The Sinistra Three
She had been ten the last time he had seen her.
Ten.
Running around the dilapidated market stalls on the outskirts of Bamako, with not a care in the world. Oblivious to the constant danger that surrounded people like them. Ten. Not registering the constant anxiety and fear seeping out of their Muggle mother's every pore when they were out in public. The Witchkillers were monitoring every community's every move. After he and Mithras, the eldest of the Sinistra children, had left Uagadou School in order to pursue and harness their magical abilities in environments more welcoming to their kind, she was left… their youngest sister… a ten year-old witch, the only witch in their town, in a country full of Muggles out to search and kill those like her.
He, Mithras, and their mother had thought it best to keep her here with her mother. Attend Uagadou just as her brothers had done and integrate herself into the most secret of societies - hidden silently away in the uninhabitable mountains of Uganda. And so Aurora had stayed. Aion and Mithras has left for Great Britain and she had remained.
He had only managed to visit his sister mother once since he had left. It would be the very last time he would ever see his mother, Eshe, alive. Four years later she was poisoned by the Muggles.
'A witch' they had called her! The Muggle Witchkillers had sentenced and executed one of their own, for Eshe was certainly no witch. But she had been a special kind of Muggle… a Muggle privy to the magical community through her marriage to the three Sinistra children's wizard father. She had known so many of their secrets. She had bravely kept it close to her heart all these years, even under fear of death and torture, because she had loved her husband most dearly, just as she loved her magical children.
It had been her downfall in the end. Eshe had sacrificed herself for her daughter, when the Witchkillers finally received a shred of evidence that there was indeed magic residing in the walls of the Sinistra household. They had burned his mother's body for it, they had poisoned her and left her for dead… all under the petrified eyes of his sister.
And so the next time he had seen her, she was fourteen. She stumbled out of the fireplace, out of the Floo that had been momentarily connected to Uagadou school. She stumbled out a completely grown witch, even at the tender age of fourteen. A witch who had already seen far too much in her short span of a life. A witch lost. A witch hurt. A witch who did not want to be a witch any longer, it had caused her too much pain and death…
And yet, for all her newly-found wisdom that had been thrust upon her shoulders, she was still his little sister, his little Rora, someone he was soulbound to protect and yet he had already failed at it. Aion vowed he would never accept such failure on his part again - nor he, or Mithras ever would.
As the years progressed he grew so proud of the woman she had become. Infinitely clever beyond her years and an inner anger that would put white-hot flames to shame. The loss of their parents had only bound them together stronger and fiercer than ever before.
They would drink, and they would laugh, they would tease and shove as siblings do, all of what they really felt would mostly remain unsaid, but all three of them knew. They knew they would all be there for life. There would be no turning back.
She was forty when last he saw her, popping in for a quick chat before she Apparated away around the globe once more, researching the laws of the magical universe and the stars... Severus - her wizard husband (her very lucky wizard husband as Aion loved to keep reminding him) - and their witch daughter in tow…
Only this time, Aion never worried. For he know she would always find her way, in the darkness or in the light - but especially the darkness.
The darkness was what his baby sister was made for, after all…