I sighed. This was it. The truth revealing time. Bye-bye secrets. ___________________________________________________________________

“Mermaid Merlynn,” Aurora said quietly. All of them fell silent to catch her words. “ Tell us the story of Mermaid Merlynn ”. She and Alex passed a look between each other; I knew only too well why she picked the story. It wasn’t a written story, but the one they grew up listening to.

The hanging leaves rustled as the train gently pushed through them. It was as if they were whispering to the train. Whispering praise and wonder, and astonishment. A word of courage here and there. A signal of a new course, a new switch of the tracks. They whispered until the train completely disappeared into the cave.

“I’m Muggle-born,” Lily declared after a few minutes, breaking the silence. “ And I really hate that boy next compartment.” 


“I am, too,” Maitri admitted, causing Snape to look up from Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1. “A Muggle-born, I mean. Um… why?” 

“The four founders each left behind something of theirs at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore said. “That sword over there is Gryffindor’s, And the Ravenclaw tower retains her huge personal library. Slytherin left behind a secret room in the school -” 

“The Chamber of Secrets?” Maitri interrupted him, her memory sparking. “I read something about it in Hogwarts: A History.” 

“Well, yes,” Dumbledore agreed, impressed. “and Helga Hufflepuff left behind her pet Giant Squid.” 

I was distracted by both James and Albus yawning at the same time - identical yawns to those I witnessed years ago. It was painfully familiar. James and Sirius, a Christmas dinner, a sleepy round of yawns and stories. 

 Even though others would say it was like being in a zoo or a museum on the other side of the glass wall, where people deigned to look at you, and never speak. Accurately right, but Maitri loved being like this. Surrounded by animals that didn’t think and discriminate her. By friends that were always there for her, never speaking, never going away.

 

 “Mommy,” Rose Weasley whined, tugging on Hermione’s jacket. “Albus is pulling my hair!”

“Now, now, sweetie,” Ron Weasley pulled his daughter onto his lap. “You should pull his hair-”

 
“Or whack him at the back of his head,” Astoria supplied helpfully, sipping her cherry wine. 
 

 “What’s that?” Maitri asked Paul, tugging on his baggy jumper. He looked at what she was referring to, and smiled.

 
“You spotted it!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Mr. Aberforth, she spotted it sooner than Yvonne Braxton could’ve spotted the snitch!”
 
 

 “Asking you to Hogsmeade?”

“On a date.” Lily added the roots ferociously to the brew, and attacked the cauldron with the ladle. “Especially when he knew I’d refuse, and that Potter was too stubborn about his big head, and his even bigger ego!”
“A… date?” Maitri repeated unsurely. 
Lily stopped midwork and looked at her friend. “You don’t know what a date is, do you?”
 

 He stopped suddenly and turned to Maitri, who realized it was part of a carol that he was singing.

 
“You know, you look like a new born camel,” Peeves commented, flipping upside down in midair. “In midst of Bethlehem.”
 
Maitri groaned and pushed the poltergeist away. “Go pester someone else, Peeves.”
 

 

 She lost track of it, too, once, after being nearly run into by Rozvitz and a stray bludger at the same time, but both girls ducked and collided with each other instead of the bludger. 

“Awesome bludger by the highly potential Black!” the commentator appreciated. “Pity it missed its target, and good it didn't hit his own team's seeker!"

 
Maitri stayed silent, and lowered her wand. It was instantly much darker, but the girl could still make out the dark outlines of the Founders, and they, hers.
 
“Do I look like a human now?” she asked softly, feeling completely alien to the situation. She felt hurt. No one felt she deserved to be elsewhere, in a kinder, nicer place, did they?
 
 

 "Was it a... song?"

 The other kids were happy with the story. Perhaps, someday, they’d get to know the whole version, but, for now, this substitute would do.

 
“Lame story,” he said, disappointed. “Is she still there?”
 
It took me a moment to figure out that it was a hidden compliment.
 

 Maitri watched as the Bodhisattvas erupted into form in each species. He was a pigeon, a hawk, a sparrow, a fish, a deer - and so on. In each birth, the Bodhisattva was exceeding singular, and easily distinguishable from the rest of the herd, pack or shoal, with his pure white skin, and the beaming benevolence that radiated from him.

"Grandpa, about the wedding – it was like nothing I know! We were only a few of us – the Prewetts, the Weasleys and Ted Tonks’ Muggle sister, and me. They screamed a lot, cried a lot, and laughed a lot, that I wonder how we were never discovered by the Death Eaters all the way down the country. Magic, I suppose (!). 

 Peter refused to be pulled by her. “No,” he said in a slightly panicky voice. “They will only humiliate us further if detentions fell.”

“Then, let’s fight them!” she cried. “Duel them and teach them not to act like a pack of wolves upon a single person!”

“I, Regulus Black, am not an insensitive hypocrite!” her friend declared, puffing out his bony chest.
 “Jump into the water.”
 The poor boy looked taken aback. “What?” he croaked nervously, certain that he had misunderstood Maitri’s words.
“I told you to jump into the water,” she repeated, looking at him seriously.
 

The elf and the boy pointed their fingers at each other and cracked an identical grin that was almost shocking. Then, both of them looked at each other, and realizing what they had just done, frowned at each other and shook their heads solemnly. And then dissolved into laughter.
 
