Helena

Petunia had followed Eileen, along with Alice and Mary, around Hogsmeade, going from shop to shop to buy Christmas gifts. Scrivenshaft's Quill shop, Ceridwen's Cauldrons, Zonko's Joke shop, Honeydukes, Dominic Maestro's Music shop...all she could see were things she would have loved to have bought for her sister, and it made her sad far more than it made her happy. Eileen didn't appear to feel any better, and they decided to call it early by having tea at Madam Puddifoot's.

'What did you get for your parents?' asked Eileen.

'I was tempted to buy a racing broom for dad,' said Petunia. 'Ever since Lily described to him what Quidditch is he's been dying to see a proper match. But I suppose it's not a very wise idea for a Muggle to be flying around on one of those things – so I got him an enchanted miniature broom instead.'

'Brilliant,' said Eileen with a nod of approval. 'What about your mum?'

'Mum loves anything sweet,' said Petunia, 'so I got her all sorts of things from Honeydukes to try. That ought to be enough to buy their forgiveness.'

Eileen stirred absent-mindedly through her tea. 'At Maestro's I remembered that Severus had picked up the bass once,' she said.

'And Lily had picked up the guitar around the same time,' said Petunia, remembering the false chords coming from the attic. 'It was always Aerosmith this, The Doors that. Led Zeppelin was a big one for them too.'

Eileen laughed. 'Tobias grew particularly spiteful about Black Sabbath after Severus had listened to their self-titled album on repeat.'

'Can't say that I blame him,' said Petunia with a snort. 'But on a different note, are you worried about tonight?'

'More than anything I'm worried whether the Polyjuice will last me long enough,' said Eileen. 'But there's no point concerning myself too much over it now. Do you know when the boys will be here?'

'In about an hour,' said Petunia. 'Is there anything else we need to discuss before you go in?'

Eileen shook her head. 'My mind is set on speaking with Helena, through any means necessary,' she said. 'That's all that matters.'

Petunia begged to differ. Having learnt that James had stolen the Felix Felicis from Severus' trunk was something she hadn't gotten around to telling Eileen about yet. Not from lack of desire to do so, but rather from the feeling that Eileen still needed to enter the castle with James without trying to murder him for stealing her son's belongings. It would have to come to light once James knew more about Tom Riddle – whatever information that may be.

...o0o…

The four of them were standing in Petunia and Eileen's room at the Three Broomsticks, looking rather awkwardly at each other.

'Your hair, please,' Eileen demanded as she held up the phial of Polyjuice in front of Sirius.

With a swift tug, Sirius pulled out a long strand of his dark hair and put it inside the phial. Some smoke bubbled up, and a rather peculiar scent entered their nostrils. 'Smells like stale cigarette ash,' said Eileen as she sniffed the phial, and gagged a little.

'We can't all smell like chocolate and vanilla,' Sirius answered with a shrug. 'Go on then. I'm kind of curious to see myself from a different perspective.'

Pinching her nose, Eileen tossed the phial back like a shot of whisky and swallowed it at once. Nearly vomiting from the taste, she clutched her stomach and belched loudly. She felt herself growing taller. Her hair got shorter and her hooked nose bended itself straight. Her hands got bigger and stronger, and her shoes were getting awfully tight. An itchy stubble formed on her chin, and she could definitely feel bits in her trousers that she had never felt before.

'Woah,' said Sirius. 'I do look quite handsome, don't you think?'

James was nodding along in agreement. 'You truly look like a particularly fine speci – oh, sorry Mrs Snape!'

Eileen had shot him a murderous glare. 'I will need your school robes,' she snapped at Sirius as she turned away from James. 'Come on. You did bring them with you I hope!'

'Yes, yes, they're right here,' said Sirius as he handed her a pile of clothes from the bed, and watched Eileen take them out of his hands and stomp off towards the bathroom. 'You alright, Petunia?'

'Can't believe that just happened,' Petunia answered stiffly.

Sirius shrugged. 'This is far from the strangest thing I've ever seen,' he said. 'Are you ready to spend a few hours drinking at the bar with me?'

'I'm ready to spend a few hours drinking,' Petunia answered. 'Everything alright in there Eileen?'

A disgruntled ugh came from the other side of the door, and out came a now completely identical looking Sirius. 'I even smell like a young man,' she said in a voice much lower than her own, and looked repulsed as she sniffed her own armpit.

'Here you go,' said Sirius as he handed her his Gryffindor badge. 'The finishing touch. Now I suggest the two of you better leave, since we're on a clock and all.'

'You're right,' said Eileen. 'Are you ready James?'

James nodded. 'Ready as I'll ever be,' he said. 'See you later you two. Have a few drinks on me!'

