CHERRY // marlene mckinnon

-thirty

*****

  Aurora apparated back to her house, and to her surprise, no one was home. Strange.

She was about to walk up the stairs until she heard faint cluttering noises. That made her freeze. She checked her left and her right, but there was no one there, so she slowly pulled out her wand from her bag. Just as she turned to face the stairs, there was something coming towards her way. White, fluffy, tiny, and four legs. A cat. How ironic. It lunged itself on her and she screamed, falling on her back.

"What the in the name of Salazar Slytherin?!!" She yelled as it got off of her. She managed to stand up and fix her hair, and then she saw a very sorry looking Regulus standing at the very top of the staircase.

"So...what's up?" He gave a quick, small, smile but his face had fear written all over it. Oh she's gonna kill me, he thought to himself.

"I just got trampled by a cat, but other than that, my day has been lovely." Sarcasm was evident in Aurora's comment. "So care to explain why this fur ball is in our house? And I'm not complaining, but where the hell are mother and father?"

"I don't know, they just said they'd be out. Didn't explain where to." Regulus shrugged, walking towards his sister and helping her collect her things. "And I got the cat for Veronica."

"Yeah—you what?!"

"What? Is she allergic or something? O-or does she hate cats?" Regulus asked frantically.

"No, it's just that I didn't think that you'd get her a cat out of all things." Aurora said.

"What's wrong with cats?" Regulus questioned his sister.

"Nothings wrong with cats." Aurora calmly told him.

"Well you're making it seem like somethings wrong with cats. Do you not like cats or something?" Regulus raised an eyebrow.

"I never said I don't like cats-"

"Well you're making it seem like you don't like cats-"

"I never said that! And it's not even about me, it's about Ronnie." Aurora stopped and turned to him.

"So what you're saying is that she doesn't like cats-"

"I didn't— ugh!" Aurora sighed in annoyance and gave up. She then turned to go to her room and shut the door.

"You still didn't tell me if that was a good gift or not!" Regulus shouted from behind the door, but Aurora just chose to ignore him. "You know what? Belle doesn't like you either!"

"Who?!" She yelled back at him from behind the door.

"The fucking cat!" Regulus shouted, and the stomped away causing Aurora to sigh.

She then dumped out all of the stuff she bought on her bed. She wanted to wrap Veronica's gift first, but her eyes landed on a polaroid picture. The same one that Lily took of Marlene and her. Aurora was laughing  and Marlene looked quite shy, and tried to cover her face. It was a rare occurrence since the girl was so out going most of the time.

Aurora just smiled while looking back at the picture. For the first time in a while, she wasn't thinking about the negative stuff. Only the positive. Maybe there was hope at happiness for her after all.