December, 1976

'Miss? Are you alright, Miss? Miss!'

Lily drifted to a halt in the middle of the hallway, held back by a hand on her shoulder. She looked that direction to see an unfamiliar man. Green Healer's robes, that was obvious, but didn't recognise him. 'What?'

Giving her what might be a concerned sort of look, hard to tell, the man said, 'Are you alright, Miss?'

Lily blinked. 'I'm fine.'

The man gave her what was definitely a disbelieving look, and glanced behind her. Frowning a little to herself, Lily followed his gaze.

Oh. Well. She hadn't been paying a lot of attention, walking through the Saint Mungo's hallway. Why exactly did they call Mungo a saint? She never had figured that out. Anyway, she hadn't been paying attention, just heading straight to the room number she'd... Oh, er. Hopefully nobody went back and figured out what she'd done to the receptionist, she could probably get in trouble for throwing that kind of compulsion around like that. Whoops. But she'd just been walking, lost in her head.

So she hadn't noticed the line of black char she'd carving into the floor and ceiling, shards of glass scattered below and glowing fog clinging above, those little floating lights shattered by the magic swirling tight around her in an uncontrollable storm. Even as she stood there, another in front of her broke with a light popping noise, followed by glass tinkling against the tile floor.

Lily turned back forward, closed her eyes, took in a long, slow breath. Through the terror, through the rage, through the confusing whatever-that-all-was turning her mind into a black and red mess, she couldn't help feeling faintly embarrassed. She didn't think she'd ever lost control this badly before, not since she'd been very young. After a few seconds turned inward, breaths forced calm and even, she could almost see it, tendrils of power slipping away from her. She reached out for them, intending to pull them back in, and immediately recoiled, a shudder working up her spine. Her magic was hot and black, and furious, raging out at the world around her, forcing it to heel, insisting she would not break, she would not bend, screaming hatred and death at anyone or anything that would even dare try, lashing out to prove she would not tolerate this offense, something would burn for this insult, she would not, she would not, she would not—

Lily grit her teeth, clenched her fists, and yanked back on herself as hard as she could. Her power was drawn back into her, thick enough and energetic enough she was bloated with it, her head going thin and dizzy. Dizzy enough she stumbled, she might have fallen if the Healer's steadying hands hadn't fallen on her shoulders. She stood a few more seconds, breathing, just to be sure she was in control again. Seemed fine. She opened bleary eyes, quickly finding the Healer in front of her. 'Sorry about that.'

He smiled at her. Not too easily, with a sense of confusion, relief, a bit of ruthlessly suppressed fear. But a smile still. 'That's all right. You got bad news, I'm guessing. You'd be surprised how often things like this happen here.' He looked over her shoulder again, along the corridor behind her. 'If usually not so extreme...'

Letting out a long sigh, Lily glanced behind her. She drew up the fire within, racing eagerly against her fingers — if it was so eager to do something, it might as well repair the damage it'd caused. Lily twisted the ball of energy into a slew of repair and cleaning charms, and threw it out around and behind her. The scorch marks on floor and ceiling were instantly burnished away, cracks here and there sealing themselves, glowing, multi-coloured fog separating into spheres of distinct shades, shards of glass springing around them to assemble themselves into gracefully-curving, rounded shapes, the many fissures vanishing as though they'd never been. Once all the damage she could see — and even, she knew, some she'd left around the corner toward the elevator — had been repaired, she turned back around to the Healer. 'I might have missed some, but that should be most of it.'

She blinked at the look of stunned shock on his face. What was so—

Oh. Her wand was still up her sleeve. She'd forgotten to pretend to be a normal person. Er. Oops?

Ignoring the stares from the Healer and a few other people through the hallway, Lily pushed past him, and continued on toward Sirius. It only took a couple more minutes, a few more turns through the meandering hallways before she got to the right door. She hesitated for just an instant. A part of her couldn't help being a little scared of what she might find. A somewhat larger part was worried Sirius wouldn't want to see her — he wouldn't be in here if not for her, after all. But she swallowed down the cold stone in her throat and firmly reached for the handle.

And glared at it when it refused to turn. Stupid door was locked. She gathered an unlocking charm in her hand hardly without thinking, but then hesitated again. It was likely the hospital had some sort of security measures she couldn't see, that would allow in hospital staff and keep out anyone else. Considering exactly what had happened to him, that wasn't a bad precaution to take. And, well, it was sort of rude to just barge in. So she knocked instead.

After a few seconds, the door was pulled open a sliver by a completely unfamiliar woman. Middle-aged, freckled face, bright blue eyes, short blonde-red hair. No idea who that was, but she couldn't be related to Sirius, looking like that. 'Who the hell're you?'

For a moment, Lily could only blink at the woman. Her accent was extremely, well, muggle-ish. Probably somewhere in the southwest, but she couldn't tell for sure. She had to be muggleborn, then, maybe halfblood. Weird. 'Who the hell are you?'

The woman didn't look at all impressed with that answer. 'If you want in, girl, you'll be giving a better answer than that.'

Lily couldn't help it. She was quite suddenly very annoyed. She didn't bother responding, just drew up a handful of power, flung it unformed against the surface of the door. Even without proper shape, the force was enough to push the wood back hard, knocking into the woman's shoulder to send her stumbling backward, the door swinging open wide. Gritting her teeth, trying again to reign in her magic before it did something stupid, Lily walked into the room.

And focused immediately on the two wands pointed right for her face, one held by a man, another by a girl probably only slightly older than Lily. She instantly saw they looked similar enough to be father and daughter; the Black family resemblance was just as obvious. Before she could even open her mouth to say anything, charms were flying at her. Looked like a rather nasty bludgeoning curse from the girl, a dark incapacitation hex from the man. The bludgeoning curse was easy, Lily deflected it away with little more than a twitch of her fingers, but the incapacitation hex was harder. Couldn't just deflect dark magic like that. She drew her fire up again, but let it come harder, let it come darker. Let her frustration and her fury colour it, turn it sharp and stabbing.

She always coloured dark magic with anger. Sev mostly used hatred, she knew, but Lily just couldn't summon enough of that consistently enough. If an especially contemptible person happened to be annoying her at the time, sure, but not consistently. Which had made Sev joke more than once that she was just too nice, but considering she did have enough anger constantly simmering in the back of her head to do just fine...

