Summary: Miranda confronts hard truths, and she and Harry briefly reunite in full on reality.
Miranda's newfound friendship with Pansy did come with an unexpected downfall. She now had two mother hens. So of course Pansy noticed when she fled to their shared ensuite to vomit for the fifth time in a week.
"You look terrible." Pansy said in greeting to Miranda one morning in the last full week of March.
Miranda scowled at her new friend, "Good morning to you too."
"You missed our first class."
"Surprised you noticed, you usually spend that class staring at Zabini." Miranda wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, knowing she'd cleaned herself up but still feeling like she had her breakfast dripping down her chin. Another student walked past with a muffin and the smell of it had Miranda gagging again.
She passed it off as a cough. Or so she hoped.
The Carrows were off visiting her brother so she had a request of the dear headmaster that he wasn't likely to approve of. After shaking off a concerned Pansy, Miranda made her way to Snape's office, waiting outside for him to return from tormenting some students.
As always, he was thrilled to see her, "Miss Riddle, what a pleasant surprise. You should be in class." He growled the last statement, but swooped in to his office and allowed her to follow behind.
Swooping magnificently to sit behind his desk he stared at her. Miranda sighed, "You are absolutely not going to like this, but I need to share a secret this office has hidden from you."
"As headmaster I am aware of everything in this office." He snapped.
Miranda arched an eyebrow at him, "Really? Did you know there's a portal in here?" His silence was all the answer she needed. "A portal home." Miranda whispered, wandering around the office, looking for anything that reminded her of her papa's side of the portal.
"Where is home?" Snape asked, moving to cover several of the Headmaster's portraits. He reached to cover Phineas Nigellus up, Miranda shook her head.
"You can leave him, he won't tell anyone anything we say." She sighed, "And as for home, I once lived in Nurmengaurd with a man who was just as much my father as any real father can be." But that was what she was worried about. The instant she had found out that the day she was released from the room in Grimmauld place was the same day Albus Dumbledore had died, an ache had begun deep in her chest. Before it all ended, she wanted to know the truth.
"Gellert Grindelwald." Snape ascertained sharply. "It was rumored that he had a secret dwelling hidden in one of the prisons.
Miranda felt like she was moving in slow motion, walking around the sides of the room, her fingers tracing along the bottom of the frames, "Those rumors were true. That hidden dwelling was a castle in it's own." She paused in front of one portrait, "That castle was also the first place I met this man." The pained face of Albus Dumbledore looked down at her. Miranda moved to uncover a large mirror placed to the right of the Headmaster's desk, lifting a heavy red embroidered tapestry. Dumbledore looked away.
She looked at it closely, trying to remember what she had seen her father do to the mirror that had resided in his study in Nurmengaurd. Miranda finally settled one hand on either side of the heavy gold frame. "Hinc monstra mentiens." Nothing happened, and Miranda laughed at herself, "Well, that was the password on my father's side. I guess this one is different."
"The password for what?" Snape asked, standing behind her to look in the mirror. He was shocked to see two very different people reflected in the glass. Miranda looked broken, like she was a scared child looking for someone to cling to, and he looked just the same, dark and brooding, tainted.
"This mirror," Miranda said, "is a distant cousin of the Mirror of Erised. It has a brother in Nurmengaurd. My father used it to visit with his lover, your very own Albus Dumbledore." She hissed in realization, "Arianna." The reflective surface of the glass dimmed until another study could be seen.
An aged Gellert Grindelwald looked up in alarm. His face paled, "Miranda?"
She took a steadying breath, resisting the urges of the small child inside of her that wanted desperately to step through the window and hug him, "I have some questions I need to ask you."
Gellert rushed to the glass, putting his wrinkled hands on the glass that only acted as a path on her side. "Anything, Miranda, anything you want to know. Are you alright? I'm so happy to see you."
"I'm not here to have a reunion." Miranda said sharply. "Did you plan this?"
"Plan what?" The imprisoned wizard said.
Miranda suddenly felt like bursting into tears, but clenched her fists instead. "Did you ever care about me, or was I just a pawn for you to ruin my brother?" Gellert's mouth fell slack, revealing a missing molar. Miranda studied his panicked expression and closed her eyes, "That's all I needed to know." She moved away from the mirror window.
"Miranda, no, Pet, please, listen to me. I need you to understand somethings." He yelled to her. "Miranda!"
