Secrets of Me | s. black

↣ | Secret Four

s e c r e t  
f o u r

It was pouring rain when we apparated onto a big street that morning. Rows and rows of houses spanned each side, looking as big and expensive and daunting as the one we were standing in front of.

It looked much like the house my mother had shown me in pictures, the huge mansion she had grown up in until she ran away at the end of her seventh year of school. The roof was all dark shingles, the walls white, and the door a bright red with a golden knocker. Dumbledore led me up the driveway, where a couple was standing on the front porch.

The man had dark hair and a handsome face and the woman was pretty with reddish curls and long lashes. They were smiling widely at us, and I noticed a group of familiar kids peering out one of the windows. I looked away and clutched the sides of my backpack to stop my hands from shaking.

I focused instead on the way the clouds shifted slowly across the sky, tumbling over and over each other, the color of wet ash. And the way they weeped their giant tears down onto the city below. It was fitting, I thought, that they looked as sad as I felt.

Dumbledore smiled at the couple and asked how they were, and they replied happily that they were doing great. "Wonderful!" said Dumbledore. And then he stepped aside so they could see me, so he could introduce me to them.

"It's great to finally meet you!" the woman, introduced as Eleanor Prewett, told me with a big white smile. And then I realized that I knew this family. That I knew why the kids in the window seemed so familiar. The Prewett's were very well known at Hogwarts.

"We're very happy to have you joining our family," the man, Joseph, added.

I stared at them, hoping my face was devoid of all emotion, and said nothing. I was thinking many things, things alone the lines of 'I'll never be apart of your family' and 'my parents were my only family and now they're gone' and 'I really don't want to live with you'. But I didn't want to be rude and so I stayed silent.

"Why don't we go inside?" suggested Dumbledore, and the couple hurried to open the door to let us in, sealing away my view of the melancholy clouds.

The inside of the house was all big rooms and fluffy carpets and long dining tables. The kitchen peeked out around the corner and I could just barely see a house elf cooking some sort of spice-smelling food at the stove. The walls were lined with pictures and the hall covered in a long, red carpet.

"I'd like you to meet our children," Eleanor said to me, and I turned around to see the children from the window gathered in front of me. And yes, they were children I had seen many times at school. Gosh, I had even talked to the boys before.

"This is Molly," Joseph said, placing his hands on the girl's shoulders. "You've probably seen her at school?" I nodded. I remembered her to be a few years older than me, her hair dark like her father's and her eyes brown like her mother's.

"And these are the twins," Eleanor said, motioning to the two identical boys grinning at me, "Fabian and Gideon."

"Nice to see you!" they said at the same time. They had their mother's curly red locks and father's green eyes, and a small patch of freckles across their noses that seemed to be their own.

I gave them a small forced smile, just to be nice, and then looked away. Eleanor, after a hesitant pause, told Molly to show me up to my room. I wondered how big my room was going to be, and if it was going to look anything like my old room. I hoped not. I hoped it was new and different so pictures of my mum and dad didn't swim through my mind whenever I entered it.

Molly led me up two flights of stairs and down a long, decorated hallway. A wooden door stood at the end, the last one in the hall, and she pushed it open to let me in.

"This is your room," she told me.

I stepped inside and looked around. It certainly wasn't like my old room back at my old house, small and cozy and decorated with butterflies and elephants. No, this room was rather large for a thirteen-year-old, the floors dark wood and the walls a light pink, much to my dismay. My mother's favorite color was pink.

The bed was large as well, covered in thick silky blankets colored purple and pillows fluffed like a sheep. There was a small bookshelf over on the right and a dresser that looked as if it could hold ten times the clothes I carried in my small bag. And on the left was a huge window, a bay window, with a long pillow across the seat and many blankets for covering while reading.

"Is it to your liking?"

I turned around, almost forgetting that Molly was there. "There's no need to be polite," I told her, a bit harshly.

"I just want you to feel at home," she said.

"I'll never feel at home."

I turned back around, pretending like I didn't see the way her lips turned down in a frown, or her chocolate eyes filling with hurt. She left the room, closing the door with a soft thud.

I dropped my bag down onto the floor and walked over to the bay window, where I took a seat, criss-cross, and stared out at a large pond that hugged the forest behind the house. It was really pretty, but I didn't notice at the time. All I could think about was how my mum and dad were probably disappointed seeing me moving on, leaving our house and moving in with a new family. I felt as if I was trying to replace them, though I knew in my heart that they could never be replaced.

I thought I would feel angry or depressed or even scared. But no, all I could feel was an aching spreading throughout my chest, and a terrible feeling of loneliness. And a single thought that kept swimming its way through my mind.

I was always going to be alone.

And so I promised myself, as I sat at the bay window that evening, that I would always write these letters. So maybe, just maybe, sometime in the future I could look back and not feel so alone.

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