🥀 Roses and Novels (Hogwarts Legacy)

🥀 - chapter 40 -🌹

-3 days ago-

(Sebastian perspective)
I was back from my trip with Anne to London. We had visited our cousin Aurelia there, she lives on a small farm. She let us fill a jar with our own honey from the bees in their hive. Our cousin worked for the Ministry of Magic and showed us her office. Never before had I seen so many wizards together in a small room.

I had taught Anne how to play Quidditch; she had taught me how to garden. We visited the big city and ate delicious food in 3 different restaurants. At a local candy store, we got chocolate frogs enough for a week.

Every evening, we watched the sunset together on top of the farm roof. Until the stars appeared in the sky, and we learned about the stars together with a book on astrology.

Sometimes, I would read my favorite book to her.
Anne was in love with a particular piece out of pride and prejudice. I had read it to her more than 10 times, and she just couldn't get enough of it.

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child, I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately, as an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoiled by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, and almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."

And another evening, she read to me from her own favorite, Romeo and Juliet.
The way Anne read from this book always gave me chills all over my body.
It was so real—so pure, dramatic, and romantic—how she read it.

"O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! Wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damned saint, an honorable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell; When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!"

Upon returning to Feldcroft, we cleaned up our suitcases and decided to camp in the backyard one more night before I returned to my own home. We roasted marshmallows over the fire and enjoyed the quiet night and crickets.

My marshmallows had melted off my stick a few times, and Anne found this all too funny. In frustration, I stuffed about 10 cold marshmallows into my mouth until I could go no further.

It was so nice to be with my sister again, catching up on our childhood memories from the time before she got sick.

-

I walked through my house and looked at my calendar in my book. Helena's birthday is in a few days, and I guess I'm not invited.... I thought about her first birthday that we celebrated together.

She never really had a birthday party before since she never really had any friends to organize it for her.

So I decided to throw one for her. I had invited a few people from Slytherin, a few girls and boys from our class that she had worked with, and Ominis of course.