Maitri blinked. Life at Hogwarts couldn’t get any stranger.
  

“But yer still not going ter ride on them again,” Hagrid told her firmly. “If someone sees yer… and yeh can’t get too attached ter them. Yeh’ll be leaving in a few years time.”
 
“Not if I also build a cottage next to yours and stay on as the Assistant Groundskeeper,” the girl argued. “So, if we can move to the Hippogriffs next…”


 

It had never occurred to her that she could be of help to others who couldn’t duel as well as she could – she had taken it for granted that Lily Evans and Dorcas Meadowes and most of the other chosen captains were all for that role; so what was indeed different about her?
 
Wasn’t it only a few days ago that she’d argued that people had treated differently because they discriminated her? Now, she was setting herself aside, ripping off the only chance she had in associating with her classmates. 

“It’s a little freaky, Evans,” said a voice behind them. The girls whipped around to meet the silhouette of Sirius, who smiled at them cockily. “Never took you to be a vampire.”
 
Maitri rolled her eyes. The British and their vampire jokes. Sirius Black nodded at Maitri, who nodded back to him. 

Then, quite suddenly, something hit his shoulder. Stunned, Sirius turned around and picked up the object. Now, confused, he stared at the lake, rubbing absent-mindedly at the spot that smarted on his shoulder.
 
How did the stone he kicked into the lake come back out to hit him? 

“‘Nobility’, ‘loyalty’, ‘resourcefulness’, etc.”
 
“Not to mention ‘serpentility’!”
 
“Bah!” Severus said, snorting humorlessly. “Our reptilian fame precedes our human qualities. Yes, definitely, ‘slithering, shimmering serpentility’.” 

The unicorn’s horn, though fully developed, rested lightly on the top of Maitri’s head. The beast itself breathed in the same rhythm as the girl, who couldn’t help but notice that there was some overpowering familiarity in its beautiful, deep, amber eyes, and the way it met her gaze. 

I laughed. I think I like this girl.
 
“I heard George Weasley is coming for breakfast,” she said, looking at me as I cleaned the coffee pot away with my wand. “If I were you, I’d make sure the kids don’t get too many ‘gifts’ from him,” she finished enigmatically. 

A pale witch sitting three chairs down turned and bared her teeth at both of them, neatly establishing the fact that iced dragon blood didn’t do much for her vampiric thirst. Paul Trump hastily pulled Maitri off her seat at the Leaky Cauldron and into the Diagon Alley, safe in to the sunlight. 

Before him stood a person Sirius would not understand, despite the fact that Regulus was his own brother,and more than a year younger. However, Sirius couldn’t figure out who was the bigger person in that moment – his own angst-ridden, lovesick self, or the boy who had pushed away an entire lifetime of beliefs just in order to help a brother who had publicly treated him lesser than he would treat a disobedient house-elf. 

“The color does narrow the nature – and the speed, down,” Holmes assured her. “Perhaps the Spellogists will be able to work out the kind of curse that will give out a green color, be dark and aim to hurt. Unless, of course, it was the Killing Curse, then we just found a new way to counteract with the deadliest curse in Latin.” 

"If you could just look up on Mermish activities, you’d find that they are, among other magical water creatures, the most skilled in healing, speed and plant-care. Selkies are also reportedly the most intelligent creatures underwater and are said to be as wise as centaurs pretend to be.”
 
“So, you’re saying…”
 
“Hello, Mermaid-ette Harys. I hope everything in your life is swimming in absolutely fine waters.” 

“A changeling is a wild child – a human child of inhuman origins,” Salazar explained. “It was the term anyone would call a child that exhibited signs of magic that couldn’t be called wizardry or witchcraft.”



 

“I was just swimming,” Sirius replied, feigning a look of innocence. “I suppose she came after me before it was after curfew, and, well, she’s a sodding perfect prefect.”
 
“He scampered after seeing me come after him,” she explained. “It was natural to think he was doing something against the rules, so I chased him to ask what he was doing. And to put him in detention or something.”
 
“Fortunately for me,” Sirius said, grinning. “Or something is delicious.”

Good and evil was inside everyone, Slytherin or Gryffindor, and he or she who chose which side to follow never thought their way was the evil one—
 
“The last half an hour,” Professor Flitwick announced, jolting Maitri back to her senses. Worriedly, she checked her answers, hoping they were alright, despite her wandering mind. She bit down a groan as she spotted a couple of mistakes, and shook her head clear of thoughts about evil and good. Right now, her priority was her exam. 

“Well, I’m sixteen, your sister and I are in the same academic year, we have classes together, and she may be famous, I guess,” Sirius replied in a single breath, reaching out to tickle the fruit that will open into the kitchens. “Now, you shouldn’t be scared, there are some tiny people in this room who look like—,”
 
“House-elves!” Chandru completed the sentence, excited at the sight he could see when the kitchen was finally open.  

“You’re right,” Sirius admitted in a small voice. With a swish of his wand, his trunk closed and locked itself shut. “Come with me, Reg.”
 
“Huh?”
 
“Let’s leave together,” Sirius said, the unease in his face hardening into determination. “Come with me, and you can also escape this madness.” 

For a moment, as I stared, I could see my irises turn purple, and my hair white as snow, and ears pointing up.

When I blinked again, it was all gone. Brown circles stared back at me, as if to chide me.