In the aftermath of Sirius Black's break-in, security was tightened yet again. Students weren't allowed outside after dark, and Filch patrolled the hallways with a manic gleam in his eye at all hours. The Fat Lady's portrait was reinstated, now with a pair of security trolls to guard it. The trolls grunted menacingly at students who passed and tended to swing their huge clubs around for fun, so Christina only left the common room if it was absolutely necessary.
This unprecedented time in Gryffindor tower finally gave Christina time to do something she'd promised to do months ago: read those old yearbooks. They'd been sitting in a stack by her bed for a while, and one Saturday after noon she sat down on her bed and took the first one, vowing to look through them until she found something that would explain her mum's past.
The first yearbook yielded nothing save for pictures of people with funny hair, but the second one, chronicling the 1971-1972 school year, held many interesting discoveries. Christina flipped it open and gasped to see a photo of a young boy labeled Sirius Black. His face was round and youthful, dark eyes narrowed slightly as he gazed up at her. He certainly didn't look anything like a mass murderer, like the skeletal man whose picture had appeared in the daily prophet alongside headlines of having killed thirteen people.
Further down the page was Lily Evans. There she was. Christina stopped and stared at her mother's face, two fingers caressing the edge of the photo. How familiar she looked, and yet . . . this girl had lived a life neither Christina nor her present-day self knew anything about. Who was she?
Christina smiled and flipped the page, eager to see more of her mother's world. Here was 11-year-old Professor Lupin, still a little shabby but youthful and unburdened. And further on was a young Professor Snape, who hadn't changed much. She kept flipping through the pages, seeing portraits of younger Dumbledore and McGonagall, the man called Slughorn who must have taught potions before Snape, and a sour-faced Slytherin with blond hair who could only be that awful Malfoy boy's father. Another page revealed a photo of Lupin and Black with two other boys, a small round-faced one and one who bore an extraordinary resemblance to Harry Potter. Looking at the caption she saw that his name was James Potter, so he had to be a relation. The other was Peter Pettigrew, who had been blasted to pieces by Sirius Black. Four people in the photo and two of them were dead because of Black. She shuddered and put the yearbook down.
She looked through all the other yearbooks, following her mother's progress through Hogwarts and watching as her face aged. The yearbook didn't hold the whole story, but it gave her a precious glimpse of what had been. As she closed the last book on her mother's graduation picture, she was seized by a new idea.
Christina kept several photos from home by her bed, and now she reached for one in particular, one of herself and her mum on holiday last year. She held it close to the oldest yearbook and compared the faces. Her mum had aged, yes, but was still the same woman. Christina compared the yearbook photo to her own face, the similarities becoming so much more apparent when the photographs had been taken at the same age. There was no denying it; Lily Evans had been a Hogwarts student and therefore a witch.
Christina leapt from her bed, smiling. Who did she tell? She had to tell someone. This discovery was too important to be kept secret in Gryffindor Tower. And who would be better to tell than Sienna, who had given her the idea to search the yearbook in the first place. She grabbed one of the books at random and stuffed it into her bag, running pell-mell for the library and not stopping until she reached the third table down from the restricted section.
"Sienna! I don't think I should be in your project anymore!" Christina bent over, huffing and panting. "I'm not muggle—at least, my mother isn't, and I know now."
"Slow down. What do you mean?" Sienna asked, looking up from an interview transcript.
"My mum went to Hogwarts. I only just found out, since she's got memory problems. I'm not a true muggleborn. Mum had always suspected but I did your project anyway."
"Whoa, whoa, ok," said Sienna. "Your mum has memory problems, so she didn't know for sure if she went here. Then you figured it out, and since you're not really a muggleborn you don't think you can be in my project? I mean, you were raised like a muggle. That still counts."
Christina nodded. "Still, I don't know if it feels right." She frowned and pulled the yearbook out of her bag. "I don't know anything about what my mum did when she was here."
"Mind if I have a look?" Sienna asked. "Old yearbooks are so cool."
"This is from my mum's fifth year, I think. 1975-1976. That's her right there."
Sienna gazed down at the page, brow furrowed. "She's the same year as Sirius Black. Wow. I wonder if she knew him."
"She reckons she did, but, uh, memory problems. We don't know for sure."
"She's class of 1978." said Sienna. "You're a first year, which means you would've been born in 1981 or 1982. She was young when she had you."
"I know. I wish I knew who my father was. I wonder who he was and why they had me so young."
Vivian had picked up the yearbook and started flipping through the portraits. "Professor Lupin's in their year too. Funny, he seems like he should be a lot older than class of 1978."
