The sun shone brightly into the apartment windows, illumination the dark bedroom. Aaron blinked at the light and woke up, stretching his lazy bones.
“Sigh…Another day has come,” Aaron said to himself as he slowly got out of bed, checking if any owls have sent him the news or letters. As soon as he stepped out of his room, he was greeted by a girl lying on his couch in the living room readgin a Muggle novel.
“Good God, Judith! Have you ever heard of knocking?”
“Good morning to you too.”
It was a normal routine for Judith Cecelia Light, next door neighbour and best friend of Aaron Turunen, to just climb into his apartment through their connected verandah every morning. A 13-year-old lively robust girl with chocolate-brown hair and ruby-red eyes, she was a fellow student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Aaron had recently graduated from, under the house of Slytherin. She had known Aaron since he was in his 5th year at Hogwarts, and when she was officially enrolled into the school, she and Aaron were like peas and carrots. Despite the fact that she was a Slytherin, she insisted on making friends with Aaron who was a Gryffindor, and Harry and his gang, thus earned her reputation as a mudblood lover among her dorm mates.
Aaron, on the other hand, was an 18-year-old Muggle-born, son of Thomas and Ariel Turunen, with dark-brown hair and hazel-brown eyes. A fresh graduate from Hogwarts, Aaron Turunen was in the middle of an unemployment crisis. Though Muggle-born, he was known as one of the brightest and most powerful wizards next to Harry James Potter the Boy Who Lived, and had aced many fields during his time in Hogwarts. He was also recently elected as one of the members of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret underground freedom fighter team against the world’s most notorious wizard in the history: Lord Voldemort a.k.a. You-Know-Who a.k.a. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; and was a master in elemental magic and potions. You could say that he was like the male-version of Hermione Granger, only better.
“Do you really have to read that stupid Muggle book?” Aaron asked as he ruffled Judith’s hair, grimacing at the title of the book she was reading: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SUNNYDALE THE WHITE WITCH. “You know the Muggles think differently about the magical world comparing to the reality of the situation.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Judith grinned. “I get to laugh at their stupidity.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be joining the festivities of the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament? Your best friend Harry Potter and my best friend Cedric Diggory were competing against two leading prestigious schools and each other, you know. You should be celebrating with them instead of leaving school early to hang out with boring old me.”
“I don’t do gatherings and big tournaments like those,” Judith pouted, turning back to her book. “I’m not a crowd kind of person. It’s just a stupid game. No different than the Olympic Games in the Muggle world. I’d rather be here with you.”
Aaron sighed and shook his head. He knew the real reason why she did not want to join the festivities: she was an outcast among her Slytherin friends and no one would want to be alongside with her while she cheered for the school. Hermione and Ron, though also friends with her, never really warmed up very much to her because of her being a Slytherin, and Slytherins and Gryffindors have always been enemy houses since the dawn of time. The only people ever made an effort to befriend her were Harry and himself. She was a poor little girl caught in the middle of a crack, and there’s nothing she could do about it.
“Any papers for today?” Aaron looked around for any sign of the Daily Prophet.
“There, on the coffee table,” Judith replied, pointing without looking away from her book. “Your owl Lola just brought it in.”
“Thanks.”
Aaron picked up the Daily Prophet where Judith directed him to and began to flip through the headlines when the front page and its picture caught his eye. Soon the whole apartment was shaken by his exclamation.
“NO WAY!!!”
“What is it, Aaron?” Judith asked, finally distracted.
Aaron went over to the couch and showed her the headlines: TRAGEDY AT TRI-WIZARD TOURNAMENT. It spoke of a disastrous accident happening during the finals that killed one of the participants. They were even shocked to know that the participant killed was none other than Cedric Diggory, Aaron’s best friend.
“Oh God, that’s horrible! How did it happen?!” Judith exclaimed. There had never been heard of a death in Hogwarts for years and now this actually happened before her very eyes.
“ ‘Cedric Diggory, upon investigations on his body,’ ” Aaron read the article, “ ‘had been found to have sustained the Avada Kedavra curse, one of the Unforgivable Curses, although it has yet to be confirmed exactly the cause of death. Sources claim that a witness by the name Harry James Potter a.k.a. the Boy Who Lived claimed to have seen Cedric killed by the so-called Dark Lord, which of course was immediately regarded as a trauma-induced statement…’ ”
Aaron’s voice began to fade away as he dropped the paper, with the picture of Cedric and his father smiling at the camera. Judith noticed Aaron’s face had gone dark and hateful, and she began to worry.
“Aaron, you OK?” she asked, putting a hand on his face. “Who is this Dark Lord they’re talking about?”
