Emilia

The days until their next lesson in the room of requirement seemed to be twice as long as usually. Emilia wasn't too sure if it was the sudden difference in how her days went by. She felt bad for all the time she could use for studying that she now spent having lunch and dinner with her new friend (she wasn't sure yet if Clarissa counted as a friend), and all the time she had with them in the common room. Her chess skills increased, that was for sure, but she still didn't feel comfortable with neglecting her studies. She needed to remind herself that she was already extremely advanced for her age – although she also had to admit that her goal had never been being the best. She simply wanted to be good at the things she liked.

And of course, then there was also Sally who seemed to steal her thoughts more than just a few times. Sally hadn't mentioned the … incident in the bathroom again, so Emilia made sure to not mention it as well. She caught herself trying to avoid being alone with Sally, although, on the other hand she also sometimes tried her best to catch her alone. None of this made sense…

~

Emilia had just tied her letter to a dark, brown owl as Sally entered the owl tower.

“For your parents?”, Sally asked.

“Yeah”, Emilia said, contemplating whether she should leave or stay.

“I write mine waaay too little, they always complain”, Sally laughed. She sat down on one of the small stone benches and started to push a letter into an a little bit too tiny envelope. Reluctantly Emilia sat down next to her.

She looked out of the wide and open windows. Sally's hair moved with the small breeze that blew through the tower. The view from up here was even better than the one from the Ravenclaw common room. The mountains in the distance seemed to glow in the sun. It had snowed on them for the first time this year, and ever since that the temperature had fallen. The cold of the first snow from the mountains tips seemed to radiate even down to the castle.Autumn weather was officially over for this year – which wasn't surprising since there were only a few weeks left until Christmas.

“Do you remember the girl we talked about?”, She asked Sally to get rid of the awkward silence. “The one my father integrated into the muggle society?”

“I do.”, Sally said and smiled, still fighting with her letter.

“I owled him and asked about her. He said he is still in contact with her. Her name is Sarah”

“Oh, how is she?”

“Good”, Emilia paused for a moment. Was Sally even interested?

“She just graduated high school and will go to college next year.”, Emilia continued.

“Awe that's nice!”, Sally answered, the smile still on her lips.

She stood up and tied the now closed envelope to an owls leg.

“She’s technically not… special, you know Sally.”

Sally looked at her with questioning eyes.

“I only remember her so well because my father used to talk about her a lot when my own Hogwarts letter arrived. My father helped LOT’S of children like her.”, Emilia said.

“She wants to be an elementary school teacher, he wrote, and she was just accepted at college when my letter arrived.”

“Really? She must be happy!”, Sally turned around. Her smile was even brighter now.

‘God, I love that girl’, Emilia thought about her friends excitement over someone Sally would call a squib – brushing that thought away quickly in embarrassment.

“You know Emilia, I always wanted to work with children too! But I fear I don't have the patience… I'm glad everything worked out for her!”

“Well...”, there was another short silence.

“Her parents disowned her.”, Emilia finally said.

With loud, flapping wings, the owl flew away with Sally's letter.

Sally seemedfrozen for a moment andthen turned around, her face showed both pity and shock. She sat down next to Emilia again. Suddenly the wind in the tower seemed cold and sharp.

“Not recently,”, Emilia explained. “They already had disowned her after she had contacted my father. Usually the parents contact the ministry, and the ministry contacts my father. Its a project he started himself and its one of the only ones existing in the world. There's another one in Japan, but besides that, muggles are completely on their own. Sarah’s case was a bit different though, she had contacted him alone.”

Sally now fully listened to her. Her eyes were fixed on Emilia.

“She wanted to be educated and live a normal life. There is a school in Scotland that teaches the muggle world to muggle-children, and when my father had secured a place for her her parentssat her in the next train that left London and never contacted her again. She was raised by a muggle foster family after being socialized, because her parents signedher up for adoption as soon as they kicked her out. Sarahhasn't seen themanother time after she had been thrown out of the house for going to the school.”

“Thats… horrible”, Sally said almost silently. Her eyes were wide, Emilia wasn't sure if she saw small tears in their corners.

“It is, but… its also normal. She isn'tspecial, as I said.”, Emilia answered and couldn't hide a sarcastic laugh.

“I've seen it numerous times – her fate of only being disowned was a good one. One time my father had contacted a pure-blood family and gave them the option to let their muggle son be raised by muggles, so he could have an independent life one day. After he had left… the family beat him with a cane until his entire back was purple and nearly all his ribs broken. They killed him later the same night. Their sentence was not even half a year in Azkaban – on parole.”

If there hadn't been tears in Sally's eyes before, they were there now.

“I'm sorry, I didn't want to ruin your day”, Emilia said, looking on the floor. She really shouldn't have brought it up. There were another few minutes of silence.

“Sarah wants to be an elementary school teacher because she wants to teach her children all the things she had needed to know, but didn't.”, she said.

Sally tried to smile.

“That's horrible”, she repeated again. “I'm glad she made that decision, she will be a really good teacher!”

Sally now looked at the floor with her.

“How many children does your father help… like, how many are out there?”, she asked silently.

“He usually gets a new case every 2 weeks, more during the summer months when the letters from the schools don't come.”

“How many are… abused?”

Judging by Sally's eyes Emilia didn't have to answer.

Sally put her hand on Emilia's. ‘God, I love that girl’, the thought kept reoccurring no matter how much she silenced it. ‘She only wants to help others’ had been her first assessment about Sally when they had started talking. Only now she realized how right she was.

“Im glad you told me.”, Sally said. Emilia had never seen her so serious.

“You were right, we never talk about it. Not my family, not my friends. No one does. But you were right – she could be my child.”

When Sally had left the tower Emilia grabbed another sheet of paper. She wrote a second letter, tied it to an owls foot and watched the owl fly into the distance.