Have you ever felt as though all the evil, unpleasant things in the world were wrapping around you like the sea, pressing themselves against you until they filled every crevice and you could hardly breathe?
That's what I felt as I sat in Dumbledore's office the morning after the ball. First I felt breathless out of sheer excitement that I had won—that I had beat a master manipulator at his own game. That there would be no more secrets after this.
I took immense satisfaction in the defeated look in his eye and the exhausted sigh that preceded his explanation.
However, as he began to speak, I felt far less breathless and a lot more suffocated. Oxygen grew increasingly sparse as he told me things I wouldn't even dare to imagine, to dread.
The story of the Potters. The story of me.
"I don't believe the dark lord knew of your existence until he came there that night," Dumbledore's old, deep voice continued, about as steady as train at full speed; though it shook and teetered occasionally, stopping was no longer an option. He gained momentum with each word he spoke.
"Honestly very few besides your parents, myself, and their closest friends even knew Lily had been trying to conceive once more… I'm sure he was surprised when a pregnant Lily Potter greeted him. But not deterred. Certainly not deterred. If he had planned on killing a child outside the womb, what difference does one inside make? Your mother's sacrifice will forever be honored…"
As he spoke, I felt as though I was tied to a bay in high tide. The platitudes and sentiments that he said to soften the blow instead hit against me like fierce waves, slowly drowning me.
"…an agent of mine found you, as I said before. That much was true. He delivered you from your mother's womb at the scene and brought you directly to me, who in turn delivered you to Nicolas…"
Waves of shock.
"…you see, the curse that damaged you so badly as a child wasn't just any dark curse, nor was it from any dark wizard, but Voldemort himself. We knew it would leave traces of its magic even if you survived. A child born from death. Your eyes for example… such a striking green…"
Waves of panic.
"…Nicolas and Perenelle thought it best not to tell you the truth, even when the danger had passed. Every choice they made – their years in isolation, sending you to Beauxbatons, their refusal to travel to England…all of it was to protect you. Not a single thing they did was out of anything less than careful calculated for your safety. When Voldemort was after the stone, Nicolas was more concerned about your safety should Voldemort succeed than his own death—he seemed to forget his mortality along the way. All that mattered was you…up until the very end…"
Waves of grief.
"…I know it is tempting, but he must not know. At least for a little while longer. Voldemort still has a loyal following." Images of flashing lights, burning tents, and the dark mark bombarded me. "Until we can identify and remove those remaining threats, you must not paint a target on yourself by revealing your true parentage. Many would exploit your familial connection to weaken Harry. To attack you both…"
Waves of fury.
Slammed violently by all these emotions, I felt like choking. All of them coalescing into one monstruous tidal wave that would soon knock me out entirely.
Between each crash of his words, the same thought kept entering my mind. Ignorance is bliss. And looking back, I now acknowledged how truly blissful my life had been up until this moment. Sure, I've had my difficulties, but my parents had always shielded me in a beautiful life full of love, like a bubble keeping all the ugly things out. Even when they had died, I still had their memory to bring my life beauty, security.
However, this popped that bubble, and there's no putting a bubble back together again after it's bursted. What a fool I had been to goad Dumbledore into telling me the truth, to force his hand by pretending to like Harry.
I had run into a dark sea, eager to uncover its secrets, but now I found myself struggling to keep myself afloat in a storm I might not be able to fare.
When Dumbledore finally ceased to talk, offering me some reprieve, he watched me closely with those wise blue eyes of his, as if waiting for some sort of response. As if.
Instead, I just sat there, scarily still.
"My dear," he finally said, breaking the silence. "I know this is a lot to take in, but please know it changes nothing about your relationship with your adoptive parents."
At that, I felt the water rising, pressing down on me, flooding into my throat so that I could not speak.
"They loved you; they really did," Dumbledore insisted, frown lines earnestly crinkling at the corners of his mouth. "As did your birth parents. Biology aside, there is no reason that the four of them cannot hold the esteemed place of parents in your life and heart forever. Do not think this means you must make a choice."
With that, I finally snapped, the water gurgling up in me as I responded in a broken, choked voice, "What is there to choose between? They're all dead. My family is dead."
"But, my dear, Harry…"
"Will be soon. At—" I choked a bit and coughed as I swallowed down the tears clogging my throat, refusing to come out. I blinked and continued quietly, "At the rate things are going."
