bad news in the morning - Fatima & open
Settled in with pancakes for breakfast, Fatima had received two pieces of mail as she prepared her plate. The first came with Dian, a reply to the letter she had sent her elder brother last week. She grinned, pulling it off the little owl and ripping the envelope open - maybe she spent more time with Yasmin over the last years, but the fact remained that Anwar was more like her than either of her sisters, and they all knew it. One quick read and she knew exactly where to start with her reply, when she had time to write it over lunch.
The second piece of mail was a copy of the Daily Prophet, which Yasmin had insisted all three sisters subscribe to. Absently handing the owl a knut from her pocket, she loaded her fork with some pancakes before scanning the headings on the front page.
“Attack on Borgin and Burkes,” she murmured slowly, in the habit of mouthing along as she read. “That’s funny.” Anwar’s letter had mentioned a routine raid on the store, and that it’d been attacked, even gotten people injured…well, she had to read the article. She was too curious not to.
When she was done, her mouth was hanging open in shock and a forkful of pancake was hovering half-way to her mouth. Her eyes were wide, staring at the last line of text. Unfortunately, it said, Auror Shafiq was killed in the crossfire.
The only Shafiq who had been an auror in the past fifty, even sixty years, was the one who had written the letter she had left beside her plate.
"What," Fatima tried to say, but her mouth was too dry to form anything more than a quiet croak. She was alone at the table, silent in her confusion.
