Another chapter for you all!
Miranda passed Hermione another book from the top shelf, which the girl had asked her to reach for even though Miranda herself was only a scant two inches taller. She had a feeling that it was just to make her feel useful. Past the initial awkwardness, Miranda could see herself becoming good friends with Hermione.
She wasn't the only one keeping an eye on the other inhabitants in the house, apparently, and Harry noticed when she let her gaze travel up the stairs to look at the portrait she'd heard scream obscenities in a horrid mockery of Walburga's voice. "What was she like? I mean I remember all the things Sirius said over the years, and obviously the painting, but…"
Miranda nodded her head, "She wasn't anything like that."
Harry laughed softly, "I'd have to think that. No way Sirius could have been the way he was with her always being like that awful portrait."
Miranda stood from the chair she'd been sitting in, and walked back into the back of the library. "Walburga's mother taught us about pensieves, I could show you what she was like back then, if you're interested." She returned to the living room with a pensieve on her hip.
Harry stared at the bowl, eyebrows furrowed, "Just when I think I've seen everything there was to see in this house you open up another hidden door."
Miranda laughed, "You didn't think this was the stronghold of the Ancient House of Black for nothing, did you? And I only know about half of the tricks this old house has up it's sleeve." She sat the bowl down, "Would you like to see them? Your Sirius' parents, as I remember them?"
"I think I would." Harry said, smiling at her. "You know how to use one of these?"
She nodded, "Walburga used to call me a Jack-of-All-Trades. I'm halfway decent at a couple things, know a little about a lot, and never have nearly enough time to be truly brilliant at potions, which is what I actually have a passion for." Miranda pulled a few threads of memory from her head with her wand, letting them drip into the bowl. She held a hand out to him, "Let's go then. Nineteen forty-four."
The memories were easy to fall in to, and Harry was stunned to find them standing in Olivander's shop where a much younger Olivander, "My, good morning, Miss Black."
Harry turned to look at the girl who had just entered the shop. Her coloring was similar to Miranda's, hair long and dark, but her eyes were the same as Sirius', and shone with the same zest for life that his had up until the very end.
Olivander ducked into the back room and a slightly younger Miranda ran out and embraced Young Walburga Black. They broke apart and Walburga hugged an elf tightly, who appeared to squeak in surprise and fall off the back side of counter, only to reappear, ruffled, but unharmed back on the counter top just a few feet away. He made a scolding motion to the girls, shaking his head. "Miss Black you should not startle Claudius."
Walburga smiled at him, "Oh, come on, you love my hugs."
"Claudius does not." The elf insisted.
Younger Miranda leaned against the counter with a half amused, half bored look on her face while the elf and heiress bantered good naturedly. Walburga finished talking to him, grabbed Miranda's wrist and pulled her out through the door, waving at Olivander, who had returned from the hall of wands.
Younger Miranda giggled as Walburga led them away from the main road. "Burga, where are we going? Claudius will be mad if we stray too far."
"Don't fret about it, we'll be back soon enough. I just need to show you something first." Walburga said.
Younger Miranda shrugged, and smiled, "Alright, just as long as it's not another one of your Black books, you know I can't read half of them."
"I know!" Walburga quipped, "You say that all the time. I promise, it's not a book."
They'd been walking for nearly ten minutes when the dilapidated Hog's Head appeared, "Burga, where are we?" Younger Miranda asked while the older one beside Harry looked a little sad, "I've never been this far off the road."
"You'll be fine, Randa, I can protect you. I used to come here all the time, my elder cousin Cassiopeia used to bring me here. I think she fancies the owner. Personally I don't see the appeal, he's a bit on the old side." She tugged on the other girl's hand, "Hurry up!"
Walburga ushered her inside, waving at the man behind the counter, "Hello, Aberforth! Mind if I go to the basement?"
The man shook his head, "Go ahead, Miss Black. Would you like me to bring down a beverage or two?"
"No, that won't be necessary. We'll be gone in no more than an hour. Have to get back to school. Cassiopeia is planning on visiting Hogsmead next week, by the way." Walburga said as she walked to a door that apparently led to the inn's basement.
The three teenagers stood awkwardly in the small basement. "Burga, what did you want to show me?" The young girl said, only mildly impatient.