"I will not allow that," the headmaster replied firmly.
Yet for all the power and influence Dumbledore had, for all his accomplishments and all his triumphs against the darkest wizards of our era, I did not believe the his promise. Something rang false about in the headmaster's words. My gut told me he didn't even believe himself.
A dark fate awaited Harry—my brother—indeed if even Dumbledore could not muster a convincing lie about it.
Not trusting myself to speak again, I jerked out of my seat, heading toward the door.
"Wait." The headmaster's hand reached out to grab my arm.
"Are you going to be alright?"
I met his eyes, and in them I saw my own: a shocking green. Avada-green. Deadly as the curse that gave them their hue. It would have been the last color my parents ever saw—and here it was, stuck inside me. Always. Their deaths forever memorialized on my face.
Perhaps even more so than Harry's scar.
If the eyes were truly the window to the soul, then I dreaded to think of what damage Voldemort's killing curse did behind my eyes. Perhaps this sickly green lined the inside of my heart as well.
Perhaps that was where the mysterious illness of my childhood really sprang from, and if that was the case, perhaps it would have been better if it had killed me off. What kind of baby is born from death? No wonder I sometimes had a fierceness about me that I could not explain—that no one, not even my father, could quell or contain. He had said I was full of life, but I'm not full of life. I'm full of death. I am death. Her death. Tucked away inside of me, forever peering out from behind my eyes.
"Of course, I'm not."
I ripped my arm away from Dumbledore and averted his eyes, unable to see the green of my own reflected back at me for a moment longer.
Immediately, I twisted the ring on my finger, feeling the weight of the stone lay warm against my fingers. It begged to be used.
I needed to speak to them.
Rushing out of the room, I flew through the corridor and down the steps as if a tsunami was chasing me down, ready to crash upon me. Which it was. The tears already began to leak.
Just when I was about to exit the castle to reach the Beauxbatons ship, a door suddenly open, slamming into me. I fell to the floor, gasping and holding my chest. I felt as though I had been punched.
"Slow down, lassie," a voice grunted from the doorway. With two clanks, out walked Moody. "Oh, it's you. Better watch where you're going."
Not deigning to answer, I struggled to my feet and attempted to walk past the rude professor, not in the mood for his antics today—or ever. However, he stopped me with a swift lift of his cane.
"Not so fast, Ms. Flamel," he said in that growly Scottish voice of his. "I was actually on my way to find you."
"Now's not a good time," I croaked. Moody squinted his eyes and hobbled a little closer, as if curious. Nosy little bugger.
I tried to push past him, but I froze in shock when the veteran raised his wand at me. Before I had the chance to duck, he yelled, "Stupefy!"
The last thing I remember was black.
The funny thing about drowning is that you don't always know when you are.
I had been playing a dangerous game with Dumbledore by cornering him into telling me the truth about Harry. In my fear of being overwhelmed by another secret, I had acted only of my immediate satisfaction and had not considered the long game; so set was I on finding the truth, that I never stopped to consider that I just might not be able to handle it.
My one objective had been to discover these secrets on my own before they could be dropped upon me again, as Dumbledore had the night he had revealed my true parentage. I had wanted to avoid the violent shock of it, the out-of-control feeling that accompanied the big reveal.
Yet here I was, now discovering the truth in my own timing, and I still felt out-of-control. Like I was suspended, floating in darkness and pain, in a history—a war—much larger than myself. And I innately knew that I would never feel in control again.
Images flashed in my mind.
A man, dark haired and handsome. Eyes closed and face contorted, wand pointing out at someone unseen.
A woman, hair a dark auburn. She looked up at someone, her emerald eyes reflecting some untold horror. In a flash, they lit up to an electrifying green—avada green. My green.
The color consumed me, and before I knew it, I fell into a dream in which the green of her eyes transformed into the green of my wings in animagus form.
As a butterfly, I flew through time and space, fluttering through different scenes of the horrors Dumbledore told me of my past.
Halloween decorations lit the quaint neighborhood beneath me as I swooped down, following a dark figure as he cut through the night. I watched as he blew the door open. Unable to safely fly inside as the dark figure fought with another man, I landed on a windowsill on the upper level.