James followed Eileen outside and trudged behind her in the direction of the castle. Eileen thought back to all the parties she had attended during her school days. How they got increasingly more lavish with the years, celebrating each and everyone's success. She found herself getting a bit teary-eyed as they walked their way through the main entrance, and instinctively found her way back to the dungeons.

'You've got to slouch a bit more,' said James. 'Sirius doesn't keep his back straight like that.'

'Sirius ought to keep his back straight like that,' said Eileen nonchalantly as she drew in the damp scent of the dungeons. 'Oh how I remember these halls.'

'Professor Slughorn will probably want to talk to you,' said James. 'Just letting you know that you should answer in a way that Sirius would.'

They walked past the Slytherin common room entrance, and Eileen looked at it for a while before she answered. 'What would Slughorn have to talk about with Sirius?' she asked.

'Well – he's eh,' said James while running his hands through his hair, 'him and I have been getting Outstandings in our Potions where we previously had not before, and I think he's on to something.'

'That the two of you have been cheating your way through it,' Eileen answered with a huff. 'How Gryffindor of you. What's the reason?'

'Oh look, we're here!' said James far too happily as he ignored her, and gestured towards Slughorn's classroom. 'Let's get on with it, shall we?'

Eileen could sense that something was up, but shook it off as they made their way inside. She could hear Sirius' name being called out by several students, and had to remind herself that everyone thought that she was him, and awkwardly smiled and waved back at them. She saw a large Christmas tree in the centre of the room decorated in all four House colours, and many garlands around the walls glistered under a layer of magical frost. All was different, and yet, not much had changed since she left Hogwarts. Slughorn's parties were as glamorous as ever.

'Ah, mister Black,' said Slughorn suddenly from behind. 'Glad you could join us. And mister Potter, if you will. Please follow me.'

Eileen shot James a questionable look, but James merely shrugged it off. 'My star students,' said Slughorn as he forced them into his private study. 'Finally, after all these years mister Potter, you're starting to live up to your father's name. And you, mister Black, seem to channel Severus Snape's talent in his absence. Care to share your secrets with me?'

'I – uhm, well,' Eileen stammered. 'James's father has been helping me a lot over the summer, sir. And we both know how brilliant he is.'

'My father expects him to do well in school for as long as he stays with us,' James added to the lie. 'And, well, you know of my plans to join the Order of the Phoenix, sir. It's about time I stopped slacking off and started taking my education a bit more serious this time.'

Professor Slughorn shifted his eyes between the two of them, as if trying to detect a lie he couldn't find. 'This calls for a celebration!' he said eventually. 'Stay here. I'll go get us some of that Elf-made wine professor Sprout's been raving on about.'

James and Eileen watched Slughorn leave his study, and swiftly James pulled out a piece of parchment from his pocket. 'You needed to find the Grey Lady, right?' he said hastily as he unfolded the parchment onto the desk. He tapped his wand on it, and the Map of Hogwarts materialised in front of them.

'Well, yes,' said Eileen while being mesmerised by the Map. 'But what's all this about? What's the Order of the Phoenix?'

'Never mind any of that now,' said James as he skimmed his eyes over the Grand Staircase. 'I have Slughorn exactly where I need him to be so I can get that information on You-Know-Who out of him with some Veritaserum we've made, and he'll be back any given second. All you needed to do here was show your face, and I'll cover the rest. Look, there she is! Seventh floor corridor!' He folded the Map back up, and just in time, as Slughorn came in hoovering a tray with a bottle of wine and three glasses on it.

'I'm afraid I must decline, professor,' said Eileen with a polite nod towards him. 'I'm not feeling too well and I better get some rest.'

'That is most unfortunate, mister Black,' said Slughorn, and with a wave of his wand he vanished one of the glasses. 'Suppose that leaves more wine for us, mister Potter.'

As Slughorn poured their glasses, James beaconed to her to lean in so they could not be overheard. He mumbled 'the one-eyed witch statue in an hour' in her ear, and understood that that's where they were supposed to meet up afterwards. Taking her leave, she left the study and made her way out of the dungeons are quickly as she could.

She knew the statue of Gunhilda de Gorsemoor was located on the third floor, but why James would want to meet with her there was a mystery to her. Not letting it concern her for now, she half-ran up the Grand Staircase and nearly collapsed of exhaustion by the time she reached the top.

Fortunately the hallways appeared empty, and she called out for Helena, hoping that she was still floating around the corridor somewhere. 'Helena I need to talk to you!' she said. 'Are you still here somewhere? I need to see you!'

Through a classroom door, the ghost of Helena appeared and looked at Eileen with curiosity. 'You're one of those Gryffindor boys,' she said bitterly. 'What do you want from me?'

'I'm not, actually,' said Eileen, and carefully took a few steps in Helena's direction. 'It's me, Eileen Prince. I'm one of your successors. You showed me the entrance to the Room of Requirement a long time ago.'

