Eunoia | Sirius Black

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Scotland, 1970
July 15th, a Hot Summer day.

I'm a living, breathing, corpse.

I am looking at something I do not seem to notice for my eyes are blurring and my throat is constricting and my chin is trembling and my hands are shaking and I cannot breathe, cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel and all I want to do is run.

I do not think I can survive here.

Someone touched my shoulder and I spun, eyes wide, frantic, seeming to relax once catching sight of the intruder.

"I wish you were coming to Hogwarts with me."

I frowned, jaw clenching. "Grandfather won't let me."

Ella grinned, but I knew it wasn't reaching her eyes. "Your grandfather is the oddest man I've ever known, El. I still don't know why he insists on sending you to Beauxbatons so ferociously. One could almost say – he is afraid of you going to Hogwarts."

"Why would he be afraid of me going to Hogwarts?"

"Merlin knows." Ella shrugged. "But with the intensity with which he refused to send you there, doesn't it all seem a bit vague to you?"

"Everything surrounding my grandfather is vague, Ella." I force a smile.

It was true. My grandfather was heavily poetic and loved to write words that never made sense. Loved to make riddles and oh, chess. He loved chess more than anything in his life. Me, included.

I'd found a parchment paper with Combustion Tumultuous Whodunnit written on it and had asked grandfather what it meant. His only reply had been "Art, my darling."

He was more than odd, I'd say.

"Are you alright?" Ella asked and I looked up, a crease forming between my brows. "You're going to a new school. You've never been alone your whole life, Elena. And I won't be there, either."

I wanted to be alone. How could I ever explain that to Ella? Especially when she was much more like my mother than I'd prefer. She was pretty, with doe eyes with the deepest blue-grey irises, and a face shape to match. It was a heart with a strong jawline and perfectly arched brows and short, dark brown hair.

She'd inherited only her eyes and hair from her father. Rest all, was from our mother.

Our family wasn't the most preferred one out there, in the wizarding world, but it was known. One could even call it famous. Which wasn't surprising in the least after the mayhem caused by the continuous deaths.

I'd never cared about our family history. Grandfather didn't like that. He liked to think I'd grow old and come to invest myself in the dark truths of the Hawkes one day. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was something that would never happen.

I was as smitten by chess and riddles as he was, much less really, but almost as much as he. Still, investigating murders was not something I'd like to do in my spare time.

I was eleven, and fate had me growing up way quicker than I'd like. I'd already faced things no child should ever have. Ella hadn't seen half of it, but she had equally staggering demons of her life.

Her father was from the sacred-twenty-eight. He'd like nothing more than to throw Ella out, now that she had nowhere to go after our mother's death. I had no father so grandfather had to take me under his wing, but Ella did. And the Ministry required Ivor Nott to care for Ella until she turned seventeen.

She was one year my senior, twelve while I was eleven and yet, we talked as though we'd faced a battle and were two fully woman warriors. Perhaps we were.