𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐓 𝐒𝐍𝐀𝐏𝐄 | h. potter

Epilogue

Epilogue: And The Start Of A New One

Violett landed in a tangle of limbs and panic on her bedroom floor, sprawled uncomfortably over the yellowed pages of The Prisoner of Azkaban. Shakily, the redhead pushed herself up with a grunt while a hand reached for the book she had been living in just seconds ago.

The door was shoved open with a resounding thud.

"Violett!" Obsidian eyes snapped up to meet the ones blinking at her from the doorway. "Sarah's been calling you down to lunch for the past five minutes — why are you on the floor?" Violett blinked, mind sputtering like a failing engine as she tried to remember how to form words, where she was is, what she was doing just a second ago and who the hell is she?

Blue eyes continued to peer at her crumpled form inquisitively, in a way that Violett felt oddly reminiscent of, like she's supposed to know this choppy-haired brunette with a tinkly voice that sounds like the noise bluebells would make if they were true to their name, or—

Saffron — fifteen — orphan.

It crashed into her mind like the full force of the moonless tides; sudden and familiar to the water-withered rocks. How could I forget how could I forget how could I for—

"I was — um, I was just reading..." mumbled a voice softly, and with a jolt, Violett realised it's her voice. Since when had she sounded so forlorn, so miserable, so...defeated? Her gaze dropped to the book clutched in her iron grasp; it tightened.

She hearted Saffron sigh. "Of course you were, it's that Harry Potter stuff again, isn't it? I swear, Sarah indulges you with this fantasy too much." The brunette continued, unaware that Violett was barely listening as concern seeped into her tone. "Hey, what happened to your head?"

Violett answered, unseeing. "Attacked by a tree."

She could almost hear Saffron raise her brows in disbelief. The girl had loud facial expressions, where her voice was soft. "Right...Well, hurry up and come down if you want to eat any time soon. Seth's back; Ziad said their football team smashed Sir John's, so there's a shit tonne of waffles and ice cream for dessert after the barbecue." She hummed in acknowledgement and heard the door close with a soft click, and a lump the size of her heart formed at the base of her throat. She swallowed harshly, swiping furiously at her eyes with the heel of her palms as if it would stop the salty warmth from tumbling down cheeks sore from biting to hold in her ragged sobs.

Everything was gone. In just a blink the moonlit lake and crawling forests gave way to the towering grey walls of her bedroom. The dirt under her fingernails were remnants of her struggle to stay rooted to the castle grounds, reminders of what she had, that she couldn't have it anymore. Hogwarts, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Sirius, Draco, Snape — everything was gone.

With a tremble, violent sobs shook her body and she slowly sank into herself — but she held on to the book with an iron grasp. It wasn't clear to her how long she sat there, slumped to the ground against her creaking bed. It might have been a few minutes, or several moonless days, but the book stayed in her hand, creating cuts so thin across her palm it hurt when she finally loosened her grip and looked at the purple-bannered cover with glistening red eyes. Shakily, she opened the book to a random page and let her eyes wander, dazedly, over the swirling ink tattooed on yellowed pages. She froze.

Words aren't meant to swirl.

Violett watched with apprehension as the black ink rearranged itself from — what, she doesn't know, doesn't care to remember — but they swirled and danced and bled permanently into words that stopped her heart and slackened her grip, making her drop the book. It fluttered shut. Violett scrambled up and tore the book open, pressed her fingers desperately to the pages and swore when she couldn't read because the words became blurry. She swiped at her eyes impatiently before attempting to read again and lost her fucking mind.

"'Hermione stared at the girl, eyes slanted in suspicion — rightly so, Harry would later say to her; it wasn't every day a girl falls through the ceiling and lands on your cat. Though, that didn't make the situation any less amusing Ron remarked, and Harry smiled in agreement while the bushy-haired brunette rolled her eyes. Violett'..." her breath catches in her throat when she reads her own name. "'Violett was an interesting girl.'"

It was like having an out-of-body experience: Violett could remember everything that happened that day, her memories were flashes of images and spikes of emotion; when the Weasley's pointed their wands at her, when Dumbledore saved her life and brought her to Diagon Alley, when she found out Snape was her dad and found the necklace that belonged to her mother — but reading it, having it painted in her mind vividly as if she was an outsider to her own life... Instinctively, her hand reached for the necklace that hung around her neck, finding relief as she rubbed the pads of her fingers across the cool smooth stone. She read on.

"'Harry felt betrayed. Snape? His new friend was the daughter of the Professor who had a personal vendetta against him? He looked to Hermione and Ron, whose expressions reflected the shock he felt and frowned. Green eyes searched for obsidian, but found them obscured by the Sorting Hat resting upon her fiery head.'"

The sorting. The house of red and gold, instead of yellow and black. It was an ethereal experience, a memory full of surprise and joy and warmth and cold shoulders. Sharp eyes, prickling stares, hissed insults and Irish smiles. Home.

"'They had spent the day together, after bidding Hermione and Ron goodbye at the entrance. What had started as idle chatter had progressed to playful shoves and breathless laughter as they danced around each other in an elaborate game of tag; Harry saw light when he was with Violett, and he felt it too.'"

With each word Violett read to herself, she felt a painful stab to her chest and the prickle of moisture behind her eyelids. It felt cruel to force herself to continue reading about a life she knew so intimately; a life that had been snatched from her without completion, but she couldn't stop. It hurt, it hurt her so damn much and she yearned to go back, for the arms of magic to lift her from this mundane world and take her back home to the ones she had come to love through more than the pages.

But she had never been more grateful for pain. It proved to her that it was all real. It wasn't a dream, no matter how much it had been, a secret prayer, for half her life. And maybe — just maybe — this prayer could be heard, too.

It was then, Violett realised, how magical she truly was.

As Violett read the last words of her disappearance, of the confusion and panic her classmates and friends and family felt, of Pettigrew escaping but Sirius still being pronounced innocent upon Dumbledore's and Remus' subtle threats to the Minister of Magic, a sudden thunk broke her out of her reverie and Violett looked up from tear-stained pages towards the door.

Nothing. It had sounded like someone had knocked on her door, or lobbed something at it. Warily, on aching bones and sore muscles, Violett approached her wooden, oak-coloured door and pulled it open. The empty hallway of the second floor greeted her, accompanied by the sound of laughter and childish exuberance and the smell of roasting meat wafting in from the garden. The sunlight streamed in from the window opposite her bedroom, but nothing was there.

Confused, Violett turned back to her room with the thought of ghosts on her mind, before promptly tripping and landing with a thud for the second time that day. "Ow!" she hissed, clutching at her elbow, and opened her mouth again to yell at nothing and everything for causing her so much pain, when the words got stuck in her throat and she stopped short.

Laying open on the carpeted floor of her bedroom was the Goblet of Fire, with the words "Back to the Burrow" staring back at her.

She reached over and slammed it shut.

[Written: 29/06/19]