Just get on with it! Harry thought at her, as she reached the end of the memory of their little chat the way he'd experienced it. Please.

She "sighed" at him. But I like seeing myself through other people's eyes. Lends a bit of perspective, you know. Let's you know what people really think of you.

What Harry and his friends thought of her, on the whole, wasn't terribly flattering. Their overall impression of her was that she was utterly terrifying, more than a little insane — none of them really believed her about the impending DAP invasion, she hadn't thought it really necessary to convince them yet, given that their priorities aligned regardless, at least in terms of killing not-Thom, so she hadn't shown them any relevant memories to really hammer it home — and probably not trustworthy.

Hermione knew enough about magical theory, and how difficult some of the shite she'd made look easy since she arrived actually was (making coffee as she had the first morning, and transfiguring Dolly into ToadCat, especially) to find Mimi somewhat intimidating. She was also the most inclined to mistrust someone showing up to help them who seemed too good to be true. She didn't really think Mimi was going to try to betray them, but watching her con the Death Eaters at the Ministry hadn't reassured her the smallest bit that she couldn't, if she wanted to. And she definitely wanted to have a conversation about whether Mimi actually believed that pureblood supremacy shite she'd been spouting at the Ministry.

(Hilariously enough, she'd mentioned that to the boys, and Ronald had actually admitted that most British purebloods think that way. Including his mother. Even if they don't tend to be quite so...in your face about it.)

She'd hesitantly accepted that maybe Mimi actually was from a different timeline, where the Death Eaters were a hell of a lot different than they were in this one — she actually had some experience with time travel as a concept. She'd even recognised Dru's name when Mimi had brought her up, which had been a point in Mimi's favour in Hermione's assessment of her character, insofar as she was probably telling the truth about being from an alternate universe, or at least had done enough research on the topic to lie about it convincingly.

That was even funnier than Ronald admitting that his mother was just as big a pureblood supremacist as any other British noble. Both because she'd actually attended several of Dru's lectures on the nature of the universe, and because she still definitely didn't know enough about how any of it worked to lie about it convincingly (as in, to someone who actually knew how it worked). If Dru actually answered her letter — which she still needed to send off, public owl-post centres should be open by now, right? — and didn't just write her off as yet another paranoid, delusional oracle trying to convince her to look into something they thought they'd seen (or been shown), but weren't sure about, but it might be the end of the world, please double-check, she'd probably have to fork over copies of her memories for the entirety of the past eight months, because there was no way she could actually explain the technicalities of the extra-planar incursion to Dru's satisfaction, despite actually having been there to witness it first-hand.

But that was sort of a big if. Most oracles — whether they were devotees of a particular Aspect or other Seers — didn't like Dru, but she was still the person they came to when they had questions that urgently required a more definitive answer than they could find for themselves. It wasn't out of the question that she'd just assure Mimi she'd seen absolutely no indications that any such apocalypse was on the horizon, and wash her hands of it. Hopefully not, since she'd mentioned it had disrupted their plane from an external point of origin, of course she wouldn't be able to detect anything, she'd have to get far enough Outside to perceive the Void between planes, which absolutely no seer could do, since their Sight was a function of how magic worked in this plane. But it was sort of a coin toss. She hadn't thought to ask her Dru what she ought to tell this Dru to get her on-board, which, in hindsight, was incredibly stupid of her.

But even if she wasn't a Death Eater in the way they thought of them, somehow apparently controlling the dementors, as well as possessing Dolly and kidnapping her, right out in the open, blatantly admitting that she was planning on killing the bureaucrat, had made Hermione certain that she was a dangerous Dark witch they should have nothing to do with. The fact that she'd turned around and cast a bloody patronus for her left the muggleborn incredibly uncertain about her. (Far too uncertain to find Mimi attractive, unfortunately. She wasn't even entirely certain whether Mimi had been flirting with her, but she thought she might have been, and it made her uncomfortable.)

