The Lies Behind Mine

by Xianna

Chapter One The Past

My name is Susan Hillard. I've been special ever since I was born, though I didn't know it until I was about eight. My mother left shortly after I was born. I've never been able to find her, to ask her why she didn't take me with her. To ask her why she left me alone with my father. For years I thought that it was my fault. That the reason my father beat me was the same reason she left.

My father was drunken wizard who bounced from one odd job to another whenever he got fired. He barely made enough to support us and my earlies memory is of trying to make friends with the rat that lived under my bed. It took my father almost a week to take me to St. Mungo's after Stevie bit me, and by then I was delirious with fever. I saw something in my fevered dreams that still occasionally haunts me. A boy who hid in the shadows, following me wherever I went and laughing quietly. Whenever I would turn around to face him, all I could make out were a pair of vivid green eyes before he faded into nothing.

It was also on this trip to Mungo's that I learned that my ability to change what I looked like made me a metemorphagus. I'd been using said trick to hide from my father, so of course I hadn't told anyone about it or known that it was a rare talent. I tried to get the nurses not to tell my father, but I was only five and they didn't listen to me.

A few years later, when I was eight and my father knew that the other children in the hall were really me, I had to go to further lengths to stay away from him. Being either brave or desperate (I've never decided which) I started exploring the other apartment buildings around mine. Or rather, the apartments in them. That was how I met Mr. Winders. Other apartments in his building left doors unlocked or guarded by only weak spells that were easy for me to reverse. Or they left open windows, not expecting a small girl to sneak in and explore the place and play pretend that she lived there with their loving family. But Mr. Winder's apartment was different. His was almost impossible to get into. The charm on his bedroom window was the weakest, and since his very secrecy had made me curious, I spent weeks attempting to break it. When I finally did and let myself in, I was slightly dissapointed. There did not seem to be anything worth going to such trouble to hide. In fact, his apartment was kind of bare and dirty. I was looking at his shoes (you can always tell so much about person by his shoes) when Mr. Winders came home.

Quickly I ducked under the bed. I'd already become pretty good at getting away when people came home too soon, though it was easier if there were kids in the family and I could just mimic them and walk out. But Mr. Winders was different. Mr. Winders knew as soon as he reached his door that someone was in his house. Instead of going to the kitchen or bathroom or falling over on the couch like any other wizard coming home from work, he walked straight into the bedroom, dropped to one knee, and looked under the bed at me.

"Alright, you. Come out from under there."

Abashed, I crawled out and stood before him. I'd hurriedly changed from my natural form to a slightly shorter, fatter girl with black hair and a blunt nose. But I couldn't do anything about my clothes, which were old and dirty but at least fit my new shape.

"How did you get in here?" he asked.

"Through the window," I told him, though it should have been obvious since the window was still open behind me.

Mr. Winders watched me with a sever expression. As if he were measuring me on some deeper level than my ever-changing appearance. In fact, everything about him looked kind of sever. He had a shark, beak-like nose and wiry white hair that stuck out at crazy angles. Finally he sighed and rubbed his nose with one hand.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to make you mad or anything and I wasn't going to steal from you. I was just exploring, you see, and I'm really sorry."

"Just go home," he told me, and stepped out of the way so I could leave. But as I passed him he held out an arm to stop me. "What's you're name?"

"Patricia," I told him, giving him the name of the girl I'd copied.

"And where did you get that bruise?"

I looked down at my arm where a bruise showed under from under my sleeve. I couldn't hide my bruises by changing shape any more than I could hide the state of my clothes. "I got it from playing," I told him, tugging my sleeve down to try to cover it.

Mr. Winders didn't look like he believed me and I scurried past him. Before I could leave the apartment he called after me, "If you get hit again, you come back here."

I went back Mr. Winders apartment the next day. He was gruff, and he didn't talk much, but he had a stash of homemade candy from his sister and let me listen to any channel I wanted on the radio. His apartment became my sanctuary and if he didn't talk much, well I talked enough for both of us. Then, after the day my father broke my arm and I had to run to Mr. Winders to have him fix it, he finally got me to tell him who was giving me my bruises. After that he started teaching me how to fight.

I learned fast, and not only because Mr. Winders was a strict teacher. I went to his house every day and he taught me how to punch and block, how to break holds and throw people, how to strike someone in just the right spots. But he also taught me other things: how to expand my ability with wandless magic to break the charms on his door, how to set and break defensive spells, how to put a hex on someone. He even let me use his wand and taught me how to levitate things and cast various spells. I didn't know at the time that children my age weren't allowed to use magic outside of school or even that most of what I was doing would be considered advanced even for students at Hogwarts.

I even learned things he didn't mean to teach me. Like how to move without drawing attention. How to copy accents and movements from other people, instead of just their appearance. And how to cook. Though Mr. Winders and I never made anything exceptional, it was better than the food I got at my father's house.

When I was eleven my Hogwats letter arrived by owl. My father threw it out, mumbling that I didn't need any learning and that he wasn't going to pay for books and wands and cauldrons. I'd been looking forward to going to Hogwarts since I first heard of it, and not only to get away from my father. I wanted to learn, not realizing that Mr. Winders had already taught me most of the basic spells. I wanted to meet other kids. Kids who wouldn't already know me as Susan the Hobo. I wanted to start over and make my own life and my bastard of a father couldn't even be bothered to buy me a wand and take me to the station!