She formed the black flames boiling under her skin not into a charm reaching past her to strike, but a bowl. A bowl made of unalterable steel on her side, but softly padded on the other, enticing the incoming hex to slow, to rest. She knew this was rather impressive to watch, Sev had stared at her wide-eyed for near on three minutes the first time she'd managed it. As the hex neared her shield the spellglow sharply decelerated, stretching blurred across the last couple feet. When the two charms properly met, there was a sustained glow of orange-green light, the occasional spark of yellowish lightning crawling up her arm, clawing at the air. For two seconds, three, the spells glowed, the lightning crackled. Then, finally, the momentum in the man's hex was used up, and Lily dropped her hand, the mixed energies of his hex and her shield, now harmless, falling to sink into the floor.

There was a pause of a couple seconds as the two stared at her, the girl blinking at her much as Sev had, the man instead looking almost terrified. Then, all four of them — four including the woman, who was standing to the side, scowling and rubbing her shoulder — jumped when a harsh, weak voice came from Lily's right. 'Give it a rest, you two. It's Lily.'

The voice might have been thin, and strained, and exhausted, but it was still obvious who it belonged to. She glanced that way to find Sirius, propped up by thin pillows in a starkly plain bed, looking far too pale, and small, and fragile. The anger still clenching her chest only tightened at seeing him, but Lily managed to control herself, her teeth grinding hard enough it hurt. But she was distracted a moment later. Lily being Lily, she saw more than just what he physically looked like. It was a cloud of black and purple and green, clinging around his heart, the texture about it drifting and thin enough she knew it wasn't her eyes that were seeing it. She didn't recognise it, but she knew well enough to know it was a curse of some kind. Why hadn't the Healers removed it yet?

But anyway, the man was saying, 'How do you know it isn't a disguise? Polyjuice or something?'

When Sirius spoke, the old joking tone was almost there. Weak and thin, but almost. 'Honestly, Uncle, how many people do you know can do wandless magic like that?'

The man answered instantly. 'Bellatrix.'

For a couple seconds, Sirius just stared at him, unsteady eyes slowly blinking. 'That...is a good point, actually. It's her, though. I can feel her. Trust—' Sirius broke off, and Lily saw the curse under his skin pulse, vile sparks clawing at his flesh, a thin, pained moan slipping past his lips.

Without thinking, Lily started moving toward him. The girl, scowling at her again, stepped in her way. Lily shot her an irritated glance, dipped into shadows with a quick thought, and surfaced an instant later at Sirius's side. She watched the curse slashing at his insides for a couple seconds, narrowed eyes following the interaction of essence and substance. Once she thought she understood the way the curse was reaching out like that, twisting his flesh like this, Lily put a hand on Sirius's shuddering chest, and reached out with her own power. Carefully, slowly, she stitched a line of magic between the curse and Sirius, a temporary barrier to directly counter that twisting, prevent the curse from acting. It was still there, of course, but it was stopped from harming Sirius further, for the moment.

Sirius let out a shaky breath of relief, feeling far too weak and unsteady under her hand. A smirk crossed his face, but thinner, lesser, with not even a quarter of the usual energy and humour. 'Thanks, love. I think they're making up those potions they're giving me as they go, they barely help at all.'

She just hummed at him, still half-distracted watching the curse. It was a transfiguring charm, she could see that, energies ever so slowly shifting Sirius's own flesh to blades. Blades that would cut him up from the inside if the curse had its way, even as it transfigured more. Not a pleasant curse. It almost looked like blood magic but, no, that wasn't quite right. Dark magic that was simply anchoring itself in his blood, maybe — that was something a lot of more complex curses did. 'Why is this still here? The curse, I mean.'

'They said they—' Sirius broke off, shooting an annoyed look off to her side. 'You mind, Ailís?' Lily glanced that way to see the girl still had her wand on Lily, her face a deeply red, furious glare. Her eyes narrowed on Sirius, but, after a short moment and a disdainful sniff, she slipped her wand up her sleeve, turned back to her parents. 'Honestly,' Sirius said, in a whisper so low she almost couldn't hear it, 'even the not-evil side of my family can be so ridiculous sometimes.'

Lily almost had to smile at that. 'I guess I can add another name to the list of your cousins who don't like me.'

'You did use magic on her muggle mother.'

She winced. That almost made her feel bad about it in retrospect. 'Didn't know she was a muggle. Just knew she was in my way. And being annoying.'

'You're not helping your case here, love.'

She muttered, 'Shut up,' almost smiling despite herself. 'Anyway, Healers left this curse here. Why?'

The smile on Sirius's face instantly vanished. His eyes tracked away from hers, looking somehow even more uncomfortable than he had before — which was significant, she thought, considering how painful that curse had to be. He hesitated for a long moment, biting his lip. Finally, his voice small and cautious, 'They didn't leave it on purpose.'

For long seconds, Lily could only stand and stare. They... That meant...

Before she could collect herself, the man who had to be one of Sirius's uncles spoke, standing a short distance away at the foot of the bed. 'They tried. They've never seen the curse before. They said it was probably invented by one of the—'

'Travers,' Sirius said, voice again a hardly-audible whisper. 'Cyrus Travers. He did it.' A few seconds into the hard, brittle silence, Sirius winced, looking up only long enough to shoot her a quick glance. It took a moment for Lily to realise what that glance was about, again tamp down her flaring fury, enough to loosen involuntarily clenched fists — one of which had still been on Sirius's chest. Whoops. It was just, she'd met Travers, she thought twice. More than one Travers, actually, but one Cyrus Travers was a particularly disgusting Death Eater. She really, really, really didn't like him. That he had— That he could have—

Lily resolutely moved Travers to the short "kill on sight" list she kept in her head.

A frustrated, empty, hopeless sort of feeling about him, Sirius's uncle finally managed, 'They couldn't get rid of it. They said... They said there's nothing they can do. They're giving him so many potions, just in case they come up with something, but...' He gave a small, helpless shrug.

It was a peculiar moment Lily had over the next few seconds. First, that knowledge, that fact, that Sirius was going to die and there was nothing anybody could do about it, it rushed down on her in an inevitable wave, and Lily felt oddly, she didn't know, precarious, unbalanced, like a single wrong push could... Well, bad things might happen.

But, in the next instant, the fury still simmering in the back of her head pushed back at the thought. She refused to accept it. She absolutely, unequivocally, irrepressibly refused. It would not happen. Sirius was not allowed to die. There was no reason to get sad, or panicky. And it was certainly not the time to fall apart like a useless little girl.