Ronald didn't have the technical understanding of magic that Hermione had gone out of her way to acquire over the course of her education, but he was much more familiar with British cultural shite that simply wouldn't have come up around the muggleborn — like knowing the University's reputation, or what soulfire was, or exactly how dangerous a legilimens with her degree of subtlety could be.

To put it frankly, mind mages who could get into your mind without you so much as noticing they were there, regardless of any occlumency training you might have, were the sort of people who inspired horror stories to...practically everyone else. At some point in their first conversation, after she'd legilimised the three of them, he'd come to the conclusion that if she wanted to make them trust her she could, and if she wanted to betray them she could, and trying to second-guess her plans or motivations would just drive them insane, because there was no way to tell if they were thinking a thing because she wanted them to for some God-unknown reason, or if they were their actual thoughts and she was letting them question her motives for some equally God-unknown reason.

The only way to win was not to play, which in this case meant taking her at face value.

Which he had every intention of doing, because she was fucking terrifying, but goddamn it, they didn't have a bloody clue what the fuck they were supposed to be doing, and if they had to ally with a murderous alternate universe Death Eater who sort of made him wonder if maybe the Morrigan wasn't just a story to scare little kids to vanquish You Know Who once and for all, then so be it.

(Morrigan definitely wasn't just a story to scare little kids. She couldn't actually dreamwalk anywhere in the world, but her range definitely covered all of Éire. She had pretty much single-handedly held the island against the DAPs at home, making it a haven for refugees from all over Western Europe. Mimi should probably try to give her a heads-up, but honestly, she'd rather wait and see if Dru actually believed her first, because if she did, she could warn the Queen of Nightmares, and Mimi could stay safely away from her. Because Morrigan was fucking terrifying, okay. Way more so than Mimi, or literally anyone or anything else she'd ever encountered. Including the soul-sucking alien invaders.)

Ronald was also willing to set aside the fact that Mira's very existence was slightly terrifying to him because she was also pretty and funny, and he wasn't entirely sure he trusted his impression of her, but he definitely found her fanciable, and he was leaning toward that being his own opinion (terror completely notwithstanding), because why would she go out of her way to make him fancy her? Like, yeah, obviously she'd go for the bloke who wasn't basically her half-brother if she had to pick one of them, but not snogging either of them was definitely an option, and she sort of seemed to have more important shite on her mind, so it was probably just him.

Ron Weasley was fucking hysterical, honestly, Mimi might shag him just for that. He was pretty fit, too, but like, just in that one supposition: Snogging? Really? And Christ, Weasley, have you never heard of a witches' witch? Also, Harry being basically her half-brother wasn't really inherently a turn-off — Black Incest Jokes were a thing for a reason. And yes, she did have important shite on her mind, but she could multitask and there was always time for sex...assuming they weren't literally going to die within the next ten minutes, which they weren't. And even if they were, who knew, maybe she'd prefer to go out with a bang. Honestly, grow some self-confidence, Weasley...

Though, to be fair, there wasn't always time to thoroughly deflower a virgin, which the redhead clearly was. Still. Everyone needed to blow off steam once in a while, he really shouldn't assume she wouldn't want to, just because she was also super stressed about the impending demonic alien invasion. Which he didn't entirely believe her about, anyway.

Granted, he was also harbouring a serious fancy for the muggleborn bookworm, but in Mira's thoroughly-more-experienced opinion, at least one person in a sexual encounter having some experience made it better, and she would be more than willing to show both of them the ropes, assuming he could convince Hermione to join them. She would make time, okay.

Harry... Well, if he wanted to and actually had the balls to ask her, she'd probably do him — in fact, she'd probably suggest they do it on a broom, because she'd always wanted to and damn, that boy could fly (...not that she'd thought about it, or anything) — but he hadn't even considered it. And she wasn't interested in pursuing him, largely because he struck her more as a baby sibling who needs to be protected than potential boy-toy. Not that Ronald or Hermione were in any way more capable of taking care of themselves, but they weren't basically her half-brother. Harry was. As such, she had a responsibility to make sure he didn't get his stupid arse killed on her watch, and that just...wasn't sexy. It might actually legitimately be un-sexy.

