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Resting her head against the window of the trundling train, Lavender contemplated the conversation she had with Ginny and Parvati the night before. The sky was growing dark and the farms growing fewer and far between, indicating their arrival to the King's Cross was impending. Despite being so vocal against the idea of being the lost daughter of Sirius Black, she couldn't help but ponder the thought now.
It was quite the coincidence that her locket bore the initials of the lost girl, much more of a coincidence than she would like to have let on.
Luna, Neville, and Ginny were playing what seemed like their twentieth game of Exploding Snaps as Parvati napped in the corner opposite Lavender, curled into a ball with her head resting on her cloak. The train shuttered, slowing down noticeably for the first time since leaving Hogwarts.
"Thank MERLIN," Ginny groaned, leaning back against her seat, rubbing her stomach vigorously. "I am starved. I'm getting too old to be living like a nine-year-old on a road trip with all this candy."
Neville bit into a chocolate frog. "Fpeak for yourflef," he muttered, his mouth full of chocolate. Luna giggled, placing a delicate hand over her lips.
Lavender looked confused, darting her eyes through the window. The train was undeniably slowing down, snow flickering down the from the cloudy sky. But the landscape was still heavy with trees and unmowed grass, things not commonly found as they neared the London station.
"This isn't right," Lavender piped up, wiping her fist on the window where fog was starting to gather from the heat of her body being so close, "we aren't there yet. I haven't even seen the suburbs of London…"
Neville and Ginny exchanged glances as she stopped rubbing her stomach out of hunger. The train shuttered to a stop in the middle of a field, no city scape visible at all. Parvati yawned, stretching her arms above her head. "There already?" she said thickly, rubbing her eyes as she sat up.
Lavender pushed her way to the compartment door, opening it slowly before sticking out her head. Students around her were doing the same thing. She noticed Colin Creevey, a fellow Gryffindor in Ginny's year, peering down the corridor with the same expression as everyone else.
The door suddenly slammed shut, nearly taking off Lavender's fingers, as she was pitched backwards into her seat. She landed painfully on Ginny's lap as the lamp flickered before shutting off completely. She felt Ginny shiver as she scooted into her own seat.
"Lumos," she said quickly, taking her wand out of the pocket of her jeans. The wand lit up, dully illuminating the faces of the people she was sharing the compartment with.
"Do you think it's another dementor search?" Parvati asked, her teeth chattering with nerves as she crossed her arms over her chest. Neville shrugged his shoulders, illuminating his own wand to give the compartment more light.
The door banged open. Ginny and Parvati shrieked out of fright, as Lavender and Neville rose to their feet, their wands extended out in front of them, ready to attempt a patronus charm.
"Expelliarmus!" The person at the door said easily and Lavender's wand clattered to the floor of the train. "Don't be stupid. We're just here for one little thing."
Luna, who had been gazing wondrously up at the scene unfolding in front of her, let out a scream of terror as the man grabbed her from under the arm and hoisted her to her feet. Neville and Parvati lunged at the door, snatching wildly at Luna's sweater as she was pulled over the threshold of the compartment.
"NO! LUNA! NO!"
"LUNA!"
"BRING HER BACK HERE!"
Lavender scrambled for her wand, turning quickly toward the door as the lamps flickered back on.
"Let this be a reminder for any of you who dare defy the Dark Lord," the man hissed behind his mask. He turned on his feet, still gripping tightly to Luna. Her squeal was cut off as the man apparated out of the train. Loud pops from down the corridor indicated the several other death eaters had gone at the same time.
"NOOOO!" Neville shouted, wrapping his arms around what was now thin air.
Lavender sat back in her seat in complete disarray and shock as the train began chugging forward again, rattling down the tracks as if nothing had happened.
….
The shock of Luna being kidnapped directly off the train had shocked Lavender and Parvati down to the core, as they busted out of the barrier from Platform 9 ¾ arm in arm with tears staining their cheeks. Ginny peeled away from them, folding herself into her mother's arms as they hurried down the station, trying to get home as quickly as possible.
Neville, on the other hand, had an angry expression set on his face, merely grunting at his gran, who had taken Trevor's cage and followed him off the platform without a second thought. Neville had screamed himself hoarse, running up and down the train for the last hour as he rifled through the various compartments, hoping the death eaters stashed her somewhere else as a horrible joke.
Lavender gave Parvati one last squeeze as her father took her luggage from her hands.
"Come on, darling," her mother beckoned her quickly, her eyes flitting nervously around the platform.
"Don't forget to ask," Parvati hissed in her ear, thumbing at her locket before giving her a stern gaze and meeting Padma at the other end of the station platform. Lavender nodded, her thoughts with Luna instead of Sirius Black, as she followed her parents toward the car that was parked in the lot outside of King's Cross.
With the help of her father, she loaded her trunk into the back of the car, shivering against the snowy breeze that was blowing in. She pulled her jacket closer to her body as she clambered into the backseat, her mother already in the car tapping the heater with her wand.