'You don't look like her,' said Helena, and bounced back a little.

'It's just Polyjuice, I promise,' said Eileen. 'It was the only way for me to get back inside the castle.'

'I don't trust you,' said Helena. 'Please leave me alone!'

'Allow me to open the Room of Requirement in the way that you've taught me,' said Eileen. 'Perhaps you will trust me then.'

Helena crossed her arms and snarled. 'Fine,' she snapped. 'Go on. Open it!'

Eileen had nearly forgotten how snappish Helena had been when they met for the first time. She walked up to the wall and paced back and forth three times while thinking, I must enter the Room that is hidden. The cast-iron door materialised out of nothing, and she entered it, with Helena following her at the heel.

The Room they had entered was empty, safe for the Mirror of Erised. Eileen had seen it before, the first time she had entered the Room. She had spent many days in front of it, looking at herself being the successful Witch she had dreamed of being. There were two empty goblets standing on the floor beside the Mirror, and briefly wondered how they got there. 'I remember you telling me the Mirror belonged to your mother,' she said as she looked at herself through Sirius' grey eyes. 'That's what I want to talk to you about, Helena. Your mother.'

'My mother, or her Crown?' said Helena with a scoff, and looked inside the Mirror alongside Eileen.

'Your mother, actually,' Eileen responded calmly. 'Do you know where she came from?'

'You should ask the Room instead,' said Helena, the resentment prominent in her voice. 'She never told me where she came from. It is as much a mystery as my own father is a mystery.'

Eileen continued to look at the Mirror. Where she had once only seen her own success, she now saw her own son standing beside her, looking happier and healthier than he ever had, and most of all present. 'Show me where Helena came from,' she said to the Mirror. I want to see where her mind went as she walked around this Room.

The walls around them faded away. Leaves were blowing onto the floor until it disappeared under a soft forest soil. Tall silver-grey trees materialised out of nothing, their leaves a clear gold in their autumn shade. They reminded her of beech trees, only much taller and ancient. As if they carried magic within their very core. The golden light of the sun shone through the canopies, and she knew she had entered a forest unknown in her own world. A forest that belonged to another place entirely.

'She would dwell in it forever,' said Helena, and looked forlorn. 'Lothlórien, she called it. The longer she was here, the more she longed to go back to this place. Always wearing her Crown, speaking in a tongue I could not understand. Conversing with her spirits. Being here drove her mad, which is why I stole her Crown and ran away with it. All she did was hide in here. I just wanted her back in the present. To be back here with me.'

'I'm sorry this happened to you,' said Eileen as she stepped into a ray of light. 'There's a horrible void one looks in when things are unknown. My son, Severus, is missing. I suspect he may be in the place where your mother came from.'

'I have seen him here before,' said Helena. 'He was looking at the Mirror the way that you are now, wishing for his friend to join him. She came in here eventually. They never noticed my presence.'

'That girl's sister found the flowers that adorned your mother's Crown,' said Eileen. 'I know that the Crown is lost, Helena. The empty plinth inside the Princes vault at Gringotts is a painful reminder of that.'

Helena didn't answer. She looked at herself in the Mirror, her ghostly reflection staring back at her. 'What is it you see?' asked Eileen, curious to what was going on.

Helena's voice turned bitter. 'I see myself wearing the Crown,' she whispered to her reflection. 'It's not lost. Not really. He promised he would bring it back for me. So nice and charming he was. Making me feel like I mattered. But he defiled it, with his dark magic! I can see where it is and yet I cannot touch it!'

As Eileen turned back to the Mirror, she noticed that the reflection of her son was gone. Instead, she was looking at a large Room filled with centuries worth of clutter. The Crown hidden in plain sight. Its silver flowers gleaming in the half-light, yet its famed sapphire had turned to black. 'who cursed it?' she asked.

'He did,' Helena answered bitterly. 'That insolent boy, Tom Marvolo Riddle. He went all the way to Albania to retrieve it for me, and then he murdered some peasant over it. A piece of his soul forever bound to it now, rendering it useless. Tossing it back into my mother's Room as if it somehow relieved him from the promise he had made me.'

'A piece of his soul,' Eileen mumbled to herself, and felt a panic within her arise. 'Helena, what do you mean exactly, by a piece of his soul?'

'You need to go,' said Helena sharply.

'No Helena, I still need –' but Eileen didn't need to finish to understand what Helena had been referring to. Her body was slowly starting to change back into her own. She could feel herself growing shorter, and her hair was growing back long and straight.

Leaving behind the enchanting forest, Eileen ran out of the Room of Requirement and straight down the staircase. Sirius' robes were dancing around her as she hurried her way to the statue, nearly tripping over the seams. She must have lost track of time inside the Room, as James was already waiting there for her.

