#novisesurierit

          Dear Aurora,

Thank you for writing, I know Dumbledore told you to look after me and all that, but you don’t have to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful, just.... I understand if writing to some kid is a pain.

I’ve enjoyed the summer so far, it’s nice not to have to worry about my secret all of the time and I’ve missed my mam, but now at home I miss my classes and my friends. It’s kind of funny, but in an ironic greek tragedy type of way. Anyways, my house is really quiet in comparison to Hogwarts, there’s pretty much only my mam either keeping the telly or record player on (muggle stuff), she doesn’t even watch it, just keeps it on for the noise I guess.

How is your summer? How did your O.W.L.s go? I’m already getting nervous about mine, Professor McGonagall says I shouldn’t worry because they’re so far in the future, but I can’t help myself. Dumbledore took a chance on me and I can’t let him down. Are the O.W.L.s hard? Should I start studying now? What was hardest? Please let me know.

                          Sincerely,

timestamp: october 5th, 1979, 11:00 location: oxford, outside oriole college availability: @novisesurierit

A night’s sleep is enough to clear the worst of the exhausted fog from his mind, even if it doesn’t do much for the shadows under his eyes or the blanched paleness of his skin. Both are too engrained, too deeply embedded these days for a nights sleep and a rest day to make a noticeable difference. Still, today is a rest day and for once he actually has a plan that isn’t lying on his couch reading, constantly half-alert for the potential arrival of a patronus summoning him to headquarters.

He leans against the ancient stone walls of Oriole college as he waits for her, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking like nothing more than another student in his worn Pink Floyd t-shirt under a woolen overcoat. His fingers brush against the wand tucked inside his coat, then fall away again; today is not about magic.

He’s not sure, exactly, whether he and Aurora are friends; sometimes he thinks they are, then othertimes they don’t talk for months until one of Slughorns alumni parties throw them back in to each others orbits. Still, she’s likely the closest thing he’s got to a friend, one he picked and didn’t inherit from Anna through the ties of obligation some of his sister’s circle still felt. 

He wonders, rather belatedly, if he should, perhaps, have been more specific in his directions for today than ‘dress muggle’. Aurora was a pure blood after all, and many of them had a rather disastrous lack of ability when attempting to blend into the muggle world unnoticed ( 10 years old, on the small tv in the Fenwick residence, he’d watched Kirk attempt to explain Spock’s ears when they were trapped in the 50s — caught in machinery, an entirely unfeasible explanation. So it went sometimes with purebloods and the muggle world; a lack of knowledge of anything except the surface ).

At the cafeteria on the ground floor, she nursed her cup of coffee, watching people come and go through the golden gates of the British ministry. They were stoic, she thought, despite all of their lives having been touched by the duel that had shaken Britain – if they hadn’t been influenced by the actions of one man or the other, it was only a matter of time before they would have to deal with the aftermath; as would everyone.

She takes her eyes of the throng of people to glance at the fluttering interdepartmental memos. The watchwizard on duty had been kind enough to help her out, despite it technically being undesirable, and had sent one of the fluttering memos with a hastily scribbled note (Meet me in the cafeteria at eleven? I have an appointment with the licensing people of magical creatures at 10:30, I’m free afterwards. – Drusilla) to the Department of Mysteries in her name.

Briefly, she contemplates opening one of the many informational leaflets she’s been given, but before she start, a shadow falls over her table.

“Hi!” she exclaims happily, setting down her cup and rising. “I wasn’t sure if you were allowed out during working hours, I thought they might prefer to keep you all locked up in that creepy department of yours.”