Chapter Text
“Oh blast it, doesn’t the weather know that it’s not fall yet?” The ginger-haired woman shivered, reaching out to place a hand on either one of her eldest sons’ arms, rubbing a little warmth into them.
“‘Ma, I’m fine,” Apollo shrugged off his mom’s hands, brushing his hands over the wool fabric of his light coat to rid it of any wrinkles she’d creased in. He ran a hand through his strawberry blond locks of hair, straightening them out, before she could try to mess it up, too.
“I’m alright as well, mother, thank you,” Loki said, patting his mother’s hand with his much warmer one, offering a rare half-smile. He pushed his half-circle glasses up his nose, stuffing his hands back in his pockets.
“I’ll take a little extra warmth, if you’re offering,” Another voice piped up, belonging to the woman’s white haired young niece.
Coella smiled warmly at her favorite (only, to her knowledge) aunt, rubbing her chilled hands together in a vain attempt at warming them up. Immediately, before her aunt could even move, the weight of a large, heavy, fur-lined wool coat came to rest on her shoulders. Her papa’s large hands patted it down onto her frame with a satisfied smile. His baby wasn’t catching a cold anytime soon.
The girl squawked in indignation as her three cousins all giggled at how silly she looked, drowning in her much larger father’s coat.
“Oh Gerhart, that’s just mean,” her aunt admonished, though she was giggling lightly behind her hand.
The auburn haired man’s eyebrows raised in genuine confusion.
“What? She said she was cold! You don’t want her to catch something on the way back to Hogwarts, do you?” the man replied, crossing his arms as he and his younger sister began to bicker.
Coella turned towards her other cousin, the youngest of her aunt’s children, Saoirse. She had fiery red hair piled up in curls on her head, and twinkling, light brown eyes that looked pinkish gold in the sunlight. She was two years younger than Coella—and would be entering her fifth year, this fall.
“You do look pretty silly, but I heard ‘men’s coats are like, coming into fashion, so maybe you’re just ahead of the times,” Saoirse said, her eyes wrinkling as she grinned at her cousin.
The white haired girl couldn’t help but snort behind her hand, as she cuddled a little deeper into the warmth of her papa’s coat—just because it looked silly, didn’t mean it wasn’t perfectly toasty.
“Maybe you’re right,” she replied, and both girls shared a silly little giggle.
The metal snapping of a pocketwatch closing alerted Coella to the presence of her Uncle Chiharu, a man who often took a backseat to these kinds of social gatherings—her aunt had disclosed once that he was actually quite shy, and it made Coella feel quite a bit less intimidated in his presence.
Chiharu flushed a little when he realized he’d inadvertently caught the attention of his niece in a rather rude way, as he stuffed the golden timepiece back into his coat.
“Sorry,” he coughed, lightly scratching at one of his sideburns as his attention moved elsewhere.
Coella could tell her cousins got their cat-like features from him—the way his hooded eyes tilted up at the corners, lips curling mischievously as he tugged at the ribbon on his wife’s hat, before innocently stepping away and whistling idly as the woman turned this way and that to find the source of the disturbance.
Well, Loki and Saoirse took after him in the face, Apollo was 100% a momma’s boy, from the looks of it, as he gently readjusted the ribbon on her hat for her, and smiled affectionately when she thanked him. He’d gotten her rounded face, and her thinner nose.
The five of them made such a lovely family, Coella couldn’t help but feel her heart ache a little as she watched them interact, standing beside her papa. A man who looked nothing like her.
Nobody in her family looked like her.
“Whatcha thinking about, bunny?” Her father asked, head tilting as he grinned softly down at her.
“My family,” Coella replied candidly, a bittersweet note in her voice—she’d never been able to lie to her father, and certainly not on the spot.
Gerhart raised a brow, at the subtle difference between her using ‘my’ instead of ‘our’. He was painfully perceptive when he wanted to be.
“They’re still your family,” her father replied, meaningfully as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a soft squeeze.
Coella had been feeling a weird, new sense of alienation. She supposed with the crisis of her fifth year truly behind her, and her sixth year going off without any dramatics, her brain had chosen to create its own problems as she went into her seventh.
Her seventh year…
It was insane to think that she’d truly made it this far—she’d managed to cram enough to pass her O.W.L.s with… mostly passing scores. She’d had to retake Professor Binns’ class last year, but she’d passed this time. Now all she had to do was do it again—with her N.E.W.T.s.
And then… that would be it.
This was her last year in school, before she’d be free to do whatever she wanted with the rest of her life.
It was daunting, to say the least.
She was no closer to making a real decision for her career than she was two years ago, and the only difference was that now she actually had to make that decision within the next nine or so months, before graduation.
No pressure, though.
Well, genuinely. As much as she wanted to have it all together as soon as she graduated, she knew her papa would never force her to go out and get a job. He still had it in his heart that she’d go to college and become a professor like him, gender be damned.
