Mel Granger, Dark Witch

by Codex Serpens

Mel is Hermione and Ron's daughter, raised by Ginny and Harry. Ron is in Azkaban for Hermione's murder. Her mother's posthumous words tell her the truth, and Ginny's abuse finally drives Mel into the Dark Arts. Britain has a new Dark Lady to fear.

1. Chapter 1: A Love Debt

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J. K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Any characters or situations that are unknown in the Harry Potter series are the author's intellectual property and should not be used without permission.

Pursuant to the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act of 1998, this work is copywrited 2007 with all rights expressly reserved by its author unless explicitly granted. No portion may be reproduced in any fashion without the express written and notarized permission of the author.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters. All characters are creations of Joanne K Rowling, 2007, to whom I am deeply indebted.

Standard Disclaimer: This story may contain sexually graphic and explicit material and it is not suitable for minors. If you are a minor, please leave now, as it is illegal for you to be here. If it is illegal for you to read or view sexually explicit material in the community you view such material, please leave now. This story and characters are purely fictional and any resemblance to events or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. If you are offended by sexually explicit stories, please read no further. These stories are just that, stories, and may or may not reflect the opinions of the author.

Right, now my own words, not the legalese I've shamelessly copied and pasted above. There are only so many situations and new ideas one could dream within the H.P. universe; almost everything has been written about in fan-fiction, and I couldn't possibly hope to read and know all fan-fics posted on the web.

Therefore, I claim no property over these ideas and adventures, nor have I intentionally copied or appropriated material from other writers. Some concepts incorporated in this story might be property of better writers, and I apologize for not crediting them because I truly couldn't track all of them down...

---

Attention! This story is based on an idea (challenge) by "pstibbons" titled "Mel Granger, Dark Witch" and it will follow all of its parameters. You may wish to read them in advance, but that will spoil a few surprises in the story.

Thanks to "pstibbons" for all the suggestions and input, which turned my drafts into a much better and more enjoyable story!

---

Mel Granger, Dark Witch

Chapter 1: A Love Debt

Sawdust continued to fall from the wooden beams above, streaking past the few dying afternoon rays of the sun that shone through the small window close to the ceiling of the house cellar. Every step, either soft or rushed, heavy or light perpetuated the particle shower that caused Juliette Melanie Granger to sneeze and lose her concentration.

Mel, as she preferred to be called, sat on top of a wooden barrel and had her back pressed against the humid wall with both feet firmly planted against a pillar, her knees bent so that she could lean the yellowed book on her thighs. Uncle Harry had departed for Norway that morning, so her duties weren't required until he returned and she had walked down to her living space before Aunt Ginevra got angry at her.

Inside the cellar were many of the usual discarded household items, undesired furniture and worthless things nobody wanted. It was only fitting for her to be there then. What surprised Mel when she'd set out to investigate the cellar many years ago was the amount of dusty old trunks; there was a pile of them and she was delighted at what she found inside the first one: books.

Uncle Harry had taken it upon himself to teach all his children to read and write, as well as Muggle and wizard things like mathematics and runes while he was home. He always said he didn't want his children to feel lost in the broader world of Muggles and to be prepared for Hogwarts but aunt Ginevra usually dismissed him saying Muggles were stupid and it was ridiculous to teach something they'd learn in Hogwarts anyway.

That was one of a hundred different topics her uncle would choose to fight about when they were at home together, until uncle Harry backs down and admits his wife is right. He always does.

So ever since she learned enough to read by herself, Mel would pop the topmost trunk open and grab a handful of books to enjoy as she was doing now. She was fascinated by the Muggle books on human anatomy, they were in full colour and showed every organ, muscle and bone the human body was made of. Sometimes she wondered if wizards had different organs; she'd have to wait until attending Hogwarts to know.

"Then, because of his ob-- obin-- obnoxious attitude," she read with a whisper and paused to think. "What the bloody hell does obnoxious mean?" Mel asked no one in particular and underlined the word with a piece of coal, before resuming her reading of Brinn Bubblin and the Hall of Mysteries. The stories featuring the accidental young wizard hero were entertaining and she loved the Baron Bonnamorte character the most. The Baron was an evil Dark Lord that continuously tried to kill Brinn but, because of sheer dumb luck, the young boy kept surviving and besting him.

Her uncle Harry told her she was too young to read such tales, but at nine years old she felt as mature as she'd ever felt in her not-so-happy life. She knew her duty was to keep Harry happy, however, so she trained herself to hide her emotions, keep her mouth shut about what happened when he was away and be the best companion she could be to him. Thankfully both Jimmy and Frida were away at Hogwarts now, which allowed Mel to perform better without having to escape their taunts and constant pushing and punching. Aunt Ginevra had warned her severely against complaining since it was her duty to provide entertainment for the Potter-Weasley heirs too.

After all, it was her fault that her mother was dead, and it was her fault that her father was in prison for life.

Mel remembered it as if it was yesterday, this happened after they moved from Potter Manor and she was no older than four or five years old. Uncle Harry had hugged her and kissed her before leaving. He never saw the furious look in his wife and children's eyes. Uncle Harry never does.

When aunt Ginevra dragged her by the hair into the cellar that morning, she had yelled that her mum and dad were coming to find her and rescue her, but all she earned besides a heavy slap on the face that knocked a couple of milk-teeth out was the sad reason she was kept in this house. "Shut up, Granger!" aunt Ginevra had yelled. "Your filthy mother's dead, and my brother's in Azkaban Prison because of you!"

The red-haired woman had continued to rant and slapped her again and again, "My poor deluded Harry doesn't see things clearly and decided to adopt you! Merlin knows the scarlet woman that spit you out her womb didn't care for you. I keep you here because it makes Harry happy, and you better remember that," she finished and slammed the door before casting a spell that locked and silenced the cellar.

Shaking her unmanageable dark-red mane of bushy hair and coming out of her reverie, she continued to read. "I need to find that blasted dictionary," she mumbled, underlining yet another word and sneezing again. Aunt Ginevra was pacing the hallway, probably wondering which fancy party to attend tonight. She never understood why so many different wizards kept knocking on her door for different parties every night her uncle was away; they all had different names and voices, and sometimes her aunt would moan and yell the weirdest things while gasping for breath and banging the walls.

Mel looked up and sighed, briefly wondering if it was right to hurt uncle Harry by disappearing while he was away demonstrating the newest products from Umbridge Undry, the premier thick-bottom cauldron brand in Britain that he worked for as a secondary job. Her uncle always brought her miniature cauldrons or beginner potions kits back from his business travels, and he enjoyed talking about the newest materials or unbreakable handles his company produced at the dinner table.

The House of Potter had suffered greatly in terms of material wealth. Now that she was old enough to understand, she knew why there was so much rage shining in aunt Ginevra's eyes when they moved from the big fancy house that was Potter Manor to the house they now lived in. Back then, she at least had a decent tiny service room instead of a cellar.

Her uncle Harry still worked at the Ministry for Magic in some smaller department, but her aunt always complained the money wasn't enough and that she had an image to uphold; soon after that he'd started spending more and more time away from home, and since he started working for the cauldron company, she only ever saw of him for weekends and holidays.

It was while looking for a place to hide her potions ingredients and small gold cauldrons that she found the crawling space leading from the north wall of the cellar into the forest, a couple hundred yards away. She'd shimmy up the tunnel after her aunt locked her in and run into the surrounding forest, where she soon built a makeshift shack with fallen branches and old linen sheets to house her laboratory. This was her third attempt at a stable shack, but it was the longer lasting she'd built so far.

She was certain that she could find enough food to survive out there in the forest, but her debt to uncle Harry for adopting her, even if he had no clue as to what happened in his own house when he was away, was enough to discourage her from running. Telling him how aunt Ginevra treated her would be even worse, because if it would devastate him to lose his "darling Julie", it would kill him to lose his entire family once he saw them for what they really were. Besides, the few days she shared with him were the only moments she actually felt worthy of being loved.

Her birthday was coming soon and she hoped uncle Harry would be home, because April fifteens without him were very painful and she really needed the silver ladle she'd told him she wanted as a gift. With another heavy sigh, Mel returned to her reading while cursing her lack of focus and turned the page, underlining yet another word on the page before the day finally faded into night.

Sleeping in the cellar was nowhere as comfortable as sleeping in her room, which she couldn't use while aunt Ginevra was alone. A few rolled up sheets made for a decent pillow and an old buffalo skin provided more than enough warmth; the only uncomfortable part were the horns. And the ticks. She really needed that silver ladle.

---

"Good morning sleepy head," greeted a male voice she could recognize anywhere. Uncle Harry was knocking on the doorway to Mel's room, and she slowly opened her eyes. Aunt Ginevra had dragged her up the night before and yelled at her about keeping Harry happy and repaying her debt to them as customary, before tossing her into the tub filled to the brim with cold water. "Not that it'd be enough to wash the filth out of you," she had commented with a sneer.

"Mornin' uncle Harry," she replied, trying to hide her forearm which she was certain would be bruised from yesterday. She forgot how proficient in healing spells her aunt could be.

"Happy birthday Julie!" he said and sat on her bed, holding a wrapped package in his hand. It was long and thick, the paper had fuming cauldrons all around and the present was topped by a shining red bow. "I'm needed at the workshop today, I'm sorry I'll miss your party but I'm sure Ginny will be happy to tell me all about it tonight."

Mel's smile faltered but she quickly hid it by hugging her uncle and thanking him, as well as wishing him a good day at work. Her uncle still held to the idea that Mel had a good and friendly relationship with her Weasley cousins and relatives in general, but she knew her grandmother despised her even more than her aunt. Her grandfather Arthur, however, sometimes looked at her with tears in his eyes and then turned away, yet never spoke to her at all.

"Uncle Harry?"

"Yes darling?"

"Why don't I have any Granger grandparents?" she asked, double checking that aunt Ginevra wasn't lurking nearby. Sensing him tense, Mel released her hug and sat back, holding the present against her chest.

"Ginny and I told you your mother was ... attacked by bad wizards called Death Eaters. Well these same wizards they--" Harry paused to clear his eyes with the back of his hand. "These wizards, they attacked your Muggle grandparents a few months before that, darling."

Mel knew the story about these bad wizards blaming her father for her mother's death, as it was what her relatives had told her the day uncle Harry returned home barely a week after aunt Ginevra had slapped her for daring to dream that she'd be rescued. Mel also knew that unlike her aunt, Harry didn't blame her for what happened.

"I-- I'm sorry, I have to go..." her uncle said and left the bedroom. Wasting no time, she unwrapped the box and admired the shining silver ladle, noticing the same engraving uncle Harry always added to every gift, "To my darling Julie."

She heard the tell-tale swoosh of a floo connection and quickly did the bed, removed the nice clothes she was told to wear whenever uncle Harry was home and donned the loose, tattered old robes aunt Ginevra insisted she wear when they were alone. Hiding the ladle inside her robe, she walked into the hallway and was promptly dragged down to the cellar.

"Here," her aunt said and handed her an old newspaper, "have a happy birthday you filthy spawn."

The newspaper was over a decade old, bearing the name Daily Prophet in bold on top and had an entire front page dedicated to "Muggleborn Manipulations in the Open!" The article revealed how one Hermione J. Weasley, ne Granger, had used illegal means and coercion to ensnare a pureblood light family heir by bearing his child. It also pointed to her betrayal of said wizard with the world's greatest hero Harry Potter and the successful Quidditch player Viktor Krum, who was photographed in a compromising position with the traitorous witch.

A picture of a couple in bed, obscured by a thin curtain, showed the head of a woman with uncontrollable hair like Mel's, only it seemed to be darker in colour. The article also cast serious doubt regarding paternity of the unborn child, accusing her uncle Harry of being the father after he was found guilty of assault on Ronald Weasley, who was discovered almost dead in Knockturn Alley and had accused Harry as his attacker.

In further detail, the newspaper described how then current investigations pointed to her mother Hermione murdering her very own parents to force Mel's father Ronald to comfort her, and theorized that she then subjugated him with love potions to marry her. Another moving picture of a very pregnant Hermione marrying a red-haired man accompanied that part of the article.

By this time Mel was crying and sobbing, and turned the page with trembling hands to read more. This was a completely different story from what uncle Harry had told her, but it still didn't mean she was the cause of her mother's death and her father's imprisonment.

The rest of the article detailed her mother's rebel exploits as an activist against the established wizarding world traditions and culture, portraying her as a fanatical witch who didn't shy away from using any of the unforgivable curses, and included proof of her constant use of the imperius against fellow witches and wizards.