(There were loads of things about a person Mimi didn't find particularly positive or negative in regards to whether she'd like to shag them, but things that actually had a negative impact on her interest in a person were...sort of rare.)

Whatever. Not important. Maïa didn't know what to make of her and couldn't anticipate her actions, so she simply couldn't trust Mimi, even if she wanted to. Ronnie did trust her, both in spite of and because he found her existentially terrifying. And Harry...

Well, Harry was sort of preoccupied by a tangle of self-centred problems. Not that she thought he didn't sort of have a right to be concerned about how the hell he was going to kill Voldemort and how and why he kept having dreams of being Voldemort; or mourn Sirius (or Dumbledore, much though she was pleased to find him dead in this timeline); or angst over whether feisty Ginny Weasley would wait for him while he was off trying to save the world (really just Britain, honestly, but whatever); or have trouble trying not to drown in the responsibility he felt for every single muggleborn who got murdered or Kissed while he was trying to figure out how to do that; or controlling his fear and rage when faced with the current situation outside this house; or fighting back the sense of hopelessness that made it so difficult to try to accomplish anything concrete in the fight against Voldemort when Voldemort's people only seemed to get more deeply entrenched every day. (Dumbledore had really fucked him up, putting the weight of killing Voldemort on his shoulders, without so much as attempting to prepare him for the task.)

He simply didn't have a lot of attention or emotional energy to spare for worrying about whether Mimi was terrifying or evil or potentially dangerous. If it turned out she was a problem in the long term, or there was actually going to be a demonic invasion in three weeks, he'd deal with that when it happened. Right now, if she was willing to help him deal with Voldemort, regardless of the reason, he was willing to let her. He wasn't sure he should, Dumbledore had made it pretty clear that this was his mission, he had to do it, and Mimi pretty clearly hated Dumbledore.

Harry really hadn't liked hearing her tear into him, saying out loud all the traitorous little thoughts that liked to plague him in the middle of the night — that Dumbledore's reasons for leaving him with Petunia weren't good enough, and he hadn't told him everything he really needed to know to deal with Voldemort, and the idea that he would somehow defeat Voldemort with the Power of Love might seem well and good and like there's something to it when you're safe in the Headmaster's office, but out here in the real world it's a hell of a lot harder to believe.

(Mimi was pretty sure she hadn't said anything about that last one, actually...)

Especially because, well, she was right about that being pretty par for the course. He'd always had to take care of himself, figure things out on his own. Why should this Voldemort thing be any different?

Except, it was different.

Maybe it wouldn't have been, but Mimi was here now, and while Harry might consider Voldemort to be this incredibly powerful, nigh-immortal and undefeatable Evil Dark Lord, Mimi considered him more of a minor obstacle to remove so she could get on with frying bigger fish. (And/or a mockery of the Thom she knew, who really would want to be put out of his misery, if the man he'd once been had any idea what he'd become.)

Harry could be forgiven for not really believing that she seriously thought she was going to kill this evil bastard who'd just taken over the country in a matter of weeks, when no one else had managed to do it in the past thirty-odd years. He actually thought it was more insane to think she could than her going off about an impending demonic alien invasion. But he did believe that she was going to do everything she could to make it happen (and he had to admit, she'd been shockingly effective so far, helping them get the horcrux, kidnapping Umbridge, and at least temporarily dismantling her muggleborn extermination programme). And no matter what else she might be, that made her an ally.

And Dumbledore might've thought that Harry had to be the one to kill him, but Voldemort wasn't the only one who put too much stock in that fucking prophecy. The childish logic that Harry would have to kill Voldemort because Voldemort would keep trying to kill him, or because he'd taken so many people Harry loved that Harry wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't try to finish him off, completely ignored that there were any number of other people who could and did want the Dark Lord dead for their own reasons. If the prophecy was really of no consequence, there was no reason someone else couldn't kill him. (Or Harry, for that matter.)