"What!" She yelled back, and Snape was stunned by the venom in her voice and how the air stirred around them with more intent than was natural. "What can you possibly say to make any of this better? You saved me from that hell hole of an orphanage just so you could fatten me up to die sixty three years later? It's no coincidence I woke up the day Albus died. You knew that The Dark Lord would never truly try to take over while he was alive! You just couldn't guarantee I would live that long on my own! That's all I am to you! I'm the bloody Dark Lord's Pawn!"
Gellert just wanted to be able to reach through the glass to hold her, but the only way he could ever hold his daughter again was if she stepped through the glass. Guilt racked his body, "Miranda, I can tell you want to hear the truth, so I'm going to tell you exactly that. You're right, that was originally my plan. I needed your brother to forget about you. But that doesn't mean that I didn't grow to care for you."
"Grow to care for me? Like I'm bloody moss?" Miranda hissed, aghast.
He thumped his fists against the glass, "Listen, Pet, please. Love is not something I thought myself capable of, but you are a keeper of more than one great gift. You showed me that I wasn't as far gone as I had thought."
Miranda muttered a silencing spell to keep Snape from hearing even more than he already shouldn't have, "You kept an obscurial as a pet and it turned out better than planned. Love? I'm not so sure about that."
Gellert pulled his white hair out of his face anxiously, "You are the whole reason that I surrendered to Albus, Miranda. I went too far, the Greater Good." He shook himself off that line of thought abruptly, "I knew he would ensure I was imprisoned in Nurmengaurd so I could remain here in our home, surrounded by all the memories I held of you. I love you, Miranda, you are my daughter."
Miranda smiled grimly at him, "I wish I could believe you. I really do. But how could you sentence someone you loved to die?"
"Why are you dying?" Gellert asked, panicked. "I thought you looked a bit ill."
"The prophecy. If I live, they both die." Miranda said, wrapping her arms around herself. "You can't tell me you didn't know."
Gellert became enraged, "Of course I didn't know! I would never sentence you to death! Let the boy die! Let your brother die. He is corrupt. The Tom you remember will never be there ever again. And what do you care about Albus's boy?"
Miranda laughed, a dark, maniacal sound that reminded Snape greatly of Bellatrix. "You messed up, father!" She spat the last word mockingly, "I love him, that boy. I love Harry James Potter!" Her voice fell, "I love him more than my own life."
Gellert stared at her, trying to reconcile the woman in front of him with the girl he had raised so many years before.
Deep in his heart, he knew what had happened. While he hadn't been looking, she had become the person she was always meant to be. The traumatized, yet whimsical child was gone, and in her place was a self sacrificing woman he could be no prouder of. She had become for Harry what he had always wanted to be for Albus. Somewhere, in all of his missteps and blunders with her upbringing, she had gained the skills to rise above the anger and evil. "For that, Miranda, I love you even more. I'm so proud of you." He said softly, making a decision that would end his own life.
Staring at him, she slowly pushed her hand through the glass, and he closed his hand around her's like it was a lifeline. She wanted to sink through the mirror and fall into his embrace, but she couldn't. She had a role to play in all of this madness, and unlike him she couldn't hide from it. And she could never be certain of how he felt, not knowing now what she was. "What do you know about obscurials?"
Gellert spoke for a long while, telling her everything he knew about what she was, the whole time stroking her hand and holding it to his face, somehow knowing she was never going to let him hold her again. Once he had told her everything, including the glossed over stories of her wiped memories, Miranda pulled her hand back through the glass. He stared at her again, mismatched eyes filled with unshed tears, "Goodbye, Pet."
"Goodbye, Papa." Miranda whispered before allowing the red curtain to fall back over the glass as she pulled her hand back. She burst into tears, and buried her face into the robes of a stunned Severus Snape.
He let her cry for a good long while before pulling her off of his robes. "You must get back to your dormitory." He said sternly before adding in a somewhat kinder tone, "The Carrows should be back soon."
Miranda went to bed that night utterly exhausted, and woke vomiting again.
Pansy held her hair back for her as she dry heaved. "You know, this is beginning to become a habit."
Miranda moaned, "I don't know what I ate that would have done this."
Pansy raised an eyebrow at her, "Seriously?"
Miranda wiped her face with a rag, staring cluelessly at the other girl. "What?"
