Perfect Illusions (Drastoria)

Chapter One - April

Chapter One: April

Sometimes it's harder to tell something to someone else when you haven't told yourself. For example, if something weird or different happened to you but you had to tell someone, you have to relay in your mind, roughly, what you'll say; and in some way, admitting to yourself that it actually happened. I really only had to go through that once. I had to tell my worst secret to one of my best friends, to try to keep him from making the worst decision of his life. It didn't work. But I still tried. I was willing to do whatever it took. And I guess, after all, that's what this story I'm about to tell is really all about.

I was born into a magical family. My father was a Death Eater, by persuasion (or force, however you look at it.) He was a friend of Tom Riddle in school, before he became the Dark Lord. During the years before he tried to kill Harry Potter, he threatened to kill my father if he didn't become a Death Eater. Thus, my father lied about having a wife for her safety. Six months before I was born, my parents decided they simply could not raise the child they were having in that dark kind of world. My father broke away from the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord and betrayed their location to the DMLE, who arrested many Death Eaters and sent them to Azkaban. My father knew the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters would surely kill him, so before they could find him, he kissed Daphne, my older sister who was two years old at the time, my mother, and her stomach, where I was beginning to form in sweet ignorance. Then he went off somewhere. My mother still doesn't know to this day; he hadn't told her. And I'd never seen him again. I've seen pictures of my father, but I never really knew him.

My mother and I were very different, but we loved each other more than anything. My mother was very quiet and reserved. She didn't get out of the house a lot, but she read so much, it was like she was somewhere else all the time. She was sort of in her own world most of my childhood, while I was usually very realistic and practical in my reasonings and ways. She was tall and had a healthy build, but I've been short all my life and was skin-and-bones skinny when I was a kid. There was one thing I had in common with my mother. We both were very casual about using magic. We never really did unless it was completely necessary. My mother only apparated to get around because it was cheaper than using money for gasoline. She kept her wand in a drawer beside her bed for emergencies, but other than that, we lived as though we were muggles, and we hardly ever found anything wrong with that.

When I was five years old, I met a girl named April Simmons. Her family moved into the house right beside ours, and immediately we knew they were a magical family like us. She was very petite, with long blonde hair and a smile that could warm you to the bone. Immediately we were best friends. There was no rhyme or reason, no question to it at all. We just met, and she was my best friend. Just like that; it was like we were made to be best friends.

As we grew up together, I was more and more sure we were going to be best friends for all of our lives. She was my other half, and we literally did everything together. I loved her more than any of my other friends, although I wasn't about to let them know that. But April knew. April always knew, because I told her everything. Every secret I had was April's secret also. As we got even older, into 4th and 5th grades, we both started having the same hints that we were witches. We could do certain things that all the other kids couldn't. With both of us being born into magical families, there was no doubt about it. We would lay in bed at night-when I stayed at her house, or she stayed at mine-and talk for hours about our dreams of going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She got her letter before mine, but our birthdays were exactly one month apart, so it wasn't long until I got mine also. Exactly two days after my eleventh birthday, I got my Hogwarts acceptance letter. My mother was so happy, she put down her book and said in a determined tone, "Well, you know what this calls for, right? We're having a party! Call April over."