Hello to all! You guys have been so fabulous will all of the alerts, favorites, and most certainly the reviews! This chapter originally went a bit differently so if you are reading this after reading the original, hopefully these were some good changes.
Disclaimer: There are lines in here from Deathly Hollows...I do not own them!
Hermione had the other girl sitting on the ground in an instant, touching the back of her head, probing for a wound.
Harry stared at her, broken images were racing each other through his mind: Sirius falling through the veil; Dumbledore suspended, broken, in midair; a flash of green light and his mother's voice, begging for mercy; Miranda smiling at him... He couldn't lose anyone else, not even this girl he hardly known for more than two days.
Miranda's head hung limply against Hermione's shoulder as the other girl looked at her own fingers, stained with blood. "Harry, she's bleeding." Hermione's voice trembled, high and shrill.
Harry scooped her up, marveling at how light she was, and laid her down on the nearby sofa. "Miranda?" He asked, holding her hand while Hermione probed the wound on the back of her head more firmly.
Nothing. On the outside she was completely still, on the inside she was back fighting demons she'd thought she'd finally left behind. Phantom hands clutched at her skin, the world was black and she could barely breathe around fabric someone had shoved into her mouth. Her hands were pinned down on the floor by her wrists, and her legs were pinned too far apart. Every inch of her hurt. All she wanted was Tom to save her, but he couldn't. He never could. They'd said they would kill him, and she never wanted Tom hurt, ever.
She didn't want to hurt Harry either. As soon as she thought about him her demons seemed to release her and the fog started to clear.
Miranda shifted on her own, lifting her head from Hermione's hand a little with a moan, and Harry saw her wince in pain. Hermione sighed in relief, and Ron went back to looking disinterested, "What?" Miranda asked slowly, blinking her eyes as if to clear them.
"You hit your head." Harry said, reaching out to touch her cheek.
Miranda sat herself up, "I think I'm fine."
"No, you're not. You're bleeding!" Hermione hissed.
"Just a little knock." Miranda said as she scooted herself farther up on the sofa and away from Hermione. She rubbed at the back of her head, checking the wound, relieved to feel it swelling under the busted skin. "A little blood, but it's swelling outward already. So that's a good sign. I've had worse, trust me." She took a slow deep breath, "Knocked the breath out of me though." She smiled at Hermione, who was shaking, and had seen something in her eyes that she hadn't wanted to share, "Relax, Hermione. I didn't mean to scare you. I may be little, but I'm a tough girl."
"Just glad you're alright." Hermione said shakily.
"I do wonder what your professor was trying to accomplish with a spell that powerful. Could have sent you right through the wall." She looked at Harry sternly, "You shouldn't have called him a coward. It's my experience that most men don't appreciate being called cowards. Insults their egos."
Miranda looked a little pale, but she seemed to be alright, especially given that the trio hadn't heard her sound quite so matronly. "I'm sorry." Harry whispered to her.
She squeezed his hand gently, "Don't sweat it. Is your back alright?"
Harry nodded, picking up newspaper Remus had brought and leaning up against the sofa to be as close as possible to her while Hermione handed her a towel. He busied himself with examining the picture of the Dumbledore and his family, reading the article as Ron and Hermione exchanged panicked looks and Miranda just sat, holding the towel to the back of her head to stem the bleeding.
They'd all forgotten about Kreacher, so when the crack sounded through the kitchen, both girls shrieked, Miranda falling gracelessly out of her chair and Hermione raising her wand. Kreacher disentangled himself from an unfortunate coat rack, and bowed to Harry, "Kreacher has returned with the thief Mundungus Fletcher, Master."
Mundungus scrambled up with his wand, only to be disarmed by Hermione, his wand flying into her hand. Ron tackled him in a move that made Miranda give his physical form a second look. The man screamed and wriggled in Ron's grip, "Wha'v I done? Settin' a bleedin' 'ouse-elf on me, what are you playing at, wha've I done, lemme go, lemme go, or-"
Harry cut him off, "You're not in much of a position to make threats." The adult stopped moving and stared up at Harry like a scared child, holding his position as Ron stood up.
The elf bowed to Harry again, "Kreacher apologizes for the delay in bringing the thief, Master. Fletcher knows how to avoid capture, has many hidey-holes and accomplices."
"You've done really well, Kreacher." Harry said to the elf before returning his attentions to Mundungus, "Right, we've got a few questions for you."
"I panicked, okay? I never wanted to come along."
"Well, none of the rest of us Disapperated." Hermione snapped, and Miranda was very, very, confused.