Assuming the prophecy hadn't already been fulfilled — which it very well might have been, if the gendered language was an artefact of the biases of the seer who'd communicated it, because Lily blowing him up definitely sounded like vanquishing to Mira — she did not have time for that kind of nonsense. Voldemort was in her way, so he had to go. If Fate had a problem with Mimi taking him out, It could kiss her fucking arse.

And she was starting with this piece, because even if it wasn't strictly speaking necessary to get rid of it before she started teaching Harry proper occlumency and baby legilimency, since the connection between them wasn't a conduit, he wasn't really in any danger of being drawn into a legilimency battle if he went too deep and Voldemort realised he was there (because technically he wasn't), the thing wasn't like a horcrux only in that it wasn't affected by magical influences on the main soul. Like she'd told Harry, it was metaphysically bound to the main soul. Which meant the main soul was bound to it. There was no way to tell if it would function as a soul-anchor when all the actual horcruxes were destroyed and Voldemort was on the brink of crossing the Veil, but she really didn't want to get that far and realise that it did.

She hadn't just been poking around like a nosey, narcissistic bitch for the past several minutes. She'd also been feeling out the shape of Harry's mind in general, getting a feel for the spell containing Voldemort's soul-fragment and the way it interacted with Harry's magic. It wasn't quite as neat and tidy as the modelling charm had made it look. The whole point of a modelled visualisation was to make things simpler and easier to follow.

From the inside — meaning, from Harry's perspective — the spell was barely noticeable. She hadn't noticed it earlier, when she'd first legilimised him. And it wasn't a simple three-dimensional, two-layered thing, with the soul-fragment sandwiched neatly in the middle. It might have been entirely external when it was first cast, but Harry's soul had grown through and around it over the years, leaving the spell-construct warped and twisted, the soul-fragment trapped in the midst of his being. The most active sections of his mind — which she might expect to see venturing outward at his age, attempting to make contact with other minds in his immediate vicinity as he came into the talent — were focused on the intrusion, attuning themselves to it, almost certainly without any intention of doing so.

It was relatively small, the trapped soul-fragment — perhaps the soul-equivalent of a splinched arm or foot, left behind when the main soul tore itself away from the trap. Somewhat larger than the life-spark of a rabbit, but it didn't have enough energy to sustain conscious awareness in and of itself — it probably didn't even have enough energy to have maintained coherence and any echo of the soul it originally belonged to for all these years without the trap holding it together — which would make it easier to subsume — it wouldn't be able to fight back. It did, however, reflect Voldemort's emotions...pretty much constantly, as far as Mira could tell. Harry tried to ignore them most of the time, and he was honestly doing a pretty good job, especially considering that he was completely unaware of the fact that he was instinctively attuning himself to the fragment.

Alright, this might pinch a little. Try to relax, she thought at him, extending her awareness through his and into the general vicinity of the fragment, surrounding it before asserting her own sense of self and distinguishing her probe from the background energy of Harry's mind, carefully keeping a buffer of "Harry" between herself and the magic of the actual trap.

He 'flinched'. He couldn't help it, really. He hadn't felt her moving within his mind (of course he hadn't, she was very good) and an extension of another person's magic suddenly appearing in the middle of his mind was instinctively interpreted as an attack — something which demanded an instinctive retaliatory attack. She was immediately assailed by the magic surrounding her, attempting to either infiltrate her probe or assimilate it. The fact that he wasn't entirely conscious of his efforts and clearly wasn't actually directing them made them easier to resist than if she had tried doing this within, say, Sev's mind, but attempting to fend off Harry's attacks — maintaining the division between them — and also "bearing down" on the fragment to subsume it — deliberately forcing it to assume the frequency of her mind — required a lot more concentration than...practically any other legilimency technique she'd ever tried to perform.

She didn't actually entirely manage to attune the fragment to herself, instead just surrounding it with her own mind-energy and pulling it deeper into herself, amoeba-like, and making a quick retreat, while doing the mental equivalent of smacking back Harry's attempts to reach out to her all the while. It only took a few seconds, but it was messy and uncomfortable, drawing in something so distinct from her self, and she was fairly certain it was painful for Harry, given that she sort of had to cut off the extensions of his magic which had infiltrated the fragment in order to excise it.

