To Repair

Darien

"That's enough for now, it's not quite Occlumency but it'll keep them from reading the first layers of your thoughts" I said in satisfaction.

"And if they push through that?" The boy said blandly.

"They won't"

"Right. Moral code. Whatever"

I looked at the boy sharply. He was moping. Again.

Of course he is - he's still got something akin to morality. Unlike some.

I ignored my thoughts. As ever.

Damn those twins. Damn their stupid pride and beliefs. Why couldn't they have just followed their family's principles, eh? Why couldn't they have just suffered to be like the rest of their family, not showing where their loyalties lie? It would have been so much easier. But no, Lara was hooked up with some half-breed and Ally was openly gay. Bastard. Next thing it would be that they were joining the bloody Phoenix brigade. Merlin that would be just so classic of them.

Now I had to help kidnap the one person I used to consider a sister.

Great going Irvine, you've really done it now.

"Regulus Black, if you don't stop moping right this instance I am going to leave you to organise this pathetic excused for a plan and it will be just you, one sad broken looser, got it?" I snapped.

Regulus' lips twitched into a smile.

"I am pretty pathetic aren't I?"

"Welcome to the club"

"We can be called the GLD, for the guilty lamenting duo" He said with what I think was a chuckle.

I blinked before sniggering.

Merlin, we were in such bad shit.

Remus

"Should we sit down?"

I was nervous. No, that would be an understatement; I was terrified and very unwilling to do what I knew I had to do. My palms were sweating and it took all my effort to speak around the lump in my throat when we got to a secluded spot by the lake.

She could tell.

Lara always knew, always. She knew if I was hungry or depressed. She knew if I was getting cranky because of the moon or if I was nervous. She knew when I was hiding something.

I was hiding something.

She hadn't said anything; she just walked oddly quiet with me after I suggested we go for a walk. It wasn't the nicest day for in, the grass was damp from a resent shower and the sky was a morose grey but she hadn't complained.

She already knew what I would say, I was certain...

She was going to be so pissed off, I just knew it. There was an edge to the way she walked that told me all I had to know. She wasn't going to go down without a fight.

I had to do this though. I did, didn't I?

I settled down on the tree branch next to her and bit my lip. I tried to gather my thoughts and think of the best way to say it.

"Lara-"

I took a breath but Lara interrupted (no surprise there right?).

"Don't say it, I can guess" She said and her voice was resigned "You think we shouldn't be together because you, number one, don't deserve me, number two, couldn't provide for me if we ended up married and, number three, don't want to risk spreading your affliction to a child?"

I gapped at her and she turned to me with weary eyes.

"You know the best part?" Her voice sarcastic "I didn't even have to hear your thoughts to know" she rolled her eyes and stood up.

"Lara I-"

She turned on her heel and clamped a hand over my lips.

"Don't. Remus, just don't. I have so many arguments against every reason you can muster for us to stop being together and I won't hesitate to use every single one of them if you try and complete that sentence"

I was silent as she lowered her hand. She didn't sound angry, just tired and annoyed. I didn't know what to do. Damn. I couldn't do this, she shouldn't do this. I loved her but I wanted what was best for her... and that wasn't this relationship.

"Just hear me out," I said and she gritted her teeth "when we leave this school-"

"-In a year and three months"

"Shush now" I reprimanded gently and she flicked up her eyes again "When we leave school I'm not going to be able to find a job, I will be living off the money my parents have left me. As for you, if you're with me then you're going to have to live with the constant prejudice surrounding me. It'll be difficult for you to get a job, to do the things you want, never mind me. If you want to settle down with me then every single week we'll be wondering where we're going to get the next meal from. I can't live with that, not while I know I'm dragging you with me." I walked up to her and let a single finger run beside the now pink scar over her face. Her skin was cold and I just wanted to wrap her up in my arms "You've already been hurt because of what I am. It sounds easy saying that we'll stay together but you don't understand what it's like to be a werewolf. This is my life, Lara, in the eyes of society I am an animal, a liability, a monster. I can't hurt you..." I trailed off.

Lara wasn't looking at me.

The silence seemed to fall heavy on my shoulders and still she didn't look at me.

"I just think we should think about-"

"Have you ever heard of the mirror of Erised?" She cut in with a voice that was scarcely above a whisper.

I blinked.

"Um no?" I said, confused.

She didn't look at me.