If only it were that easy…
“Alright kids, let’s get you all to platform 9¾, the train should be arriving soon!” Lorelei called, corralling all of her rowdy children (namely, Apollo and Saoirse) into the front to make sure she had her eye on them.
As she did, Coella ended up near the back of the group, between her Uncle Chiharu and her papa, her hands fiddling a little with her trunk.
Apollo began to struggle with his own trunk, and Gerhart broke off to help him, leaving her with her quiet uncle.
She chewed on her lip, looking up at him. It was hard to believe that such a peaceful-looking man used to be an Auror. He’d retired from the field before she’d even discovered her magic, which was why she’d never suspected that he was in any kind of dangerous career. Besides their kids attending Hogwarts, he and her aunt lived very peaceful, near-muggle lives.
“Do you know anything about my father?” Coella blurted out, startling the poor man out of his apparent reverie. “M- My real father, I mean.”
“Gerhart is your real father,” Chiharu replied, immediately, looking down at her, a note of sadness in his light brown eyes. “He raised you, doesn’t that make him more real than…”
“I- I know he’s your brother,” Coella replied, eyebrows drawing together as a little frown pulled at her lips.
Obviously she wasn’t trying to replace the man who raised her, but she wanted to know the man who had sired her! Or at least know… something. Anything more than she knew, only that his name was Ryu and he was her uncle’s older brother.
She couldn’t remember when that bit of information had been revealed to her—perhaps it had been when she’d gone home for Christmas, her fifth year. That was when she’d been introduced to the cousins she’d, apparently, been attending Hogwarts with.
Someone—either her father, or her aunt—had told her that she’d been abandoned by her birth father, her uncle’s brother, and since Chiharu couldn’t take her in, she’d been given to Chiharu’s wife’s brother, her papa.
She also didn’t know why she’d decided to bring it up now, as she was minutes away from leaving for the year. But her uncle was difficult to be alone with, as he always stuck by his wife’s side when he was present at these gatherings and rarely talked much, she’d felt like this was her only chance.
“...Don’t you know where he is? A- At all? Like… if I wanted to send him a letter?” Coella continued to press, hands tightening around one of the handles of her trunk.
The man was very obviously growing increasingly uncomfortable with the line of questioning, and his inability to answer.
“I don’t, and you’d… really be better off forgetting about him. Really, don’t go chasing after his ghost- you won’t find him unless he wants to be found, and you don’t want to be swept up in any of his messes,” Chiharu replied, his voice a little distant as he smiled sadly down at his niece. “He doesn’t deserve your time of day, Ella. Last I’ve heard, he’s somewhere in Japan, chasing around dragons and the like. Best case, he’d ignore you. Worst, he’d ask you for money.”
Japan? Dragons?
It was more than she knew about him! Why was he being so stingy with information?!
“But-”
“Go on, uh… focus on your studies. Lorelei’s calling for you,” Chiharu said, giving her a very gentle nudge on the shoulder.
Coella pressed her lips into a pout as she strode forward, towards platform 9¾ with her family.
She departed from her family with a few tight hugs- despite arriving at Kings Cross Station early, they were still fighting not to miss the train, a last minute scramble for Loki’s backup pair of glasses and one of Saoirse’s missing robes ended in her Uncle Chiharu having to Apparate back home to retrieve both, before they were all set to truly depart.
In the panic of possibly being late, Coella had forgotten to return her papa’s coat, only having realized when she was settled in a train car with Saoirse, that she was still swathed in heavy fur and wool. Toasty warm, but what if her papa needed it back?
“This year is going to be great,” Saoirse commented idly as she stuffed a chocolate frog in her mouth, glancing out the window of the train, at the rolling countryside that was whizzing by outside. “I already know I’m going to pass my O.W.L.s, all I really have to worry about is Quidditch. I heard the Ravenclaw team is going to be stacked this year, Cassiopeia told me so.”
Cassiopeia was a girl in Saoirse’s year, a Ravenclaw with a rather dry personality, and very little interest in anything outside of Astronomy and Arithmancy classes.
“Did she really?” Coella asked, raising her brow as she settled into her seat, cozy.
“Mmhm! Well, no, not unprompted. I bugged her with letters all summer until she finally asked one of her housemates and they’d said that Ravenclaw was going to be stacked.”
Then, a new voice joined the conversation, as the door to their little car slid open. “Even with all of the broom upgrades in the world, they still cannot compete with Gryffindor’s raw talent.”
“Natty!” Coella greeted happily, sliding over in her seat so the other girl could sit with her. Behind Natsai, Poppy Sweeting had shyly entered the car, too, taking a seat beside Saoirse.
“That’s what I’m saying!” Saoirse replied with a confident laugh. “I’ve been practicing at home with my brother- Apollo- and he said I have a good chance of making captain this year.”
