Well...it's not as long as the last chapter was, but it's a day after the last one so that's got to be something!


After their talk, the trio had returned to the kitchen, Ron red-faced and Hermione tense. Miranda smiled at the other girl, rubbing the backs of her inexplicably sore hands. "I can show you the other library if you'd like. Something to pass the time. You look like the reading type."

The two boys snorted and Ron said, "You've got that bloody right."

Hermione didn't reprimand Ron, instead looking at Miranda curiously, "The other library?"

Miranda nodded, "Yeah, you didn't think that little study upstairs was the only library, did you?"

Hermione appeared flabbergasted, "I mean, I always kind of thought it was small, but some of the rooms could have been libraries a long time ago. The books could have been in a vault somewhere or something."

Miranda giggled, "Even I was never allowed to take a book from the house. The Blacks are one of the oldest dark families remaining. They've got books so dark they would make you take Dreamless sleep for a month."

"They were. They were the oldest. Sirius is dead. He was the last one." Harry said, his eyes filled with gloom.

After a breath Miranda smiled comfortingly, putting a hand on his shoulder, making him look into her eyes, "You might be more related to them than you think. You deserve this house."

"It's a dump!" Ron exclaimed and Miranda shot him a dark look.

"Now, but it wasn't then." She ran her finger over the dusty door frame, "Houses like this need love. Not just cleaning. They need real care. It was always beautiful. The only truly creepy thing was the stuffed elves. Walburga hated them."

Hermione stared at her, like she was a riddle the brainy girl couldn't wait to figure out. "You talk about her, but there's nothing in anything that we know about her that sounds anything like that."

Miranda nodded, "I'm not sure I knew her as well as I thought I did. She did trap me in that room, after all. But maybe that was what happened. She obviously changed after that. Who knows."

Hermione pondered her words for a second, "That's the trouble with the past, isn't it?"

Miranda agreed, "Yes, it is." She took Hermione's hand, "Come on, let me show you. Really, most of the books are fine. You just have to watch out for the ones that try to bite." She took the girl to the other side of the stairs into the sitting room and went to the fireplace, pushing in a section of the wood. The fireplace slid to the side with a horrendous creak and plume of dust which left both girls coughing and their eyes burning. When the cloud settled, Miranda took Hermione in, "This is it. The Black Family Library. I imagine that right about now, some librarian or the like is sobbing over the mere thought of holding even one of these books."

The other girl offered no response... that was when Miranda realized that she was already in the library, skimming her hands over the bindings of the books, and within a second, she was gone from sight around one of the massive shelves. "Well, okay..." Miranda said, leaving the girl and the books alone.

Ron was right outside, of course, "You think you were going to get her into those books and leave?"

They glared at each other, their blue eyes practically sparking, "I was going to go downstairs and see what state the potions room is in. And why are you under the assumption that I want to leave, Ronald? I happen to be perfectly at home in this house."

She looked away, walking to trace her finger over a gold eagle sitting on the marble mantle. "Yeah, creepy house for a creepy girl. I bet you're happy." He snapped.

"You know, Ron. I didn't ask for this." She spun on him so fast he could have sworn her eyes flashed white with anger, "I didn't ask to grow up in an orphanage with only my older brother as comfort, I didn't ask to be taken from him and live with a single man who I'm not even sure about who he was anymore, and I certainly didn't ask to be locked in a room for fifty four years by my best friend. I have spent the last four months trying to make sense of everything, and you are not helping."

Ron couldn't say anything, and didn't, even when the tears started to fall down her face. Harry, who had come upon the two mid fight followed her as she ran up the stairs. She ran to Sirius' room, hesitated in the doorway for an instant before a cloud of dust rose off the surfaces and crashed to the floor in a silent avalanche. Harry and Ron had just made it up to the landing when the door swung shut in Harry's face.

Harry and Ron stared at each other. Ron made an awkward hand movement and chuckled weakly, "You see that?"

