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｡･ﾟﾟ･ MARAUDERS... ! ･ﾟﾟ･｡ 𝟶𝟶𝟷. SUMMER, 1971: ST. AGNES' 🪩 ❝ when you're weary. feeling small. when tears are in your eyes. i'll dry them all. i'm on your side. oh, when times get rough. and friends just can't be found.❞
SATURDAY 7TH, AUGUST 1971
SHE CAME TO the conclusion that she most certainly suffered from a sleep deficit. It had become a habit, she knew that. After two or three days, she would still be sitting wide awake in her small room, thinking of mischief to cause and wonderful adventures for herself and her brother to go on—anything other than being in this ridiculous cell. Let alone sleep in it. It always smelled like death in there, and neither she nor her roommate could get rid of the stench that was coming from it. The always talkative Millie lay in the bunk bed below her, snoring her head off (even in sleep she couldn't shut her mouth). For what seemed like the millionth time, Romola reminded herself to complain to her roommate about her atrocious snore once she woke. Romola found a more useful time staring at the pages of her notebook, a Christmas gift from Matron in 1969, so old and soiled that the girl had to start scribbling on top of previous doodles.
She couldn't help but stay up on full moon's, however. For about a year now, Matron had been waking up the ten-year-old once a month at 4:45am exactly. Romola had started matching her with the clock on the wall (she was shocked it worked). Over time, the child had become accustomed to hearing the familiar click of Matron's heels and the jangle of her keys, which she always kept on hand to keep all the kids in at night. Based on Romola's personal experiences, the children at St. Agnes were already insane. She had no idea what horrors could lurch during slumber at St. Edmund's with so many boys, which Remus described as:
"Vicous creatures Ro. Your future husband betta not be like any of em'!"
Her two-hour lunch meetings with her brother in a strange, deserted room that Matron only allowed after Remus gave some unfortunate blokes four black eyes to prove to her how much he needed to see his baby sister every day, were the only glances she had of the building. Back then, he was only six years old. Romola was barely even a year younger than her brother, but it didn't stop her from admiring the tenacious child. He was the most courageous person she was aware of, by far, despite the lack of strong competitors. She liked remembering him this way, glorious with his knuckles bruised and a tooth knocked out,
"Baby tooth, I swear RoRo"
and not instead in a cage bleeding from scars inflicted by himself all over his thin body. The older girls in the home used to say she was lucky to be the only person there with a family member she saw regularily. As if any of this was regular. They didn't have to deal with 5am wake up startled from Matron. The norm at St. Agnes usually fancied 6:45.
