Okay, so I partially lied again...shame on me. However, Remus is in this chapter, so that should make up for a little of it.

I don't own anyone but Miranda. Some of the dialogue in this chapter is directly from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: The Bribe. There's too much of it blended in for me to note it every time, so I'm just telling you here, if it sounds familiar, that's why. I've changed it heavily, but some scenes have identical dialogue spots. As the story goes on, I will use less and less of the original text as my story diverges from canon.

Now that I'm done with all of that, let's talk about the story again. Once more, I've pushed back my pace a little, Remus comes in, but Mundungus and such WILL be in the next chapter. Next chapter will more than likely be the last one in Grimmauld Place for now, but maybe a little in the one after.

Enjoy!


After their talk, the trio had returned to the kitchen, Ron red-faced and Hermione tense. Miranda smiled at the other girl, rubbing the backs of her sore hands. "I can show you the other library if you'd like. Something to pass the time. You look like the reading type."

The two boys snorted and Ron said, "You've got that right."

Hermione didn't reprimand Ron, instead she looked at Miranda in confusion, "The other library?"

Miranda nodded, "Yeah, you didn't think that little study was the only library, did you? The Blacks are one of the oldest dark families remaining. They've got books so dark they would make you take Dreamless sleep for a month."

"They were. You said they are, Sirius is dead. He was the last one." Harry said, his eyes filled with gloom.

Miranda smiled comfortingly, putting a hand on his shoulder, making him look into her eyes, "You might be more related to them than you think. You deserve this house."

"It's a dump!" Ron exclaimed and Miranda shot him a dark look.

"Now, but it wasn't then." She ran her finger over the dusty door frame, "A house like this needs love. It was always so beautiful and light. The only creepy things were the stuffed elves."

She took Hermione's hand, "Come on, let me show you. Really, most of the books are fine. You just have to watch out for the ones that try to bite." She took the girl to the other side of the stairs into the sitting room and went to the fireplace, pushing in a section. The fireplace slid to the side with a creak and plume of dust which left both girls coughing and their eyes burning. When the cloud settled, Miranda took Hermione in, "This is it. The Black Family Library. I imagine that right about now, some librarian in Sweden is sobbing over the mere thought of holding one of these books."

The other girl offered no response...that was when Miranda realized that she was already in the library, skimming her hands over the bindings of the books, and within a second, she was gone from sight around one of the massive shelves. "Well, okay..." Miranda said, leaving the girl and the books alone.

Ron was right outside, of course, "You think you were going to get her into those books and leave?"

They glared at each other, their blue eyes practically sparking, "You're under the assumption that I want to leave, Ronald. I happen to be perfectly at home in this house."

She looked away, walking to trace her finger over a gold eagle sitting on the mantle. "Yeah, creepy house for a creepy girl. I bet you're happy." He snapped.

"You know, Ron. I didn't ask for this." She spun on him so fast he could have sworn her eyes flashed white with anger, "I didn't ask to grow up in an orphanage with only my older brother as comfort, I didn't ask to be taken from him and live with a single man who I'm not even sure who he was anymore, and I certainly didn't ask to be locked in a room for fifty four years by my best friend. I have spent the last four months trying to make sense of everything, and you are not helping."

Ron couldn't say anything, and didn't, even when the tears started to fall down her face. Harry, who had come upon the two mid fight followed her as she ran up the stairs. She ran to Sirius' room and the door swung shut in Harry's face. He was stunned, not just by the fact that the door had closed, but the fact that Miranda had already been on the bed when it had. She could do wand less magic. He looked down at the wand in his pocket. This girl was so much more than what she appeared. She wasn't telling them the whole truth. She had a brother? Wouldn't that have been an important thing to mention before, and not just in a fit of anger against Ron?

His head started to hurt, and then he realized that it was his scar that was hurting. Voldemort was mad. Unable to find the strength to rush to the bathroom to hid his pain, Harry sunk to the floor, holding his pounding head. "Leave me alone." He said, trying to remember what Snape had taught him to do, to clear his mind, but he couldn't. Sirius was dead. Dumbledore was dead, and Snape was a traitor.

Suddenly, the pain was worse than ever, bloomin in his head, and this time, unconsciousness stayed away.

Miranda felt like a child, sitting on the bed that had been Walburga's, sobbing over how horribly wrong her life was turning. She should have been an old woman now, sitting next to Walburga and knitting. She would have married Alphard, she'd never love him, but she would have done what was expected of her. She would have been Walburga's sister that way. It would have been a nice, safe life filled with certainty and stability.

She stopped crying when she heard Harry's back hit the wall. She didn't know why, but she knew she needed to go to him, that Tom was hurting him. She yanked the door she had previously slammed shut open and fell upon her knees in front of Harry. He was crying, holding his head and mumbling to himself in panicked tones.