"You were most certainly raised by a man in the nineteen nothings." Pansy commented snidely as she ducked back into her room, returning a moment later. "Here, take this and we'll see."
"I don't understand." Miranda said, holding the potion vial Pansy had thrust at her as if it might burst in to flames at any given moment.
Pansy rolled her eyes, "For the love of Merlin. Miranda, you'd been galavanting around a forest with a handsome unattached half blood, you're glued to the hip with the most eligible bachelor here, you haven't had a monthly since just after you got here, and you've been puking your guts out all week. Not to mention you've looked more than a little green these last few days, even when you aren't offering your meals to the loo."
"Oh."
Pansy's eyebrows threatened to reach her hairline as she mocked Miranda's sharp intake of breath, "Oooh? Seriously? I thought you were smarter than this."
"You think I'm…" Miranda couldn't even bring herself to say the word. "But I…I can't be."
"Have you shagged anyone recently?" Pansy asked, and Miranda felt herself nod. She hadn't even thought about the consequences of her dalliances with Harry not being dreams, and if she had this one would never have crossed her mind. "Well, that's all you need."
"As a child…" Miranda began, stumbling over the words, "I was told I could never…that I am infertile due to…injuries."
Pansy looked pensive for a moment, "Did muggles tell you this?" Miranda nodded again, and Pansy laughed, "Yikes! Surely you've taken a healing potion since then. That probably fixed whatever happened right up. You've probably been able to get up the duff for years. Shoulda been on the potion like me. Not fool-proof, but it's worked well enough so far I haven't needed to get this vial from my aunt out before."
Miranda glanced at the vial in her hand, "Is this…will it tell me if…you're right?"
It was Pansy's turn to nod, and she pulled out the stopper for the other girl, "Oh, go on. Unless you'd rather do it alone…"
"No!" Miranda cried, putting a hand on the other girl's arm, "Please, stay. I won't know what to look for, and…I don't want to be alone."
An unusually kind look passed over Pansy's unconventional features, and she settled back onto the stone floor beside Miranda, nodding slightly, "Alright, let's get on with it then."
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had run for nearly a week after Harry had stupidly said Voldemort's name aloud, saved by Hermione's quick thinking. Harry had spent most of the time they weren't running sitting next to Ron's radio listening about Miranda on PotterWatch. She seemed to be all over it know that he knew it was her.
His chest always hurt. She was alive, like he had wanted, but she wasn't the same person in his mind anymore. Miranda was Voldemort's sister. Her betrayal hurt worse than any injury he had ever suffered. Harry had ceased to have dreams of children with Miranda, replaced by ones in which they alternated killing each other.
The other two were in shock too. Hermione couldn't believe that the kind girl that had shared her love of books was Voldemort's twin sister, and Ron couldn't believe that he had let her change his opinion of her. Harry had even gone to Ron, humbled, "You were right, Ron. I should have listened to you then. I'm so sorry."
The two boys had sat next to each other in silence, both understanding that things were going to change now. With Miranda at Hogwarts, the whole situation had gotten much worse. Voldemort was getting stronger, more violent. Something about Miranda gave him a strength he hadn't had before, "He's becoming more controlled." Harry had said. "He was becoming sort of mixed up, but now he's going back to how he was before."
After another sudden uptick in Snatchers, they went on the run again. Hermione had warned them just a minute before the Snatchers caught up to them. She had turned to Harry and slammed a spell into his face. "I'm really sorry, but this should buy us some time!" They had been captured anyway, and dragged to Malfoy Manor.
The instant they had apperated into the Manor, Harry had felt Miranda. He knew she was there. What he couldn't decide was if he wanted to see her or not. Part of him wanted to see her, that was the part that loved her still and wanted to know why she had done what she had done. The other part of him though, wanted to make her feel how he felt, like his entire world had ended. He wondered if she even cared that she had hurt him so badly.
When they had stripped the trio of their belongings, they had neglected to take the locket from around his neck, and it was a small comfort. He didn't know why he still kept it. It made him angry, but it still made him feel connected to her. Sometimes, he felt like it was still influencing his emotions, but he knew that it couldn't be possible, that the Horcrux was gone. He and Ron had destroyed it. He waited for whatever they were going to do to him.