"My mum was worse than a Death Eater..." Mel whispered between sobs. "Bloody hell I'm a dark witch's daughter!"

Throwing the old newspaper away, she stood up and paced the cluttered cellar back and forth, wiping her tears and taking deep breaths to calm herself. She could certainly understand uncle Harry's reticence to tell her about her true heritage, and from what little she knew her mum and dad had been close friends with him in the fight against Death Eaters and their Dark Lord, which made things even worse.

"No wonder aunt Ginevra hates me," she mumbled and continued to pace, "but uncle Harry likes me anyway, and I just can't just tell him I know my mum was a vicious killer!" Mel was startled out of her thoughts by moans and wall banging coming from the master bedroom, and she realized uncle Harry had probably flooed in to announce he wasn't coming home tonight.

Deciding her days of feeling sorry for herself were over, she began to plan her independent future right then and there. Most important in her mind was saving her uncle the heartache of losing his friend's daughter overnight, because she always felt his love for her was true even if he couldn't see how his family hated her with a passion. So Melanie would continue to fulfil her duties, all the while learning as much as she could about magic and Muggles, and try to focus her mind only on those purposes, which she'd always found a very difficult thing to do.

---

Summer break meant Jimmy and Frida Potter were back from Hogwarts, which in turn meant Mel was in for a world of trouble. Her daily routine using the tunnel from the cellar to the forest would have to be cut short, or else the king and queen of Gryffindor, as they had named themselves, would notice her absence and become suspicious.

In the last couple of months since her tenth birthday, she'd been able to explore further into the forest and found a small hamlet inhabited by dozens of Muggles and an old hag, and that was saying a lot given that hags looked old by their own nature. The Muggles were friendly enough, she'd get a free meal or ice-cream once in a while, and she marvelled at the portables they carried around.

A "portable" was a thick sheet of parchment that had full colours like a painting and would show everything the Muggle wanted, from a book to a picture and even long stories enacted as if little people were performing inside the parchment itself! Aunt Ginevra was wrong, Muggles weren't stupid at all. Certainly they wasted their time and effort riding these horseless carriages to go places and used big contraptions to lift weight, actions a wizard could do with a flick of his wand, but they were happy people despite their severe limitations.

When Mel wasn't among the funny Muggles, she'd wander to the southern parts of the forest, where a pack of werewolves had recently opened a clearing and established a tiny community. She noticed three or four mixed families that did everything together. There were no hidden children in cellars. The second thing that drew her attention was that the closer the full-moon got, the more anxious they were and the less food they consumed. The turned wizards among them would talk about how many galleons short they were that month and the Muggle werewolves returned with chains and shackles they'd purchased nearby.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten what the books on magical creatures said about the enhanced sense of smell a human turned werewolf developed. She was caught spying by a couple of young boys.

"Oi, whelp! Watcha doin' here?"

Mel jumped in the air and yelped, before crossing her arms and staring up at the boys that found her. "I live down that way, and ... well, since we're neighbours, I'd thought it nice to ... er ... say hello?"

"She don't smell like one of us, does she Mike?" the taller of the two said, making a show of sniffing the air.

"Aye, I reckon she don't know she's bitten more than she can chew," the other replied, "though I do smell somethin' ... pleasant about her," he added, licking his lips. That gesture made Mel take a step back and ponder her chances of outrunning them.

"Michael? John Paul? Where the devils are you?" called a female voice from the clearing that made both boys cringe. "You'd better finish washing 'em dishes or I'll pelt yer hides!"

Trying to stop her urge to laugh at the wincing, scared werewolves, Mel bit her lower lip and then asked with a raised eyebrow. "Got something more ... pleasant to do all of the sudden?"

"Har bloody har," Michael said and walked into the clearing with slumped shoulders, followed by John Paul who looked just as deflated.

"Er... Can I help?" she asked, actually surprising the older boys who looked between them and shrugged.

"Sure, though you're gonna see some ... weird stuff goin' round here," John Paul explained, a tad hesitant.

"No worries, I know you're wolves and I'm a witch myself," Mel said and stepped up to them, walking towards a wooden hut. She had to actually look back at the surprised boys and wait for them to start walking again.

"I'm JP, and this is my cousin Mike," the taller boy introduced and extended his hand, which she immediately shook while introducing herself as simply Mel.

"Alright Simply Mel, now what d'you know about dishes?" Mike asked.

"That they break if you drop them?"

JP snorted and opened the door into a small kitchen, where a middle-aged woman stood wand at hand. The three youngsters stopped dead on their tracks and Mike took upon the job of introducing his dear mother to Mel. The woman narrowed her eyes dangerously and turned away, but not before growling at her because she was a stranger to their kind and wasn't really welcome there.

"Your mum reminds of my aunt," she said.

"Is she nice?"

"Far from it," Mel replied and started on the dishes while JP dried and Mike stored them away. After ten minutes and only a single broken plate, they finished and walked outside to talk under the afternoon sun.

"Oi, Simply Mel, d'you have any wolves in your family?"

"Not that I know of, though an estranged uncle was bitten and clawed by one many years ago. It wasn't a full-moon so..."

"No infection then, lucky bastard."

Mel shrugged and then asked something else. "Are you two attending Hogwarts?"

Mike and JP looked at her as if she were deranged. "You takin' the mickey on us? How the hell d'you reckon we'd be accepted there?"

"Or pay for it, anyway," Mike added.

"Is it expensive then?" asked Mel, truly curious about this since she'd never heard any comments about Hogwarts tuition. She also knew aunt Ginevra would never allow her to attend if it meant paying for it, unless uncle Harry put his foot down.

"It's bloody expensive alright... Even if they'd allow us in, it'd be ... what's that word, undifordeable?"

"Unaffordable, JP," Mel supplied, "but why the hell wouldn't they send you a letter? I mean there's a bloody book that writes all the wizards' names, isn't there?"

Mike shifted and frowned, "I reckon they scratch you out of it after you get bitten..."

---

Dinner with werewolves had become an interesting weekly event that Mel tried to partake in as much as she could, besides JP was really cute and Mike made her laugh, something not even her uncle Harry managed to bring out of her lately. September the first was finally around the corner and she'd have time to continue her potions and read in peace without Jimmy's leering and Frida's scathing remarks. They didn't dare hurt her while Harry stayed at home for three whole weeks.

Her uncle had become suspicious of her change in attitude and had actually asked if he'd done something to hurt her. Mel stared at him for a few seconds wondering why this poor man was considered the wizarding world's hero if he was oblivious to the way his family treated her. Yet it was clear he loved her and she loved him back because he'd taken her in, despite who her mother had been and the damage she'd done to the Weasleys.

"No uncle Harry, you haven't," she replied and hugged him. He always liked her hugs the best, she could tell because every time his children did it he'd flinch a little, but was completely relaxed when Mel initiated one.

"By this time next year you're going the be preparing for Hogwarts," he told her with a smile. "In fact, I'd like you to have something. Come with me."

She followed him to the kitchen and he showed her the door to the cellar, explaining what it was as if she'd never been dragged in there before. They climbed downstairs and he used a lumos spell to make his way around the clatter, stumbling twice until he found the pile of trunks against the farthest wall. "Huh... Now I know where you got all those books from, Juliette," he commented, looking inside the half full topmost trunk.

Mel winced at her spoken first name but, as required by her duties and debt, simply smiled. "Yeah, I found those a while back..."

"These were all your mother's, you know?" he said and paused, staring at the wall absent-mindedly. "Anyway, we're here to find one trunk in particular," uncle Harry added and began to levitate the heavy luggage around. He swished and flicked, moving and wiping them until he found what he was looking for. "There it is!"

She followed his pointed finger and found a brown trunk with a small plaque that read H. Granger in cursive letters. Her uncle waved his wand again and the locks flipped open, then he lifted the lid and stood back, "It's been so long, I can't even remember when I put these here..." he whispered and rubbed his forehead.

Mel put a hand on his shoulder and he looked down at her, mumbled an apology and walked away, leaving her alone with her murky past. Sighing and deciding to make the best of this situation, she began to rummage through her evil mum's forgotten things. "Planner, planner, Hogwarts: A History, planner, shoe! Bean bag, planner, nice wand! Another shoe that doesn't match... Wicked, there's a copy of Moste Potente Potions in here!"

Pulling the thick book out, she sat in her customary spot on top of the wooden barrel with her legs against the pillar and began to read. Soon enough some potions had picked her interest and she fetched one her mother's planners to make some notes. Turning it upside down and over to use the back end as a starting page, she dug for a quill and ink.

"I wonder what kind of tool Muggles use for writing," she suddenly thought while holding her quill an inch above the page. "Focus dammit! Bloody scattered brain I've inherited..."

After filling a couple of pages with her questions and notations, Mel flipped ahead on the planner and noticed what should be her mum's latest notes in it. The handwriting was neat and curvy, unlike her own spiked and wobbly script, and the text had some words underlined and others inked in red. Turning it upside down, she began to read from the top.

Concluded 4th attempt. Results were negative for m.p.m. but addition of unicorn tears created following symptoms:
- Doubt; effect was temporary and countered by routine monthly charms only, ingested s.p. was ineffective.
- Better body control; immediate reaction as proven by t.c.i. test.
- Magical discharge; unpredictable events in exponential ladder over time, potential danger to self!

"What the hell is all of this?" She flipped a few pages back and looked a humongous list of ingredients with detailed characteristics and proper storage conditions. There were also references to previous attempts and their results, including all those annoying acronyms that didn't mean anything to her. "Probably some nasty evil potion she was creating," Mel concluded and frowned at the raised voices upstairs.

The door leading down to the cellar was kept unlocked while her uncle was home, and the sounds of a yelling match between the Potters came through. She ignored it because she knew who'd win anyway; aunt Ginevra always won. Which was why she feared that she wouldn't be able to go to Hogwarts at all.

This time her aunt had picked her favourite topic to fight about, the You Should be an Auror or a Quidditch Star routine. She'd berate him for the lack of money, which coincidently she'd squandered herself a few years back when they still lived in Potter Manor, and then tell him he was the amazing Boy-Who-Lived and that it was beneath him to be working at a cauldron factory as a secondary job to his position in the Ministry for Magic.

He'd stand there and listen to her rant, before yelling that this was all he was worthy of and that all he needed was a happy family, until finally acknowledging she was right and that he'd try to bring more galleons home. Uncle Harry would be spending even more time away from now on, which probably was aunt Ginevra's desire all along.

---

Christmas was a family holiday she was always dragged to, despite it being the worst day of the year as far as Mel was concerned. Doubly so this year after her discovery that she was the daughter of an evil witch who'd used her as a tool to achieve her goals.

After discovering the strange potion in one of her mum's planners, she had carefully organized everything she ever wrote and stuffed it inside a single trunk, including her notebooks from Hogwarts and those wretched planners. She'd also found many pamphlets and manifestos denouncing inequality among wizards due to blood status and unfair subjugation of magical creatures that looked really interesting, but knowing her mother had probably killed people as part of her campaigns had made her throw those into the do-not-touch trunk too.

That trunk was then sealed with copious amounts of wax, wrapped in a chain and bathed in holy water for good measure. And then buried under a dozen empty old cases of butterbeer.

Mel had tried to speak with a Weasley to find out more about her father that Christmas evening at the Burrow. Grandmother Weasley wouldn't acknowledge her existence but uncles Percival and George, the younger of which she'd never met before, would at least look at her. Her father Ronald had been a victim in the situation she now knew the truth of, but since everyone around her insisted in the official tale that Death Eaters had murdered her mum and blamed her dad for it, they'd either dismiss her questions or say "he's sorry for leaving you" and then walk away. It was quite annoying, actually.

Aunt Ginevra had been keeping an eye on her and throwing angry scowls all the time and she finally decided to sit outside the kitchen door and remain seated there until it was time to go. She wished she'd thought ahead to bring a book or something.

Watching the snow quickly became boring, and she felt her eyelids grow heavier and heavier, until the sound of the kitchen door being pushed open woke her up and she sat straighter against the wall.

"Hey mini-Herms," greeted her uncle George in a hushed voice while looking back into the house. She winced at the allusion to her dark witch mother's name and looked up at the red-haired man who was missing an ear. "I saw your look of ... disappointment earlier, when you were asking about my brother."

Mel nodded in silence, hoping to hear something about him after all.

"Well, I ... I'm not sure if you've noticed this is the first time I've been at the Burrow for Christmas? Or at all for over eight years," he added sombrely while stirring his glass.

She nodded again, "Yeah, I know there's another two of you that I've never met. Uncles Will and Charles, right?"