Because Sirius was not going to die, it wouldn't happen. There were advantages to being herself. It wouldn't happen, it could not happen, because it simply wasn't allowed.

Lily pulled out her wand, quick conjured a chair for herself to sit in. Even as she conjured a knife — copying the style they usually used in Runes, a short, narrow blade with a proportionately long handle — she glanced over at Sirius's uncle. 'I'm sorry, sir, I never did catch your name.'

'Alphard.' Ah, yes, she recognised that name. It would be him, wouldn't it. He was watching Lily, staring at the knife she was still carefully shaping, his brow noticeably lowered. Having been born a Black, he was more familiar with some sorts of magic than the average mage, so he was probably guessing she was about to cast blood magic — not entirely incorrectly. 'What are you doing?'

'Healing Sirius. But I need you to—'

'You're what?' That was from the girl, the shout paired with a distrustful look tinged with lingering anger.

'It's not allowed.' Lily again felt her fists tightening, almost painful on her wand and the knife handle, and she had to take a couple long, slow breaths before she could hold them normally. When she opened her eyes again, all four Blacks — at least, she assumed those three still used the surname, she wasn't sure — were staring at her with a mix of confusion and disbelief. And a bit of pity, actually, but she was ignoring that. 'And before you ask, yes, I can do it. But it's very illegal, so if you could seal the door please, Alphard, until I'm done, I would appreciate it.'

'You can get rid of it?' That was from Sirius, voice almost painfully hopeful, like the thought were too good to be true and he reflexively distrusted it. She turned back to him, and her breath caught in her throat. He'd been trying to be his usual easy, joking self, as much as he could past weakness and what had to be a considerable degree of pain. This wasn't that. The way he looked at her, he seemed far too fragile, like a single word spoken too harshly would shatter him into a million pieces, relieved and desperate and terrified. He'd been hiding it, hiding it far too well, hiding it well enough she hadn't even noticed. She had been distracted with controlling herself, true, but she hadn't thought he could fool her like that anymore.

Lily slipped her wand back up her sleeve, her knife to her right hand, and reached forward with her left, trailing lightly along his cheek. She'd barely even touched his hair before she thought her fingers had been caught by the knots — honestly, his hair was so ridiculous sometimes. As a shaky breath slipped through his teeth, his face turning into her hand just a few degrees, slightly enough even she barely noticed, she said in a light whisper, 'Yes, Sirius, I can get rid of it. It's going to be a little unpleasant, though.'

With a short, shocked laugh, he said, 'Shite, if I'm gonna live, you can do whatever you want to me.'

She let a smirk touch her lips. 'Now, now, Sirius.' Her left hand retreated, and with a sideways twitch with her wrist, a flick of her fingers, she slit down the front of his simple hospital robe, spread the gash wide over his bare chest. 'Is that really a smart thing to say to a dark sorceress?'

He just smiled.

While Alphard behind her laid charm after paling after charm over the door, Lily leaned forward and, carefully and delicately, cut a Melīx channelling rune into Sirius's forehead. He barely even winced, which wasn't so surprising, since that curse was probably far more painful than these few shallow cuts. Once that was done, she carved a second one, on his chest right over his heart. She then cut two more runes, one on the palm of each of her hands, this a Melīx rune of taking, of receiving. She vanished the knife, cast a quick silencing around her own head, placed her hands on Sirius — runes touching runes, their blood mixing — and closed her eyes.

See, she was going to cheat to get rid of the curse. She'd be surprised if the Healers here didn't know about this trick, but they likely couldn't do it themselves, for more than one reason. Not least of which being it required a Parselmouth — hence the silencing. She'd found this trick in a book Sev had gotten her. Actually, she still had no idea where he'd found the thing. He'd given her a book detailing all kinds of Parseltongue-related magics, but he never had said where he'd gotten it from. Not that it particularly mattered, she guessed. A lot of people in western Europe didn't seem to know Parseltongue had originally been invented, millennia ago, by Melīx Healers. There were healing magics out there, perfected over millennia of use, that could only be used by Parselmouths.

She could count the people who actually knew this on one hand, but she just so happened to be a Parselmouth. And she just so happened to know a couple of these spells.

Which she guessed made Sirius the luckiest son of a bitch in the world right now.

Gathering herself, her will, she drew in a slow breath through her nose, let it out as a low, musical hiss. «Death that lurks below, hear.» Even with her eyes closed, she could see it — obviously, her magesight didn't technically require her eyes. The curse, that malignant cloud of black and purple, twitched at her words, the red and white tendrils already reaching from her blood. Another long breath, easing herself placid, another singing hiss. «Livelier prey awaits, see.» Red and white meeting black and purple with tantalising hints, caressing and teasing, the curse twitched again, turned, claws sliding ever so slightly out of Sirius's flesh. «Upon a greater feast, come.» The red and the white was too tempting, too sweet, and the curse lifted from Sirius enough her magic could slip between them, isolating Travers's magic from its victim.

Trapping it with her. Which meant it was time for the fun part.

The curse came crashing down on her, stinging lashes of agony crawling across her body from head to toe, but she grit her teeth and ignored it. Her magic bucked under her leash, protesting at the assault, weary from holding too much too tightly, but she kept an unyielding grip, allowed not a twitch out of place. But it was not properly bound to her the way it had been to Sirius, unrooted. She could face it directly. And death stood before her, cold and empty and implacable, staring down on her with mindless, ravenous, terrifying eyes, demanding she yield, surrender, there was nothing else for mortal creatures to do. But she dug in her feet, lifted her chin, and glared right back, demanding the curse disperse, demanding death retreat, throwing all her considerable power behind her will, furious and unyielding.

This was another reason some Healer wouldn't have been able to do this. To stare down death in the place of another, one had to care enough for the victim. And magic could be very particular about this sort of thing. It couldn't be professional. It had to be honest, it had to be personal.

Sirius was hers, now. He was not allowed to die. She hadn't given her permission. So when death's eyes met hers, Lily did not yield, she refused.

And death blinked first.

As the blackness broke apart, her head was filled with white, soft and numb. And she was sluggish, and weak, and tired, and the world felt so far away. She was done, she'd done it, she felt only distantly her body slump forward against Sirius's bed, tingling with numbness and weak with exhaustion. She was already half-asleep, she couldn't even open her eyes.