"Well, you're a bunch of bleedin' 'eros then, aren't you, but I never pretended I was up for killing meself-"
"We're not interested in why you ran out on Mad-eye. We already knew you were an unreliable bit of scum." Harry had gotten very close to the man.
"Well the, why the 'ell am I being 'unted down by 'ouse-elves? Or is this about them goblets again? I ain't got not of 'em left, or you could 'ave 'em-
"It's not about the goblet's either, although you're getting warmer." Harry said, "Shut up and listen." Harry's wand was so close to the man's face that the only thing he could do was gulp and nod his head a little, "When you cleaned out this house of anything valuable-"
"Sirius never cared about any of the junk-"
Miranda snorted when Kreacher slammed a saucepan on top of the man's head, and was preparing to do it again while the man screamed, "Call 'im off, call 'im off, 'e should be locked up!"
"Kreacher, no!" shouted Harry.
Miranda swooped forward and scooped up the elf in her arms, "Really, Harry, don't yell at the house elf. It's uncouth."
She held the elf in her arms like a child and he stared up at her, the pan still in his hand's, his eyes as wide as saucers. He blinked a few times, the pan slipping from his grasp and clattering loudly on the floor, "Mistress Miranda?"
Miranda smiled at him after she winced at the loud noise and her aching head, "Hello, Kreacher, hush now, let your Master finish talking to the nasty man." The elf clung to her and she hugged him soothingly before setting him at her feet, where he attached himself to her legs like a small octopus.
Harry looked at her incredulously for a moment before returning to his victim, "When you stripped this house of all the valuables you could find, you took a bunch of stuff from the kitchen cupboard. There was a locket there. What did you do with it?"
The thief's eyes lit up and he moved forward, "Why? Is it valuable?"
"Wondering if you should have asked more money for it?" Ron said harshly, but for once, Miranda agreed with him. What ever this locket was, they wanted it, badly.
"More? That' wouldn't have been difficult, Ministry hag took it."
"What did she look like?" Harry asked.
"Little woman, bow on her head, looked like a pink toad."
Apparently, the other three knew who he was talking about, each reacting, leaving the man's eyebrows singed and a considerable part of the kitchen floor wet. A few minutes later, when she had composed herself, Hermione obliviated Fletcher and apperated him to the middle of London, returning only a few moments after first cracking away.
Kreacher wouldn't let Miranda go, holding onto the hem of her pants as she walked towards Harry, "You alright?"
He nodded, "The woman who has the locket, she's bad news, and she knows us, which makes this really hard."
Miranda sunk into one of the kitchen chairs, trying to keep the headache at bay by shoving her thumb as subtly as possible into her eye socket, "If you don't mind me asking, what is so special about this locket?"
"It's a Horcrux. I nearly lost the closest thing I had to a grandfather for that thing, and getting it weakened him so much that he was murdered later that same night." Harry said, his mind going back to Snape.
She was still confused, "I'm sorry, but if you had it, why are we trying to get it now?"
Harry scoffed, "It was a fake, a decoy, meant for the Dark Lord to find and know that the real one was gone."
"Kreacher was supposed to destroy it for Master Regelus, but Kreacher failed. Kreacher has Master Regelus' locket now though!" The elf said excitedly, holding the locket up to Miranda. Harry didn't know why, but seeing Miranda treat the elf so kindly, with such dignity made it obvious that she was a lady from another time, a proper lady.
She took the locket from Kreacher while looking at Harry, and when she looked down at the fake Horcrux she recoiled, "This is the Horcrux?" Harry nodded.
Miranda felt the tears well up in her eyes, but refused to let them fall. They would be too hard to explain, and they were something she literally couldn't explain without giving up her secret. She had to say something though, had to share as much as she could, "I've seen this locket before, it was mine, a long time ago. I lost it when my Papa took me from the orphanage, I assume I dropped it." Miranda traced the S in the center of the locket with a finger, longing coursing through her for the real one, which had thrummed in her hands just as much as the snake on her wrist. "I haven't seen this in years. It belonged to my mother."
She realized she'd said too much when she looked at Hermione and could practically see the gears turning in the girl's head. She rushed to cover herself, handing the locket back to Kreacher, pretending it meant nothing more to her than a little girl's trinket, no matter how much it pained her, "How would your Dark Lord have gotten a hold of it, and why would he have used it as a Horcrux?" She knew why, because somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, Tom must have remembered that it had been hers, and had sought it out.
"We think the S is for Slytherin, it must have been his, and Riddle got his rocks off using his idol's things for a Horcrux. How did you end up with it in the interim?" Ron said, and Miranda couldn't shake the awkward feeling she got when he spoke her last name in reference to her brother doing sordid things.