Her father climbed into the driver's seat, fumbling the keys with frozen fingers, as he pushed them into the ignition and turned. The car roared to life and it wasn't until they were on the main road that her mother spoke through the silence.
"How was first term, darling?" she asked, peeking over her shoulder toward Lavender.
Lavender looked closely at her mother, studying the shape of her eyes and the curve of her lips. Nothing looked familiar to her, when she thought of her own face in the mirror. Not the straight, dark hair both of her parents possessed. Not the round, light eyes in comparison to her own brown, bright ones. Not even the thin lips both of her parents possessed, much to the contradiction to her fuller ones.
She lifted her hand, clutching onto her locket with, before taking a deep breath. "Mum, dad. How did I get this locket?"
Her mum didn't waste a moment in answering. "It's just a family heirloom, my love." She smiled back from the front seat. "Passed down through the years, is all."
Lavender squinted her eyes in thought, not quite sure what to make of the sudden answer. "Does it have anything to do with Nora Black?"
Her father almost rear-ended the car in front of them. If there was any indication of a response, the one she gave was clearly unexpected. "How do you know the name Nora Black?" he asked, an almost frightened look in his eyes as he gazed into the rearview mirror at her.
"How do YOU know the name Nora Black?" Lavender retorted, a slow burning rage starting to boil in the pit of her stomach. She had expected to be laughed off, to be told they had never heard that name before in their lives. That wasn't the case.
"Darling," her mother started slowly, "I think this is something we should discuss at home-"
"I think this is a fine place," she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared up at her parents from the back seat, "we're sitting in traffic, we have nothing else to talk about. Oh, and Sirius Black had a DAUGHTER with my birthday, a fiancée who looks exactly like me, and I so happen to have a LOCKET WITH HER INITIALS ON IT." Lavender was panting by the time she had finished, anger rising in her so quickly she almost didn't know what to do with it.
She hadn't even considered giving the theory Parvati and Ginny had latched onto a second thought, didn't think it was even a possibility that this could come to a head. She had the nasty feeling in her heart, though, that her entire world was on the verge of toppling over.
Her mother sighed, rubbing her eyes before turning to her father. "I thought this was over when Remus became her teacher in the third year," she said, suddenly looking as though she had aged fifteen years. "I thought he would say something to her and we would be found out."
She leaned forward, clutching onto the shoulders of her mother and father just as her father turned to pull into the driveway of their home.
"I just need you to say it," Lavender managed to seethe through her teeth. She clambered out of the car, following her mother and father to the porch of their home, stomping through the puddles of the half-frozen snow. "You know the true and I think I should know too. Are you my real parents? Did you adopt me? Where did this locket come from?"
Her father ushered her inside, quickly shutting the door with a snap. "If the death eaters knew. If You-Know-Who and his inner circle knew you were alive and where you've been hiding-"
"Dad."
"-No, you need to know this." He paused to shut his eyes, taking off his own glasses to press his palms into his sockets. Her mother looked to be on the verge of tears. It only aggravated Lavender more. "Back during the first war, it was…it was awful. People were dying, being kidnapped, going into hiding-"
"Yes, I know all of this," she said sharply, interrupting again.
"No, no you don't!" her father snapped back, looking to her mother for support. She bustled around the kitchen, putting a kettle of water on the stove for tea. He signed, turning back to her. "Haley and Sirius were about as involved in the Order as you could get. Once Sirius went to prison and You-Know-Who was vanquished, the death eaters began attacking Order members for information. Haley knew this and she, with the help of Dumbledore, put her daughter into hiding…with us. She was killed shortly after."
Lavender sank into a chair at the kitchen table, the blood leaving her face. "So, what- what are you saying? That I'm…that I'm their daughter?" Her breathing doubled, her chest felt heavy.
Her mother's head dropped, tears forming in her eyes as the kettle whistled behind her. "Darling, you are OUR daughter," she said, wrapping her hands around her husband's arm. "You will always be OUR daughter…" She trailed off, unsure of what to say next.
"So…so my locket?" she stuttered out as she lost the feeling in her hands and feet. Her head was light. There was a possibility she was going to pass out. Looking around the kitchen, at the people who stood in front of her, the people who raised her. Everything felt like a lie.
"It was a gift," her father cleared his throat, "a gift from Lily Potter…your godmother. She…she and James Potter gave it to you before they died. You…you were very special to them."
She sat quietly for a moment, trying to soak in all the information. The tea leaves, the locket, the familiar feeling every time Sirius and Haley were mentioned to her. It all came together, it all started to make sense. "Does anyone else know?"
"I-it's very dangerous information to have," her mother started, striking her gaze over to her husband again, "if the death eaters knew of your survival…"
"Does anyone else know?" Lavender repeated in a more demanding tone this time.
"Remus Lupin," her father answered quickly, ignoring the shooting looks he was receiving from his wife.
"I want to talk to him," Lavender said, standing quickly from her seat. "I want to know EXACTLY what he knows. I know you have his address."
Her mother opened her mother to protest, but her father quickly summoned parchment and a quill, jotting down the address. In a flash it was in Lavender's hands and, with a quick turn of her heel, she was gone.