Not only did Danica hear the painful sound of glass breaking and crashing to the floor in a noisy storm of crushed mirror. She felt it. There might've been pieces actually impaled in her back but she wasn't too sure. She lay face down on the ground in the dust and shards of broken glass. Growling under her breath, she heard the gasp and cries of all the others as she hit the wall and went tumbling down. Stupid gravity. Feeling the glass dig into her palms, she lifted herself off the ground, rotating her now sore shoulder back. Shaking the glittering pieces out of her hair, Danica checked her face for any damage. There was a single gash across her right cheek, the blood looking rich crimson against the paleness of her skin. She looked up and across the room.

"Neville-"

"I'm so sorry, Danica! I didn't think that was going to happen! Please forgive me. Just don't hurt me," Neville pleaded, already putting his wand away in his pocket in case he needed to run for it. Danica just held up a palm to silence him and dusted off her clothes, looking behind her to find her wand. Fred already had it and placed it gently in her fingers.

"You alright?" He asked, taking her chin and tilting it to look at the scratch on her cheek. She shook him off and nodded, smiling.

"I'm fine, Fred."

"Would you like me to slip some Puking Pastilles in his dinner tonight?" Fred offered with his Weasley smile. If there was any way that Fred could get back at someone for causing any kind of damage to his girl, it would be a prank. A prank far worse than Puking Pastilles. He just didn't want to tell her what he had in store.

"No, that will not be necessary," Danica said smiling and shooing him away to the crowd. He joined them a little hesitantly but she could hear small parts of his conversation with George. 5 galleons on how badly she was going to beat Neville. Silly boys. Neville wasn't the one going to get hurt.

Danica closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Even from across the Room of Requirement she could hear the sound of Neville hyperventilating and still murmuring apologies under his breath. She tried not to laugh. Instead she thought of memories…people…places that made her upset. She remembered Lupin leaving her alone. She remembered never being allowed to play with other young wizard girls around in the neighborhood because their mothers were scared of Remus, scared of her. The remembrance of lying on the chilled floor as a child in a ball, howling and crying as she watched the full moon rise into the sky.

She raised her wand and charged across the room, her lungs expanding and shrinking with air, her teeth bared as her feet pounded across the floor, reaching Neville at such a speed he would have to react quickly. And now. Danica heard the others beg and scream for her to stop but she ignored them. Dean moved in to grab her but she avoided him. Neville was shaking in fear, drawing his wand, looking to Harry for some sort of direction. Danica looked at Harry, looked him in the eyes. Harry nodded. Pushing Neville forward, he whispered in a low voice,

"Try again, Neville." He shook his head, breathing heavily and preparing for impact.

"Fight back, Neville! Fight back! Glacius!" Her wand emitted an icefall that fell to the floor and travelled with speed between Danica and Neville. Soon the ice would reach Neville and he would be incased in it, frozen down to his very bones. The cackle and hiss of the ice leaving her wand echoed across the room and the crowd standing behind her stared a little open jawed. "Fight me, Neville!"

"Stupefy!" His voice rang out through the room and once again, I was sent flying through the air, stunned, feeling as if I was suspended in a moment in time and everything around me was moving in slow motion, even gravity. That all ended when I hit the ground again, the air leaving my lungs suddenly. My wand landed a few inches from my fingers.

"Well done, Neville!" Danica heard Harry congratulate. Hopefully Hermione stopped her spell from freezing him. That would've been awkward. Sitting up with a strain of effort, Danica rested her elbows on her knees and pushed her hair back away from her eyes, taking in deep breaths. Fred came and sat next to her, patting her back.

"That was a nice thing you did for him. Until you almost locked him in a block of ice." Fred laughed and pulled her closer as she giggled and watched Harry trying to melt the ice off the floor. But the room was already melting it from underneath. Danica looked around the mirror covered hall, lined with the faces of some of her friends and acquaintances. They crowded around Neville and told him that he did a great job, finally, they all added mentally in their heads.

"Ice was the least painful thing I could think of for some reason."

"But you hate the cold." Fred swept some strands of black hair away from her face and then brushed her cheek.

"You're only doing that because Ron is watching from the mirror," Danica said smiling and peering at him from the corner of her eye. He just smiled his mischievous smile and shrugged his shoulders. Typical Weasley Twin behavior.