“He’s Lord Voldemort, the most evil wizard known to everyone,” Aaron replied as he began to explain everything: from Voldemort’s dark awakenings to his monstrous atrocities committed throughout both the world of magic and Muggles alike, to his brief downfall after his encounter with Harry Potter, the famous Boy Who Lived, the only person ever in history to have survived the Avada Kedavra curse.
“You make him sound like he’s Hitler or something,” Judith said in an almost disbelief tone. Being brought up her whole life as a Muggle before discovering that she was adopted and was actually a pure-blood witch had made her rather new and ignorant to Hogwarts and the magical world’s culture in general. Being an outcast among her peers and being someone who mostly kept herself to herself do not help either to prepare her for the possibilities of a frightful evil comeback.
“Judith, he murdered Harry’s parents when he was a baby. Is that not much of a Hitler to you?”
“OK, now that’s bad.”
“And…one of his Death Eaters murdered mine,” he said sadly, instinctively rubbing the scar on his neck that served as a reminder of the day he witnessed his parents got tortured to death by the Cruciatus Curse.
“I know about Death Eaters. The news talked about them appearing during the Quidditch Games. I didn’t think they’d be related to Voldemort.”
“Now you do.”
“But is it true? Do you really think Voldemort killed Cedric the way Harry described it?”
Aaron nodded. “No one in their right mind would want to use an Unforgivable Curse intentionally on someone. You’d get arrested for it. It had to be him.”
“Shouldn’t you be verifying the facts with him? You are, after all, from the Order.”
“Can’t…I haven’t gotten the letter from Dumbledore yet.”
Judith picked up the paper and looked at Cedric’s picture with his father/ ever since she received the enrolment letter from Hogwarts and found out from her Muggle family that she was actually adopted all along, she had been curious about her wizard/witch lineage. Most importantly, since her Muggle mother told her that her real mother had passed away after she was born, she wondered a lot about the identity of her real father. The main question that often popped out of her head was: Why, when the world of magic is so much powerful and convenient than the dreary old Muggle world, her father never tried to come and look for her?
Guess it was one of the reasons why she related well to Aaron who also lost his parents at a young age before he could barely get to know them.
“Maybe I should go visit him and ask him. Like visiting a sick friend, in a way, but just helping you verify his story. I am close to him next to Ron and Mione after all.”
“I’ll go with you,” Aaron suggested, pocketing his trusted wand. “Information works best first-handed.”
“Let’s stop by at Diagon Alley,” Judith said as she put on her school robes that bore the badge of her Slytherin house. “I wanna buy some flowers for Harry. Flora always makes patients feel better.”
“OK then,” Aaron replied as he gets into his trench coat and fedora and put in his pocket watch. Judith grabbed a handful of Floo powder and waited for Aaron in the fireplace. As soon as he got ready she took his hand and shouted “Diagon Alley!” before dropping the Floo powder, sending them straight into the busy streets of the age-old Diagon Alley, the heart of the wizarding community.
“Diagon Alley,” Aaron took a deep breath and sighed. “Aye, it’s been 3 years since I’ve been here last.”
“The last time I’ve been here was last Christmas when I tried to get presents for Harry and the gang,” Judith chuckled humorously, trying to push aside the bitter memory of spending the final hours of Christmas alone in the common room. She went into a flower shop to buy some carnations for Harry while Aaron went to the wand shop, being his favourite place to hang out when he was a student. After her flower shopping, she searched for him there.
“Aah, reminds me of the day I got my wand.”
“Same,” Aaron said as he showed his wand to her. “Holly and phoenix feathers.”
“Cool! Nice design and colour,” Judith complimented as she took hers out as well. “Check out mine. Dragon heartstring and ash. Hmm…come to think of it, I met my first love here.”
“Your wand looks nice.”
“Thanks. Suddenly finding out that I’m a witch was quite terrifying for me. I didn’t want to have anything to do with this place actually. It’s because of meeting my first love here in this shop that led me to be willing to give up the Muggle life for this. It was he who changed my mind.”
“He who?” Aaron asked as they left the shop and walked towards the direction of Hogwarts.
“Potions Master Prof. Severus Snape,” Judith replied, blushing red. “He was my first love.”
Aaron suddenly stopped in his tracks, his eyes widened in disbelief. Prof. Snape, of all people? What was she thinking?
“What?” Judith asked, surprised by his sudden reaction.
“You had a crush on my favourite teacher?”
“Well…sorta…” Judith replied bashfully, twirling her finger around a stray hair on her head. “I met him for the first time when he was chit-chatting with Malfoy’s father outside the store.”
