Seeing the Past, Present, and Future

Blocking the Truth

"He—he's a Death Eater?" Harry stammered in disbelief.

The little girl in front of him nodded.

"But how is that possible? Dumbledore wouldn't allow a Death Eater to teach here!" The mental of image of Snape floated to Harry as a contradiction. "Unless they'd changed or something," he added. "Like—" Harry cut himself off.

"Like Snape," the girl finished.

"Yeah, exactly," Harry replied. "Wait," he spoke suddenly realizing what she had said. "How do you know about Snape?"

The girl's eyes became wide and she clapped her hand over her mouth. The resulting expression was one of the utmost terror that part of Harry could not help but feel pity for her. However, a much larger part of him felt great suspicion.

"How do you know about Snape?" Harry repeated to the terrified girl. "And how do you know so much about these Death Eaters?" The brown haired girl moved backwards, still the same look of fright upon her face. "Why aren't you answering me?" Harry asked, anger and suspicion seeping into his voice. "Answer me!"

"Obliviate!" the young girl shrieked, pointing her wand directly at Harry's heart.

Where am I? Harry thought. Some sort of classroom. Looks empty. But what am I doing here? Talking with someone, I think, but where are they, then? Maybe they left…but who was I talking with and about what? And why am I so forgetful all of a sudden? I can't even remember what I was doing a mere moment before. Now I remember! I was talking with Lupin's niece about that sheet we found. Here it is. What was she saying? Clarifying the acronyms, or something like that. I wonder where she went?

Her feet pounded painfully against the hallway's tiles, causing an echo to bounce off the wall and strange looks to follow her. Just a bit further to the owlery, I can't tire now, she thought to herself while sprinting through the school. I hope I didn't mess up the memory charm or the consequences of that may be even worse than me revealing that piece of information about Snape; I'd hate myself if I accidentally deleted a huge portion of Harry's memory. But at the same time I hope I didn't do it too weakly or he'll remember about Snape and he'll remember I tried to erase his memory and then I could get in big trouble. I hope Lupin can fix whatever trouble I've caused.

Harry entered the Gryffindor tower and was greeted sorrowfully by one of his friends.

"I assume you saw the article, mate?" Ron inquired. "Hermione's still up in her dorm room. I feel really bad for her; the article says a really large percentage of the people in the attack were Muggle-born. This must be really tough for her."

Harry nodded as he recalled the article from that morning. "Has she been down here at all?"

"Earlier in the morning, I think, but whenever it was I missed her. She had to have seen the article somehow." Ron stared gloomily at his shoes.

"Have you seen Lupin's niece?" Harry asked, still trying to piece together that inexplicable void in his memory.

Ron shook his head. "I forgot, she's Muggle-born, too. Is she still up in her dorm?"

"I don't know. I was talking with her recently but now I can't find her," Harry explained.

"Oh, really? Then I don't know where she is. What was her reaction to the article?"

"She seemed…oddly okay, considering how close to home it must be."

"Oh, because she's Muggle-born?"

"Yeah, and I got the impression her uncle was killed for being a Muggle a few years ago." Harry frowned slightly. "One would think we'd have heard about a hate crime against Muggles in the newspaper, but I guess not."

Ron shrugged. "You and Hermione are way more observant than I am." He gave a slight, bitter laugh. "I still don't know her name and here you're remembering stuff about her family."

Taking a seat near Ron, the Boy-Who-Lived gave a slight smile, "Don't worry, I don't know her name right now, either."

"Good to know I'll always have someone as unobservant as me around," the red-haired boy said with a slight laugh. "Speak of the devil," he added upon her appearance at the portrait.

"Hi, Harry," she said quietly. "H-How are you?" the young girl added nervously. "I mean, um, any new pieces of information in your head since this morning?"

"No," Harry said, oblivious to whatever she was trying to get at. "But you already saw the article, right?"

"Oh, right, that thing. Well, um, look at the sheet I gave you, I would best be, um, off. To my room. Something there I need and all," she trailed off before dashing up the stairs to her dormitory.

Both of the two friends' eyes followed her route. "She's awfully quirky. I mean perky. Considering everything that happened today," Harry explained.

"Yeah," Ron said, looking at where she had been a moment before. "She's acting awfully oddly. I mean, she's Muggle-born so why is she all zip-a-dee-doo-dah today? The only person I expect to have a spring in their step today is Malfoy," Ron finished, angrily smashing his fist onto the arm of his chair, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Harry nodded before Ron continued in a quieter tone of voice, "Say, do you want to do some investigating?"

"What do you mean?" asked the messy-haired boy.

"We try and find out more about her, like where she came from, because Hermione's plan of making friends hasn't been working," Ron explained.

"How else can we get information?"

"I'll start by writing to my mum to find out what the official story is. Then I'll write Fred and George because chances are they'll be willing to reveal more. After that we can go from there."

Harry nodded. "Okay we can try that, but we shouldn't snoop around too much," he added uncharacteristically.

The next day the mail came in a frenzy of feathers and owls, as usual. Harry looked upwards but doubted the response to Ron's questions would be amongst the different colors. A few seats away from the two boys sat their first-year Gryffindor friend, nervously opening a letter from Lupin. The brown-haired girl breathed a sigh of relief as she read the quickly scrawled note.

Don't worry about whether the memory charm holds or not. If Harry didn't confront you on your attempt it means he doesn't remember that part and whether or not he remembers you stating that piece of information about Snape doesn't really matter—Harry already knew that.

But if he hadn't known then yes, that would've been the perfect time to use a memory charm.

Take Care,

Remus Lupin

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or his world.

A/N: I'm not too happy with this chapter but I'm posting it anyway. I don't know how many chapters there are left but the story's closer to its end than it was before. (I mean, obviously…) Anyway, please review.

Review Responses:

lumiereal: lol, I'll chose to ignore the first part of that review :sticks fingers in ears and starts humming loudly before realizing reviews are written, not spoken: ANYway…what do you think about how much she knows NOW?