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The prologue of "Ad Astra Per Aspera" - The Peculiarities on Logic Lane - can 100% be skipped. It contains no dialogue, and very little about the characters you came to read about. If you prefer to dive right into the dialogue, characters, drama, angst, slow-burn relationship and fan-fiction style plot lines, absolutely skip this 'chapter'. Chapter two, and even chapter three, work perfectly well as the beginning to the fan-fiction you came here to read.
Happy reading! :)
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All of the houses on Logic Lane were beautiful.
So beautiful, that if someone were to pick up a copy of Walking London from a newspaper stand on their way to Kings Cross Station, Logic Lane would be one of the first recommended for those who appreciated historical architecture.
The entire street, a part of a London neighbourhood that wove around Regent's Park, was lined with Victorian style homes. Many of them had been built hundreds of years ago by rich family men, and the exterior aesthetics of first generation stone and brick proved it.
The homes had tall front gates and perfectly trimmed shrubs. There were looming trees to provide privacy, but each house stretched several floors high into the sky, which proved it impossible for them to stay hidden. The residents of Logic Lane didn't mind: they prided themselves in the homes they lived in and the gardens they kept, and wanted people to marvel at the fine architecture and topiaries in the front gardens as they passed by. Every house gave off the impression that exceptional people lived inside, but one stood out amongst the others.
Behind a beautifully crafted golden entrance gate and at the end of a large walkway, it stood more like a castle. A simple glance was enough to know the interior was just as nice.
There were large windows, turrets that rose from the roof, and a chimney that always puffed out light grey smoke. There were round rooms and exterior walkways. Heavy green ivy grew tastefully over the intricate stone work no matter what the season was. Several fountains in the shapes of gods and goddesses trickled with sparkling water. The garden was always well kept, blossoming with what people swore were new flowers every time they walked by.
This house gave off an immense feeling of royalty, old money, and something that people could only describe as magic. It was a marvellous sight in the day and the nighttime, and the neighbourhood knew that some exceptionally exceptional residents had to live there.
They had no idea how exceptional the owners of the beautiful house really were.
All of Christopher and Ophelia (Y/L/N)'s neighbours had normal office jobs. They answered phones and faxed papers and then returned home to complain about the mundane 9-5 days that paid for their newest kitchen renovations. However, they had the luxury of several extra hours of sleep. The married couple in the beautiful house was always awake before the sun.
On the rare occasions when the neighbours got together for drinks, they would joke about how Chris and Ophelia's cars were always gone when they woke up and never returned until after they had gone to bed. They wondered what kind of office jobs the (Y/L/N)'s worked. Instead of correcting them, the couple would laugh.
To correct their neighbours would mean explaining they didn't have cars. Despite working with Arthur Weasley, who was always ready to explain the workings of muggle anything, they had a Floo Network in their parlour and knew how to Apparate, and simply didn't see the point in sitting a muggle driving exam. They also didn't work muggle office jobs, but that was a whole other conversation.
Logic Lane was ideal for families. Fresh off their honeymoons, couples moved into the neighbourhood and within the year of securing the lease, turned a spare office into a nursery.
The couple from the beautiful house had a child too, but she was much older than the stroller bound babies or gibberish talking toddlers that their neighbours had.
Now, more than ever, Logic Lane was alive with gleeful young laughter and the sound of running footsteps against the large cobblestones. The school year had come to an end, which left children all across London with long, sunshine filled days and an amount of free time they didn't know what to do with. Children played in their front yards and often accompanied their parents to the main streets, holding their mother's hands and babbling nonsense as their parents shopped for food at the markets or bought summer dresses in boutique stores.
Just like how they talked about work, parents conversed amongst each other about their children. During quick run-ins on their ways to work or in an aisle at the supermarket, they'd joke about how they couldn't wait for their children to be off at school again.
Logic Lane residents were well aware that the (Y/L/N)'s had a daughter. Her parents always pleasantly informed anyone who asked that she was doing exceptionally well in school, that they were proud of her, and that she actually spent her days waiting for the summer to end and to return to her classes. This revelation would be laughed off: what child, when graced with two months of absolute freedom, would wish to be sitting back behind a school desk?