"True, Bill and Charlie they ... feel so ashamed from what Ron did. As do I," he said and scrunched his face before downing the rest of his firewhiskey. "I'm really sorry for--"

"George! Leave the creature alone, I've told you she's unstable," admonished aunt Ginevra before grabbing Mel's one-eared uncle and dragging him back inside. "Now tell me again about your wife and kids! You should've brought them along..." her voice trailed out of the family room.

The interrupted conversation had startled her, why would they be ashamed of something her father did? It didn't make any sense! Then again, he was drinking a lot of that burning drink. She'd sipped a little of it earlier and after coughing for a good fifteen minutes, vowed never to touch firewhiskey again in her life.

Raised voices drew her attention back to the house and she peeked over the kitchen window, from where she could see the doorway into the sitting room. Uncle George was yelling and waving his arms around, while aunt Ginevra pointed her finger at him and then between her and uncle Harry.

"I can't believe you're still sticking to that fuckin' crap about Death Eaters!"

"That's the effing truth, George!" yelled her aunt.

"That's a load of bloody hogwash and you know it! All of you ... I'm ashamed of being related to you all," her uncle said and dissApparated.

Now that was even more strange. Uncle George knew the story about dark wizards attacking her mother and blaming her dad for it was false, but why would he be sorry for something her father did, then? Perhaps he'd failed to see the evil in her mum and could've avoided this whole mess?

On the other hand, Mel had assumed her father was in Azkaban for killing her mother after he realized what a dark witch she was and what she'd done. But if that was the case, why would half of the Weasleys be ashamed of him? Running her hands over her face, she berated herself for not thinking things clearly. What she needed was solid, verifiable information; she needed to investigate her mother's trunk.

The door creaked open again, this time it was her uncle Harry. "There you are, Juliette. Been looking for you all over the place."

"Hey uncle Harry."

"It's nice and welcoming here at the Burrow, isn't it?"

"Of course," Mel answered, patting the floor next to her. Sometimes her uncle looked more like a five-year-old child than the thirty-something wizard he really was.

Her uncle sat and stared at the snowy landscape, his eyes fixed on an unseen point in space. "I learnt what a family is here at the Burrow, back when I was just a little older than you are now. You see, my relatives they ... didn't know how to treat a child."

"Oh, did they keep you locked in a cellar?"

Uncle Harry turned a sharp look back at her, "Don't even joke about something like that! Children are sacred, and ... children, my children are great, aren't they?"

Mel blanched. Her uncle really had no idea what happened at home, and the spark that her off-handed comment had started died within a few seconds. She'd always tried to hint or tell him but aunt Ginevra was always there, watching. Well, aunt Ginevra was still inside and she had the perfect opportunity.

"Aunt Ginevra keeps me in the cellar when you're away."

His face turned grave again and his eyebrows knitted together, he stiffened suddenly and tried to stand up, but lost his footing and fell on his knee. After rubbing it absently, he looked at her again but the spark was gone, "I understand you've suffered so much, darling Julie. Please, please don't lie about these things?"

He then stood up again and walked back into the house, telling her to get ready to leave in ten minutes and to go play with her cousins in the snow.

Mel waited for her uncle to leave and began to cry.

---

The months of decaying Winter and blossoming Spring had given Mel time to study a good portion of what her mother's trunks contained. That, and the fact uncle Harry was working on weekends whenever he was back in Britain.

She was thankful for her evil mum's organized nature, for every book had a name and a date, as did the planners and notes and scrolls. It had taken a full two weeks to sort everything and rummage through old clothes to find more books and written material, as if someone not very gifted with packing spells had come to her house with half a dozen trunks and squeezed everything she had inside.

Cataloguing her remaining possessions had taken a bit more caution, she didn't want to end up blown away to smithereens by some cursed locket or whatever dark artefacts she might have found. "Weird, there's nothing out of the ordinary in here," Mel had said after emptying the last trunk.

Like every good investigative Auror, she'd began building her mother's habits by looking through her things, trying to understand what had driven her into the path of the Dark Arts. Her surprise came when she opened a small bean bag and found a single sealed scroll bearing a letter from Hermione to her.

Beloved Juliette,

Today is the eleventh of April, four days until your first birthday. I've taken the habit of writing more or less the same letter to you every week and hiding copies of it inside several of my personal possessions; this one is inside a small bean bag. Before you continue reading please know that I love you with all my heart and soul.

My name is Hermione Jane Granger and I'm your mother. I am a witch and so are you, I know it because I've carried you inside my body for eight wonderful months and have taken care of you ever since I knew I was expecting you. Your summoning skills are quite impressive, you can call stuffed hippogriffs and unicorns from your nursery all the way to the kitchen sometimes.

Your name, in case they have changed it, is Juliette Melanie Granger. The bag where you found this scroll would only show it to you by means of a blood charm, and if you're old enough please feel free to confirm this with your wand.

Because you are reading this letter, I must have failed you in a way that rips my heart apart just by thinking about it. I've left you alone in this world.

Worse still, I haven't completed the task I've set out to perform four years ago. Trust no one around you, and be wary of anyone related to the Weasley name. Your paternal heritage is also magical, for you are the daughter of one Ronald Bilius Weasley, sixth son of Arthur Weasley, current Head of the Family. Please forgive me for it.

Four years ago, returning from a twelve day vacation with my parents, I suffered an accident that killed me. Literally. The moment I left my body, magical bindings and harnesses I had never felt were released, as were my true memories of certain events. I vowed to stay alive and free another enslaved soul like mine; that of Harry Potter, my friend and my love.

My dearest daughter, know that I love you above all else and I'll never regret giving birth to you. I've defended you with my life and have never allowed your father to come anywhere near you, but I must remain close to him and his family if I am to fulfil my vow.

Archaic wizard law prevents me from making legal provisions for your future, such as instructing that this information be delivered to you immediately, or as soon as you reach scholarship age, in case of my death. Please take a tiny droplet of your blood and drop it inside the bag where you found this scroll, then without a wand, incant the following words: Lagrange aeternus. All shall be revealed.

All my Love,

Mummy

Mel still refused to open the bag. She was confused and upset, she didn't know what to believe or what to do. What she did know, was that aunt Ginevra could never find out about her mother's letter and possessions, so with the help of a couple of werewolves, she'd built a fourth attempt at a solid building to house her laboratory and stored all the trunks and books in the resulting shack.

Her friends JP and Mike from the werewolf community had helped a lot, but also noticed her withdrawn and pensive mood and tried their best to cheer her up. Which they did in spades. These two boys were twelve and eleven respectively, both turned at an early age while camping with their family in Wales, and being cousins, they managed to catch each other's jokes on the fly and provide endless laughs.

While JP had a series of deep scars criss-crossing the right side of his face, Mike had a bitten ear, similar to that of old mice, all jagged and bent. She didn't mind those flaws because they weren't of their own doing. Besides, she liked running her fingers over Mike's ear and he was a sucker for an ear-scratch. Much like JP was fond of a good belly-scratch himself.

When the three of them weren't dodging Mike's dear mother's hexes, they'd be found wandering the Muggle hamlet of Bardle or exploring the dense forest to the south. Both boys had wands of their own but neither had the quality of craftsmanship and magical properties Mel's inherited wand had. It was an Ollivander original, after all.

It was Tuesday afternoon and they were relaxing against a fallen tree after tricking a Muggle into believing they were a Yeti. The man had even taken a few pictures of them before running away pleading for his life.

"Simply Mel, try 'em blasting hexes again, but this time aim away from us, okay whelp?"

She showed them her tongue and prepared her wand, nodding at them. Mike banished a branch into the air and she trailed it with her eyes, willing her hand to aim at the same spot. "Confringo!"

Squelch!

"Holy shite!"

"Bugger..."

"Bloody hell, I exploded a ruddy bird!" she said and looked at the tip of her wand, then at the animal remains, before shaking her head.

"How come you can Accio a freakin' bowl of ice-cream from across town, blast a damn bird sixty yards away, but you can't make a Protego to save yer scrawny arse?" JP asked, truly puzzled.

"I don't have a scrawny arse!" Mel complained and looked over her shoulder at herself. "Do I?"

The boys laughed and banished a rock and a branch again, this time Mel hit the branch but missed the rock and hit a wild boar. A very unfortunate wild boar.

Unable to attend Hogwarts, the vast majority of werewolf wizards and witches had to rely on spell-casting knowledge handed down by their elders, and were also free to learn and try whatever spells they could get their hands on. Because they were discriminated against, it was common for them to learn defensive and duelling spells and hexes more than anything else.

Mel was taking advantage of this situation knowing that the middle of a forest was safe from any Ministry for Magic monitoring. And the few spells they'd cast in the Muggle hamlet either weren't registered or the location was simply too unimportant to merit a team of obliviators and an Auror investigation.

After a fulfilling dinner of pork chops cooked over a magical fire pit, Mel hugged the boys goodnight and walked back towards uncle Harry's home. She jumped into the tunnel and crawled back into the cellar, hoping to focus her mind on a good old potions handbook instead of deciding if she wanted to know about her mother's plight.

---

Uncle Harry only came home to sleep at night whenever he was in Britain, which was about once every month or so, and aunt Ginevra had convinced him Mel's bedroom door was always closed because she'd gone to bed early and was still sleeping in the mornings. He was away in France for her eleventh birthday, yet managed to send her an owl with a wrapped package, which brightened her day.

She was crafting a few variations on the cutis-petreus draught, which mimicked the petrificus totalus spell, but to give one's skin hard-rock strength without paralysing the body. Two of her frogs had actually survived the transformation, but one was so soft it crumbled into fine powder at first touch, and the other had turned its skin into molten rock, igniting everything as it leapt away until she cast aguamenti on it. The rest had simply been blown apart when fed a drop of the modified draughts.

Her uncle's present was topped with a huge yellow bow and had a card with his handwriting on it. She opened it to find a kit of unbreakable beakers, decanters, pipes and specimen jars. Underneath them she found the most amazing magniocular, made of brass with an engraved plaque bearing her name. The lenses could do from five to five hundred thousand magnifications, meaning that with the right filters she might actually see the magic compounding itself between ingredients inside a potion!

Clearing some space on her work table, Mel magically stuck her new magniocular on the flat surface and soon began observing a few common reactions between lacewing flys and bubotubers. She felt giddy just by thinking about the amount of knowledge she could uncover with this new tool.

A knock on the wall of her shack drew her attention back to the human-sized world and she took her eyes out of the magnifying Apparatus, meeting the smiling faces belonging to her friends.

"Happy birthday Simply Mel!" they chorused together.

She rinsed her hands on a towel and flung herself on both boys, hugging them tightly. "Thanks guys, you don't know how much it means to me that you remembered," she said.

They waved her off and then produced two packages wrapped in newspaper and decorated with wild flowers. She half-heartedly told them they shouldn't have bothered but was dying to open them, which she did with gusto after sitting together on the ground. The presents consisted of a myriad of natural ingredients found in the forest, many had healing properties and others needed to be activated by something else for more complicated potions.

Mel thanked JP and Mike with a kiss for each, before regrettably telling them she'd better be back at home or else her aunt might find her missing.

"It's okay, Simply Mel. Tonight's the full-moon so we're busy too... Preparations 'n all."

"Yeah, the alphas didn't have enough for Wolfsbane this month so you'd be better off staying inside, alright? We don't wanna see you hurt or anything."

She thought it was sad, and frankly ridiculous, that werewolves were discriminated because of their savagery, but that savagery could be contained if they could purchase Wolfsbane potion, which they couldn't afford because they were discriminated against and couldn't get good jobs!

"Couldn't you get Wolfsbane from an independent source? Like from a good potions brewer instead of buying the ready-made bottles the ministry sells?" she asked.

"Last year Alpha Carroll did that, he got this wizard's stuff that's stronger than the government's, but I'd reckon it's still too expensive for us this month."

Nodding in resignation, Mel stood up and bid her friends goodbye and happy hunting, which the boys returned with a feral grin. She watched them leave through the woods and tidied her laboratory, extinguishing fires and casting stasis charms on the on-going preparations.

She knew Wolfsbane was way beyond her understanding and brewing capabilities, but the idea of an independent source for the potion kept floating on her mind while she made her way back to the cellar. It was expensive because it required the skilled hands of a Potions Master and many hard to obtain ingredients, as well as weeks of brewing. What if the werewolves themselves could collect as many of those ingredients as possible?

