Chapter 1
I lived in a small town off the coast of Cornwall. It was mainly a muggle town, with the exception of a few young wizard families. None of them of a high enough social status for my parents to affiliate themselves with them.
We were a family of four, a father off at the ministry, a stay-home mother, a daughter, and a son. We were the perfect picture book family. Perfect in all respects. I always hated it, every aspect of it. I was shunned, shushed, and ignored. Maybe that's why I loved my sister so much.
She was perfect, in the most imperfect way. Three years older than me and the best of my mother and father, long golden curls that only seemed to get brighter in the dark and light brown freckles that ran from her cheeks to her feet. She was completely bedazzled with them, she was a ladybug, she was all the stars in the universe. My Pandora.
She had green eyes. I remember that the most, bright eyes beneath golden lashes. She had dainty lips, bitten raw, matching to her fingernails, which were picked all the way up to the fleshy bit beneath, stained with dry blood.
She was smart too, even at a young age. When she turned 9 she began to sneak off to the town square. She told me I couldn't follow her, that it would make mother suspicious, though I begged profusely. When she returned we would sit in front of the fire, legs tucked in and chins resting on our scabbed knees. I would ask her, bright-eyed, what she had done? What had happened? What were the muggles like? She always went to the same place though, every time. The town only had one library, a small old thing run by a man far too old to still be working. She would sit in a far corner and read for hours.
I wonder now if she did it in a desperate attempt to attract my mothers' attention.
Mother was a cut-off woman, short with mousy hair curled up in a bun and a dead look in her eye. She was miserable and would lock herself away in the kitchen all day, only exiting to feed us and sleep. The only time I ever saw her smile was when she held events.
The events were gatherings of people my parents deemed acceptable enough to socialise with. My mother, when planning, would spend hours at the dining table, scrutinizing over pieces of paper, choosing who to invite and who to drop.
You see, Mother played a cruel game with these events. It was set up as a one in one-off. For one event she would pick up a new couple, often young and sociable, probably pureblood with bright futures ahead of them. Then, the next event she would drop an old regular she no longer found relevant or interesting. She would always introduce them to the new couple though, the event before they were dropped from the highly prestigious social group, having just met the people who would replace them.
It was horrible, and she loved it.
Father did not care much for the social events, but he allowed them. I think he knew they were the only sense of freedom his wife had, outside the sad, lonely world of motherhood. He didn’t love her much, I came to see that as the years went by. She loved him though. She adored his every move as if he was some ancient deity who blessed us with his presence.
They never paid us much attention, and when they did it was to scold us. We were never tucked in, sung to, read to, loved. We were never loved by the people who were meant to love us more than anyone in the world. A strange sense of betrayal, but one that hurt so bad you keeled over, wishing for a mother's touch and a father's smile.
Pandora loved me though. She loved me more than any parent. At night, as soon as we heard our father's heavy footfalls return to his bedroom, I would scurry up out of my bed, open my door, and creep across the hall to her room. We would curl up under the blankets, her hair around my neck.
“Tell me a story” I would whisper, she would smile, a sparkle in her eye, a single candle lit on her bedside table warming her face with golden light, stark contrasts with the dark of night behind her.
“What story would you like to here”
She had many stories to tell, her visits to the library filling her with fantasies. Muggle stories of knights and princesses. Wizard stories, about the fountain of youth and kings who locked their hairy hearts in chests. My favourite though was a muggle story she had read on her first outing. It told the story of a group of animals in a far off country who raced and got a year named after them, Pandora called them the “Chinese Zodiac”
“Tell me about the animals” I would say, and she would scrunch up her nose, formulating the story in her mind. Then her face would relax and she would begin the story.
Her voice was a hush of velvet, beautiful and poetic.
I always liked the rat particularly, much against my sister. “But the rat did what he had to! It would not have won otherwise!” I would say after she insulted the creature.
She would sigh, twirling a piece of hair around her finger, “but Pete, the rat was horrible to its friend the cat, and tricked the kind Ox. The rat is not good.”
“But-”
She would shake her head “we’ve talked about this before ok? The rat isn’t good.”
