Petunias • Daisy Dursley

7. It's Been a While

By coincidence, the title of this chapter was already decided on long ago and not just made up because it's been a while since I updated. 

Emma's window was two floors up. No ladder scaled the wall outside it, and the fire escape was down at the end of the hall, not outside her room. Therefore, when something tapped at the glass, Emma assumed it was nothing. Maybe a twig tossed by a gust of wind, or a bird that didn't spot the glass soon enough to turn away. Emma's roommate was the one who saw the owl first.

"Hey, Emma," she said. She was backing away from the window, reaching to go out into the hall even though it was past curfew. "There's a bird trying to get in. An owl."

Emma went and looked, opening the curtains wider, and sure enough. An owl. It was tagged, for identification she thought, until she saw the rolled paper attached to its leg. She turned to report this finding to her roommate, but the girl was already gone, probably to get one of the older girls to help.

Emma didn't bother waiting. The owl blinked expectantly from outside on the ledge, and Emma opened the window. She reached a hand towards its leg, halting a few inches away to see how it would respond. It held out it's leg, twittering as if to hurry her along. Emma took the letter. Behind her, a door slammed and voices grew louder.

"Better leave, birdie, if you don't want to get caught."

The owl bent over and nibbled at Emma's fingers.

"Ow." She pulled her hands and the letter back into the room. When three other girls entered the room, the owl had long gone into the fading dusk light.

"There's nothing here," one of them said. "I have plans tomorrow, next time just wait a few minutes to make sure you're not dreaming."

"I wasn't! I swear! Emma saw it too! Right? Emma, you saw it, the owl, it was right there!"

"I don't know." Emma crumpled the paper into one fist, hiding it from the others. She wanted a chance to read it without them around, even though she reasoned it might not be for her. "It was a large bird, but it left pretty quickly. It probably just hit the glass."

Emma's roommate glared at Emma and stomped back off into the hallway, muttering complaints and curses as she went to go sit by herself in a bathroom or something.

Emma unrolled the now crinkled paper and began to read. She recognized the handwriting immediately, and the way the "Dear Emma" looped together in semi-cursive writing, the way Daisy wrote when she was frustrated or rushed. How she'd gotten an owl to deliver the letter, though, Emma didn't know. The letter didn't clarify anything either, Daisy mentioning people Emma didn't know, classes she hadn't taken, and something called "quidditch." It was all so bizarre, from casually sending mail by owl to the odd references, Emma almost decided it wasn't really from Daisy. Then she saw the signature.

Love, Daisy.

Her first thought was to respond in the same way -- send a letter back with the owl -- but the owl hadn't returned, and Emma didn't want to depend on the chance that it would. She checked her phone, guessing that maybe Daisy would have texted something. Nothing appeared. She started typing her response there, mostly a lot of questions.

Thumb hovering over the send arrow, Emma paused. She exited the chat, leaving the message as a draft, and slipped the phone back into her bag. Answers could be found elsewhere from places that couldn't lie.

The next day, she biked over to Daisy's house, ignoring the voice in her head reminding her how much trouble she would be in. No one was home, just as Emma expected. She located the spare key, hidden between some flowers and rocks in the backyard, and went in. She didn't waste time on the ground floor, instead taking her search upstairs. First, Daisy's room. She'd searched it before, but she searched it again and found nothing unusual. She'd practically lived in the room some summers, she knew where Daisy would hide things.