Legacies

A Quiet Christmas

Christmas with the Oswells was once again quiet and sullen. Since the previous year had Romina staying at Hogwarts, Sage and Lyonel both wanted to give their niece a good Christmas just like they used to! So, when Romina returned home for the holidays with an even deeper reservation...things got tough. They truly believed that returning to school would have helped Romina get out of that funk she'd gotten into during the summer. They didn't know it could get worse.

First of all, they were shocked to find her hair completely changed. Lyonel had raged about it, and Romina had argued back. Eventually, Sage calmed the two and allowed Romina to keep her hair...at least for the time being. But in the end, neither Sage nor Lyonel could understand what brought this sudden desire to change herself...until Arden told them what happened at Hogwarts. And she did not keep it clean.

"That bitch Pansy Parkinson distributed pictures of Rom's parents to our entire House!"

The girl sat in the kitchen with Sage and Lyonel listening to the story. Romina was up in her room, probably sleeping or just laying in bed as she'd done for the past days. It didn't matter who she would hear, Romina never came down.

"I didn't think kids could be so cruel," Sage straightened herself up in her chair. "But then again, the Parkinsons were always a stingy family always looking for a quick way into the spotlight. Seems inheritance was strong in this girl."

"Parkinson was always annoying and rude, but this act was just...cruel," Arden continued with her story. "None of us knew that Romina looked a lot like her parents...but Pansy made sure of that."

"Romina must have found that photograph of her parents in the attic," Lyonel said, vividly remembering him being the one to send her up there last summer in the first place.

"Had she never really seen her parents before?" Arden asked them.

Sage and Lyonel glanced at each other, uneasily.

Arden's eyebrows raised. "Seriously?"

"Romina's always been very adamant that she does not want anything to do with her parents," Sage explained. "We thought that giving into her way would be better for her."

"If you ask me, she got the shock of her life last summer then," Arden said, blowing out a breath, "Because she looks a lot like them — especially her mother."

"We need to figure out a way to help Romina," Sage put her hands together and pressed them against her lips. She was worried sick over her niece and afraid of what Romina might do in a desperate moment.

"It's going to be really hard," Arden admitted with a sigh. "The whole school probably got a glimpse of the pictures before we burned them. I'm sure Pansy made copies for the train ride back."

"Burned them?" the two adults had not listened much after those words.

Arden nodded. "Mhm, burned them. Daphne, Carolinha and I collected the pictures in our common room and then Draco, Angel and myself burned them afterwards. I made sure to give Pansy a good punch across the face before leaving. Theodore had to sort of pull me back. That Blaise just watched and laughed."

"Oh...Arden..." Sage said, probably meaning to scold but the smile twitching at the corner of her lips gave her away.

"Thank you for everything," Lyonel said, admittedly feeling guilty for questioning where some of those friendship associations of Romina's might lead to. While the Parkinson girl didn't surprise him much, the Malfoy boy did.

Arden pushed her chair back and got up. "Can I see Romina? It's Christmas, afterall...maybe I can get her to come down and open presents like last year."