Sapphire (Lazuli Book #3) - Harry Potter Fan Fiction (Draco Malfoy)

Chapter Twenty-Four

I fall in and out of consciousness, if you can call it that. I prefer the word memories, which I relive as if they are happening to me once again. I see the scenes out in front of me as if I am living them again, every sound and sight and smell replayed for me. Except I'm not really in them. I am a ghost, unseen and unheard. It's like I've stepped into the pensieve, and I'm rewatching my entire life before my eyes.

A few memories stick in my mind more than others.

In the first, I am a small child of perhaps five, watching as my older brothers open their Christmas presents. That was always the way we did it in my household, Bill would open his present first, followed by Charlie, Percy, Fred and George, then Ron and I, then Ginny. In those days, Bill and Charlie were the only two at Hogwarts, but they always used to come home for Christmas, and we would spend it all together. Ginny was still a small child bouncing on Mum's lap whilst the boys opened their presents, and Ron was a boisterous child who would clamber all over our elder brothers to get a look at their gifts. In the memory, he gasped in delight at a miniature fire-breathing dragon that Charlie had been given, and scoffed at a watercolour painting set that Percy humbly accepted. We never had much money, but Mum and Dad always found ways to make do.

I sat at my father's feet in the memory, with him stroking my hair absent-mindedly as he watched the boys argue over whose jumper was better. Fred and George were prodding Percy - who liked to take his time in unwrapping each present - to hurry up, and Ron was even worse. He moaned at Mum that it wasn't fair that he had to wait, and that he had to go nearly last every year.

"It's because you're the smallest boy, Ronnie," Bill teased him. Ron retorted by punching our older brother in the ribs, although Bill barely even flinched.

Eventually, it came to be Ron and my turn, and I watched as the child me carefully unwrapped a present to find a purple jump with a large J knitted onto it, courtesy of Mum. It looked like the same pattern that she had used for the older boys, so of course it was huge on me, but I didn't care. I merely beamed up at her, my front tooth missing, and pulled it over my head proudly. "Thank you Mummy," I called in my child's voice. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek lovingly. "It's quite alright, my beautiful girl."

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In the next memory, I had just turned eleven, and lying in a field at Easter time with Cedric beside me. Our hands were entwined, as they always were when we were together. I was talking to him about my worries for attending Hogwarts in September.

"Bill says that there are lots of ghosts at Hogwarts, who like to eat little girls at night," I had told him matter-of-factly. Ced had thrown back his head of bronze hair and laughed loudly. "Your brother is fibbing to you, Jule. There are ghosts at Hogwarts, it's true, but I've never heard of them eating anybody. In fact, I don't think they eat anything!"

The eleven year-old me sat up and pulled at a patch of grass. "Will you still be my friend Ced, even if I'm not in Hufflepuff with you and I'm two school years below you?"

Cedric sat up too and smiled down at me. "Jule, you're my best friend. I'm not going to ditch you just because you get sorted into Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, or god forbid, Slytherin!" He pulled a teasing face at the Slytherin, but the younger me had pouted my lip seriously and crossed my arms across my chest. "I won't get sorted into Slytherin!" I stated sharply. Cedric laughed and ran a hand through his hair, clutching his sides at my reaction. "What if you do? What would your Mum say?"

I remembered a shot of fear shooting through me, and then the younger me smiled and shook my head. "It won't happen. But even if it did, Mum would still love me. She's already told me that she won't mind what house I'm sorted into, although Gryffindor like my brothers would be nice."