"Well, I suggest you find out from somewhere. When I look in that mirror I see you, you and me. When you know what that mirror is, then come and find me and I'll let you finish that sentence designed for my sake"

She walked away without looking at me and I felt something hot land in my heart, seeing her walk away. Her hair danced around her in the wind, wrapping around her slim waist and over her white shirt clad shoulders. Her arms were crossed over her stomach and from here she looked small amongst the wide dreary backdrop.

Lara

I bit back my tears as I slammed the massive tome onto the table and was rewarded with a barely suppressed yelp and a plume of dust flying into the air. The ink bottle jumped off the surface of the table and came down with a clink and glug as the dark blue liquid pooled over parchment. I flicked an impatient wrist at the mess but didn't bother to watch as the ink was siphoned away.

"Severus" I said curtly.

"Somebody is in a bad mood" was the predictable sneer in place of a greeting. I shoved my bag under the table and collapsed into the seat.

"My boyfriend is being a Gryffindor" I said through gritted teeth.

There was a pause and I looked up to see Severus smirking.

"Something funny?"

He chuckled.

"Let me guess: he was being overly noble and thinking 'for your own sake'" He said and this time it was me who was the one scowling.

"Something like that, yeah"

"That's Gryffindor for you" He said with a ironic twang.

"At least we have morals"

"At least we don't throw away the things we have"

"I'm not being thrown away!"

"That's because you're stubborn and annoying, it's very difficult to get rid of you and I would know"

I beamed.

"Can't argue with that I guess"

He snorted and shook his head in amusement, turning back to his essay. He'd gotten over his unease around me by now.

I, meanwhile, turned back to the stupidly heavy book now taking up half of the table on its own. I had charmed the cover and writing to be incomprehensible to anyone but me (for the time) so that I could study in the library. I would have done it in the dorm room but Amy and Alice's curiosity combined would never have given me any peace. Right now all I needed was something complicated to keep my mind preoccupied.

Every page of the huge book was stained yellow with random streaks of other colours (some I didn't even want to think about). In the margins I saw numerous drops of candle wax and the parts nearest to the spine were becoming black and sooty with slight mould. Every time I turned a page little dust fumes came up.

I sighed and began pouring over the dense script.

In all the chaos, Alex and I had hardly had any time to study how to become Animagi. I had, at least, been studying human biology for a while now, mainly for my healing work (which Poppy was grudgingly allowing me to continue after our torture). The self-legilimentic magic would be, while tiring and time consuming, fairly straight forward though it was beyond anything me or Alex had tried. It was the complex spells that I really needed to study up on.

The first spell would help with the process of diving into my own psyche. The first spell had to be said in exactly the right way with exactly the right wand movement. You had to be in a certain mindset, used for Occlumency, while visualising a certain rune while you said it.

Inspice mentis anima...

"Hey...?"

Once 'there' I would have to perform a spell that finds the creature suited to my nature. The second spell would only be at its best if done nonverbally. You had to stay completely focused while you chanted the spell and waved your wand in precisely the right way, a sort of cross shape in front of you and an odd spiral movement around your head.

Mihi sumo veri simillima...

"Grey?"

The third spell was done wandlessly, though it was more Legilimency that spell work, and it was like crystallising an image into your personality... or something like that.

Et sic patet...

"Hello?"

That image then had to be linked meticulously to your human anatomy in every tiny way. This was the part that had to be done purely with your mind and could take hours of nonstop thinking to be completed. It was also this part that was the most dangerous because if you missed a single link and continued-

"Larissa!"

I jumped out of my focus.

"What?" I snapped.

Severus rolled his eyes and jabbed his finger at the clock on the wall.

"Ten minutes till curfew you deaf workaholic" He said with a grin...

A grin?

I grinned too.

"You called me Larissa" and you grinned! I said cheerfully as he began to pack away his things and I did the same, he rolled his eyes.

"You still call me Severus" he shrugged "despite my complaints"

"True"

How things had changed in these few months, now I had a year to work my wicked ways with him. Ah, the taste of corruption is sweet...

We walked out of the empty library together, wordlessly, as I cradled the massive tome in both my arms. Madam Pince, the strict librarian with a mind as sharp as a needle, eyed the large book in my arms but just squinted at me as I walked out of the door. I sent her a little wave and grin as the doors closed, chuckling at her look of outrage.

"Should I even bother asking what that thing is about" The Slytherin asked me as I hefted the book in my arms.

"Nope"

"What about asking over the reason Pince was looking at you as if you'd put an author beginning with B in the E section?"