"Alright, everybody, that concludes today session! Everyone did wonderful today. Next time, if Danica and I believe you are ready, we will start to learn the Patronus Charm." There were a few hoots and hollers as many footsteps went up the stairs and checked the halls for Filch before leaving. Soon, the only ones left in the Room of Requirement were Danica, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Harry. Hermione nudged Ron in the ribcage, motioning with her eyes between Danica and Harry. He nodded.

"Oi, I'm starving. Let's go get supper, shall we?" Ron patted his brother's shoulder as he walked by; automatically signaling that Fred needed to go. Fred frowned but leaned over and kissed Danica's forehead tenderly before rising to his feet, still holding her hand gently.

"I'll see you later," he said softly, only letting go of her fingers when their arms couldn't reach far enough once he started walking away.

Then, there was only Danica and Harry. She approached him from behind as he stood stiffly, silently in front a three sided mirror with two pictures taped to it. One was of a group of people, crowding around each other to fit into the picture, smiling and laughing. If only the Order then knew what was to come. Maybe history could've changed its course. And if it did, everything would've turned out much differently. Would she have been born? Abandoned for Remus to raise? Would she have even met Harry Potter?

The other picture, a rather handsome boy with a dazzling smile posed in a Hufflepuff quidditch uniform. Cedric Diggory. Danica had indeed heard rumors about him. How Harry had supposedly killed him, how Voldermort came back and murdered him on the spot. Or he simply just died in the middle of the final stage of the Triwizard tournament. The one where the Dark Lord used the Killing Curse to end such a promising life was true. My stomach tightened. To witness such a thing, Danica couldn't even imagine. Harry has seen too much, known too much, been knocked down too many times.

"Hey, great lesson today, boss." Danica punched him lightly on the shoulder, smirking. Harry turned just enough so she could glimpse his face. He gave a weak attempt at a smile and turned his attention back to the pictures on the mirror. She followed his gaze to his parents who stood arms around each other, in the front. Remus stood off to the side with Sirius. They both looked so young then. Those smiles and wrinkle-free skin liberated of worries wouldn't last soon.

"You didn't do so badly yourself," Harry finally spoke. Danica hesitated, not quite sure what to say next. She was sort of bad at this stuff.

"They were a good-looking group back then, huh?" She said with a chuckle, her eyes still on Remus' healthier looking face.

"Yeah. I just wish they knew-"

"What was coming for them. I know. Sirius would be in prison for 13 years. Neville's parents tortured until driven mad." She saw Harry's skeptical look and she sighed. "I was told this a long time ago when I had found a picture just like this with Remus. I'm guessing Neville told you as well." Harry nodded. "Yeah, sad story. And your parents of course, I'm terribly sorry-"

"I know. Thank you." Harry said indifferently, shifting from one foot to the other. The conversation was getting a little too uncomfortable for him.

"Forgive me. I've pushed it a tad too much." Danica sat down on the floor, drawing her knees up to embrace them. Resting her chin on her knee caps, she looked into the mirror to see a pale girl with gray eyes staring back at her. The tips of her hair instantly changed to a shade of brown.

Harry sat down next to her, his eyes following the waterfall of black hair turn to brown at the tips. "Why does your hair do that?"

"What? Change colors?" Danica chuckled slightly. "It's a mood reader. Kind of like those mood rings muggles buy thinking they actually work."

"But they seem to change even when your mood hasn't."

"Not only do they change with my mood, but they also change with the mood of the people around me, the emotion in the atmosphere. But there is one person that I have a specific lock on their mood." She tried to hide her smile as to not give it away.

"Professor Lupin." Harry didn't even have to ask. He nodded his head, now able to show hints of a smile. But then it faded. He had been wondering about this since the day he met Danica. He was scared to ask, afraid that he was stumbling on a subject that was rather left untouched. Curiosity, however, got the best of him.

"If you don't mind me asking, Danica…how are you and Professor Lupin related?" he asked softly, watching her from the corner of his eye since she was watching him through the mirror. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, opening her shocking gray irises once again once the breath passed through her lips in an exhale.

"I was abandoned, left for dead only a few days after birth." Harry could see her fingers clutch at her robe, pained to say the words out loud. "My parents, who I don't know, didn't want me. So they left me to die out in the street rather than raise their own child." He could hear the heaviness in her voice, the dry, dull ache of reliving this again. Harry didn't know what it was like to be unwanted by his parents. He knew, all along, that his parents loved him, adored him. That's why his mother had given her life up. So that he would live. Danica's parents would rather her die.

