Vengeance| Harry Potter

thirteen. a real angel

-CHAPTER THIRTEEN-
~a real angel~

AFTER THE BIG ADRENALINE rush that came with facing a dragon, Viola decided to stray away from the common room and the more busier areas of the castle. She just felt tired now and was looking forward to finally getting a good night's sleep for the first time in weeks.

Luckily enough, she was able to find a usually secluded part of the castle before the rest of the students got back. She had taken refuge in the Astronomy Tower, probably her favourite place in the entire castle. And she was banking on thinking that no one would come up there— she couldn't even count how many times she had remained there for ages without being disturbed.

The usual serenity of the tower was more comforting than ever, now that some of the worry had faded from her mind. And along with the breeze lapping lightly at her slightly red skin where she had gotten burned, it was a nice place to be.

She looked down at her hand— one of the rogue sparks that had flown from the dragon's nose had left a small red scar on her hand that Madam Pomfrey hadn't been able to heal. The rest of the burns were mostly gone now, though, and even her deep cut was almost painless, bound tightly in a large roll of bandage.

But even with the injuries, she felt so much better than she did before she had faced the dragon. At least now she could tell herself that she had already gotten through one task when the second one came around. It may not soothe her mind completely, but at least it was something, right?

A quiet meow made her look up from her hand. A few feet behind her was a white and ginger cat prowling around the stairs. Viola smiled at him. Cats had always been her favourite animals. They were just so majestic, she thought, and so soft.

But unfortunately, Viola was so caught up in the appearance of the cat that she didn't realise an owl was flying towards her, until a letter was dropped on her head. Atlas was circling over her, and she thought that he looked rather smug— if owls even could look smug.

"Thanks, Atlas, love you too," she shouted to him as she opened it up, meeting a long script of writing; she recognised the penmanship immediately to be her brother's.

Viola,
   I do not yet know if you have completed the first task of the tournament— I am writing this in the morning, having not been made aware of what time the task starts at. If it has already started, I assume you must be dead (or, at least, I hope you are). If not, you will probably die soon and I wish you the worst of luck; I am personally keeping my fingers crossed for a long, drawn-out and painful death!
Now that I have gotten that out of the way, there is a reason that I am writing to you. Mother and father are most displeased with you at the moment. They have gotten ahold of the Daily Prophet articles that are painting you in a light that sounds as though you are friends (which seems to be an underexaggeration) with Harry Potter.
I know that you are severely foolish, but I would have thought you would know better than to go befriending someone of the sort.
But that's not all— I managed to snatch one of the Prophet articles and noticed that you talked about mother and father being Death Eaters. I didn't think much of it at first— most pure-bloods already know about their affiliation with the Dark Lord years prior— but I overheard them talking in a rather suspicious manner about the Dark Lord himself.
From what I heard, father was talking about something on his arm. I didn't see what, or even hear, for that matter, but I am positive I heard them say You-Know-Who. Father mentioned that whatever was on his arm seemed to be coming back, stronger than it has been for the past thirteen years.
I do not know what they were talking about, but they did seem very frantic and frightened.
I am mentioning it to you in the hope that you can be useful for once and help me figure out what is going on.
Hope that you are not well,
Edwin.