"Yeah." Harry mumbled, staring at the closed door. He was stunned, not just by the fact that the door had closed, but the fact that Miranda had already been on the bed when it had. She could do wandless magic. He looked down at the wand in his pocket. This girl was so much more than what she appeared. She wasn't telling them the whole truth. She had a brother? Wouldn't that have been an important thing to mention before, and not just in a fit of anger against Ron? But they hadn't really divulged that much about themselves, had they? It wasn't like she had been told about Ron's siblings after all.

His head started to hurt, and then he realized that it was his scar that was hurting. Voldemort was mad. Unable to find the strength to rush to the bathroom to hide his pain, Harry sunk to the floor, holding his pounding head. "Leave me alone." He whispered in vain, trying to remember what Snape had taught him to do, to clear his mind, but he couldn't.

Thoughts collapsed down in on him:

Sirius was dead.

Dumbledore was dead.

Snape was a traitor.

Dark brown hair and how it might feel.

Suddenly, the pain was worse than ever, blooming in his head, but this time, unconsciousness stayed away.

Miranda felt like a child, sitting on the bed that had once been Walburga's, sobbing over how horribly wrong her life was turning. She should have been an old woman now, sitting next to Walburga and knitting or something else domestic like brewing pain relief potions. Knowing Walburga though, they'd have been concocting some obscure spell on the side while a slightly more sinister potion bubbled in the kitchen. She would have married Alphard, she'd never love him, not really, but she would have done what was expected of her. They'd have married and probably ended up adopting pureblooded children orphaned during the war. Orion and Irma would never have permitted non-pureblooded children into the family knowingly, even if Miranda herself had been capable.

It would have been worth it though. She would have been Walburga's sister that way. It would have been a nice, safe life filled with certainty and stability. That was all gone now, and her best friend had died full of hatred that Miranda wasn't sure she would ever understand. Because even now, even knowing what Walburga and her father had done to her, she couldn't hate either of them, not really. It left her feeling a bit empty. In vain she kept crying in an attempt to fill the void.

To make matters worse, her magical trap had taken a lot more out of her than she'd expected. It had been a spell Walburga had created to give her brothers and vapid females at school nightmares. She had taught it to Miranda so she could have a long distance way to express her displeasure at Alphard should he have ever angered her. Miranda had never used it on him though, had never needed to. If anything, thinking about the spell in retrospect made her cry even harder.

Miranda stopped her juvenile attempt at healing through crying when she heard Harry's back hit the wall. She could hear him on the other side, and instinctually knew he was in pain. She didn't know why, but she knew she needed to go to him, that Tom was hurting him. She yanked the door she had previously slammed shut open and fell upon her knees in front of Harry. He was crying, holding his head and mumbling to himself in panicked tones.

"Shh." She whispered, drawing him to her chest like she could protect him from her brother's intrusion into his mind. She hadn't known that the link between Tom and Harry was that strong. She had assumed that Harry was, like her, a human Horcrux, by the scar on his forehead, a magical mark like the one on her hand. She had never been so damaged by her connection to Tom before though, and seeing Harry practically incoherent was frightening.

An idea struck her when her presence alone didn't seem to ease his pain: She had always felt just a little bit more grounded when her scarred hand had been flush against Tom's.

She moved to sit behind him, pulling him back to rest flush against her and putting her scarred right hand against his own scar. She tucked her face into the side of his neck, her breath falling against his skin, grimacing as his hands clenched around her arm like he was holding himself together by holding on to her. They stayed that way for several minutes, her left arm around his upper body and the fingers of her right hand smoothing his wild hair, all the while, their magicked skin never parting.

"I've got you, just calm down, Harry." She whispered over and over again until, finally, Miranda felt his body relax slowly and his breathing calm. Sitting with him seemed to be as natural as breathing to Miranda, and that scared her more than the implications of his bond to her brother. Even through her brief flirtation with a relationship with Alphard, Miranda had never been so positively affected by the proximity of a man. When things like that had truly mattered to her, she'd worried that her youth had left her damaged beyond repair, that having a man close to her would forever traumatize her. Pressed so closely to Harry, his body resting between her opened thighs, however, feeling each of his breaths rock through her body, every part of her felt alive for the first time in her life.

