From the moment she hatched from her egg, Mimi longed to be loved.
In the tropical heat of her home-world, Mimikyu basked in shadows under a huge ohia tree. Sometimes she draped herself in pink and yellow blossoms. When she grew a little older, she shared a sandy cave with a trio of fire-kittens: two brothers with pitch-black fur and their white-furred sister. They were her only company, before Harry.
Mimikyu was not quite a day old when she learned that her lovely smoky form, so light and airy, caused the chirping birds to drop dead from their branches. She tried her best to change, but the only forms she could take were images stolen from other creatures' brains.
Somehow, these images were all nearly as scary as her true form. One day, after an unusually long nap, she realised that these vivid pictures were dreams and nightmares.
Perhaps they floated to the top of every mind, waiting for her to scoop them out. Or perhaps they lived in the dark and were drawn to her.
To make friends, Mimikyu gave up her dream-shapes. She took a fallen strip of bark from her shelter tree and rolled it into a cone-shaped dress, painting friendly eyes on it with berry juice.
Unfortunately, her bark dress kept knocking into things and unrolling. She practiced floating all day just to move about more easily. She got quite good at it.
She had nothing else to do for quite some time.
In this world, Mimikyu thought she was content. But she had no mother or father, no sisters or brothers of her own to play with. She wondered if perhaps she was born lonely. She was born knowing her name, so it seemed quite possible.
The cave where she lived had first belonged to the fire-kittens. Mimikyu was hurrying back to her tree on a wet, miserable night when she heard a wolf snarl. The cave entrance was well-hidden, but the wolf had found it and was trying to dig the kittens out. She saw a flash as a fireball sizzled in the heavy rain.
Mimikyu floated up and hissed at the furious wolf. As it turned, eyes burning, she found one of its nightmares and promptly mimicked it: a wolf with its stone mane crushed to bits, dissolving to pinkish mud in the tropical storm.
The midnight-wolf went off howling in terror and the kittens invited her in. They kindly dried her dress with their warm breath, and she slept very well in a nice dark corner.
She knew that the fire-kittens liked her, but they kept mostly to themselves. They were twice as tall as her usual form and guarded their shared cave ferociously, spitting fire at the rats who always tried to invade during heavy rains. Mimikyu hated rats with a burning passion, though not quite as burning as her companions'.
Every now and then, she saw a human. But they were like noisy giants, scaring the birds from the trees (and sometimes the trees themselves) with loud laughter and songs. She never found the courage to approach one.
One rainy evening, as the kittens fell asleep to the dusk-wolves' song, Mimikyu glimpsed a spark of green light in the sandy cave.
There was a sheer drop-off just past her favorite dark corner. She couldn't truly fly, and had no wish to see how deep the cave went. She guessed there was an underground lake at the bottom. The air sometimes smelled stagnant, especially in the rainy season.
But the light raced and looped like a mad firefly. Mimikyu felt glad that the kittens were asleep - one of them would have tried to chase it, and likely fallen into the lake (if there was one). The more she watched it, the more distressed it seemed.
Perhaps it was a fairy? Mimikyu did not know what she herself was, exactly, but she knew what magic felt like. The green light had that same buzzy feeling.
As she watched, the light winked out.
Mimikyu floated up. Her dress rustled, so she left it on the cave floor and moved to the edge of the precipice.
The light reappeared close by. It jumped to the rocky wall beside her, and grew like a spreading pool of firefly green.
Mimikyu discovered that this green pool was a portal. On the other side was a boy, curled up on a small, stained mattress.
She floated through.
"Where am I?"
We are in a shared mindspace. You're hosting, I'm decorating. Open your eyes and see.
"Who … who are you?"
It's only me. The girl beside him smiled. I mimic you. Do you know me?
"Mimi," he said, blinking hard. "What's happened? Why are you …"
"Human?"
She spoke aloud, laughing at the sound. Her voice was Daphne's sweet contralto. Her eyes were bright green; her hair was black, curled and riotous as Hermione's, and her skin was coppery-brown as Reina's. Her forehead bore a very faint lightning scar.