However, the parents who laughed at the oddity of the (Y/L/N) girl's outlook on her vacation time were missing one key piece of information: at the end of summer, muggles would be returning to their home public and private schools.
Y/N Y/L/N would be returning to Hogwarts.
But first, you had to get through the summer.
For the sake of the staff's sanity, you understood why this wasn't an option, but if you had it your way, you'd stay at school over the summer holidays just like you did over Christmas break.
But, at the end of June, you begrudgingly packed your trunk, put Athena, your owl, into her cage and retrieved your cat, Stella, from chasing stray rats down by the kitchens. Then, you boarded the Hogwarts Express and said goodbye to your friends on the platform of King's Cross station.
You supposed that the break was a great relief for many this time around, seeing as the previous year had been plagued by the horrors that followed the opening of the Chamber of Secrets. At the very least, you were happy that the previously petrified students and poor little Ginny Weasley were back at home with their families, and that you could return to the school after the break at all, seeing as the school was planning on closing during the attacks.
You also supposed you should've been relieved, seeing as the period of time in which the Chamber had been open and the hospital wing was filling up with petrified bodies, you were a target of some relentless verbal attacks. Not as bad as Harry, you often reminded yourself, whenever you considered how many people whispered the likelihood that you had been the one to open the Chamber of Secrets and let loose the beast inside.
It had been almost five years since the Sorting Hat was placed on your head and announced for the entire Great Hall to hear that you belonged in Gryffindor. Four full years wearing red and gold and three full years of playing on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, yet certain people found all the ammunition they needed to heckle you about your house placement.
You couldn't blame the gossipers, as the fate of your sorting had eaten away at you from the moment you got your Hogwarts letter. Even you had been surprised when you hadn't been placed in Slytherin.
Your father's side of your family tree was easily comprehended, with only a small handful of relatives: he was a half-blood with a muggle-born grandfather, a full muggle grandmother, and a younger brother. You preferred his family more. The relatives you knew, anyways.
There was an equal amount of relatives on your mother's side. She came from two prominent families in the wizarding world, with parents from two long lines of standalone pure bloods: Your grandmother, Indira (Y/L/N), years ago, had married a man named Maximillion Dolohov.
The Dolohov relatives were the heartiest portion of your family lineage, but this wasn't something you were particularly proud of. Notably, all of them were incarcerated, criminally insane, or deceased after long careers of death and destruction.
You weren't particularly happy to be related to any of these people.
Your mother chose not to acknowledge her Dolohov blood just as much as her Dolohov relatives chose to acknowledge her. She'd gone by her mother's maiden name for her entire life, making sure you went by it too. It was her choice, but you had a feeling her father's side of the family wouldn't have wanted her using their name regardless. She'd done an unacceptable thing; marrying a half-blood and giving birth to another half-blood, tarnishing the Dolohov name.
You had an uncle on your mom's side - Antonin. The combination of your Ravenclaw grandmother and your Slytherin grandfather had surprisingly created the Gryffindor that was your mother, and unsurprisingly created the Slytherin that was your uncle.
It had been in the Slytherin house, the house which almost all of your Dolohov relatives had been sorted into, where your uncle had changed for the worst. Young and impressionable, soon his Slytherin influences turned him against his own family.
He, like various other mass murderers and dangerous wizards, had his own cell in Azkaban. You weren't even really sure if you had ever met him before he was locked away. If you had, you didn't remember. Your mom preferred not to talk about it.
Every ancestor on your mother's side was respected, depending on who you asked.
The (Y/L/N)'s were Healers. Poets. Philosophers. Kind wizards with good intentions.
The Dolohovs were dark wizards.Criminals. Blood status elitists. Followers of the Dark Lord.
Having blood in your veins that connected you to a feared dark wizard family instilled the mindset in you very young that the evil genes had just skipped a generation.
