Cloudbusting
On the morning of the Third Task, Alastor Moody sat next to me and immediately said, “How’s it feel to have the night off?”
I suppose I must have let this Auror think we were on speaking terms since I danced with him at that ball. I didn’t even produce a reply before he continued:-
“I heard this Task’s just a hedge maze. Not worth going. Can’t see anything, like it was with the lake.”
The Enchanted ceiling began to rain, and the floating candles momentarily extinguished before their magic adapted and they relit.
If it will be cloudy all day, perhaps it’s best I don’t have class.
It could take me up to an hour to clear the sky for classes. Oh, who was I fooling? I loved using Atmospheric Magic as much as I loved teaching Astronomy. This Tournament was nonsense to me.
“You’re not thinkin’ of going, are you?” Moody asked me. He almost seemed distraught at the prospect of my presence.
“No,” became my first word of the day. I did not fathom how many times I would cry that word by the day’s end.
I couldn’t sleep. I was awake when Severus’s Patronus bounded through my door to tell me:-
“Your husband. Come at once.”
I discovered I was never talking to Alastor Moody. I was talking to you.
~~
My life, for all those trials, has been full. I am now thrice the age you ever got to be, but I still play with the clouds. I never gave credence to nephomancy, but today the clouds unambiguously told me I will see you again soon.
I am much too learned to picture you sitting atop some cloud waiting for me. You, my love, are in the rain.
“Aurora,” you smile, “you must be my thunder.”