Wristbands | Sirius Black [1]

Prologue

★

[trigger warning: death, sh, swearing, mentions of cannibalism? half-cannibalism? you'll understand my confusion.]

[Prologue: Wristbands]

★

      At the expense of losing a parent, there are boundless possibilities as to how a child will react. Inherently, there is a much larger consequence to losing a mother. Most children weep for the person who they'll never feasibly see again. Others deny it, declaring death as deception whilst knowing deep down that their closest connection, the one that introduced them from nothingness, was gone forever. Never to be seen again, like that ant you crushed as a toddler sitting on the stairs outside of primary school.

In lieu of losing her mother, her first inherent love, Aspen Lee did not partake in either of these reactions. She had not responded when her father told her that her mother died, attacked by a werewolf. Well, she didn't have an immediate response–the only thing she had done in that moment was stand as still as a scarecrow and stare at her father's miserable expression. Observing every line and crinkle in his face, the sweat that dripped from his temples, the mess of his sideburns. Regardless of her calm stature, a mixture of disbelief and nothingness swept through the then-fourteen year olds mind. Her mum, a powerful witch living in the Scotland suburb with her husband and only daughter–who the morning of her death made a batch of scrambled eggs while loudly vocalizing the chorus of Queen's Love of my Life–was dead. Gone. That night, Aspen would be going to sleep in a house occupied by two people; not three. The next morning, she'd bake herself a bagel rather than be scolded for not waking her mother up in time to make a large protein-rich breakfast.

Aspen would instead read the Daily Prophet that very next morning, the front cover positioning the Hogwarts graduation photo of her dear mother with the headline, "GRYFFINDOR ALUMNI SLAUGHTERED BY LYCANTHROPE KINGPIN!" The front page was devoid of the perpetrators name. But Aspen knew what happened to her mother, her father hadn't the audacity to shield his daughter from the gruesomeness of her own mothers death. Fenrir Greyback, a monster known to attack unsuspecting children in their sleep to groom them into joining his pack, had torn the flesh and bone from the Lee family matriarch. Why he had done it was a mystery, but he wasn't afraid of flaunting his recent accomplishment to the press in letters written from the flesh of her mother.

    Carved with a fingernail, claw, at the site of the murder into the torn flesh of her mothers thigh told the flaunt, "Meat was too raw for my tastes."

So at the age of fourteen, Aspen was left without a mother figure with no reason or explanation as to why she was in that predicament. That was what bothered Aspen the most, not only that her mother was dead—but also the fact she didn't know why her mother was dead. Not only did she become motherless, though, but she had also lost most of her father. She was an orphan with an absent but ALIVE father. Never to be seen again mere weeks after the loss of his wife.