Past the glare of the window, I could make out a woman with dark red hair. She cradled a baby and kissed him on the forehead before placing him in his crib. Then she turned around to pick up a book. The room began to glow. A soft golden hue fell on the room and she kissed the baby once more before the door exploded and the dark figure swept into the room, wand raised.
She turned to meet him, and that's when I noticed the baby bump on her stomach. The dark figure and the woman seemed to stand there for a lifetime, much longer than his time with the father. They were saying words, but I could not make them out.
All the while, the woman's hand rested on her stomach.
Suddenly, a flash of green lit the room, and the woman dropped.
The dark figure stepped around her fallen form to the crib.
The scene went dark, and I fluttered away.
"What are we to do? He cannot return, Nicolas."
I looked down to see my mother speaking urgently with my father. They spoke in soft, urgent tones as a younger version of myself rode a broomstick around our estate. Their eyes trailed me, both looking concerned.
"No, he cannot," my father agreed. "We will do the only thing we can do."
"Which is?"
He smiled softly as I dove into the pond to retrieve the quaffle and came out soaking wet.
"Let nature finally take its course." My stomach rolled at the bittersweet gleam in his eyes as he resigned himself to his own death—for me.
The scene shifted once more to the most disturbing one yet, and only because it had such a different feel. Whereas all of the dreams shared an odd realness to them, this one felt far more threatening than the first two.
I saw an older version of myself standing in a dark room, the only light coming from the dim glow of blue glass orbs lined up on shelves all around me.
My older self's wand lay nearby on the floor, and I watched in horror as one of the biggest snakes I'd ever seen slid out from the shadows and wrapped itself slowly around my older self, circling her waist in a vicelike grip. The snake's head finally stopped when it reached her chest. From there, its two beady eyes looked out into the shadows. It hissed at something—or someone—just out of sight, a spot where the older version of myself had already been staring in alarm.
I fluttered down to get a better look, hovering just above her shoulder.
"You're wasting your time," the older version of myself declared disdainfully, sounding a lot braver than she looked. "He won't come. Not for me."
A tall, dark figure stepped out, and I instinctually backed away. He carried with him the aura of a monster in the dark: the kind you know very little about other than you ought to be scared.
"You would be surprised," the figure spoke. His low voice contained a haunting hiss, almost exactly like the snake's wrapped around my older self. Yet, that wasn't what made the hairs on my antennas stand in fear.
I knew that voice.
Uncanny as it was, I knew it—knew him… Yet how?
If this was a Death Eater, then there should be no way I would know him. I could count on my hand the amount of young British men I've met, and none of them were followers of Voldemort.
"Afterall." The mysterious figure took a step closer to my older self. The bitterness in his voice froze my blood. "You are his sister, Ms. P-"
"POTTER SURFACES AT 20 MINUTES AND 39 SECONDS, LANDING HIM IN THIRD."
I gasped out of the dark slumber I had fell into, awaking to the sound of Ludo Bagman's voice.
Immediately, I started choking… on what? Where was I?
The bright lights of the sun and the cameras worked together to blind me. It took me a full ten seconds before I realized I was in the middle of a lake. Was this another bad dream?
"BUT WAIT- COULD THIS BE? POTTER RETREIVES NOT JUST ONE BUT TWO CAPTIVES," Ludo booms.
I swatted around in a panic, trying to stay afloat and accidentally slapped someone in the face in the process. It took me a moment to process that that someone was Harry—my brother.
I shuddered at the thought. Only then did he finally speak.
"You're okay, Marguerite," Harry attempted to comfort me through uneven, labored breath, presumably from swimming. I now realized another girl held onto his waist.
Wait—was that…Fleur's sister! What the devil was going on?
"We're almost there," he assured before doubling down on his strokes, clearly eager to reach the shore.
As we approached, the first thing I noticed was who wasn't there rather than who was: Moody. The foul bastard. I wondered where the half-baked pirate had hopped off to. This was all his fault.
In his stead was a bizarre mix of people. Just about everyone significant in this school in one place. Hermione sat wrapped up with Krum in a towel as Karkaroff hovered above them, though he was staring at someone else—Snape, who was glaring at Dumbledore and looked every bit the dark wizard he was rumored to be in that moment. I wondered what all that was about.
Meanwhile, Fleur was kneeling on the ground, tears streaking down her face, but she beamed at us and stretched out her arms as we approached. Odd. Perhaps it had to do with her sister?
