Disclaimer: The OC's and parts of the plot are all that belong to me in this story. The rest, of course, belongs to J.K Rowling. Thank you for reading!
Dear Coralie,
It will probably come as no surprise to you that Mother had already sent me a letter regarding the issue that came into light at your birthday celebrations. I understand how you were feeling, after Celestin died I didn’t want to speak about it with anyone either- if I could have, I would have kept it a secret as well but eventually, the truth must come out- I know you know this, I only wish you had the chance to go back and tell everyone before Millen did.
At which point, I beg you to be careful with her- I know you trust people quicker than you should but you need to be aware that people like her will always stab you in the back , you don’t know what that family is planning.
Cora, as your older sister, I believe I have the right to tell you to grow up and go talk to the rest of the family. I promise they won’t be angry with you, but it’ll just get worse if you leave it. Talk to your friends as well, they’ll understand.
Love you dearly,
Allisyn.
Lily paused on the spot in her bedroom, before letting out a groan and continuing to pace back and forth through her room. She was surprised that her floor hadn’t fallen through yet as a result of her nervous pacing. It was starting to get ridiculous. Maybe she’d actually be able to stop pacing if that boyfriend of hers would actually be on time for once!
At this, she let out a sigh. She knew she shouldn’t be blaming James for being late or for becoming the cause of her nervousness but it was much easier to blame him than to actually have to think about the situation. And so, she resulted back to walking up to her window and looking out of it before walking towards her cupboard before repeating that same routine over and over, and over again.
Though she had previously half-convinced herself not to blame James, she couldn’t help that think that if he’d actually turned up at her house at noon like he said would instead of making Lily wait around for a whole hour, then maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so out of control. She wondered whether their friends might actually start sending out search parties for them soon.
Following the debacle of Coralie’s birthday ‘celebrations’- which has also come to be known as ‘Shelena’s bitchy-est tactic yet’ amongst the group of girls, everyone had agreed to meet up for coffee in London while they decided how best to approach Cora. They knew she would be upset, and some of them understood why she’d kept the tragedy a secret from them while others were still complaining about not knowing what their friend was going through. Then Lily had invited the boys and Coralie to tag along as well.
Lily was among the few that understood Coralie’s motives, though admittedly if the same situation had happened a few months ago then Lily’s reactions would have been very different and she probably would have not understood at all. At first, Lily was a little cut up that Coralie hadn’t been able to tell her about Emma’s death but now, in all honesty, Lily was just grateful that Coralie had been able to tell Nathaniel - at least it was somebody that would understand.
She worried about how Shelena knew and wondered if Coralie had known. Even if she had, Lily doubted that she would have seen something like that coming. Sometimes, Coralie only believed to see the good in people even if the bad was just hidden under a few layers. That reminded Lily too much of herself when she’d been best friend with both Sev and Shelena. She had believed that the two of them both had goodness inside of them, and while that had rung true for a couple of years- in hindsight, Lily wished she hadn’t believed it.
She desperately hoped that this would teach Coralie that same lesson that Lily had learnt in fifth year. There was nothing that she wanted less than to see her friend get hurt, and she feared that with Shelena causing trouble and Sirius around that it would be too much and Coralie would loose that innocence that she still kept.
As she paused at the window between her pacing, she noticed James was finally arriving at her front door. With a relieved sigh, she grabbed her bag and jacket over the back of her chair and slipped them on before running down the stairs and pulling open the door.
“Hey,” James grinned, leaning in to kiss Lily on her lips before placing his hands on her waist and pulling her into him.
“We should go, we’re very late already.” Lily insisted but James ignored her completely and stepped inside the Evans’ house. “James, come on, this is important.”
“Fine, fine. But I think they’d probably be alright without us, you know.” Lily rolled her eyes, tucking her hand under James’ arm before pulling open the door again.
“You know they wouldn’t. They’d probably all kill each other, if they haven’t already!” James sighed, nodding in agreement as they walked down Lily’s street and into a little deserted space between some bushes and a high fence as they apparated to a laneway in London by the Leaky Cauldron, where they had agreed to meet their friends.
“There they are!” Miranda exclaimed as the two of them finally made their way over to the table their friends were occupying.
“Now, on to the point. Why exactly are we here?” Kiki questioned without even letting Lily or James say hello or sit down. Marlene sent her a stern look but nobody added anything.
“We’re falling apart,” Lily stated, her eyes searching each of her friend’s faces and their reactions.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“We need to go back to how we were before bad things started to happen to us, before we started to fall apart. What happened at Coralie’s birthday-” Coralie diverted her eyes at this, “opened my eyes, she couldn’t tell us- her supposed best friends, that Emma died because she couldn’t trust us. Mary died, guys. We should have been there with her, we should have known that something was happening. We should have paid attention and we shouldn’t have let Mary die alone- without us there.”
