The Potion Princess

Christmas Eve

"I'm not afraid of dying." The protest falls on deaf ears. She had scrambled backwards a few feet when he reached out to her, but now she inched back to him, trying to get him to his feet.

"You should be." He takes a swing at her with the hand holding the bottle, and eggnog sloshes onto her robes. "Run while you can, little girl."

Audra stifles a gasp when he reaches for her again. She's not sure who he's seeing, who he thinks he's talking to, but it isn't her. On instinct, she reaches back to grab the dipper out of the bucket holding Buckbeak's water, throwing her arm around to splash it in Sirius's face. He coughs and splutters, his dripping hair falling around his face in lank tangles, but at least he's seeing her now. "Sober up, old man." She stands and turns away from him with a whirl of her robes. "Your godson is expecting you."

The hours drag on and speed up, and Aura spends most of it telling herself to keep smiling, to not let them know that anything is wrong. The only ones who know where she'll be going tonight for sure is the twins and Mrs. Weasley, but even so, she thinks that the rest of them have guessed.

"Oh, Audra." Mrs. Weasley grabs onto her and wraps her into a hug, the fifth one that morning. When they broke apart, Molly busies herself with brushing invisible dust off of Audra's shoulder just so she doesn't have to look her in the eye. She really wished everyone would stop looking like this was the last time they would see her. "Let's give you your presents now, shall we?"

Audra agrees, and lets herself be brought packages of all shapes and sizes. There's a sweater from Mrs. Weasley in dark green like always, and Ginny gives her the new weird sisters album. Hermione gets her a journal bound in dark leather, Ron a set of nail polish that Ginny picked out, and from Harry, a subscription to Perfect Potions. George gets her the chocolate she likes, enough of it to last her a whole month. Even Clary had managed to get her one- a compass with a needle in the shape of a rose, which was more for decoration than anything.

"I got you something." Fred says later, after everyone else had cleared out and it was only her in the kitchen. "I just didn't want to give it to you in the middle of all of them."

"You didn't have to get me anything." She smiles up at him, and he hands her a small box without looking at her. She lets the wrapping fall away to leave behind a gold necklace. The chain coils in her hand when she picks it up, leaving the heart shaped charm in her fingers. There was one lone garnet stone dotting the center. "Okay, you really didn't have to."

"It's a locket. If you press down on the gem, it opens up." She pressed down to reveal two different windows, one holding a picture of her and the twins from the last Hogsmeade visit, and the other holding a picture of her and Clary from their first year at Hogwarts. "Ginny helped me with it. I wasn't sure you'd like it..."

He trails off, blushing furiously, and she decides to take pity on him and remember how to talk. "It's beautiful. I love it. And the pictures are perfect." She goes up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, then offers him the necklace and scoops her hair up into a pony tail. "Help me put it on?"

His fingers brush against the back of her neck as he struggles with the clasp. When he talks, he's close enough that he's basically whispering into her ear. "You always get us such good presents. And not just expensive ones, but good ones, for my whole family. I wanted to give something that nice back to you."

"This year I gave your dad a broken pocket watch that I nicked from a muggle garage sale."

The confession breaks the tension and has them both busted up laughing. She turns to face him and leans against him for support. "And he's going to love it, I'm sure."