Chapter Thirty-Six
Wait and See

May 25th, 1975

I need a place that looks like the Forbidden Forest where no one can enter but me.

She concentrated on that exact thought as she walked, passing in front of the stone wall on the seventh floor three times. Slowly, a circular wooden door appeared, and Mia let a smile cross her face as she opened it and walked into the Room of Requirement. The view was incredible.

Kicking off her shoes as she stepped inside, she moved through the magically created trees and undergrowth, feeling the soft grass on her bare feet. Where there should have been a wall to her left, instead was a view extending to the Black Lake. To the right, she could see the shadow of Hogwarts, which was odd since she was technically inside the castle at the moment.

The forest lay ahead of her, and Mia smiled as she walked through the shadows of the trees, glancing upward at what should have been ceiling. Instead, she saw sky lit only by a perfectly circular moon, hung large against a black background. A full moon was her motivation for this, and she used it to calm her, to relax her as she wiggled her toes into the soil. A part of her felt guilty that she was using the very thing that caused Remus pain to take away her own anxieties. To persuade her guilt to leave, she reasoned that, in the end, this would make it easier for him.

It was good to know that Padfoot and Prongs—and yes even Wormtail, for now—would soon be there for Moony during his transformations, but she longed to be there with them. With him.

It had taken months to get the meditations down correctly, to relax enough to allow herself to dip into her "inner animal"—an animal she had assumed would have been an otter but was not. As soon as she discovered this, she tried to summon a Patronus and watched, shocked, as the silvery otter she had come to know and love morphed into a slightly larger beast with slender limbs and a tail as bushy as her hair. It now made sense why an older Sirius had been surprised to learn that Hermione's Patronus was an otter—because Mia's Patronus was certainly not.

She closed her eyes and felt the wind cover her skin, felt the glow of the moon against her back and the dirt shift between her toes. She focused on her inner animal, but also reached out with purpose to Moony, to Remus, who was in the Shrieking Shack at this very hour. She reached out to Prongs and Padfoot, knowing that the boys had followed Remus out the doors of the castle; unable to join him in the shack just yet, they had instead retired to the actual Forbidden Forest to practice their own transformations.

Something inside of her pulled and tugged in multiple directions and she realised quickly it was not just one bond but many. In her meditative state, she could feel and see them clearly. A golden string that tied her to Sirius—a Soul Bond prepared by emotions triggered by memories, provoked by kisses in two different decades, and left unsealed. A lighter, silver string connected her to James—a Familial Bond, as her mother had explained it, prepared by her sisterly love for Harry, provoked by her gift from Sirius, and sealed by the Potter's official adoption.

But there was a third string, something almost invisible as though it existed but had yet to be awakened. Something that reached from her out to Remus, far away in the shack, but did not end there as it extended back into the Forbidden Forest where she lost it.

Another bond?

Letting go of the thought took time, but she released it with effort, knowing she had to have a clear mind to complete the transformation.

Mia let out a deep sigh of contentment and acceptance, and she felt her body shift beneath her. Hands became paws, and she dug sharp black claws into the earth, feeling the way the dirt shifted under her touch. Her vision increased tenfold, and she could see the forest ahead of her as though she were looking through a pair of omnioculars. She could feel her ears shift upward, and the sounds of nearby whispering voices were heard as though they were right outside the door.

Outside the door?

It was relatively easy to slip back into the corridor without being spotted since she had the Room of Requirement on her side. Asking it to create a doorway that was both invisible and silent was less of a feat than she had imagined. Disillusioned, she closed the door behind her, spotting Sirius, James, and Peter. They were huddled together as they held wands up to nearby paintings and looked behind tapestries, likely searching for more hidden passageways.

"I know she came this way," Sirius said. "I saw her sneak off the other night, and she disappeared up around the seventh floor."

Peter sighed. "If we could just finish the map, this wouldn't be a problem. Oh, bugger, I think I left my bag out in the forest."

"Beasties have gotten to it by now," Sirius said with a chuckle.

Frowning, Peter moaned miserably. "That was a new bag. And I had a Charms essay in it."