Walburga moved towards an empty spot in the room, her voice low and almost sultry, "Do remember the boy I've been writing about?" The girl nodded, "I want you two to meet." Walburga finished, pulling what Harry instantly recognized as his Invisibility Cloak off a tall man about Harry's age with strawberry-blonde hair and familiar green eyes. "This is my boyfriend, Brennan Evans."
Harry pulled back from the memory, staring at Miranda, who's face was just as dripping wet as his was, "Brennan Evans?"
Miranda nodded, "I know the tree upstairs lists Sirius' father as Orion, but…"
Harry blinked rapidly at her, "My mother was Lily Evans. She had the same eyes."
A sort of sick dread made itself known in the back of Miranda's throat, "I uh…I assumed you knew. Brennan Evans was a muggle born, and when I was locked in the room behind that terrible painting, Walburga was six weeks pregnant with his child. They were going to be married once he came back from the British Navy. I don't know how it all ended up, but…they loved each other, and she always swore their first son would be named Sirius. I assumed you knew."
"Filthy traitor! Back stabber! You swore to never say a word! Silence yourself!"
Miranda looked up the stairs woefully, hearing the achingly familiar voice, "I'm so sorry, Burga, but I have to tell him."
"No!" The portrait screamed again, the curtains billowing out. Miranda spelled them shut with a whispered word and swish of her wand.
"Orion was not Sirius' father." Miranda told him assuredly, "His father was a muggleborn, Sirius was a half-blood. That photo you showed me the other evening…he may have had Walburga's coloring, but everything else seems to be Brennan."
"My mother…" Harry whispered.
Miranda nodded, "Must have been Brennan's younger brother. I met him once, he was only a child. His name was Robert, they called him Bobby. Brennan doted on him."
She looked back up at the young man, feeling better that she finally knew why he'd seemed so familiar. She'd spent a lot of time with Brennan after all, through much of his and Walburga's courtship. She'd been to his family home before, where she'd met the little boy who'd shared Brennan's eyes, eyes he'd passed to his daughter, and then they'd come to rest in the young man she'd been drawn to since the moment she first saw him.
Miranda reached out instinctively, taking his hand into hers for the second time in one day, "Oh, Harry, Sirius was Lilly's cousin, he was your cousin, that's what I meant when I said the house was yours. It would have gone to you, through the paternal line. Brennan's line, not Orion's."
Suddenly it made sense to Harry, why he had always felt so good with Sirius, they were actually related, "Thank you." Harry said.
Miranda understood. She understood the gap between knowing who you are and just having a gut feeling that you were meant to connect with someone, "You're welcome."
Harry blinked back tears, and laughed, "I'm really glad you followed us from that diner."
"Sometimes history isn't exactly as it was written." Miranda told him, gesturing back at the bowl, "We could keep looking if you'd like. I've been so angry at her recently it's nice to remember just how full of life she was, how funny he was. Brennan wanted to be an actor, he always made me laugh, got the three of us in to trouble when we fumbled behind him in muggle London. Told us all sorts of things that weren't quite true…nearly got us arrested once."
She continued telling stories for the rest of the morning, and they never touched the pensieve again. They both felt better by the time lunch came around, and Harry spent the afternoon with Ron trying to come up with a plan while Miranda and Hermione read in the study, discussing their own half baked plans as Hermione discovered a world of information that was all beyond what Miranda could really understand. At least one of them could.
Both dark haired girls froze, however, when they heard a deep voice from the entry way, "It was not I who killed you, Albus."
Hermione jumped up shouting, "Harry!"
Miranda followed after a few stunned seconds, feeling like a confused puppy running after it's owner, "Hermione!" She called softly, stopping when she could see the intruder, but he could not see her.
Harry was pointing his wand at the middle of a cloud of dust, "Don't move!"
Her Papa had trained her well. For him, protecting her had meant nights spent learning strategies of escape and how to stay out of sight. She'd learned how to apperate by the time she turned fourteen. Wandlessly by fifteen. One of the few things she was able to do wandlessly without it being a complete mess. She wasn't even sure she had managed to replicate Walburga's memory implantation spell without completely destroying the minds of the two men.
Right after Harry yelled, a familiar voice started to yell from the portrait at the top of the stairs, "Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house-"
Ron and Hermione ran down the stairs, stopping behind Harry, just a few steps up from the last. Harry kept his wand pointed at the stranger, "Hold your fire, it's me, Remus!"
"Oh, thank goodness," said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at the portrait and, with a bang, closed the curtains over it. Silence fell.
