearly had been laying in on her bed.
But there is something she overlooked in her search for him. There lays a single jasmine flower atop her trunk at the foot of her bed. Avior bends down to inspect it up close. The flower is larger than they usually are, perhaps enlarged with magic. She reaches out and gently touches one of its white petals with her forefinger and the moment her skin comes in contact with it, it flutters in an invisible wind and floats up enough to then slowly drift back down. Catching it in her palm, Avior smiles. Theodore has told her before that she sometimes smells like this particular flower.
She pushes the stem of the flower into her hair, by her right ear, and then picks up her school bag. When she reaches inside until she feels the leather cover of one of her journals to pull it out, another item falls out with it. The folded up wanted image of Sirius Black drops onto her covers and she places her journal on her lap to pick it up and unfold it.

Like father, like daughter

Where those words were written to mock and insult her, they now do different by reminding her of her conversations with Remus just now and the day after she cut her hair. She grabs her wand from her pocket intentionally, so she can cut off the rest of the poster and only keep the words. The strip containing them she leaves on her nightstand, next to the spot where she always places her watch every night not to forget it in the following morning. And the rest of the poster gets ripped to shreds and thrown away without a second thought.

After all, Lorelei was right. She needs to find a way to be prideful in what she comes from. Her blood means more than just the other souls that were housed in bodies fed by it. It means power in a way that cannot be touched by image. That power is what earned them that reputation. Remus has always told her what an exceptional witch she is, that her magic is different. Perhaps it is about time she embraces it.

———

The extremely small number of people left at Hogwarts has it so she doesn’t run into many others throughout the next few days, apart from her visits to Remus and having meals in the Great Hall with house tables so empty, the castle has never felt so big and the other tables have never felt so close.
Harry Potter and his two best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger are three amongst the six students total that are left, including Avior. Something has shifted. Ron still continues to avoid her gaze, Hermione looks as indifferent as ever, but Harry… There is an anger in him directed solely at Avior that has never been there before. A newfound but deep well filled to the brim with hatred. This odd one-sided tension starts to rub off on Avior too as the days pass towards Christmas, making her automatically start to dislike him for the sake of him hating her for no apparent reason. She has never done him wrong, so she wonders if Ron hasn’t convinced him of some other blatant lie or rumour, and given her a hated reputation in Harry’s eyes.

Despite the lack of students present during this holiday season, many Christmas decorations have been put up in the whole of the castle. Even the Slytherin common room feels warmer with the tree and its lights present.

On Christmas morning, Avior wakes up with only Nyx by her side and presents piled up at the foot of her bed instead of under the large tree at home. Though she is eager to unwrap her presents, she simply can’t stand not freshening up the moment she gets out of bed, so she rushes off to the bathroom first, wishing Nyx a Merry Christmas on her way. Once done and ready, she sits down on the floor in utter peace in her solitude. Her cat walks up to her side upon hearing the crinkling and tearing of wrapping paper.

“This one is for you!” Avior exclaims when she unwraps a small Christmas hat as her third present, small enough for Nyx. “Viens.”
It only takes several minutes, but eventually the tiny black cat sits seemingly glaring at Avior with a bright red hat on. Avior pets her once or twice before she moves on to grab the card that accompanied the first few presents. Books and several potion ingredients, including the hat, were all from her father.
Next up, she opens a box containing a snow globe with a charmed dragon flying inside it whenever she shakes it, miniature snowflakes falling around it. There is a card from Lorelei and Juliette included— she could have guessed that. Not only does Lorelei love dragons, having always been obsessed with them in a way that still continues to surprise Avior that she never chose for a career with them. And then also, they know of her collection of snow globes and her love for them.
Theodore’s gift is next and Avior gasps audibly when she opens a small box with a bracelet inside it. It is very simple; a silver bracelet with a single star in the middle. The initials engraved on it have her reacting like this. Smiling, blushing profusely. The initials of her boyfriend and best friend all in one, engraved on something that resembles her. Avior takes the bracelet out and although she struggles for a bit, she manages to put it on her left wrist.