Others believed the same thing: A new school year meant actively avoiding the students who found it amusing to point out the un-Gryffindor-like flaws in your character as proof you had been placed in the wrong house.
Despite all of this, you couldn't wait to go back to school.
England did a better job of embracing July than you did. Summer perennials were planted in beautiful pots by front doors, lining the main streets, hanging from large planters at every storefront where people dined on patios. Women walked in colourful, flowing summer dresses with shopping bags filled with fresh produce, their children running around the streets freely, shouting and laughing. Not one school aged child was keen on staying at their desks to finish homework, which wouldn't be on any of their minds until August rolled around.
Not one person was willing to let a single drop of the beautiful sun go to waste. Soon enough, the leaves would brown and everyone would wake up to damp, foggy mornings for a long autumn season that would lead to a winter that would force everyone inside. Regent's Park bloomed with healthy grass and patches of flowers and bright green leaves, and people found every excuse they could to spend an afternoon in the park.
Oftentimes, if you weren't out in the backyard watching the koi fish swim in their glimmering turquoise pond or walking along Main Street browsing for new books, this is where your mother found you, lounging under a large willow tree and reading.
July, which was never anything particularly special, went by the way July always did.
Unlike most, you finished your school work immediately upon returning home in order to be relieved of the worry that Potions essays and History of Magic assignments had as they loomed over you unfinished. So, you sacrificed two weeks of summer sun and worked through a roll of parchment almost every other day. You'd never replaced ink bottles more frequently, but now you had a stack of finished work on your desk up in your bedroom.
You might have complained about being stuck inside and working, but you didn't have any neighbourhood friends to run around with and distract you from your essays.
You weren't particularly unfriendly or in any means socially awkward. You had plenty of school friends, and that was the problem; befriending neighbourhood muggles after making friends with witches and wizards at Hogwarts, as close minded as it was, seemed undoubtedly boring.
So, instead of engaging with your neighbours, you opted to stick with the friends you had, writing to the ones who wrote you back, which this summer appeared to only be Ginny (whom you had been a kind face to all of last year when you were one of the only ones who noticed her strange behaviour) your dorm mates, and fellow Gryffindor's Lee Jordan.
This wasn't a surprise to you. Cedric Diggory, while vowing to write, was on vacation with his family; the moment Harry Potter arrived in Little Whinging, he was under the watchful eye of his aunt and uncle. Hedwig was rarely allowed out, and when she was, Harry never burdened her with letters; Hermione only wrote when she needed help with school, which was never.
And, despite five years of friendship, Fred and George Weasley wouldn't have picked up a quill to write anything, let alone a letter to you, over their holidays even if their lives depended on it.
With schoolwork out of the way, you found yourself enjoying your time a bit more. Early mornings were no longer spent hunched over your desk, reading An Anthology of Eighteenth Century Charms, The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts or Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and writing corresponding essays. Instead, you could enjoy breakfast and a cup of coffee out in the back garden without rushing back inside to work.
Your parents didn't have the same luxury as you. Busy with the Ministry, they worked from sunrise to dusk on a good day. What Aurors and Unspeakables did so early in the morning, you didn't know, but you knew better than to ask. Everyday without fail, your mom was gone before you woke up, but you often had a good fifteen minutes with your dad before he kissed the top of your head, grabbed his bag and left you with an empty house and a half full coffee machine.
You missed them while they were gone, but it was relaxing having the house to yourself. Your mom wasn't hovering over you and asking whether or not you had been studying for your O.W.L.s, and your dad wasn't trying to discuss with you your career plans. You sipped slowly on your morning coffee without interruption. Then, you would pour a second cup to tide you over as you walked the halls aimlessly for several minutes until you decided what you wanted to do.
Every night of July, you crossed off a day on your mental calendar before you fell asleep, growing more eager as the end of the month grew closer. Eventually, half the month passed.
The shorter July got, the more exciting it became. One particularly good day started when a familiar owl slammed into your closed bedroom window. In a ruffle of brown feathers, Errol let you untie a letter; the first letter you had gotten all summer from a Weasley who wasn't Ginny.