Sheating her mum's wand inside her sleeve, she hid the secret tunnel's entrance and sat on the same old wooden barrel with her feet propped against the pillar. She had to bend her knees at a sharper angle than ever before and wrinkled her nose, wondering when had the cellar become so small. Mel picked her latest reading and flipped to the page marker, ready to continue laughing at Brinn Bubblin's mishaps and enjoying the exciting evil plotting of the Dark Baron.

All in all, it had been a very nice eleventh birthday.

"Grangeeer!"

"Bloody hell, why did I have to jinx it?" she cried to the heavens, dropping her book and planting her feet on the floor. She moved a few books and boxes around to make it look like she was still living in the cellar and sat on her buffalo skin, toying with the head's horns and waiting for the door to burst open.

Slam!

"The conniving, dirty, scarlet woman that spawned you managed to do this to me!" her aunt screamed and pointed at her own face. Across her forehead, in angry red pimples, was written the word bitch in capital letters. Mel tried really, really hard not to burst out laughing, but the red-faced ginger-haired woman sporting the best description of herself that Mel could think of was just too much.

"Stop laughing and sign this bloody parchment ... if you can write at all, ignorant squib," she added, it was too much to have to ask her for something without insulting before and after the request.

From what Mel could gather, someone had sent her something and aunt Ginevra had tried to fake her signature on the receipt, which triggered the bitch-charm. Whatever it was, she was certain her aunt would try to destroy or hide it away.

The moment she finished inking her name, however, the parchment vanished and a manilla envelope she'd seen Muggles use came flying through the door and slammed into her face. Fumbling with it and rubbing her bruised nose, Mel failed to see her aunt reaching for the envelope to tore it away from her. She never had a chance to because it burst into a fireball so bright and big that it burned white circles in her vision for at least a minute.

Mel finally managed to look at her surroundings and, besides the charred beams and a few scorched things in the cellar, the only other casualty was Ginevra's formerly long and shiny hair.

"Say one word and I'll rip your guts and feed them to you," she hissed and slapped her harshly across the face, foaming spit dripping from one corner of her mouth. Aunt Ginevra turned and locked the cellar again, the familiar sound of a colloportus spell blocking her access to the house.

"Burnt hair smells bloody awful," Mel said and waved a hand in front of her face. She looked down at the floor and noticed something shining under the ashes of her delivery. Bending over, she blew some ash away and discovered a teaspoon adorned with a crest on the handle. Turning it over with an old quill, she found an engraved pair of words: Lagrange aeternus.

"Mum," she whispered and grabbed the teaspoon. When she touched it, a strong feeling of being hooked by her navel and being pulled gripped her, and the world spun away in a maelstrom of colour.

Spinning away, she suddenly felt solid ground and the force pulling her stopped. She tripped on her own feet and rolled away to land against solid wood, in a poorly-lit room of some kind. Looking around her, she found two small panelled windows with a door in between leading to a street and a wooden counter on her back, which she used to steady herself and try to make world stand still.

"Welcome Miss Weasley," greeted a voice from above and behind her.

Mel spun around and jerked her wrist to produce her mother's wand, pointing it at an old man with a tuft of white hair and hollow, silvery eyes.

"Ah, yes... Vine wood with dragon heartstring core, ten inches and three-quarters long. Beautiful name, your mother had... Alas, I am a wandsmith and this is my shop. Name's Ollivander and I'll be at your service today, Miss Weasley," the strange man said, his eyes never leaving her own.

"Call me Mel, I don't really care for either family name though most of my relatives use Granger," she replied, looking around for an exit and possible threats while keeping her wand pointed at Ollivander. "Now what am I doin' here?"

"It is your eleventh birthday today, is it not?" the old man asked, "Someone very powerful and wise incanted one too many rituals and spells that have resulted in you being here. Imagine my surprise when an ordinary wand box compelled me to open it and I found a binding contract of service and silence for a ... respectable sum of galleons."

"Someone who'd like you to sell me a wand and keep it quiet, I gather?"

"Wise deduction, Miss ... Granger," the man said with a frightening grin, "Please allow me to measure you, then."

Ollivander then proceeded to measure the length of her pinky nail, the width of her nostrils, how many inches there were between her heels in a relaxed standing position, and even asked her to open her mouth and measured her upper right canine tooth.

Wrinkling her nose at the process, she watched the old man disappear behind towering shelves filled with narrow boxes and rummage around. Mel hopped on the counter and bent forward to see where Ollivander was and saw him pulling half a dozen wands before turning back.

"I hope whoever went through all this trouble paid you enough for any wand I might choose?" she asked him before accepting the first box.

"Worry not, young lady. Besides, it's the wand that chooses the witch, not the other way around," Ollivander said and the room suddenly dropped a few degrees in temperature.

"Creepy bugger," she thought and took half a step back. Opening the first box, she found a glossy rosewood wand, about a foot in length, which she used to cast a levitation spell at a heavy wooden chair on the corner but it barely moved.

"Are you certain you know how to cast a spell?" Ollivander asked, clearly amused, "Witches your age cannot cast any--"

He stopped speaking when Mel switched wands and, using her mum's, made the chair float around and dropped it neatly on the other corner of the shop. "You were saying?"

"Very well, try this one please," the miffed wandmaker instructed, scowling at her.

Boom!

"Oh shite! I'm sorry, so sorry!" she said, blanching at the cabbage-sized hole she left on the counter after waving a wand made from holy.

"No unicorn hairs for you," Ollivander told her and fetched another set of wands.

Twenty minutes later Mel was pissed with the situation. She'd tried at least two dozen wands and if they didn't explode anything in the shop, they'd simply be too incompatible to channel her magic.

"Isn't this taking too damn long? I mean, you must have more customers to care for, right?"

"On the contrary Miss Granger. I haven't been able to open any doors or windows at all today... Or dissaparate either, for that matter. The result of yet another of your mother's rituals, I'm afraid."

"Bloody hell, she locked the man inside his own bloody shop!" she thought and whistled in appreciation. Ollivander wandered back into the bowels of his shop and she could hear him mumbling something and moving lots of boxes around, before saying "aha!" with a triumphant voice.

"Seven wands my ancestor turned from a lightning-struck proud ash of the north. Only one survived the dragon's breath that attacked this very shop we now stand in," he told her and presented the eleven inches long wand to her. "This one, has a silver phoenix feather core."

She observed the wand, it had a glossy polish and was decorated with intricate flowing lines that made it look almost organic, the surface giving the impression of constant motion. Most striking was the fact that one side was completely blackened, as if the wood itself had been transfigured, while the other had the natural shade and grain of the ash tree.

Mel ran a finger over its length, then grabbed it firmly and, unlike some of the others, it didn't explode anything right away. She waved it above her head and down to the floor, willing her magic without a definitive intent, and a shower of bright golden sparks erupted from its tip. With a wicked grin, she aimed at the already maimed but still standing grandfather clock on the opposite wall and whispered a blasting hex.

Boom!

After the dust settled and the metal coils and sprockets stopped rolling, they found another cabbage-sized hole, on the wall this time. The gaping hole was easily fixed by Ollivander, but the obliterated clock was stubbornly resistant to any form of repairing spells he tried. He frowned at Mel but she simply clasped her hands behind her back, bounced on the balls of her feet and put a sheepish look on her face, never letting go of her new wand.

"It seems our dealings have concluded then, Miss Granger. As part of the contract, I'm required to cast a reversal portkey on the same item that brought you here in the first place," he said and summoned the fancy teaspoon, waving his ancient looking wand over it. The teaspoon glowed and shook for a second, and then Ollivander handed her the ash and phoenix wand's box and a pair of wand-care kits. He told her to touch the portkey whenever she was ready to leave and walked back into the shadows, among the hundreds of wands waiting for their wizards to come.

Mel's last image of the old wandsmith was that of a man scared of uncertainty.

---

The twenty-fourth of July was the traditional Hogwarts Letter Day. Magical families with eleven year old children, or with children turning eleven before or on the thirty-first of August all over Britain waited anxiously for an owl bearing the acceptance document that would grant their children the opportunity to receive the finest magical education in the world. It also proved that their young boy or girl wasn't a squib, but a true wizard or witch.

Naturally, as it happened every year, some rather unaware families would receive the shock of their lives with the first-contact experience of meeting a mail owl delivering parchment letters. Of those non-magical folk, or Muggles as they were known on the other side of the artificial divide, one eleven year old happened to live in the hamlet of Bardle.

Mel had forgotten all about her Hogwarts letter and was spending the Summer day with Mike and JP. They'd Accioed three ice-cream buckets and spoons from a local Muggle shop and sat on a bench facing the road, with her squeezed in between the two boys.

"I love pistachio. Muggles have the best flavours," Mel commented between mouthfuls of her precious frozen delicacy.

JP raised an eyebrow at her, "I'd never know, haven't tried one o' them Muggles before, you see?"

Slapping him on the arm for the pitiful joke, Mel continued to enjoy her green bucketful of bliss. She was observing a young mother they knew was called Anna carrying her baby, and Mel wondered if her dead evil mother had done something similar once or twice. She didn't know; truth was she still refused to open her mum's bean bag even after the amazing arrangements she'd made for her eleventh birthday.

An elbow in the ribs from Mike brought her attention to him, and he pointed a finger at a pair of owls that were approaching from the north. One of them dove straight for them, but the other alighted itself on the roof of the house behind them, and then flapped its wings to land on the first open window to the left, on the second floor.

The first owl dropped the heavy envelope on Mel's lap and flew away. She picked it up and sighed, looking left and right before folding it and putting it in her back pocket.

"Ain't you gonna open it?"

"What for," she answered, "I can't afford it. My uncle might but my aunt won't let him pay for me to go to Hogwarts... I wonder who's the witch or wizard that lives up there, though."

The three friends turned their faces up and saw the second owl leaving, its feet relieved of their delivery. They hoped to hear or see something but the only motion was that of a curtain being blown in and out by the wind. A minute later, however, the door of the house burst open and a young boy with impossibly white hair and the palest creamy skin she'd ever seen put on a Liverpool F.C. cap on his head and run across the street and into the hamlet's only pub.

"Holy shite, was that a vampire?"

That comment earned a whack in the head from both JP and Mel. "Don't be silly, it's the middle of the day. Ever seen a vampire crossing the road at noon?" she asked.

Mike shrugged and rubbed the back of his head before gulping the last of his chocolate brandy truffle ice-cream. While that was his favourite, JP preferred one called Kentucky cocktail, which tasted suspiciously like firewhiskey, except for the burning tongue, throat and lungs thing.

Four or five minutes later, the non-vampire boy exited the pub and sat under the shadow, legs crossed against the wall. He was fidgeting with his Hogwarts letter and reading it back and forth, once and again. Mel found it extremely annoying to watch. Yet, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene.

"Oi, whitey! Yeah, you there!"

Whack!

"Mike don't be rude to the poor kid!" Mel berated and whacked him again to make her point. She gestured at the boy to stay where he was, and pulled her friends along and across the road.

The boy was actually scared, she noticed because the werewolves' nostrils flared and their grins turned slightly feral. Ignoring them for the time being, she bent forward and extended an arm, introducing herself and her companions. "I'm Mel, this is JP and this is Mike," she said, indicating each of them.

"I-I'm Lewis, Lewis P-Porpington," the boy replied.

"Hi Poportingpon, nice meeting yeh."

"Alright, enough!" Mel said and grabbed the boys by their ears, twisting them and bringing their faces an inch from hers. "Be nice and play nice," she hissed and released them. The werewolf cousins whined and rubbed their ears, falling half a step behind Mel. She was quickly becoming their alpha and she knew it.

"Sorry 'bout that Lewis. I see you've got an interesting letter there?"

Lewis got even more scared and his adrenaline levels were agitating the wolves, but Mel knew they'd restrain themselves. "What d-do you mean?"

"It's from a place called Hogwarts, isn't it?" she insisted, and then showed him her own, "I got one too."

"So it's real? I mean this is real, like really real?"

"Yeah, it's like really real alright... Do you have a parent or some adult that takes care of you?"

"Yes, mum works here at the pub, and dad's got a job at the Fleischer's farm. I showed it to my mum and she sent me back home. I don't think she believed me..."

"Can I read your letter then? Then maybe later we'll be able to prove your mum that this is really real," she said and winked at him. Mike and JP rolled their eyes but she pretended she hadn't noticed. Lewis traded his acceptance letter with hers and the standing boys and girl began scanning the parchment.

"Oi, check that out, the Muggles get free monies for Hogwarts if they can't pay for it! That ain't fair, innit?"

"More like indoctrination money. It's tied to the loss of parental guardianship and they don't have any rights under magical law until they turn seventeen. The Ministry for Magic acts as their guardian and controls everything they do," explained Mel once she finished reading. She also noticed that Muggleborn wizards and witches attending Hogwarts were required to renounce Muggle citizenship and that their records were magically erased once they signed for school.