She'd chosen to appear in a yellow sundress. Her feet were bare, like Luna's in the garden.
"We're in your brain, Harry! I wanted to be human, so I am."
He turned, taking in their surroundings. "Are we in Hawaii?"
"No! This is where I grew up!"
Human-Mimi swung her arms exuberantly, waving at the beach, the blue-green water, the lush green forest. They stood just at the edge of the treeline. One step would carry them to the sand, or they could melt back into the foliage.
"My cave is around here somewhere. But I don't think the fire-cats will be there," she said. "I haven't seen any other creature. If this were real, we'd see gulls, maybe a pelican or two …"
Her voice faltered. "I do miss it," she said quietly. "Your world is very grey, sometimes."
Harry staggered, almost falling in the sand, as she threw her arms around him. She smelled like wild blackberries.
"I've never hugged anyone before!"
He hugged her back, confused at her sudden bright mood.
"I'm just so happy to see you." Her sniffles confused him even more. "It's been a long time, Harry. I've tried and tried, but there's no library book on mind-melding. Well, there is, but not with someone … someone who isn't awake."
"This is a dream?"
She pulled away. He noticed suddenly that she was taller than himself, perhaps two inches taller than Tonks … but he was looking her in the eye. Had he somehow grown taller?
"You're in a magical coma, Harry," Mimi told him. "Quirrell attacked you, and Voldemort possessed you. What's the last thing you remember?"
He thought back and shuddered. "Freezing to death. It felt like my blood turned to ice. Someone was screaming, and then there was gold fire and the screaming stopped. Then nothing."
"You exorcised yourself," Mimi said, smiling fondly. "Threw Voldemort out like a bucket of mopwater." For some reason, she patted her stomach.
"Why are we here, though? Why am I in a coma?"
"Because you haven't healed yet, Harry. The exorcist thought you'd awaken by now, but the Healers said your body is fighting itself and they'd never seen anything like it. One of them wrote a paper on you. Your mother was so angry, she sued St. Mungo's for breach of —"
"You're my best friend," Harry interrupted. "I know when you're hiding something. Please, Mimi … just tell me."
Her green eyes shone with tears. "I broke down all the dark magic from your scar. I didn't want to hurt you, I had to go slowly and I've missed you so much — there was so much left and I had to rip out every thread. We might not find the other fragments, but I don't care, I don't care - I had to do it or you'd never wake up!"
"How long did it take?"
She looked down, studying her toes. "It's spring. The fifteenth of May, I think."
"I missed my whole first year?!"
"More than," Mimi said, stunning him to silence. "May 1993, Harry. I'm sorry I couldn't go faster, it was all tangled up—"
He hugged her so tightly she squeaked. "You stayed with me," Harry said, his voice muffled by her hair. "It must've been awful."
"I was certain you'd die," she said, hugging back almost painfully. "The whole time, all those bits of magic, they were like tiny black worms and they all said he's dying, you're killing him, Mimikyu, you're killing your only friend —"
She broke down. They clung together like Hansel and Gretel, at the very edge of the forest.
The sun had begun to set by the time they both calmed. Insects shrilled in the trees, but still there was no living thing in sight.
"Almost third year," Harry said. "And I thought I was so far ahead …"
"You still have friends, your family ... no one's forgotten you."
"It won't be the same."
"The same as what?"
"As it would have been," he said, a little impatient. "Things won't be the same, that's all."
"That makes exactly no sense," Mimi replied. "Nothing's what it could have been. It is what it is."
The beach looked much paler in the moonlight. So pale, Harry thought, that it looked almost transparent. Underneath the sand lay white hills and valleys.
"I'll miss talking like this," Mimi said. Her fading voice seemed wistful. "I didn't think I'd like being human, but it's not so bad … I love being tall."
Harry laughed and hugged her again.
"Next time I'll be a Mimikyu instead," he said, ignoring her protests that there would be no "next time," since he would absolutely not be falling comatose or harboring evil spirits ever again. "Wear a black silk pillowcase, paint a yellow dress on my forehead …"
He was still laughing when he woke up, safe at home.