The misty fog that his breath had left on the window sparkled in the orange glare of the streetlamp outside, and the artificial light drained his face of all color, so that he looked sickly beneath his shock of untidy brown hair.
The room was strewn with various possessions and a good smattering of rubbish. Owl feathers, empty ink bottles, and discarded clothes littered the floor; a number of spellbooks lay among the tangled robes on his bed, and a mess of unopened letters and newspapers sat in a puddle of light on his desk. The headline of the most recent Daily Prophet article blared:
HARRY POTTER - THE CHOSEN ONE?
But Charlie couldn't bring himself to reminisce about the recent disturbance at the Ministry of Magic, during which He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was sighted once more. In fact, he couldn't bring himself to do anything.
He had isolated himself, you see, failing to do anything other than count down the days until he was free to return to Hogwarts. He was wallowing in self pity, truth be told; Charlie Hawthorne had seemingly given up.
Over the summer, Charlie hadn't reached out to any of his friends, despite their countless efforts at coming into contact with him. He couldn't bare the sickening feeling of guilt that arose in his stomach whenever he read, in descriptive detail, about Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, life with the Dursley's, or, quite literally, anything from Hermione.
And why?
Well, because those letters symbolized the life Charlie had been forced to leave behind. He was no longer the little boy with the bright, kind grin that had an eagerness to be good. No, no... now, he was a man who woke up every morning, scarred by the pain inflicted from the night before, and he would put on a smile to hide the brokenness embedded in his features.
Easily, this summer holiday had the been the worst thing Charlie had ever experienced. His task wasn't set from the Dark Lord just yet, but that didn't stop his father from enforcing acts of preparation. Despite many attempts at refusal, the Dark Arts were practically forced down Charlie's throat. It was safe to assume that, near the end of the holiday, the effects of several Cruciatus curses, which he had been hit repeatedly with over the summer, had naturally begun to make his body react badly to lifting anything remotely heavy, or even flinch from too much movement.
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On the rare occasions where his father left him by his lonesome for a night to recuperate, Charlie locked himself away in his old bedroom at the Hawthorne Manor, to which he hadn't lived in for almost ten years. His home had always been Hogwarts, you see, and being so far away from everything he once knew made Charlie feel as though he was sentenced to a lifetime in prison.
His old alarm clock ticked loudly on the windowsill, showing one minute to eleven. Beside it, held in place by Charlie's tensed hand, was a piece of parchment covered in thin, slanting writing. Charlie had read this letter so often since its arrival three days ago that although it had been delivered in a tightly furled scroll, it now lay quite flat.
