crucio ━ harry potter (1)

iii. strangers

What did she use to have every morning to eat? She couldn't remember clearly. She remembered it was something with fruit, maybe cereal, or toast. Was it apples or kiwis? If she thought she was sure it would come back to her. She did recall Harry used to have a cup of tea every single morning and two on his bad days, and he would load it with unmeasured sugar. It would drive her teeth crazy looking at it.

She jumps slightly when Runskin starts vehemently laughing at his newspaper.

Pierre was sitting at the table, eyes cast out the window watching the sea. She watched him and he turned and look at her. He did that a lot.

This time, however, she gave him a look back. Typically, she looked away. It wasn't a glare, more so a stare at him. He rose a brow, and his eyes narrowed slightly back at her.

"Eat," John demanded standing in the doorway with Frank. "Keep your strength up."

     Aurora kept her eyes on John and then flickered to Frank.

"He's right." Pierre nods, taking his eyes away from the window and towards her. She met his eyes. They had such intensity in them. After all her months of being here, she still couldn't figure out this man's temperament. "You should eat."

Aurora looked him right in the eye as she leaned across the table, grabbed a piece of toast and chewed on it loudly.

The Aleksander man at the top of the table sighed and set his newspaper down. She vaguely saw something about a Muggle-born Registration Commission on the front of the newspaper. "Aurora, please don't chew so loudly, it hurts my head. The question, what's your Patronus?"

She had to think, "A Dragon."

"Mine too. How alike we are." Runskin smiled before returning to his reading.

  We're bloody best friends at this stage, she thought, and he laughed.

Aurora nodded, quietly. She tried to keep her thoughts blank because that statement was not true. She was nothing like him. Or at least she wanted to believe she was. However, after what she's been doing these last of weeks, she feared she wasn't. She feared she had become the thing she fought so hard to not be.

She would rather die than become evil.

Again, when Aurora looked up from the table, Pierre was staring at. He almost seemed to be analyzing her.

What was his bloody problem?

She didn't know much about him compared to Runskin. She knew Runskin seemed to trust him with his life and they knew each other for a long time. Any advice she heard Pierre give him, Runskin seemed to either simply ignore but he stilled listened to. She had seen him execute many of the prisoners, one day he killed eleven in a row without stopping once. Once he was finished, he left without a word. That told her all she needed to know about him.

Yet he wouldn't stop looking at her.

"I think it's time for us to meet today's conspirators." Runskin declared standing up.

     Aurora rose to her feet emotionlessly and followed him out of the dining room. They walked down the hallway, passing the screaming prisoners and headed into the main room. She winced at the noises they made: pain and fear. She had been in this room more than a million times now - it was six to be exact but it felt like more - and there were new people. He was catching more every week and she wondered how many more people her parents had on their side.