Aftermath ✧ Sebastian Sallow

chapter fifty-five

The Summoning by Sleep Token

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Mature(ish) Content Warning

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Amelia's Perceptive

The N.E.W.T.s were finally over as everyone was celebrating the last few weeks before graduation. Although it felt more bitter than sweet. 

Three years hadn't felt like enough time. I wished I had been able to start Hogwarts with everyone else instead of late during the fifth year so I could have spent more time with everyone.

It was the Saturday morning after exams when I found myself in the graveyard just outside the castle. Fig's headstone had needed to be cleaned of all the dirt and overgrown vines that had been covered during the years. It was difficult to believe how it became so overgrown already when it still felt like it was just yesterday when we last spoke.

Using magic to clean the grave would have been easy, but it felt better to wash it by hand. He deserved to have more care put into the chore. It hadn't taken long to do and as I placed the fresh flowers on top it made me feel accomplished. Bushes of baby's breath grew nearby and made for a lovely simple offering to decorate the engraved stone with.

Even if I didn't visit often, I thought of him a lot.

I wanted to visit my brother's grave in London too, but that one I had a harder time bringing myself to do that. I'm not sure I'd even remember the name that he was buried under since it wasn't his own. Even years later I still haven't gone back to visit him since.

"I'm going to be Auror," I said to Fig's headstone.

I knew he couldn't hear me, but saying it out loud made it really like he would be most likely to know.

"You can thank Hecat and Sharp for convincing me. I'm still not sure if I'll be any good at it still, but I'll be able to keep people safe I think?" I confessed to the stone.

The grave didn't answer. It never would.

Death was the only thing that magic could never be able to fix.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," I mumbled to myself.

He wouldn't have wanted me to apologize yet I still felt as if I needed to.

"I found out who my parents were," I remembered suddenly, "You were right, it turns out that my parents weren't muggles. It turns out that my father had been from a lower branch of the Black family. He was wed to someone else, but he took off with my mother. She was from a family called Westwood. It makes sense why you could never find any other Blackwoods, it seems like they created the name."

At least that was the information that the Ministry had told me. I'm still not positive how much I trusted Marvolo Gaunt. Ominis had been very clear that everything he said had a hidden purpose behind it. But each time we spoke, he only offered me information that no one else seemed to be able to find.

My father being from the Black family had been a clear and unfortunate truth. A pureblood family name that the Ministry had hoped for. With a wizard who abandoned his newlywed wife and went missing around the time I was born. He had fallen in love with my mother instead.

The truth about my mother was the only part that I truly believed was a lie created by the Ministry. They called Westwood a family name of an old wizarding family, yet nothing about them seemed to exist. It was a more common name among muggles.