"What'd you bring your book bag for anyway?"

"I had snacks in it. Thought if we all got through a full transformation that we might be hungry. Training always makes me hungry."

Sirius snickered. "Cheese?"

"Shut it."

"I don't think she's up this way, Padfoot," James said, sounding annoyed. "I'm starting to worry, though. It makes me nervous that I'm more concerned that my sister is sneaking off in the middle of the night than I'm worried about her dating a werewolf who happens to be my best mate."

"Hey, I thought I was your best mate?" Sirius pouted.

James groaned. "You are."

"Hey!" Peter whined.

James pinched the bridge of his nose. "Can we pretend that the both of you have self-esteem that doesn't revolve around me? I'm thrilled that I'm the centre of your entire world, but Mia's still missing!"

"Who's missing?" Mia whispered as she cancelled her Disillusionment Charm, popping up right behind James with a grin.

"Mia!"

"Me?" she asked, acting innocent to the point of batting her eyelashes. "I know exactly where I am."

"What are you up to?" Sirius asked her point-blank.

"What are you up to?" she countered. "It appears that all of us are out past curfew."

"We at least have the cloak," James protested, narrowing a suspicious gaze at her. "We're not going to get caught."

Mia rolled her eyes and tapped her wand on the top of her head, recasting the Disillusionment Charm on herself and very nearly disappearing into the stone background of the wall behind her. "It only counts if you're actually wearing the cloak, Jamie."

Sirius looked amused, as usual. James looked mildly embarrassed as he scrambled for the cloak. Peter looked flustered and nervous.

She glared at him with a murderous look in her eye, glad that they could not see her. "What's wrong, Pete? Worried that you're being watched by someone you can't see?"

"Very funny. Come on out, Mia," James said with a chuckle. When she was visible once more, he asked, "Seriously, what are you doing out past curfew?"

She put her hands defiantly on her hips. "I asked you the same thing."

"My-uh!" James whinged.

"Jay-mee!" Mia copied, matching his tone and pitch.

"We were looking for Ravenclaw's lost diadem," Sirius blurted out. When Peter and James looked at him incredulously, he went on, "What? It's not technically a lie. We were doing that all week before tonight."

Mia smirked at him. "Good luck finding that."

James shook his head and waited another moment, staring at her with a strained expression that she assumed he thought was intimidating but came off looking a bit constipated. He was just precious.

When she remained silent, refusing to "fess up," James huffed. "Fine, we'll wait until the next time you go out and track you then."

"You won't find me." Mia grinned smugly. "Your map isn't finished."

All three boys swallowed and stared at her.

"What?" James gaped. "What map?"

"The map you four have created of Hogwarts and all the secret passages that lead into Hogsmeade." She chuckled softly and watched as their eyes widened.

"That lying werewolf!" Sirius snapped. "Leave it to Remus to bail on his mates and tell all our secrets to his bloody girlfriend."

"Remus didn't tell me anything. You should always trust Remus, Sirius. If your secrets aren't being properly kept," said added pointedly, her gaze turning to Peter, "maybe you have a rat in your midst."

Peter shrivelled before her, looking terrified. "I d-didn't say . . . Did I?"

"I've told you repeatedly, Peter's a terrible secret keeper; very, very twitchy," she said, twitching her nose and pointing at it.

James stared wide-eyed at his sister while Sirius glared down at Peter. "You little—"

"Uh oh. Looks like I've accidentally put Peter in the doghouse." She grinned at Sirius as he suddenly paled at her words, his grey eyes widening.

"Mia . . ." James whispered.

She turned to her brother. "What's wrong, dear? You're looking at me like I've just sprouted antlers." When James began breathing erratically, she could not contain the laughter anymore. "Oh calm down, the lot of you!"

"How long have you known?" Sirius yelled.

"About the map or you three becoming Animagi? Illegally, I might add." She stared at Sirius, as he appeared to be vacillating between amused and furious.

James huffed. "Both."

"I told Sirius years ago that we should have a map of the castle. Plus, I just heard Peter talking about it a few minutes ago when you didn't know I was here. I assume the problem is you haven't figured out how to track everyone's movements?"