"I don't know. The locket was on my mother when she died, she was a destitute drifter, I have no clue where she would have gotten it from." Miranda said, stroking Kreacher's head with her hand idly, occupying herself so she wouldn't have to look them in the eyes as she lied to them again. They had no idea the power that lay in the locket. No idea what she'd been able to do with it because she was who she was. How she'd dazzled Brennan with it the first time they'd been alone so she could determine how he had felt about her friend. In some ways that locket was the most powerful magical object she'd ever had her hands on, her wand included. It had been the first too. Hers since the day she was born.
Kreacher hugged her legs again, distracting her from her spiraling thoughts, "Kreacher is so glad to see Mistress Miranda again, the 'ouse has gone to the dogs it has, bloody Sirius messing up Mistress' things."
"Kreacher!" Miranda scolded, dropping to her knees, her dark skirts billowing around her, "I will not stand to have you speak ill of your Mistress' son, you know how much she loved him. You do her tolerable poor, talking like that."
The elf hung his head, "Kreacher will go punish himself now."
"No, you won't, you need to get to cleaning this place. It's been made a mess of. I expect it spotless by the end of the next fortnight." She hugged the elf again, "Go on now, you."
He smiled a crooked grimace of a smile that was the most positive thing Hermione had ever seen from the elf, "Yes, Mistress."
He disappeared into the house and Miranda smiled weakly at the trio, "My head is killing me. I'm going to brew a quick pain relieving potion downstairs and head to bed."
Hermione shook her head and started digging in the bag she always kept with her, and Miranda had to stop her eyes from popping out go her head when Hermione's whole arm disappeared. "No, I've got some paracetamol in here that should fix you up before you go to bed."
The ensuing minutes of confusion and instruction were more than enough to have Harry and Ron both smiling, and by the time she made it up the stairs Miranda's head had already stopped aching quite so badly. She had tucked herself in to bed when the temperature in the room dropped suddenly. "You gave away my secret. I kept it hidden for so long."
In the middle of the bedroom stood Walburga Black, exactly as she had looked in 1944, only silver in color and slightly transparent, a ghost who had hidden herself for years in her own home. Miranda's anger and hurt at her best friend got the best of her, flaring violently, "Why would I have kept it? You locked me in a room and left me there!"
The beautiful ghost stared at her long lost friend, looking near tears, "I didn't have a choice, Miranda, you have to understand. He said it was the only way to keep you safe."
"I could have lived as your long lost cousin, we look enough alike." Miranda snapped, sitting up in the bed.
"I know, I offered that, but he said it wouldn't work. And then he offered me something I couldn't refuse." Walburga looked her friend in the eyes, trying to make her understand without making her say the words.
"He killed your mother for you, didn't he? He put her out of her misery of a slow and painful death." Miranda choked on a laugh, "I don't suppose I can be angry at you, can I? You locked me away, to keep me safe, so that your mother wouldn't have to suffer any longer. It seems like the only one who lost anything was you."
Walburga nodded, looking down at her spectral hands, "I lost so much." She looked back up, "Do you know why I'm in this form?" Miranda nodded sadly, but Walburga continued anyway, "I died when he did, and when our precious son was born, I had to stow him away. I had nothing. When you die, you return to the form that was most familiar. Usually, it's the state you were in when you died, but me..." She sighed and her breath came out in a frosty fog, "This was the last time I was ever really alive." She looked at the closed door wistfully, "The portrait was to keep you safe. Your father had me affix and curse it so no one would go poking around."
Miranda sighed, "You said you hid your son away, after his father died? But Orion was alive and Sirius was always here."
"I did the same thing to him that I did to Miranda. After I killed Brennan, I was married to Orion, but you know I was already pregnant. I hid it, and then I hid him. Sirius replaced another in a devastatingly long line of miscarriages and stillborns. Only you, Kreacher, and Brennan even knew of his existence in 1944." Walburga explained.
Miranda stared at her in horror, "You just said you killed Brennan."
Grief colored Walburga's face, "You heard me correctly. I killed him. My father would have killed us both otherwise, and in doing so, he would have killed Sirius too." Tears welled in her eyes, "Brennan begged me to do it, for Sirius. That was the kind of man he was. He would rather have died by my hand than have Sirius and I in danger." She smiled, that smile that came from a deranged woman barely clinging to her last shred of sanity, "I had to save my baby, and I did. He's a good man, my Sirius, they both were. But my poor, poor Regulus, went and got himself murdered by the Dark Lord." The two old friends exchanged a look, pain in both their eyes, for one's brother had killed the other's son. "I'm sorry for what I've done." Walburga's ghost whispered, "Can you ever forgive me?"
