the gentle moon / george weasley

happy birthday to me

My mum left me a letter, or she at least wrote me a letter in case she died one day. Clearly, that jinxed her. I ran my fingers across the page, feeling the dents where she had pressed the quill to the paper so hard that it had nearly broken through. I could picture her writing this, trying to get all her last thoughts memorialized on this piece of parchment. Scrawling the letters in her terrible handwriting, slashing through line after line when the words came out wrong or weren't enough, maybe even snapping the quill in half because she hated those bloody things; that would explain the ink splatters. 

God, I miss her.

If I'd been there, I might have laughed. Don't give yourself an aneurysm, mum, I would have teased her. Why are you even writing this? You're too young to be writing a goodbye letter.

We still have time.

Don't go...

Your handwriting is bloody awful.

Laughing was the last thing I felt like doing now as I reread the words I'd already memorized.

While I was pondering this, I caught the unmistakable scent of smoke and not the kind of smoke that came from the fire. Something was on fire. Hopefully this campsite. I didn't hear any screaming, so against my luck, everyone was still alive. I shoved the wrinkled parchment back into my pillow case and pushed myself out of the tent. Faust was staring at the firepit, with a pot sitting on a grate. The thing inside of it, I say thing because I have no idea what he was trying to cook. It is completely black and at this point mostly ash.

"What was it?" I asked him.

"Porridge..." He sighed, looking down at the burnt remanence of his breakfast pulling his black eyebrows together and crumpling his forehead.

"It's fucked."

"I can see that, Moony." He hissed. He looked over at me, and then his face fell with his shoulders, "I could use some help..."

"Where'd ya' get the porridge?"

"On my way back from Scotland, I stopped by a shop. Had some coin on me."

"Did you even put water in it?"

"Was I supposed to?"

I live with idiots now. If I was cooking at home usually someone had their wand ready to put out my fire, but now I am the cook. He sat down behind me while I chiseled out his breakfast and began cooking his last instant pack, duplicating it for him so that at least his money didn't go to waste. I should let him starve, right? Say fuck it and burn this one. But I don't think I can. He's given me multiple black eyes in the almost 2 months I've been here, but taking money from a werewolf, I don't even think I could do that to Greyback.

Actually yes I could. But Faust, he didn't want this life. He wanted to be a tattoo artist, but now he has one hand and a lifetime of pain.

"You seem off today." He points out.

I shrugged, not looking at him. Hopefully, he could tell by the way my back rose and fell that I didn't notice.

I am off today.

"Accio blue bag," I whisper and the little blue satchel I packed came flying from my tent.

"What's in there?"

"Are you allergic to anything?" I asked

"No." He said, watching me dig through the bag.

"Do you like cinnamon?"

"You have cinnamon?" I can hear the smile forming on his face.

"Yeah. Do you want some?"

"Sure." He said, "You know it took me some time, but I get why Arc wants to keep you around."