Thanks everyone for the lovely comments

Sorry if this chapter seems a bit like filler. It is, sort of. Next chap I'll go straight to the plot though.

Also there's a time skip here. Amara's fourth year.

Thanks and enjoy

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Chapter 10 - June 1992

‘He’s just over there,’ Karina grinned. ‘Go on.’

Her loud voice rang through the crowded courtyard and was followed by a burst of giggling from the other girls sitting in the circle. Amara smiled and leant back on her hands, watching as Mina made her way to a group of boys sitting across the yard, and asked if she could speak to Pedro alone. His friends wolf-whistled and laughed.

It was just a few days until the end-of-term exams. They really should have been studying, but the prospect of summer approaching had swept all thought of revision from everyone’s mind. It was beautiful, at this time of the year. The grounds were no longer colourless, flowers were in bloom everywhere and every once in a while one would even spot a lone Bowtruckle trying to make its way back to its tree in the mountains after a winter lost in the grounds. And the fact that it hadn’t snowed for weeks meant that it was safe enough to go up to the mountains or the lake Russvatnet across, uninhabited by sea monsters.

Something glistened in the sky and Amara raised her hands to her eyes and squinted at it, realizing what it was as the owl dropped a few feet with the weight of the package it was carrying. It circled once around the courtyard, dodging a paper plane and an enchanted frisbee and landed in Amara’s lap.

She started untying the package from the owl’s legs, when she noticed everyone in her circle staring at it. Deciding to open it somewhere else, she pretended to read the letter, then said, ‘Oh, it’s that Broomstick Servicing Kit I ordered a few weeks ago.’ It worked, and the others went on with their chatter.

The letter wasn’t in Ginny’s handwriting. Usually Ginny was the one who wrote for all of the Weasleys, but she hadn’t heard from her since the start of term. Amara had sent her several letters before giving up and deciding that either they weren’t arriving or she didn’t want to talk. It took her quite by surprise, so she didn’t expect any more contact, before one of Fred and George’s remarkable packages had arrived – a jar of pickled eel’s eyes they’d sneaked off their Potions master. They’d sent far worse things before: a grubby loincloth that must have been a house elf’s; the doorknob to the staff room; a black egg they’d brought from the Forbidden Forest, which had hatched into a weird fluffy creature she couldn’t quite name and she’d given to Karina for her birthday; and the latest, a toilet seat, thankfully pristine clean and with ‘Greetings From Hogwarts’ written on the top in cheeky red handwriting, and a note on the side saying it was Mrs Weasley’s idea.

It was pretty embarrassing when Karina once found the toilet seat tucked away in Amara’s dresser while searching for a pair of socks to borrow, but apart from that incident Amara never minded the strange souvenirs. They were a piece of Hogwarts, after all.

So after thanking them for their generous gift of pickled eel’s eyes, Amara had asked them about Ginny, and now here was her reply.

Amara,

We’ve noticed Ginny’s been acting weird lately, too. For some reason she’s been leaving a bunch of rooster feathers everywhere she’s going (not kidding) – and yesterday we found all your letters in the common room, still unopened.

Don’t worry about it, though. We’re guessing it’s just her hitting puberty and feeling all too mighty and moody to talk to us elderly folks. That’s probably it. We’ll see you in a few weeks when term's over.

Yours most truly, sincerely and dearly,

FG

In a few minutes people had started to file in for lunch, and Amara and the others traipsed in after the crowd and made their way to the hall. In the pretence of needing to use the loo, Amara sidetracked and made to the fourth year girls’ dormitory, reached an empty corridor and sat down against a wall etched with incantations, tallies showing duel wins and in one corner, Grindelwald’s mark.

Amara remembered clearly, a few months ago, when a whole chain of duels went off around the castle after a bunch of kids started wearing the mark around, and unintentionally provoked those who had in some way been a victim of Grindelwald’s doings. She’d gotten in the way of one, though that wasn’t her plan from the start, and somehow had ended up with lead-heavy hands and had given two people sprouts for noses.

Professor Karkaroff had personally given out the detentions, and since the most part of the older students had landed themselves in it, most everyone had been given normal detentions. The teachers had suggested cleaning without magic and no lunch for three days, but a “select few cases with particular need of it” had been given a few hours each in the pit, Amara being one of them.

Why wasn’t she surprised to find out Professor Kysley had come up with this?

She’d forgotten just how horrible it felt, to be shoved into that pit and come up almost frozen to death. Amara shivered as she remembered, and untied Fred and George’s package. A bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, a few fake wands and some Dungbombs. From Hogsmeade, the note read.

Plopping a bean into her mouth, Amara recalled the straggly-haired woman from her memory again. She was so familiar, and appeared in her dreams frequently, and she was certain that she was someone well-known. But although she’d been to the library and looked in almost every book containing celebrated witches and wizards, none of them were to do with people who lived in the twentieth century. She’d even asked Mrs Burke once, pretending to have seen a picture somewhere, and her History Professor, whose name no one really knew, simply waved her away when she asked.

And despite how hard it was to admit it even to herself, and the shame she felt in her chest every time she remembered, Amara was almost sure that the woman, the dark, heartless murderer, was her mother.

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