Cigarette Daydreams- ꜱɪʀɪᴜꜱ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋꜱ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ

64.

Aurora Black was a coward. A spineless, unavailable coward with crippling mental health.

She lay on the floor by her bed, her head resting against the stone flooring. An unopened letter sulked by her head of unbrushed, ebony curls, which spread around her motionless figure like a crown of thorns, and her arms were tucked uncomfortably under her forehead, cushioning her against the rigid unyielding of the flooring in which she lay. Her bed was unmade and her curtains drawn, casting her room in flickering shadows and rays of weak, early summer sunlight.

The letter glared at her in pity, and she averted her gaze once again to the ground. It was the sixteenth of June, and a measly eight days stood between her and the third task. Aurora's mind hadn't casted itself that far into the future, too wrapped up in the present day issues that tangled themselves around her ankles and pulled her underwater, and so she had hardly even begun to prepare for it.

But that didn't matter. Not right then.

Aurora allowed her eyes to flicker up to the letter once more, and she stared at it. Her eyes did not falter, not even to blink, and stayed focused entirely on the crisp parchment that had been strewn through her door that previous morning.

The worse part was that she knew who it was from. And she didn't want to open it.

It was a cowardly thing to do, Aurora realised. She should have just gotten it over and done with, scanned through whatever Fred had scribbled before casting the parchment alight, but she couldn't bring herself to do so.

It was unmistakably his handwriting. Aurora remembered it distinctly. Slightly cursive and slanted unevenly with a giddy, energetic finish to it. In a way, it reminded her oddly of her Uncle James', apart from this one was a little more legible than James' untidy, mistake filled hand. Not that that comforted her. She would much rather be receiving a letter from James, however irritating his correspondence may be.

She rolled over and groaned a pained groan. The floor prodded at the indents in her spine, and she shivered slightly at the ghastly feeling. Why she decided to have a meltdown on the floor rather than in her bed she would never understand. Perhaps it was because she was being a coward and ignoring her problems. Cowards don't deserve beds.

She dragged her knees up to her chest and took the letter in her scarred hand. She was careful not to lean too close to the envelopes opening, incase a bought of itching powder belched from its mouth, and gently ran a harsh finger along it's rim. Apprehensively, she ripped off the seal.

"Dear Aurora,"

She cringed slightly. If this was another apology letter she was going to light herself on fire.

"This is not an apology letter."

Good.

"I just wanted to – and this is from George as well – offer you some help with the third task, since you missed the introduction. Feel free to light this letter on fire, if you don't want to read it. We'll never know. Anyways, you're going to need to study a lot of dark creatures; werewolves, those giant spider thingies, vampires, Hippogryffs, the whole lot, though I don't think that there will be very many werewolves. The moon isn't until the end of the month. They might just stick Professor Lupin in there.

Make sure to clean up your defensive technique, not that you'll need it, and we snuck some colour-bombs in there to offer you cover should you need it. We gave some to Harry too, though he seemed fairly confident that we wouldn't need them.

Er. . . I think that's it. Don't get yourself killed, I guess.

Fred (And George xx)"

Aurora blinked. She flicked the page over, slapping the yellowing parchment against the cold stone floor. There was no other side, no warning, no p.s. She turned the paper over again, scanning through the simplified text once more.

That was it?

No. No, there had to be more. She ran her hands down the surface of the page, expecting to find hidden runes or textured letters or a secret code; she screwed it up and unravelled it, flipped it over repeatedly. Her hands had creased the parchment, and her attempts had prematurely weathered its common features, but Aurora payed no mind.

There was something about the parchment.

She held it above her head, aiming it up towards the light. There was no odd shadow casted, or the lingering dents of past letters scribbled hurriedly over top. The parchment was completely smooth. Strange. When Fred had sent letters previously it had taken about twenty-seven drafts and a full notebook of paper for him to even write the opening paragraph. It didn't seem right that there was no evidence of that here, or that there were no spelling mistakes or crossed out sentences.

Perhaps George had written it, as a peace- keeping thing. That would make sense, she supposed. But George had perfectly ordinary handwriting, and Fred's was scratchy and precarious. Besides George was adamant that Fred make up for the incident (she called it the incident now, because it wasn't quite an accident and technically she hadn't been in the wrong, so it wasn't her fault in anyway, shape or form.) and he was stubborn. No, it wasn't George, even if he had signed it.

So why would he give her advice? Maybe he was just joking around, giving her false advice so that Potter had a higher chance of winning. That seemed more likely than an actual apology, and it made Aurora more angry than anything.

Besides, how did they know what the tasks was when she didn't? It didn't make any sense? Did Dumbledore really detest Slytherins that much? Probably.

Even James and Lily knew! Draco bloody Malfoy apparently knew more than her, and everything he heard was about as real and genuine as his hair colour! It was depressingly infuriating, and Aurora could feel the desire to punch a wall swell up in her chest.

Out of pure restlessness, Aurora stared very hard at the parchment and attempted with all of her will power to set the letter aflame. She was still crouched on the floor, and her wand was on the fireplace. She didn't remember how it got there (she distinctly remembered it digging painfully into her spine exactly ten minutes ago) but it was too far away to fetch and Aurora honestly didn't have enough energy to cast a simple fire charm. Pins and needles stabbed at her feet, but Aurora remained still, her hair tickling the underside of her chin.

She didn't move until later that night, when her subconscious called for the little silver instrument she kept in her battered tote bag.