The Amulet of Houle - #2 in the Chronicles

PART III: THE GIRL WITH TWO FACES

Chapter 3

 

“A fellow what?” Draco sputtered. His ears couldn’t have been working right. He could have sworn she’d said –

“Slytherin,” Mica repeated quietly. “What house did you think I was in?”

He looked at her, her face as pointedly blank as it had been when she was a child, her still-tiny body swathed in the vast folds of black linen that he supposed constituted a robe. A robe for someone the height and size of Diana. For the first time he noticed the green scarf she also wore – green for Slytherin, Draco realized. “Well…” he said slowly, “Gryffindor. Your parents were in Gryffindor. And – your aunt and uncle.”

“Is that a reason?” She laughed, a bitterer laugh than he would have wished for her. “Slytherin is for the clever and ambitious. I was – am – a genius. Ambition was no problem. I have determination by the gallon when I need it.”

He said nothing, merely stepped onto the first step of the fire escape and extended a hand. Mica hesitated a moment, then took it.

As they made their way down the stairs, it occurred to him that she was still strangely like the little girl she had been fourteen years before. She was still petite, so diminutive of figure that her stature seemed small in proportion as well. Her eyes were still the cloudy blue that he remembered so well, though they were not the eyes of a child. Had they ever been? He wondered.

Once inside the flat, Draco brewed them some of the mango ceylon tea that Sirius kept in a bowl over the fireplace. Mica sat down and kindly left him the right half of the couch, which was, for her, quite a compromise. Once they had sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes, she spoke.

“I’m sorry that I… blew up at you like that.”

“It’s not a problem,” he replied. “So long as you don’t go through with the bit about killing me.”

Mica smiled a lazy half-smile at him, running her right hand through her wavy brown hair. There were faint purple shadows under her eyes that hinted of nightmares and sleepless nights, but there was also a visible look of relief to her. “Oh, I can’t. I need you.” She paused. “To kill Marcus.”

“Ah, yes. The subject at hand. The Pact is being made on Slytherin’s deathday, you know.”

Nodding, she took a sip of her tea. “That would be in accordance with what Caro has told me. Marcus is brown-haired, isn’t he? Not dyed his hair or anything?”

“He is.”

“Good. When is Slytherin’s deathday, anyway?”

“October 1^st.”

“There. That’s settled, then.” She set her teacup down on the coffee table, and looked up at him again. He felt a sudden urge to say something, something that would set her free from her strange obsession with Marcus Flint’s death and the nightmares, anything that would free her from the events of that terrible night so many years before… if only he could have…

Out of the blue, there came a rapping noise from the window. Draco watched as she got up to let the owl in, its tawny wings fluttering furiously. Mica seemed to recognize it, giving it an odd look before she opened its message.

“Draco,” she said, sounding utterly terrified, “My sister is missing.”

* * * * *

Mica couldn’t breathe. Her chest ached, and she felt as if she were falling into a bottomless black abyss. How could they take Lily Elizabeth from her? How dare they?

Caro was different. Caro had been dying all this while, perhaps even before she herself was born, and her death was painful, but accepted. Lily Elizabeth was just a little girl, her sister, and she had never done anything to anyone…

She wasn’t quite sure how she wound up on the couch, though she did remember the kind blackness enveloping her as she slid to the floor. The next conscious thought she had was regarding the fact that the room was dark. Not entirely dark, though… some light must have been coming from the fireplace, which her back was to, at the moment. So Mica rolled over.

As she landed with a thump on something – or someone – beneath her, she reflected that rolling over on such a narrow couch had not been such a good idea. But, to her surprise, Draco did not wake, so she simply stood up and made for the kitchen, where she found, after some searching, a can of soup that had only a thin layer of dust atop it.

Mica poured it in a pan, and put a Warming Charm on it, before she went back into the living room to contact Sirius via fireplace. With a faint smile, she noted that Draco was still peacefully snoring on the floor in front of the couch. Then she turned to the fire, took a pinch of gold powder from a small bowl on the mantle, and threw it into the fire.

“Sirius Black, Department of Mysteries, Unspeakables, Division Five, Section One, operative twenty-three,” she said crisply.