She heard, thin and quiet as if from a distance, Sirius break into laughter, high and loud and joyous. Despite her exhaustion, she felt herself smile. He was fine, Sirius was going to be fine. She could rest, now.

There was a faint sense of motion, of being pulled, she thought she was being lifted forward, out of her chair. Warm, familiar arms were around her, a hand tickling in her hair, and she turned into the warmth without thinking, feeling far too sleepy, far too comfortable. A voice whispered into her ear, gentle and tender. 'Thank you, Lily.'

'Mm. You're mine. Can't die. Didn't give permission.'

His laugh was almost painfully loud in her ear, but it didn't do anything to keep her awake, still slipping inexorably away from the world, down into warmth and darkness. 'I love you, you bloody nutcase.'

Lily could only manage so much as a low hum before she fell asleep, smiling against the crook of his neck.

October, 1995

Melantha sat in her bed, arms crossed, glaring at the potion bottle sitting on the sheets before her. This was a crazy idea, she didn't know what she was thinking. Well, okay, she did know what she was thinking, but...

On advice from her mother's journals, she'd been keeping a little bottle or two of the potions they brewed in class. Some of the potions they were working on were dead useful, and it was just such a waste to vanish all but the tiny sample Snape needed from them. It'd barely been a month and a half yet, and she already had quite a stash going. Nothing compared to Hermione's, of course — Hermione had been saving potions here and there since second year, and with careful use of preservation charms most of them were even still usable — but still a good few.

The one she was staring at was the one that had gotten Snape all suspicious, the Draught to Improve Active Recall, or simply Morgen's Draught. This potion was, in a sense, the poor man's pensieve. A person could take a dose, look back to a past event in their head, and remember it with supernatural clarity. Like a pensieve, it wasn't quite perfect — the potion would show the user how their brain had recorded it, not necessarily what had actually happened. Though, usually, that was in far more detail than people could remember without it. Brains were silly things, and often there would be information hidden in there the person couldn't remember unprompted, but with the potion to help came springing up. Whether it was entirely accurate or not wasn't certain, but still. The potion could also be taken at a much lower dose to improve a person's recall of what was happening to them just then at some later time — apparently, there was a little black market trade in the school involving this potion, sought mostly by OWL and NEWT students — but Mel wouldn't be using it for that right now.

She had an odd feeling. An unpleasant feeling. It'd been bothering her for a couple weeks now, ever since that ridiculous trip to the Ministry. Seeing Dora act like... It had been very uncomfortable seeing it. Partially just because, well, it had never been quite so clear to Mel just how pathetic she'd been. But that hadn't been the only reason it'd bothered her. She couldn't help the thought that, well... She didn't know, it was complicated.

She didn't think she was that much better. She had the feeling she was still...like that, most of the time. And she really didn't like the thought. She didn't like the person she used to be. Kind of hated, actually. She'd thought she'd been doing better for a little while there, but she wasn't convinced anymore. She suspected she hadn't improved nearly as much as she'd thought she had. Which was an uncomfortable thought.

So, potion. It hadn't been obvious to her how timid and pathetic Harry Potter had been until she'd seen it from the outside. When she was removed from herself, could watch and see. With this potion, she'd be able to watch Melantha Black, and see.

Which was inexplicably terrifying. She didn't know what she would do if...

She let out a long breath, rubbed at her forehead with both hands. She had to stop thinking about this so much. Wasn't that the entire problem? That she was thinking too much, getting too wrapped up in her pointless, idiotic neuroses that she couldn't act like a fucking normal person? She was taking this way too seriously. Just take the potion, think back to the list of moments she'd already decided to check. Just do it. Not that hard. Come on, stupid, do it already.

Gritting her teeth, she swiped the bottle off the bed, popped out the seal, and downed the thing in two gulps. And shuddered as soon as she was done — god, that tasted awful, like a sickening combination of broccoli and copper, blech.

Ooh, wow. This felt...weird. Her head felt oddly heavy, but also too light, and... It was hard to explain. She could only assume that meant it was working. Okay. Okay. She was doing her list in chronological order, starting only after that little explosion she'd had in the bathroom, which meant the first one was—

Mel cringed at the nauseating twist, then blinked her dazzled eyes. She was outside, warm in the late summer sunlight, wind playing at her hair. For a moment she just stared around. Hadn't expected it to be this accurate, honestly. It wasn't quite perfect — there was a faint hint of unreality to it, the movement of her hair not feeling quite right, the feel of her own body slightly off, the blue of the sky shining against the sunlight almost glass-like. Surprisingly good, though.

And just a little bit away were hopefuls for the Gryffindor quidditch team, Mel standing at the edge. It was slightly odd to watch herself from the outside, struggling with the instant assumption that that girl couldn't possibly be herself, an impulse she thought she'd gotten rid of by now. Maybe seeing herself in a mirror and seeing herself from outside like this were different somehow, she wasn't sure. But anyway, in the memory she had just landed, and people turned to glance at her, then stare when they realised she was holding a Firebolt. And Mel watched herself shift and squirm in place, visibly trying to shrug off their eyes, to not care. And visibly failing. Until she'd been distracted by her thoughts, at least.

A quick fast-forward to talking to the team, telling them who she was and that she wouldn't be trying out, didn't make her feel any better. There she was, small, folded inward enough she seemed even smaller than she actually was, noticeably cringing whenever anyone said anything too uncomfortable. She...

No, this was not a good omen.

