aquila ▶ marauders era {EDITING}

01.

published: nov. 16, 2016
edited: feb. 25, 2017

NUMBER 12 GRIMMAULD PLACE HAD ALWAYS LEFT AQUILA IN CHILLS, even though she had grown up calling the household her home.

What with its walls that were decorated in green and silver (showing the many generations of proud Slytherins that the Blacks had had) and the many Dark Arts artifacts that were all over the place, the house never radiated any warmth or happiness; only coldness, darkness and despair. It suffocated her and the one thing that kept Aquila from going completely insane while she was trapped there during the holidays was her older brother, Sirius, who went against everything their parents ever tried to force into their heads. However, as of recent, she didn't even have him.

Their parents and Sirius had never gotten along, that anyone with functioning eyes could see. The couple practically despised the boy that they had raised for he represented everything that they were not. The eldest child often made mention of how he believed everyone (from Muggles to purebloods and everything in-between) to be equal. With a heart that beat scarlet and gold, the boy made it his duty to defy their parents whenever he could.

Regulus, her younger brother, was the exact opposite of Sirius. Instead of letting their parents' derogatory words bounce off him, Regulus absorbed every fascist thing their parents said and took it to be true. In his head, Muggles were vermin and beasts and beings were an abomination to this planet. All of them had to be exterminated. It was no wonder that Walburga and Orion loved him most, and by the time Regulus stepped foot in the castle for his first year of Hogwarts, the boy believed that he was royalty and that he was better than everyone else there.

Aquila agreed with everything that Sirius stood for completely (not his actions but what his actions meant). However, the girl went about showing it in a different way. Whenever Regulus made a slandering comment to someone that wasn't a pureblood, she would scold him (or hit in the back of the head, depending on how bad the comment was) and whenever their parents went on and on about how 'Mudbloods' should be gotten rid of, she wouldn't make a statement or go into a large debate about it. She'd just ask them a simple question.

Why?

Her questioning as a child was passed off as pure curiosity, though it left her parents stumped and stuttering. "There's no explanation," they would tell her, "That is just how it is."                 

As Aquila got older, on the other hand, her questions were viewed as defiance (it wasn't rude and bold like Sirius' in any way but it was defiance to her parents nonetheless). Her inquisitiveness was what set her apart from her brothers. While Sirius showed them he could break the rules and while Regulus showed them he only followed the rules, all Aquila did was question them.

Which is probably why she ended up in Ravenclaw.

Now, that hadn't caused an uproar like when Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor (which had caused quite the uproar, mind you) and it wasn't bad enough for her to be sent a howler the next day (thank the gods because she would have never lived that down) as she was not the first Black to be put into Ravenclaw instead. The girl was relieved when the Sorting Hat bellowed out the house of the bronze and blue as in her thoughts, it had considered placing her in Hufflepuff (which she was sure would have been automatic disowning).

In her first few years at Hogwarts, Aquila was happy. She had her brothers at her side and had made a few great friends. Then, everything changed.

It was in the summer between her fourth and fifth year when Sirius decided he had had enough. They were both in his bathroom that night. The boy was sitting on a stool while she stood between his legs, cleaning a cut that he had gotten on his forehead when his mother threw a ceramic plate at him. He had ducked and the plate hit the wall behind him, shattering into pieces which still managed to cut him.