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𝐀 𝐖 𝐎 𝐍 𝐃 𝐄 𝐑 𝐅 𝐔 𝐋 𝐏 𝐔 𝐃 𝐃 𝐈 𝐍 𝐆
"𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘, Melody — you both look terrible."
Melody's eyes were tired pools of charcoal, and they raised with great effort. After the previous afternoon's revelations, her memory was hazy as to how she'd ended up back in the castle, and failing to fall asleep until daybreak certainly hadn't helped.
She felt a pair of virescent eyes embrace hers, and she suddenly remembered, the circumstances folding her in with barbed limbs — those eyes were Harry's, and they had both just wandered into the completely empty common room.
"Where is everyone?" she wondered, after a hefty yawn.
"Gone! It's the first day of the holidays, remember?" replied Ron, watching her closely. "It's nearly lunchtime; we were going to come and wake you up in a minute."
Melody heaved a sigh, and slumped into a familiar chair next to the fire. For reasons beyond her control, she felt the weight of a thousand white hot stars resting on her shoulders, each one eons away from death. It was almost Christmas, a season usually alight with laughter and cheer, but she felt completely and utterly awful.
"You really don't look well, you know," Hermione said, peering anxiously into her face.
"I'm fine," she lied.
Hermione gave her another inquisitive look, but returned to a nearby seat anyway.
Melody flickered her eyelids shut, and curled into a pajama-clad ball. Of course she wasn't fine — her grandma, Dumbledore, Cornelius Fudge . . . why hadn't anyone ever happened to mention that her mother and Sirius Black had been in love? Why hadn't anyone ever thought it wise to tell her how Dolohov found her parents in the first place?
As soon as they'd returned from Hogsmeade, Melody had gone up to her childhood bedroom and thrown Petar's Christmas present aside. She headed straight for her smallest bookshelf, immediately pushed the books aside, and found what she was looking for — a leather-bound photo album Aunt Molly had given her.
She sat down on the bed, and started turning the pages, searching, prying, hunting until . . . A picture of her parents' wedding day, dated January 1979: about nine months before her birth.
There was her mother waving up at her, beaming, the chocolate hair Melody had inherited neatly pulled back. There was her redheaded father, alight with happiness, arm in arm with her. Melody couldn't help but notice the absence of similar qualities between herself and her father — there was no identical nose nor matching smile; no similar posture nor indistinguishable eyes. She frowned in thought, and moved on.
