Birds of a Feather

Chapter 4: Exploding Doors and Worried Wizards

          You know that expression about how trouble always catches you with your pants down? Well it really does as it would turn out for when the aurors pounded on the door to my house to take away my adoptive parents, I was in the bathroom doing what one does in the bathroom. And then I was met with loud screams, bangs, and shouted spells. Originally, I wondered if my mother had come to attempt to kidnap me out of the house once again in another of her drug-fueled rages when she decided that she had not tortured me enough when I was living back at her house. I had hoisted myself up off the toilet after a bit of pre-work and readied myself to open the door, and right as it swung on its incredibly loose hinges my adoptive mother was thrown against the door, sending piercing splinters all over my beautiful face. My eyes shot up only to be met with the usual silvery ness of the future that blurred out to reveal a dark-skinned man for a split second, though soon he disappeared into the vision.

          "Oh my god," he breathed, worry clouding all other sense of expression in his voice. I was bombarded by a vision of him kissing a woman holding a baby. This glimpse into the future was my only frame of reference for what he might've looked like. In this vision, he was a bearded man with incredibly large round glasses, though I had no clue if he currently looked like that or would look like that in the future. "I didn't mean--I didn't know you were going to open the door. I'm so sorry. Are you injured?" he continued, his worry only growing each time he added a word to the growing array of sentences spewing from his mouth.

          "No worries, I'm fine." I said, with a skilled movement of my hand that I am not quite sure what meant.

          "You've got bits of wood sticking out of your arms." A woman called. "You are most definitely not fine." Her whole body swiveled towards the man as she shouted "Good job, Mark! Your first day on the field and you almost kill a fifteen-year-old girl."

          "I'm sixteen." I cut in, through gritted teeth. "And besides, you're fine." I said sweetly with a practiced nod to the man. "I've experienced worse." I uttered with a shrug, ignoring the sharp pain that shot up my arms as I moved them.

         The woman ignored my interjections and asked "Do you have somewhere to stay?" She turned to me as she spoke, and I expected the cruel eyes that adults often gave me that told me they only cared because they were payed to, an expression I was often given when I was removed from the care of my biological mother and bounced between homes constantly, but like the man, Mark's, her eyes were also full of concern. The woman had long blonde curls and huge brown eyes, though a sneaking suspicion of mine told me that this was what she would look like, not what she did look like.

          "Not really." I responded, which was probably one of the biggest understatements I've ever voiced as I truly had no where to go. I had no friends who had enough freedom that I could stay with them, I had no family, I had no trustworthy adults I could ask to stay with, besides the aurors that I had just met I had nadie (I know, my Spanish skills are absolutely incredible, I've picked up on a couple of words from many of my Spanish-speaking friends at Hogwarts, none of which I could stay with, in case you didn't catch that).

          "I can't leave you alone...you're sixteen." She quirked an eyebrow at me after a second "...Do you by any chance know..." she paused, reading off of a list that was scrawled unto a piece of parchment she dug out of her pocket "...Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, or..." she paused, her eyebrow arching higher as she attempted to read whatever was on the parchment "...Blaise Zabini?" I gave a nod. She smiled and asked "Could you stay with any of them?"

          "No," I said with an accidental overaggressive shake of my head that sent my hair flying into my face so that I had to sweep it out of my eyes before continuing "none of their parents would allow me to stay--I mean maybe the Malfoys but--"