Dear musefan929, for whose competition I started writing this story. I am going to navigate you through this story so you don' t have to read all of it, because I know that the competition makes you hard pressed for time. I wrote this for your first prompt, and the only thing you need to read of it is everything in italics, because that is the letter itself.

Everyone else, thank you for clicking on my story. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think. Bad, good, suggestions, criticism? Every feedback is welcome.

The only warmth around her was that of the blanket draped around her. The three girls flitting around the room showed none of that warmth. They were the ones that made the room feel chilly and cold. They were like butterflies made to suck away the colour from everything so that they would seem even more beautiful in contrast. Cold they made Rose.

Maybe it was the icy looks they shot her from time to time, or the coldness they had wrapped around themselves, shielding them from any harmful things others could shoot. She would never know which one, all she knew that their hostility towards her was clear as ice.

Rose might need to wrap that same cold around herself soon. Maybe that would keep her safe.

She turned her attention back to the half written letter in front of her. She'd been writing it for some time, but it was hard to find words.

It was a letter to her parents. She was going home in a week and had yet to sent a single letter home. Her cousins had been so kind as to sent them for her.

Dear Mother and Father

The first four words were enough to make rose's hands itch and burn to tear the paper up and throw it in the fire. She had done that a few times, but there was no better way that she had come up with to start the letter. And this letter needed an introduction.

I am sorry I have not written all year. I was occupied keeping up with my studies and found little time to spent otherwise. I trust my cousins have kept you up to date with news.

Because there was no option that her cousins had not. Rose knew her family better than anyone. They were nosier than they were loud, and anything that was out of the ordinary would be reported home without any thought of anyone else's feelings. It would always be a hot letter full of emotion and opinion, leaving no room for any other view than their own.

Sorry, Rose wasn't for not writing. Sorry she was for what she knew they must have heard about her.

My studies have fared well and I have had little troubles throughout the year. I am proud to say that my grades are on top of the class. I am sorry that for me to accomplish that, I had to stay at Hogwarts during the holidays, but, as I hope Al told you, I felt it was necessary.

She was ashamed to admit that she had, indeed, been hiding. Not that they had minded. Rose could almost see the play that had played out back home after Al had told her parents the news of her staying at school. Her father would have been the red hotheaded man, his hair on fire with his passion. Her mother would be hopelessly trying to calm him down with reason, but reason was the one thing that would not quench his fire.

She'd bet everything she had that they were both secretly relieved she had not come home. For different reasons, but relieved all the same.

"Rose." A cold sliver reached her within her protective bunker of blankets.

"Hm?" She looked over and saw Missy, a girl with an attitude true to her name, looking at her with her chin slightly raised. She had mastered looking down on people while having a distinct lack of height.

"Seen my other shoe?" She held up a red shoe with a high heel. Higher than Rose could even dream of walking on.

Rose shook her head and asked her if she had checked the common room. Missy scrambled downstairs, leaving Rose alone again with her letter.

I hope you and Hugo find yourselves in good health. I am anxious for the return home to come quickly, and have missed all three of you very much.

There was nothing more she could make of it. The words had rejoined the origin of the paper. They were wooden and stiff. insincerity seemed to bolt the words, and distance underlined them.

Rose had yet to sent a single letter, where her parents had sent one.

It had been in her first week, and it hadn't been a pleasant one. She had neglected to sent her parents the burning letter telling them of her sorting, and they had found out through Harry. Saying that they had not been pleased was like saying that a tsunami was a broken water current. Her mother had been angry because she had not written. Her father had been because the Sortinghat had placed Rose into the wrong house.

When Rose had first read the letter she was convinced it must have been a joke. It must have been Freddy and James. It must have been someone, trying to pull a prank on her and she would not fall for it, because her parents would never write this. They just wouldn't.

But after denial, realisation comes. She had refused to write after that. She did not want to see them. She did not want to face people who wrote her off, just because she had, by some odd twist of fate, been sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor.

But she had to write at least once before she went home, didn't she? To tell them she was still sound and breathing. To announce that she was still there.

Love,

Rose

She looked up from the parchment screaming at her to burn him and tried to tune the sound out. She folded the letter and carefully sealed it. There, done and done. Nothing she could change about it now. Not that she wanted. It had been a hard letter to write, probably the hardest one ever for her. She wasn't eager to rewrite it at all.

"Found it." Missy appeared out of nothing, the same look on her face as before.

Rose blinked and frowned. the question in her eyes was clear. Why are you telling me?

"Thanks." Missy said. The word sounded about as sincere as Rose's letter.

Rose stood up without a word and left, leaving Missy standing there. She needed to post a letter she hated. She didn't have the stomach for fake Slytherin formalities at the moment.