The Pureblood Princess | Sirius Black

|98| Flora Fawley

It was a drizzly Monday morning in late May when, right on cue, Sirius cursed loudly at a delivery owl disappearing into the rafters of the great hall with his bacon in its beak.

"Write that strongly worded letter yet, Pads?" Remus sniggered, narrowly dodging a sugar cube Sirius sent flying his way from across the table.

James laughed boisterously at Remus's side while leaning over the table to try to read the news paper in Adelaide's hands. "What's going on in the Wizarding World this week, Ads?" he asked with a lopsided grin, reaching to take some of her toast, but was thwarted by Sirius smacking his hand away.

Eyes firmly fixed on the text, Adelaide shrugged. "The usual. A few muggles terrorized—some bloke in the Auror department lost an ear—big feature on how the new minister's anti-Death Eater efforts are failing—"

"—Poor guy. Only been in office a month and they already hate him." Peter said sadly, taking a not-so-dainty slurp of his pumpkin juice.

"With good reason!" Sirius said passionately with his mouth full of half-chewed pancakes, slamming his fist on the table. "He was supposed to fix everything but now it's even shittier than it was before!"

James cleaned off his smudge glasses with his tie. "Only been a month though, Pads— can't expect him to end the war that quick—"

"We're at war?" Peter squeaked.

Remus sighed deeply, as if this was too much for him to dive into before he'd even finished his tea.

"—Ooo! A new shop is going in at Diagon Alley!" Adelaide said happily, clearly too engrossed with reading to hear the boys' heated political discussions. "It's going to be a witches fashion boutique!"

The boys didn't find this at all interesting and began throwing food at one another and laughing until some raspberry jam James was attempting to fling at Sirius, instead splattered itself on a snowy owl that suddenly landed on the table. Sirius moved his plate far out of reach, lest another feathered beast tried to eat his bacon.

The owl ruffled its feathers and screeched loudly in James's face making him wince, then turned to Adelaide, sticking out a foot for her to untie the letter attached.

Not wanting to get screeched at as well, Adelaide hastily released the letter from the bird's foot and sent it flying away, magenta jam on its feathers clearly visible even as flew high into the rafters.

Initially, she thought the letter was from Emmeline Vance, but the stationary was much more expensive than anything the Auror-in-training had ever written on before. Next, she thought perhaps it was from Robert Selwyn, but his letters had all but ceased since Christmas, and the parchment itself was considerably more feminine than anything he would ever even dare to write on, with the silver ivy and flowers decorating the edges of the pale blue parchment. For a brief moment she feared it was from Beauxbatons, but was pulled away from this particular train of thought when Remus spoke.

"Who's the letter from?" he asked curiously.

Adelaide looked up at him briefly, then back down at the letter. "I dunno..."

"Well it might help if you open it." James sniggered.

Adelaide rolled her eyes and chuckled with the rest of them, breaking the silvery, shimmering wax seal and carefully unfolding the letter within.

Her eyes glossed over the actual contents down to the name signed at the bottom of the page and gasped slightly in surprise. "It's—it's from my aunt..."

"Your aunt? The one in Austria?" Sirius asked, trying to look over to read the letter, but she moved it out of view.

Adelaide shook her head. "No—I mean she does live in Austria—but that's not—this is a different aunt." she explained, still having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that her mysterious Aunt Flora had written to her. Flora had always been one of her favorites amongst the Fawley's, but it had been years since she'd heard from her. "It's from my Aunt Flora—my dad's little sister—the one that lives in France... at least... I think that's where she lives..."