Lucius… Aaron thought, gripping a fist.
“I accidentally bumped into Snape and he gave me that sort of cold look that sent chills through my spine, but instead of going pale with fear, I actually blushed…And then I tried to confess my love one day to Snape during my 2nd year but he replied,” she imitated Snape’s voice for this, “ ‘Please concentrate more on your studies than your unbecoming infatuation over me’.
“I guess we’re not meant to be, but I still admire him from time to time,” she ended her story with a weak laugh. Rejection, even by her own house teacher, was not something she could easily stomach.
“Snape always liked how much of a hard worker I was,” Aaron replied, his tone sounding slightly jealous, “even though I was a Gryffindor.”
“Really now? Well, don’t you take advantage of being an Order member and monopolize my darling…Oh God, your hand’s bleeding!”
Had she not rambled on and on, she would have noticed that Aaron had growled at hearing Lucius Malfoy’s name being mentioned and had gripped his fist so hard it bled. Judith took his hand and saw that he had dug his nails through his palm and was bleeding crimson red.
“Yeah…It was when you mentioned Lucius, Malfoy’s father.”
Judith looked at him for a while, realizing what was going on before asking, “He’s the Death Eater you were talking abut, isn’t he?”
Aaron closed his eyes and nodded. Despite the fact that he knew the true nature of Lucius Malfoy, and witnessing him killing his parents even, there was never enough to prove him guilty. Lucius, together with his wealth and power, had convinced the Ministry of Magic so well about him serving the Dark Lord under the Imperius Curse that the Ministry was willing to fully pardon him and his family and accept him back into society. All records of his evil-doings were erased and he was rendered as innocent as an angel. There was nothing, not even his reputation as a powerful Muggle-born wizard, that could do to convict Lucius and put him behind Azkaban doors.
“I want justice…I want vengeance…but I don’t want to become evil like him…”
“I’m so sorry…” Judith replied as she instinctively brought Aaron’s wounds to her lips to suck off the blood like she always did when her brothers at home got hurt. Aaron started to turn bright red as he felt her lips and tongue trailing along his stinging wound, his heart pounding faster than a bullet train. Judith soon realized what she was doing and quickly cast a healing spell over his wounds, blushing red as well.
“We better get going…” Judith muttered as she turned around and continued walking, not daring to face him. He followed behind her, still blushing a little.
Somehow, deep within their hearts, they were glad for what just happened.
“Sigh…Another day has come,” Aaron said to himself as he slowly got out of bed, checking if any owls have sent him the news or letters. As soon as he stepped out of his room, he was greeted by a girl lying on his couch in the living room readgin a Muggle novel.
“Good God, Judith! Have you ever heard of knocking?”
“Good morning to you too.”
It was a normal routine for Judith Cecelia Light, next door neighbour and best friend of Aaron Turunen, to just climb into his apartment through their connected verandah every morning. A 13-year-old lively robust girl with chocolate-brown hair and ruby-red eyes, she was a fellow student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Aaron had recently graduated from, under the house of Slytherin. She had known Aaron since he was in his 5th year at Hogwarts, and when she was officially enrolled into the school, she and Aaron were like peas and carrots. Despite the fact that she was a Slytherin, she insisted on making friends with Aaron who was a Gryffindor, and Harry and his gang, thus earned her reputation as a mudblood lover among her dorm mates.
Aaron, on the other hand, was an 18-year-old Muggle-born, son of Thomas and Ariel Turunen, with dark-brown hair and hazel-brown eyes. A fresh graduate from Hogwarts, Aaron Turunen was in the middle of an unemployment crisis. Though Muggle-born, he was known as one of the brightest and most powerful wizards next to Harry James Potter the Boy Who Lived, and had aced many fields during his time in Hogwarts. He was also recently elected as one of the members of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret underground freedom fighter team against the world’s most notorious wizard in the history: Lord Voldemort a.k.a. You-Know-Who a.k.a. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; and was a master in elemental magic and potions. You could say that he was like the male-version of Hermione Granger, only better.
“Do you really have to read that stupid Muggle book?” Aaron asked as he ruffled Judith’s hair, grimacing at the title of the book she was reading: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SUNNYDALE THE WHITE WITCH. “You know the Muggles think differently about the magical world comparing to the reality of the situation.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Judith grinned. “I get to laugh at their stupidity.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be joining the festivities of the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament? Your best friend Harry Potter and my best friend Cedric Diggory were competing against two leading prestigious schools and each other, you know. You should be celebrating with them instead of leaving school early to hang out with boring old me.”
