Title: Mirrors (3/13)

Author: Angelina Johnson

E-Mail: BlewGoo2@aol.com

Category/House: Angst/Darkfic

Keywords: Descendants of Harry and Co.

Spoilers: All

Rating: PG

Summary: In a fight for good and evil, someone must lose. What will the future hold for those affected?

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.


A child's shadow cast across the room. The shadow came from a little girl sitting in the window, watching the sunset. The girl saw shades of red, orange, yellow, and pink in as they faded into blue and purple. There she sat, reflecting on her past and dreaming about her future.

But this child's reflections were not happy, and her dream's of the future were not bright. It was as though a dark shadow would forevever loom over her forever, making her life miserable.

She remembered that promise, that girl, that storm, that night. She remembered all of it, and all of it brought pain, and oh, how she wished she could forget it all.

But that nine year old girl would not, could not, forget those horrible things that made her suffer.

Claire Black would remember.

Earlier that day, her pappa had told the little girl a story. She had only been two, but she remembered the story. It had been about a man named Sirius Black. That man was her great-great grandfather. He had been sent to a bad place for no reason, and a bad thing had happened to him. He had been sent to wizard prison, and his soul had been sucked out. Claire's pappa had asked her to do something that all of the Black's had been trying to do for ages- clear the good name of Black. Claire had promised that she would give it her best shot, and she was determined to keep that goal at all costs.

Then pappa had left, promising to be home soon, and the girl had come over. The girl, who her mother had forbidden to ever see her again. The girl, who had been with her on that night, during that storm.

The storm was horrible, so bad that Muggle weathermen said it was the worst storm to hit England in nearly a hundred years.

The storm may have been horrible, but the events that changed the Black family forever were worse, if possible, than that horrid storm.

For on the night of August 29, 2217, an evil that had existed for over two-hundred years struck the Black family, and Quinn Black had been killed.

That had been a horrible night. She may have been two, but she understood what her mother meant when she was told, "Pappa's gone forever, Claire Bear. He's dead." Gemma Black had been in tears as she said this, and Claire understood that tears meant bad things. But that was not the only bad thing, for that was the last night that Claire Black would see her best friend, Mary Graham Lupin.

Claire sat in her window, seven years later, watching the sun set, tears running down her eyes. She had no friends, and rarely left her house. Exactly seven years ago, her father had died, and the pain was yet to leave her. The child wanted only to be left in peace.

Just then, Claire's six-nearly-seven-and-proud-of-it brother, Parker Black, entered her room, and yelled, "Claire, it's time for dinner, you deaf monkey!" Claire ignored her brother, continuing to look out the window.

"Claire Eliza Black, we have been screaming at you for five minutes, now get your butt downstairs and eat! Come on, you know this may be the last meal we eat at home together before Becky gets married." Claire finally turned around to face Parker, and he looked at her apoligetically when he saw the tears in her eyes. He suddenly had a knowing look on his face, and finally he spoke.

"It's today, isn't it? Trust you to be the one to remember." Parker sighed, realizing the signifigance of this day, and sat down next to his big sister. He hugged her gently, and Claire looked at her younger brother sadly. Parker was he favorite of her siblings, Will and Becky, the half-siblings, included. Maybe it was because they were the one's who you could honestly say were "Quinn Black's kids." Will and Becky didn't understand Claire the way her true brother and sister did, but Holly found that she preferred to ignore Claire and Parker. Parker and Claire could have been twins, they were the same height, had the same brown eyes, and the same tangled mass of black hair.

Parker hadn't even been born when her father had died, yet Claire knew when she loooked in Parker's eyes that she wasn't the only one who needed him in their life.

"Are you hungry? I'm not. I don't care if it's Becky's last meal before she becomes Becky Davidson. I've got something more important to do," Parker said, looking at Claire.

"PARKER! CLAIRE!" Gemma Black's scream tore angrily through the house. Claire looked back at the setting sun, and then at Parker.

"What have you got in mind?" Claire asked.

"C'mon," Parker said, and he slid open the window. He jumped down and landed perfectly on his feet, two stories below.

Two hundred miles away, another nine year old was thinking of the last time she had done the same thing.

There had been a fire crackling around her, and a voice, a voice that she dreamt of each night, was telling her that she must jump out and escape.

