Author's Note: Welcome back! Some more revelations this week, so buckle tight! I want to thank my lovely reviewers for taking the time out of their busy lives to let me know their thoughts; thank you Lillylarlar, LeahLovesPotter, and Ghostwriter71! Also to LeahLovesPotter, I wish an early congratulations to your birthday and much and much joy with your new laptop!

Now, enjoy this chapter!

April 28, 1997
London

After working out the practicalities – such that her parents would call her in sick for school today and the next couple of days and would take care of Severus, and that they would call Emma to tell her to similarly go into hiding until Sophie contacted her again – Sophie had gone up to grab a few extra changes of clothing, leaving Tonks alone with her parents with only the slightest hesitation.

While she'd grabbed clean clothes and told Severus to be good in her absence, she would later learn that the Auror had secured the house with some protective wards. In the meantime, her parents had sat in slightly awkward silence, the furtive glances they passed speaking of the conversation that they would have once the visitors had gone.

They had left the Cornwell home soon after, arriving back at Grimmauld Place 12 at half past noon, to the dismay of Alastor Moody, who immediately requested what had taken them so long. Tonks had explained that it had taken her parents some time to agree to her leaving once they had broken the news of the return of Voldemort – which had once more elicited grumbles from the ex-Auror, this time for breaking the Statute of Secrecy – but then steered the conversation to safer subjects.

'How are things at Hogwarts? Any news?'

'Preparations are being made for emergency evacuation of the students,' Remus replied, looking weary and as if he hadn't slept all night (which he probably hadn't), from his seat at the breakfast table. 'The call for reinforcements has been distributed to all parents from students in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. The Daily Prophet has also…-'

'What about Slytherin?' Sophie found herself interrupting him.

'What about it?'
'What about the parents of Slytherin students?' Sophie explained, slightly vexed at the completely innocent tone of the professor's voice. Surely if anyone understood the danger of prejudice, it must be him.

'We cannot be sure that some of them will not… have different loyalties.'

'Isn't this quite prejudiced?'

'Actually, it was your friend, Mr Malfoy, who suggested it.'

This stunned Sophie into silence – and she filed away the information for later, to question the Slytherin about. As she thought about this, another question entered her mind. 'Professor, how will you get those who want to defend Hogwarts at the school on the day of battle? Surely you cannot just lift the Apparation restriction, lest Death Eaters also start Apparating into the school.'

'With Vanishing Cabinets,' Tonks said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. She had sat herself down at the breakfast table next to Remus and while there was no specific sign that told her, there was just something about the way their bodies were angled that told Sophie they must have settled their differences.

'Vanishing Cabinets?' She repeated, incredulously.

'Why of course. We assumed Dumbledore had gotten the idea from you, when he mentioned them last year – or at least the unnamed source he had mentioned before. Naturally, at the time he did not disclose what they would be of use for, only that they would be, as was his custom.'

'Professor Flitwick fixed the Cabinet that was stored away in the Room of Requirement at the start of this school year,' explained Remus, 'We acquired the twin that was on sale at Borkin and Burkes several months ago – anonymously of course. It is now residing in one of the guestrooms at the Hog's Head Inn.'

'When You-Know-Who comes to Hogwarts, we will instruct all parents to come to the Inn. Hopefully, they can inform all others who want to come and fight,' finished Tonks.

'That…' she was at a loss, at once flabbergasted and impressed by how well they had thought it out. It appeared that the information that she had once spewed to professor Dumbledore had not gone too waste. 'Is amazing. We might just be able to pull this off.

'We might just be able to win.'

April 28, 1997
London

She went up to the guestroom on the first floor afterwards, dropping off her refilled bag before going off in search of Draco. She eventually found him in the drawing room, not that far from the start point of her search, stretched out on the stuffy sofa with a book in his hand. From the complex figures that she spotted on the cover, she figured it to be Arithmancy. On the coffee table in front of him, several more schoolbooks lay stacked up.

On her entrance, his gaze shifted off the page for just a moment, acknowledging her silently before returning to his book.

'Can I sit with you?'

'If you are quiet,' he countered, not looking away from his book but changing to a more upright position so that she could take a seat on the other side of the sofa.

She nodded to herself, thinking that his quiet company was still preferable to sitting alone in the guestroom. To amuse herself, she picked up a copy of "A History of Magic" by Bathilda Bagshot from the table.

As she absent-mindedly thumbed through the rather thick volume, her thoughts quickly returned to the revelations of that morning. Her own, but perhaps more importantly those made by her mother.