Despite the fact that James and Sirius remained silent on the matter, Peter spoke up. "Pretty much." James and Sirius threw him a glare, and he looked away from them innocently as though he had not even spoken.

"Try a Homonculous Charm." She smiled sweetly at her brother, all hints of malice and devious mischief gone from her eyes. "I'd offer to show you myself, but it looks to be a Marauders' thing, so I'll let you three work it out with Remus when he's feeling better."

"Speaking of Remus feeling better . . ." Sirius eyed her. "We're becoming Animagi to help him. You told me that he should be safe around other animals."

"I know." She smiled, picking up the defensive tone in his voice that she knew he often used when people he loved were being threatened. "I assumed as much."

"That's great, but how did you know?" James asked.

"I'm surprised Sirius hasn't figured it out yet," she admitted with a soft laugh. "Remus either, to be honest. Though he might just be too polite to ask why my scent has changed."

Sirius stared at her curiously and then inhaled deep and slow, his eyes darkening. "Wait, why do you smell . . . canine . . . ish. How?"

She smiled wryly. "How'd you do it?"

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How long?"

"Six months, give or take."

"Bloody hell! It's taken us three years to get this far! Are you at full shift?" Sirius demanded bitterly. When Mia shrugged her shoulders lightly, he stomped his foot. "Fuck!"

James blinked, confused. "What's going on?"

"She's an Animagus too!"

"Keep it down! What's the matter with you?" James glared at Sirius. "Filch could be just around the corner, and if so, we're all buggered, you bell end!"

"You're having trouble with the final shift, right?" she asked, amused. "Keeping the form at will?"

"Yes," Sirius snapped, enviously. "I was the first to fully shift. Prongs can get there as well, but neither of us can hold it for more than a few minutes. Won't be much help with a werewolf if we turn into snacks ten minutes past moonrise."

"You have to find something to ground you. An image to keep in your mind. Your reason for doing this," she offered politely.

"We use the shack," James admitted.

Mia shook her head. "Not strong enough. A shack can be knocked down; also, outside of the shack, Remus is still the wolf. You need something permanent."

"What do you use?" Peter asked quietly.

"The moon," she admitted, and all three boys grimaced as though they could sense how Remus himself would react. "It's morbid, I know, but it'll never go away, and as long as it's there, he'll turn. He's connected to the moon, and we're connected to him through the moon. It's all tied together."

"So what are you?" Sirius finally asked. "I smelled canine, or something like it, but I can't tell what."

James chuckled. "I would have thought you'd be a cat."

"Why's that?" Mia narrowed her eyes. She had, in fact, worried about such a thing happening. It would have been ironic considering she had accidentally turned herself into a cat during her original second year.

"Because you and Sirius fight like cats and dogs." James grinned, and both Mia and Sirius rolled their eyes. "So what are you?"

"Guess you'll just have to wait and see."

Later that night, Mia pulled the Invisibility Cloak from James's trunk and wrapped it around herself. She had not had nightmares that often since her encounter with Bellatrix the summer before, and she imagined it had something to do with facing her fears. Regardless, she struggled to sleep some nights, especially during the full moon when she knew that Remus was alone and in pain.

It had not occurred to her until she began her training inside the Room of Requirement, but one night just after Christmas, she sought out the Room of Hidden Things. A part of her wanted to look for the diadem, which she ultimately found and immediately refused to touch. It was not as though she could control Fiendfyre or had a basilisk fang on hand. Another part of her wanted to look for other missing parts of history. She wanted to see everything that the Fiendfyre during the final battle might have destroyed. She wanted to look for old books and buried treasures that the castle had kept hidden for centuries.

What she had not expected to find was a mirror.

A wondrous mirror, taller than a wardrobe, with a beautiful gold frame, stood on two clawed feet. The inscription at the top made her gasp as she recognised from Harry's stories what this was: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

The Mirror of Erised.

Very, very slowly, Mia approached the mirror and took in a sharp breath.

A name escaped her lips on a pained whisper, something she had not said out loud in over three years: "Harry."

