𝒊𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 orion black dies of a
blood curse and scared for her
status in a world of death eaters,
walburga black insists her son joins
her for a holiday away.
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ad astra per aspera ; through adversity to the stars
✧
Melina had been a sickly child.
She was born too early in the month, and was too small to survive on her own. The hospital had aided with that, and when she was older she would find that her half-year of life was spent there, being fed by tubes and visited by her parents daily, where they would peer at her through a small glass cage that prevented her from outside harm.
When she came home, she was quiet. She didn't cry or scream, she sat still when her mother dressed her, stared blankly when spoken to, and slept soundly at night. She was the victim of many illnesses that threatened her already weakened system; respiratory infections mostly, that always threatened to become something more severe. And as a result, Melina was in and out of hospitals until she began to retain things for herself. Being ill was one of her earliest memories.
Her illnesses were perhaps only a part of her difficulties; her weaknesses ensured she couldn't walk alone until she was three, and she couldn't grasp the concept of speaking way past two, which was months following the usual range. But despite the sickness that plagued her constantly, once she finally got the hang of things, there was no stopping her.
Her mother, a woman named Odette who worked in a nearby bakery, and her father, a man named Leonardo who worked in the Italian Embassy of Paris, had never been so grateful that they had been granted a chatty child. They had suffered in her silence for so long, petrified that she would remain as such for the rest of her life, but to hear those babbles slowly but surely turn into coherent sentences was perhaps their biggest dream come true. They had prayed and hoped tirelessly for their daughter to get better, and it had appeared that God had answered them and helped them in a way they had always believed he could. It had paid off, and the couple were eternally grateful.
No longer did Melina require semi-regular hospital visits, nor was every cough and cold so detrimental to her health to the point it was a threat to her life. No longer did she sit in silence, unable to go to school and lacking the confidence befriend others. Now, she could hold a conversation and was singing and dancing to the radio that played whilst her father cut up the vegetables to roast for their lunchtime soup, sending her running down the sun-lit hallways outside their peeling crimson-painted door to pick up a baguette from Odette's work, or she could hold her mother's hand and a small wicker basket in another as they decided to take the métro to surprise Leonardo with home-cooked Italian food for a picnic dinner after a particularly hard week.
Now, she could skip her way up the centre aisle of their nearby church dressed as Angel Gabriel come Christmas, could wear the pretty blue plaid pinafores that were the uniform of her new school. She could stand during hymns, kneel during prayers, and run around in the snow hand in hand with her father until she was dizzy after service, whilst her mother caught up with her friends and not worry about her catching a cold. She could join her parents in travelling to Odette's hometown in the south-east of France for their Christmas Eve meal without worry of danger.