That voice had told her those words five years ago. The woman who had said them was long gone from this world, but her memory lived on through her daughter.

Mary Graham Lupin shook her head, and a strand of her light-brown hair fell out of her ponytail and into her blue-gray eyes. Angrily, she pushed it behind her ear.

She glanced backwards at a picture. There was a beautiful woman smiling, holding a little baby in her arms.

That little baby was Mary Graham herself, and the woman was her mother, Olivia, who had died in a fire.

It would have been one thing if the fire had been an accident, something caused by drought, or by a candle falling over, or by an oven, but the fire had been the killing tool of Lord Voldemort, who had haunted not only her own past and present, but that of her family two-hundred years gone.

Her great-grandfather Remus had lost one best friend to Voldemort, and another may as well have been lost to Voldemort. Now, two hundred years later, her mother had been killed. It didn't seem fair.

Sighing, Mary Graham flounced on her bed with all her might, wanting the world to suffer as she did, feel the pain she felt, live what she had lived through, but all she heard was a stupid creak. The old house always creaked, and her father always told her to look for the board that was making the noise so that it could be fixed, so she pushed her rolling bed out of the way and began to step on the boards. None creaked.

The very last board she stepped on gave a huge moan, and Mary Graham fell to her knees beside it. She poked at it, and then saw it was so loose she could lift it up.

She did.

Mary Graham gasped and stepped back. In the tiny hole were hundreds of papers, all in the same handwriting.

She picked one up and saw the signature at the bottom.

Remus Lupin.

~~~

Claire jumped from the window, and landed on her bum. Parker smiled lightly and pulled her to her feet.

"Where are we going, Park?" she murmured, trying to make sure that her mother, sister, and half siblings didn't hear. She knew that her mother was in the house, yelling for them, probably about to head upstairs to see what the terrible twosome was up to.

"Don't ask, just run," Parker said, and the children set off at a sprint, their wild black hair flowing behind them.

They reached the patch of woods that lay about a hundred feet from the Black's back porch, and finally slowed.

"Where are we going?"

"It's not far, just come on," Parker said, and he pulled Claire with him. They walked a little further, and Parker ordered that she close her eyes.

"Fine," Claire grumbled, and Parker held his hand over her eyes, taking her own hand in his other one. He gave a little tug, and she stumbled blindly by his side.

"All right, open," Parker said, and Claire did.

"Oh my................" Claire murmured, and stared around her. There was a little pool, and cascading gently into it was a waterfall. It wasn't very big, but it was very pretty. Next to the pool was a flat rock, and Claire went over to inspect it more closely. Carved into the face of the stone were two moss-covered names. She rubbed her hand on it, and the green faded away just enough so that she could see the names inscribed in it. The first said Gemma. The second said Quinn.

Claire looked more closely at it, and saw that the two names were inside of a carefully chiseled heart.

"Park, what is this place?" Claire asked.

"Huh? Oh- it's where Dad proposed to Mum."

"I never knew it was here. Mum never told me. How did you find out?"

"Well, I was running around, exploring, off on one adventure or another, you know me, when I found it, and I didn't want to ask Mum about it, because if she went to the trouble of not mentioning it she obviously didn't want us to know about it, so I just forgot about it, but when Mum was gone one day, I went into her room and found all these pictures of her and Dad there. I flipped over the picture, and it had written on it the date, and a caption that said 'Proposal.' I just assumed, you know?"

"Wow."

"Beautiful, right?"

"No, actually I was just thinking about how amazingly smart you are for a six year old," Claire said, and she forced a smile. So did Parker.

They sat down on the rock and stared at the water in silence.

"Park?" Claire said quietly, and turned to him.

"Yeah, Claire?"

Staring at the pink sky that faded into purple, and then glancing at the glowing sun as it set in the sky, Claire Black murmured, "I don't want to leave."

**End Chapter 3**

Be on the lookout for Chapter 4, coming soon.

"Master, the foolish girl wishes to try and clear Black's name."

"Fool! What matter is that to me! Why do you disobey me?"

"I haven't disobeyed you, master!" the servant cried.

"You are too friendly with them!"

"I need them to trust me...... So I can get the information needed out of them............." The boy shuddered. He was afraid of his master, very much afraid of him.




The Chapter/Fic has now ended