Swallowing, she shook off the whatever it was itching at her throat, and reached for the next item on her list. She'd been—

She didn't have to watch very far into her meeting with Remus before she'd had all she needed. The way her shoulders had turned inward the moment his hand had come to her back, guiding her to the room she remembered they'd talked in, the way her head turned away, her breaths too low and thin—

After their first practice duel, the way she'd shrunk away from Dora's eyes, curling into herself, hugging the mug of hot chocolate to herself—

Her second conversation with Malfoy, how she was sunk into her chair, pulled away, barely even looking at him, only meeting his eyes a few seconds at a time here and there. And she hadn't noticed it at the time, but it'd clearly been obvious to Malfoy she was uncomfortable. Watching from the outside like this, she could see the slight hesitations, how he retreated, voice going somewhat softer, whenever she had a particularly bad moment. Which meant Malfoy had been consciously nice to her, which was weird enough it almost distracted her from her own patheticness—

That bloody trip to Hogsmeade, shrinking away from Hermione and Daphne's eyes with every few seconds, cringing and twitching with practically every word from Tracey's mouth. She'd thought she'd been less obvious, with how tongue-tied Tracey and Susan's incessant teasing and compliments had made her, far less obvious than this. Her face was too red, and she wouldn't even look at them, and it was clear with the way that Tracey smirked, how Susan would pull back a few inches every once in a while, how Daphne's eyes softened with what she thought, with an unpleasant twitch of her stomach, was probably pity—

Talking with Ellie about that same trip, shrunk into her armchair, arms hugged around herself, eyes on the ceiling, or her knees, or the walls, or the fire, anywhere but at the person she was talking to, shrinking away from Ellie's more direct looks—

No wonder Treasa had just taken charge the way she had! She could barely even meet a house-elf's eyes without cringing—

Watching herself shrink under Neville's gaze was especially bad. Neville! Really? And watching him collect himself, go all nice and gentle, even though, from the red all over his face, it clearly made him uncomfortable. God, this was so awful to watch, they were both so pathetically awkward, she couldn't, she had to go to the next one—

That conversation she'd had with Susan, when she'd randomly showed up in the enchanting lab. The way Mel shrunk away, avoiding her eyes, face going far too red practically every time Susan opened her mouth. At the time, she'd thought Susan's smirk had been mocking, teasing, but looking at it when she wasn't being made uncomfortable just by the fact she was looking at her, she saw, yes, the teasing slant did appear a few times, when she was actually saying something teasing, but otherwise, she... Well, it looked different, was all, she wasn't sure exactly how. Not the time to think about that, though—

She watched through the entirety of the trip to the Ministry, and was surprised by how...not pathetic she was being. Mostly. There were a couple points she twitched or cringed, like seemingly always, but most of the time she... Well, she seemed almost normal. And she got why Dora had made that time turner joke, she really had seemed like a completely different person dealing with Ethan, far too light and easy, not herself at all—

She was surprised again by her talk with Snape in the hospital wing. She did flinch here and there, a few shiftings that made her look far too guilty. But she gave glares nearly as good as she got, and talked back to him almost uncharacteristically level. After a moment of thought, she might get it. It didn't matter what she did with Snape, did it? It wasn't like he could possibly think any less of her...

There was something there, a bigger point peeking out, just barely visible. But she brushed the thought off for now, gathered herself to look at the last memory on her list, only a few days ago—

She hadn't noticed it at the time. It wasn't surprising she hadn't, she'd barely been looking at Susan at all, far too uncomfortable. All pulled into herself, so flushed Mel had to wonder if that was healthy. But she only noticed now how cautious Susan was being, hesitating between sentences here and there, carefully watching. Her face alternating between that confident smirk, and a smile far too gentle and warm, it was making her uncomfortable even in her head—

And Mel shoved the memories off, returning her with a snap to lying in her bed. She threw the bottle still in her hand against the curtains, and sunk back into her pillows, arms wrapping around her stomach, her breath inexplicably harsh in her throat.

She'd been worried she was no better. She'd had that suspicion. And it turned out she was entirely correct. She was no better. She'd hardly changed at all. Marginal improvements, here and there. She did talk to far more people on a regular basis than she did before — but even then, those were mostly the members of that study group Hermione had more or less forced her to join, or otherwise Blacks, and she was still as uncomfortable as all hell talking to most of them anyway. She was aware she was far better with magic now than she'd been a year ago, or even just a couple months ago. Even with things not directly related to duelling, in practical lessons these days she'd gone from being not far from the last in the class to figure something out — excluding DADA, at least, where she'd always done well — to being only a couple minutes behind the first to manage it. Duelling especially, though. It wasn't even funny how thoroughly she could pummel herself as she'd been at the end of last year, it wouldn't even take two seconds.

Of course, fighting with magic was like that. There were far too many spells that could take someone out in one shot, so all you needed was one good hit your opponent couldn't deal with, and it was over. Unless the two people fighting were extremely evenly matched, duels tended to be very, very short. Mel now knew what was basically a variation of the stunning charm that also happened to be dark magic, and thus practically unblockable, she could easily take out herself from a couple months ago with that, fight over in one spell.

And, well, another thing she'd give herself, she was dressing a lot better these days. So, while she did turn incredibly pathetic whenever someone so much as looked at her, her baseline patheticness was much lower than it used to be. If that made sense. Which wasn't saying a lot, granted. She didn't even want to consider what people must have thought about her walking around in Dudley's old clothes, no thanks. Of course, most people generally didn't notice, since she'd quickly developed a habit of almost always wearing her school robes, which she had gotten a few funny comments for, but still.

But other than that, other than those few small things, she hadn't changed at all. She was still the same stupid, pathetic, useless little boy she'd always been. She was still— She didn't...

Her hard breaths were catching, her chest and throat so tight it hurt, enough she could barely breathe. She knew what was happening, and the instinctive fear immediately started lashing in her head, her magic, so uncontrollable of late, already shifting at the building panic. But she couldn't, she had to hold it down, she had to control herself, crying was dange—

And she was somewhere else again, she knew where this was, she was in the Dursley's living room. By the furniture and decorations — which, after so many times cleaning them, she had far too good a feel for — she knew this had to have been some years ago. Once she spotted who had to be herself, she knew she hadn't guessed wrong: she was absolutely tiny, not even old enough for primary school yet, probably three or four, looking almost comically silly in Dudley's ratty, oversized clothes. A bit less comical when Mel recognised that tight, controlled look on her much younger face, she knew that feeling.

She had an odd moment where she had to remind herself she would have been a boy back then. It could be hard to tell with young children, and apparently she was used to being a girl enough it hadn't occurred to her at first. A thought she was rather ambivalent about.

After a couple more seconds watching, picking up a couple details — the greater-than-usual sluggishness in Dudley's blinking as he gazed blankly at the television, the glass of brandy on the little table next to Vernon's chair — she realised this must be shortly after dinner. The Dursleys were in their usual routine, and Mel was in hers. By which she meant she was dusting that stupid cabinet in the corner. God, she'd always hated that thing. Shelves fronted with glass, thing filled with all kinds of stupid little baubles Petunia had picked up here or there over the years, cutesy disgusting little things all of them. And she swore Petunia had to have far better vision than she did, or perhaps just a persistent hallucination, because she always saw dust where Mel didn't, where she'd already gone over three times, there couldn't possibly still be any there — there had hardly ever been any dust in the first place, the shelves were sealed with glass! It was so stupid, she hated that fucking thing.