Christina nodded. "He looks so old now. I wonder what happened."
"War has a way of aging people." Sienna muttered softly. "Hard living shows on the face." Christina waited for Sienna to elaborate, but she didn't.
Vivian pointed to another picture. "Look, James Potter was in their year too. Look. Wow, that was a stacked class."
"I never realized just how much he looked like Harry." Sienna squinted at the picture. "That's crazy. Hey, wasn't Harry Potter's mum's name Lilly?" Sienna flipped back to Lily Evans' picture. "Christina, are you sure this is your mum? There's not another Lily Evans in this book who could be her? Because I could've sworn this Lily Evans was married to James Potter. Then there'd be no way . . ."
"But she looks just like me." Christina pulled out the photo she'd taken from her nightstand. "That's her last year, and that's me. I look just like her old pictures."
"Yes, but . . . do verify it, before you do anything rash." Sienna looked rather pained. "Please. I know this must be hard for you. But Lily Evans isn't an uncommon name, and sometimes people can look similar without being related."
"She's my mother." Christina insisted. "She has to be. I'll find you proof, I'll . . ." but Christina didn't know what she was going to do, other than stomp back to Gryffindor tower and fling her bag down in a chair by the fire. As she did so the flier about Sienna's project fell out and fluttered down to a low table. Christina bit her lip as she eased herself into the chair, looking up and realizing that Harry Potter was sitting in a chair opposite her, muttering something about Black.
Christina rolled her eyes and opened the yearbook, suddenly angry at Harry. How dare he have a mother who was so much like hers. Her eyes flicked from the photo of Lily to Harry's face and back again. They didn't even look alike. Except for the eyes, which Christina had to admit looked very similar. Still, that wasn't enough. Eyes didn't prove anything. Perhaps she could ask him about his mother, but one couldn't just start conversations with "excuse me, who is your mother?" She slammed the yearbook shut and huffed loudly.
The noise startled Harry, who looked up from his reverie and noticed the flier about Sienna's project on the table between them. Christina saw him reading it. "Were you thinking of joining Sienna's project? She wants to interview people who were raised by muggles, it doesn't matter if you're actually muggleborn or not. I'm in it and I've only just discovered my mum was magic, too." Here was a way to start a conversation with Harry, that didn't involve asking point-blank who his mother was.
"Your mum was magic too?" Harry asked, clearly feigning interest to be polite.
"Mhm. I found her in a yearbook. See?" Christina picked up the yearbook and shoved it into Harry's face, pointing to Lily's picture.
She wasn't sure what kind of reaction she'd expected as she watched him. Harry's face had turned very pale. "Christina, that's not your mother. Is this some kind of joke?"
""What are you talking about?" Christina asked.
"You can't go thrusting pictures of my mother into my face like that claiming she's your mother!" Harry shouted. "She was murdered, you know, and the man who betrayed her is wandering the countryside right now, trying to finish off me next! I don't have time for first years trying to play sick jokes on me!"
"She is too my mother, and I'm tired of people trying to tell me she isn't!" Christina snapped. "Look at her!" Christina pointed to the photo. "Look at her, look at me. You don't look anything like her!"
"Well she can't be both of our mothers." said Harry defensively.
Hermione Granger, who had been listening the whole time, finally spoke up. "Are you really that thick, Harry? Remember what happened on halloween 1981? Voldemort—yes I say his name, Christina, get over it—did something so unspeakably horrible to your mother and your younger sister that their bodies were never found. Christina, when's your birthday?"
"October 12, 1981."
"You're a mistake, then."
"Excuse me?"
"What I mean to say is your name on the school's roster is a mistake. You should be listed as Christina Potter."
"You mean . . . " Christina gasped. She'd always wanted a brother or sister, and suddenly here was one in the flesh, wild-haired and staring open-mouthed at Hermione. "Oh my god. Harry." She leapt forward and hugged him.
Harry didn't hug her back. His face was very pale and he looked like he might faint. "How? Hermione . . . no one knew what happened to them. She's my—my—sister." He sounded out the last word carefully, as though it was completely foreign to him. "But we . . ." he trailed off.
"I have a picture." Christina said suddenly. "I have a picture. Let me show you." She let go of him and took the photo from last year's holiday from her bag and showed it to him. "That's me, last year. That's Mum."
"She's alive." Harry whispered. "She—she's alive. I guess you really are my sister."
Looking back later, Christina didn't remember much from that day, a blur of discoveries and emotions. But she would always remember the way Harry collapsed into her arms as the tears began to fall down his cheeks.