From the moment her father's ute pulled into the familiar gravel driveway, the Christmas holidays began to pass by in a furious blur. Her encounter with Scorpius had left her with an awful cold, but her parents seemed genuinely relieved that she was enjoying some aspect of the school.

"I'll order you parts for the car," her mum said over dinner one night, as she passed a plate of roast vegetables across the table. "But you have to promise that you'll put more effort into studying next year."

Sariah sighed. "It's not like I don't try, but-"

"Sweetie, we got a letter from your Head of House last week," her father said. "You've been getting more P's than A's in your practise tests all year; besides Muggle Studies. And frankly, I think that's almost cheating: of course, you know what electricity does. How could anyone not?"

"Fine! I'll study more, okay?"

Her father nodded seriously. "Good. Because if your grades don't improve, how are you going to get into the sixth and seventh years? You've been given so many opportunities, don't you want to be the first person in our entire family to finish high school?"

"I do," she said quietly. 

Her father stabbed at the fish on his plate, smouldering silently.

They wanted to be so proud of her, Sariah knew that. It felt like an icy hand had wrapped itself around her stomach, and was squeezing tighter and tighter every second. A Hogwarts dropout, that would be awful. She'd probably have to slink back into the Muggle world. It'd be a kindness to just obliviate her memories of it, so she wouldn't have to remember that magic existed. 

"May I be excused?" she asked quietly. "I have some essays to write."

The days just seemed to get shorter and shorter after that. Between her attempts at homework and helping out in the workshop - realigning car axils and refitting brake pads - there was barely enough time in the day to catch up on the four months of blockbusters she had missed.

After lunch one day, she flicked absentmindedly onto Youtube. The channels had lost their appeal, as she didn't understand most of the references now. What she really wanted to do was go to the movies and see something on the big screen. The last thing she'd seen was in July:  Aquaman, a couple of days before she'd left for Hogwarts. She'd seen that with Jerome though. Sariah paused the video on her screen and opened Messenger. A trail of unreplied messages she'd sent him filled the screen. They'd been quite close before her first year of Hogwarts but despite her best efforts, he'd drifted away from her, answering her with one-word responses, if at all.

"Stupid magic school," she muttered under her breath, before sending him another message: 'Happy Holidays! I'm back at home for another couple of days if you want to hang out sometime?'

After what felt like hours of glaring at her Charms textbook, she checked her phone. Like all her other messages, it wasn't even read.  Sariah frowned at the wall of unchecked messages on her screen. She was almost tempted to make the trek to his house and knock at his door, but the inkling fear of rejection kept her away.

The day before the Hogwarts Express was due to depart, Sariah reluctantly admitted that Jerome wasn't going to reply. She went the cinema alone, staying for two lonesome movies: the first part of marvel's Infinity war, and Sony's newest attempt to reboot Spiderman, this time in animated form. Spiderman was tediously average, as she'd suspected it would be, but it was the walk home from the bus stop that made her feel most isolated. This was the time where they would usually trash talk the movie together, making light of its plot: from casting decisions to the generally ridiculous coincidences. Silence was her companion and it followed her home as she walked along the cracked footpath.

To distract herself, she thought about her car in the woods. It probably the only thing in existence that was more lonely and desolate than her; rusted and broken, abandoned and rotting underneath a tree. Comparing yourself to a car in that situation probably wasn't an indication of mental stability, she mused. But the temptation was there... if she could fix it, maybe she could make road trips to visit her parents and Jerome during the weekends. If she were able to make impromptu trips to Hogsmeade or take joyrides in the moonlight, surely she'd be able to find someone who wanted to do that with her.

The sun had given up lighting the cold December day. As she walked, the trees lining the footpath drained to shades of grey and black, as did the sky. The darkness leached the colour out of her surroundings until her neighbourhood resembled a surreal black and white photograph.

Sariah smelt her home as she walked up the worn brick steps to the door: the creaky cat flap had taken so much effort to saw into the front door that it was still there, despite the cat being long buried; its rather lax air-tight qualities wafted the smells of dinner out to her.

The secret spices of her dad's vegetable curry mingled with the faint aroma of engine grease. It almost brought tears to her eyes when she realized it was her last night.