Her first glimpse of Sirius was his back; then he spun around in his chair abruptly.

“What on-” he began, and then he saw her face.

“Lily Elizabeth’s been kidnapped, I’m at your flat, and as far as Malfoy’s concerned, the jig is up,” Mica said slowly, on some level thinking that perhaps if he could comprehend it, so might she.

“Morgan’s wand,” Sirius declared in a fervent manner. Then he paused. “That’s not- er-”

“Not quite blasphemous, Uncle, but please…” She sighed. “Without Lily Elizabeth, the whole thing will be in vain, because there’s no one else I can trust with putting the Amulet on me. Assuming that we find it. I don’t know how he’s found out, but… it’s more important than ever that we continue. Owl Ginny and let her know I’ll be by later.”

“Later?” he asked.

“Malfoy wants explanations,” she stated flatly.

“Mica,” her uncle began sternly, but she interrupted him.

“Listen, I’d thought a – a wrong thing about him, for a long, long time, and that was Flint’s fault. I owe him some clarification, because... because I do, that’s all.”

“Very well, then.”

Absently, she tapped out the fire-link, and then got up to tend to the soup, which had begun to boil.

* * * * *

A moment can be as long as infinity or as brief as a nanosecond, as Sirius remembered when he saw the look in his niece’s blue eyes. He had last seen that look when someone mentioned the quite timely disappearance of Draco Malfoy (“that good-for-nothing bastard”) at a picnic eight years before… he had seen that terrible horror spreading out over her face as she dropped her glass of water onto Ginny’s tiled floor, not seeing it shatter into innumerable shards on her bare feet. Mica still had the scars.

He still didn’t understand that look, though; he had a feeling that he never would. Twelve years in prison had given him a little wariness of others, but Mica… she was as remote and delicate as a princess. Fear was an emotion that he understood, but he got the feeling that fear was entirely alien to Mica; what he saw in her face was something far more basic and terrifying that fear, an emotion older, perhaps, than the Great Pensieve whose golden memories ran in his niece’s veins.

Sirius found that it was more frightening that anything to hear her voice slow and steady, to hear her tell him without tears that her sister was missing. If Mica had ever loved anyone in her life, it was her sister Lily Elizabeth.

He got to his feet after Mica had closed the fire-link, shuffled the papers on his desk into some kind of order, and Apparated to the Potter home. It was past midnight; he ought to have been home long before.

Harry was as silent as stone, and Ginny couldn’t look at anything without crying.

He embraced them both before he spoke.

“Listen, Ginny, everything will be all right,” Sirius began, a little awkwardly. “I’ve set an agent on it; there’s someone looking out for Lily Elizabeth as we speak.”

At this, Harry frowned. “You’ve set Diana on her, haven’t you?”

“Of course,” he said.

“So now my own daughter’s mixed up in this Flint business, isn’t she? When will you decide it’s time to tell me what you’re holding back? When the boys go missing?” His godson’s voice was hard and angry.

“Harry…” Sirius sighed. “It is safer for her, infinitely safer for Lily Elizabeth, even, if you don’t know. Diana is the last person you could imagine being an Unutterable, you understand; she is Diana only to you, I, and a few select others.”

Ginny looked up at him, sharply. “Diana is a princess of the night, you know. A Roman goddess.”

The corner of his mouth turned up, producing a smile. “And that is why it is her name.”

His godson’s wife looked at him for a long moment, and he recalled that long ago he’d heard someone say she was a Seer…

“Lily Elizabeth is safe, dear,” she said with a great whooshing exhalation of breath, and with that statement, Ginny straightened her back and detached herself from Harry’s arm. Then she walked off into the kitchen. Harry simply gaped.

Sirius quietly thought to himself that he would never understand women.

* * * * *

Draco slept, and he dreamt as he had never dreamt before…

No, the little girl said firmly. She wore a dress that was slightly long for her; she kept tripping on the edge of it. The stones of the courtyard were cold.

(She would remember the feel of that dress’s satin folds for the rest of her life; when her aunt tried to buy her satin dress robes in her fourth year at Hogwarts, she threw a temper tantrum that amazed both of them.)