A little further back, Cedric and Cho stood hunched together, arms around each other. Closest to us was Dumbledore. The old wizard waited directly on the edge of the dock, despire the fact that the other headmasters stood much further back with the rest of the judges. Clearly, the headmaster was anxious to soundly retrieve his not-so-secret favorite student from the lake.
Still struggling to breathe as I coughed out the water, I didn't fight Dumbledore as he kindly met me by the dock and pulled me up with surprising strength for an old man, offering me a towel.
"That's it, my dear," he said soothingly, patting my back as I spat out the rest of the water. "I am so sorry, Marguerite. I told them not to choose you. When I did not see you after our conversation, I assumed you needed some time to process… but I never would have dreamed… I assure you my dear girl, if I had any idea they would go against my orders, I would have intervened."
The headmaster gave me a significant look, his eyes hard as sapphires as he bent down to perform a series of spells. The corners of his mouth were tightened in such a way that I just knew his jaw must have been clenched behind that white beard of his. He performed some sort of warming spell on me, which felt good but failed to stop my violent shaking.
Honestly, at this point, nothing—magical or not—would be able to stop the shaking besides a heavy sleeping draught and an assurance that this all had been a cruel dream.
It was all too much: my conversation with Dumbledore, the dreams, this—whatever the hell this all was.
My breath felt short. Too short.
"Mon papillon!" Two large hands crushed me into a familiar embrace. I leaned into Madam as she whispered furiously in my ear. "I told zem no. I mentioned your childhood illness, told zem 'ow relapses can be triggered. We agreed it would be another—zat 'orrible redhead boy. Zey will suffer greatly for zis."
"May I have a word with you, Madam?" Dumbledore's voice beckoned nearby.
However, Madam refused to relinquish her grip on me, and just pressed me tighter against her.
"Dumbly-dorr," my guardian hissed, her body rigid. " 'Ow could you let zem do zis to your own friend's daughter? She could have died!"
"Madam Maxime, I assure you I played no part in this," he replied evenly, though his voice held some tension. "However, I am likewise appalled and eager to find out who is responsible."
"Moody," I cut in, voice shaking.
Madam pulled slightly away, looking down at my face with a frown. Dumbledore approached behind her, his eyebrows raised.
"Ze professor?"
"Surely Alastor would never—"
"He did." The world became a bit fuzzy again at the loss of Madam's warmth. I felt as though I would freeze over, and my brain would be the first to go. "Knocked me out on my way back from your office, Headmaster."
Both Dumbledore and Madam were silent for a moment, seemingly processing the events, before Madam snapped back to action.
"Zen he will be dealt with. 'Arshly," Madam declared, voice like iron. "Mon papillon, stay 'ere as Dumbly-dorr and I speak about 'ow we will proceed."
She marched off to the side of the dock without even looking back to check Dumbledore was following.
Dumbledore stared at me intently for a moment, and I almost thought he would use Legilimens, but instead he just dipped his head in a penitent nod. "If this is true, you have my deepest apologies, Marguerite. I had thought Alastor capable of working with children, despite the violence he was exposed to in his lengthy career as an Auror."
I stared at him blankly, my thoughts screaming clearly not! I don't know if Dumbledore used Legilimens but he seemed to hear me according to the look on his face. He walked off to meet Madam without another word.
I had not even a moment's reprieve before that terrible reporter woman Rita Skeeter and a camera crew swarmed around me.
"Ms. Flamel—"
"Ms. Flamel! Over here!"
"My dear, how does it feel to be rescued by your dashing Yule Ball date?" Skeeter asked with a nearly manic glint in her eye. A quill scribbled furiously behind her on its own volition.
That's right, I remembered. I had gone to the ball with Harry—my brother. My head grew even more dizzy at the thought.
"I would prefer not to answer anything right now," I attempted to fend them off, but my voice came out weak.
"Surely you must know that nearly every girl in the world envies you right now," Skeeter persisted mercilessly. "To have the attentions of Boy-Who-Lived is a dream, but to be saved by him… that's pure fantasy, my dear. You are a walking fairytale—the damsel in distress of modern day."
If I had any energy left in me, I would have punched Rita Skeeter in the face right there and then.
Luckily for her, anger took energy, and as I became more furious, I began to precariously sway.
