Aurelia couldn't move, there was never a time before where so many eyes were laid on her. Her own vibrant, blue eyes flickered from person to person until she looked up at the elder witch who was impatiently waiting. Her legs were wobbly, but she placed each small footstep one in front of the other and gently slid her bottom onto the stool. The weathered witches hat was presented to her and placed upon her head. As she sat and gripped the wooden stool with her hands under her thighs a loud regal voice spoke through her ears.
"Hmm..." the male voice paused "a Lestrange." Aurelia's eyebrows furrowed, and she shifted her outwards gaze to her lap.
"Quick minded but rebellious. You have a hunger, alas...your bloodline defeats me."
"Slytherin!" the voice vanished with the weight on her head. The tall witch known as Professor McGonagoll ushered her to a long table sidled with two lines of students sat on benches, it reached the full length of the hall, here Aurelia noticed many people looked as though they could have ventured around the Malfoy Manor. She took her seat, kept her head bowed to avoid any conversation. She was well aware that there were dark and scathing eyes that watched her every move. She wondered if, maybe hoped if these fellow house mates would be just as entertaining as the ones she shared her journey with.
Time passed quickly, Aurelia was cautious to take the food which appeared on the table in front of her, there was so much choice that she didn't know where to begin or perhaps she had just lost her appetite. Some girls tried to talk to her, others asked questions that she didn't want to answer, and answers that she did give were limited in their content. The headmaster of the school was Professor Dumbledore and he rose from his table at the head of the room and gave a speech, the girl marvelled at how easily he used wandless magic, but she was ever more intrigued by a professor whom they were informed was new to the school just like her, and just like her he had an obviously scarred face. Strangely although she hadn't made any hint of friendships or even any decent human contact, she didn't feel alone here. When the students were dismissed for bed they paced their way to their dormitories, the Slytherins were guided to the dungeons. Aurelia allowed herself to chatter with the people who walked with her. An unusual pulling at the corners of her mouth formed and she held her wand tightly in her small fingers.
Aurelia passed through the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room the air around her instantly became colder, the stench of pond water swirled around her. Inside was their Head of House, he introduced himself as Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master at Hogwarts. He was a tall and slender man with slick black jaw-length hair. His stance was powerful, he made Aurelia feel a bit uneasy as though he was ready to pick his victim at any given moment. He spoke in a mono-tone tongue, his words were smooth and joined like water that trickled from his mouth, above which a hooked nose poked out into the room. He performed his ceremonies duties to inform the first years of where they would reside and the rules of the House and swanned out of sight. Aurelia was quick to notice this common room had lots of dark corners, it was lit by a fire in a huge marble fireplace, long but narrow black windows stretched across the ceiling and down the far wall. She also spotted a quick, sly bit of thievery from a first year's pocket by a girl sat on large black sofas as they walked towards their sleeping quarters.
As the group dwindled down Aurelia saw the only bit of familiarity she craved, the white blonde-haired boy that was Draco Malfoy. However, he didn't want to acknowledge her at all, he was harsh with his words, much to the amusement of his friends, Draco shooed her off and they chuckled and sniggered when she left their presence. Aurelia found her way to the girls' dormitory and proceeded to find the bed with her belongings on, and heaved her trunk from underneath it. The scrawny girl kicked off her leather lace-ups, pulled her uniform off and replaced it with a night gown and climbed into the cold, stiff white linen, she drew her knees into her body for warmth. Strange sounds echoed throughout the hall, a shiver crept its way over Aurelia's body.
Morning brought with it a harsh bright light, Aurelia sat herself up and blinked her eyes until she remembered where she was and what she was doing. She looked around at 20 white lined beds in two rows of 10, the room was aglow with green hue given from the watery windows above. The black metal bed clanged against the dark, almost moss covered stone wall as Aurelia lifted herself from her bed. Girls buzzed busily around the room, getting dressed for the first day of school and with no time to spare Aurelia found the bathrooms. Sinks sat back to back in a row down the middle and on one side lay a row of toilet stalls and the other, shower cubicles. The girl tried to keep her head bowed but her eyes wandered over to the cubicles, curved serpents were carved into the glass which separated the washing occupant from the bathroom visitors, Aurelia could still make out her flesh coloured silhouette, so she rushed into the wooden toilet stall opposite.