There he stood before her, or next to her really, as she gazed in the reflection and saw herself standing beside him. Harry looked just as she remembered. The spitting image of James, with two exceptions: a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the most brilliant green eyes, the colour of emeralds in direct sunlight.

Standing on either side of Harry were the smiling faces of his parents, though not as adults. No, James and Lily appeared in the mirror as they looked to Mia right now, fifteen and full of life. James looked like he could be Harry's brother.

The Potters, all together again.

Mia sniffed at the sight and wiped away a tear. She stood with them. Harry had thought of her as a sister, allowed her to wear the words of his House that had provoked a Familial Bond and made her a Potter. James, her brother in everything but blood, and Lily, quite possibly the only female aside from Ginny Weasley that Mia could ever consider a true friend. Mary and Alice were lovely girls, but Lily was more; Lily was . . . family.

Ron appeared close behind Harry, a hand on his shoulder, and Ginny beside him making moon eyes at Harry.

To the left of Mia's reflection stood Remus, just as beautiful as he was right now, perfectly fifteen and perfectly hers. However, his reflection changed, and she watched closely as he aged right in front of her eyes into the professor she had originally met, except his eyes; those were still the same eyes as her Remus. Only her Remus held a blue-haired child in his arms, and Mia smiled at the sight of little Teddy Lupin and Tonks, who moved to stand beside her husband. They were smiling brightly, and Mia felt guilty and jealous at the same time until the reflection of Remus smiled at her with that loving expression she knew too well.

She was not his mate, but she was still his memory, and Mia knew better than anyone that Remus had a capacity to love that rivalled Harry's; there was room for her in his heart.

An older Sirius appeared in the mirror, slowly walking up behind her, his grey eyes boring into her as if they could liquefy her very soul. He approached her reflection from behind, but his eyes remained fixed on her as his arms wound themselves around her reflection's waist tenderly, intimately. He knew her. He remembered her.

He looked exactly as she remembered: war-torn and battered by life but vivacious and full of fire. He wore the scars and tattoos that his younger self had yet to bear, and she mapped each mark with her gaze until it landed on one she was sure she had seen before, but never placed it until now. In faded black ink, peeking out from beneath an open shirt right over his heart was a name.

Mia gasped and turned away from the mirror as quickly as possible.

She was not ready for this.

She remembered what Harry had told her about the mirror: it showed the deepest desires of our hearts. But Dumbledore had cautioned her friend that the mirror gave neither knowledge nor truth.

And she needed both.

May 26th, 1975

"You're here early, Belby."

"All right, Potter?"

Mia smiled as she walked into the Potions lab to find the young Slytherin hard at work, sweating over a steaming cauldron. "Still experimenting with the aconite?" she asked, trying to hide exactly how curious she was about his investigations.

While the rest of the class had finished their experiments anywhere from a week to three months into the year, Damocles kept digging, insisting that the longer he brewed, stewed, or dried the aconite, the more properties it released.

"Found something new you might be interested in. Look what happens when I add scarab beetles to the brewed wolfsbane."

He dropped the beetles into the cauldron, and Mia gasped when the liquid let off a faint blue smoke that she knew all too well to be a chief characteristic of the Wolfsbane Potion. She squealed with excitement. "What did you do?"

He smiled at her, a look of pride and excitement in his eyes. "Kind of got the idea from you actually. You mentioned that aconite could be used for mind sharpening. I tried mixing it differently with a Wideye Potion, but then . . . Snape suggested that I could extract more potency from the aconite sprigs if I cut them after stewing for two weeks. Smug sod was right too."

Son of a bitch! Was it really that bloody simple?

Mia had been working on the Wolfsbane Potion since Professor Snape had killed Dumbledore and ran off. They found his notes on how to brew the potion, of course, but it had always said to stew cut aconite sprigs, never to cut previously stewed aconite sprigs. A part of her thought he might have done it on purpose in order to remain useful to Remus—to somehow keep an old rival indebted to him.

Mia really wanted to punch Severus Snape in the face. Again.

"Then, instead of the Wideye Potion, I thought to mix it with a Wit-Sharpening Potion."