"HEY!" I heard Harry's voice somewhere off in the distance. There was a rustle nearby, and I felt more than saw him pushing through the crowd to come closer. "Leave her alone! Can't you see she's unwell?"
In a moment, his enraged face fell into my line of sight. He threw an arm around me and pushed Skeeter away.
The wench didn't like that. Her eyes glittered with malice as she collected herself, plucked her quill out of the sky, and announced loudly enough for everyone to hear:
"The Boy-Who-Lived runs to the aid of the Girl-Who-Has-Stolen-His-Heart!"
The cruel click of her camera struck a chord in me as I thought of the headline of tomorrow's paper with a picture of Harry's arm around me. I jerked away from him, mortified. Harry looked at me in surprise.
Of course the picture didn't seem any worse to him than mere tabloid gossip—because he didn't know I was his sister. To him, I was still just some random Beauxbatons girl. Perhaps he even secretly fancied-
That released a wave of panic in me that struck the final blow; unable to withstand the force of it all anymore, I succumbed to the dark waters of unconsciousness. The last things I saw were Harry's concerned, heartbreakingly emerald eyes looking down at me.
I didn't awake until the dead of night.
The cool air hit my bare leg, and it took a moment for me to realize that the hard, narrow bed I rested on was not my own. My muscles lied limp, like I was a puppet with no strings, and my throat scratched as though a vine of thorns had been shoved down it.
What had happened?
Using every ounce of willpower, I lifted myself out of the shabby bed.
Based on the grand ceiling and the rows of white, tiny beds just like the one from which I had just risen, I judged this to be the infirmary. Though the idea would usually alarm me, I found myself grateful. After this last bout of illness, I felt worse than I had in a while. Even now, I still shook slightly as I walked.
Unable to muster up the strength from my legs to wander further than a few feet, I aimed for a seat by a nearby window. The thought of seeing the stars was enough to motivate me to work through the exhaustion and weakness to get there.
As I waded through the other beds toward the window, I spotted Harry much to my surprise. I stared down at the raven-haired boy sprawled sloppily on his chair. He looked peaceful and much younger while asleep. I wondered why he was here, doubting it was for me, but some part of me found his presence comforting all the same.
Sighing, I gently lowered myself into the window seat, my gaze and mind soon consumed by the stars and their many patterns and shapes.
I thought of all the events of the day: of the big reveal, of my birth parents, of the dreams, especially of the monstruous figure at the end. For some reason, my mind went back to my father's description of Psyche's monster:
A monster that neither gods nor humans can resist.
I pulled the thin cloth of the hospital robe closer as a breeze swept in through the window. Though clearly a monster, I was certain that man was no Cupid. But who was he?
A rustle broke my train of thought. I tensed.
Across the room, Harry yawned, and I immediately eased. The raven-haired boy began to stretch, looking around a bit confused, then alert. I nearly laughed. He probably thought he had been sent to the hospital wing for something.
Then his eyes landed on me, and they went soft. He weaved through the beds and sat on the one closest to the window before he spoke.
"How are you feeling?"
I shrugged. "I've had better days."
He nodded, looking grim. "Dumbledore tells me he had a big conversation with you just before you went under. Something about your father."
"Did he?" The old man never ceased to surprise me. Hadn't he been the one urging me not to tell Harry the truth? "Dumbledore tells you a lot then, does he?"
"I like to think so," Harry said thoughtfully, almost cautiously.
I half smiled. Perhaps my brother was smarter than he seemed. Guess I shouldn't be surprised; we were related after all.
"Never quite know with a man like Dumbledore," I confirmed.
"He's a good man," Harry defended.
"Never said he wasn't, but he's also a clever man—some might even say brilliant. If my father taught me one thing, it's never assume you know what's going on in the brain of someone smarter than you."
Harry didn't respond and turned to look out at the stars, letting that sink in. We sat there for quite some time like that.
"Thanks for today," I finally said quietly, feeling a bit awkward having to say it.
His brows rose as he looked at me. "You don't have to thank me. It was the least I could do, I'm the reason you were in the water in the first place—"
"No, not about that," I cut him off hurriedly. "I could care less about the water bit—it's the press I'm talking about. That awful reporter—"
"Skeeter," he supplied disdainfully.