"I'm not so sure it'd be a good thing going to Hogwarts after reading all this shite, Lewis." Mel was biting her lower lip and started to pace in front of the pub, the first tendrils of an idea beginning to take hold inside her mind. "You've got a week before answering yes or no. We three are magical and can show you that magic's real, but we can't do too much of it here in town 'cause we're underage."

"What happens if I don't go to this Hogwarts School?

"Then we'll teach you magic ourselves!"

"What?!" chorused Mike and JP.

"I've got a whole set of course books for all seven years. Sure they're like twenty years old but I reckon they're still good," she said.

"That's nuts, Simply Mel! I mean it's alright to cast a couple blasting hexes or whatever in the forest, but casting hundreds o' spells a day's gonna draw the ministry to us!"

Mel stopped pacing and her shoulders dropped, "You're right, they'd notice that huge magical activity in the middle of a freakin' forest and send a pack of Aurors the very same day... Bloody ministry."

"Got that right. But it'd be alright to show Porpington here some simple stuff, aye?"

Young Lewis watched in awe as a floating parchment zoomed in front of his face, but Mel wouldn't risk more than a simple short-lived Leviosa spell after two potential Hogwarts pupils were registered in the hamlet. The pale boy was actually bouncing with excitement after hearing about accidental magic, and confessed he'd once turned water into ice when he was falling into a pond and didn't know how to swim. It had happened the middle of the Summer and he'd slid on the solid surface face first, dusted himself and ran away scared to death.

After a few minutes of conversation about magic and why neither Mel nor her friends could got to Hogwarts, Lewis informed them of his albinism, which was the name given to his condition, although a broad amount of different symptoms and causes created different forms of it. His was milder in that it didn't affect his vision so much as his skin and hair, which were pearly white overall.

"Bugger, I thought you'd be like a day-walkin' vampire or somethin' like Mike thought," JP commented and earned a slap and a round of chuckles.

They parted company with the promise of meeting again after the weekend and walked back into the forest, where Mel hugged her boys and left for her laboratory shack to spend a few happy minutes prior to making her way back through the tunnel into her cellar.

"What if uncle Harry stands up for me?" she wondered, allowing a tiny flicker of hope to shine. She wouldn't begrudge him for not going to Hogwarts, she loved him and understood that somehow, for some unknown reason, her uncle's life was that of his wife and children. Uncle Harry lived and died for them, and always did as they told him as well.

Also, Mel understood why her aunt hated her so much, and she wouldn't be learning magic in the best magical school in the world because of who she was and what her evil mum had done so many years ago. Still, everything was so confusing, there seemed to be multiple versions of her past and each member of her family would choose to believe one or another or neither!

Uncle George said her father had done something shameful; uncle Harry would swear an oath on his magic, what little he had left, that Death Eaters were responsible for her mother's death. Aunt Ginevra knew the truth that Hermione Granger had been a dark witch, and yet her dead mother had successfully plotted to offer her the real truth in a letter only she could find, warning her against every single Weasley and everyone around her.

Perhaps it was time for her to open that bean bag.

She threw the crumpled Hogwarts letter over her work desk and moved a few boxes, finding the trunk she needed. Opening its latches, she lifted the lid and pulled the bag, returning to her desk. A gold knife she used for certain preparations would serve its purpose and she sliced the tip of her finger, dropping the blood into the small bean bag, uttering "Lagrange aeternus" as her mother's letter instructed.

The object shuddered a little and a puff of blue smoke erupted from it, swirling around and expanding out to encircle her before dissipating slowly into nothingness. She reached into the bag and found a thick blue book; the journal of Hermione Granger.

Inside the cover, Mel found a loose sheet of parchment and began to read.

Beloved daughter,

Thank you for trusting my word on parchment. The journal you hold in your hands was started the day I decided to stay on this earth and this body, when all artificial bindings placed upon me fell loose.

When you used our shared blood to unlock the truth of our lives, a cleansing mist removed all magical bindings, harnesses and traces from you, in the same way my momentary death did it for me. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to release you from any oaths or vows you may have willingly made in your past, for those are both true and untainted.

Because you share Weasley blood, it's unlikely that any magical slavery methods have been applied to you. They wouldn't work from Weasley to Weasley, likewise they wouldn't work from Granger to Granger. There are, however, worse forms of slavery in the shape of physical and verbal cruelty to a child. I wish with all my might that you've been spared from them all.

Any form of memory modification you may have been subjected to is now weakened, please learn to meditate properly in order to recover the truth. You will find the necessary information within these pages.

If you are currently attending Hogwarts, please leave immediately. You will learn true magicks as I have in the past three years, drinking the knowledge that our common Muggle and wizard ancestors crafted out of nature, instead of the indoctrination the Ministry for Magic passes for magical education. You will need traditional magic as well, which you will learn from a unique syllabus I've prepared exclusively for you. Your education will be free from the constraints and prejudices of the present magical society.

Juliette, again I beg your forgiveness for allowing you to be tainted by your father's blood and for leaving you alone to fend for yourself. I love you and I'm doing everything in my power to protect you while rescuing Harry, but I can only pretend to be under their enchantments for so long.

I fear the day an enraged Weasley or a Ministry assassin walks through our wards and takes you away from me. Your first birthday is four days from now, and we'll celebrate together as if there's no tomorrow. There may be no tomorrow.

Please forgive your uncle Harry for whatever wrong he's done to you. His mind was weak and easy prey for those who wished him harm and for those who wished to control him. I've failed to free him because it's impossible to brew the standard counter to magical slavery without ancestral family blood. All Potters are dead, and his children are tainted with the master blood of the Weasleys.

Because I know you've inherited my intelligence, you're now wondering how can I be free to pretend being a Weasley slave, if I have no Weasley blood. The answer is, I bound my blood to that of Ronald, your father to be. The ritual took two days to complete, and all details are inside my journal. Through this artificial bond, any slavery potion, charm and spell where the master is a Weasley will continue to fail.

Practice your meditation and learn the art of Occlumency. While your father can never hope to learn how to read minds, he might hire someone to do it for him. Remember, trust no one around you and learn as much as you can. Then, if your heart tells you to, please help my beloved Harry and reclaim your ancestral name. My greatest wish is for you to be free.

All my love,

Mummy

By the time Mel had finished the letter, she was shaking like a leaf. Was any of this true? Had her dad enslaved her mum like this? Was he in Azkaban for this or did he actually kill her like she feared? If it was true, then uncle Harry had been under aunt Ginevra's control for over twenty years, and from what little she'd read on the magical damage compulsion potions create, no wonder the man was almost a squib!

"In fact, he shouldn't even be able to argue anything with his wife," she considered, and concluded it was a clear sign of him fighting the slavery potions. If all of this was true, of course.

Without time to waste, Mel sat to read her mum's big blue book and draw her own conclusions.

---

The thorough, endless, annoying and frankly already getting old taunts Jimmy and Frida had thrown at her whenever she was out of the cellar, because uncle Harry was home of course, had been mercifully over once September the first arrived. She'd decided to follow her mother's advice and stay out of Hogwarts, and the Potter brothers had a feast by calling her a squib who didn't even get a letter.

Mel had yet to reveal that not only was she a full-fledged witch, but also that she carried two wands and could actually blast the crap out of any Potter in a duel any day of the week. She knew she could, she'd seen them duelling in the yard.

She'd been reading her mother's life for the past month. Brilliant was too simple an adjective to call her mum, Hermione Granger had been the most talented witch in all of Britain, and done all her work under the Weasleys' nose! She fought too many battles at once, however, and Mel knew that was her undoing.

There were loose parchments before the actual journal, a kind of introduction Hermione had prepared and updated every week until her death. The first thing her mother taught her was how to reveal tampered food and liquids, how to detect master-slave bindings like the ones between house-elves and a magical family, and how to cast a mild compulsion so that she had proof the revealing spells were real. Mel had made JP stand on all fours and scratch his belly with his left foot for an entire afternoon after learning that.

The second and most striking thing her mum had prepared for her was an actual pensieve and dozens of duplicated memories inside the deceivingly small bean bag. She taught her how to recognize a modified memory and instructed how to create one herself, so that she could actually see the difference.

That's how Mel learned what a murdering bastard her father was.

She had thought it strange that her mum's first letter said she'd held her inside her body for eight months, when normal gestation lasts nine months for humans. Mel was born one month earlier thanks to her dear father.

When she saw a memory labelled April fourteenth, 2004, she'd smiled thinking that she would see her own birth, but instead she'd watched in horror how a tall red-haired man punched and pushed her mum through a window and, not content with leaving her bloodied in the face and hands, had begun to kick her belly again and again until uncle Harry, then younger and more powerful, had mashed him into a bloody pulp with his bare hands.

There were worse beatings, however. Once Hermione had flung a bottle of firewhiskey at Ronald's head, who wanted to force her into having sex in a ... very rough way, and she suffered for it. Mel had already found and read a couple of Muggle books about sexuality and human procreation her mother's journal recommended, and they explained a lot of the things her friends Mike and JP would sometimes hint or make jokes about. She knew this was the memory of a rape.

Mel had cried when she saw her father, the raping bastard, cast the binding charm on Hermione, forcing her to choose between blowing her cover or playing the slave for uncle Harry's sake. Her mum had chosen the latter, and still gotten a beating so thorough that only her grandmother Molly Weasley had managed to stabilize and heal her.

For every memory there was a corresponding entry in the big blue book, and she saw several happy memories from her mum's time in Hogwarts, when she fell in love with uncle Harry and he'd fallen for her. There were many of her as a baby as well, touching and tender moments as well as funny events like when she discovered mud for the first time; there'd never been a happier baby in the world.

Mel saw a modified memory set in Hermione's fifth year, it was something that happened inside a classroom but was obscured; a copy of the same memory extracted after her mother had her instantaneous death and resurrection revealed aunt Ginevra and her father spiking food and drinks. The obliviator had been a plump witch wearing white robes and healer cap on her head.

Hermione's big blue book said that healer's name was Pomona Pomfrey and that she'd initiated the memory and personality modification process on uncle Harry and on her mother under Molly's orders. According to her mum's journal, the Weasley matriarch had some very big leverage over the healer, something that would've thrown her in Azkaban.

Despite the physical abuse, Hermione had dedicated her time to perfecting an alternative potion and ritual to release Harry's bindings as well as writing weekly attacks on the Ministry of Magic and its policies regarding magical creatures and their treatment of Muggles and Muggleborn witches and wizards. One of her entries even rebated the article from the Daily Prophet that aunt Ginevra had given Mel for her previous birthday.

Mel felt ashamed for believing the crap they'd written about her mum. She still believed Hermione had an evil streak in her, though.

According to the journal, the Weasleys had tried to modify her behaviour but Hermione could keep pretending to be Ronald's slave and still be an activist as long as her actions didn't directly affect the family. That was one of the particularities of these master-slave bindings.

Besides, her mum had written, whenever she slipped they'd always think the batch Molly had brewed was slightly off and wouldn't dwell on it for too long.

The Big Blue Book had taught her how to cast a simple surface ward to mask any and all magical activity on it, which allowed Mike, JP and Mel to start studying Hermione's own brand of Hogwarts education while inside the fifty yard circular area. Mel would've liked to have taught Lewis, but unfortunately his family had been visited by a Hogwarts professor and the Porpingtons had been convinced to send him away. The professor got to them when he showed them that their heritage spanned five hundred years of wizarding history, and that the very ghost of Gryffindor was a Porpington.

The sheer amount of Hermione's modified or brand new spells that defied the standard catalogue approved by the Ministry for Magic was actually dwarfed by the Pangaean Magick her mother had unearthed. It had taken Mel and her friends a full week to understand the very definition of it, and it required extensive use of meditation and reorganization of the way their minds worked while casting a spell.

Every once in a while, her mum would reiterate her love debt to uncle Harry. At first Mel wouldn't understand it, but after reviewing her memories and reading her written thoughts, she began to come to terms with the fact that Hermione Granger and Harry Potter had been robbed of their past, present and future love for each other, and wouldn't have rested until she'd gotten it back.

In fact, Mel began to believe that there'd be no greater revenge than to release uncle Harry from the Weasley Bitch's clutches, show him how they killed the girl he'd once fallen in love with, and then sit back to watch the House of Potter burn down.

"We gonna try those transmogrifying spells again, Simply Mel?"