I would surrender, nodding along. Curling into her more, afraid she would hate me, and when she didn't hug me back I would whisper “I'm sorry”. she would laugh her laugh, like bells in the night. “It's ok peter.” and she would wrap me up tight, circling me with the smell of her, like an old house.
She was everything to me.
My Pandora.
Oh, I loved her more than the sun itself. I loved her more than anything I have ever come to love.
She was a ghost of the past, a childhood memory, an old recipe.
Maybe if I could go back, I would hold her hand forever, I would never let her hand go.
All the stars in the universe, that was her. The ladybird on the leaf.
When she left I was in pieces.
She was ecstatic after she got the letter, reading it out to me every time she could, touching the cream paper with utter love.
“Hogwarts!” she would whisper, her voice so full of joy it made me wince, “Oh Pete isn't this exciting! I wonder what house I shall be in! I hope for Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, I don't much fancy the other two, I heard they are very full-on”
She would ramble away, reading all the books on Hogwarts she could after our miserable trip to Diagon Alley. I had sulked along behind my mother, as she and Pandora chose things out. My Father could not come of course. Too busy at work.
I decidedly hated Hogwarts, for stealing my sister away. My parents were delighted though, one less child to bother with.
Pandora was put into Ravenclaw much to her delight, and on my birthday sent me a history of Ravenclaw book as a present.
I didn't care much for it, but it was from her. So I kept it tucked under my pillow every night, knowing that once her hands had touched those same pages.
She wrote to me every day. I was so lonely that I sat by the window, watching for her white owl in the sky.
She wrote extensively about the beauty of the place, so wondrous she could write millions of poems about the common room alone. Her classes, brilliant. Her friends, lovely.
I responded in a more dull fashion, scratchy lines detailing every little thing that happened to me.
I waited patiently for Christmas when she was to return, but much to my dismay, my Mother, in a monotone voice, informed me and my Father that Pandora planned to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas. My Father nodded, I sighed and that was that.
Winter flew by, it snowed, but I didn't go outside, I had no one to play in the snow with anyways.
Then spring came, in a rush of flowers and sun.
Dearest Peter.
Oh, joy! April arrives! My Birthday is soon, and I'm so very excited. Time has gone so quickly here in Scotland, and I will miss it when summer arrives and I'm shipped off home. (though I shall be so very excited to see you, darling).
I cannot wait until you are also in Hogwarts, we shall eat lunch together and when it snows you and I could go ice skating on the great lake! I do wonder if the giant squid is ok under all that ice.
Examinations are coming up soon, my friends all think those are a bore but I'm rather excited, I like studying, which I know sounds terribly boring of me but it's a way to pass time. A productive one at that!
How are Mother and Father? The same I expect.
By the way, I loved the drawing you drew for me! You are quite the artist young Peter, utterly incredible, I pinned it on my wall!
The quidditch finals are coming up soon too, (i assume you will love quidditch when you get here), Hufflepuff vs. Slytherin! Everyone is rooting for Hufflepuff, though the Slytherins will probably win.
Anyways, you take care of yourself, I must be off.
Me, Xenophilius and Alice are going to the astronomy tower!
Lots of Love, your devoted sister Pandora xxxxxxxx
P.S: do me another drawing asap, they are glorious!
My drawing wasn't as good as she made it to be, but if it made her happy I would do hundreds of drawings, just for her.
As Summer approached, I became restless, waiting for her return.
It was strange, after so long being away from her, I could hardly remember her face, or her smell or her voice. She had become an apparition, far too far away.
And then she was there.
Walking down the street beside their Mother. She had changed, her hair was longer, her cheeks fuller and pinker. There was a bounce in her step, and her nails and lips were not chewed up anymore, rather, her nails were longer and neatly filed, and her lips rosy.
When she saw me she dropped her trunk, earning a scolding word from Mother, but she ignored her.
“Peter, Oh Peter!” She cried, running towards me, hugging me and kissing my head and cheeks, crying. “Oh darling boy, I missed you so much.”
For a second I stood in shock, as if seeing a ghost, then wrapped myarms around her. “I missed you too.”
She drew apart from me, my head in her hands. “Well, aren't you all grown up?”
And then i melted, here she was. Pandora.
“You too”
“Well, let us go inside shall we, an awful lot to talk about you and me”