They were in the heart of an impenetrable residence, Marcus Flint’s Scotland estate, where Death Eaters and Leaguers of all nationalities mingled in the opulent ballrooms and hallways; she wasn’t sure how many rooms there were, as the place was like a maze.

On the third day of the gala, an air of expectation, of waiting, filled the rooms like the pungent fragrance of dying lilies. House-elves rushed to and fro, bustling about. Finally, one of them led her to immense, walled, cobblestone-floored courtyard.

The people surrounded her in an undulating circle, which made her rather dizzy. The light from the candles they held was the only light in the darkness of the night, and it illuminated the small table on which a little pile of bones and a steaming cauldron were placed.

Come, Marcus said, crooking a slender finger at her. She shook her head.

I don’t want to play right now, Marcus.

But we need you to, darling.

She was easily distracted. Where’s Draco? Has he got me the toy he promised?

Draco’s here. The tall, bony man waggled a hand in the vague direction of the circle of people. He’ll give you the toy afterwards; he wants you to lend a hand.

Why? This is boring. She yawned. I want to go play.

You can do that later, little girl. He took hold of her by the shoulder and yanked her over to the cauldron.

She didn’t have time to protest before he slit her throat.

(Pain and red and black and she couldn’t breathe, she was dying, and more pain like the crack of a whip after he spoke those words… choking and suddenly all the red was gone with another whisper, but pain still shot through her head…)

The little girl lay gasping, prostrate on the floor, her eyes opened, the people milling around her still body, until Lowell came and put her in bed.

(But she did not know fear.)

(She knew only anger.)

(So now you know, said a very familiar voice.)

* * * * *

He slept until nearly one in the morning, and she watched over him as she had when she was Diana, silently sipping her soup. Mica did not smile as she listened to his quiet breathing. In fact, she wasn’t really listening to it; she was internally berating herself for what she had done. The dream had been a spiteful thing to wish on anyone, worse yet on Draco. She was losing control again.

It was the worst thing in the world to know she was wrong, that she was young, foolish. For the first time, she realized as she idly stirred her soup, she was learning that she was not infallible, for all her brilliance. There had been… other things, in her life, that she had brushed off, but the dream was far crueler than all of them. It had been wrong.

It was almost reassuring for her to know this… It had been a long time since she had known calmness, or serenity, but now, with the fiery hounds of hell on her heels, she felt strangely at peace. Perhaps, she wondered as she leaned back in the chair, the peace of the damned?

She looked at Draco, his face pale in the firelight. Suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, she thought of Lily Elizabeth, Lily Elizabeth who was possibly dead by now. Lily Elizabeth, her beloved baby sister, kidnapped by them in the blackness of night. She reflected that she would die before she would let Marcus Flint do to her sister what he had done to her, so many years earlier.

Mica was not one for idle resolutions.

Draco stirred, suddenly, awakening from the tortured sleep that she had so foolishly sent him. His grey eyes blinked once before they met hers.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, awkwardly. “I was wrong. I know that now.”

“Yes,” he agreed, to her surprise. “You were. But I’ll forgive you this once, so long as you don’t plan on making it a regular sort of thing.” The corner of his mouth bent up into what was, for him, a smile.

She couldn’t help but smile back. Maybe Lily Elizabeth was lost for the moment, but she had faith. They would find her.

“We have to,” Mica said aloud, absently.

“We have to what?”

“What? Oh. We have to find my sister, Lily Elizabeth.”

Draco gave her a bewildered look. “You have a sister?”

“You don’t – but no,” she interrupted herself, “I suppose you wouldn’t. She’s really my cousin, but Ginny and Harry adopted me right before she was born, and I’ve always thought of her as my sister.”

“Ginny Weasley?” he exclaimed.

She was a bit perplexed. “Well, yes, of course – weren’t they married before you were in- in prison?”

“Azkaban’s not a swear word, Mica,” he said, in a tone that suggested a gentle rebuke. “And, yes, they were married, but they were living on opposite sides of the globe, then… I never thought she would really stay with him…”

“You knew her, then?” she asked, inquisitive. “She was in the year under you, I think…”

“I knew her.” His tone made it clear the topic had come to an end.

But Mica was interested.

