The Boy With Black Eyes

Letters Long Lacking

Writing letters to her father had always been a little bit awkward. And now, with her duties as Head Girl taking up any free time she thought she once had, and Nox becoming part of her life, with the Potions tutoring and the drama between two of her prefects breaking up...

The letter from her father had gone unanswered and unopened. 

So, after teatime, in which she dealt with two girls starting their periods, and two boys wanting to know how to woo new partners, as well as Hannah, the young first year, reporting back to say she'd  formed a fast friendship with the girl she'd been having problems with, Melissa sat down to open and read her father's letter. 

Turul was perched on the back of her desk chair, feathers fluffed up against the late November wind that blew in through her window. There was always a fascination in her head about being up high, blowing in the wind like some absent feather. When her father had taken her out to California for her sixteenth birthday, she didn't want to go to the theme parks and the big cities with the fancy restaurants. There had been an inexplicable draw to the redwood forests, and urges to climb up, as high as she could, to sit in the branches and let the wind rush through her hair. The closest she could get at Hogwarts was leaving the windows open, to hear the wind rush around the towers and through passages. 

The letter included a moving photo of her father with his newest girlfriend, a redhead with dusky blue-grey eyes. They waved from their place on the steps of her childhood home, his arm around her shoulders, her hand on his knee. Melissa hoped she was Scottish. She just loved the way their voices sounded. Her dad had a strong accent that was kinda racially ambiguous, a weird mix of posh Londoner, high Parisian and elite Istanbulite. She had the mix of a deep Cree to her posh Londoner, but it was only detectable on certain words. Tilting her head to one side, she decided her dad looked kinda racially ambiguous too. Deeper skinned, could have been Spanish, maybe Italian, maybe from somewhere in Northern India. Dark hair, crow's feet at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. And those bright green eyes he'd inherited from his mother. 

Apparently he was asking permission to go to Greece with the new girlfriend over Christmas. Melissa was stuck at Hogwarts due to her duties, so in her letter back, she made sure to include her acceptance, as long as she got a pretty Christmas present. She also suggested Florence as opposed to Greece, just to see what her father would say to that. 

He asked if she'd found some pretty boy to marry later. She hadn't. Not that she was opposed to doing something of the sort, she preferred men to women regardless, and like Nox, had experienced both sides of the spectrum and found what she liked. She did not like boys her age, she did not like a man who was a pushover, but hated people who bottled emotions. Had a preference for dark hair and eyes. With a shrug, she commented such in her letter back to her father, telling him to keep his eyes peeled for her while he was abroad, and set to rolling up the parchment tightly so she could tie it to Turul's leg. 

When the falcon flapped to the desk and stuck out his leg, talons curled so she didn't accidentally nick herself on the razor edge, Melissa attached a letter rolled up as tightly as a cigarillo to her familiar's leg, and held out her arm for him to flap onto to, taking the time to brush over the smooth feathers on the top of his head, and the sleeker ones out on his wings and down his back. 

With a kiss for luck, she sent her messenger on his way, the bird dive-bombing to the loch below the castle before snapping open his wings and soaring out into the starry sky. She followed the rapidly beating wings along the dark surface of the lake with her sharp eyes, until he disappeared into the night, and took her spirit with him. 

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She cornered me before breakfast the day after our...encounter in the Prefect's Bathroom. Just outside the door to the Slytherin Common Room, she gripped me by the sleeve and tugged me into a corner, our faces impossibly close together.