"Yes, her." My lips pursed. "She crossed a line. I was already sick, feeling faint and she kept pressing, making these horrendous leading questions about—"
"Us."
I looked up to see Harry. My eyes drank him in, terrified but ready for the moment of truth. Did he have feelings for me? I searched for any sign.
However, his jaw remained relaxed, his hand unclenched, and his face a completely normal pallor. The only thing abnormal were his eyes, which seemed to be examining me just as closely.
It took me a moment to realize he was probably doing the same as I.
I sighed a breath of relief, feeling a bit of the heaviness leave my limbs.
"Ridiculous, isn't it? Reporters and their conjured-up romances—I swear it's just about the only thing that keeps people reading their sad excuse for writing," I said lightly.
"Couldn't agree more," Harry responded with a smile. "This is the first time it's happened to me…"
"But I can guarantee it won't be the last," I deadpanned. Harry laughed. "Especially with all that hyphenated Boy-Who-Lived and Girl-Who-Has-Stolen-His-Heart nonsense. It sounded far too premeditated—like they've been thinking out headlines and patiently waiting for this day since you got that scar fourteen years ago…"
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't be surprised." Harry shrugged. "One of the downsides to being me is that my life is under a microscope, and if it's not by Skeeter, it's by professors or other students."
I made a face. "Are there any good sides, then?"
"None that make it worth it." His tone sobered me up real quick. I looked at this boy, this celebrity, who happened to be my brother. He did not look back, his frown angled firmly at the stars.
Harry Potter. The-Boy-Who-Lived. But at the cost of what? So often was the world focused on how he lived that it forgot who had died in the process.
"I understand," I say, and I really did, more than he could imagine. Not just because we grieved the same set of parents, but because I knew what it felt like to have my parents sacrifice their lives to protect my own, much like Harry.
"How could you?"
"My father and mother died for the 'greater good' in order to keep Voldemort from getting the stone," I said tonelessly. I couldn't remember the last time I had spoken with anyone willingly about this—in fact, I believe this was the first.
But I needed Harry to understand. For my brother to see me, even if he could not know me yet.
"Yes, I am sorry," he responded a bit uncomfortably. "Dumbledore told me that, actually."
"Well what he didn't tell you—what I didn't find out until just recently—is that it wasn't as altruistic as it seemed." My voice sounded dead, even to my own ears, as the next words came out. "I have reason to believe that my parents chose to die specifically for me."
"What?"
I was silent for a minute, considering how much truth I would tell him. One look into his emerald eyes made my mind.
"That conversation I had with Dumbledore before the second trial, the one about my father. That's what it was about," I clarified. "It seems your house wasn't the only stop Voldemort made that night. He killed my parents just before getting to you. Seems he had some sort of personal grudge against my family."
"But—that's impossible," Harry insisted, looking more calculating than I'd ever seen him. "Your parents—"
"Were not my birth parents."
His mouth dropped a bit.
"And you just found out?" he asked quietly, and God bless him, I could have sworn I detected anger in his voice.
"Yes," I replied simply, not wishing to complicate the truth. "My birth parents were friends of Dumbledore's. He knows all the details, I still do not. After their death, he thought my best chance at surviving without a target on my back would be acquiring a new identity. Hence, the unlikely birth of Marguerite Flamel."
"But who are your real birth parents?" Harry insisted. "Why cover your true identity for so long? Voldemort is dead."
"Your dear Dumbledore has always suspected he wouldn't stay dead for long. And after being in England for only 3 months and seeing the way you British lot still obsess over him, I must say I understand why." It really was ridiculous.
"You believe he's coming back?" Harry demanded.
"Not really," I dismissed offhandedly. "Dead is dead. Nobody, not even a self-obsessed dark lord, can change that. You killed his horcrux after all."
Harry did not respond, just grimly stared past me out at the sky, clearly unconvinced.
"But I do believe he's not actually dead – not truly," I continued, and Harry looked at me once more. "There are too many whispers. Too much fear… awe. As long as the idea of him lives on, anyone could pick up where he left off—his followers or even a psychotic copycat."
His frowned at me, as if puzzling it all together.
"Your parents—your adoptive ones, that is—feared his followers would pick up where Voldemort left off," he guessed quietly, intently. "With your family."
"Yes," I replied simply, because to say anything more would take too much out of me. I had yet to come to terms with the reality of it all: my adoptive parents' deaths, my true parents, their deaths.
