"Briar Lupin had dreamt, predicted, foreseen death more times than she cared to admit. If she actually remembered all of the times it had occurred, at least."
Sequel to Blue.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
BLUE (REPRISE)
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
AUGUST FIRST, 1976.
IT WAS SAFE TO SAY that Laurel Crouch, no matter how much she denied it, was just like her brothers. Dark haired, brown eyed, and able to commit themselves to something until it no longer mattered to them, the three Crouch children were different sides of a coin; Laurel, having spent months analysing the phrase to understand how to morph it to fit her family, came to the conclusion that whilst her brothers shared one side of the coin, she was alone on the other side. Whilst they were on the dark side of the coin, Laurel was on the light side, the side that had the light bouncing off of instead of being concealed between the light and the surface the coin sat atop of.
Although, whenever she had a thought around those lines, she felt somewhat wrong. Her brothers had been forced to grow up with the same beliefs as she had done, beliefs that she had forced herself to shed. It had taken months for Laurel to cure the years of damage her parents had done, the years of unnecessary prejudice towards anyone that wasn't pureblood or half-blood.
She couldn't remember when it began, but she remembered the click in thoughts. She remembered the beginning of the attempts to change the belief system she had been bred to have, she remembered the beginning of the splurges and purges, buying anything about feminism, and binning anything that she defined as wrong. She remembered the times when she'd accidentally slip up, and she'd feel so ashamed with herself that hatred would litter her thoughts for hours afterwards.
She remembered, that one time, when she was speaking to Sirius, and one of his best friends Remus Lupin (who she thought was fairly pretty, but Sirius was never going to find that out), and she accidentally said something that, to her, was completely and utterly an insult about werewolves. It was an accident. It was the end of her parents' beliefs still infesting her own. Neither had noticed it as an insult, but Laurel excused herself quickly afterwards. She remembered locking herself in a bathroom stall, and she remembered crying in shame, and she remembered thinking to herself, I'm trying, I'm trying — fuck, why can't this be easier?
It was summertime now. Laurel had moved her bedroom around over the summer, when her big brother's extended trip became worryingly extended. It was easier to lie on her bed, her head on the foot, and listen to her parents' conversations from the open living room door. They were still convinced that neither Laurel nor Barty could hear what they were saying about Aster. But they did. They knew he was gone.
"Laurel."
Her dad had opened the door. Laurel grasped onto the open book next to her, acting as though she had spent the last hour reading that, rather than eavesdropping.
