revival - f. weasley

chapter three

"Enough Elora!" Christina stands up suddenly, slamming her hands loudly on the table. She still won't look at me but keeps her heated gaze on the paperwork in front of her, but I know she's not reading it anymore. Slowly I sink into a seat at the table. With Irving out of the house at work, the house is even quieter than usual. Christina grabs her empty mug from off the table and slowly moves to the kitchen, facing away from me she hand washes the mug. I watch her as she moves carefully around the kitchen. She is careful to keep her back towards me at all times. "Dumbledore believes that it is in your best interests to stay here. This is your home, whether you remember it or not."

"To hell with Dumbledore! He's a teacher, not a he-"

"But I am!" She yells, cutting me off and making me jump once more, "I am a healer and I know what's best for you, and the only way to keep you safe is if you stay here!"

I stare at her. This house was feeling less like my home and more like my prison. "Fine," I mutter, standing up and walking out of the kitchen and back up to my room. I lean against the door once it's closed, my eyes skimming around the room. Irving and I had gone through most of the boxes a few days ago, pining things back onto the wall. He'd done his best to remember where he'd seen things, and I'd just placed things randomly, hoping my subconscious would put them in the right place. My eyes skim across the items in my room. Desk, photos, window. Window, dresser, bed, bedside tables. Bedside tables, bed, dresser, windows, photos... photos. There are no photos in my Hogwarts trunk. Dozens litter the walls and fill the albums in my room, from age seven to maybe, fourteen or fifteen there are smiling pictures of me. Me with the Crams. Me, frozen in muggle photos with a brown curly-haired girl. Moving photos of me with another girl and four other boys. I'm in photos with all of them, but there aren't any photos of the six of us together. Almost as if we're never taken a group photo together. Then the photos stop. Why would I go from capturing all of my favorite moments, to stopping taking photos altogether? Unless...

I'm moving back down the stairs and to the kitchen where Christina still is, once more. She's returned to her seat at the table but is now drafting a letter to an unknown recipient.

"My photos," I state firmly, and she looks at me with a cautious look of confusion. "Where are my photos?"

"I don't understand-"

"I have dozens of photos on my walls, in boxes, in albums from ages seven to fifteen. Then suddenly, they stop. Either I stopped taking photos, or you're hiding them from me." She stares at me, confusion gone and replaced with a blank face of denial. "I don't understand, it's like you don't even want me to remember."

Silence.

Unforgettable, telling, silence.

Slowly I shake my head at her, disbelief making me stumble back towards the front door.

"Elora wait," Christina tries, "you don't underst-"

"No, I," I blink at her. "I can't be here, I can't look at you."

I can hear her calling after me as I run down the front steps of the house, and out down the street. I know she can follow me, Merlin, there was probably a spell that could prevent me from running any further, but she doesn't. When I know I'll be out of the sight of the house, I slow down. Walking absently down the path, I regret leaving so abruptly, the wind rushes through the trees and chills me to the bone. My thin long sleeve top is doing nothing to deter the cold. My wand, which is keeping half my hair in a bun and away from my face, is useless when the only spells I have managed so far are 'Lumos' and the summoning spell.

Rubbing my arms, I contemplate returning back to the Cram house, but the thought of seeing Christina and knowing that there's a part of her that doesn't want me to remember... it hurts. The concrete path opens up onto a mostly empty playground. It's a modest park, with a climbing frame and slides, and a set of swings off to the side. I intend to ignore the lone man who is swaying slightly on the swing set, the only noise coming from the creak of the rusty chain that attaches the seat to the swing set frame. I'm drawn to the swing set though, and as I take a step forward, my eyes blur.