Aurelia's time at Hogwarts passed quickly, she excelled in classes such as Charms and Transfiguration. However, she struggled to grasp the subjects of Potions, History of Magic and Herbology; the ones that required the intense study of books. Her Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was the man who she had seen with the scarred face on her first day. Once he had noticed her face on their first lesson he had become concerned, Professor Lupin had secretly wondered if she was troubled by the same monthly occurrence that troubled him. He had wanted to immediately question Aurelia, but it took a further 6 weeks before he found the right words to challenge her with, she was after all, a child. He needed to be delicate with his confrontations.
"Aurelia, may you stay behind please" Lupin had whispered to her once class had finished for lunch. She had thought her lack of progress had gone unnoticed...until this point.
She was wrong. She packed her bags and walked to the front of the classroom, once all her classmates had left the room her professor leant his bottom on his desk and crossed his arms and legs. She stood with her hands behind her back and waited for him to speak. He appeared to be very uncomfortable and shifted to new positions several times before standing tall and coming close to her.
"Aurelia will you sit for a moment?" he stated and conjured a chair directly in front of his desk. "I want to ask if anything is bothering you" His eyes flickered to the thick scar down the side of her face. Aurelia lifted a hand to it and dropped her eyes to the floor. She had been asked many times by her acquaintances in class, but this was a teacher. Her heart ached to tell the truth, since starting at Hogwarts she had come to realise that the grown-ups here didn't lay so much as a feather on the children here. In that past weeks Aurelia had never wanted to escape her home so much as she did now. She wasn't who she was raised to be, she wasn't a Malfoy and she wasn't a toy for Mr Malfoy to satisfy himself with. She took a small amount of air between her dry lips and lied.
"It was an accident between my brother and I, I was very small" She wasn't sure why she lied, if she had spoken the truth she may have what she had been dreaming of while she laid in the cold bed in her dorm.
"Well then, no more questions need to be asked" Professor Lupin smiled and dismissed her from his care. His chest ached with relief, he couldn't bare the thought of another child going through what he had experienced at a similar age. The change alone is enough to break the soul, add teenage hormones on top and it becomes unbearable. He saw how small Aurelia was and wanted to help.
Aurelia's 12th birthday passed by her, she only realized after the date that she was now a year older, she was far too busy practising spells in her common room, her wand hadn't failed her yet. Christmas was approaching as was her return to Malfoy Manor although she didn't want to return, she was free inside those walls of Hogwarts. She could roam about outside as much as she pleased, and she did spend countless evenings hidden away in the grounds of the school, she would sit and watch the sun lower until the very last minute before curfew. She received detentions with Severus Snape for not completing her written homework as well as not paying attention in many of classes and the dark professor began to grow tired of seeing the girls face. The latest of detentions took place a week before Christmas break.
"Do you take pride in being a nuisance to me, Lestrange?" His voice droned.
Aurelia didn't lift her gaze from the desk she sat at, she fingered the deep lines in the wood as if she didn't care for her wrongdoings, she certainly didn't look as though she did. Her brows furrowed in silent disobedience. As soon as she had done that two spindly white hands grabbed the collar of her school shirt and pulled her to her feet, she was heaved face to face with her teacher. Her blue sapphire eyes glistened with fear as she looked into the coals that bore into her head.
"Why do you persist to act as you do?" Professor Snape sneered into their close proximity. His pronunciation of 's' tickled Aurelia's bottom lip.
"Sir! I…" Aurelia began but was interrupted when she was dropped by the man who turned and perched against his desk at the front of his dungeon classroom. "Sir, I cannot..." a beat passed, she swallowed the lump gathering at her voice box and continued. "...Read" she confessed. Confessed to a man she only knew to be a terror.
Snape stood; he appeared to think for a moment before he concluded she had told the truth, after all that would explain why she never wrote a thing. As he put one booted foot forward, Aurelia continued.
"I do not want to go…home. He…" the girl clung to her own hands and kept her head bowed, she had confessed again but she felt powerless to stop the words that vomited from her mouth. Her voice was innocent, yet her mind was not.