“I don’t do gatherings and big tournaments like those,” Judith pouted, turning back to her book. “I’m not a crowd kind of person. It’s just a stupid game. No different than the Olympic Games in the Muggle world. I’d rather be here with you.”
Aaron sighed and shook his head. He knew the real reason why she did not want to join the festivities: she was an outcast among her Slytherin friends and no one would want to be alongside with her while she cheered for the school. Hermione and Ron, though also friends with her, never really warmed up very much to her because of her being a Slytherin, and Slytherins and Gryffindors have always been enemy houses since the dawn of time. The only people ever made an effort to befriend her were Harry and himself. She was a poor little girl caught in the middle of a crack, and there’s nothing she could do about it.
“Any papers for today?” Aaron looked around for any sign of the Daily Prophet.
“There, on the coffee table,” Judith replied, pointing without looking away from her book. “Your owl Lola just brought it in.”
“Thanks.”
Aaron picked up the Daily Prophet where Judith directed him to and began to flip through the headlines when the front page and its picture caught his eye. Soon the whole apartment was shaken by his exclamation.
“NO WAY!!!”
“What is it, Aaron?” Judith asked, finally distracted.
Aaron went over to the couch and showed her the headlines: TRAGEDY AT TRI-WIZARD TOURNAMENT. It spoke of a disastrous accident happening during the finals that killed one of the participants. They were even shocked to know that the participant killed was none other than Cedric Diggory, Aaron’s best friend.
“Oh God, that’s horrible! How did it happen?!” Judith exclaimed. There had never been heard of a death in Hogwarts for years and now this actually happened before her very eyes.
“ ‘Cedric Diggory, upon investigations on his body,’ ” Aaron read the article, “ ‘had been found to have sustained the Avada Kedavra curse, one of the Unforgivable Curses, although it has yet to be confirmed exactly the cause of death. Sources claim that a witness by the name Harry James Potter a.k.a. the Boy Who Lived claimed to have seen Cedric killed by the so-called Dark Lord, which of course was immediately regarded as a trauma-induced statement…’ ”
Aaron’s voice began to fade away as he dropped the paper, with the picture of Cedric and his father smiling at the camera. Judith noticed Aaron’s face had gone dark and hateful, and she began to worry.
“Aaron, you OK?” she asked, putting a hand on his face. “Who is this Dark Lord they’re talking about?”
“He’s Lord Voldemort, the most evil wizard known to everyone,” Aaron replied as he began to explain everything: from Voldemort’s dark awakenings to his monstrous atrocities committed throughout both the world of magic and Muggles alike, to his brief downfall after his encounter with Harry Potter, the famous Boy Who Lived, the only person ever in history to have survived the Avada Kedavra curse.
“You make him sound like he’s Hitler or something,” Judith said in an almost disbelief tone. Being brought up her whole life as a Muggle before discovering that she was adopted and was actually a pure-blood witch had made her rather new and ignorant to Hogwarts and the magical world’s culture in general. Being an outcast among her peers and being someone who mostly kept herself to herself do not help either to prepare her for the possibilities of a frightful evil comeback.
“Judith, he murdered Harry’s parents when he was a baby. Is that not much of a Hitler to you?”
“OK, now that’s bad.”
“And…one of his Death Eaters murdered mine,” he said sadly, instinctively rubbing the scar on his neck that served as a reminder of the day he witnessed his parents got tortured to death by the Cruciatus Curse.
“I know about Death Eaters. The news talked about them appearing during the Quidditch Games. I didn’t think they’d be related to Voldemort.”
“Now you do.”
“But is it true? Do you really think Voldemort killed Cedric the way Harry described it?”
Aaron nodded. “No one in their right mind would want to use an Unforgivable Curse intentionally on someone. You’d get arrested for it. It had to be him.”
“Shouldn’t you be verifying the facts with him? You are, after all, from the Order.”
“Can’t…I haven’t gotten the letter from Dumbledore yet.”
Judith picked up the paper and looked at Cedric’s picture with his father/ ever since she received the enrolment letter from Hogwarts and found out from her Muggle family that she was actually adopted all along, she had been curious about her wizard/witch lineage. Most importantly, since her Muggle mother told her that her real mother had passed away after she was born, she wondered a lot about the identity of her real father. The main question that often popped out of her head was: Why, when the world of magic is so much powerful and convenient than the dreary old Muggle world, her father never tried to come and look for her?
Guess it was one of the reasons why she related well to Aaron who also lost his parents at a young age before he could barely get to know them.
“Maybe I should go visit him and ask him. Like visiting a sick friend, in a way, but just helping you verify his story. I am close to him next to Ron and Mione after all.”