Merry Christmas, Ava!
The first Christmas where I get to call you my girlfriend. Excited and happy don’t even begin to encompass how I feel about that. Even if we aren’t together right now, you still manage to make this Christmas even better than any I have ever had before.
I hope you like your present, Stella.

Yours,
Teddy

Avior folds the note back up and places it in the bracelet’s box, reaching for the next present with a giddy smile.

She has received a drawn image of what is clearly a Hebridean Black, with a simple message on the other side;

Merry Christmas.

Terenzio Norelli

Eliana has sent her a small replica of the moon that floats above her palm the moment she takes it out of the expensive looking box. Avior can’t help but admire the details on it for many long seconds before she continues, eyeing the largest box of all with eagerness that has her leaving it for last.
Next, she opens a card that explodes with red and gold glitter in her face, making her cough as she most definitely inhales a bunch of them. There is a small message written inside from the Weasley twins, and she is all but surprised. She blinks through the glitters stuck in her eyelashes as she reaches for her wand to disappear them all, exhaling with relief when she finds that they didn’t charm them to stick permanently— which she wouldn’t have put past them.
Graham has sent her a Quidditch themed Christmas card and then there are only two more gifts left; the largest of all and rather small one, perhaps the smallest out of them all.

Again, Avior reaches for the smaller one first, pulling loose the ribbon keeping the little box closed, then revealing a simple ring inside it. It is a band of silver, nothing on it, but when Avior pulls it out of the box, she notices the engravement on the entire inside of it. She takes a closer look, the floral pattern and its details showcasing a thin string of jasmines.

When she searches for a note or anything of the sort, she doesn’t find any. With slight hesitancy does she slip the ring onto her forefinger, but it is too big so she puts on her thumb and finds it to fit perfectly. Avior waits several seconds, looking down at Nyx. As if a letter or a card will appear, or maybe the ring will curse and kill her. Though when nothing happens, she shrugs at her cat and moves on to the largest box. Firstly she tries to take the paper off neatly, until her impatience gets the best of her and she starts to rip it off without care, getting too curious to see what it is. It is a large rectangular box, possibly over a metre long if her guesswork is to be trusted. Nyx attacks the crumpled up paper when Avior throws it aside before she tries to jump into the box.

“Hey! Just a moment! It will be all yours in a…” Her voice fades into silence the very moment her gaze falls on the singular little box in the large one, slightly bigger than the previous she just opened. It lays in a large layer of tissue paper, disguising whatever lays underneath. Unless this entirely too large box was for this only. Avior finds herself growing more and more confused with every passing second. She picks up the box, clearly meant for jewellery— possibly another ring. The box is a gift on its own to her; made of a hard material covered in maroon velvet and decorated with golden details along the edges all around. It feels expensive.
Her guess turns out to be right when she flips the box open, much fancier than the plain one she just opened. A beautiful gold ring comes into view with immense detail on each side of two smaller deeply red stones, in the middle of them a slightly larger one. They are rubies, so perfectly matching the box itself.

Avior glances at the ring she just got and the bracelet she is now wearing. She only wears silver, so she doesn’t see a reason to put this ring on. Yet she still plucks it from the cushioned inside of the box to try it on and it fits perfectly on her ring finger.

It is a beautiful ring with an intricate design that speaks of its worth including it being gold and having rubies on it. What she doesn’t understand is why she would be gifted this ring. And by whom.

She puts the ring back in the box and closes it to search for a letter, leaving the ring on the floor beside her before she grabs a handful of tissue paper to lift it up.

Her jaw falls slack at the second gift inside the box. She starts grabbing more fists of paper to throw it all aside with her heart beginning to race.

“Non,” she utters under her breath, staring down at the perfect and brand new Firebolt beneath her gaze. So many questions fill her mind with one at the very front, yet it is all overpowered by pure amazement and growing excitement.

“Nyx,” she breathes when the cat tries to jump into the box again, reaching out to the broom with actual shaking hands, gingerly lifting it out of the box where it was cushioned with even more paper. “Pinch me, Nyx.”

