Hogwarts Legacy: A Continuation of Time

Chapter One: Unladylike

White eyes.

"Leave this place." I heard my father's voice.

His white eyes were unseeing but in a different way than before.

"GET MY FUCKING WAND NOW! I'LL KILL HIM!" Sebastian roared.

A door was slammed, I could hear it as I rested my hand on his. It was very cold. Maybe it would help if I rubbed circles in his hands. Yes. He'd feel better then.

"OMINIS! OMINIS!" was that Ruby? What was wrong with her?

"Kitty? Kitty, come now, let's go."

Professor Onai? Why was she in my father's house?

"Why? Where are we going?" My voice asked as I continued rubbing soothing circles into my brother's skin. Why was he so cold?

"I think you need to see a healer, darling. Let's go, we can have Nurse Blainey look at you. I'll take care of Ominis." She said and I felt her hands under my arms.

"No thank you. I can't leave him right now. He's not himself." I said, reaching to brush his hair from his forehead. He wouldn't like it ruffled like that. He liked to keep it neat.

"You can't help him, Kitty. I'll make sure everything's taken care of. We can make arrangements later."

"What arrangements?" Why was she being so odd? And why was Ominis so cold?

"Well...for the funeral...we don't have to discuss it right now..."

"What're you talking about?" My voice growled. The wind howled against the windows.

"Kitty, come now, love. Let's just get you into a bed."

"What funeral?"

"I...he's dead, Kitty."

"Who is?"

"Ominis. Ominis is dead, darling. I'm so sorry."

Kitty jolted awake in her bed, the pale moonlight illuminating the deep green sheets she was buried under. Her heartbeat was pulsing in her throat as she shook the vision of her brother's lifeless eyes from her mind.

It had been five years since that day. Five years exactly, the thirteenth of April. There hadn't been the usual gathering around his headstone that morning, she'd travelled to the cliffside alone, placed a small glass of whisky on the ground as a tribute to her booze-loving brother and then had disapparated straight home again before any family members could show up and witness the silvery tears that streaked her face.

Her eyes searched in the dark and once her wand was in her hand illuminated the time on the clock.

01:42

And yet beside her, his side of the bed remained unoccupied...Sebastian's.

"For fuck sake, Sallow," she whispered into the darkness, before rolling over in her sheets and tightening her eyes so hard she began to see stars, anything to avoid the memory of those eyes.

"Tea, darling? Or is it too early for a proper drink?"

"Tea is fine, Bella thank you."

Belladonna's eyebrows furrowed. She had tried insisting that Kitty call her Aunt or Auntie, but it hadn't stuck. It had only been the last year that she'd started calling her Bella as opposed to Belladonna. Her Aunt didn't press this time.

The conservatory was filled with a pale spring light, the beams of which reflected a spectrum of colour through the numerous crystal glasses and trinkets Belladonna had lining her cabinets. A flash of red hair sped past the window and before Kitty could open her mouth there was a yell from behind her.