𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟-𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝

Small Pieces For The Puzzle

How had she gotten here? Oh right, Hermione had forced her.

The Gryffindor common room was loud and boisterous, full of colour and life. Aurora had reached a point during her stay at the castle where she adored every small amount of silence she got. However, it seems like she was a bit too distant for Hermione's liking, so the smart witch had somehow managed to drag the winged girl into their common room, cutting off any prefect who argued the sacredness of their secret common room with a withering glare.

She admits, Hermione can be persistent when she wants to be. Any argument that had escaped Aurora's mouth was refuted by a logical point. So Aurora found herself squeezed uncomfortably into an armchair that really didn't look like it could hold all of her weight, a book open in her hands to stop herself from hissing at anyone who tried to come and ask her too many questions.

"See, you don't have to hole yourself up in your rooms," Hermione said smugly.

Aurora's glare slid to her, its effect heightened by the different eyes. "I don't have to, I want to. There's a vast difference. And I still don't know how you found my bloody rooms,"

Hermione winked. "That's my secret,"

Aurora couldn't help but shift uncomfortably. The chair she was in was small, it didn't alleviate the discomfort her wings were in, having been strapped around her body by belts. She was wearing a ridiculously long cardigan buttoned up to hide them, and the small chair was making the belts dig into her skin.

"Don't you have a bigger chair in this place?" She grumbled to Hermione.

The girl looked around before pointing at the sofas on the other side of the room, where a group of seventh-year boys were studying with mountains of books around them, their heads buried between the pages.

"You could go ask them for a place," Aurora turned around to look at her recommendation, then turned back with a 'surely you jest' expression on her face.

"I wouldn't go near them with a ten-foot pole," she declared, "they look far too stressed to handle someone like me asking them for anything, let alone a request to abandon a sofa they found comfortable enough to study on."

"Is that - is that Parvati? Oh, I have to go ask her something-"

"-If you abandon me here and someone comes up to me and forces me to socialize, I'll cut you and him both," Aurora threatened, narrowed eyes trained on Hermione who was still looking across the common room.

"Oh, you'll be fine," Hermione said, getting up and pushing her way through people. Aurora sighed irritably, holding her book up so that her face was obscured.

When her vision was set on the words and not the people around her, she allowed herself to relax, blocking out the noise the twins were causing with their Skiving Snackboxes.

There is sweet music here that softer falls,
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls,
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass.

As always, Tennyson had a way of calming her, in the back of her head she could almost hear Golden Boy's voice as he read the verse to her, his voice soft and lilting, the gentle tone like a caress on her skin. Aurora allowed herself a moment of blankness, where she dove deep into her mind to bring the memory forth, content with replaying it over and over in her head, until she was so lost that she hadn't noticed the Golden Trio had settled around her.