Wolves Without Teeth ── theodore nott ¹ ( UNDER EDITING )

chapter twenty eight

                    Winnie Bulstrode prefers not to speak to her sister, which certainly isn't a surprise to those who know her, or even know of her. They are like water and gasoline, never being able to mix together correctly, always forced to have one on the outside while the other soaks up the limelight in the middle.

So it can be thought of as an awful turn of events when the eldest sister finds herself tiptoeing down the hallways of Hogwarts late at night. Her hair falling like a cloak around her features, hazel eyes wide and flickering around the darkened hallways, only illuminated by the light tip of her wand. In her hands lays a map of parchment, showing her the entire school and where everyone inside of it stood and slept. She had begged Harry Potter for it hours before, where he stood and stared at her with such a sharp emotion of concern he instantly handed her the map without question.

Luckily for her, he did not question, for not even herself could form a reasonable reasoning for the Marauders Map that wasn't the truth. Her mind was still reeling from the events of yesterday evening, all too much for even her to handle the truth of it all, but to sum it all up incredibly quickly for you, let's start with points.

One.) Her sister lays in a Hospital bed, rumoured to be healed and in perfect condition all besides for the constant draining of her magic source that will take a few days to be healed. This is all due to a freak accident where Winnie literally electrocuted her sister's chest, it was only for the fact that her magic wasn't that strong that her sister is alive right now.

Two.) Theodore Nott stumbled upon her, leaving him in a state of panic so severe he hid her from everything, cleaned the choked blood on her face and fingers and brought her back to reality. Only for him to tell her that he's marrying her sister, and while she imagines it as a incredibly horrid joke, she knows it's true from the simple hard line of his lips. She doesn't wish to look into why that simple fact makes her stomach turn to lead or why she burns so severely with agony every time she remembers it.

Three.) It was early that morning when she received a letter with a tiny black box from an auburn owl she didn't recognize, at first she believed it to be Sirius, until the emerald ink stamp glistened at her in the early morning light. Winnie had sat, hidden behind her four poster bed curtains with the opened letter laying upon her lap. It had taken her to squeeze her eyes shut and for the shifting sounds of someone waking in order for her to open it.

I had no intention of reaching out to you, at least not anytime soon, but I visited your sister in the infirmary today, and I found that I have no choice but to write this to you. Honestly, of course you would gain your awful Grandfather's curse. I feared for the worse ever since you were born and it's so disappointing to be right, what a lonely, hard life this will be for you my child. But I hope regardless that you find this box helps you, not everything is as it seems. But I will not write again, it is for the best. Perhaps in time you will see everything as a blessing rather than a curse. Perhaps one day you will understand.

I.B

It didn't take long for the blonde to figure out who was writing to her, she would recognize her mothers penship anywhere. That thought brought both comfort and pain to her chest as she folded the letter up, crinkling the edges with her eyes staring at the black box with a hardened gaze. It sat, resting against the foot of her bed, her fingers itching to reach out for it.

She did for the record, reach forward, and inside was a tied band of parchment, ink spilled and splotched along the lines. Smelling of cigars and firewhiskey, stinging her nostrils as she picked up the yellowed letters. All of them addressed to her in her late Grandfather's chicken scratch scrawl, the answers she spent all this year looking for right in front of her hands.