yellow ribbon | a harry potter fanfiction

a summer unlike any other

THERE WAS SOME naivety in thinking that everything would be as Wendy would have planned. Michael should have expected it, and somehow he did, but it still left him so broken to see her collapse just a few meters away from him. He felt his body react before he even realised it, as he shoved away anyone who was before him. He couldn't even think of any spell, and fortunately enough, Remus was by his side as he lost scope of the situation.

"Have you heard from your sister?" His mom asked through the phone one night.

"No, I haven't," he answered without much thought as he took one last sip of the tomato soup he was preparing for dinner. "Why?"

"Well, I tried to call her four times already today, I called in in the office, even called that Martin she's always with—"

"He's a co-worker, mum," he already stopped her mind running wild, "they aren't a thing!"

"They do spend an awful amount of time together for people who 'aren't a thing' though," she sighed from the phone. Michael could almost see her walking back and forth in front of the TV as his dad tried to catch glimpses of the football game going on that night. "Ahhh! Doesn't matter... you should check up on her, see if she's at her house."

"Okay, mum, I will pass by tomorrow when I go to work."

He promised, but he wished he checked in sooner. He wished he listened to his mother's sixth sense and checked if his sister was really at home. Because the morning later, he was greeted by Diego and an empty house.

He reached for the police, for Martin, his parents, anyone he knew who could have had any possible idea of where Wendy was. Yet, months after that day, she was still missing. The day she went missing was the first of September, and it would have been a year soon enough.

Could he call it an anniversary? It sounded too cheerful for such tragedy.

Journals, daily newspapers, and the news on the telly were all plastered with the last photo of Wendy. She was smiling in there, it was taken during her last birthday and they celebrated it with the whole family and close friends. She loved that day, she told him once, because that was the day she finally saw her brother with the love of his life.

"Michael," Tadashi said in his reassuring voice, "We will find her, I promise."

There were nights where he couldn't sleep, and the nights he did manage to fall exhausted, he'd wake up from nightmares and Tadashi was always there to comfort him back to sleep. He didn't know how he would be if he weren't there by his side, and that is a question he didn't know he'd know the answer to.

———

"Wendy is gone, but I feel like you are gone with her!" Tadashi burst one night when Michael came back at 2 in the morning. "I love you, Mike, I do... but this is not... good."

"Then leave."

"Y—you don't mean that," Tadashi tried to calm down. He was erratic himself, but Michael had no way to be reasonable at the moment. Nor any moment since his sister was gone.

"You know what?" He said in a bitter smile, "I will. This place is fucking awful anyways."

Tadashi watched him pack his stuff before realising what he was doing. With a slam on the door, he walked away, not for a care of the world, not knowing where to go, nor how wet his clothes were going to get if he didn't find repair from the rain anytime soon.

"MICHAEL!" He could hear him scream from the entrance of their building, passerby judging the two with the gossipy eyes neighbours have. "MICHAEL, PLEASE!"