Its wood shines in the lights of the dormitory, so much so that she can nearly see a perfect reflection of herself staring at the broom with pure joy. Avior lets go of it, for it to vibrate and then lift up into the air next to her where it remains floating at the exact height for her to get on it. She starts to dig through the paper again at once, pulling every last bit out and shaking every handful as if at least a name will fall out of it to reveal to her who sent her an actual Firebolt. The blood in her veins seems to be buzzing, pushing more and more energy into her and urging her to try out the broomstick. But she is on a hunt for any sign of who has gifted her this.

“How?” She whispers to herself when she has gotten close to ripping the whole box apart. Avior lifts her head to stare up at the broomstick floating beside and she has to fight the need to fly it through the common room and the castle’s corridors.

At a loss of who the sender could have been, Avior finally decides to change into black jeans and green jumper, glancing at the broom floating very still in the air every now and then. Lastly, two pins are pushed into her hair to keep it out of her face and her shoelaces get tied. She rushes off with Nyx on her heels to find her father and thank him for his gifts and inquire about the Firebolt. While she wants to believe that he gave it to her, she is also very well aware that her father can’t afford something that expensive. Her current broomstick —a Cleansweep Seven— isn’t bad at all. Lorelei had gifted it to her when it came out together with Remus, right before she was finally old enough to try out for the Quidditch team. It is a good broom, but nothing is as good as a Firebolt nowadays and Avior has never owned anything like it.

Despite her size, Nyx is fast and easily keeps up with Avior as she hurries towards her father’s classroom through many corridors and up many stairs. The Christmas spirit follows them all around; floating ornaments in every corridor, shiny strings coiled around the bannisters along with Christmas lights. Even with its current emptiness and the wintry snow and ice outside, the decorations make the castle feel warm and welcome.
Avior bursts into the classroom and runs past the desks and up the stairs at the very end of the room, up to Remus’s personal space and office.

“Papa!” She heavily knocks thrice on the door, waiting for him to open as she catches her breath and bounces on her feet. Nyx climbs to sit on the front of her Converse shoes, forcing her owner to stop rocking back and forth as she is, until Remus pulls the door open and the cat shoots off past his legs to enter the room, not quite bothering to wait on a humanly invitation.

“Merry Christmas!” Avior throws her arms around her father for a tight hug and he chuckles warmly as he reciprocates it, leaning down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. It is clear in his embrace that he is not feeling well in the slightest with the next full moon in only three days time.

“Merry Christmas, Ivy,” says Remus, opening his mouth to thank her for her gifts —a pile of chocolate bars and a silver necklace with a subtle star pendant on it that she may or may not have stolen, though her father doesn’t need to know that— when she beats him to it.

“Thank you for the presents,” she smiles broadly, “I love them! And Teddy got me a bracelet that technically matches the necklace I got you! C’est le destin!”
She lifts her hand and pulls her sleeve back to reveal the bracelet to him, letting him take her wrist gently and study it.

“It suits you well,” Remus comments, a smile of his own tugging at his mouth at the sight of the initials on the star. How fiercely he wishes to return to the time when he was young and in love, when his lover would get him presents for Christmas.

“And I received a Firebolt,” she finally blurts it out when she cannot contain it any longer. Remus is still holding onto her wrist and his smile drops to make place for pure confusion on his face, making his eyebrows furrow together as he tries to make sense of what his daughter has just said to him.

“A Firebolt ya said?” He echoes, puzzlement clear as day through his voice. His accent slips and becomes heavier. Remus lets go of her wrist and rubs the side of his jaw.

“Yes,” Avior nods heavily, “but there was no card or anythin’! I haven’t the slightest clue who sent it.”

Cogs turn in the father’s head, alarm bells ringing at once, though he tries to push them down and muffle them so he can think clearly. Worry is the first thing that raises itself, the need to shield her from any potentially lurking danger.

“I don’t think you should be using it,” he ultimately decides and her jaw drops once more. The unexpectedness of his response makes her stomach twist, successfully choking down her previous excitement. At once, her joy of owning such a broom ceases to exist, because she knows there is no way of changing her father’s mind once he has made it up.

“Pourquoi?” She responds sharply.