'Took you long enough!' said James as he ushered her behind the statue.

'Sorry, it felt like I was only gone for a minute or two,' said Eileen. 'The Room of Requirement has a strange way of making time seem obsolete.'

'Dissendium,' said James as he tapped Gorsemoor's hump with his wand. The hump opened up and revealed a short slide into a tunnel. 'It's a passageway to the cellar of Honeydukes,' he said. 'After you.'

Not wanting to risk getting caught any longer, Eileen jumped down the slide and landed softly into an old stone tunnel. 'Wish I'd known this when I was still a student,' she said as James appeared behind her.

'We were definitely proud to discover this one,' said James, and lighted the way with his wand as they started walking. 'It'll take us about an hour to get there. I believe we have discovered most of the secret passages, but I've never heard of the Room of Requirement before.'

'Rowena Ravenclaw made it,' Eileen explained. 'She's my ancestor, which is why I know how to find it – but if you don't mind, I'd rather keep this a family secret.'

'Must be neat to be a descendant of a founder,' said James while bobbing his head in approval. 'I had a great-uncle who was convinced the Potters were related to Godric Gryffindor. Did a lot of research on it too, but my dad didn't believe –'

Eileen could hear James going on and on about Gryffindor, but she didn't bother listening. She thought of what she had seen inside the Room. Lothlórien. The Mirror. Helena's ghostly imprint still longing for her mother's Crown, stuck in another version of the very same Room. Cursed and defiled by a piece of Riddle's very soul. 'Did you get from Slughorn what you needed?' she asked to make him stop prattling on.

'—and so, we unfortunately discovered that we're actually not successors of, oh – ehm, yes,' said James, and his voice suddenly grew very cold. 'Yes, the Veritaserum I had worked on him. I think its best if I share what information I have when we're with Sirius and Petunia again.'

...o0o…

'I think that's your fifth glass of Elf-made wine,' said Sirius as another goblet floated towards their table.

'And I think that's your sixth,' said Petunia while pointing at the glass he was holding.

'Still on my fourth, thank you very much,' he said, and drained the goblet in one gulp. 'But I suppose I can't stay behind now can I?'

'I just feel so bad for you, you know,' said Petunia as she held on to her glass of wine for dear life. 'To just be discarded by your own family like that. You get sorted into one House, and before you know it, you're tossed out with the rubbish!'

'Your life doesn't seem to be any better,' said Sirius as he held up his hand for a refill. 'Having a magical sister must be awful when you're just a Muggle.'

Petunia bobbed her head along in agreement. 'It's no worse than the story of your little brother,' she said. 'Perfect little siblings with their perfect little lives. It's too bad we love 'em anyway.'

'I can't help it but I do love him,' said Sirius, and got teary-eyed for no apparent reason. 'And you know – oh look, there they are!'

Still shaking off the snow, James and Eileen entered the Three Broomsticks. Sirius gestured to them to come and sit down, but James waved it up and pointed up instead. 'Petunia, I think they want us to go up to your room,' he said.

'Guess we'll go,' said Petunia, and scraped her chair loudly over the floor. 'C'mon, I'm ready to hear it all!'

Eileen steered Petunia in the right direction as they made their way up the stairs, and came back to where the evening had started. 'James, do you want to start?' she said as she closed the door.

'Horcruxes,' he answered. 'You-Know-Who made Horcruxes – but I don't know what that means. Just that it really upset Slughorn to talk about it, so it must be something terrible.'

The answer to that came from an unexpected corner. 'Oh but I know,' said Petunia while pointing at Eileen. 'I read all about it in that book of hers.'

A/N The music references is a little nod towards my first fic Severus Snape and the Art of War. Severus played bass and Lily played the guitar. Led Zeppelin I mentioned because the band geeked out hard over Tolkien's work and wrote several songs inspired by Tolkien titled 'Ramble On,' 'Misty Mountain Hop,' and 'The Battle of Evermore.' Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith, is Liv Tyler's father, who portrayed Arwen in the LotR movies.

A/N Making the Room of Requirement one of Rowena's creations is a non-canon compliant thing I did. Thing is, I think the Room may just be one of my favourite things out of the HP universe. It's essentially a Room where all your fantasies come to life. You want to walk through an enchanted forest? It's there. You want to sleep under the stars by a campfire? It's there. You want to read any book imaginable? It's there. All you need to do is desire it, and the Room gives it to you.
And therein lies the danger as well. It's your fantasies come to life. A place where one could easily get lost in and roam in forever. For Rowena, it is a way to imagine she is still in Middle-earth – and it's essentially a one-way ticket to driving yourself towards madness. The Room draws you in on your desires, and you will never want to leave.

A/N Reminder that neither the Chamber of Secrets nor the Room of Requirement showed up on the Marauder's Map because they weren't known to the makers.