Harry's next words surprised me.
"Do you ever grieve them?"
I blinked incredulously. "Of course, I have. Every moment of every day. What do you think this conversation is about?"
"No." He waved a hand, a bit flustered. "Your real parents."
I frowned. "Real is a very subjective word."
The silence rang a little too loud as Harry blushed, and I thought about that. Thought about the implication behind my words. What would he think of this moment when he inevitably found out the truth one day? The fact that I was so quick to dismiss my blood? Our blood.
Still, it made me shudder to even consider which set of parents were 'real.' I refused to believe blood alone was the answer.
"But yes," I finally continue, a bit hurriedly, eager to silence my mind. "Since I've found out, I've begun to grieve my biological parents alongside my adoptive ones. Perhaps even more because I never knew them."
"You haven't said their names." The question was in Harry's tone.
"Dumbledore will not tell me their identities," I lied. "He says it's for my own good, my protection."
His brows rose. "What?"
I remained silent as Harry shook his head in dismay, a hard look passing over his face. It took me a moment to realize why he was so personally invested in this; Harry had no family. He understood how priceless having one was. Therefore it was no surprise that the idea of being robbed of the knowledge of family infuriated him, since that was all he had of his own.
If his reaction to my situation was anything to go by, I could only imagine how he would respond to the old man when he found out Dumbledore had been concealing Harry's own family all these years too: me.
"If Dumbledore won't tell you, then maybe he'll tell me," he responded, a hard determination entering his voice.
"I highly doubt that."
"Why not?" he protested. "He tells me the answer to any question I ask."
"He tells you a version of an answer," I corrected with a pointed look. "But this isn't just any old usual question. Besides, he knows you'll probably tell me whatever he says."
"Why?"
I rolled my eyes. "Because we're friends, you dolt."
Harry paused for a minute. I could understand why. It's not like I've been acting particularly friendly. Allies would be a more accurate term, but things changed now. I wanted to keep him close somehow, even if he couldn't be my brother quite yet.
"Are we really?"
I sighed. "Why do you act like this is some big surprise?" I asked, completely downplaying it. "Did I not agree to go to the dance with you? How else would you explain that? I assure you, it definitely wasn't because I fancied you."
Harry chuckled a bit. "You're so prickly, it's hard to tell."
"Prickly?" I asked, aghast. "I am not prickly."
Harry lifted his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Well, you're hardly bright and cheery."
I frowned, immediately dismissing his comment. He just didn't know me well. My father had always praised me so much for my liveliness, my playfulness. If I was a bit crabby and glum nowadays, a bit cynical and disillusioned, who could really blame me? I'd like to see Harry remain his optimistic self when grieving the death of people who made him who he was.
"Best let my problems stay my own," I finally replied.
"But you helped me with my problems," Harry pointed out. "More than once actually. You told me about the first task and helped me survive it."
"Yes well, that's different."
"How?"
I stared into his challenging face and nearly spilled the secret of my animagus form just to prove that I was right. However, I thought better of it; he might have been my brother, but he really was only a new friend, and barely one at that.
Blood or not, trust needed to be earned.
"Just trust me."
"So I'm just supposed to take your word for it, no further explanation?"
I smirked. "Welcome to being my friend."
Without another glance, I walked back to my shabby little hospital bed, weaving through the row of empty beds like waves in the see. I heard Harry scoff and rustle a bit behind me, but I could hardly muster the energy to care.
"I suppose I'll go back to my room now," he said as I collapsed onto the bed. "I just wanted to make sure you were ok and prepared for the awful article Skeeter will doubtlessly write tomorrow."
When I was finally settled, I looked up at him across the room, only his silhouette visible against the moonlight. For a moment, I had the strangest feeling I had seen this scene before, a shadow of a memory.
"Do not worry about any headlines with my name on it, Madam will deal with any bad press swiftly and ruthlessly," I assured. I knew she probably felt so guilty about the whole ordeal that she probably already had dealt with Skeeter. "Maybe watch out for whoever you associate yourself with in the future though."
Harry rubbed the back of his neck, a bit sheepishly.
"Best. Good night," he said, walking away.
"Good night, Potter." The sound of his last name—my last name—was the last thing I heard before falling once more into a sea of darkness, except this time, much more at peace.