"Now come on! I only did that once!" I exclaimed indignantly while the boy next to me snorted with a small twitch of his lips.

"Okay, what about the reason Lupin's decided to act on his better judgement?"

I sighed, having forgotten about my problems with Remus till this point.

"Alpha stuff" I muttered.

"Ahh" He said knowingly and I rolled my eyes.

"Out of curiosity what's it like knowing your boyfriend becomes a fully fledge beast every month"

I send him an impish look and twitched my eyebrows suggestively.

"Kinky"

He chocked and I saw two little spots of pink on his cheeks.

"Actually, I don't want to know" He said with horror laced in his voice, his thoughts had the interesting swirling effect of trying to avoid itself.

I laughed but in doing so I inhaled some of the rising dust from the book, making me chock.

"Serves you right for asking" I through the tickling in my throat.

Lily

"Prongs, Padfoot, Wormy, Alex, Lily. Help. I need help" Remus said desperately as he slid into the seat with us "I need to know what the Mirror of Erised is"

Alex's head snapped up and the others just looked at him clueless. I tried to think if I'd heard the name before but just shrugged. Remus seemed to slump into his chair.

"The mirror of what?" James said from next to me.

"Never heard of it mate, sorry" Sirius said and Peter just shrugged and continued to poke the apple he was trying to transfigure.

Both Remus and I turned to Alex whose lips were pursed.

"Alex?" he said as if it were his last option.

"Don't ask me. I can't tell you. Strict orders, you have to work for it" He said quickly with an odd furrow between his eyes.

"Ugh" Remus groaned and placed his head in his hands.

Alex looked... indecisive. He looked like he could quite figure out whether to be annoyed or supportive. He crossed his arms in front of himself and flicked out a bit of silver hair from his face. He sighed.

"I wouldn't waste time if I were you Remus" He said gruffly and the boy nodded miserably before pushing himself up to his feet.

"I only thought that we should talk..." He said, running a hand through his hair.

"No you didn't" Alex said harshly and his eye glinted, they shared a look and Remus bowed his head.

"I guess. See you guys..." He muttered as he began to walk out of the room.

"Remus!" Alex called across the common room and Remus turned "Try Dumbledore but when you do remember just how stubborn my sister is and remember what she told you the first time you said this. Also" his gaze sharpened "remember she's not the only Grey in this school"

Remus nodded weakly at the barely concealed brother threat, before exiting the common room. Alex stared off after him, jaw clenched.

"Well then" I said bluntly into the silence that had descended on our table (apart from Peter's muttering over his apple, bless him, I didn't have the heart to tell him he was using the wrong end of his wand) "who else suspected that would happen sooner or later?"

They all, apart from Alex, turned to me confused.

I rolled my eyes.

"You know, doing the whole 'I'm dangerous and not worth you' argument" I said and the Marauders just gapped at me "Oh, come on. There is a reason he never went out with anyone before Lara, you should know well enough" they continued to stare at me like I'd sprouted a trunk, I snorted "Merlin, boys are so clueless"

Alex chuckled.

"I don't think that's what they're staring at you for Lily." He said "I think it's more that they've just realised you know about Remus' furry problem"

The boys all spluttered at Alex and I blinked and made a noise of understanding.

"Seriously? Is that it? I've known that for years" I said with a chuckle.

Regulus

I tried to shut my eyes. I tried to still my thoughts. I tried.

The boys in the room around me slept quietly save for the gentle sound of breathing. There was the gentle ticking of the grandfather clock in one corner and in another the slight rustle of Parkinson's snake in its cage.

I bit my lip.

I'd known it was coming to this. I'd known it was going to happen. So why was that now all I could do was tremble at the thought? It was easy, simple; I'd hardly have to do anything. Easy.

I gulped in more air.

Darien had done it, twice, sure it was different but... I could do this. I could.

Darien lived with guilt, sure he knew what he was doing, he was cold and he could do that. I was a newbie, I was an optimist and completely hopeless romantic, as Darien said. I was tiny in the role of things, even if I tried to say otherwise. Darien though, he was suited to this game, a cynic who stopped caring enough to argue with himself years ago.

I curled up inside my duvet, pressing my knees to my chest.

At least I didn't have to kill her or something - that would be bad. I could do this. All I'd have to do was appeal to her better nature, the nature that trusted, that gave others a chance. Maybe in the process I'd stamp on that innocence so that if she ever lived she'd be better protected.

If she ever lived.