Non Omnis Moriar

18: Christmas at Wool's

I am back!

It's been soooooooooooo looooooooooong, hasn't it? How is everyone?(assuming anybody is still reading my swooing over Tom Riddle lol) The reason I have been so MIA was because of my masters' and the fun, fun stuff that comes with it. (Modern education is a void of souls, don't at me.) ANYWAY!

For this chapter, I was planning to encapsulate the whole of December in the 18th chapter BUT it got way way long because there will be some ACTION in Dec! So yep, we have a SPLIT chapter! (I hope to actually be able to complete the second half in the next month) Maybe even do NANO, who knows...

Anyway, enough of my rambling!

***

The lashes of November rain dimmed in the wake of Winter. Fluffy, magical snow drifted from the skies, matting the grasslands and grounds of the castle in a glistening carpet. The soft crunch of crumbling snow accompanied students, soft murmurs in the corridors made puffs of fog hover over their mouths.

Ten days in, Hogwarts had begun preparing for Christmas. The stones of the castle was cleaned, the paintings scrubbed which left the inhabitants wincing, the suits of armor shone from polish, and the massive Christmas trees supplied from the inner circle of the Forest were tinseled and decked with ornaments - all under the watchful eye of the caretaker, Appollyon Pringle.

He was no Argus Filch, in that he wasn't perhaps as bitter as the old man had been - left with no magic in a world of magic - but then, it was easy to see why not; I had seen him dole out physical punishments without hesitation.

I wondered if all the Hogwarts caretakers were awful, in the past and the ones who'd come after Filch.

I shuddered at the thought.

The familiar festive atmosphere of the school was weighing me down again, and it was getting annoying. It seemed like the constant glumness and self-pity had become something of a permanent fixture in my life. Way back in my present, while staying at Hogwarts with friends had been fun, going home to Mum with Pamela was beyond comparison. The inability to do that choked at my throat, brought edges into my nerves that frayed with the slightest mention of family from the students around me.

And yet...through the haze of the sheer despair, there was a hint of pressing anticipation.

I had already promised Eric and Billy that I would return to Wool's for Christmas - if only to return Eric's suitcase, if not because of the small bloom of friendship that I had managed to cultivate with the two muggle boys.

But now, it seemed that going back to the orphanage to see them was akin to going home to see my mother. At least it was because I had somewhere to go, of course. I wondered how it would've been to be stranded in some other timeline, with no Dumbledore or Hogwarts - where I wouldn't have met the muggles, or Lila, Fawley and Alphard.

Perhaps, part of the reason I wished to go back to the orphanage was to keep at the cultivation of this new association. Muggles were rather interesting, taking steps at progression without magic in their veins, without wands doing anything and everything they wanted. They had these big machines that did it for them, and was not that magic?

And just perhaps...part of it was to escape the aftermath of my stupidity about the Slug Club.

The conversation with Slughorn could be considered illuminating, hinting at a Tom Riddle who hadn't arrived at Hogwarts a fully grown evil Overlord - but a child, who had wanted to make friends and failed.