Right after it happened I ran to Mr. Winders apartment and told him everything. Part of my was hoping that he would help me. After all, my father hadn't hit me since he first gave me my fighting lessons three years before. Maybe Mr. Winders would have an answer for this, too.

He did, but it wasn't the answer I was expecting. After looking grave for several minutes, he suddenly asked me if I wanted to run away from home.

After this rather surprising opening he explained to me that he was not a minor curse breaker (something close to a locksmith) but that he worked for the Department of Mysteries. He was an Untouchable. An agent for the Ministry of Magic who did things that had to be done, but that the government would rather not think too much about. Then he told me that I could be an Untouchable as well, that a very few, very special children were used for jobs no adult would be able to complete. And that if I were willing to leave my father and let him adopt me, then I could be one of them.

It wasn't the 'new life' I'd been dreaming of, but it was new. It was new and fresh and exciting and most of all it was away from him.

It took less than a month for the paperwork to be done. My father didn't even know what was going on and I doubt he noticed the day I stopped coming home. I stopped using my Patricia look when I officially became Susan Warnshaw (Mr. Winders' real name) and when I first stepped inside the Department of Mysteries, as every time after that, it was in my natural form. Here, at least, was a place where I wouldn't have to hide from everyone.

For more than three years I worked as an Untouchable. At first it wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped. I made deliveries. I followed people. I worked with adult Untouchables to help make their friendly and harmless guises seem more real. I asked questions and explored places that would have been suspicious if an adult had done them. Basic stuff. I didn't get my first fight until I was 13, and I only killed one man those first three years. And I didn't get my first solo assignment until I was 15.

When I would have been half-way through my fourth year at Hogwarts, the Department got information that Voldemort (none of the Untouchables called him You-Know-Who) was planing something at the Tri-Wizards Tournament. No one could uncover any details, or even confirm what we did know, though there were dozens of witches and wizards trying to do just that. In the meantime, someone had to watch Hogwarts, and maybe even stop Voldemort's evil plot. If he had one. There were only three underage Untouchables at the time, and Hillary was too young at a mere ten-years-old. I was sure Patrick would be sent, but Mr. Winders surprised me on my birthday (not on purpose, it just worked out like that) with the news that my next mission would be to attend Hogwarts as what essentially amounted to a government spy. I was going in order to spy on the kids.

At fifteen, I was a little vain about my looks. I had long, pale blond hair and light grey-green eyes and only a very light tan. Altogether, my coloring gave me a decidedly delicate look, helped by my heart-shaped face, tiny nose, and trim figure. Even though I was a metamorphagus, I stayed in my natural shape as much as possible. But for my mission I would have to blend in as much as possible, be completely forgettable and almost invisible. After a few days of experimenting I came up with a look to match my new code name: Helen Schmidt. As Helen, I was a short girl, neither thin nor fat and with very few curves. I had shoulder length, curly brown hair, brown eyes, and even some non-prescription wire-frame glasses. The only thing distinguishing about me (besides the glasses) was the snub nose I'd worn for the years I pretended to be Patricia. I also had to trade in my official Ministry robes for old hand-me-downs and pick out a leisure wardrobe of faded jeans, t-shirts, and sweaters to take with me. They did, at least, allow me to take the wand Mr. Winders had given me when he adopted me. It was a little too grand to go with the rest of my look, but I could always say it was an heirloom or something. Plenty of people used family wands.

And so I was quietly sorted into Hufflepuff. (The Sorting Hat probably would have put in Ravenclaw, but even my house had been picked for me as part of my cover.) On the outside I was a quiet girl who studied a lot and kept up average grades. When people asked, I told them I'd been home schooled by my Mom until money problems made her go back to work, but few people asked. I even affected a crush on the Hufflepuff champion, Cedric Diggory. No one suspected that I was years ahead of them in their classes, or that within a few months I knew the castle and it's secret passages inside and out. That I was already keeping files of several students (most of them Slytherin) and even more of the teachers.

But I made one fatal mistake. I didn't watch Mad-Eye Moody. He was a famous Auror, a man who had given more body parts to defeating Voldemort than the old Care of Magical Creatures professor had given to his class. If anything I assumed he was on a mission similar to mine and as professional courtesy tried to stay out of his way. Because of this, because I couldn't do the simple job of just watching a school, Cedric died, Voldemort returned, and everyone's lives were thrown into chaos.

Hillary and Patrick joined me as Grace and Aaron, respectively. Hillary came as a normal first year and Patrick blended in with the rush of home schooled kids who parents suddenly wanted them tucked away in a safer place. Though the Department said it was because Hogwarts had become a major target, I first thought it was because I'd failed to stop Crouch. I found out later it was really because the adults thought we'd be safer there. Years of training us and working and fighting with us hadn't managed to override the parental view most of them had.

But it was true that with more kids and more fear and more information, there was more work for all three of us to do. So they gave each of us one more thing to help us and keep us safe.

A time turner.