"And there is nothing I can do about that Miss Lestrange" Snape replied very quickly, almost with an air of ignorance. "Nevertheless, I can teach you to read, would you consider staying for the holidays?" His lips pursed, and he laid his eyes back onto those of the girl in front of him.
Aurelia lifted her head; the knowing expression her professor gave with a cocked eyebrow told her that deep inside, he knew what she was trying to say. She could escape going back to the Manor this time because she was to learn to read. Perfect, the girl thought. She nodded and was dismissed with the orders to return in a week. The child couldn't help but skip her way down the long passageways and through to her bed.
Back in the potions classroom Severus massaged his temples with his thumb and middle finger, his head held low in his own hand.
Aurelia hid from her former brother on the last day of term until she was due at Professor Snape's classroom that evening, by which time the school's students would have arrived in London for Christmas. The Castle was far quieter without its occupants, a chill wind howled through the stone walls, snow sometimes drifted in with it, and more often than not the floors were slippery with ice especially in the passages leading to the Slytherin common room. The girls' dormitory and bathroom were particularly quiet and even more cold to Aurelia, the freezing lake above was the most definite cause, it caused the Common Room shadows to dance when the sun shone through. It required great courage to step into the shower every morning and night, but the girl succeeded none the less. She attended her daily classes with Snape in the evening time, Aurelia didn't like the walk back to the common room much, Hogwarts was scary in the dark. She made steady progress; the professor tackled the basics of recognizing and pronouncing letters and then began to make words. Lastly, they attempted writing those said letters. The professor had made a mental note of the state of the girl's fingertips when she had started Hogwarts, they were damaged; red, dry, and cracked. He watched her endlessly when sat opposite him, his eyes focused closely on her tiny fingers clasped around the shiny metal quill tip, the black feather would brush the side of her face every now and then. Her fingernails turned white when she applied pressure to the page, the skin around those nails was healing. Snape's icy black eyes trailed up towards her face, curtained by feral hair, her eyes darted from the book to the blank page in front of her. Snape watched his own fingers lace together on top of the desk and he waited for her to finish her first written word.
Aurelia concentrated so hard she completely amazed herself and wrote a word. Before presenting her finest work, she compared her word to the one she'd chosen in her textbook. Upon flitting between the two she, without much effort, realized she knew what this word read. The girl turned her book upside down and pushed it towards her teacher.
"Water" she inwardly whispered.
Snape felt a twinge of something in his stomach, it couldn't have been pride because he was too cold. he didn't even flinch. Maybe it could have been. The muscles of his face only moved to speak "why did you choose that word, Lestrange?".
"I had hoped" Aurelia breathed "it would have been witch. But it was water". She looked to the glass jars around the room with disappointment written across her face.
Professor Snape twisted the book with outstretched long fingers and flicked it back towards his pupil.
"Write 'witch'" he commanded and laced his hands once more.
Aurelia picked her quill up and scanned the textbook page, she desperately looked for some indication of how to spell 'witch', Snape noticed and snatched the textbook from her, which left her with just a quill and a blank page with 'water' written on. Her letters were linked with ink, yet they stood ungracefully.
"Hurry up!" Snape hissed through gritted teeth which caused the girl to recoil into her seat.
Aurelia bit her cheek and tried to remember the order of the letters she needed, she remembered she needed a 'w' and so penned it out. Mentally she broke down the word, she wrote the next letter 'i'. Suddenly she could picture the word in front of her, briefly she got excited but focused on finishing the word, only to find it was already done. She hadn't imagined the correct spelling she had in fact written it herself, there on her paper. She scanned Professor Snape's face for any acknowledgement or praise as she passed her work book back; the book was whipped from her hand and closed. He simply nodded and dismissed the girl.
Aurelia felt a tiny bit angry that her achievement wasn't celebrated by her tutor but as she left his classroom she decided she was stupid to expect otherwise, he was the stone hearted Professor Snape. The girl near skipped to bed that night, the aspect that students would be returning to school tomorrow had escaped her mind. She had relished in having the castle and common room practically to herself for two weeks. She wasn't bullied or beaten, her possessions weren't stolen, she wasn't shoved into a freezing shower by one of Draco's minions, but above all she was now armed with knowledge that would violently propel her forward in her life.