She curled closer to him, feeling his muscles spasming under the palm of her left hand. For a long while, she just held him, even after the terror seemed to have bled from his body. Consciousness seemed out of reach for him for at least ten minutes, long enough for one of her legs to go numb under his, but not enough for her to want to move the tingling appendage. He smelled warm, and the scent only added to the feeling of coming home, of being whole again. Emotions swelled in her, and she relaxed around him, settling into a state of mind where her only purpose was to calm and comfort him. "Shhh, I've got you. Breathe, Harry."

"Miranda." Her whole chest clenched when he whined her name and gripped her arm, still completely incoherent as he buried his face closer to her hand, his breath hot and sticky on her arm.

Miranda held on, but began urging him to break the connection. "Harry, let go. You've got to let him go."

As soon as Harry started to stir, Miranda moved him off of her, dragging her thighs apart and forcing herself to once again appear to be the proper lady she'd been raised as. She didn't want him to panic about how intimate their position had been. As it was, she was panicking more than enough for the both of them. "Harry?" She asked softly, brushing his hair out of his damp eyes. He looked at her blearily at first and she smiled gently as his eyes slowly but visibly cleared.

His gaze was intense just moments later, and he stared at her in awe, "How did you do that?"

Fear crept back into Miranda's world. How could she possibly tell him the truth? She had to tell him something though, didn't she? And she already cared too much to be able to spin a fantastic story and not feel wretched about it. "I uh…I think you're like me..." She began, having no clue how to explain it all without admitting that her twin brother was probably the monster who had killed Harry's parents.

"Like you? What do you mean? I wasn't in a room for over fifty years, I know that for sure." He said quietly, his attempt at a sarcastic joke falling flat.

"No, I know you weren't, Harry. But we were both marked by powerful magic. Magic that left scars." She showed him her scarred hand and he touched his forehead, his eyes still on her skin.

Harry's green eyes scraped over her permanently damaged skin, at the way it looked so much like how his own flesh was torn, "I've never seen another scar like mine." He squinted slightly, "What's stranger is I can tell it's like mine even though it looks normal."

Miranda nodded in agreement, "Exactly, I noticed yours earlier. I mean those bangs of yours kept it covered a bit, but that's a bit of a nasty scar. Then again, so is mine. It's just easier to keep hidden I suppose."

"How did you get it?" Harry asked, unconsciously shifting closer to her to look at the curves she'd carved into her own hand all those years ago.

Miranda's mouth went a bit dry, "I marked my brother, we were just kids, and we didn't know what we were doing." Her breathing hitched, and she rephrased herself, "I didn't know what I was doing. I cut our hands and we pressed them together. Since then, I've been able to find my brother in my sleep. It feels like astral projection, but I can't talk to him, I'm not strong enough. It didn't really matter back then though, I could see him and that was enough." She hid her face in her hands. "A boy had just died in our orphanage, I was scared, my brother was scared. We just reacted. I didn't know then that I was invoking dark magic. I didn't have a wand and neither of us knew anything that even resembled a spell. I'm honestly not sure how I did it at all."

Harry reached out and took her scarred hand into his, pulling it away from her face, "Hey, however it happened, you just helped me loads. I honestly thought that time was going to kill me."

She touched his forehead briefly with the finger tips of her free hand, a soft smile on her face. Her touch left a trail on his skin that made him shiver, even before she started speaking again, "I heard you were in pain, and I saw you clutching your head. Remembered what you said about your parents and this Dark Lord, and I put it together." She slid her hand out of his, and stared down at her own palms, saying softly, "He really hurt you, didn't he?"

Harry sat up, putting a bit more space between them, though his worry made him want to get closer, "You and your brother, are linked like I am to Voldemort?"

"Yes, sometimes, when he's hurt, I can feel it, but we've been apart for so long, I don't know. I guess our bonds negated each other." Miranda felt herself remembering Alphard from the look on Harry's face, but not in the wistful way she would have expected. A feeling settled in her belly that unsettled her as much as it excited her.