Only Harry did not lower his wand like his two friends had, "Show yourself!" he called.
The man moved forward, his hands raised, and his face more clearly illuminated. He was a ragged man, with small scars on the visible skin of his body. She recognized those scars, and felt a shiver of fear run down her back. Her father had had an acquaintance who had scars like that. He had been a werewolf. Fenrir Greyback had terrified her as a child. She'd never liked the way he'd always looked at her. It had reminded her too much of how the boys in the orphanage had looked at her. She wasn't something to eat and she wasn't anyones play-thing. Greyback had made it more than clear she would be both if he ever got the chance.
This werewolf looked different though, sadder, more human, less wolf. But still, her deeper instincts told her to hide, so she pulled back to the top of the stairs, peeking through the bars and, sitting so she could hear their voices and where, if Ron came looking as he usually did when she'd been out of sight too long, they could find her easily.
"I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder's Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag."
Harry sagged in relief, dropping his wand, "Oh, all right, but I had to check, didn't I?" Miranda relaxed instantly. If Harry didn't see him as a threat, then he wasn't. Inexplicably, Miranda trusted his judgment implicitly.
The werewolf smiled weakly, "Speaking as your ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I quite agree that you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn't be quite so quick to lower your defenses." Then they were all the way down the stairs, Hermione flinging her arms around Remus for a quick hug.
She went back to stand next to Ron and Remus looked at the dust on the floor, "No sign of Severus, then?"
"No," said Harry. "What's going on? Is everyone okay?"
"Yes," The man said, and Miranda noticed that some of the tension in the other three lessened. Hermione, in fact, looked close to tears of relief. "but we're all being watched. There are a couple of Death Eaters in the square outside-"
"We know-" Harry said.
Miranda had never been one able to keep her mouth shut, something that had gotten her regular scoldings from Walburga's mother. "They were there earlier, but those are different ones now."
Remus raised his wand and pointed it at her, "Who are you?"
Harry pulled his mentor's hand down gently, "It's okay, she wants to help us."
The older man practically growled, "Is she a Death Eater?"
"She's not marked." Hermione said, meeting Miranda in the middle of the stairs. "She hasn't done anything since she got here."
"And how did she get here?"
Miranda swallowed hard, shoring her bravery, "I followed them, and before you spell me into oblivion, I'd been here before. Except, the last time I was here, there wasn't a Fidelius charm on it, and Walburga Black was nineteen."
Remus did the math in his head, "That would have been..."
"Fifty four years ago, I was seventeen. I still am, actually." She pointed up to the top of the stairs. "I was in that room, behind that awful portrait, frozen for more nearly three times my life. I woke up four months ago. I saw Harry, Ron and Hermione in the cafe I was working at, they were attacked and I followed them."
Miranda didn't know why this man ruffled her feathers so badly, but she just didn't want him to keep glaring at her. "You were in this room because?"
She could only tell him what she'd begun telling herself, "Because people I loved thought I wasn't safe out in the world any longer. And I want to help because since I woke up, I thought I'd never be able to come back to the Wizarding world. So now that I know that everything is in a mess, I want to fix it. I want all of this to stop. And I'm not one of the Death Munchers, or what ever they're called. Until the others told me about them, I didn't even know there were such things."
Remus looked at her critically, particularly how her hand remained joined with Harry's, "You really are from then, aren't you?" Miranda nodded, "Then, you must have gone to Hogwarts, what do you know about a boy named Tom Riddle?"
"I never went to Hogwarts. I was home schooled." Miranda said, her voice tight, not meeting anyone's gaze. She pulled her hand from Harry's. She couldn't lie to them, or they wouldn't trust her, but that didn't mean she couldn't leave things out, "I only know about the school what Walburga told me about it, and that wasn't much. She liked to keep her school and home lives separate. As much as she could with Brennan at least."
Remus looked disappointed, "Why were you home schooled?"
Miranda smiled, it was easier to think about her Papa when she wasn't thinking about the way he'd trapped her and ruined Walburga's life in the process, "My Papa was a bit of a survivalist. No school, no being outside without someone watching me, and no friends he didn't approve of. And also, apparently, I was no longer allowed to go anywhere at all. Hence the room behind that lovely painting." She shook the rising anger off, "Enough about me though. I'm here to help you all. What are we going to do now? We can't stay here too much longer."