"After being dumped in an alley-way where no one could hear me, see me, not even have the slightest knowledge a baby was lying in a dumpster, I slowly began to lose my only day's old life. But then by luck, by sheer-" she paused, her eyes lighting up with a light that warmed even his insides, "chance, Lupin found me barely alive. Then he took me home where he nurtured me back to health although he had absolutely no experience in child care." They both laughed, breaking the tension in the room.

"That's why he means so much to you." He watched her stare into the mirror, this time at herself. She looked into her eyes. Harry wondered what she saw. Did she see what he saw whenever he looked into those eyes? Did she see a past, dark and dreary, trying to be buried by the only known dirt that could have a chance of entombing memories, time, like he did? Did Danica Lorenzo know Harry could see through the mask she tried to hide behind?

"Yes. That's why."

The silence that fell between them was uncomfortable at first, causing each of them to pick at something as to show they had a reason to stay quiet. Danica chewed on the sleeve of her robe while Harry scratched at grass smudged at the bottom of his shoe. Slowly the absence of talk shifted into comfortable silence. They just sat there, paying attention to little things, or looking up every few moments or so to watch themselves in the mirror. Harry smiled when their eyes met through the reflection which made Danica laugh.

"Harry, I know I've been doing a crappy job of helping you. I've hardly even been a friend," she said softly, now refusing to look at him.

"I wouldn't say that."

"You know it's true." She turned to look at him, her eyes locking with his behind his glasses. "I've been too busy promoting a social life."

"I don't blame you. I'm actually a little grateful. For once not all the attention is on me." Harry chuckled slightly, finding himself unable to look away from her gray eyes.

"Nice to know I helped do something." Danica hugged her knees even tighter. "I'm going to do my job, Harry. The right way from now on. I promise you."

Their eyes stayed locked so then and there Harry knew one thing for sure. He could trust Danica.

Harry joined Ron and Hermione at the Gryffindor table just as Ron was reaching for some more food. Fred and George stopped in mid-conversation, Harry caught snips of it and didn't even want to think about what they had planned or who for. Piling some supper on his plate, he dug in.

"How did it go?" Hermione asked, picking at what little she had eaten, watching Harry.

"It went rather well I believe." He swallowed and looked towards the door to see Danica come down the aisle. Fred immediately removed the leg that had been propped up on the bench in order to save her a seat just in time as she sat down. Without even taking his eyes off George or stopping his mouth from running, Fred managed to pull Danica closer and kiss her hair. Ron made gagging noises. Then he howled in pain as Fred and Danica both kicked him from under the table. Trying to block her own giggles, Hermione hid behind an insanely huge book that Harry noticed she had been trying to finish for awhile now. Everything felt…normal. Except for Fred actually being mushy, Harry saw nothing wrong with this picture. He wished it could all stay like this. That he didn't have to go upstairs in the next few minutes and return to these frightening dreams.

"Harry, did you hear me?" George threw a chicken wing at Harry's head. He managed to duck but it hit a first year in the ear.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Danica and you should have a duel tomorrow." Fred and George said together in union. Their Weasley smiles gave away the fact that they already bet who was going to win. Odds were against him.

"That's not a fair match, mate." Ron wiped some chewed morsels that dangled from his chin. Hermione cringed.

"I agree." Hermione chimed in, finally putting her book down to jump into the conversation.

"What? Because Danica would beat Harry to a pulp?" Danica dug her elbow into Fred's side gently. He looked down at her and a silent conversation passed between them. He sighed and just rested his chin on the top of her head, waiting for Harry to make a decision.

"Considering she is the youngest member of the Order and practically liable to become an Aurora, Harry should be scared." Everyone at the table instantly told George to shut his mouth since other people had tuned into their conversation. And knowing their amount of luck, someone probably overheard Danica's secret. Hermione glared at George until he was forced to whistle and reach for another chicken wing as if no one was watching. Nice going, George.

"Fine. I'll fight Danica tomorrow," Harry finally said after the anticipation of an answer grew to an extreme. Danica smiled her radiant smile, the mischievous look that Fred adored so much lit behind her eyes.

"Bring your A game, Potter."