Clarissa Snape [incomplete]

twelve

—Patronus—

The gif really has nothing to do with the chapter besides the fact that it's about Patronuses...

SORRY FOR THE LATE CHAPTER! I MEANT TO POST BUT I NEVER FOUND THE TIME!

Twas the night before Christmas break and there was a D.A. meeting. My fake galleon got so hot that it almost burned my hand when I grabbed it. I figured mine was rigged to get hotter than needed, but who cared at that point? Not me.

Anyways, I sat in my Charms class, not skipping it for once but I wish I had. It was extremely boring. Not Professor Binns boring, but I was definitely not enjoying the class at all. I just took out a piece of parchment and doodled for most of the class.

Over time, I had grown rather close to Linda, especially since we were both in the D.A. We would study in the Ravenclaw common room for the upcoming exams. Sure, they were in about six months but she was a Ravenclaw and they're all about passing now aren't they?

Linda wasn't terrible, to be honest. She was quite nice to be around when she wasn't talking about her crush on Harry Potter. She always went off about how brave he was and nonsense like that. I wouldn't care if he walked to Mount Kilimanjaro and back with just one glass of water and a condom as the only items he would bring. Hearing about him was very, very annoying.

Also, my dad needed to make up his mind whether he was happy or sad, Changing his mood every five minutes was doing me no good.

Sure, I was still very devastated about my mum's death. I always will be, It's natural. I then realised that she wasn't coming back and there was nothing I could do, so I tried to accept it. She wouldn't have wanted me to mope around over her my whole life. She would have understood the grieving we went through at first, but it was time to try and get our lives back on track. I had shared these thoughts with my father who did take them into consideration.

Every two minutes.

My grades were also pulling up slowly, even if I didn't care about them. Mum would have. No matter what I was to do in life.

'Education comes first unless it's for love,' she would say. Not to mention my dad would get angry if I had bad grades and he was very scary when he was angry. I didn't want to feel his wrath.

In the last D.A. lesson before Christmas, I sat in the Room of Requirement. I was in the corner, in a chair with my legs crossed in front of me and my hands folded on my lap, accessorized with the usual bored look on my face.

It was the day we were going to conjure partonuses. I hadn't before, nor had I tried, so I had no idea what mine was or what it would be.

Harry split us into small groups of three and told us to think of a happy memory and then speak the incantation 'Expecto Patronum,' but not cast anything.

My happiest memory was hard to think of, but I remembered when my parents were still together and we went out to a muggle restaurant to eat. We laughed and smiled till our cheeks hurt, clutching our sides and trying not to shake the table. When my parents always gazed at one another lovingly when the thought I wasn't looking and how my dad put me on his shoulders when we left to shop at the market afterwards.

When we had our happy memories, we were instructed to try and conjure our Patronus. And I did. A bright, glowing fox ran out from the tip of my wand. I looked around and saw that only about two other people had conjured full partonuses on the first try.

Then it slapped me hard in the face.

My Patronus was a fox.

"Do you have any idea why it's a fox?" asked Potter from behind me.