“Lil-” Alice whispered, tears had begun to form in her eyes but Lily shook them away.
“We need to be able to trust each other, we need to be able to tell each other everything and feel like we’re not alone.”
“So go, everyone say one thing that you’ve been keeping a secret.” Marlene added, motioning to Lily to start.
“My sister is getting married, she won’t let me be a bridesmaid because I’m a ‘freak’.”
“I still feel like it’s my fault that my parents died.” James frowned slightly at his own confession.
“Every night, I remember what it felt like to be attacked.” Miranda added.
“Sometimes I wonder if it was me that hurt Miranda.” Remus gulped out, Miranda reached over and squeezed his hand.
“I don’t feel like I fit in sometimes.” Peter whispered.
“The idea of becoming an auror scares the crap out of me.” Alice said with a slight chuckle.
“I’d hoped that my younger brother would follow in my footsteps rather than the rest of my family’s, but he’s just as bad as they are.” Sirius awkwardly brushed some hair out of his face.
“I miss Mary like hell. Every single day.” Everyone nodded in agreement at Marlene’s statement.
“I don’t get too close to people because I’m scared I’ll mess up.” Kiki answered, her tone was a lot more nervous and quiet than her usual self.
“I-” Coralie paused for a moment and took a deep breath, “I never actually told anyone that Emma died, Nate found out but no one else knew until the other night.”
Everyone let out the breaths they didn’t know they’d been holding and shared a smile with one another.
“That actually feels really good to get that off my chest.” Lily chuckled, everyone laughed in agreement.
Two days had passed since the ‘Leaky Cauldron confessional session’ and all in all, everyone felt pretty wonderful to get everything off their chest. At least, everyone except for Coralie.
She couldn’t help but think that she had essentially lied to them again, she didn’t know which made it worse- the fact that she couldn’t even tell them about Emma’s death in the first place or the fact that she’d told them that she hadn’t actually told anyone. Technically, Coralie wouldn’t have categorised Shelena as ‘someone’.
But still, the fact stayed in the front of her mind and every time she believed that it was finally being pushed to the back of her mind, it would appear again as desperate to be noted and remembered as before.
She hadn’t been in contact with anyone sense that day- Nathaniel had practically kidnapped her the very next morning and the two of them had spent the entire day in London- walking through the streets and drinking multiple cups of tea at many different little cafes. All in all, it had been a wonderful day.
Then that morning, she had spent with Angus as it was already the 29th of August and he would be leaving for Hogwarts on the 1st. They sat out in the garden in the sun, for a while they were quiet and just enjoyed each other’s company and then they begun to discuss anything and everything that came to mind.
Once they had finished and Angus had headed back inside, leaving Coralie to relax by herself. She began to realise how different life was compared to the same time the year before. Allisyn and Haley still lived in central-ish London, though they wanted to move out into the country within the year. Jacob was beginning to pack up his things before his move back to Paris for a couple of months, at least. Angus was about to start his sixth year. Coralie’s father had sent her letter informing her that he would be in England for a week in October and was hoping to catch up. On top of that, Marcelle was heading over to France in a few weeks to see her sister.
Coralie, however, her only plans including staying in England with Nathaniel and the rest of her friends. And for once, she was completely alright with that.
Until, it started raining again.
The morning of September 1st, in true Hogwarts student fashion, was hectic in the Bennett house. Despite the fact that Angus had packed his trunk full of everything we could have possibly needed until Christmas, Marcelle had decided that morning at six o’clock that she had to go through it all again to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything- as expected, he hadn’t.
Needless to say, Marcelle’s three hour unpacking and repacking sprint had left the household in a rush. With Violet gone, it was slightly less stressful though Jacob seemed to be willing to take her position, he even joked around about his breakfast having more than his daily serve of carbohydrates in it- Coralie had smacked him on the back of the head.
“Go on, you have the rest” Coralie said, pushing her glass of orange juice over to Angus who smiled at her in return and down the whole thing in one go- Angus was a bit of a fan of orange juice.
“Have you all eaten your breakfast?” Marcelle asked as she came downstairs for the fifth time that morning, this time she was half dressed- she wore a nice blouse but still wore a pair of pyjamas that Coralie had bought her for Mother’s Day years ago.
“Sometimes it’s like you’ve forgotten that you’ve only got the one school child now” Jacob replied, shoving a spoonful of cereal into his mouth at the same time- most of which ended back up in his bowl.