* * * * *

“Sirius?”

Sirius Black had come home to a house full of two very awake young people, both of whom had bombarded him with questions at the earliest opportunity. Having finally made it to bed at two in the morning, he was very, very tired.

When he rolled over in his bed, he caught a glimpse of his clock as he turned to face the fireplace. It was only four. “Just who the hell do you think you-” He paused when he saw who it was. “Sorry, darling. It’s just- a little early, that’s all.”

Caroline smiled at him, her pale skin taunt against the delicate bones of her face. “It’s always early for you, isn’t it?”

With an enormous amount of effort, he managed a chuckle. “Well, perhaps. What do you want at this goddamned hour, anyway?”

“I heard about Lily Elizabeth’s disappearance,” she replied. “She’s- I know she’s tied in. You should know.”

“Is she really the right girl? I mean, there’s always been doubt- and I couldn’t believe that lightening would strike the same place twice.”

“Lee will be saved, this time.” Caroline said sternly. “If that is what you mean.”

“No, no,” he protested, internally yawning. It really was too early for this sort of thing. “It’s just too much of a coincidence. I still think you should owl Sandra- your Lee’s always seemed more likely, to me, than Lily Elizabeth.”

“Believe me.” Her voice was sharp. “I know. We’ve always known about the three daughters of the moon; that prophecy’s as old as time. But you are only a Protector, Sirius. You don’t have Lee’s blood in your veins. She whispers, sometimes… as I creep closer to death. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt she will be saved, by the avenging angel that is our Bearer. I know who will be saved.”

“If you do, then… that’s all there is to it, I suppose. ”

“Yes. Death won’t be so painful, Sirius. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Oh, Caroline,” Sirius murmured, feeling his heart ache as he looked at her emaciated little face.

“Two outlaws in love,” she said softly. “We were, once. You saved me from a fate worse than death. I promise you this, my friend; no matter how terrible things get, balance will be restored. Whether all magic is abolished or returned to the equal state in which all things ideally repose, balance will be restored, and Lee will be saved. Trust in me.”

He didn’t have to say anything. Trust had always been a given with them, back in the days when they were like milk and honey.

* * * * *

He just couldn’t believe it.

Draco had polished off the last of the soup, and now he sat, staring into the fire, as Mica wrote letters to several people and sent her owl, Skywalker, off with them. The cause of his incomprehension was simple; he had never really, truly accepted the fact that Ginny loved Harry, belonged with him. Even if he had been the one to send her back, the first time. She had been beautiful that night.

Mica yawned, leaning back in her chair. “I think I’ll call it a night,” she said. “You do have taxis in this neighborhood?”

He shook his head. “Sadly, no. How far…”

“It’s only a couple miles or so from here. Near LUS.”

“LUS?” he queried, feeling a bit silly. The initials sounded familiar to him.

“The London University of Sorcery,” she explained. “I’m a student there, right now, for… research purposes. I start teaching next year.”

“Teaching?” It was beyond belief. This fragile little girl, sitting at the desk in front of him and looking like a breath of air might blow her away, teaching?

“Oh, not at LUS,” she hastened to reassure him. “At Hogwarts. I’m going to be their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.”

In Draco’s opinion, it was highly unlikely that his jaw could drop any farther.

“Well, you see, they’ve had Remus Lupin filling in my job for nearly five years now; it took me forever to convince him to stay as long as that. Six would be a bit much to ask of him.”

“What?” It was simply mind-boggling.

“You see – but I suppose you don’t.” Mica sighed. “I – well, I’ve always been very good at Defense Against the Dark Arts. Among other things. I finished all the seven years of coursework by the end of my third year. I was in an Advanced Studies class.”

“Wow,” he said, well knowing that only four people in his year had ever qualified in for Advanced Studies courses, and none until they became fifth years. “They don’t just let anyone in.”

“No,” she agreed with a smile. “No, they don’t. I finished the rest of my classes within the next year. McGonagall – she’s Headmistress now; Dumbledore died in my second year – she decided that I should spend the rest of my time taking correspondence courses from the Magical Institute at the Sorbonne. LUS doesn’t offer them, if you’re wondering. But I finished those as well – I have a doctorate in Arimancic Spellcraft – and in my seventh year, Sirius came to teach at Hogwarts, as the Transfiguration professor. Professor Delacour was on sabbatical. So I trained to become a member of the Department of Mysteries. Next year, I’m returning to train my successor and to remain indefinitely.”

