Liar. Harry Potter's sister ~ Book 2

chapter three

The kitchen was pleasantly less gloomy than the hallways, with rough stone walls and a large fire at the far end of the long room. Dozens of chairs had been crammed around a long, wooden table, which stood in the middle of the room, littered with goblets, parchment and empty wine bottles. When we entered the warm room, Mrs Weasley gripped my shoulder and cleared her throat, loudly. A balding, red haired man, with thin spectacles, looked up from an engaged conversation with Ron's other brother, Bill, and jumped to his feet. I take one look at the red hair and assume this must be Mr Weasley.

"Harry! Olivia!" He says, stepping forward and shaking my hand vigorously, "Good to see you!" I smile and greet him with equal amounts of friendliness. Mrs Weasley gestures for us to take a seat at the table, and waves her wand, setting the table with bowls, forks and knives. I snap my head around at a loud clatter coming from the hallway.

"Tonks!" Mrs Weasley, exclaims, exasperatedly.

"I'm sorry!" Cried a white haired young woman, lying flat on the floor, she sits up and hoists herself onto her feet. "It's that stupid umbrella stand, that's the second time I've tripped over the ruddy thing!" The woman walks, rather clumsily into the kitchen, looking flustered and stops when she sees me.

"I take it you're Olivia?" She says in a cheerful tone, and I nod. "I'm Tonks!" She looks to her right and obviously catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She shakes her head roughly, scrunching up her nose as if she was deep in thought, and her hair transforms to a shorter, bubble-gum pink. I gape at her.

"Wha- how did you do that?" I ask, furrowing my eyebrows.

"I'm a Metamorphmagus," Tonks said, ruffling her hair up in the mirror a little bit, "It means I can change my appearance at will."

"I wish I could do that," I say, glancing at my messy hair and blemished skin, but mainly the scar that overtook my neck, in the shape of a lightning bolt.

"Bet sometimes you wouldn't mind hiding that scar of yours eh? Stop people from staring?" She says and I nod. That's exactly what I want. People stare at my scar way to often, it irritates me a lot when it happens, a lot of the time I wish it could just disappear.

"Molly is there anything I can do to help?" Tonks says, walking past me and tripping over a chair leg slightly as she did so. I snigger quietly and look over at Harry, who's biting his lip in an attempt to contain a laugh. Molly tells us to take a seat so Harry and I pull out chairs beside each other and sit ourselves down, opposite Remus and Sirius.

As we ate our way through a delicious stew Molly had prepared, the conversation around the dinner table was loud and exciting: Sirius, Remus, Harry and I talked about our parents and the one year they got to spend with us before they died. I learned more about why Sirius was sent to Azkaban for a long stretch of time, and how Remus had offered to take Harry and I into his care permanently. He told us that for certain reasons, on top of his lycanthropy, Dumbledore has stated it would be too dangerous and split us up. I seemed to be overwhelmed with sadness, thinking about the life I could have had, growing up with Harry and Remus, in a loving home, knowing about magic, and even going to Hogwarts at aged eleven and not fourteen. A hole was carving itself into my heart as I thought about the way things could have been if none of this had ever happened. If Voldemort hadn't came after us. If our parents lived.

Across the table, Tonks is amusing Hermione and Ginny by changing her nose from a pig snout to a duck beak. All of the others are engrossed in their own conversations with those opposite them. I had just finished my second helping of rhubarb crumble and custard, when the conversation within the room died down.

"Nearly time for bed, I think," Mrs Weasley says, yawning.

"Not just yet, Molly," Sirius said, placing his spoon into his bowl and leaning towards us, his head propped up on his elbows. "You know, I'm surprised, you two, I thought the first thing you'd do when you got here was start asking questions about Voldemort." The atmosphere in the room changed as if it were controlled by a switch. The once sleepy and relaxed faces in the room were now alert and tense. Everyone looked up from their plates at the mention of Voldemort's name and seemed to be listening intently.