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Aurora Areli
IT HAD BEEN AROUND three months since the final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Three months since Harry had come back from the graveyard, where Voldemort had gotten his body back, and his accomplice had taken the life of one of my best friends.
It had been hard knowing that I'd never see Cedric again, never send letters back and forth with him over the summer, exchange books, or see him graduate and start working for the Ministry like he had wanted to. Thinking about that made my chest feel like it was caving in on itself, and brought an ache to my throat.
Lately, that feeling hadn't been as frequent as it had been at the start of the summer holidays. Only when I spent too much time staring into space, or when I didn't fall asleep at night right away. However, that Saturday morning, I woke up trembling and breathing heavy — I had seen it again, that nightmare from the graveyard.
My heart was pounding as I kicked off the quilt that was tangled around my legs. I felt like I was suffocating, so I wrenched open the hangings around my four-poster and forced myself out of it, onto the floor. I sat there with my back against the mattress and brought my knees to my chest, hugging them tightly. Closing my eyes again was the last thing I wanted to do, because behind them there would be the horrible images of a body among tombstones that I tried so hard to forget.
Just when I thought things were getting better, it all came flooding back.
At that moment, I really just wanted to see my mother. That might've been childish, but in reality, I was a child, just a few weeks short of fifteen. Sometimes, in the midst of everything around me, that was easy to forget.
Once my heartbeat was back to a more manageable rate, I decided that I wanted to write to my mum. Seeing her handwriting was almost like hearing her voice. The loops and swirls around the letters accented the way the words would sound if she spoke them, and I just really wanted the sense of familiarity and comfort that would bring.
So I stood up on shaky legs and dressed before gathering some parchment and my favourite quill (this one was a warm auburn colour — the black one I had used before made the back of my hand sting just looking at it) before quietly exiting my dormitory.
Soft blue light shone in through the common room windows as I settled down in my usual spot by the fireplace. It was still very early out; I was clearly the first to wake, rising even before the sun. Though I suppose I had the nightmares to thank for that.
But I shook my head to stop myself thinking about them, and instead uncorked my ink bottle to set straight to writing. I needed a distraction from everything. I felt like the whole first week had been a dream, but the kind that you could never seem to wake up from, and just droned on forever, showing you all the terrible things your brain could think up. Or remember.