“That’s lovely,” Coella and Poppy both said at the same time, and the small group of girls burst into giggles when they had.
The two less sporty girls had a little trouble keeping up with Natsai and Coella’s cousin as the two of them launched into a spirited discussion about their projections for Quidditch the coming year.
It made the train ride to Hogwarts pass by so quickly, it was as if they’d blinked and suddenly the train was pulling to a stop at the station closest to the castle. The four girls were still chatting as they got off the train, and into the carriages that would take them to the castle proper. The three older girls grew a little somber at the sight of the thestrals, while the youngest, Saoirse, continued to chatter on, unaware.
They only split off with promises to meet up again later once they made it into the central hall, all of them being ushered off to their house tables.
Coella immediately brightened up at the sight of her Slytherin friends, who had miraculously arrived before the rest of them. Likely because they lived just a little ways away from the castle.
Her eyes zeroed in on one boy in particular, with his blond hair and pale green eyes, she’d always be able to pick him out in a crowd. It helped that he’d grown so much taller, by age seventeen, he was a decent few inches taller than her and Anne, now.
“Ominis!” She’d greeted, first, unable to help herself from throwing her arms around her friend with a sweet laugh from the moment he’d stood up from the table.
The boy had stiffened for barely a second before he’d hugged her in return, chuckling awkwardly.
“It’s good to hear your voice again,” Ominis replied, smiling down at her as he let go of her so Anne could throw her arms around the girl.
Anne pressed a couple sweet kisses to both of Coella’s cheeks, making the poor girl fluster with a giggle. “It’s good to see you too, Annie.”
“I’ve missed you! How come you sent Ominis so many more letters than me? I thought we were partners! Partners in girlhooood!” Anne whined, tugging Coella over to sit down at the table with them.
Sebastian hadn’t risen to greet her, and as she sat down, he only nodded towards her, his lips pressed into a thin line. They hadn’t exchanged any letters over the summer months, and it was only due to his own stubbornness.
They’d gotten into a big fight right before summer break, and Coella had sent an olive branch of a letter within the first few weeks of being home, after she’d already exchanged a dozen letters with Ominis, and half a dozen with Anne. Sebastian never sent a reply, and that had been that. If he didn’t want to talk, she wasn’t going to break her wrist begging him to communicate with her.
“How is his handwriting still neater than yours?” Coella replied to Anne, smiling light-heartedly as the girl dramatically acted as if those words had physically wounded her.
She wasn’t sure why her correspondence with Ominis had picked up to that point, though. The summer between their fifth and sixth year they hadn’t sent many letters, she’d mostly written to Anne and a little to Sebastian.
Then, right at the beginning of last summer, Coella had been going through her things and realized she’d brought home an extra scarf. With Ominis’ name stitched to the inside, it was easy to tell whose it was—she still remembered the way her entire face had burst into flames, and she’d hid the scarf like it was incriminating.
With how protective her father was, it practically was incriminating. She’d had to get together with her aunt to figure out how to mail it out discreetly, attaching a letter of apology and a general, polite, ‘how’s your summer?’ to the package.
Despite how close they were at school, she hadn’t honestly expected him to respond. When she received a letter with a plain green wax seal, she’d opened it up expecting it to be a reply to one she’d sent to Sebastian. She could always tell the difference between the siblings’ letters because Sebastian used plain green, and Anne liked to have fun with pretty metallic colored waxes, pressing little flowers and herbs into the wax, too. Not to mention the fact that Anne’s letters were actually delivered to the house Coella lived in with her papa. The ones from Sebastian were delivered to her aunt’s, and her aunt would forward them directly to her. She couldn’t risk her papa getting his hands on a letter from a boy.
But instead, in a very neat scrawl, was Ominis’ letter in reply to her’s.
From there, well… they hadn’t stopped trading letters for the next three months- right up until leaving for Hogwarts.
Getting to see his face after so long was refreshing, and with his saying it was nice to hear her voice, she had to imagine they were both feeling the same way…
Coella hurriedly reined that thought in as she settled at the table beside Anne, across from Ominis, a nervous grin tugging at her lips.
Anne was rubbing her hands together, mischief in her expression already. The new first years hadn’t even been sorted into their house yet and she was already ready to give them a proper Anne Sallow welcome.
“This is the last year for- for anything !” Anne despaired. “I have to make it really good!”
“She’s been brainstorming since last week, I’m honestly a little frightened for the lives of the incoming first years,” Ominis said with a little chuckle. “She hasn’t disclosed anything about the prank though.”
“Yeah, because you’re a traitor! ” Anne accused with the point of her finger—as if the boy could see the offending motion.
“Becoming a Prefect does not make me a traitor.”
“Whatever, traitor!”