It was from George. In very messy script, he told you that his dad had won the Prophet's lottery and that his family was taking a trip to Egypt to visit Bill, their older brother. They would be gone for an entire month. Before signing off, he briefly mentioned that Percy had been made Head Boy, and that Fred said 'hello'.
You knew better than to write back. When you saw them next, they'd tell you everything, which you'd prefer more than a response letter; the twins were least exciting in written form.
Their picture was in the Prophet the next day, and there was part of you that couldn't help but feel jealous of their adventures. You could imagine Hermione, an avid Ruins studier, was absolutely livid that Ron, who couldn't care less about Ruins, had gotten to go to Egypt.
However it soon became apparent that, despite numbing boredom and sunburnt cheeks and the fact that you were stuck in humid London while your best friends explored Egypt, there were people who had been graced with a worse July than you.
For example, the architect behind Azkaban, the wizarding prison deemed inescapable since its opening day, was undoubtedly rolling in his grave.
After hundreds of years of successfully holding some of the world's darkest wizards, and protecting both the wizard and muggle world from the dangers they planned to inflict before their captures, someone had finally escaped.
Sirius Black managed to slip through the ice cold hands of the creatures that guarded the cell in which he had been rotting since his arrest 12 years ago.
You highly doubted that he had broken out of Azkaban so he could accept the honour of being the only person to do so, but you found it much easier to consider this than to really delve into what the man was after now that he was free.
The Daily Prophet reported Black's escape roughly a week before the end of July. His mugshot was on the front page, in the same place where the photo of the Weasley's in Egypt had been just a day earlier. You barely saw your parents in the week that followed. Every Ministry worker was working in a way they never had before in order to try and capture the escaped.
Part of you felt a certain unease now that he was free, assuming he had escaped with the intentions of causing more harm. Who would he go after first?
But, you reminded yourself that you were so significantly unimportant to Sirius Black there was no way he had broken out of Azkaban with you in mind. Just because he had been close friends with your parents during their school years didn't put you at risk. In fact, you weren't even sure if the blurry memories you had with him were even real, and the chances of him remembering them in the case they were real was slim. He had been arrested when you were four.
Above it all, your parents were certain the family was safe, which was enough to stop you from worrying. So, you resumed the mundane July activities, a new slight spike in your energy every morning as you scanned over the Daily Prophet in search of any news on the escaped convict.
July drew to a close with no updates, but you had started to put less importance on the escape of Sirius Black. You were growing excited again: the end of July meant the start of August.
As much as you enjoyed the flowers and the clear night skies for stargazing, July was too hot and long for your liking. August meant less small children shouting in the park while you walked, more cozy sweaters being sold at your favourite shops, and an excuse to drink warm coffee while you studied. The chances of rain were higher in August. You loved rain.
August was better than July, but to you, it was September you really wanted. Even though you were about to enter your Fifth year, one that older students and your parents said to be the hardest one they'd experienced, you were just as excited to return as you always were.
Even with a mass murder on the loose that would undoubtedly have an affect on the year ahead of you, your heart ached to return to your second home and family: July and August were the only things standing between you and doing just that.
Smack dab in the middle of July and August fell Harry Potter's birthday. July 31st was a sort of holiday in all wizarding homes, seeing what the boy was undoubtedly famous for, but it was especially such since you were friends with him. Harry's birthday meant a trip to Diagon Alley to find a present you could send as unsuspiciously as possible to the home where he stayed.
Also, in a few short years, you'd learned Harry's birthday proved to be a rather entertaining day.
Roughly one year ago, your parents had come home from work, shaking their heads and trying to not find any amusement as they told you what they had dealt with at work: a house elf breaking into the muggle home where Harry stayed and wrecking absolute havoc.
If his previous birthday and the past two years of attending school alongside him (in which he had come face to face with varying forms of Lord Voldemort and defeated him not once, but twice) were any indicators that trouble followed Harry wherever he went, you were expecting something rather magnificent as his thirteenth birthday grew nearer.
July 31st arrived, and you were right.
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