Note to self, destroy this memory before Thom or Dru sees it... Both of them would almost certainly be disappointed in the incredible gracelessness of that little manoeuvre. (Sev would just give her a deeply disappointed look for engaging in subsumption, period, regardless of the reason and how (in)competently she had done so.)

It was effective, though.

She pulled back to her own mind-space, disengaging from Harry's mind entirely and putting up a hard barrier to keep him out while she dug into the fragment, tearing it apart. There were only a few memories, just flashes of the sequence of events which had led to the moment of the fragment's creation—

Lily, empty-handed, facing him down, green eyes hard and determined, but also terrified, not for herself — she wasn't afraid to die, of course she wasn't — but for the child — afraid that she would fail him, that Lord Voldemort would prevail, end her precious baby's life this night—

Earlier— "Run, Lily! Take Harry and run!"

"Avada kedavra!" A flash of green light tore the soul from the unarmed idiot who thought himself capable of stalling the Dark Lord's advance.

He stepped over the body, slowly, deliberately—

Earlier yet— Speeding over the dark ground, a roiling cloud of smoke, trailed by two others, peons brought to bear witness to his triumph—

And before all that— "My Lord! My Lord, please— You cannot go, not tonight— Please!"

"You dare question my judgement, Bellatrix? I shall not cower here, not when we are so very close— Why should I? I do not fear this mudblooded pretender! She dabbles in magics she cannot hope to comprehend, but she is weak, and no match for Lord Voldemort!"

"No, my Lord, of course not, but—"

"Silence! Enough of this! You forget your place, Bellatrix!"

There were others as well, the weak little man who had pretended to be a rat for thirteen years after Voldemort's fall, revealing to the Court that he knew where the Potters were hiding and the process of extracting that information from him, and after the fateful curse was cast, the agony of vengeance brought to bear against him, but Mira didn't care to linger over them. Not after seeing him speak to Bella like that.

Not after seeing Bella let him.

It was just so– so wrong, on so many levels— No. She was done. She didn't need to see what else this fragment contained. She didn't want to know.

She shredded it, cutting it to pieces from a thousand different angles, the memories lost — deliberately destroyed — as the shards of stolen energy, dark and familiar, but twisted, corrupted by the tynged, bitter and cold, evanesced, dissolving into the background energy of her own mind, the rage and frustration reflected from Voldemort's soul, still furious to have been thwarted earlier this morning, and the influence of the tynged as well quickly fading as it became entirely dissimilar to him, until there was nothing left but her own anger, and something like grief, mourning the loss of the Thom of this world, magnified by the sudden influx of energy into her own metaphysical person.

It did, however, serve to strengthen her resolve.

With Lily dead, there was nothing that could be done to help him, and there was nothing left of her Thom in the man in that memory. Killing him would definitely be putting him out of his misery. And everyone else's.

"Uh, Mira?" Harry said, breaking her concentration, though it hardly mattered.

"It's done." She opened her eyes to see he had his hand pressed to his forehead, a wary expression on his face.

"It's— That's it?"

"Yes?"

"That's— Seriously? How did— But— If it was that easy, how come no one else ever— I mean, it kind of hurt, but not more than the actual nightmares! Couldn't Snape have just—"

She couldn't quite stop herself snorting at the idea of Sev deliberately subsuming anything, much less a fragment of Thom's soul. "No. Metaphagy does not come naturally to most legilimens. At all. Most of us can learn it, but there's a sort of mental block normal people have to overcome to do so. You're definitely not getting how horrified most people are by the concept. I would say ask Ronald or Tonks, but I'd rather they not look at me like a complete monster every time I walk into the room, so please don't."

"What? But— Why would they...?"

Okay, that was genuinely hilarious. "Because things that can eat souls are scary?"

What?!

She grinned at him, skimming off his shock and horror, too, just because. "Aren't you glad I'm on your side?"