“Ivy,” he says in warning, “I don’t trust it, and neither should you, especially with all that you know. You are smart and should not ever let your guard down, even for things that could excite you— especially for such things. Bring me the Firebolt, yes? I will go over it, make sure it is safe.”

Having a father well taught in Defence Against the Dark Arts clearly has its cons.

Even so, it is only a broomstick after all.

Avior sees the logic behind his reaction and what he is telling her. She knows it is better to be safe than sorry, and that is what he is deciding by. Though she is much less mature than him and very obviously not taught in such parental instincts and decisions herself.
Avior crosses her arms over her chest and looks up at him intransigently. Remus feels like he is being flown back in time, or like this is a strange sense of deja vu, but warped and twisted, where two people morph into the one person standing before him.

“Do as I say, Ivy,” he says to her before she can start arguing. “I will only look it over to ensure your safety.”

Grumbling under her breath, Avior is off again to collect the Firebolt from her room and return to her father with it, to leave it unused for undecided time. She has half a mind to try it out outside before she brings it to her father when she grasps it where it remains floating in the air of her dormitory, but she is certain that Remus will know if she did somehow. And if there truly is a danger to this broomstick like he suspects there might be, then he won’t even need to rely on his gut feeling to know she used it.

Remus has to contain an amused smile upon her return and the sight of her annoyed and disappointed face, the longing look she throws at the broomstick the moment she hands it over to him.

“You won’t destroy it, non?” She asks with bated breath and Remus shakes his head.

“Nothing will happen to it, Ivy,” he reassures her, then sends her off without her cat, laying curled up in the middle of his bed.

The next few hours are spent wandering around the corridors of the castle. At one point she stops in front of the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, wishing that she had known the password to go inside, wanting to taste the air of Christmas in there for at least a moment. The portrait of the Fat Lady stares down at her haughtily, ready to reprimand her for daring to even look at her as a Slytherin, but Avior already spins around and stalks off, to go to the Ravenclaw tower instead. With no other students present —or at least not around— she is free to attempt at getting into the common room.

She stops in front of the knobless door with nothing but a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle. Reaching a hand out to grab it and knock once, the eagle comes to life.

“Glittering points that downward thrust, sparkling spears that never rust. What are they?”
It couldn’t ever be surprising for the Ravenclaws to have to answer a riddle to enter their common room, but Avior can only think of how annoying that can be when one is tired and ready to shut their brain off and go to sleep.

She is often lucky to even remember the Slytherin’s password when she returns to the commons after sneaking out and staying outside way past her curfew, doing everything a rule-breaking young teenager like herself might do, and tiring herself out. Avior stares at the eagle for a few more seconds, then sighs.

“It is time for lunch, so I’ll be back later to try to answer your silly question. Au revoir.”

There is no rush in getting into every common room so perhaps she could write a letter to Juliette, asking for the password to the Gryffindor’s. Surely her sister would let her in? Avior would let Juliette into hers without hesitation. The only obstacle would be Ron Weasley and his two friends being present and possibly stumbling into them when entering their territory. Ron might be too scared to say anything to her, but Hermione is a witch the opposite of Avior; always following the rules and making sure others do too. Harry might strangle her, she thinks to herself with an audible chuckle. The way he has been looking at her lately during the few times they cross one another for meals in the Great Hall, he seems to be fueled by hatred enough to have considered it.

Entering the hall as one of the last people, she realises that the House tables have all been moved to the walls again and that instead there is a single long table in the middle. Professors Dumbledore, Snape, Sprout, McGonagall and Flitwick are already seated, as well as Filch, this time dressed in an old and battered-looking tailcoat. There are two first years, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, and Avior herself as the only students.

“Merry Christmas!” Dumbledore says as she nears the table with the urge to simply turn around and leave, had it not been for the fact that she is sure her father will be joining them as well. “Take a seat! With only so few of us here, we have chosen in preference to all enjoy this meal together!”

Avior takes a seat at the very end of the table as one of the few spots left, directly across from Ron. She could laugh right then when their eyes meet and he attempts to flare at her before he quickly diverts his gaze.