"We'll have to head out soon, that much is true. May I ask, what impossible task Dumbledore has sat upon you all?" Remus asked.
"No, you can't." Harry said, a little snappishly.
"Alright then, don't tell me, but will four become five?"
"No. Is there something going on between you and Tonks? Where is she, anyway?" Harry asked, sizing up his rugged mentor.
"No, she's fine, with her parents." The man said tersely.
"Why is she at her parent's?" Hermione asked.
"She...we...we're having a baby." he said, a dismal look on his face.
"Congratulations!"
"How great!"
Miranda had to hold back her grimace at Remus' news. She couldn't help that reaction, it was the same one she had anytime she saw children or pregnant woman. The boys that had hurt her as a child had taken the ability to have children of her own from her. Since she had been fourteen or so, the pang of longing and jealousy had been a constant shadow over her life. Walburga being pregnant had been a hard pill to swallow, but she was a big girl, she could handle it and she wouldn't hold it against Remus that he, a werewolf, was going to have a child and she never would.
Remus only forced a small smile that looked more like the grimace Miranda had smothered. "So...do you accept my offer? Will four become five? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined."
The rest looked to Harry, Miranda biting her tongue, somehow knowing the cauldron of trouble Remus had just set off. "Just-just to be clear," he said. "You want to leave Tonks at her parents' house and come away with us?"
"She'll be perfectly safe there, they'll look after her," said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. "Harry, I'm sure James would have wanted me to stick with you."
"Well," said Harry slowly, "I'm not. I'm pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren't sticking with your kid, actually."
The werewolf's face turned white. "You don't understand." He said at last.
"Explain, then," said Harry.
"I-I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since."
Harry nodded, and Miranda moved to grab his hand, which he gripped tightly. She understood his anger, and he knew it. What he didn't know was that the anger in him reminded her of the anger she'd felt in Tom, and only her holding his hand had let the anger flee his body. The same was true for Harry, but it left him coldly calculating, "I see," He said tightly, "so you're just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?"
Lupin sprang to his feet: his chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face. Miranda couldn't help flinching away from him when he started yelling. "Don't you understand what I've done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I've made her an outcast!"
The wolf kicked the chair. "You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore's protection at Hogwarts! You don't know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don't you see what I've done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child-the child-" He started pulling on his own hair, looking just as deranged as Walburga had. "My kind don't usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it- how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!"
"Remus!" Whispered Hermione, tears in her eyes. "Don't say that- how could any child be ashamed of you?"
Harry's hand clenched on Miranda's and she fought the urge to pull her hand out of the ferocious grip, but could tell he would truly lose it if she did. She'd only pulled her hand out of Tom's once while he was angry. "Oh, I don't know, Hermione," he said. "I'd be pretty ashamed of him." This rage was new in Harry, even Miranda could tell that much, and she knew she was the cause. Whatever his connection to her brother, her presence both soothed and agitated it. He continued on, "If the new regime thinks Muggle-borns are bad, what will they do to a half-werewolf whose father's in the Order? My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon he'd tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us?"
"How- how dare you?" Remus growled, "This is not about a desire for-for danger or personal glory-how dare you suggest such a-"
"I think you're feeling a bit of a daredevil," Harry said. "You fancy stepping into Sirius's shoes-"
"Harry, no!" Hermione begged him, but he continued to glare into Lupin's livid face.
"I'd never have believed this. The man who taught me to fight dementors- a coward."
Lupin drew his wand so fast that only Miranda was able to react fast enough, throwing herself in front of Harry. With a loud bang, the pair flew into the kitchen wall, Harry wrapping his arms around her instinctively, her head cracking against the wall over his shoulder as he glimpsed the tail of Lupin's cloak disappearing out the door.
"Remus, Remus, come back!" Hermione cried, but Lupin did not respond. A moment later they heard the front door slam. "Harry!" Wailed Hermione, "How could you?"
"It was easy." He said, standing up, still holding Miranda in his arms, struggling under her weight, not noticing that she wasn't moving. "Don't look at me like that!" He snapped at Hermione, who's eyes were fixed on Miranda.
"Don't you start on her!" Snarled Ron.
"Stop it! Both of you!" Hermione yelled, rushing towards Harry, "Harry! Put her down!"
It was then that Harry realized that Miranda wasn't moving.
Let me know what you think!
-Jenn