Truly – and perhaps shamefully – the thought that her mother could be magical had never, not even for a moment, crossed Sophie's mind ever since coming to this universe. Her practical, simplistic, down-to-earth mother. If she had to choose between them, she would have sooner figured her father a wizard than her mother a witch.

Still, out of the two of them, she guessed that her mother's life story had always been the most of a mystery – although she hadn't quite realised at the time how much. She had known her mother had spent her late adolescence in the care of Aunt Margaret, had known Victor and Madelyn Thornton, née Maundrill, had died on a New Year's Eve back when Tilly had still been at school. On the few occasions that the subject had been raised, her mother had always ascribed the attack to hooligans – and in a way, Sophie supposed it hadn't been a lie.

'Are you really not going to tell me about your visit?'

Looking up from the book in her hands, Sophie found Draco had yet to break his gaze from his, even though the question had unmistakably come from him. 'I thought you wanted me to be quiet.'

'I didn't think you were able to follow such a direct order – especially when it involves your being quiet.'

She scowled at him without much energy or effect. Then she sighed, realising that even if she disliked his tone, she did really want to share her thoughts with her friend. 'Very well,' she bit her lip, 'It all went well; I told them of Voldemort, they accepted it, I told them I had to leave again, they accepted that too. There's just the minor hiccup of my mother lying to me – to my father and me both – for all these years.'

'How so?' He had finally broken away his gaze from the page it had been fixed on, and now gazed at her with an empty expression.

'As it turns out, my Muggle mother, Matilda Maundrill, is not a Muggle at all. Apparently, she received her school letter to no one's surprise on her eleventh birthday, and went to Hogwarts as expected afterwards.'

Draco did not respond immediately, but then let out a low whistle. 'Well that's…'

'Shitty?'

'I was going to say unexpected, but yeah shitty too. She never told you anything?'

'Nothing.'

'And you never noticed?'

Sophie shook her head, 'She said she turned her back on the magical world after Hogwarts, after… Her parents were killed by what I assume were followers of Voldemort.'

Draco flinched slightly at the name, as he usually did, but nodded regardless. 'Were they… members of the Order of the Phoenix?'

'I don't think so… Apparently her mother's family, the Maundrills, are quite a respected wizarding family. Do you by chance know them?'

Draco thought for a moment, 'I must confess the name sounds familiar, but it's been quite a few years since Lucius had me study the family trees of Britain's most prominent families.' He gazed down at the book in his lap, blonde eyebrows coming together in a frown as he thought. Then, 'How old is your mother?'

'Pardon?'

'How old is your mother?'

'Eh,she just turned 41 a few months ago, although I'm not certain why that's relevant?'

'Because if she went to Hogwarts, my mother may remember her.'

'I'm not sure…'

'You're not scared of my mother… are you?'

She blushed a violent red, snorting before she lied, 'Of course not.'

April 28, 1997
London

That evening, Sophie found herself after a quiet dinner with just Draco, Mrs Malfoy, and herself in front of the door to Mrs Black's – and she supposed now Mrs Malfoy's – room. Draco had offered to come with her, but after his jab that afternoon, she'd felt like she couldn't possibly accept. He had shrugged and turned to go to his room.

She took a deep breath, mentally telling herself that there was no way that she was afraid of Narcissa Malfoy, and racked her knuckles on the door. A short moment passed, then Narcissa's voice called her in.

The room that she found behind the door was large – quite easily double the size of any of the other bedrooms – and extremely elegantly furnished. Opposite from her, large, full-length windows took up most of the wall and looked out onto a small courtyard. Heavy crimson drapes hung to the side, the fabric looking expensive even from Sophie's distant and, quite honestly, untrained view. There was a fireplace on one side of the room, with a velvet sofa standing in front of it, and she could almost imagine the women of previous generations of Blacks dramatically dropping themselves on top of it after the slightest of inconveniences. On the other wall stood a heavy wooden dresser and a massive canopy bed, dressed with the same drapes as the windows and with sheets of satiny black.

The extravagance of this all was not so surprising as was the easel that was set out near the window, a small side table next to it filled with several bottles of differently coloured liquids. On top of the easel stood an unfinished depiction of a bird, next to it several finished paintings of animals and flowers – some of which Sophie recognised from the book her mother had gifted Narcissa for Christmas. The room was filled with the slightly breath-taking smell of fresh paint and a hint of what she could only imagine was Hippogriff.

And there, seated in the middle of it all, sat Narcissa, on the edge of the bed with a book in her hands. At Sophie's entrance, she had looked up, seemingly hardly surprised that it was not her son who had come to visit. She hadn't spoken yet, giving Sophie ample time to take in the room.