The few times she'd broken one trinket or another hadn't been nearly as accidental as she'd claimed. She hadn't done it very much, since she'd always been punished severely for it, but she hadn't been able to help herself.

Tiny her was already fiercely trying to hold something back, Mel could see it in how pinched and still she was, how sharply her hands moved. She figured out what it was just when Vernon said something about it, how they had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts — right laugh, that — so if she wanted to eat, she would do her chores and she wouldn't complain about it. It was better than a freak like her deserved, really. Worthless as her parents, filthy layabouts never amounted to anything, nothing but a burden on society. Honestly, he had to wonder if she would have ended up here either way, he doubted her parents would have provided for her properly, or perhaps they would have just voluntarily left her with them, they were worthless freaks themselves, so their tolerance for worthless freaks like her would naturally be far lower than that of good, ordinary people. On, and on, and on.

Mel didn't know what it was. Maybe just because she'd been younger then, not yet used to these rants Vernon could go on. Or maybe she'd had an especially awful day. And missing a meal, as she obviously had, had always made it harder. Whatever it was, whatever the reason, the tiny her lost grip of the last shreds of her self-control. Standing there in the living room, in front of that stupid bloody cabinet, dusting rag held tight in one hand, she started crying. Quietly at first, holding her breath in a fierce effort to control herself, and by the fear flickering across her face Mel knew she'd already learned crying was dangerous. And her hand was clamped over her mouth, her tearing eyes squeezed shut, but she couldn't stop it, there was no stopping it.

And Vernon was yelling at her to quit that awful racket, but she couldn't, it was only getting worse, and then... Oh, Mel didn't remember this at all. Of course, she hadn't remembered this particular incident in the first place, but she certainly didn't remember this. The colours around her were bending, shimmering, like the air over a fire, the image on the telly shifting, twisting, before finally exploding into multicoloured chaos, light bulbs all around noticeably flickering. Dudley was startled out of his stupor, Petunia let out a sharp yelp, when the bulbs above their heads popped, one immediately after the other, the shattered glass tinkling inside the fixture, and Vernon was on his feet, purple face twisted with rage, screaming at her words she couldn't quite hear over the roar of flame that seemed to be filling her ears. Vernon reached for her, violence thick in every inch of him, but when his hand came within a few inches of her, into the shimmering air around her, he retreated with a pained roar, his hand red, blisters blooming unnaturally fast across his palm and fingers. With a scowl that seemed half rage and half terror, he stormed off, disappearing into the hall.

He returned a few seconds later with a cricket bat. And, the memory turning dim and blurry in anticipation, hit her across the head with that instead.

The memory went dark and fuzzy for a few seconds, and by the time Mel could tell what was going on again, Vernon was already dragging tiny her into the hall, still screaming at the top of his lungs. She couldn't make out what he was saying, and the shapes around her were still oddly blurry, she assumed the hit to the head or the accidental magic or both had messed up her memory here. And tiny her was shoved into the cupboard under the stairs, the door slamming and clicking locked behind her, and everything was dark.

But not so dark Mel couldn't see tiny her curl into a ball on her bed, gingerly poking at the thin gash on her head, rubbing at the arm Vernon had probably wrenched dragging her here. Still fruitlessly trying to control herself, sobs thin, and weak, and choked—

Mel finally managed to tear herself away from the memory, sprawling back on her pillows in Hogwarts. Stupid fucking potion! She thought it'd worn off! She scrambled to the side of her bed, reaching for her wand with shaking fingers, barely even able to hold the thing, pointed it at her own head. She knew she couldn't concentrate well enough at the moment to get it out silently, but she kept stammering on the incantation, her throat too tight and unsteady to let the words out properly, it must have taken six tries before she finally got a dispel out. She wasn't sure if that would actually work, so she overpowered it as much as she dared, just in case. Then she dropped her wand and flopped back against her bed again, hugging her arms around herself, stubbornly, fiercely trying to control her breathing, to hold back the stinging in her eyes, but it wasn't working.

That fucking memory hadn't helped, Jesus Christ...

She had put up a silencing earlier, she thought, but luckily there was no one else in the dorm all the same, because she just couldn't stop it, there was too much of it, a tense, hot pressure in her chest she just couldn't repress. And her throat hurt far too much, like she'd gone far too long without drinking, and her head felt too heavy and too thick, and she couldn't control her breathing at all, it was pointless to try, so she just lay there, holding her head in her hands, waiting for it to stop, praying it would just fucking stop.

Honestly, she didn't even know what she was crying about anymore. Her head was such a shifting, confusing mess these days, she had no idea what was going on. But she couldn't stop it, and it honestly terrified her a bit that she couldn't stop it, which made twice in just the last few months, she didn't know what was happening to her.

God, she was so pathetic.

She jumped at the sound of the door opening, her knees hitching up a bit toward her elbows. But it was fine, she'd put a silencing, it was fine. She listened past those fucking noises her own stupid body was making, quickly picked out Lavender and Parvati chattering. Oh, wow, fuck, good thing she'd put that silencing up, Jesus, did not want to deal with those two right now...

A couple seconds later, she jumped again, a voice coming from far too nearby, just on the other side of the curtains. 'Mel?' She wasn't entirely surprised Lavender was using Hermione's nickname for her. They'd hardly talked at all, Mel had honestly been avoiding her and Parvati a bit, but that was just a Lavender thing to do, she guessed, far too friendly that girl. 'Are you in there?'

'I think she is,' Parvati said in a lower whisper. 'There's a silencing over her bed.'

'Really? How'd you know?'

'That analysis charm Professor Weasley taught us.'

'Right, good thinking.'

Oh, of course these two pay attention in class when it's Bill bloody Weasley teaching, god dammit...

'I... Mel, are you okay in there? I don't even know if you can hear me. It's, just, your curtains are smoking.'

What? Mel peeled open her eyes, glanced upward. It was hard to tell with how blurry her vision was right now, stupid fucking tears, but she had a feeling Lavender was right. Stupid useless magic, being so bloody uncontrollable lately, she wasn't a fucking child, why did it have to keep—

'We're coming in, okay, Mel? Just...'

