~Chapter 10- The Easter Holidays~

It had been so long since I'd seen my family. I normally saw them at Christmas but the Yule Ball took that away. However, over the Easter holidays I took the Hogwarts Express home. As soon as I stepped off onto Platform 9 ¾, it was immediate that I'd been missed. Dora ran up to me and gave me a hug so tight I felt the air being pushed out of me.

"Linds!" she said. "It's been forever! I haven't seen you for eight months! How is everything? I want to know all about the tasks - I've read about them in the Prophet but I want to hear everything first-hand."

"Let her breathe, Nymphadora," Andromeda's voice said. Dora stepped away from me and I caught sight of each of them - Ted, Andromeda, and Dora, her hair in a turquoise ponytail today.

"I'm fine," I said. "But I have a lot to tell you."

"Then let's get home so we can hear everything," Andromeda said.

Over dinner that night, we shared our stories. Ted and Andromeda told about their lives at home: how Andromeda had been busy keeping the house spotless as usual while Ted was his lazy self. Dora told about her job at the Ministry and how she'd decided that turquoise was currently her favorite hair color. I told them all how I'd been doing at school and gave them detailed stories about the tasks. Then my latest concern popped into my head - Mr. Crouch's absence. I asked Dora if she knew anything about this.

"No, I don't," she answered. "I didn't know he'd been gone at all."

"They all say he's ill," I replied. "But I don't see how he can be sick all the time."

"He could have a chronic illness," she suggested lightly.

"If he had a serious chronic illness, he wouldn't have been a judge, would he?"

She shrugged her shoulders, reaching for the vegetables and spilling them over the tablecloth in the process. "It's strange. I'll tell you if I find out anything."

Later that evening, I was in my room eating the white chocolate truffles I'd received for Easter. Andromeda had made them homemade; therefore they were better than anything you could buy at Honeydukes. I stared blankly at my wall and popped another piece into my mouth when the door burst open and Dora came in.

"Hey," she said.

"Hi." I didn't look up, but took another bite of chocolate.

"So. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

"Tell you?" I looked at her and lowered my eyebrows. "I told you everything over dinner."

"Come on, Lyra. You know what I'm talking about. You were being extremely vague over our journal entries, and I can't say I blame you in case it fell into wrong hands, but now you can tell me in person. What happened at the ball? Tell me what's between you and this Neville guy." She gave me a sly smile.

"Oh, no. No, no, no. You don't get it. I went to the ball with him and that was it. Nothing more. We're friends now, but we're not ... going out or anything."

She looked slightly disappointed. "But if there was anybody ... "

"You'd know," I said. "But that's not going to happen. I'm ... busy with school and all. You know how it is."

"Lame excuse," she said with the wave of her hand. "You'll be even busier next year; it's your O.W.L. year."

"Fine! Dora, you know I can't have a boyfriend anyway. You know who I am, and no one else can find out about that. If I got close to somebody, they'd know."

Now she looked at me sympathetically. "But that doesn't mean - "

"Yes, it does! Don't you get it? People cringe when they see my face, okay? I know you can make yourself as attractive as you want, but when people see me, they see the face of not one, but two Death Eaters! It scares them, all right? There's nothing I can do to help this, either. That's just the way it is and that's how it's always going to be."

She sighed. "All right, then."

"And I suppose the fact that I actually have a friend now means nothing to you."

She looked hurt. "You have friends. What about ... er ... Harry Potter?"

"Right. Famous Harry Potter wants to be friends with an outcast like me."

"Why do you have to be so negative all the time? Lighten up a little."

I rolled my eyes and ate another truffle.

"We haven't seen each other for months. Hey, why don't you come to my room with me?"

I followed her to her room, which was completely different from mine. Her walls were each painted lime green and were covered in posters of the Weird Sisters. She also had writing utensils, papers (which oddly looked like they were from the Auror office), tubes of lipstick and other makeup, various articles of clothing, and old copies of the Prophet littered all over her floor. Dora was like the seven-year-old who was often told to clean her room but never obeyed her parents.

I threw a pink sweater off a chair sat down on it. "What is it?"

"We have plenty of time. We should play wizard chess while we catch up."

I shrugged. "That's fine."

She pulled up a small table and another chair, and the game began. Flicking her wand, she turned on her Wireless and we listened to the Weird Sisters' latest hit. When that was over, Celestina Warbeck's most recent came on, a sappy song called ‘My Heart Burns with the Heat of Incendio.'

"I can't stand her!" Dora exclaimed after only a few bars (Celestina hadn't even reached the chorus yet), turning the Wireless off. "Let's listen to something else."

She left her seat and manually got up and turned on some round device, unlike anything I'd ever seen before, that began to play unfamiliar music.

"What is that?" I asked.

"It's a radio," she said. "It's like a Muggle Wireless. I've been listening to Muggle music lately and it's better than you'd expect. They have a huge variety. It's not all Weird Sisters and Celestina Warbeck. Anyway, let's get back to the game."

We played, we talked, we listened. Dora seemed somewhat disappointed with my conversation when I went on about how exams were coming up and how Mr. Crouch's disappearance was just one of the few strange occurrences. She acted as though she wanted to hear something more exciting.

"I mean, it's strange, isn't it? Harry's name in the Goblet, Mr. Crouch being absent, the Mark at the World Cup, Snape and Karkaroff's discussion ... do you think something's going on?"

She shrugged as she ordered her chess piece to destroy mine.

"Dora! Did you even hear me?"

"What? Oh, sorry. Well, it's certainly is strange, but who knows? This stuff's been happening all over since Harry Potter's first year. He claims You-Know-Who was trying to get the Sorcerer's Stone three years ago, but for all we know, You-Know-Who could be dead."

Furious, I said, "You're an Auror! You're supposed to care more about this stuff! What if something's going on and we need to be reading the signs more carefully?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "Please, you're on holiday; can't we just enjoy a game of chess for once?"

I let out a frustrated moan, then, calming down slightly, said, "Dora ... there is one thing, though. Lately, my wrist - you know, the one that hurt at the World Cup - has been hurting and throbbing. It's in the same place."

She looked at me seriously. "Hmmm. Well, I think you should get medical help. You could - "

"No!" I screamed. "It's not medical, it's magic! Dark magic! It's like I have a trace of the Mark! Why won't you believe me?"

"Fine!" she yelled, actually standing up from her chair so quickly that she knocked the chess board off the table, causing the pieces to fall to the floor and shatter. "But I don't know what to do about that! You know I haven't been an Auror for even a year yet, so why do you expect me to know every little detail about Dark Magic? I'm not perfect, Lyra!"

I stared at her for a moment. Finally, I said. "I know you're not. Never mind. I ... I didn't mean - I'm just - I don't know ... worried."

"It's all right," she said soothingly. "But if something's coming, it will eventually come, and we'll just have to deal with it."

Her tone scared me. That was it; I was sure of it now. Something huge was coming, and it would probably be soon. She - as the rest of the Aurors - had been reading the signs as well.

But how would it affect me?