The Other Black Book 4

Chapter 1 - The Scar

Aurora Malfoy woke early one morning to a rapping, tapping sound on her window. It was otherwise silent in her house, and she stared at the window a long while before realizing what she was seeing. In a second, she was out of bed and opening her window, and the snowy owl that had been pecking her window pane flew in, dropped a small bit of parchment onto Aurora's desk, and seated herself on a perch Aurora had placed on her wall for owls to rest before she sent them back to their owners.

Aurora looked at the parchment and turned on her desk light, blinking a few times as she adjusted to the brightness.

Aura,

I had another dream. Just woke up from it, and I'm writing what I can remember. A snake on the hearth rug, Peter -- although he was using his nickname Wormtail, the high cold voice of Lord Voldemort... There was an old man, he fell to the ground. Voldemort and Wormtail were talking about someone they killed and their plot to kill someone else... Oh, that someone else was me.

It was a dark room, and Voldemort's chair spun around and I saw myself sitting there. It gave me such a start, I think that's what woke me. Or maybe it was my scar; it's been hurting again.

That's really all I can remember. What do you think of it?

Harry

Aurora wasn't quite sure what to write back. She looked around her room as she thought of the words to use. Her room was filled with a highly unusual assortment of things. A large wooden trunk stood open at the foot of her bed, revealing a cauldron, black robes, and assorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment and scraps of letters littered the part of her desk that was not taken up by the small cage in which her small brown owl, Cooper, usually perched.

In two frames on her desk sat two pictures of people smiling and waving, although both of them gave her a hint of sadness when she looked at them. She decided not to dwell on them right now, and instead turned her attention to the parchment. She wrote back her answer, gave it to Hedwig, and the snowy owl flew back across the street. Aurora followed her to the window and looked out at the street.

Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of a Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as Aurora could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat. She looked up at the window directly across from hers; it was the only other open window in the entire street. Aurora turned back into her room, shut her window again, and looked at the photos on her desk.

The first one depicted a mother, father, and daughter.

The mother, Elara Malfoy, was Aurora's mother. Aurora found out last year that her mother was the sister of a convicted murderer, and it had led her to be a sort of outcast from her school for quite some time. The father, Janus Malfoy, was Aurora's father. He was the brother of Lucius Malfoy, whose son was Draco -- a student at the same school that Aurora and Harry attended who took a rather quick dislike to Harry. The daughter was Aurora. She was one year old in the photo.

When Aurora was one, her mother left Aurora in an orphanage and vanished into the night. Aurora spent ten years in that orphanage under the name Aurora Ibe until five years ago when she was adopted by Olivia and Taylor Jackson and took their name. In the thirteen years since Elara's disappearance, no one has heard anything as to what happened, and whether or not she was alive.

She'd received the photo three years ago, in the summer before her second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from her cousin Draco.

The other photo also depicted three people, this time, siblings. She'd received it over the summer and had yet to show this one to Harry, and part of her wondered if she should. It depicted a younger Elara Malfoy beside her two brothers, Sirius Black and... Aurora did not know the younger brother's name; Sirius didn't name him when he sent Aurora the letter with the photo, and didn't talk much about him, other than that he was dead and that his death broke their sister's heart. Elara looked much like Aurora did now, and every year when Aurora looked at the first photo, she thought she was looking more and more like Elara.

There was a fortnight to go before they returned to school, but Aurora was excited to return to Hogwarts for several reasons. She'd get to see her best friends again, and she was excited (but cautiously so) to see who would be their new teacher for Defense Against the Dark Arts, as last year's teacher had resigned before the end of the school year.

Aurora looked at the photo of her mother and two uncles again, and this time took it out of its frame. She had only met him once, two months ago, very briefly before he escaped from a fate worse than death on the back of a previously doomed-Hippogriff (yes, it was really as bizarre and confusing as it sounds).

There was a simple reason for Sirius's complete absence from Aurora's life until then - Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrifying wizard jail guarded by creatures called dementors, sightless, soulsucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwarts when he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent - the murders for which he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, Voldemort's supporter, whom nearly everybody now believed dead. Harry, Ron, Aurora, and Hermione knew otherwise, however; they had come face-to-face with Wormtail only the previous year, though only Professor Dumbledore had believed their story.

Aurora had received two letters from him since leaving Hogwarts, each of these letters delivered by brightly-colored tropical birds instead of owls (which was common to most wizards). The first one had been to tell her that he was safe, and had the photo of him and his two siblings, along with a paragraph talking about them. He didn't mention his brother much, only that he was the favorite child of the family before his death and then that attention turned to the older Elara. He spoke of Elara in detail, however, giving Aurora a mental idea of who her mother was and her care for her siblings.

After a glance at her clock, Aurora began to get dressed before going downstairs to breakfast.