"Shh." She whispered, drawing him to her chest like she could protect him from her brother's intrusion into his mind. She hadn't known that the link between Tom and Harry was that strong. She had assumed that Harry was, like her, a human Horcrux, by the scar on his forehead, a magical mark, like the one on her hand. An idea struck her when her presence didn't seem to ease his pain. She moved to sit behind him, pulling him back to rest flush against her and putting her scarred right hand against his own scar. She tucked her face into the back of his shoulder, her breath falling against his skin. They stayed that way for several minutes, her left arm around his upper body and the fingers of her right hand smoothing his wild hair, all the while, their magicked skin never parting. Miranda felt his body relax slowly and his breathing calm. Sitting with him seemed to be as natural as breathing to Miranda, and that was what scared her.

As soon as he started to stir, she moved him off of her. She didn't want him to panic about how intimate their positions had been. "Harry?" She asked softly, brushing his hair out of his eyes. He looked at her blearily at first and she smiled as his eyes visibly cleared.

His gaze was intense, "How did you do that?"

'The boy with the scar on his forehead can be trusted with all but your real name...'

She knew she could trust him, her father had said so. "I think you're like me." She said.

"Like you? What do you mean? I wasn't in a room for over fifty years, I know that for sure." He said quietly.

"No, I believe you. But we were both marked by powerful magic. Magic that left scars." She showed him her scarred hand and he touched his forehead, his eyes still on her. "I marked my brother, we were just kids, and we didn't know what we were doing. I didn't know what I was doing. I cut our hands and we pressed them together, to form the sign of infinity. Ever since then, I've been able to find my brother in my sleep, I can't talk to him, I'm not strong enough, but I can see him and that's enough. I didn't know then that I was invoking dark magic. I didn't even have a wand, and honestly, I'm not sure how I did it."

She touched his forehead briefly, "I saw you were in pain, and I know I've felt like that. I remembered what you said about your parents and this Dark Lord, and I put it together. He really hurt you, didn't he?"

Harry sat up, putting a bit more space between them, "You and your brother, are linked like I am to him?"

"Yes, sometimes, when he's hurt, I can feel it, but we've been apart for so long, I don't know. I guess I sort of took your pain away, like our bonds negated each other." Miranda felt herself remembering Alphard from the look on Harry's face.

"Thank you. I don't want to worry Hermione and Ron. They think I've gotten my pain under control, that I've blocked the link."

Miranda forced a smile, "Than it's a good thing I woke up when I did. I'll help you keep it at bay." She stood, and he followed her as she walked down the stairs.

"Hey, Miranda, your brother? Is he still alive? Your brother?" He asked. They both stopped on the stairs.

She didn't reply for a minute, but then she looked at him, tears welling in her eyes that she furiously blinked away, "Honestly, I don't know."

"I'm sorry." Harry said, and then she couldn't look at him anymore, wiping her eyes and heading to the library.

"I'll be with Hermione." The other girl was happily drowning in piles of books. Miranda watched her well into the night, until the boys dragged them out for another meal and to bed.

"These are books I've only read about! Some of them were supposedly lost centuries ago." Hermione gushed the next morning after breakfast. Miranda fingered her wand, that she had reclaimed, idly, and spent the next few hours reading next to Hermione, listening to her excitement over the books with a small smile on her face. Having her wand back grounded her, helped her evaluate her new companions more thoroughly.

Hermione was like Walburga, a smart, naturally gifted witch with a passion for books and learning. She was also the kind, mothering type, a trait that Walburga had not contained, apparently. She obviously fancied Ron, but the red headed boy was too daft to realize that she felt the same way about him that he felt about her.

Miranda knew that he was irrational, but only because he was so brave he was stupid and so protective that he would kill for a wrong glance. He was just young, Miranda had a feeling that once he and Hermione finally pulled it together, that he would settle down.

And Harry, Miranda couldn't figure him out. He reminded her so much of Brennan, which made sense if he was who she thought he was, and at the same time of Tom and even a little bit of Alphard. He was handsome, but nearly as thin as she was. Malnourished as a child, like she had been. His childhood had not been easy. But she couldn't exactly call her childhood easy either. The orphanage had been a nightmare, but only when Tom wasn't with her. She'd nearly blocked out everything that the boys had done to her, but still, she remembered, more vividly everyday it seemed, but this Harry, it seemed like he had not known kindness for too long. Miranda couldn't relate to that, she'd had someone that loved her her entire life. She passed Hermione another book from the top shelf, which the other girl had asked her to get, even hough she was only a scant two inches taller than the girl. She had a feeling that it was just to make her feel useful.

Past initial awkwardness, Miranda could see herself becoming good friends with Hermione. Both dark haired girls froze when they heard from the entry way, "It was not I who killed you, Albus."

Hermione jumped up, "Harry!"

Miranda followed after a few stunned seconds, feeling like a confused puppy running after it's owner, "Hermione!" She called softly, stopping when she could see the intruder, but he could not see her.