Draco nodded after a few moments, finally saying the one thing foremost in his mind.

“Might I inquire what on earth Arithmancic Spellcraft is?”

* * * * *

Of all the things he might have said, Mica hadn’t expected that, and it relieved her a little. She laughed.

“It’s… a little complicated. It involves ancient methods of spell construction, back when straight verse was utilized instead of phrases. Today, the few of us in the field are working to create more spells, to expand the limits of what we can and can’t do with magic. The whole thing is based on Arithmancy, in the precise calculations of rhyme and meter,” she explained.

“Oh,” Draco said, sounding a little overwhelmed. Well, it had been a bit much for one evening, hadn’t it? She yawned again, and rubbed her eyes. Alex would have her head for waking him at such an hour, but she had to get home. Dawn was breaking.

“I’m going to go back home now, see if I can catch a few winks before class.”

“Do you want me to walk you home?” he asked.

Mica was surprised, for a moment, until she remembered that Sirius did not live in one of London’s most preferable districts. “No,” she said, “I can ward myself sufficiently. But – thank you. Anyway.”

He nodded, in what she supposed was a silent reply. So she reached into the magic deep within her, and murmured, “Nonveditis. Caperebon Cura. I’ll be off, then.”

“Very well.”

As she slipped out the window, she heard him chuckle, and she smiled - old habits died hard. Still, it was easier to go down the fire escape than the lift; people might ask questions of a lift going down at six in the morning, seemingly of its own volition.

Mica walked the half-mile until she saw Bochard Avenue (a magical avenue, where several less wealthy wizarding families lived.) Silently, she ducked into the shade of the trees, and, extricating her wand with some difficulty (due to the voluminous state of her robes), she flagged down the Knight Bus.

Stan, a friendly man about ten years older than Harry, helped her aboard the bus, and collected her fare. Meanwhile Ernie, the driver, inquired about her destination (“Trellis Way, off Flamel Boulevard.” “Ah, by the University.”) She settled down on her bed and took a short nap- the other beds were full of travelers waiting to be bussed to their respective destinations. About twenty minutes later when Stan tapped her on the shoulder, she awoke, and left the bus for her flat.

To her surprise, Alex was awake when she came in.

“Mica Weasley! Where the hell were you?” he exclaimed. “You’ve been out all night!”

She shrugged off her outer robe and hung it on the coat rack. “Since when is that any of your business? You’re not my nanny.”

“No… but all the same, your aunt and uncle won’t like it.”

Biting back a scream, Mica spun around and glared at him. “And you would know? For your information, Alex, my sister has just been kidnapped. Now, will you kindly shut it?”

For once, her flatmate was entirely speechless.

* * * * *

Before he could lift his hand to knock on Ananda Lupin’s door, she opened it. She was, as Sirius reflected, a singularly efficient woman, something surprising for Remus’s daughter.

“She’s been expecting you,” she said without the pretense of a greeting. “Do come in.”

“Hello, Ananda.” He was determined that one of them, at least, would observe the social niceties. As soon as he had made his way inside the house, she closed the door behind them, and led the way up the stairs. When they reached the door of Caroline’s room, she left him.

His first thought upon seeing Caroline was that she was tiny. She had always been a vibrant, powerful presence; but now, she was wan and listless.

“Sirius,” she murmured; and he took her hand, warm and still in his.

“I have something great to ask of you,” he said. “If it is too much, for you, or the Coven, then I apologize.”

Caroline laughed, and he remembered how he had loved that sound, her laughing. As rare and as beautiful as a diamond. “I can never repay you for the debts I owe. And you speak of asking too much of me?”

“I need to see Lee. I need to hear her exact words, what she said.”

She was silent, for a moment. Then: “Do you know what that entails? I am not authorized, any longer. It would be a breaking of the Creed-”

“Caroline, the Creed has been broken many times over in last forty years. And it says nothing of the Great Pensieve.”