"Isn't that used to counter a Confundus Charm?" Mia asked.

"Yes. Adding the beetles like you would to a Wit-Sharpening Potion not only sharpens the mind, but it clears it and holds it in place. Unfortunately, I can't think of many uses outside of maybe people who've gone mad under the Cruciatus Curse. Even then it would have to be administered immediately and daily."

"I'm sure you'll find a good purpose for it, Damocles." Mia beamed. "You're brilliant. This will change lives, I just know it."

And another thing she just knew, was the proper way to brew a Wolfsbane Potion.

Mia made her way back to the Gryffindor Tower with a skip in her step, surprised to find all four Marauders sitting around the fireplace, Marauder's Map in hand. As she stepped through the portrait hole, she laughed when they all jumped and Sirius quickly closed the map.

James sighed at the sight of her. "Oh, it's just Mia."

"Just?" She scoffed and walked over to sit down beside Remus, kissing his cheek. "Hello, love."

His tired eyes lit up, and she brightened at his reaction.

"I thought you were going to be in the hospital wing for a few more hours. I would have come to see you."

"Couldn't stay away." He grinned and put his arm around her, leaning forward and placing a kiss on the top of her head. "My friends here told me that you helped with our little project. A Homonculous Charm; I should have known."

"You would have gotten there." She smiled and cuddled gently into his side, trying to be careful, knowing that he would have fresh wounds and deep bruises. "You had these three prats to distract you from your brilliance. I was all on my own."

"Prats? You think Moony there is the only brilliant one?" Sirius handed her the map and touched it with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

"Appropriate password." She nodded her head with amusement, doing her best to look as impressed as possible as the map came to life before her very eyes.

The map was just as it always had been, magical and brilliant and quite a bit less worn than it was when Harry had it. She quietly sought out Gryffindor Tower, relieved that her name showed Mia Potter and not Hermione Granger. She wondered briefly if James had done a bit of concealing magic until she remembered that the Familial Bond being sealed would have changed her name.

"Very clever," she said, doing her best not to be sad that her past self had somehow vanished further into oblivion.

"Watch this. Mischief managed," Sirius said with a grin and the ink displaying the map vanished before her very eyes, leaving behind blank parchment.

She chuckled at how very much like Fred and George they all looked in that moment. "Is your mischief ever really managed, though?"

"That's not even the best part. You try to read it," he insisted, "but without the password. You can use any other spell you want."

Mia rolled her eyes, knowing perfectly well what would happen when she tried to break into it without the password, but she had to placate them now—especially Sirius, who was so very eager to show off.

"Aparecium." She tapped her wand on the top of the map. Slowly, as though an invisible hand were writing upon it, words appeared on the smooth surface of the parchment she was holding. Chuckling softly at the sight, she read aloud:

"Mr Padfoot offers congratulations to Miss Potter for her noble attempt at sneaking into such a brilliantly crafted magical object but offers his condolences over her failure. He understands she must feel very envious over her lack of such a creation. He also offers compliments to Miss Potter on her very shapely arse."

Remus and James each punched Sirius in the shoulder at the same time.

Mia laughed and continued reading as the words faded in and out of the parchment.

"Mr Prongs would like to remind Mr Padfoot not to talk about Miss Potter's arse, which is most certainly not shapely."

"Mr Moony agrees with Mr Padfoot over Miss Potter's shapely arse, but he is too much of a gentleman to say such things aloud."

She fell over laughing

Remus held his hands up as James turned to descend upon him. "You wouldn't strike an injured man!"

James smirked at his friend as he snatched the map back from his sister. "You're lucky she likes you so much."

"Yeah, I am," Remus said with a smile.

Mia bit her lower lip and grinned. "I have a surprise for you," she whispered into Remus's ear, purposely getting close enough to let her lips linger on his skin. He let out a soft breath, and she watched closely as he swallowed at her touch. "But it won't be ready for another three weeks."

"What is it?"

"Something . . . that will change everything."

He raised a brow. "You're really not going to tell me?"

"You'll just have to wait and see."