Miranda nodded, "I already have."
Walburga gave her a tight smile as she started to fade, "The spell to disenchant the portrait is in your favorite book. Live your life, Miranda. Do it better than I did."
Sleep after that encounter was fleeting, but there was a closure that Miranda hadn't known she'd needed. After an hour or so of tossing and turning she was finally drawn in to a deep sleep.
In the next weeks, the house was cleaned thoroughly and Ron had finally admitted that, when cleaned, it was sort of a lovely place. His quiescence had given Miranda a thrill, and she had laughed for an hour, Ron screeching at her the whole time. Hermione had just watched them, a bemused smile on her face. Ron and Miranda didn't get on, per say, he didn't trust her enough, but their was a levity in their spats now, like siblings teasing one another.
For the first few weeks of their cohabitation, Hermione had felt threatened by Miranda, but had come to realize that she didn't spend near as much time staring at Ron as she did Harry, so the girls had easily become close. Kreacher had been another improvement, he was actually civil to Hermione now, and often sat with them at night, sitting at Miranda's feet, who obviously cared about him. She had explained that although he was annoying and hard to live with, she had always loved how faithful he was, and had followed Walburga's views on the treatment of him. Hermione had learned a bunch about Sirius' mother, and her passion for house elves. The Walburga the world had known hadn't been anything like the girl Miranda described, but it certainly explained Sirius a lot more clearly.
It took a couple of weeks, but Hermione finally managed to liberate Miranda from the button down dark colored dresses with full long skirts she'd taken to wearing that harkened back to the riding habit of the early twentieth century. "There you go!" Hermione cried, moving out of the way so Miranda could see herself in a mirror.
Miranda blinked at the girl staring back at her in shock. The outfit Hermione had transfigured for her was a pair of sleek black trousers Hermione had called leather with a pale blue shirt whose sleeves rolled up to the crook of her elbows and whose bottom hem fell below her bum. Miranda felt of the material as it slid over her skin, and whispered. "Wow."
Hermione beamed, "I'm so glad you like it!"
"I love it." Miranda commented in amazement, straightening the magicked snake that had taken up residency as an ouroboros on her wrist since she'd gotten her head slammed against the wall. The outfit was like nothing she'd ever worn, and Hermione had spent all day fussing over it, using the crafting of something specifically for Miranda to keep her thoughts off the outside world. It had worked, and the brilliant young witch's results were magnificent. Certainly it was below her intellect, but Hermione would have made a fantastic fashion designer. Yes, Miranda had transfigured herself clothes as a girl, but they had always been copied off something she had in her closet so that she could remember what it felt like to wear it. Hermione had transfigured a pile of black cloth from Miranda's mourning garb into something completely new.
"Try these on." Hermione requested, holding out a black pair of boots that seemed too thin to provide much protection, but they were incredibly comfortable when Miranda slid them onto her feet and did up the laces. "There's cushioning and temperature controlling charms on those." Hermione added, addressing Miranda's unvoiced questions.
"You are incredible." Miranda said in awe, standing to her full height and looking down at a body she hadn't truly noticed in years. She wasn't ignorant to the fact that most considered her beautiful, it was a common opinion that had caused her unfathomable pain as a child, but now, as a woman dressed in clothes that flattered rather than concealed, she felt different. She walked down the stairs awkwardly, unused to the feeling of wearing trousers, and she felt oddly exposed even though no more skin could be seen than before. That feeling vanished with the first appreciative look she'd gotten from Harry.
"Miranda?" He asked, as if he couldn't believe that the modernly dressed girl was the same as the one who had previously favored more Victorian garb.
"Hermione transfigured them for me." Miranda explained nervously.
"You look fantastic." He admitted.
Miranda tugged at the bottom hem of her shirt, "Seems kind of silly to get new clothes when the only people I see are you three."
"Your clothes were unusual and conspicuous." Hermione said from behind her, also dressed in new looking clothes, "This way, you can go out shopping and no one will look twice at you!"
"She's not going alone." Harry said instantly. They compromised easily, and whenever Miranda left, either Hermione or Harry were hidden under the Invisibility Cloak, an item Miranda had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from reminiscing about too much or she was bound to again give away more than she intended. He was just too blasted easy to talk to.
The next chapter is pretty well on it's way to being done with editing, so your reviews could certainly help me get it out faster! ;P
-Jenn
Note: Paracetamol is another name for acetaminophen