Harry pointed his wand at the middle of a cloud of dust, "Don't move!"

Her Papa had trained her well. For him, protecting her had meant nights spent learning strategies of escape and how to stay out of sight. She'd learned how to apperate by the time she turned thirteen. Wandlessly by fourteen.

Right after Harry yelled, a familiar voice started to yell from the portrait at the top of the stairs, "Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house-"

Ron and Hermione ran down the stairs, stopping behind Harry. Harry kept his wand pointed at the stranger, "Hold your fire, it's me, Remus!"

"Oh, thank goodness," said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at the portrait and, with a bang, closing the curtains and silence fell.

Only Harry did not lower his wand, "Show yourself!" he called.

The man moved forward, his hands raised, and his face more clearly illuminated. He was a ragged man with small scars on the visible skin of his body. She recognized those scars, and felt a shiver of fear run down her back, her father had had an acquaintance who had them. He had been a werewolf. Fenrir Greyback had terrified her as a child. She'd never liked the way he'd always looked at her. She wasn't something to eat.

This werewolf looked different though, sadder, more human, less wolf. But still, her deeper instincts told her to hide, so she pulled back to the top of the stairs, peeking through the bars and, sitting so she could hear their voices and where, if Ron came looking, they could find her easily.

"I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder's Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag."

Harry sagged in relief, dropping his wand, "Oh, all right, but I had to check, didn't I?"

The werewolf smiled weakly, "Speaking as your ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I quite agree that you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn't be quite so quick to lower your defenses." Then they were all down the stairs, Hermione flinging her arms around Remus for a quick hug.

She went back to stand next to Ron and Remus looked at the dust on the floor, "No sign of Severus, then?"

"No," said Harry. "What's going on? Is everyone okay?"

"Yes," The man said, and Miranda noticed that some of the tension in the other three lessened, Hermione, in fact, looked close to tears. "but we're all being watched. There are a couple of Death Eaters in the square outside-"

"We know-" Harry said.

Miranda had never been one able to keep her mouth shut, "They were there earlier, but these are different ones now."

Remus raised his wand and pointed it at her, "Who are you?"

Harry pulled his mentor's hand down gently, "It's okay, she wants to help us."

The older man practically growled, "Is she a Death Eater?"

"She's not marked." Hermione said, meeting Miranda in the middle of the stairs. "She hasn't done anything since she got here."

"And how did she get here?"

"I followed them, and before you spell me into oblivion, I'd been here before. Except, the last time I was here, there wasn't a Fidelius charm on it, and Walburga Black was nineteen."

Remus did the math in his head, "That would have been..."

"Fifty four years ago, I was seventeen. I still am, actually." She pointed up to the top of the stairs. "I was in that room, frozen for more nearly three times my life. I woke up four months ago. I saw Harry, Ron and Hermione in the cafe I was working at, they were attacked and I followed them."

Miranda didn't know why this man ruffled her feathers so badly, but she just didn't want him to keep glaring at her. "You were this room because?"

"Because people I loved thought I wasn't safe out in the world any longer. And I want to help because since I woke up, I thought I'd never be able to come back to the Wizarding world. So now that I know that everything is in a mess, I want to fix it. I want all of this to stop. And I'm not on of the Death Munchers, or what ever they're called. Until the others told me about them, I didn't even know there were such things."

Remus gave her a strange look, "You remind me a great deal of someone I once knew. What's your name?"

"Miranda, I'm Miranda Peverell. I was born in nineteen twenty seven on the first day of that year. My best friend was..."

"Walburga Black. It was you!" Remus seemed stunned.

"I beg your pardon. It was me what?"

"When Sirius left home, he said his mother kept screaming about how he couldn't leave her, that she'd lost Miranda, and..."

"Brennan." Miranda said, a cold feeling spreading out into her fingers from the center of her chest.

Remus fixed her with a steady gaze. "Who was this Brennan, because Sirius looked, and he's not a pureblood?"

Miranda felt uneasy. This wasn't her secret to tell, but she was vaguely sure that if she didn't, he would curse her. She looked at Harry, right in the eyes, the emerald green focusing her panicing brain. It wouldn't take too much effort to say, no matter how wrong saying it felt. She could do this. She'd planted her own memory into the minds of two idiots, she could change how the world thought of the Evans family, how they thought of Harry, what he thought of himself. She should just say it, just get it over with, tell them all that Sirius wasn't the man they thought he was, and that Walburga wasn't as evil as she seemed now. One deep breath, she could see Remus' wand shake in his tense hand out of the corner of her eye, "He was..."


Yay! So, did you like it? You guys are amazing with all of your reviews and alerts, this story is the best one feedback wise I've ever had, and I thank you all for that. Just one question, how was the first little Harry/Miranda scene?

That's all I have to say...if that wasn't too much already...yeah, definitely too much. Sorry!

Review!

See you next time,

-Jenn