Aurelia spent the next day watching the strange black creatures that had billowed in the sky since September, they swayed in the winter winds above Hogwarts. The snow in the air and on the ground, didn't matter to her in the slightest; she was enjoying the last bit of true freedom, that unbeknownst to her, that moment would be her last for a long time.
The school was back to its usual routine, the weather was beginning to change its relentless pelt of snow, but it still remained chilly. Older students were allowed trips to Hogsmeade, Aurelia longed to join them, she wondered what shops would be located there, whether they would be like those she saw in Diagon Alley. The skinny girl spent free afternoons and evenings in the library where she had found a different kind of freedom, one which gave more satisfaction than prowling the vast grounds of the school. Her detentions also decreased, and she began to succeed in her school work where she couldn't before. Her best friend was her wand and it served her well; she could do far more with it than she revealed to those around her. She had regular contact with the students in her classes but for some reason people would keep their distance, she didn't mind. Her most favourite charm she had accomplished was one that stopped the trickle of water which ran down the wall at her beds headboard. She was able to deflect the flow towards another girl's bed. A flurry of tiny butterflies darted about in her stomach upon being successful the first time around.
She cared not for the rumours of school, she was the subject of most rumours in the Slytherin common room. She listened to the tales of the Potter boy but admired the fact that this boy seemed to have it worse than her. She had seen him, and his friends walk through the school and quite often be the target of Draco's ability to cause upset. Draco also enjoyed making a mockery of Aurelia. So much so that she didn't bother to visit him in the hospital wing after he was injured in his Care of Magical Creatures class, she suspected it was probably his own fault anyway, he could be such a slimy git. He tried to talk to her about how much his arm hurt during lunch time but Aurelia ignored him and continued to thumb through a newspaper. The newspaper provided Aurelia an insight into the wizarding world she lived in but really knew nothing about.
But sure enough Aurelia's first year at Hogwarts was coming to a close. She was somewhat subdued as she boarded the Hogwarts express back to London. The people she would be going back to were like strangers now, she never felt like she belonged there and now she knew she really didn't belong, she felt even more hateful. Her clothes had become slightly constricting over the year too, Aurelia had been able to access food regularly and as a result had become healthier looking. Her hair had grown down to her bottom and her body itself was beginning to take a womanly shape. Aurelia idled past her summer companion on the platform and entered an empty cabin. Soon a boy was standing at the door looking directly at her. This boy was called Blaise, a tall dark-haired boy with dark skin. Aurelia thought she must have been mistaken when she saw his mouth smirk into a small smile before leaving and joining his friends, but she was certain of what she observed the more she thought it over.
Aurelia puzzled the whole journey home, she hadn't thought for one moment that Draco could have kept people from talking to her all year, yet with him absent Blaise had taken the opportunity to attempt some form of communication. She seethed silently, why must she be the subject of such behaviour. Her blue eyes darted about the moving trees and fields that whizzed past the moving train. The evening sun shone far longer than it used to, here the summer months were wondrous to behold.
The exasperated red steam engine pulled into Platform 9¾ and its guests piled out of its doors. Aurelia reluctantly stepped onto the concrete and as soon as she lifted her eyes to see in front of her she stopped. Her breath caught in her throat and a student behind her pushed her forward out of the way of the door. She was aware of eyes watching her as the man she most feared cracked an obviously forced smile and held both his hands out to her, his cane was tucked under his thumb inside one of his hands. The girls' feet shuffled forward, her twinkling blue eyes never separated the contact with his. The weak scent of him entered her nose and she stopped just before she reached his grip. His icy stare narrowed as he flicked his fingers which indicated her to continue forward. Aurelia glanced sideways and noticed the spectacled Potter boy who watched from behind a brick pillar. Aurelia swallowed hard, her sweaty palms clutched the edges of her skirt, holding it flat down against her body. She paced once more, into the stomach-turning arms of Lucius Malfoy, his now strong odour filled her nostrils and mouth, she was quickly reminded that she had better behave so she reached up and clasped her own hands around the waist of the broad man, her face burrowed deep into the heavy fabric of his clothes. Aurelia's mouth went completely dry when she felt the firm pressure of his hand at the small of her back, one finger slyly rubbed the top of her backside. The girl dropped her hands and removed herself from his embrace. Potters' shadow left in her peripheral vision.