'Can I help you?' She requested, when she noticed the younger girl's gaze had stopped its wander.

'I eh…' she swallowed, fidgeting with her hands as stage fright crept up on her. 'Well you see…'

'Draco told me of your mother before dinner.'

'Ah…' She found her shoulders sag slightly in relief, glad that at least she wouldn't have to explain the crazy situation she found herself in to this woman who looked like the slightest thing out of the ordinary would have her crash on the sofa by the fireplace. She took a step further into the room, eyes flitting to the sofa as she considered dropping down on it herself. 'Yes, it was quite… unexpected. Unfortunately, given the situation I wasn't able to ask her more. So I was wondering if perhaps you remember her from Hogwarts?'

Narcissa seemed unfazed by her rushed question, but curtly nodded her head. 'Yes Draco told me that too.' She stood from the bed, almost effortlessly, and gestured towards the sofa. When they were both seated, each on opposite sides, she continued. 'It is a good thing he did too, for I must admit that at first no recollections came to mind.

'Despite her being of good family, your mother and I had little reason for association. She was a year below me, a Hufflepuff, and, if I may speak so plainly, did not keep to the same social circles.

'Although there was an attempt at first to include her, it was very soon evident that she cared little for blood status or pureblood traditions, and so that was that. After that, my memories of your mother are few and most likely not of the intimacy that you desire. I remember seeing her sometimes at the greenhouses, or by the Black Lake with friends. She was most distinct for wearing Muggle clothes whenever it was allowed, and I remember feeling scandalized by it on several occasions. Even so, she was not high enough on my priority list to think much about her during my days at Hogwarts, much less so afterwards. As such, I am not surprised I did not recognise her this past summer.

'And that is as far as my knowledge of your mother extends.'

Sophie nodded, disappointed but not entirely surprised that her mother and Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, had not been best friends at Hogwarts. As she had expected, her mother had always been the way she was now; level-headed, down-to-earth, and with a preference for the mundane and ordinary. In many ways, the polar opposite of the woman seated next to her. 'Thank you for sharing this,' she replied, ready to depart when a thought struck her. 'I might be mistaken, but did you say that my mother was a pureblood?'

Narcissa nodded, 'I did. Quite a shame really that she decided to leave the magical world and marry a Muggle – if you believe in that sort of thing of course.'

She should of course be offended by the offhanded remark, even when Narcissa's civility during the remainder of the conversation spoke of at least some degree of softening of her opinion of Muggles. Instead, however, she was seized by another thought altogether – one that she could not allow herself to think in front of the Malfoy matriarch. And so she nodded, thanked the older woman again for her time, and made her escape from the room.

April 28, 1997
London

'The original Sophie Cornwell was a witch,' she realised, quite certain of the truth of her statement, as she closed the door to Draco's room behind her. He was seated on his bed, one of the textbooks in his lap and wand out, the CD player lying nearby suggesting he had been using it recently. At her announcement, he looked up, surprised.

'My mother told you that?'

'No, she hardly remembered my mother from Hogwarts,' she sighed, shoving Draco's legs off the bed and dropping down on the newly-vacated spot, 'But she did tell me what I already suspected: that my mother is a pureblood. Furthermore, it reminded me of something that my mother said – or well, almost said – when I was there this morning.

'That strange things happened to me… to the original Sophie when she was a young child, that made my mother fear she was a witch. And from what I understand, the chance of a Squib being born is rather small, is it not?'

He nodded, though from the expression on his face, it was clear that he did not fully understand the importance of the situation, the gravity. He seemed ready to return to his writing and so she continued.

'Don't you see? It's me. Sophie Cornwell was supposed to be a witch, but is not because of me. I ruined things; simply by entering this universe I somehow took a girl's chance at magic.'

'But didn't you say your mother never wanted that for her children?'

'I guess… but what if she wanted it herself?'

Draco did not know what to say to that at first, then he shrugged dismissively. 'I guess we'll never know.

'Now, can you go sit on the other bed and hold this quill up as I practice some spells?'

Sophie was thrown for a moment by his change of topic – probably as he had intended – and then looked mildly perturbed at the lightly singed quill he held out to her, not immediately inclined to take it from him. 'That depends. What kind of spells are you practicing?'

He rolled his eyes, dropping the quill in her lap, 'I won't hex your hands off, I promise.'

With that small assurance, Sophie went to move across the room, her personal troubles if not gone at least a little lightened.