“Very well, then. It is the least I can do for you. If you could give me a hand-” She tried to sit herself up in the bed, to no avail, and Sirius gently maneuvered her upwards, placing an arm across her back to pull her towards him. Putting an arm around his neck, Caroline finally achieved vertical status. “Thanks.”

He placed a fleeting kiss on her lips, watching her smile faintly; in the days when Voldemort reigned, and they battled for justice, side by side, that kiss would have ensured that the day’s mission remained incomplete. But now, it was simply a nod to their memories of far-gone times, and she made the Sign in the air without hesitation.

The familiar pungent smoke surrounded them – it always smelt of sandalwood – and it made him slightly dizzy for a moment. Then he caught his balance and, still holding his beloved Caroline, Sirius stepped through the gateway that hung suspending in the dense, fragrant cloud.

“Ninth Protector,” she murmured, “The key?”

He smiled, at hearing her pronounce the name that he hadn’t heard in years. “I haven’t got it, at the moment. This was easier, too, with you. Let us go to the Pensieve.”

The Portal Hall, where they stood, was lined with doors, hundreds and hundreds of them, that seemed to extend on into the great beyond indefinitely. The grand arches of the ceiling were gilded, though their golden gleam was darkened by centuries of dust and cobwebs. The heels of his shoes clicked on the endless stretch of marble that was the floor.

They entered the fifteenth door on their left, and their world spun in circles.

* * * * *

Draco awoke late that morning, to find sunshine spilling through the seemingly impenetrable London fog onto his face. With a grim smile, he rose and made for the toilet.

An hour later, he was busy helping customers in Flourish and Blott’s (“Yes, sir, you’ll find that back in ‘Magical Markdowns-’” “No, ma’am, we don’t carry Gilderoy Lockhart anymore, he’s quite out of print-”) when two small, black-haired boys with mischievous brown eyes approached him. Inwardly, he winced. He wasn’t awake enough to deal with children.

“How might I help you?” he asked the two boys.

The taller of the two cleared his throat. “Er, we’re looking for a present for our sister-”

“It’s her mum’s birthday,” the shorter one added, rather unhelpfully. “We were thinking we might find her a book with her mum in it, rather than the usual paperweights and such.”

“Not this year,” conceded his brother. “They’re too juvenile.”

Draco managed to extract from this muddle of information that the two boys were looking for a book with someone in it, and that they were not overly fond of arts and crafts.

“So you’re… looking for a biography, say?” he inquired.

The two boys exchanged apprehensive glances. “Well, not a biography, exactly; if there is one, though, we’d take it-” the shorter one began.

“So long as it’s under two Galleons,” the taller one hastened to add. “Mum’ll have our heads if it’s more. Your head, too, quite probably.”

At this, he raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Well, who is it that you’re looking for a book about?”

The shorter boy elbowed his brother, who extricated a piece of paper from his pocket, and squinted at it. “Herminny Grimger.”

“Hermione Granger?” Draco asked, disbelieving. Surely, not in span of twenty-four hours… “That’s who you’re looking for?”

“Yes,” the taller boy said emphatically, “That’s it!”

“Well…” He Summoned his catalogue, performed a quick Search charm, and informed the brothers that there were approximately three books with sections on Miss Granger, at one galleon three sickles, one galleon fourteen sickles, and twelve galleons four sickles. (The last was the latest edition of Grumdinkels’.)

The taller boy thought a moment. “What’s the title of the first one?”

With a glance at the page, he told him, “The End of an Era: The Final Defeat of Voldemort.”

The shorter boy shook his head. “No, Sirius- that’s the one that-” He muttered something that sounded, to Draco’s ears, like “highly inaccurate – Mum protested-” before saying, “We’ll take the second.”

“Ah.” He walked over to the cashier (the two brothers trailing behind him) and rang up The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts: Third Edition. “Cash or-”

“We have our mum’s card,” the taller boy interrupted, handing the object in question to him. Draco scanned it in, as was procedure, verified the two boys were authorized to spend so much on a book, and charged it.

Then he looked at the name on the card.

Virginia Margaret Weasley Potter.

Ginny.