The question interrupted Mel's thoughts and she paused, bit her lip and shook her head, "Not yet Mike. I'm not ready for that... You and JP can try today by I won't. My arm's still kinda feeling weird since yesterday."

Transmogrifying, unlike transfiguring, was the act of pulling magic from around you and using it to effect a transformation. For example, the Big Blue Book instructed the wizard to use the water in a stream to pull magic from it and use it transform itself into water. The incantations and wand movements depended on the base element of what they wanted to mimic, be it fire, water, earth or air.

Problem was, the wizard had to become one with the element first, and it required lots of intent and strength to pull the natural magic and bend it to one's will.

When Mel had finally felt ready to do it, she'd stuck her arm into the water and cast the required incantation. Her arm had began to liquefy and her sense of self shifted, suddenly she could feel one with the pond, and actually sense the slimy toads and slippery fish rushing through her. She freaked out and botched her concentration, resulting in the current weird feeling. She hated toads, but wasn't about to loose face in front of her werewolves by telling them that, so she came up the lame excuse that her arm was bothering her.

"Did you ask Alpha Carroll where the potion brewer lives?" Mel suddenly asked while they worked on mastering the sizing charm, which would be extremely useful for carrying and concealing their belongings.

"Nope, he don't know where it lives at, only that the brewer pops in, picks the money, drops the stuff 'n vanishes," JP answered, poking the largest acorn she'd ever seen. It was as wide as dining table and twice her height!

"Bollocks, we've been gathering ingredients for ages now, but how do we get in touch with the bloody brewer?"

"Dunno," Mike said and then shrugged. "Oi! What if we just follow the bloke?"

Mel bit her lip again, "We'd have to stake-out the clearing. And it'd be dangerous for me to be out of the house for too long..."

"I don't get it Mel... Why don't yeh ditch the effin' bastards?" growled JP, real concern and caring in his eyes.

Walking up to him, Mel wrapped him in a tight hug and looked up. "You know I'd rather slice my family's throats and feed 'em their tongues for lunch, except uncle Harry of course. But that'd bring me and you guys lots of trouble. Besides, taking Harry Potter away from that bitch is something I really wanna achieve, in honour of my mum's memory."

She smiled when JP nodded in acceptance of her choices. The strength of character and bursts of seriously powerful magic she displayed had tapped the young werewolves' instincts and made her their alpha, but she wanted to feel their human affection as well. After a silent moment holding each other, he kissed her forehead and Mel released the hug, walking to sit next to Mike and giving him a gentle ear-scratch while looking for disguising spells in the Big Blue Book.

That same evening, two walking shrubs and one rolling boulder were circling the clearing where the small werewolf community lived. The walking vegetation would stand still for a while and the unnaturally moving grey boulder would then roll ahead of it, as if scouting the forest ahead.

Disguised as inconspicuous landscape items, Mel was confident they'd be able to spot the potions brewer and then follow him. Unless he Apparated or used a portkey, they'd have a chance to speak with him and offer ingredients instead of galleons for his services.

The sun had already sunk and there was still no sign of Alpha Carroll, the wolves' leader, and no sign of any strangers either.

"D'you reckon we missed him?" the boulder asked.

With a shuffle of leaves, the shrubbery seemed to bend and sniff the air, before speaking "We've picked a new scent Mel, follow us!"

The shrubs hopped to their ... feet, and started to zig-zag into the forest, following the trail that would hopefully lead them to the brewer. After a couple hundred yards, Mel rolled to a stop and the boulder shuffled back and forth, until she saw a cloaked figure cast a switching spell at a pouch on the ground, where a basket filled with corked bottles appeared.

Never swaying from a straight path, the unknown wizard plunged into a denser part of the forest while the disguised persecutors trailed him as close as they dared. Once Mel feared they'd lost him but after a minute she distinguished the robed figure again and continued to follow, instinctively knowing her wolves were right behind her.

Reaching a small natural clearing, the figure suddenly spun and vanished from sight with a faint crack. While still disguised as a rolling boulder, Mel felt a tiny popping sound behind her and the last she heard before blacking out were two simple words.

"Pathetic... Stupefy!"

Twelve hours later, under the morning sun, a young witch stirred and groaned, "Bloody hell... Oh no, it's daytime!"

Mel groaned and tried to stand up, but was held to the ground by a tangle of arms and legs. She snickered at the way her friends were wrapped around her on either side and would've enjoyed the feelings of safety and caring for longer if she didn't need to return to her cellar immediately.

"Geroff me, you lazy berks," she laughed and shook the boys awake. They gasped and grabbed their heads, hissing in pain.

"That bloody wizard knocked us out! You alright Simply Mel?"

"We jumped to defend you Mel, but ... I'd reckon we screwed it up... Sorry..."

She told her wolves not to worry and explained her predicament. If aunt Ginevra had checked for her last night she'd be in a world of trouble; thankfully it was more likely than not that she'd invited someone over or went to a party, in which case her aunt wouldn't have bothered to look into the cellar at all until it was time to throw her some food at around ten in the morning.

With a promise of sending a flying parchment to the forest end of the tunnel leading to the Potters' house, she jumped in and crawled the narrow space. Careful not make any noise, she peeked into the cellar and relaxed upon noticing the door was still closed. She produced one of her wands and swished it at the door, revealing a magical lock around a day old or more.

"Phew... That was bloody close!" she whispered and frowned when sawdust fell on her nose, making her sneeze. Seconds later, the moaning and wall banging she'd associated with aunt Ginevra's visitors could be heard and felt around the house.

Scribing a quick "I'm fine, go home" in a piece or parchment, she waved her wand and incanted "columbanimatus" while picturing the tunnel entrance where JP and Mike were. The note folded itself like origami, creating a tiny dove that flew away through her end of the passageway. She then took possession of her customary seat to read and was about to plant her feet on the pillar when a wrinkling in her pocket alerted her to something foreign.

Patting herself, she found a note written by an unknown hand: "Follow me again and you all die" it read. Unfortunately for the Brewer, he hadn't counted on Mel Granger's tenacity. She scrunched the note inside her fist and huffed, before burning it and pacing the cellar; within the next twenty eight days she needed to craft another way to follow or track him, because she had a man to rescue, a name to reclaim and she'd be damned if he was ever going to catch her or her friends by surprise again.

---

Spending yet another Christmas holiday with the annoying Potter-Weasley spawn telling everyone squib jokes and hiding stones inside their snowballs was deplorable. Mirroring the murdering stares by grandmother Molly and making her flinch and turn away, however, was delicious.

But the real icing in the cake for Mel was getting to aunt Ginevra's nerves by sitting next to uncle Harry at the table, making him laugh and playing with him as if he was a little kid having the best Christmas ever.

The Weasleys couldn't enslave her, and killing Mel would break uncle Harry for good, even if they blamed Death Eaters again, rendering him insane and perhaps so close to death that the bindings would fail. Or he'd simply give up and die, turning whatever little perks and status Ginevra still held in magical society totally useless. She was Harry Potter's wife after all, but who would give her the time of day for being his black widow, the woman who couldn't keep Harry Potter sane?

There was a reason Ginevra insisted in keeping Mel's uncle happy, and it had everything to do with her control over him. The Big Blue Book contained that knowledge, and she knew that her mother had spent years close to uncle Harry in order to keep him alive and try her many modified potions, spells and rituals on him.

For Mel, returning the untainted yet oblivious love Harry felt for her and taking revenge on the Weasleys for her mum's pain were reasons enough to make herself indispensable to them; keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, Hermione Granger had written.

From now on, it was a matter of learning and applying herself to creating new and improved counters to the slavery magic. For that end, she needed ingredients and potions expertise. And for that, she needed the Brewer.

Following the Brewer in the past three months had been dangerous and foolish. He was fast and cunning, and yet together with Mike and JP they'd managed to ambush him once into what was originally conceived by wizards as a werewolf trap, an anti-Apparition, odourless, invisible capture net that they could string over the ground.

They netted the wizard, but failed to consider the use of magically enhanced knives. The Brewer sliced through the net and blasted them twenty yards into the forest. It it weren't for Mel's quick thinking in the use of transmogrifying the hard earth into soft mud and moving the trees into the hexes' path to soften the blows, they'd become a trio of ugly rotting corpses.

"Uncle Harry, what do you know about potions?" she suddenly asked, enjoying the sounds of gasps and clattering forks coming from Ginevra and Molly Weasley.

She watched him scratch the back of his neck and frown, as if trying to remember something he hadn't recalled in a very long time. "Not much darling. I had a horrible teacher, I guess... In any case, Ginny could help you if you want to learn potions," he said with a sincere smile, but then tilted his head in question. "Shouldn't you be learning that in Hogwarts?"

"Oh, Harry," interrupted aunt Ginevra, "don't you remember she didn't even get the acceptance letter? We were all so saddened to learn Granger's blood was so weak," her aunt whispered and gave her a vicious sneer behind uncle Harry's back.

"No, you're right, I must have forgotten. But I'll find a special book you would like, darling Julie. Your mother she ... yelled a lot at me for using it but since you aren't a real witch, I see no harm."

Mel had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing, the Weasleys were going to have the surprise of their lives when she succeeded and revealed herself as a real witch, not the squib they'd been convinced she was. And then, they were all going to die a horrible death.

They were celebrating alone since uncle Percival had failed to come to the Burrow with his family, and her grandmother had openly accused Mel of being the cause. She suspected the older Weasleys were aware of at least part of the truth, but like her mother before her, she didn't trust any of them. However, one day they might become useful and she kept her ears open and trained her newly acquired mental focus on every bit of information she could gather.

The meditative techniques her mum provided had helped her counter her dimwitted father's genetic contribution, and the basic Occlumency magic exercises clenched her hold on the secrets she kept, without spilling them accidentally by blurting something or falling prey to someone magically gifted in the art of reading minds, unless the wizard attacked it directly with Legilimency.

When it came time to exchange presents, she silently made her way outside the kitchen and sat on the snow, eager to return to her aunt's house and leave her cellar to meet her friends. She hoped they liked her presents, it had taken a couple of tries but she learned to tan and handle boar hide, as well as how to apply the fitting charm so it wouldn't cut the wearer's arm out or fall loose.

An hour later she was flooing back into the Potter's house and, because her uncle had to work on holidays to bring home the extra galleons Ginevra demanded, she was soon thrown into the cellar by means of a firm hold on her hair and a swift kick to the bum.

After the door was locked, she moved some stuff around and crawled through the tunnel into the forest, her head popping up through the accumulated snow. Vanishing her footsteps, she made her way to the laboratory shack to find JP and Mike already there, preparing something tasty to eat over an open fire pit.

"Happy Christmas, Simply Mel!" they chorused together as they enjoyed doing.

She skipped up to them and they shared hugs and kisses, before Mel walked into the shack to retrieve her self-made presents. "I made these for you guys," she said, handing them two wrapped items and turning her hands to the fire for warmth.

"Thanks! We got a lil' somethin' for you too," JP said and handed her a long package wrapped in newspaper, while Mike handed her a smaller rectangular one.

The three then sat on the fallen tree they used as a bench all times, looking back and forth between them and keeping their presents on their laps, untouched. Fingers twitched and eyes fluttered, each clearly waiting for the other to break down first and tear his or her present first. The fire crackled again and Mike almost lost his will, but managed to stamp the urge by sitting on his right hand.

"Bugger this!" JP yelled and tore his present open, while his cousin and Mel laughed merrily.

Each of the boys found himself a leather wand holster for their forearms, it was deep red in colour and had their names engraved on the inside. Mel had hunted a wild boar and used the hide to craft it, the hardest part was getting the leather to be flexible but strong, as well as cutting and sewing the holsters together because it had to be done manually. She'd been unable to find any charms or spells for making combat gear, only for knitting ridiculous sweaters or useless scarves.

The moment they placed the holsters on their arms, the fitting charm activated and the leather bands adjusted to be not too tight, but also firm enough to stay put under any conditions. They oohed and awed at the same time and stored their wands at once.

Mel blushed and her ears turned red at the look of pride and appreciation shining in her wolves' eyes. To distract herself, she tore open the rectangular package and found a cracked, battered wooden box. Inside, a rectangular yellow and grey coloured stone shared space with a thin metallic rod about six inches long. She lifted an eyebrow but followed Mike's silent instruction to open the other gift.

Clearing the newspaper wrappings she found a beautiful knife, it seemed to be forged all in one single piece, because the nine inch blade morphed smoothly into a handle without any visible change in material, save for a leathery band coiled around it for a secure grip. The blade itself had a single cutting edge but its point trailed up, allowing a double edge there. Closer to the handle, several sharp serrated teeth were featured and she understood the first present as a whetstone sharpening kit for her knife.

