His Mark [Tom Riddle's son] DISCONTINUED

The ruined surprise

His Mark
[Knowledge is Power]

4th October 2016
Tuesday

Aileen

I felt like I had barely slept at all, when I was rudely woken up by an annoying tapping sound at my window.
I slowly pushed the heavy curtains aside to reveal a tiny black Northern saw-whet owl, blankly staring at me with its reddish-yellow eyes.

I vaguely remembered the tiny beings shrill screeching, and mistrustful glances towards Momo as I opened the window.

The tiny owl- whose name I didn't know, quickly made its way in, closely followed by a heavy looking packet and a gust of icy cold wind, and made itself comfortable on my bed.
It sat there, and looked accusatory up at me with its big round eyes as if it were silently blaming me for the short trip it had to fly through the icy winds.

"Poor little thing," I muttered lowly and reached out to smooth the tiny being's messed up feathers.
That gesture however only managed to turn its blank stare into the owl equivalent of an angry scowl as it dragged its tiny self closer to me, prompting me to release it from the heavy looking pacet tied to one of its feet.

I slowly untied the packet from the little bundle of joy, and the little owl made its way towards some leftover strawberry muffins, that were on my bedside table.
I quickly started to rip the package open, as the tiny owl that I had lovingly named Grumpy devoured a muffin almost the same size as him.

Two books a handful of some sort of strawberry sweets and a somewhat crumpled piece of parchment lay before me on the bed.

I opened one of the sweets, popped it into my mouth and quickly moved on to the neatly written parchment- immediately recognising Cordelia's neat handwriting.

Aileen,
Happy Birthday, ok fine, I know you dislike people acknowledging your birthday, but it goes against my code of honour of being a friend not giving friends birthday gifts. So...yeah.
You have to accept it.

But if you really don't like it, think of it as an
I-see-you-are-being-attacked-by-organic-appendages-so-I'm-trying-to-help-you-here gift with a You-have-to-read-this-book-or-you're-not-a-real-wizard book and an I-hate-sherbet-and-strawberries-so-I'm-dumping-them-on-you sort of thing that coincidentally came on the twelfth anniversary of your birth. Definitely not a gift to celebrate your birth.

C.

It must have taken her ages to write this...
I smiled slightly to myself, as I imagined Cordelia writing and crossing words out in the early morning hours.

"A You-have-to-read-this-book-or-you're-not-a-real-wizard book." I whispered shaking my head and picked up 'The Tales Of Beedle the Bard'

I flipped the book open on page 87 The Tales Of The Three Brothers, after one last glance at grumpy the owl, who had just finished eating two strawberry muffins twice its size and started reading:

'There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at twilight. In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across.. However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure.

And Death spoke to them.

He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river.

But Death was cunning.
He pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him...'
****
I found myself wandering through the corridor in the third floor after an exhausting hour of Defence Against The Dark Arts on this unusually sunny Tuesday afternoon.