The Adventure of a Riddle

15- Another Orphan to Befriend

She walked aimlessly, passing the other houses in the neighborhood, all the houses varying in different levels of shabbiness. She was wearing jean shorts and a blue tank top that Draco certainly would not have approved of. Aurora stopped herself upon seeing a small abandoned park not too far away from her new home.

She plopped down on the only swing not broken, and proceeded to kick the ground— resulting in her going back and forth in a rocking motion. Her white chucks were starting to get dirty from the damp dirt that lay beneath her, but she paid no mind to it as she narrowed her eyes and made the nearby wood chips levitate. It had been so long since she intentionally used magic, that she barely had to concentrate in order to keep the small wooden pieces afloat.

She had been swinging there for almost ten minutes until she heard a rustling noise behind one of the larger bushes surrounding the ghostly park. Aurora raised a hand, uprooting the bush in question, only to see a curly haired boy looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Aurora tossed the uprooted bush to the side and narrowed her eyes at her new watchful companion.

The first thing Aurora noticed was his peculiar body language. He was holding his arms to his chest and awkwardly looked at the ground. She could tell right off the bat that this was a very shy and introverted boy. He had the most beautiful dark golden skin, with random freckles spattered across his cheeks and nose. He was tall and lanky, with hyper pigmented hazel eyes. She shamelessly admired his deep brown curly locks, his shabby and tattered clothing not escaping her notice as well.

"Hello," said Aurora pleasantly.

The shy boy didn't answer, instead finding interest in his left shoe; which was untied. Getting up off of her swing, she walked over to him until she was stood right in front of the boy.

"It's considered rude manners not to greet someone back," she said lightly, "my name is Aurora, but you can call me Rory. What's your name?"

"Francis," he spoke so quietly that Rory had to
use her gift of assumption to put the pieces together.

"I think I'll call you Frankie," replied Aurora with a dazzling warm smile, "well are you just going to continue to watch me creepily from afar, or are you going to join me?"

The boy, Frankie, blushed and awkwardly shuffled to the swing that she had just occupied. Shrugging, Aurora assumed that he was a muggle. They were in a non-wizarding neighborhood, for one, and for two, he didn't seem to recognize the fact that she'd just been doing magic. Or if he did notice, the boy was just too socially awkward to say so. Making the best of what was now a strange day, Aurora sat in the swing right next to his— the chain which held it together was very close to snapping completely.

"So you live around here?" She asked, trying to make conversation with the sheepish boy named Francis.

"I-I live close-by," he replied and blushed again before adding quietly, "in an orphanage."

Aurora furrowed her brows at the boy who seemed only able to communicate through whispering. "An orphanage? What's that like?" She asked, genuinely curious.

Frankie graced her with an uncomfortable glance with his round eyes before replying, "It sucks. W-where do you live?"

She sighed and kicked off the ground to swing and responded, "Not far. I'm staying with my emo Godfather. Got disowned from my real family this year. He lives just around the corner. How far away is your orphanage?"

"About a ten minute walk through London. I come to this park sometimes, Wool's is awful," he whispered as his hazel eyes darted to the ground.

"Wool's? I've heard of that before," said Aurora as she thought about it. Wool's Orphanage, she knew she'd heard it somewhere... it then dawned on her that that is where Tom used to stay when he was growing up. "I had a friend that grew up there a long time ago," she admitted. What did it matter? It's not as if this muggle stranger would know of Tom Riddle who turned into one ruthless Voldemort.