The Art of Dying

Chapter Sixteen: A Night to Remember

Erica was the first to wake up in her dormitory next morning. She lay for a moment watching dust swirl in the ray of sunlight coming through the gap in her four-poster's hangings, and savoured the thought that it was Saturday. The first week of term seemed to have dragged on for ever, like one gigantic History of Magic lesson.

Judging by the sleepy silence and the considerable lighter tones to the water in the black lake outside the window, it was just after daybreak. She pulled open the curtains around her bed, got up and started to dress in a pair of comfortable jeans and a light burgundy jumper that was thin enough not to be stifling but thick enough to keep her warm in the chill of the castle.

The only sound apart from the distant twittering of birds was the slow, deep breathing of her fellow Slytherins. She opened her bedside drawer carefully, drank the correct potions that would begin her day officially, and then did her hair up in two quick braids before easing open her trunk, grabbing the journal her father had gifted her with along with some ink and a quill and then headed out of the dormitory for the common room.

Making straight for her favourite squashy old armchair by the fire that Blaise usually stole, Erica settled herself down comfortably and opened the cover of her journal while looking around the room. The detritus of crumpled-up bits of parchment, old Gobstones, empty ingredients jars and sweet wrappers that usually covered the common room at the end of each day was gone, as were the remains of last night's celebration party which she had heard late into the night as she completed her homework in the comfort of her own bed, leaving her weekend free.

Erica uncorked her ink bottle, dipped her quill into it, then held it suspended an inch above the smooth, white page, thinking hard... but after a minute or so she found herself staring into the empty grate, at a complete loss for what to write, or to who she should begin writing to.

She sat quite motionless for a while, gazing into the fireplace, then, finally coming to a decision, she dipped her quill into the ink bottle once more and set it resolutely onto the page.

Dear Me (as in, Erica Riddle),

If you are somehow reading this, then something has gone horrible wrong. Okay, that's a lie- it's more like something has gone horribly right. You aren't supposed to survive to be able to read this, but if you somehow defy all the odds, then here you go, this is what I want to say.

You are strong. No matter how many times you think that you're not, no matter how many times other people say that you are weak, they are wrong. You are strong. If you don't believe me, then look at the facts. You're the daughter of the most hated and the cruellest man in existence, you have been tortured, you have been forced to betray your friends, and you have hated, and yet still you manage to love, and still you manage to surround yourself with those who love you back.

You're also very intelligent. You taught yourself wandless magic and you figured out a way to stabilise your magic in a crystal and you will, one day, figure out the Hogwarts warding system, discover a counter-spell for the permanent human transfiguration spell and complete the Animagus transformation. It seems like a lot, but I am sure that you are able to do it, because you are me and because if you're reading this letter then somehow you have done the impossible and you're still alive, even though you shouldn't be.

More on that later, though.

I don't really know what to say, writing this letter to myself in the journal our father gave to us, being the bastard that he is. It's strange, thinking of an alternative version of me reading this letter sometime in the distant future, though it will most likely not be read at all, or if it is read it will be by others who find this journal, long after I am gone (looking at you on this one, Fred).