No! Bad! Fucking friendly bints! Mel started scrambling for her wand again, but she only got so far as sitting up before she froze, the curtains before her sliding aside. And Lavender and Parvati were standing right in front of her, and Mel couldn't look, she had to jerk away, she didn't even like these two, she didn't want them here right now, she couldn't.

Before she could pull very far away, she felt her bed sink on either side of her, and unfamiliar arms were wrapping around her. Lavender, she thought, it was hard to tell for sure with her eyes still closed. And then Lavender was pulling Mel into her, and for a few seconds Mel resisted, trying to push away — which wasn't at all easy to do, with Parvati hemming her in from her other side. But she only struggled for a moment. Lavender was too soft, too warm, too gentle, and that fragile thing that had been lingering for months now, that open wound constantly weeping in the back of her head she did her best to ignore, it shuddered and relaxed, melting inside of her, and she was shivering, and she was still crying like a pathetic child, and she couldn't hold it.

'Stop it,' she groaned past her painful throat, muffled a bit by Lavender's shirt where Mel's head had ended up.

'Stop what?' Lavender muttered, her voice vibrating against her.

'Being so n-nice.' She shivered a moment later, reflexively twitching away from Parvati's fingers slowly combing through her hair.

'Why?'

'You're m-making it w-w-worse.'

'We don't mind,' said Parvati from behind her, fingers still gently slipping through Mel's hair. Which she was trying to ignore, not going too well. 'It's okay. Let it out.'

No, she... She couldn't. Not... That...

Ah, fuck it. It was a losing battle by this point anyway.

She had absolutely no idea how long she sat there crying like a pathetic...well, a pathetic something, anyway. She couldn't even try to guess. It was so fucking embarrassing in retrospect, and, honestly, it was rather embarrassing at the time too. She just couldn't stop. Lavender's hand gently rubbing up and down her back, Parvati's fingers slowly working at her hair, those didn't help. It felt too, well, good, and a part of her she wasn't usually aware of was stridently protesting at that, that she shouldn't be feeling good right now, she was doing something bad, and it couldn't be allowed, she was a freak, and she had to stop it, right now. But she couldn't, she couldn't, and quite honestly she couldn't be bothered to try. She didn't want to listen to that part of her head, the part she knew Vernon and Petunia had put there. This might be a bit awkward and embarrassing, sure, but she felt good so rarely she didn't think it was the end of the world if she just sat back and allowed even a little bit when it actually came for once. Sure. That was fine.

Eventually she stopped, slowly fading out, her face still buried in Lavender's chest, hands clenching fistfulls of her...actually, didn't have a clue what Lavender was wearing right now. Her top, anyway. Parvati's fingers were still twitching in her hair — she had the odd feeling Parvati had switched to plaiting it at some point, but that was fine, whatever. And she took a long moment once she was still just sitting there, trying to gather herself, enough so she could lean away and actually look at them without feeling mortified.

Well, without feeling too mortified, anyway.

Before she'd even sat up, her hands just loosening from Lavender's clothes a bit, Lavender said, 'Milly?' There was a pop from the side of Mel's bed, sudden and sharp enough she jumped. After a quick exchange, the Hogwarts elf popped away again, returning a moment later with a mug of water.

Wait, no. Mel corrected herself when she'd sat up, the mug pressed into her hands. It smelled like some kind of tea, couldn't say what. While the two patiently waited, Mel shakily raised the warm mug to her lips, took a sip. It was a bit sweeter than she usually took, but it felt inexplicably amazing on her abused throat, spreading warmth and relief all along the painful tightness through her neck and chest, powerful enough she almost had to wonder if there was a potion of some kind in it. A couple sips later, and she could breathe without her throat convulsing on her, her chest didn't hurt anymore, and she could probably talk without stammering incomprehensibly. So, staring down at her mug instead of either of the girls, she muttered, 'Sorry.'

'What for?' Lavender actually sounded honestly confused. Jesus, these two were weird...

It took herself a second to shake herself, find her voice again. 'Crying all over you, I m-mean.' Dammit, stupid... 'Probably got your clothes all messy.'

'It's fine. That's what cleaning charms are for.'

These two, honestly... The thought slipped out before she could stop it. 'Why are you being so nice to me?'

'Huh?' And there Lavender goes sounding confused again! Seriously...

'I mean, you don't have to. It's not like we're friends, or anything. We've barely even talked at all.' Mel managed to stop herself from admitting she'd been avoiding them, but only barely.

'Well...' She was aware Lavender was staring at her, but she resolutely didn't even glance in her direction, just gazing down at her too-sweet tea. 'Because we feel like it, I guess? I'm not sure how to answer that.'

From her other side, Parvati said, 'It's just what you do, I think. You know?'

'Mm-hmm. Parv's been playing with your hair the whole time, though. She likes hair, you know, but she can't do mine, because it's too gnarly and blech.' Now that she thought about it, Lavender's hair was almost as bad as Hermione's. Mel had just hardly ever taken occasion to notice because...well, honestly, she'd never paid that much attention to Lavender, ever.

'There's nothing wrong with your hair.'

'Yes, that's why you randomly plait flowers into it all the time never.'

'Well, no...'

Mel blinked at that. 'What did you do to my hair?'

'Oh, well, ah...' That was weird, Parvati sounded strangely embarrassed. Mel glanced that way quick to see there was a slight reddish tinge to her brownish face. Which was weird. 'I just, ah. Well, let's get a mirror, and I can—'

Mel rolled her eyes, set her mug down and leaned backward to snatch up her wand from the bed behind Lavender. A quick, silent swish, and a swath of the air in front of her abruptly turned reflective. And Mel stared at herself, blinking. Her face was all red and blotchy, and she had some dried stuff on her lip which, okay, ech. But her hair wasn't just solid black anymore. Turning her head a bit, she saw Parvati had made five narrow plaits all the way down, all about the width of her pinky, and threaded through them were flowers. Tiny little things, mostly violet and cherry, she thought, in whites and purples and yellows. That was...

'Sorry about that, I kind of, just, do that,' Parvati muttered, looking almost painfully sheepish in the reflection next to her.

Brightly smiling, Lavender said, 'She'll play with any hair that sits still long enough.'

'Yeah, ah, the flowers are just conjured, so they won't last very long, but...' Parvati gave a little, embarrassed-looking shrug, turned a little to meet Mel's eyes through the reflection. 'You like it?'