“And sometimes you forget how to eat like you’re not a school child” Coralie responded dryly, wiping the milk that had splattered on her arm up.
“You are right, Jacob” Marcelle added before smiling at Coralie, “You, of course, are quite right too lovely. I can’t believe that my little baby only has two years left at school, you’ve all grown up too fast” Angus rolled his eyes at this.
“Mum, I’m 16 now- I haven’t been your ‘little baby’ for years now” Marcelle didn’t respond and instead headed back upstairs to finish getting reading, leaving Jacob and Coralie to mercilessly tease Angus.
“Ickle little baby Angus is still in school” Jacob cooed, Coralie threw her head back and chuckled at the rude gesture Angus sent back at Jacob.
“He’s growing up so fast” Coralie added, ruffling Angus’ hair as she passed him on the way to the sink. He sent her a disgusted look and tried desperately to fix it up, it didn’t want to stay down now though.
“Oh look, you’ve gone and ruined his hair!” Jacob cried, squishing Angus into his side and pretending to pat his back- Angus turned and shuffled until he finally broke free and all but sprinted up the stairs and back into his room.
“He’s trying to look good for Azure” Coralie screamed after him but he didn’t respond, with their fun now over Coralie and Jacob stacked the dirty dishes up by the sink and headed into their own rooms to get ready for the day- they had agreed that they would see Angus off, Jacob was then heading to a new music store down the road to pick up some new guitar picks before band practise while Coralie was heading out for morning tea in a cute little London cafe with Lily.
That was if they ever made it to the station in the first place.
Sure enough, the four Bennett’s ending up all but running through King’s Cross with Angus’ trunk on a trolley in front of them at ten forty-five. They made it through the barrier with ten minutes to spare and pushed their way through the crowd.
Coralie didn’t bother to look for anyone, only Marlene and Sarah had any younger siblings (except for Sirius, but she didn’t expect to see him there in a million years) that they would be sending off. She’d already told Angus to keep a lookout for Cassie, she’d explained to him what had happened and he’d agreed to watch out for her, after he’d stopped laughing that was.
After the four of them finally reached the train, Angus picked his trunk up without any help and turned back to face his family once it was placed safely behind him. He hugged Marcelle first, who looked so close to tears that she had actually begun to complain about the state of the platform to Coralie once he’d let go. He clapped Jacob on the back and Jacob ruffled up his hair a little, Angus sent him a death glare for that. Then finally, Coralie stepped closer to the train and hugged him tightly.
“Good luck,” They all called at him, stepping away from the train slightly. He stood frozen in the doorway as the train began to pull away, he wanted to grab onto them at the last minute or jump off the train and stay but he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he waited until he couldn’t even see the three of them watching the train from the platform anymore before he headed in search of a compartment or his friends, whichever he found first. Evidently, it turned out to be a compartment with his friends in.
“God, it’s like ice in here!” He exclaimed as he pulled open the door, his friends all stared up at him in agreement before Briony threw her arms around him in a greeting. Azure followed closely behind and did the same, though he couldn’t help but notice something different about her attitude. Ryan and Matthew grinned at him, they all shook hands due to a silent mutual agreement they had not to hug each other- they weren’t the Marauders.
The moment had name passed through Angus’ brain, something stung inside of him that he pretended not to notice as he sat down and pulled out a book.
This year would be the first year without Coralie being close by. Being so close in age to one another, they’d always been within a few years of each other and now Angus was stuck at Hogwarts without Coralie or any of Coralie’s friends- Angus had always found a sense of trust with James Potter even if he was best friends with Sirius. Now, it was just Angus and his friends. If Sirius’ younger brother had been anything like him (in other words, not an Slytherin) then Angus probably would have found some comfort in that, sadly Regulus was possibly even worse than Sirius. There was Sarah’s younger sister, Cassie, the one that had apparently turned herself into a jellybean but Angus had no clue what she looked like and so he couldn’t go and seek her out.
Then there was Anastasia.
Naively, halfway through the summer Angus had believed that maybe he had actually managed to her out of his head but as he quickly realised, she’d never left.
There was something about Anastasia that had Angus’ brain setting off alarm bells anytime she entered his mind. That mysterious aspect about her that sometimes he thought was kind of hot, bugged him to no end as well. It was different, but it was anything but safe.
And that was Angus in a nutshell, safe.
Authors Note: I am so so sorry! It probably seems like I forgot about this story, but I promise I didn't! Honestly, I just had a very difficult time getting this chapter right. However, chapter seven is almost complete and will be posted this Friday!
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