Mischief Managed

3: Birthday/Worst Day

Perhaps it isn't possible for a tragedy to strike instantly. Perhaps it must have strings attached, steps and signs laid out far before its occurrence- warnings missed so easily that they might as well not exist.

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October 12th, 1975. My fifteenth birthday. I didn't have much planned, but, luckily, it had fallen on a Saturday so there were no lessons. I awoke to a small pile of gifts arranged neatly by my bedside. A smiling Marlene McKinnon lounged on the bed across from me.

"You'd think that after eleven hours of beauty sleep, a person would wake up with some sort of smile."

I groaned. My hair was knotted into a tangled bun, and the bright sunlight streaming from the window across from my bed seared my tired eyes. Summoning all of the strength I had, I rolled clumsily off of my mattress and landed on the wooden floors with a booming thud!

Marlene watched me amusedly.

"Happy birthday, Bree," she said, her lips curving into her kind, flowery smile. "Did you see your gifts? Everyone got you something."

I rubbed my eyes then shuffled towards the presents. There were four of them, each individually wrapped with small notes attached to their wrappings.

"Where'd everyone else go?" I asked.

"Well, since someone was sleeping away her morning, Lily, Dorcas, and Alice all left for breakfast about an hour ago. I volunteered to wait for you," Marlene said.

I wasn't surprised; she was my only semi-good friend among the girl Gryffindor fifth years. Even then, I was still closer to boys-James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter.

"Should I open them now? Or will they rather me do it later?" I already knew the answer. The other three girls would have bought me gifts out of obligation, not genuine friendship.

"Nah, they won't mind," Marlene replied.

Pulling a small square present towards me, I began to tear through its dark blue wrappings. Underneath the paper was thin purple box. I raised the lid and smiled at Marlene as I pulled out a pair of sapphire earrings.

"To match your eyes," she explained then added, "They're silver too, don't worry."

I was allergic to nearly every type of earring, and no matter how much I bugged Madam Pomfrey to cure my allergies, she always refused. I spread out the earrings on my palm, admiring the size of the carefully cut sapphires attached to the silver chains.

"Thank you, Marlene!" I reached for the next present, this one a lively orange rectangle.

This time, there were two sizable bars of chocolate beneath the wrapping paper. They were both caramel-milk chocolate, which was unfortunate. To me, caramel always had an overly-sweet taste. I tossed the chocolates to Marlene, who caught them excitedly, and pulled another orange present towards me.

This one was another square, slightly larger than the box for Marlene's earrings, and I opened it to find a box of Honeyduke's chocolates. I slid open the lid, popped a dark chocolate truffle into my mouth, and held out a creamy-looking chocolate towards Marlene.

"Waht un?"

With barely a moment of hesitation, Marlene snatched the chocolate from my hand and stuffed it eagerly into her mouth.

"Mmm," she sighed.

I grabbed the last present, a tiny round bottle wrapped in white paper. Beneath the paper was a pink, floral perfume bottle. I wrinkled my nose; perfume wasn't really my thing. Every bottle seemed to have taint all the air around it.