Invisible String

5.

"Yeah, I can. I think about the day that my father adopted me," Aurora explained, smiling at Dean, "Probably the best day of my life."

She saw Harry smile in the corner of her eye. He then raised his wand, and everyone stepped back to give him space.

The words "Expecto patronum!" departed his mouth, a blinding light flashed in the room and a bright blue stag appeared from the tip of his wand and sprinted around the room. Everyone watched in admiration and scattered around the room by the time it disappeared so they could try it for themselves.

Some time had passed, enough that even Neville managed to send white sparks out of his wand, when Dobby the House Elf made his way into the Room of Requirement to inform Harry that Professor Umbridge had found out about Dumbledore's Army.

Aurora had a sharp memory, but even that wasn't enough for her to remember the muddled events of that day – it all seemed like one big blur. All she remembered was that by the end of the day, Albus Dumbledore had vanished and Dolores Umbridge had taken over, bringing her full wrath upon the school come the following weeks.

Harry and Aurora reflected on the events that had happened since Christmas at the top of the Astronomy tower; since it was now June, the weather had come back to being pleasant, which allowed the duo to resume their meetings at the tower, where they had enjoyed it the most.

"It's like, everything that could've possibly gone wrong, happened in the last 5 months," said Harry, unintentionally grabbing hold of Aurora's hair while lost in the fury of his thoughts. Aurora chose to lay with her head on Harry's lap today, and she looked up at him as if he was giving her the answers to all of life's questions, and not fuming over a passive-aggressive woman who abuses the colour pink.

Aurora frowned in pain but had pursed her lips to hide the fact that, had it been any other person pulling her hair, she would have enjoyed it.

"Hey, at least the year is almost over. Only one more awful thing to conquer!" said Aurora, referring to their O.W.L.s.

"Right, like Umbridge isn't going to try and fail me and whoever else was involved in DA. You should be bloody thankful your name wasn't on the list."

"Oh, I am. Have you studied at all?"

"Well yeah, I have to. Hermione made me and Ron these revision schedules, and don't tell her I admitted this but they're rather helpful," He smiled, looking up at the sky. "I am kind of glad that Snape stopped my Occlumency lessons, though. That was stressful on its own."

"I'm still offering my lessons; I promise they'll be much better. Might even kiss you as a reward when you finally get the hang of it," Aurora laughed.

He looked down at her and placed his hand on her cheek. "Oh, trust me, I could have easily gotten a kiss from you by coming up here one day and crying about how much I hate my life."

"And honestly, I'll just have to learn it later on. It's not that I was bad at it or anything, Snape was just annoyed at me for looking at his memories."

"To be fair, it was a private memory..." Aurora rolled her eyes. "Speaking of which, what did Sirius end up saying about it?"

"He said Snape wasn't exactly innocent and that my dad matured and became a better person over the years, and my mother grew to love him by their final year at Hogwarts. Most of what he said was comforting, I guess. Except he was pissed that Snape stopped lessons and threatened to come here and confront Snape..."

Aurora smirked and shook her head slightly, "There is no way dad would let him leave. And it does make sense, people grow. Severus has."

"Snape is an awful man! I don't know what you find so appealing about him!"