“I’ll go with you,” Aaron suggested, pocketing his trusted wand. “Information works best first-handed.”
“Let’s stop by at Diagon Alley,” Judith said as she put on her school robes that bore the badge of her Slytherin house. “I wanna buy some flowers for Harry. Flora always makes patients feel better.”
“OK then,” Aaron replied as he gets into his trench coat and fedora and put in his pocket watch. Judith grabbed a handful of Floo powder and waited for Aaron in the fireplace. As soon as he got ready she took his hand and shouted “Diagon Alley!” before dropping the Floo powder, sending them straight into the busy streets of the age-old Diagon Alley, the heart of the wizarding community.
“Diagon Alley,” Aaron took a deep breath and sighed. “Aye, it’s been 3 years since I’ve been here last.”
“The last time I’ve been here was last Christmas when I tried to get presents for Harry and the gang,” Judith chuckled humorously, trying to push aside the bitter memory of spending the final hours of Christmas alone in the common room. She went into a flower shop to buy some carnations for Harry while Aaron went to the wand shop, being his favourite place to hang out when he was a student. After her flower shopping, she searched for him there.
“Aah, reminds me of the day I got my wand.”
“Same,” Aaron said as he showed his wand to her. “Holly and phoenix feathers.”
“Cool! Nice design and colour,” Judith complimented as she took hers out as well. “Check out mine. Dragon heartstring and ash. Hmm…come to think of it, I met my first love here.”
“Your wand looks nice.”
“Thanks. Suddenly finding out that I’m a witch was quite terrifying for me. I didn’t want to have anything to do with this place actually. It’s because of meeting my first love here in this shop that led me to be willing to give up the Muggle life for this. It was he who changed my mind.”
“He who?” Aaron asked as they left the shop and walked towards the direction of Hogwarts.
“Potions Master Prof. Severus Snape,” Judith replied, blushing red. “He was my first love.”
Aaron suddenly stopped in his tracks, his eyes widened in disbelief. Prof. Snape, of all people? What was she thinking?
“What?” Judith asked, surprised by his sudden reaction.
“You had a crush on my favourite teacher?”
“Well…sorta…” Judith replied bashfully, twirling her finger around a stray hair on her head. “I met him for the first time when he was chit-chatting with Malfoy’s father outside the store.”
Lucius… Aaron thought, gripping a fist.
“I accidentally bumped into Snape and he gave me that sort of cold look that sent chills through my spine, but instead of going pale with fear, I actually blushed…And then I tried to confess my love one day to Snape during my 2nd year but he replied,” she imitated Snape’s voice for this, “ ‘Please concentrate more on your studies than your unbecoming infatuation over me’.
“I guess we’re not meant to be, but I still admire him from time to time,” she ended her story with a weak laugh. Rejection, even by her own house teacher, was not something she could easily stomach.
“Snape always liked how much of a hard worker I was,” Aaron replied, his tone sounding slightly jealous, “even though I was a Gryffindor.”
“Really now? Well, don’t you take advantage of being an Order member and monopolize my darling…Oh God, your hand’s bleeding!”
Had she not rambled on and on, she would have noticed that Aaron had growled at hearing Lucius Malfoy’s name being mentioned and had gripped his fist so hard it bled. Judith took his hand and saw that he had dug his nails through his palm and was bleeding crimson red.
“Yeah…It was when you mentioned Lucius, Malfoy’s father.”
Judith looked at him for a while, realizing what was going on before asking, “He’s the Death Eater you were talking abut, isn’t he?”
Aaron closed his eyes and nodded. Despite the fact that he knew the true nature of Lucius Malfoy, and witnessing him killing his parents even, there was never enough to prove him guilty. Lucius, together with his wealth and power, had convinced the Ministry of Magic so well about him serving the Dark Lord under the Imperius Curse that the Ministry was willing to fully pardon him and his family and accept him back into society. All records of his evil-doings were erased and he was rendered as innocent as an angel. There was nothing, not even his reputation as a powerful Muggle-born wizard, that could do to convict Lucius and put him behind Azkaban doors.
“I want justice…I want vengeance…but I don’t want to become evil like him…”
“I’m so sorry…” Judith replied as she instinctively brought Aaron’s wounds to her lips to suck off the blood like she always did when her brothers at home got hurt. Aaron started to turn bright red as he felt her lips and tongue trailing along his stinging wound, his heart pounding faster than a bullet train. Judith soon realized what she was doing and quickly cast a healing spell over his wounds, blushing red as well.
“We better get going…” Judith muttered as she turned around and continued walking, not daring to face him. He followed behind her, still blushing a little.
Somehow, deep within their hearts, they were glad for what just happened.
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