FLOYD; sirius black

31; help her

Sylvia Floyd's auspicious future had always been present. From her father's eyes, a firm, kind and rosy man who had whittled from the war, and had the lucky chance of watching that very war dwindle until no one dared mention the pain and grief that was devised from it, she was to be the greatest witch in the world.

A father's expectation is a hefty one.

From her fathers eyes, her world was to be one of riches, good fortune, literature and music. She was bilingual before she blew out four birthday candles on her Victoria sponge cake, spoke latin perfectly at the age of twelve, read Shakespeare and Orwell, Hemingway and Tolstoy, Fitzgerald and Woolf. Amongst her many accomplishments, she was a friendly face in town, a trust-worthy friend, a kind-hearted girl and a girl who had a very present, auspicious future.

Sylvia knew of the word at the age of eight. A dinner party, placed in the dimly-lit dining room with large, french windows and a vase of peonies.

Seated to the left of the eight year old, red-cheeked and naive girl, with two groomed braids and a white bow, was Charlene Laurent. The woman radiated a class that Sylvia couldn't imagine existed, let alone allow her grubby eight-year old hands to reach. She had lost her husband to the war, a grey man named Jaques, with balding hair and a wry smile that the woman had come to copy in her elder age, and she was poured with so much class, money and power that anyone would bow to her feet. Nevertheless, Charlene Laurent loved Sylvia Floyd.

Perhaps, Charlene took such a devotion to the girl for her singular child was a skimpy, stalky and stiff boy, Leon. His humor was a down-pour, his intelligence low, and he often stood cramped in the corner of a room whilst his mother attempted to match a girl to him; often flinging them his way after informing them, wrongly of course, that the boy was first in his class, heir to the Laurent fortune ( the only truth told), and had recently been accepted into Cambridge University.

Sylvia was seen as a doll in the eyes of Charlene. She poured among her, showered her with gifts that her mother eyed approvingly, taught her the ways of a young lady and said to her parents rather often," Your daughter has an auspicious future."

Leon married a french baker named Charlotte, found a job as a mechanic, though only worked at the office for ten years before the death of his mother, seventy-two from typhoid after a visit to New York City, left him devoured in riches, birthed two children, a girl named Camille and Lucien, and lived the rest of his life within a manor in the south of France.

Who would've thought that sulky Leon Laurent would have a more auspicious life than Sylvia Floyd.

december 24th 1977

It was a surprise when Sylvia Floyd finally emerged from her room. Her hands hiding within the fabric of her sleeves, her striped pyjama trousers hanging loosely off her torso as her eyes flickered round the room. Kindly, she looked as if she had crawled out a rubbish bin or not returned from a late night out. Her hair resembled a birds nest, the slithers of pale blonde running askew around her forehead, her eyes held bags so heavy that her face drooped with complete sadness and her simple being, existence and presence showered every lively person (not that you'd find any in this particular room) with melancholy.

A beam of striking light fell on the staircase as she walked down, slowly, collecting herself as her hand brushed along the wooden banister. It was James Potter that saw her first. He sat there, his girlfriend lying within his lap as she devoured her latest book, clasped in her hands with intrigue as her interest peaked once and once again. He had been running her hands through her red, thick hair, whispering the girl inaudible somethings to which she hushed as she stirred, eyes tracing the words of the three hundred page novel.