"I don't know what to say, I ... thank you, thank you!" she exclaimed and then admired the blade at an angle.

"You're welcome Mel. When me 'n Mike saw the Brewer slice that net of yours with a blade, he pointed out you'd better be havin' one too."

"What about you two?" she asked, concerned that they only had wands to defend themselves.

They smiled and produced two smaller but easily concealed flick-knives from their belts, claiming that since they've been hanging out with the wicked Lady Granger and chasing dangerous wizards to learn their evil ways, they'd better be well prepared. Mel stuck her tongue at them and returned to admiring her knife, testing the sharpening rod on one of the serrated teeth.

Minutes later the roasted turkey was ready and she grabbed an entire leg for herself, briefly wondering where in Britain could the boys have hunted down a wild turkey and how had they scraped enough money to purchase such a beautiful gift for her. "Oh well, what you don't know won't hurt you, as they say..."

---

Five years later, during the Summer of Mel Granger's seventeenth year of life on Earth, she had become a tall and strong woman. Her penetrating brown eyes diverted all attention from the little freckles on her nose and cheeks, while short cut, dark-red, uncontrollable hair framed her face, barely reaching the nape of her neck on the back; long hair was liable to get smeared and singed when concocting and sniffing potions. Despite the fact she could be living on her own, the uncontested belief she was a squib and thus unable to fend for herself had forced her aunt Ginevra to accept uncle Harry's wish that she should continue to live at home.

She still used the tunnel for her daily escape from the cellar, which her aunt continued to lock with a simple spell, "something beyond my understanding," as her aunt would say. Little did she know that with the magic JP, Mike and her had been studying she could become one with the house and actually command it at will. "Well, the whole bloody house is a bit of a stretch right now, but I'd be able to in a few more years," she mused out loud.

Standing in front of her work table inside her laboratory shack, she flipped today's Daily Prophet open, which carried some inane front-page story about lemon drop sweets being banned from production and sale in the magical world. Her many cauldrons bubbled, fizzled and steamed around her while she browsed the newspaper, looking for anything of interest.

It seemed late January of 2021 was one of the most boring seasons in history in terms of journalistic excitement, and Mel had some better uses for the Prophet than a source of news. Sighing, she ripped it in two and, pulling a tray from under her owl's open habitat, replaced the soiled and awfully smelly paper.

Medusa the owl had a clump of grey feathers in her head as wild as Mel's own mane of frizzy hair was, and while not as civilized as magically bred and trained birds were, her people-finding skills rivalled those of any other mail bird out there. Besides, she'd fallen in love with the grey-owl the moment she saw it gutting a large snake on the roof of her laboratory, and soon bribed her into becoming her familiar with live juicy fat rats she used for potions experiments.

It was JP, the nature enthusiast, who'd later pointed out that grey-owls weren't native to these parts of the world, but she didn't dwell on it too much. "Never look a gift Hippogriff in the beak," was the saying and if Medusa had escaped some zoo or whatever, it was only fortunate she'd ended having a meal on top of her roof. She loved her familiar and the owl probably loved her back.

The only person her owl had never been able to find was the Brewer.

"That elusive little bugger," Mel mumbled and hit the work table with a closed fist. "Stirring powdered goblin hipbones clockwise destroys their rebellious attribute. Who do you take me for?" she replied on a piece of parchment and folded it, ready to be delivered three days prior to the next full moon, when the Brewer would show up to collect his ingredients and galleons. She was getting tired of the intentionally misleading suggestions and life-threatening, explosive combinations the wizard kept slipping into their monthly correspondence.

It had taken more than six failed ambushes to be able to slip a piece of parchment into the Brewer's cloak, in which she explained the need for rare ingredients and how she was willing to barter them for others she and her wolves could easily gather in the forest. The reply she'd found written on the back of her note the following month read "Seven thousand beetle eyes for seven unicorn hairs" and thus a fairly regular exchange had began.

After years of study and training, Mel was poised to be the most accomplished young potions brewer in all of Britain if she ever stepped out of the shadows. Her skills weren't sufficient for making a perfect cauldron of Wolfsbane on the first try, in fact she could still botch a full cauldron of it even if it looked perfect in the end, but her observations and experiments had given her knowledge and insight probably beyond those of the Brewer himself in a few areas.

Uncle Harry's gifts from the Umbridge Undry cauldron company were always welcome, as were free quills and office supplies he probably pilfered from his part-time desk job at the Ministry for Magic, but it was that old copy of a Hogwarts sixth-year Potions text of his that had held more than she ever expected. While her mum's copy had several instructive and noteworthy annotations, her uncle's had time-saving tips and revolutionary concepts, as well as more than one useful non-standard and downright dark spell.

What frustrated her to no end about uncle Harry, however, was the fact his bindings continued to hold.

She'd almost shouted in glee when her second variation on her mum's latest counter-potion made his eyes focus sharply upon her face, a flicker of life behind them. His body tensed and she tested him by "accidentally" pushing his teacup off the table. He grabbed it in mid-fall, before it could reach the floor.

It had all gone sour when his rage surfaced, but his memory didn't. Mel had tried to talk and reason with him, yet instead of logical replies he kept yelling at her about betrayal and murder and fake visions, accusing her of knowing nothing about Quidditch and killing someone named Dumbledore.

The episode had thankfully ended with him clutching his forehead and slumping to the floor, where he rested for a few minutes and then woke up offering Mel some tea, as if nothing had happened.

Today she was concocting a third variation, in two and half months more she'd be able to proceed with the final phase of the potion and then try again. With improved results, hopefully.

The sound of an opening door and firm steps behind her alerted to the presence of another, while the arm snaking around her waist in a distinct manner told her it was Mike. His gorgeous smell was another indicator.

"Hey Mel," he whispered and kissed her neck, caressing her stomach and pressing himself to her back.

"Hmmm... Keep doin' that, I love it," she whispered back while powdering the dried mandragora with an obsidian mortar. "Is JP back from work too?"

"Yeah, his day to cook, remember?"

Both werewolves were adults under magical law and had reluctantly registered themselves in the Ministry for Magic's Half-Breed Program, which was a source of cheap labour for wizard-owned companies, but they'd agreed with Mel's reasoning that it was the only way for them to be legally able to carry a wand.

John Paul and Michael Lobozny had become independent from their community, the fact they'd chosen to follow an alpha that was actually a non-werewolf witch had estranged them from the pack anyway. The three had built a small cottage not far from her laboratory, but it was mostly for her wolves since she was still supposed to be living in her uncle's house because of her condition as a supposed squib. Whenever aunt Ginevra was away travelling or having a night out, however, she'd be free to spend as much time as she wished with them, as was the case today.

"Lemme finish this up and I'll meet you home," she said and kissed Mike on the lips, before watching him go.

Five minutes later she was walking home, her real home where people she was in love with lived. People she wanted a future with. Not for the first time she wondered what her mum would've thought of her relationship with the Lobozny cousins, a relationship that the hypocritical and conservative magical society would consider barbaric to an extreme, bordering on the immense insult of "Muggle behaviour."

A pair of strong arms holding and lifting her in the air brought Mel out of these thoughts and she found herself nose to nose with a scruffy-bearded JP. She kissed him thoroughly and demanded to be put down on the floor, complaining that he smelled of garlic.

"Are we expecting vampires for dinner tonight?" she teased.

"Ha ha, funny you," he said and kissed her again, before pulling her by the hand inside where she helped Mike set their small table.

They enjoyed dinner and she revelled on the closeness and love they shared, being able to spend long silent stretches of time together simply listening to each other's breathing or frantically debating something about the Pangaean Magick her mum had researched and they had still to understand fully.

As it happened when she could spend the night home with them, soon after finishing their ice-cream they began to kiss and caress each other. Mel took pride in giving each of her lovers equal affection, and because she knew exactly how Mike liked to be fondled, nuzzled and loved in different ways than JP did, she'd always satisfy them both fully, and be thoroughly satisfied by them in turn.

She escaped their grip and made her way to the bedroom, teasing her wolves by removing her work t-shirt and throwing it back at them. Crawling on the bed and locking her eyes to theirs, she stretched in a way that made them growl and moan at the same time, and then invited them by curling her index finger back and forth.

The Summer night was still young and she was being pleasured when an uneasy feeling made her turn to the open bedroom window. "Wait..."

"What's wrong Mel?"

"I dunno, I ... thought I saw something," she said in a whisper. "Must've been the wind, now come 'ere and make love to me..."

As the sun rose the morning after, the bedroom became bright and warm. They had chosen to build it so that the window faced the east, because it reminded JP and Mike that there was always an end to the torture of the full-moon in the shape of a golden orb.

Mel stirred first, as she was wont to do, and donned the first shirt she could find on the floor before grabbing a leftover chicken wing and munching on it. Wiping her hands clean, she padded back to the bed and took a moment to observe her family. That's what they were, her very own family.

The same uneasy feeling she'd had last night came over her suddenly and she released a scream when the window blew apart, showering her in glass and wood.

"Grab Mrs Potter's daughter and kill the beasts!" ordered an unknown voice inside the house.

"My wand! Where the fuck's my bloody wand!" Mel yelled hysterically from the floor while JP and Mike growled at the red-robed wizards surrounding them. She watched in horror when one of the Aurors pointed his wand at JP's chest and incanted a spell. A werewolf killing spell.

"Sagitta argentum!"

"Nooo!"

The silver arrow hit him dead centre in the heart and he fell back, blood pouring from his wound. Mike lost control and lunged for the murderer, throwing him against the wall and choking him with his bare hands. Mel then tried to hit one of the other four Aurors but he was quick and used her inertia to throw her to the floor, from where she watched the last vestiges of life leaving her beloved John Paul.

His eyes shone with love and he smiled one last time, before mouthing "sorry" and fading away. Mel was shaking but tried to stand up again, only to be subdued with a petrification spell.

Her very heart bled while she watched her brave Michael swinging fists with inhuman speed and strength, downing another Auror and barely flinching at a close-range Reducto to his left arm, which splintered in a nightmarish cloud of bone and flesh. Mike kicked his attacker fiercely and turned to defend a hex from behind, but there's nothing an unarmed wolf can do against a high speed silver arrow.

"No, no, please, no!" she pleaded inside her mind, blaming herself for failing her pack, for losing her family, for surviving her loved ones. The Auror had said it, she was to be taken alive. But she was dying with them, she was dead without them.

Mike fell over their shared bed, not one but three silver arrows on his chest. She saw him look at her through the corner of his eyes, and she saw his love for her, and his pride for being killed in battle, defending her to the end.

The shirt Mel was wearing had been hastily transfigured into a simple robe while she was being levitated out of the house. Her frozen body was then dropped on the ground as the beautiful cottage they had built together was burned to ashes by means of incendiary spells. The Aurors then healed one another and congratulated themselves for a job well done while she pushed the despair away, storing names and faces in her memory. These Aurors were going to die.

Three of the red-robed wizards Apparated away and two grabbed her still frozen frame, Apparating her to the last place she wanted to see right now: the pathway leading to the Potter's property. After a couple hundred yards walk, the house came into view and she saw Ginevra standing in the front door, looking back at her with a disgusting half-smile on her face, which soon disappeared to be replaced with fake concern and magically induced tears.

"By Merlin! Thank you for saving her, I can't believe those beasts were living so close to us all this time!" she cried, telling them how thankful the Potter family was for saving their poor adopted squib.

"Here's your daughter, Mrs Potter. She's safe now," the lead Auror told her aunt, "We also took the werewolves' wands and weapons, they actually had four magical wands in their possession, probably from other kidnapped young witches."

"Thank you so much Auror Croaker," she said between sobs, "did you put those beasts down?"

"Yes ma'am, there'll be no more werewolves around your property," the murderer replied and took his leave, closing the main door behind him.

Because of Mel's height, aunt Ginevra had to look up at her against the wall, where the Aurors had left her petrified body. Her aunt pocketed the four wands and threw the knives and crossbows under a table, before narrowing her eyes into slits.

"Come here you filthy spawn! Sullying yourself with those foul creatures!" aunt Ginevra yelled and dragged her by the hair, "You're your mother's daughter all right, a whore just like her. Be glad I need my Harry to be happy, or else I'd told the Aurors to kill you too!"

Her aunt cancelled the petrification spell and, while slapping her back and forth, began to ask how she had left the house. "Tell me Granger, how did you leave this house?"

