Scratches (Fred Weasley)

(52) OWL Results

The days until Florence returned to Hogwarts could be counted on their hands, and she spent her remaining time as productive as she could. Sirius had taught her her very first song on the guitar, which was an old muggle song from a band called Beatles that Florence's father used to love before.

To say that she was extremely proud of herself was an understatement.

She had also taken interest in tending to thw Hippogriff that resided in their attic. Florence had never actually gotten the chance to see Buckbeak when he was still in the care of Hagrid due to the Mafloy incident. And she was frightened by the sight of the creature the first time she entered the attic.

"Hippogriffs are proud creatures, and very much easy to offend and very dangerous when they are," Sirius told her, "You bow first, and you wait for it to respond. If it bows back then you are allowed to touch him."

Florence did as she was told, and the creature responded with the same courteous gesture. And it had been her job to bring Buckbeak food for the remaining days.

One thing that completely slipped her mind, due to the fact that she had quite a lot of interesting things that happened over the course of summer, was that her O.W.L.s results had not arrived yet.

Normally it would have been attached to their Hogwarts acceptance letters—atleast that was what Penelope Clearwater had told them. But there was no word about where her results were at.

She had gotten letters from both Xander and Nicolai who were greatly thrilled with their exams. Nicolai had gotten an O after she had accidentally transfigured the whole desk instead of the paperweight during the Transfiguration practical exam.

Both had also asked her about her results, and they too found it weird that she hasn't received them yet.

Worry started gnawing at the pit of her stomach as September first grew nearer and nearer, and with each day that passed when she didn't get her O.W.L.s letter.

Maybe she had failed everything was the first possibility that came into mind, but they would have still sent in a result paper with a bunch of P's on it.

Her worrying stopped one day when her mum had brought out a special looking parchment over breakfast. Florence had been ultimately relieved that her mother had simply hung on to it and that the owl did nor drop it by accident like she had thought of.

"You had me so worried!" she half-exclaimed, Miss Mimsy—who was rubbing her face against her foot—gave out a short startled hiss, "Why didn't you show it to me sooner?"

"Because," shrugged Jane, "I didn't want you to get so worked up about it."

"But it did the exact opposite of what you were trying to prevent... Did you open it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "We can open it together, though."

They sat back down, Jane neatly tearing open the envelope. The moment she had pulled the document out, Florence seized the paper from her mum's hand, fumbling to get it open.

"Hey now, easy on the grabbing," she told her, watching her daughter skim through the contents with anxiety written all over her features.

"What does it say..."

There was a pause, a very long one at that. Jane sat patiently, hands folded over the other as she gave Florence her time.

Her brown eyes went wide, although it was an unclear expression of whether or not the results were great.

2 E's and the rest were O's. They were very good grades, better than Jane had done in her time at Hogwarts. She was proud of her daughter, and words couldn't quite describe how she felt. Her mind had subconsciously wandered to Gabriel, and her heart ached at the thought of not sharing that certain moment in their daughter's life.