It was a beautiful autumn day, the sun was shining warmly upon a copper and golden world preparing for winter. Despite the warmth, there was a cool wind that made it just a little bit too cold for t-shirts and left me feeling just a little bit too warm in my jumper. I was sitting down by the lake, looking out into the distance, a small smile on my face. I loved days like these. In-between days, as I called them, days when everything was changing. If only I had known how true those words would turn out to be. Everything was changing.
It had been a year now since the battle of Hogwarts and things were very different. I was different. I had learned so much, overcome so much… but most of all… I had found my family, a brother. That had been one of the biggest changes in my life. I, who had grown up alone among the Scail, the shadow people, alone all my life, had a brother. Most days I found it hard to wrap my mind around it.
I had always known that I wasn't one of the Scail, not truly. I was human and they were not. They were demons, shadow children, the Fay. I had always known that I was a siofra, a changeling, taken from my home in the night to be raised by demons and monsters. It wasn't that hard to figure out when you were the only child who bled, the only child who cried. Yes, I always knew that I had to have a home out there, but it wasn't until my seventeenth year that I decided to try and find it.
I have wondered many times, why? Why did I stay for as long as I did? Take the abuse? And the answer I kept coming to was the same every time. Because it was all I knew. From the moment I was born, before my mother even had the chance to hold me, I had been theirs. A child of the Scail, a slave. But I was tough. Most human children didn't make it into adulthood and those who did, well they were domestic slaves, but I? I was born a fighter. I learned their ways, fuelled by my own Magic, the reason they had taken me in the first place. A powerful witch.
And in my seventeenth year, when the war was reaching even the Scail's shadowy corners of the earth, I learned of a boy. They called him the Chosen One, the Saviour, the Dark Lord's doom. The Scail were impartial in the war, saw no reason to join a world they had left long ago, but I…I needed to know more about this Saviour who fought darkness. Perhaps, I thought, he could free me from mine. And so I left.
Who knew that I would find more than a saviour? Who knew that I would find a brother? A brother who shared my black hair and emerald eyes. A twin. And so, after seventeen years of loneliness, I learned my name, my birthday, my heritage. My name? Kyra Potter, child of Lily and James Potter, sister of Harry Potter. For the first time in seventeen years, the tears I shed were tears of joy.
The wind ruffled my hair, making black locks escape the bun in the nape of my neck. I smiled as I tucked them back behind my ear. My fingers were cold, as was my bum upon the rock, but I didn't want to leave yet. I was at peace here, reminiscing and thinking about how I got to be so lucky. I had a brother now, whom I loved dearly, wonderful friends and an incredible boyfriend…. Draco Malfoy.
I had fallen in love with him instantly, much to Harry's dismay. I had seen him, his exterior so light, so frail, but filled to the brim with the same shadows that haunted me. I remembered when I saw him, there in the manor after the snatchers had caught us, looking into his grey eyes and seeing myself reflected there. We connected, instantly and he threw everything away to save us, to save me.
He had betrayed everything he'd stood for all his life, his entire family, because of what he saw in my eyes that day. That's what he told me when I asked him why he did it.
"In those emerald eyes I saw everything that I could have, could become if only I dared. And so I did."
I smiled at the memory.
It had taken a lot for Harry, Ron and Hermione to accept Draco, but he won them over eventually.
"He's a changed man", Harry would tell me with a look of such amazement in his eyes that I would always laugh.
"He's always been this man to me."
And he had been. I never knew the Draco Malfoy that had followed his father blindly, the one who had tormented Harry, Ron and Hermione. The Draco I knew was arrogant, proud, kind, funny, creative and wonderful.
And things weren't easy for him, by no means. There were still so many who wished him harm, who blamed him for his choices in his younger years, who were blind to the person he had become. People who held on to hate, because it was all they had left.
A reddish leaf fell onto the water in front of me, causing ripples to spread. I watched as it slowly sunk beneath the surface, disappearing into the deep waters of the lake.
I leaned back on my arms, my face tilted towards the sun, trying to catch its warmth on my nose and cheeks. A sigh escaped my lips at the gentle caress. One year now, since things had changed. I had fought against the demons of my past, quite literally. Another thing Draco and I had in common. We'd both had to overcome seventeen years of darkness and we did, every day. Sometimes I could still feel it, the pain, the fear, the bitterness, haunting me. The magic I had learned among the Scail was dark and corrupting, and it gnawed at my sanity, threatening to take over, but it wouldn't.
"As long as you have love and trust in your life, you will not succumb do it."
"I don't trust easily… I never learned how."
"But you do have some you trust and love, don't you?"
I thought about Draco and Harry and smiled. Yes, I did have people I loved and trusted, unconditionally. What a precious gift? I remembered the moment I realized that I trusted Harry. It was before the manor before Draco came into our lives, and we had been on the run. It had been shortly after I had tracked him down at Privet Drive and right after Bill and Fleur's wedding. The death eaters had been everywhere, there was chaos and suddenly there he was, his hand outstretched.
"Do you trust me?"
And I had said yes and meant it. For the first time in my life, I had placed my trust, my hope in another person, a person I knew nothing else about besides the fact that he was my brother. And it was enough. We had apparated away from the Burrow and the adventure had begun.
With Draco, it had been different. I had trusted him the second those eyes looked into mine, there in the manor, Bellatrix knife at my throat. I had caught his eyes and known that he wouldn't let me die. And he didn't.
Yes, I did have those people, people who had stood between death and I more times than I could count and I had done the same for them.
And that's why the darkness inside me couldn't win. This one year of love, hope, of having a home had pushed aside seventeen years of pain and hatred, of bitterness and loneliness.
Yes, I was happy.
Now my butt was as cold as ice, as were my hands and I decided to get up after all, to move into the warmth of the castle and perhaps my boyfriend's arms. That thought painted a small smile on my lips. I got up, brushing off the dirt from my blue jeans, rubbing my hands together to get the blood pumping again, and headed up towards the castle. On my way, I noticed a couple standing under one of the large oak trees that had survived the war. Two men, one light, one dark, a perfect contrast under the golden autumn sun. There was a gust of wind, causing golden leaves to rain down around them as they leaned in, as they moved closer and their lips met beneath the branches of the oak tree. My numb mind marvelled at the beauty the scene created, not quite ready to grasp the truth. They separated, their eyes meeting and as I watched grey eyes gaze lovingly into emerald ones my world fell apart.