'I...' Mel still wasn't sure what was going on in her head still. It was a confusing mix of all sorts of things, she had no idea. But she felt weirdly... 'I think I do, actually.' Parvati just beamed at her, and after a second Mel had to look away, she wasn't sure why.

'So.' Lavender snatched Mel's arm with both of hers, suddenly enough Mel jumped, and gave her a look through Mel's lingering charm. Not sure what kind of look, but definitely a look. 'If you want to talk about it, we're here. You don't have to, of course, but if you wanna.'

'No, I—'

'It's not Malfoy being a prat, is it?' said Parvati, a sharp frown taking her forehead. 'I can tell my sister to curse him.'

'No, it's not...' Mel blinked, turned to glance at Parvati. 'Malfoy? Why was your first guess Malfoy?'

Parvati just gave another awkward shrug, but Lavender said, 'See, I told you there was nothing to that, people just making stuff up like normal.'

'Wait, nothing to what?'

'Just a rumour going around that you and Malfoy are, you know, a thing.'

Her charm failed, the reflective surface dissipating in little whiffs of steam. For long seconds, all she could do was stare at Lavender. Finally, she managed to get her mouth working again. 'What? Why?'

'He is weirdly nice to you. You have to be the only Gryffindor he doesn't sneer at.' Then Lavender shrugged, adding, 'Well, you and the other Black, but she doesn't go sneaking off to meet with him.'

'I– That only happened twice! And I was just carrying messages from Sirius! There was nothing—' She broke off, rubbing at her forehead with the hand that wasn't weighed down by a silly girl. It was true he was being unusually nice to her lately, but she was pretty sure that was just because he'd started thinking of her and the other Blacks as family, which demanded a lesser degree of arsehole-ishness. And, yes, that was weird, but she'd mostly been not thinking about it. How did people... 'I mean, he's Malfoy.'

'Yeah, I didn't think there was anything to it. There's also one floating around involving you and Hermione, but I think I would have noticed that.'

Again, all Mel could do was stare at her. Seriously? Did people have nothing better to talk about? 'She doesn't like girls, though.'

And Lavender smiled at her, a crooked, teasing sort of smile that did not belong on Lavender fucking Brown's face, it was the weirdest thing. 'Ran into that problem, did you.'

'I– no! It, just, it came up! I—'

'Relax, Mel, I'm just teasing.'

Mel let out a long huff, turning away to stare up at her curtains. 'I would think people would have better things to do with their time than speculate about who I may or may not be secretly dating.'

She felt Lavender shrug through the arm she was still holding, but it was Parvati who answered the not-question. 'A lot of people have been talking about the Blacks lately. It is a Noble and Most Ancient House, you know, there aren't very many of them left. And with Lord Black breaking out of Azkaban, and everyone going crazy over that, and then him turning out to have been innocent the whole time, and then adding a whole bunch of people to the House, some of which nobody had ever heard of before, and then him being, well, Sirius Black — he had a reputation when he was younger — yeah, a lot of people are talking about the Blacks lately.'

'It doesn't help,' Lavender said, 'that nobody has any idea where you came from. I've asked around, and no one knows.' This was said with a rather hopeful tone, half-begging Mel to spill her secrets. Only partially so she could go bragging about it to these nameless other people later, Mel guessed.

And Mel hesitated, biting her lip. This could be a problem. She'd known people would probably go digging, with Black being a Noble House and her just appearing and all it was inevitable. Sirius had said their explanation would hold up to all but intensive inspection, but that the truth would get out eventually, he couldn't prevent that forever. But...she wasn't ready yet. She didn't want people to know. Eventually, yes, it would have to get out eventually, but not yet.

But everyone was just so nosy. They'd probably keep looking no matter what she said.

Or, maybe she could...

Mel let out a long breath. This was going to be uncomfortable. 'I just don't like to talk about it, is all. I never really knew my parents, you see.' She realised just as she was finishing saying it that that didn't quite fit with the backstory Sirius and Andi had worked up. Erm, oops. Oh well. 'And the people I was with until Sirius took me in were... Er, not very nice.'

She was still staring up at her curtains, so she couldn't see how the girls were reacting to that. They did seem to go oddly still, Lavender's hands tightening a bit around her arm, but that was all she got. Her voice slow and cautious, Lavender said, 'Is that why you've been...you know.'

Mel wasn't entirely sure what Lavender was referring to. That little episode she'd just had, maybe, or how pathetically shy and awkward she was. Either way, the answer was the same. 'Yeah, sort of.'

There was silence for long seconds. 'Oh.'

Mel almost had to laugh at that. Yeah. Oh.

Whatever was going through the girls' heads now, she didn't know, but they didn't bloody leave her alone. They were still sitting there — talking about the most idiotic shite, she couldn't even remember — when Hermione appeared from wherever she'd been, freezing halfway to her bookshelf when she saw them, eyes flicking between the girls, to Mel, to the flowers plaited into her hair, to the girls, and back again. She didn't say anything, but by the smirk twitching at her lips she was definitely thinking teasing thoughts.

And Mel certainly wasn't blushing. Not at all. That was silly talk. What was there to be possibly be blushing about? Honestly.

[You did use magic on her muggle mother.] — Just to clarify, these three are Sirius's uncle Alphard, aunt Theresa, and cousin Ailís (the triplets' mother). I do think I mentioned this before, but Theresa was a muggle. Ah, yes, I checked, and waaaay back in chapter seven, Sirius says, "[Alphard] was expelled from the House before I was even born, I think. Aunt Terri's a muggle, you see."

[He'd given her a book detailing all kinds of Parselmouth-related magics, but he never had said where he'd gotten it from.] — In case you're wondering? Tom let him have it. Tom didn't know who it was for at the time, thought it was for Snape's own curiosity, but he put it together when he figured out Lily was a Parselmouth a couple years later.

Ugh, sorry about how ick this chapter was. I didn't want to end it here, but I'm already late, and my brain was getting increasingly fuzzy, so I decided it would have to stop early. Which meant shuffling a couple scenes around, but I serendipitously stumbled on a sequence I really like, so...yay?

Anyone thinking on commenting on how Mel is being all terrible and blechy this chapter, I thought we were done with this pathetic bullshit, do note the "part one" in the chapter title. I have plans.

Until next time,
~Wings