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CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
childhood part one
FOR THE FIRST time since Betty Lupin had been at Hogwarts, she could hear the House Elves murmuring in the shadows of the Great Hall as the students of Hogwarts ate their breakfast. The Daily Prophet was being passed around, each hand tossing it — damning it — to the next person as if it had burned their hands, leaving red scars.
Betty, however, made no such motion as she stared at the bold text. Edgar Bones and his little sister, Amelia, had already been taken to Professor Sprout's classroom as they were both in Hufflepuff house. No one dared to speak, not even the Slytherins. Her fingers lightly traced the edges of the thin paper as the flash of the camera for a family Christmas portrait lit up a circle around her eyes ever so often.
She remembered receiving that card. Lyall had been good friends with Edgar's dad at Hogwarts, so they always received a Christmas card from them. It was nothing overly posh, but she'd always loved the way the letters looked indented into the paper. Bones. She would trace it and marvel at something so small.
Tears pricked the edges of her eyes as she stared at the photograph. Flash. Smiles crisp and Amelia's little black shoes shining. Her white filly socks at a perfect height. She inhaled, let out a shaky breath and pushed herself up from the Hufflepuff table. She couldn't remember who she was sitting with, friend, foe or someone in between, but it didn't really matter, did it?
Her head filled with burning hot air as she strode forward, not aware that her legs were moving at all. The cold mid-December air, however, slapped her and left the mark that the paper didn't. Her cheeks burning and the tips of her fingers growing red and then purple with every step that she took, she looked at her breath.
The swirling tendrils, letting her know that she was alive. Letting her know that she was living, whatever that meant. They soon joined the collective cloud above her, taunting her with late, heavenly sunlight. A few degrees more and she was sure that her tears would freeze, but she was not so fortune and had to resort to shoving them into a box where every other Daily Prophet headline lived. Surely, they would make the front page ink run, but who could blame her? If she'd known better, she'd let her mascara run instead.
"Hey." A voice cut through her thoughts, splitting her head open, making her freeze as she turned.
"Rem." Their eyes locked onto each other as he approached her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