“Dig in!”
Avior is the only one not to pick up her cutlery, her feet swinging back and forth under her seat as she waits for her father to arrive despite her hunger at the sight and smell of the food.
Her head turns so fast she could have dislodged it when the doors of the hall open, but to her utmost disappointment it is Professor Trelawney, and not her father. The witch almost appears to be floating towards them as she approaches the table, wearing a green dress with sequins that catch the light of the candles, making her glitter with every movement.

“Sybill, this is a pleasant surprise!” Dumbledore stands up, though he remains the only one.

“I have been crystal gazing, Headmaster,” says Professor Trelawney in her usual mystical and sometimes strange voice, “and to my astonishment…”
Avior doesn’t bother listening anymore, the sound of their voices being blocked off in her mind as she looks past the professor to search for any sign of her father. Not only would she much rather eat with him than any of the people present here —not that she truly dislikes any of the professors, apart from Snape— she is also aching to ask him about the Firebolt and if he has found anything out. She knows he might not show up at all due to the nearing full moon, and if that is the case, she will save her hunger to bring food along with her to eat with him in his room instead.
Her attention is drawn when Dumbledore conjures a chair out of nothing and it falls with a thud between Snape and McGonagall, but Trelawney does not yet sit down, glancing around the table with her eyes so enlarged by her glasses she looks much like a bug with her green dress on. Instead she reveals a scream— even her raised voice sounds soft enough, “If I join the table, we shall be thirteen! Nothing could be more unlucky! Never forget that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!”

“We’ll risk it, Sybill,” says Professor McGonagall impatiently. “Do sit down, the turkey is getting entirely too cold.”

Avior snorts and wants to tell her how she likes the number thirteen, and even more so the number’s believed unluckiness. But Trelawney already sits down with clear apprehension before she searches the table again.

“But where is dear Professor Lupin?”

“He wanted to make sure there are thirteen of us,” Avior replies with a glitter in her eyes that those closest to her know is because of her amusement in her own joke. Professor McGonagall can’t help a tightlipped smile, like she is trying to contain it, whereas Professor Dumbledore chuckles freely.

Professor Trelawney doesn’t see the fun in Avior’s joke at all and instead stares at the young girl with big eyes and her mouth drawn into a line.

“If you must know, child, I have seen that your poor father will not be with us for very long. He seems aware, himself, that his time is short. He positively fled when I offered to crystal gaze for him—”

Avior’s amusement is gone at once and she glares back at the teacher without shame, spitting her next words out, “Of course you would know, Professor.”

“I doubt,” Dumbledore says, in a cheerful but slightly raised voice, to prevent an argument between professor and student which might end in yet another detention for Avior, “that Professor Lupin is in any immediate danger. Severus, you’ve made the potion for him again?”

“Yes, Headmaster,” says Snape.

“Good,” Dumbledore nods once. “Then he should be up and about in no time…”

As the others continue to eat and occasionally chat, Avior keeps her gaze locked firmly on Trelawney, with annoyance at her presence alone. She has never particularly disliked her nor her subject as many other students do, but she now finds herself abhorring the idea of being taught by her ever again for the audacity displayed just now.

She has barely gotten a few bites in when her hunger becomes overwhelming, until she decides that she has wasted time enough for it being Christmas and not being with her father. Even if Trelawney acts close to normal until almost the end of Christmas dinner, now nearly a few hours later, she shrieks when Avior rises from her seat first.

“My dear! Sweet child! You will be—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Avior snaps, cutting her off harshly. “First to die. Boo-hoo. Let’s hope it happens quickly.”
She is muttering under her breath in French when she turns around to leave the hall. Unbeknownst to her, Ron is actually laughing at her reaction and the offended look on Trelawney’s face in response.

Whether Professor Trelawney is genuine and skilled in her field or not might not be clear, but one can only wait and see. Avior hums to herself as she departs from the hall to visit her father once more, deciding that if she does happen to die first out of the thirteen people that had been present, she will haunt Trelawney as a ghost for speaking it into existence. She pauses at the kitchens, asking very politely for a plate piled with food from the elves before she is on her way again, surprising Remus when she arrives, grinning from ear to ear.

“Apparently I will be dying first out of everyone here, Papa, so enjoy your time with me while you still can.”