astronomy • marlene mckinnon

forty seven

Considering that Astraea lived with Sirius Black for the first sixteen years of her life, she was used to being awoken in quite unusual ways. She did expect to have peaceful mornings after he left, but considering that the universe was out to get her and would never ever do anything which was in her favour she wasn't surprised when she woke up due to Evan Rosier shaking her, practically screaming in her ear to wake up while waving the daily prophet in her face.

"What in the name of Merlin—" She began as she pushed the blond away, perhaps with a bit too much force than she had intended because the boy fell off the bed and onto the ground. She heard the sound of laughter echoing across the walls of her room as she rubbed her eyes, "Evan? What the fuck? What time is it?"

"Rise and shine darling, it's seven in the morning," Evan let out a laugh, clearly not affected at all by the fall as he stood up again and shoved the daily prophet in her hands.

"Seven in the morning," She repeated, staring at one of her best friends with a scowl on her face, "There will be no shining. On second thought, there will be no rising either," With that Astraea proceeded to lay back into her bed and pull the covers but was stopped by the blond who gave her a look.

"What do you want?"

Evan Rosier grinned at her saying absolutely nothing as he handed her the daily prophet, which the raven-haired girl took rather begrudgingly, looking at him sceptically for a moment, rolled her eyes at the obnoxious grin on his face but turned to look at the newspaper nevertheless.

"Read the heading aloud!"

The raven-haired girl scoffed, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes once more but did read it anyway, "Evan Rosier's death-eater accusations proved to be false— Merlin's saggy tits! The ministry has removed your wanted status?"

"Yes they did," He grinned even wider, if that was possible as he leaned back, balancing himself on the palms of both his hands, "I'm a free man now."

Astraea frowned, her eyes flickering to his left arm, "I can literally see the dark mark on your arm right now."

"I went up to my mother about a month ago saying that the wanted posters with my picture are really ruining my life, like I can't even go to get butterbeer anymore because someone may recognise me," He shrugged, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "I put up that face which makes everyone want to do my bidding and she sent a letter to the ministry saying 'My son is not a death eater' and 'You have ruined our lives by your false accusations, take them back immediately.'"

"Well, I hate to break it to your mother," Astraea cut in, "But her son is a death eater."

Evan rolled his eyes, ignoring her statement completely as he continued, "And as you know, I'm amazing at charms, so I covered the whole thing and you know, placed anti-charms for every charm I could think of and walked away with a thousand galleons as compensation for any inconvenience caused."

"I thought they used veritaserum for these kinds of hearings," The raven-haired girl raised an eyebrow and the blond in front of her gave her a smirk.

"Of course they did."

"And we don't have an anti-truth potion invented as far as I recall."

"We do not."

"Then," Astraea looked at him, "How the fuck did you, a nineteen—"

"I turn twenty in a month."

The raven-haired girl shot him a dirty look, "As I was saying, how did a nineteen-year-old manage to convince an entire court of highly trained wizards and witches that he is not a death-eater, under the influence of veritaserum?"