That was the untenable emotion at last declaring itself: lust.

She was lusting after this boy she'd just met, this boy who would probably kill her in an instant if he knew the truth. This boy who looked far too much like the kind of man the woman in her wanted to submit to.

Harry grinned bashfully, unaware of her lurid thoughts, "Thank you. I don't want to worry Hermione and Ron. They think I've gotten my pain under control. Well, actually, they think that I've blocked the link completely, so there wouldn't be any pain."

Miranda smiled tightly, "Than it's a good thing I woke up when I did. I'll help you keep it at bay. We should move before they come looking." She stood, and he followed her as she walked down the stairs.

"Hey, Miranda, your brother? Is he still alive?" He asked. They both stopped on the stairs.

She didn't reply for a minute, thinking about how her heart and mind hadn't decided yet, but then she looked at him, tears welling in her eyes that she furiously blinked away, "Honestly, I don't know."

"I'm sorry." Harry said, and then she couldn't look at him anymore, wiping her eyes and heading to the library to find Hermione. The other girl was happily drowning in books, and Miranda sat with her well into the night, turning the day's events over and over in her head until the boys dragged them out for another meal before insisting that they go to bed.

As she dragged herself up the stairs, Miranda was distracted by the wood under her fingers. One of the trio had either spelled it clean or wiped it down, but the natural material hadn't taken kindly to the rough care. She was past the point of exhaustion already so it wasn't too difficult to retrace her steps and go down the stairs in the kitchen that led to the basement.

The potions room looked better than every other room in the house. The matches were still kept in the same spot, and the candle she lit with a practiced familiarity lit up the darkened space enough for her to take stock of what she had to work with. Obviously someone with a bit of know how had seen to it's care. Everything was carefully labeled in a distinctive scrawl, and not a single one of the vials or their contents appeared to have been left for long enough for time to ravage. None of the three other teenagers had struck her as having the passion required to keep a supply in such good shape. Even with Hermione around they hadn't stood a chance at looking this much better than the rest of the house. They were potions ingredients, not books.

"What are you doing down here?" A voice asked from behind her.

In spite of herself, Miranda jumped like a school girl as she spun around, "Bugger, Harry! You've just scared the life out of me." She scowled at the young man, "I'm too tired to be startled like that."

He gave her a lopsided grin that made her ire disappear instantly, "Sorry 'bout that."

Miranda pulled at the hem of her shirt, mentally making note of the fact that she needed to find a new one to wear. The muggle diner uniform shirt was showing every bit of the scuffles she'd been in, as well as every minute of sleeping on the front stoop. "It's alright."

Harry settled himself on to the bottom step, "So what are you up to?"

Miranda turned back to the ingredients shelf, poking around as she spoke, "I was going to see if the ingredients were here to make a wood polishing potion. It's a fairly easy brew, and the wood in this place needs it desperately." She looked over her shoulder at him, "Who took such care of this room?"

Harry's expression darkened, but, as much as she suspected it pained him, he told her about Severus Snape, the professor that had betrayed them all.

While he'd given her the biography of the Potions Master, Miranda had begun mixing things into a cauldron, grateful that she still recalled the potion and that it didn't require anything more than heat from the fire and careful monitoring. Once a bright orange brew smelling strongly of freshly squeezed lemons was left in the bottom of the cauldron, Miranda extinguished the flame beneath it with a flick of her hand.

She could feel Harry's eyes on her as she carefully suctioned the viscous mixture into a glass jar and screwed the lid on it. "I'll wipe the cauldron out in the morning. Happy side effect of this brew- your cauldron is left cleaner than it's ever been after a night with the residue."

Harry didn't speak for a few minutes, but it didn't bother Miranda. She instead set herself to the task of returning the ingredients she'd used back to their proper place and taking a mental inventory of the new layout and what she could do with the ingredients inside.

"Guess I can give you your wand back." He finally said.

