We Are Golden (A Harry Potter Fan Fiction)

A Fluffy Surprise

"Annabelle!" My mother cried, wrapping her stick-like arms around me as soon as I walked through the front door of the house. "How was the ride back?" My father squeezed past us, carrying my bags, and headed up the stairs, smiling and humming a tune under his breath.

"It was good" I said. It had been almost peaceful really. James didn't go chasing after Lily, nor did he and Sirius prank cause any of their typical trouble. It may have been a bit too quiet for my liking, actually.

Lily had actually refused to say a word to anyone on the way back, although I thought she'd be thrilled by James' limited appearances. Something had happened between those three after the Severus incident, a giant blow-up that not even Remus really understood apparently. To make matters worse, Sev had come by and refused to get away from the portrait hole until Lily came out to talk to him. She refused, and I had to coheres him into leaving before she lost her cool and hexed him.

"Excellent! Now I'm going to start dinner, is there anything you want in particular ?" she dragged me into the kitchen.

"Anything you make is good for me." I smiled and looked around the canary yellow kitchen, soaking up the positivity the room absolutely radiated. This year had been so full of drama and mischief, no thanks to the liked of Potter and Black, that coming home felt like every nerve they had worked was finally coming undone.

"Alrighty." She opened my palm and pushed a set of keys into my fingers, then pushing me back towards the door. "Be a dear and go fetch the post from down the street?" she said and scampered away, her laugh like a tinkling chime in the wind. With a sigh I slipped on my trainers and ducked around my trunk, which my father had forgotten to bring up to my room.

Muggle post was so tedious in our town. The post came in annoying metal boxes in the centre of the subdivision, containing a thousand little boxes inside, one per family. Why couldn't we just have a post-box on the end of our driveway so I didn't have to walk like a billion blocks to get a bloody envelope from the muggle government? They should take a lesson from the wizards and use owls.

I opened the door and stepped out into the fading light of the sunset. It felt good to be home. In the distance I could hear the neighbours do their neighbourly yell at one another to keep the leaves off of their lawn, or clean up their dog's dung. It smelt like fresh cut grass and petrol...

The sinking sun was casting odd shadows on the ground, making trees and flag poles look eerie and unnatural. Even the muggle world could seem scary at times, making me really wish that I had remembered my blasted wand. A rustling noise came from the bushes to my right. I jumped and emitted something of a squeak. What the hell could have caused that? A squirrel? A nest of birds? A red-cap? A death eater? My thoughts got less and less coherent as I sped up, practically jogging down the street into the light of the setting sun.

The rustling followed me, a dark shadow running parallel with me in the hedges. My breath felt ragged in my chest, my mind coming to ease for some reason when the postbox came in sight. Merlin, we needed P.E or something at school Flying was not doing the trick for my cardio game. The postbox was just off to the side of the road, the familiar area sight doing little to improve my sense of panic.

I fumbled with the keys as I attempted to find the right one to slip into the lock of postbox 349. "Come on, come on" I whispered to myself as key after key didn't seem to open the lock. I could almost hear the suspenseful music of muggle movies as the shadow finally caught up to me in the brush across the street.

The lock clicked open as soon as the shadow sprung out of the bushes. My eyes shut firmly and I held my breath, waiting for whatever it was to attack me.

"WOOF!" I opened my eyes and there in front of me was a large, black, bear of a dog. His fur was matted and threaded with twigs. I was pretty sure that I could smell him from here. He barked again and padded towards me, his tongue lolling out of his mouth like I was a long-lost friend.