It couldn't be worse than what Miranda had done to him mentally. He could survive, he would survive, and he was planning on taking his anger out on one Lord Voldemort.
Back at Malfoy Manor for the Easter holiday, Miranda woke in the middle of the night when she was suddenly struck with an ache in the pit of her stomach. She tried to go back to sleep, ignoring the feeling, but was alerted to a commotion coming from below her room in the dining hall. She got out of bed and noted instantly that Draco's bed was already empty.
She went down the stairs quietly, her silk robe wrapped tightly around her, hand on her stomach soothingly. The feeling in her belly was a familiar one, confirmed by a slight sting that shot across her scarred hand. She heard Narcissa talking in a panicked manner, "Is it him? Please, Draco. Is it him? Is this Harry Potter?"
Miranda felt her heart drop through the floor and she stood breathless until she heard Draco's voice say, "No, it's not. Even Potter's not that ugly."
"Look again tomorrow, Draco." Bellatrix's harsh voice said. "Peter! Put him back in the dungeons, but not in with his companions. Can't have them figuring out how to escape."
Miranda let out a huge sigh of relief. She knew it was Harry, without even seeing him. Draco, her now dear friend, had lied.
She stood in the shadows until the others had gone back to bed after a skirmish with the Snatchers over a sword. Once all was silent again, she moved to the door to the dungeons. Peter was asleep next to the door, and she cast a sleeping charm on him so he would stay that way.
"Lumos." She whispered, trying not to cause any noise.
Harry must have sensed her though. "Miranda?"
She found him in a small stone cell off to the right of the opening to the larger, barred, enclosure. "Harry, are you alright? I heard they found you. I've been so worried!"
He stared up at her from his seat on the cold hard ground, more critically than he had since that first day in Grimmauld Place. "You're his sister."
She nodded in confirmation, "I kept from you that Tom Riddle was my twin brother."
"Was?" Harry asked with a short laugh.
Miranda nodded again, "He's gone. Whatever the creature using that horrid anagram of his name is, he is not my brother. There's only one man I love, and he is right in front of me. I've always done all I can to help you."
He heard her. Really heard her. The lies and half truths had been there. He had foolishly chosen to ignore them, but he didn't see any signs that she wasn't being completely honest with him. The bond between them echoed truth. Miranda shivered once, and he reached towards her instinctually. She hesitated for a moment, seeming utterly confused by his actions, but then practically threw herself down to his side. Miranda started crying, burying her face in his dirty shirt and holding on to him. "You've finally told me the truth." Harry whispered, "I wish you'd told me at first."
"Me too." Miranda whispered, wiping her face on her sleeve.
Harry buried his face in her hair, "I'm horribly naive, aren't I?"
"We share something no one else can fathom, it's no real surprise we feel the way we do." Miranda explained, relishing in the feeling of his skin under her fingers and the beat of his heart pounding through the ear she had pressed against him. "Oh, Harry." She sighed, forcing herself to put some semblance of space between them, "We should talk."
"We will." He growled, reaching to grab her face in his hands and crush his lips to hers.
Miranda returned his ferocious kiss feverishly, completely focused on him, casting all thoughts of truth and life aside in favor of immersing herself in feeling him and knowing the experience was real. She needed to talk to him though. HAD to talk to him. He deserved to know everything. She should push him away again, insist they behave like adults and use this brief time to speak about life-changingly important things, but she just couldn't. The throb in her core was there again, and he was the only thing she wanted to think about.
"Miranda! Potter!" Draco's harsh voice snapped the air back in to the room. He took one look at him, his handsome face contorting in disgust. "Merlin's Beard! There's no time for this. My father's old elf is here for you. You need to go!"
Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the exit Draco was gesturing to, but Miranda pulled back, "I can't go, Harry. If I'm with you he will search even harder. Here I can distract him, keep a closer eye on him." She shoved him towards the door his friends, their friends, were waiting beyond, "Go, Harry!"
He wouldn't go, "Like hell I'm leaving you here."
"Draco!" Miranda shrieked when the blond half tackled Harry and threw him through the arch, where the waiting elf grabbed him and popped away just as Bellatrix rounded the opposite corner and shot off a curse.
Just when Miranda registered the relief of Harry being safe again, she registered Draco. Still. Splayed out on his stomach, his wand rolling ominously across the stone floor from his limp fingers.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter!
-Jenn