"What just— Why'm I— Did you just do something?" he asked suspiciously, prompting giggles.

"Nothing bad. I did promise not to use mind-magic to harm you, remember?"

He did. Warily. He also wanted to be anywhere but in the same room as her, preferably wearing a mind-ward amulet.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm fucking terrifying. Go take a nap, I'm sure Maïa and Tonks will have finished the mind-ward amulets by the time you wake up.

"I'm not going to go take a nap!" Harry snapped. "I— We have shite to do! We have to—"

"Harry. When was the last time you got a good night's sleep? I know you don't know me well enough to realise how absurd it is that I'm the one telling anyone else to go rest, but you're not going to do anyone any good if you're too tired to think straight."

"But—"

You're not going to be any more vulnerable to me while you're unconscious than you are awake, and you're not going to have nightmares about being Voldemort anymore. You don't have any urgent obligations. You're no good to anyone if you're tired and slow, and you're definitely not going to pick up new spells anything like as quick as you would if you were well-rested, so, "Go take a nap, Harry."

She slipped the compulsion in subtly enough that he didn't suspect it was anything other than her very reasonable argument encouraging him to say, "Fine. Maybe you're right," and haul himself to his feet. It probably didn't hurt that, "I don't even know how long it's been since I've really— Maybe since Sirius died? Er." He winced tiredly, clearly 'realising' that it would be insensitive to remind her of her 'father's' death when she'd only just found out about it a couple of days ago. "Sorry. I shouldn't—"

"Don't worry about it. Really. Your Sirius isn't — wasn't — my father. I never knew him any more than you knew James and Lily. And to be perfectly honest, my Sirius isn't really a father figure to me, either. He was in Azkaban until I was about twelve, and he didn't really start getting back on his feet and growing up until a couple of years after he got out. Honestly, Helena — the Grey Lady, you know, the Hogwarts ghost? — is probably the closest equivalent I have to a parent. And Bella and Sev, though she's more like an older cousin, and he's more of a long-suffering uncle. Like, he's not a bad parent — Siri, I mean. Neither is Lily, for that matter. I have a baby brother and sister — Alex and Diana, fraternal twins, they're two and shaping up to be a complete nightmare — and they do alright with them. They just weren't really parents to me." She shrugged, taking stock of his uncertain envy.

It did make him feel a little better that she wasn't really close to the family he couldn't have, but he did still find it incredibly unfair that they were all still alive in her timeline, and at the same time, how can you not appreciate them?! You don't even know how good you have it, how terrible it is to not have anyone who loves you!

Which was true, she had to give him that. Even when she'd been locked up in the school, Helena and the elves had been there, and then Bella and Sev. I'm not trying to win a pity-contest here, Potter. I'm just saying, you don't need to worry about hurting me by bringing up Sirius.

...Okay, fine, whatever...

He still didn't think she appreciated how good she had it, and he didn't really care whether it hurt her bringing up Siri, it still hurt him, but making it clear that she actually did know exactly how much better her life had been compared to his would only make him feel like shite. Instead she brought to mind the warmest, fuzziest feelings of love and safety and home she could muster — not the actual memories they were derived from, since most of them involved Bella or Thom, and obviously Harry wouldn't appreciate that, just the feelings — and fucking smothered him with them — the mental equivalent of being hugged so tightly that you couldn't breathe.

His breath caught in his throat, tears pricking at his eyes. "What—?"

"Weren't you going to take a nap?"

He nodded. "Yeah. But I really don't want to—" I don't want to go back out there, I don't want to have to go back to the real world and all of the problems I have to face—

Fine, then. Sleep here. Come out when you're ready. Gods all know you could use a break. She cast a Cushioning Charm on the floor beneath him, encouraging him to lie down, pressing more comfort and safety on him, and rose to let herself out.

Mira? When she turned back in the doorway to look at him, the light from the corridor falling across his face, she was struck by the impression that he looked so young. Much more so than the eight months and change she'd travelled back could account for. Poor kid was so far out of his depth, here... Thank you.

Sleep well, baby brother.