Coella was incredibly proud of Ominis for that achievement, though she didn’t speak up in this instance for fear of divine retribution in the form of Anne’s wrath. The boy had told her in one of his letters that he hoped to get the position, and judging by Anne’s confident accusation of him being a ‘traitor’, he had likely gotten. it.
The conversation lapsed into silence, where Sebastian would have ordinarily piped up in Anne’s defense, instead he remained silent, resting his chin on his palm and staring up at the front of the room. First years were arriving and lining up to be sorted.
In Sebastian’s uncharacteristic bout of silence, Coella and Anne shared a look—Coella’s eyebrows raised in question, and Anne just shrugged and shook her head with an amicable expression that said ‘I don’t know either’.
They let the issue drop as the sorting ceremony started up, watching happily as a good chunk of the new first years got sorted into Slytherin—new victims, Anne called them. Coella didn’t share in the House pride, but she was happy for Anne (if not a little sorry for the first years).
In the year or so that had passed previously, Coella had certainly gotten more comfortable in her place in Slytherin, for as much as she still didn’t quite identify with the House’s central traits. Part of her still considered herself a Hufflepuff—a point of contention between her and Sebastian, who had pointed out multiple times that she’s a traitor for putting up a Hufflepuff banner in her Room of Requirement.
Which had been funny at first but as he continued to bring it up as if it were something that truly bothered him, the more Coella had started getting irritated with his needling. It was her Room of Requirement!
In any case, she certainly didn’t find herself to be very cunning or ambitious. Not with how she was probably the only one in her house who still didn’t know what they were going to do after graduating…
Coella blinked, and suddenly there was food in front of them. The sorting ceremony was over, and it was time for the feast. That was one way to pass the time.
Before she knew it, they were departing from the Great Hall, barely getting ahead of the hoard of first years trying not to get lost on their way to the dorms.
As Anne chattered animatedly to her brother, Coella fell in step with Ominis, smiling lightly to herself.
“Congratulations on getting to be a Prefect, I- um, I knew you’d get it,” She said, a little shyly. “Oh! And- I didn’t get to tell you, when I was shopping for books for this year, I managed to find a copy of that book you told me about in one of your letters. They really did only have it in Wizard book stores, ‘cause my papa took me to like 3 different muggle stores with no luck,” Coella rambled, clasping her hands together as they walked. Like bringing up a new topic would erase the awkwardness of her very genuine congratulations.
“Ah, that makes sense. If I’m remembering correctly, the author was a bit of a purist, hated muggles. Have you started it yet? That’s an ideology you can kind of pick up on in his writing if you look close enough. His work is a little controversial because of it, but this story is well written.” Ominis replied easily.
Coella nodded a little, she’d definitely have to take that into consideration as she read. While discussing books and stories, she’d found that Ominis liked to read between the lines more than she did—while she could enjoy a story at the surface, he’d always have some fascinating things to say about what was really going on. All of the ‘symbols’, ‘themes’, and ‘allegories’ were lost on her, but when she and Ominis came together to discuss it after, it was like he opened her eyes. She loved going back and rereading stories after discussing them with him, because it completely shifted her perspective.
Plus, he had a way of explaining things that just… made sense to her. It was a skill that so far, only her father possessed. Coella knew for sure that if it had been anyone else trying to explain the main theme of Anna Karenina, she would have felt like she was listening to the original Russian version of it.
The excitement of getting to talk about it to Ominis made Coella read much more than she ever had before, too. Her papa had no idea why she’d randomly gotten really into reading over the summer between her fifth and sixth years.
“Did you pick up a copy of Sense and Sensibility?” Coella asked after a beat, fiddling with the sleeve of her robe. It, and many of Jane Austen’s other works were recommended to her by her aunt. “I thought… um, I thought we could read it together, I haven’t actually gotten a chance to read it just yet.”
Ominis pulled a face, a little grimace of regret, as he tilted his head towards her—making Coella’s stomach sink a little. She’d been so excited to read it with him! Her aunt had recommended it specifically to read with him-
“I hope you can forgive me,” Ominis replied, and Coella had already prepared herself for the disappointment—before the boy had pulled a paperback book out of the sleeve of his robe, and suddenly the poor girl was more confused than disappointed. “…As I’ve already read a few pages, but I’m sure I can hold off while you catch up.”
“Ominis!” Coella giggled as the boy grinned softly in her direction, snickering at his own little joke. “I thought you were going to tell me- oh you think you’re so funny-“
Ominis continued to laugh, shaking his head at her.
They bumped shoulders together as they walked, continuing to laugh and chat well after they’d made it to the dorm. They moved themselves to occupy a little couch close to the windows that looked out at the bottom of the murky lake. Just the two of them.
Other students milled about—most notably a little group of first years trying to spot a mermaid, but to Ominis and Coella, they were the only two in the room…