Miranda turned back around to look at him, shrugging one shoulder, "Extinguishing a flame isn't exactly the most riveting wandless magic. Definitely more difficult without a wand though." She took a deep breath, "I would certainly rest easier with it. I think Ronald would be quite satisfied to hex me in my sleep."

"He's just protective." Harry told her, but held her wand out to her, looking it over a second longer than he probably should have.

For a few moments they both held her wand, and she had to wonder if he felt the electricity too, wanted to ask if he knew why they existed in the first place. Cowardice won out, however, and she pulled her hand back with just enough tension to prompt him to let go. "Thank you." She whispered, clutching her wand to her chest. The snake pressed around her wrist under the cuff of her shirt seemed to purr happily at the reunion with it's old friend. The snake, after all, had often served the dual purpose of giving her sight and taking care of her wand.

Harry smiled at her again, and she was instantly distracted, "Least I can do considering you helping me this afternoon."

Miranda tried to smile back, but something told her that her smile wasn't as easy as his was, "It was nothing. I'm sure you'd've done the same for me." She tucked her wand up under her sleeve, barely noticing when the snake twined just a little too tightly around it. "I'll polish the staircase in the morning."

"I could help." Harry offered quickly, "I uh…did a lot of chores growing up."

This time her smile came easier, "I'd like that."

They walked in companionable silence up the basement stairs, through the kitchen, and up the stairs to the landing in front of Walburga's bedroom. "Goodnight, Miranda." Harry whispered, as if he was afraid to break the hypnotic spell of the darkness surrounding them.

Against her better judgement, exhaustion to be blamed of course, Miranda rocked herself on to her toes and brushed a kiss to his cheek, "Goodnight, Harry." She didn't wait to see what, if any, reaction he had to her brazenness, and was asleep in minutes.

It took him a solid ten minutes to move from the spot she'd seemingly rooted him to to go to bed in the living room with the other two.

After breakfast the next morning, Hermione was still gushing, "These are books I've only read about! Some of them were supposedly lost centuries ago."

"We may never get her out of there." Harry commented.

"Walburga loved it in there too." Miranda said as she fingered her wand idly, and spent the next few hours reading next to Hermione, listening to her excitement over the books with a small smile on her face. Having her wand back grounded her, helped her evaluate her new companions more thoroughly.

Hermione was so much like Walburga, a smart, naturally gifted witch with a passion for books and learning. She was also the kind, mothering type, a trait that Walburga had not contained, apparently. She obviously fancied Ron, but the red headed boy was too daft to realize that she felt the same way about him that he felt about her. Miranda knew he was irrational, but only because he was so brave he was stupid and so protective that he would kill for a wrong glance. He was just young, Miranda had a feeling that once he and Hermione finally pulled it together, that he would settle down.

And Harry, Miranda couldn't figure him out. He reminded her so much of Brennan, which made sense if he was who she thought he was, and, at the same time, of Tom and even a little bit of Alphard. Although Alphard had never been any where near as congenial or detailed while cleaning as Harry had been when they'd polished the staircases before breakfast. She had tried quite hard not to blush when he'd marveled at how much better her polish worked than the stuff his aunt and uncle had purchased.

She just couldn't stop looking at him. He was handsome, but nearly as waif-ish as she was. Malnourished as a child, like she had been. His childhood had not been easy. But she couldn't call her childhood easy either. The orphanage had been a nightmare, but only when Tom wasn't with her. She'd nearly blocked out everything that the boys had done to her, covered over the terror with joy and laughter, but still, she remembered, more vividly everyday it seemed.

Harry, on the other hand, seemed like he had not known kindness for long at all. Miranda couldn't relate to that, she'd had someone that loved her her entire life. She'd had Tom, then her Papa, and, up until the very end, she'd had Walburga. Harry was a mystery, and Miranda knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself until she'd uncovered every part of him. Never before had she wanted truly know a man, but something about Harry drew her in more and more with every breath she drew in his presence. He was magnetic. And less than two days in to this new chapter in her life, she knew without a doubt that she was completely doomed.


Let me know what you guys think!

-Jenn