GRAVEYARD | h.p.

𝖎𝖛. MILLICENT'S CAT WILL GIVE ME NIGHTMARES

I HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT OF MYSELF AS AN EARLY-BIRD.

That was before Tara woke me up at 5:00 AM.

I had been sleeping, dreaming about a dungeon that held Elenara and Connor while I was in another cell. My parents were frantically trying to open the cell holding Elenara and Connor, ignoring my cries for help. The cell I'm in is filthy, with spiders and critters roaming around. I even thought I saw a green snake.

I had.

It's slithering towards me, it's eyes glaring intently. I cry for help again, but nobody responds. Scree, scree, Hoot hoot, says the snake. I'm too worried about getting bitten to register what an odd and un-snake like sound it made. Then the earth starts rumbling, and the dungeon cell tilts to the right. Then to the left. And then the ground's shaking so rapidly I fall to the dust-covered floor, scraping my knees.

I wake up with a gasp and let out a small screen when I see Tara―her face covered in green goo―standing above me.

"Wh-What are you doing, Tara?" I stammer out once I regain my breath.

Tara rolls her eyes as though the answer is obvious. "Trying to wake you up, Osanna! Now make your owl shut up! It's messing up my routine!"

I hadn't realized, but Apollo has woken up too and is screeching in it's annoying voice. That why Elenara named him Apollo. Because he always wakes up at the crack of dawn and makes sure to wake everybody else too. Personally, I would have named him Rooster.

I'm half asleep and not in the mood to deal with Apollo's antics, so I shove the cage, indicating that Apollo should shut up if he knows what's good for him. Apollo only starts screeching more loudly.

I grimace and pull my trunk out. I rummage through it, wearing my dragon-hide gloves before pulling out a red tin. It's full of Apollo's favorite thing to eat; rats. They're the only thing that can possibly calm Apollo down, and the annoying bastard sometimes purposefully starts screeching when he's hungry, since he knows a rat will be delivered to him shortly. When Elenara had discovered this, she told Apollo to be honest. Meanwhile, I was surprisingly proud of the owl; he had the cunningness to be a Slytherin.

That all changed when Elenara gifted him to me on my birthday. I'm genuinely scared that my hearing will go bad because of his ear-bleeding screeching. How Elenara managed him for seven years, I don't know. I've owned him for barely three months, and I'm already out my mind.

You might be wondering why I don't keep him into the owlery. Well, it's actually a funny story. When Elenara arrived for her first year, she kept him in the owlery like everyone else with an owl. A week later, and he managed to startle all of the owls in there. They few through Hogwarts, causing chaos and making extreme messes, so much so that classes were canceled for the day. When she gave him to me, Elenara made sure to make me promise that I always keep him in my dorm. The reason I like this story so much is that it's the only mistake Elenara ever made, so naturally, I revel in it.

But anyways, I hold my breath and open the small tin (dead rats are very smelly). Looking away, I hold onto a rat tail and toss it into Apollo's cage. I can hear a loud crunch! indicating that he's devouring it right now. I am certain I will never be able to get that disturbing sound out of my mind.

"Eeeeeew!" Tara slurs with a groan. "Goodness, that's disgusting! I think I'm going to be sick!"

She gags, and for a second, I fear that Tara is going to throw up all over me. Luckily, she manages to compose herself. I feel a little disappointed, though. Her throwing up would have been a card for me to make fun of her for years.