Mel was free from the spell but still frozen with grief, rage and despair. Her friends were dead, her lovers murdered in cold blood before her eyes. She should have left years ago but the love she and her mother had felt for and from uncle Harry didn't let her. He needed his darling Julie and she couldn't bear the pain of leaving him alone with the woman that killed him inside every day. It was a love debt she'd have to break now.

Dodging another round of slaps, Mel grabbed hold of a vase on a nearby table and swung her arm, smashing it into her aunt's face and throwing her back against the wall where she crumbled to the floor. She recovered the first wand she could find from inside Ginevra's clothes but was kicked back once the older witch regained her senses.

"What d'you think you're doing with a wand, stupid squib?" she asked and laughed while wiping blood from the left side of her face. "Are you gonna poke me with it?"

Crouching in the doorway to the parlour, all Mel could see before her were the lovely eyes of her beloved wolves. She had a wand at hand but pain and despair had gripped her mind and she'd barely registered the fact her aunt was pointing her own wand at her, reacting only after the third syllable of the incantation was shouted.

"Expelliarmus!"

Mel narrowly avoided the disarming spell by diving behind the sofa, which exploded seconds later into a cloud of debris and floating rags after a blasting hex. She ran for cover but the wooden floor in front of her exploded as well, hitting her arms and face with a thousand splinters.

Her cries of pain were accompanied by another's gleeful laughter; aunt Ginevra seemed to be having the time of her life. "Run filthy squib, run!" she yelled and hurled a Tarantallegra spell. Mel began to flail her legs around the room until she was hit with a bone-breaking hex to her left femur.

"Ahhh! Bloody fuckin' bitch," she hissed and fell to the ground, still clutching her mum's wand.

"Such foul language, mummy would be ashamed of your mouth."

"Must be dad's little gift to me," she replied and dragged herself into the dining room, avoiding another bone-breaker that shattered the door behind her.

"Ron's a stupid moron, even I pity you for being his offspring..." aunt Ginevra said and walked up to her, confidently keeping her wand aloft and pointed to a side. "Now tell me, Granger whore, did you enjoy humping those rabid dogs while they lived?"

"Damn you!" Mel screamed and hurled an offensive blasting spell at her, which her aunt barely managed to deflect out of pure reflex, yet it bounced against the wall and the explosion hit her against the side, throwing her across the room.

Wasting a couple of seconds to cast Ferula and a mild numbing spell on her broken leg, Mel stood up and limped into the parlour, finding a wide-eyed, extremely surprised red-haired witch slumped against the wall.

"Incendio!"

Aunt Ginevra directed her flaming spell against Mel's face but she managed to step back and only her transfigured clothes caught fire, which she quickly doused with a wave of her mum's wand. She retaliated with a cutting hex but her aunt was too short and ducked out of the way, rolling into the small atrium and blasting the lamp above Mel's head.

The brass chandelier fell on her shoulder but she banished it in mid-flight, hitting Ginevra on the back while she tried to leave the house. She recovered fast, however, and managed to wrench the front door open and stumble away.

Mel realized her aunt wanted to Apparate away, and if she did she was going to bring a full Auror squad back. The house had solid wards extending about a hundred yards in every direction, which meant she still had time to stop her. Limping as fast as she could, Mel exited the house and aimed for the running witch.

"Stupefy," she incanted in a steady, soft voice while keeping her arm rigid and her eyes locked on her target, just like she did with the wild boars in the forest.

Sixty yards away, Ginevra fell to the ground. The spell was low powered because this wasn't Mel's wand, but it was enough to put her down and prevent her escape. Mel limped forward, intent on taking revenge for her family's murder. But first, she needed to discover who exactly had seen and recognized her out of the house. Only Weasleys knew her face and who she was, and she was going to find out which one of them was going to die first.

Grabbing her lovers' wands from inside her aunt's robe with a trembling hand, she fought the tears and reverently stored them inside the ill-fitting robes the Aurors had transfigured on her, before groping for her own two-toned wand.

"Ennervate," she whispered and jammed her wand under her right sleeve.

"How--?" the older witch stirred and asked.

"Looking for something?" Mel asked, holding Ginevra's wand with the tips of her fingers.

"Filthy deceiving whore!"

Slap!

Mel backhanded Ginevra again for good measure, smiling at the trickles of blood pouring from her many wounds. Having a sudden inspiration, she pocketed the wand and pulled Hermione Granger's from her robe, waving it in front of her aunt's face. "Do you recognize this?"

Ginevra's eyes widened in recognition and Mel flicked the vine wood wand to her left hand in a practised move, while at the same time jerking her arm so that her real wand fell from the sleeve and into her waiting fingers.

"Now this one ... is my wand, ash and phoenix feather," explained Mel, never taking her eyes away from Ginevra's.

"You're a witch..." her aunt whispered.

"Yes, I am a witch. Much like my mother before me." She could almost smell the fear coursing through Ginevra's veins, her breathing became erratic and her face lost the characteristic redness of fury. Bringing a smirk to her lips, Mel raised her wand and prepared to cast a particularly damaging spell she'd found in uncle Harry's old textbook.

"You there! Lower your wand and stand aside!" a man commanded from the edge of the woods. A man wearing an Auror's red cloak.

"Sectumsempra!" she cast and waved her second wand at the wizard standing next to the Auror, hurling a blasting hex that destroyed his knee and split his leg in two.

A series of disarming hexes and bludgeoning spells were thrown at her, she dodged and erected a strong shield but one ethereal bludger hit her in the ribs. Rolling again and casting a second shield, she breathed again and stood up, assessing the situation.

Only three out of five Aurors remained standing and one was franticly trying to close the slashing wounds from her curse on the screaming wizard. They were still inside the wards because the Auror to Mel's right spun around but couldn't Apparate, and she took the chance to down him with a powerful bone-breaker to the skull.

"Disarm her! Disarm her befo-- Ahhh!"

The yelling Auror never finished his orders because Mel threw a double impaling curse at him, the conjured wooden lances ripping his chest and internal organs before vanishing into nothingness. She then deflected a couple of weak stupefying spells and, after hurling some bludgeoning hexes of her own, cornered the remaining pair of wizards against a copse of trees.

Mel bit her lip and her eyes darkened in anticipation.

Clearing her mind, she cast the ancient elemental spell and plunged her hand into the hard soil as if it were liquid. Her senses shifted and she focused on the sap flowing through her branches and the wind caressing her leaves. Mel was one with the trees and the trees hugged the terrified Aurors; with a little squeeze, bones began to break and flesh began to tear, until their magical yet still human bodies failed and they died amidst horrifying screams.

Her leg was killing her and she had more than a few broken ribs. However Mel pushed the pain into a corner and focused on searching for Ginevra. She felt her running back into the house, stepping on her blades of grass and pressing over her bare earth, and with a surge of magic willed the ground in front of her aunt to crack and rise, forming a wall before her.

"I'm not done with you, bitch!" Mel wheezed and wrenched her hand from the ground, fighting for air and trying to keep her balance while walking towards her aunt.

Ginevra stumbled back and fell on her back when the wall of rock and soil stopped her, before crawling back on her elbows, trying to escape the advancing younger witch. Her face was cut and bruised from the porcelain vase Mel had hit her with, and her shoulder was now bleeding profusely, probably a stray curse from the short fight against the Aurors. The look in her eyes, however, was still defiant.

"You'll be spending the rest of your life in Azkaban next to your father, bushy-haired freak!" Ginevra spat and tried to stand up.

"I sincerely doubt it, my dear auntie Gin," said Mel with a sickly sweet tone of voice, before raising both her wands and bending slightly forward to whisper. "Run!"

She could see the fear in Ginevra's eyes again, and she revelled in it by watching her tremble, stumble back and run away. A quick bandaging spell took care of her ribs for the time being and, briefly closing her eyes, she promised vengeance for Michael and John Paul Lobozny.

Her aunt was now almost at the front door and she sprung forward into a run, hurling hexes left and right and destroying the atrium. She ducked to dodge a porcelain vase and banished a heavy brass bust representing some long-bearded wizard, before cornering her against a heavy bookcase.

"Coward! You'd never beat a real witch in a real duel!" her aunt screamed, looking back and forth from behind her hiding place.

A second later, Ginevra's wand clattered on the floor in front of her.

Mel then stepped out of the kitchen, ready to duel to death, but her aunt surprised her by toppling the bookcase over and throwing a couple of blasting hexes through the furniture, expelling broken wood, books and knick-knacks straight at her. She was hit in the arm and face but managed to drop on the floor and roll back into the kitchen, just in time to see Ginevra attacking from the other door leading into the dining room.

"Reducto! Confringo! Osseofractum!"

One spell grazed her left hand and Mel lost two fingers in a blast of blood and bone, dropping her mother's wand in the process. The adrenalin lessened the pain but she was still cornered while aunt Ginevra continued to cast cutting curses and bone-breakers at her. Mel cast another shield and jumped into the stairs leading to the cellar, hoping have a moment to seal her wound.

Biting her tongue to avoid screaming, she cauterized her left hand and slumped against the wooden barrel she'd become so familiarized with.

"Where are you, little Granger slut?" her aunt taunted while descending the stairs into the cellar. "You should actually thank Frida for letting me know what you were doing with those creatures, she's a proper witch, not a whore like you."

Mel had the information she needed, Fredericka Potter was the shadow she'd seen last night. Frida was currently living on borrowed time. She blasted the door and ran to the other wall of the cluttered cellar, hoping to catch her unaware, but as the dust settled they stood aiming wands at each other.

Her aunt had her wand raised and began an incantation. This was the horrible woman who'd enslaved her uncle, the woman who'd destroyed her mother, the woman who'd made her life miserable. Ginevra Weasley was already dead.

"Bannicorpus!" Mel incanted and twirled her wand, finishing with a small swish upwards. Her aunt was hit and thrown against the brick wall with a thud, her wand falling off her hand.

"Now, now, don't you dare faint on me," she said and limped forward. "I wanna show you a few tricks my mum taught me..."

Ginevra groaned and tried to scurry away from the tall younger witch, but Mel cast a few whispered spells that glued her hands to the floor and her eyelids wide open. Crouching on one leg only while leaving the other extended because of her broken femur, she jabbed her half-blackened ash wand under her aunt's chin.

"You killed my family," she growled and made the tip of her wand glow.

"What family? Who'd want to have--"

Slap!

"D'you know what happens when you change a simple root in a spell? Let's take a ... water boiling charm, for example. Simple, easy to cast, even an inbred bitch like you can use it!" Mel noticed her aunt was about to speak again and grabbed her face with her mutilated hand. "If you interrupt me again, I'll cut your bloody tongue out and feed it to you."

By now the Ministry for Magic had most likely dispatched another Auror squad, either to investigate why the original Aurors hadn't reported back or to search for the source of such large concentration of spells in Harry Potter's registered property. Mel knew of this but she'd vowed to take revenge for her wolves. After this, she had to pack her belongings and her lab, save as many potions and experiments as she could, grab her owl and then vanish.

"Repeat after me: a-qua-coc-tum," she told her terrified aunt, as if teaching a small girl. "Now why don't we try switching the root for something more ... interesting, like blood?"

Mel waved her wand and, with a predatory smirk, incanted her modification. "Sanguicoctum!"

The screams of pain from the boiling blood in aunt Ginevra's veins were cut short when Mel ended the charm momentarily, seeking her wide-open eyes with her own darkened pair. She backhanded her again to prevent the woman from fainting and stood up, wincing when her broken ribs poked her internal organs.

"Did my father kill my grandparents as well as my mum?" she asked while staring down at the older witch, who refused to speak until Mel renewed the blood-boiling charm. "Tell me!"

"Yes! Merlin be damned, yes!" her aunt screamed back, breaking into hysterics after she lifted the spell. "Harry is gonna kill you! He's mine and he'll kill you when I tell him what you've done!"

"You aren't leaving this cellar alive, bitch... Let me tell you a secret before you die, though," she said and tilted her head. "I know the truth of how you and your family enslaved Harry Potter and Hermione Granger..."

"Liar! Deceiving whore, your mother was a filthy scarl--"

"Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra!"

The three identical curses hit aunt Ginevra before she could finish her insults, hitting her in the face and twice on her chest. The gurgling sound of an open throat mingled with the ripping of fabric and flesh and organs. The seventh-born Weasley of her generation slumped to the floor in a pool of her own fluids, her trashing and spasmodic body giving its last signs of life mere seconds later.

Leaning against the wall, Mel dropped her wand and finally let the tears fall.

---

Notes:

1.- From Hermione's notes:
m.p.m. Memory and Personality Modification
s.p. Slavery Potion
t.c.i. Tea-Cup Incident

2.- For the purposes of this story, magical people cannot Apparate without wands.