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NINETEEN FIRST CHRISTMAS (I LOVED YOU)
🍒💌🕊
THREE DAYS INTO THE WINTER HOLIDAYS of her 6th year, Ina Patel finds herself completely and utterly bored.
There is only so much to do in her small house, nestled within the bustling hubbub of London, and after staring at the walls of her childhood bedroom for the past few days (days that, she would like to state for the record, drag on at a snail's pace like a dark tunnel with no end in sight) she has had enough.
Only a few days earlier, the end of the first half of term had hit Ina like a train with how fast it approached—one moment, she had been in the library stressing over all the last minute essays her professors had assigned, and the next, she was on platform nine and three-quarters in Kings Cross, waving goodbye to her friends and promising to meet up with them soon.
Needless to say that without any school assignments to keep her preoccupied (or any pesky Gryffindors to take up all her attention) Ina has been pushed to the ends of her wits.
However, despite it all, the boredom only really started to eat her inside after three days, which is why on the first Thursday of holidays, bright and early in the morning, she dresses to impress.
Last night, in a spur of the moment decision, Ina had sent an owl to Will, asking him to meet up with her in Diagon Alley today. She might have been a bit dramatic in her letter to him, writing something along the lines of how she might just die if she doesn't leave the house soon. Being a person who doesn't take things lightly, this prompted Will to write back almost immediately, agreeing without any hesitation to meet up.
She skips down the steps from her bedroom two by to, and when she arrives in the kitchen, she is greeted by the warm and familiar scents of cardamom, ginger, and tumeric.
Her mum is bent over the stove and dressed in her favorite green sari, and her father is sat at their small, circular dining table, his reading glasses perched on his nose as he scrutinizes the daily newspaper.
"Hi mummy," Ina greets cheerfully, peering over her shoulder. Today, it seems, she is making the usual: masala omelette with flakey, doughy paratha. The kettle boils on the burner to the right, shooting up aromatic puffs of steam as she makes chai.
"Hello, beta," her mother says endearingly, flipping over the perfectly round paratha with her bare hand. "Will you set the table?"
Without missing a beat, Ina opens the cupboard and pulls out plates and mugs—four, for each member of the Patel household.
"We only need three," her dad says without looking up from his paper. "Your sister left early this morning."