* * * * *

Mica awoke with a start when Skywalker started nibbling on her fingers. With a look at the clock, she decided that it was far too late to even think about going to class. So she took a shower, dressed, and made for her aunt and uncle’s home, roughly ten blocks away.

As she walked through the dismal and slightly chilly London fog (whose characteristics remained intact despite the noon-time hour) she remembered, somewhat bitterly, the last time she had seen her little sister.

It was the end of summer, and she had returned for a week from three months in the mountains of Wales with Caro. Lily Elizabeth had been happy – so happy – to see her, and the boys had informed her, quite seriously, that they loved their birthday present, before running off to hide in the shrubbery. She had never quite understood Ron and Sirius.

She had taken Lily Elizabeth to the first showing of some highly anticipated Muggle movie that her Muggle-born friends had been fawning over. Despite the general squalor of Muggle cinemas, she herself was rather fond of them, a fondness perhaps inherited from her aunt. She and Lily Elizabeth had a lovely time, eating the buttery and inordinately expensive popcorn, drinking Muggle soft drinks, and watching the movie (which wasn’t half-bad.)

Would she ever see Lily Elizabeth again? she wondered.

Just as Mica opened the gate in the white picket fence of the Potter house, two identically powerful forces suddenly rammed into her from behind. Oh hell, she thought. The twins.

Ron and Sirius were equally dismayed to see her.

“Oh, er…” Sirius, the taller of the two began, “We thought you were Mum.”

Mica said nothing, but she fixed him with a steely eye.

“Alright, alright,” Sirius admitted. “We thought you were Mrs. Figg from next door. You know, the fat, mean old lady who smells like cats?”

“Your robes are really big,” Ron said, by way of an excuse.

She sighed, inwardly made a note to have a talk with Ginny about the boys, and put her hand to her forehead. “It’s okay… This has just been a very long day, that’s all.”

Her brothers then ran past her, through the gate, and up the stairs of the house. After a moment, she followed them.

* * * * *

Sirius wobbled faintly when his feet touched the floor, then got his balance. Caroline had thrown her arms around his neck in their seemingly endless flight, so, gently, he helped her to her feet, and supported her as she slowly, slowly walked to the two chairs pulled up to the Great Pensieve. After she had been safely seated, he moved to sit down across from her-

But she stopped him with the quick gesture of one pale hand.

“Ninth Protector, darling,” she said softly, “There are customs to be observed. That chair-”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, comprehending a few seconds too late. “That is Mica’s?”

“No,” Caroline said, to his confusion, “That is the Bearer’s.”

Despite their many years together, he had never entirely understood her firm hand with Coven tradition and her seeming keenness to defy its more important rules. But Sirius let well enough alone. Caroline had her mysteries, and he his.

“Show me,” he reiterated.

“Patience is a virtue, you know.” Tentatively, she placed her hands over pool of molten gold that was the Pensieve, their slender, interwoven fingers forming a Sign he had never seen before. When she took them away, a tall woman with serene eyes stood in the table’s hollow.

“Lee,” Sirius said hoarsely. “Oh, my beautiful Lee.”

She looked at him, looked up at someone, the someone whose memories had been awakened for these moments of clarity. When she spoke, her voice was like silk and fire.

“You know what I have seen,” she began. “Oh, Min, do not doubt me. It would be easier for you. But I do not see myself in this future, not actively; I will be purely tangential. I am the first flower of which Merlin’s Song sings, and I have seen that the little girl’s shadow falls on the second. As for the third, I see farthest. In her future I see trial by fire, by darkness, and ultimately by her own mind. She will be the element of fire among us. I will be the earth, and the shadow-daughter will be the spirit. The Vestal fire will forge a sword of earth and spirit, as it was over a thousand years before.”

A voice spoke, a familiar voice that made Sirius’s mouth curl upwards in a wry smile. “The Past Bearer – before she died – she spoke of trial by fire for the third flower. Can you scry? She spoke of, perhaps… ” The voice lowered itself to a whisper. “Death.”

“I can scry,” Lee said, sounding oddly resolute. She rummaged in a pocket of her robes, and, seeing the Hogwarts logo, Sirius realized that she was not as old as he had thought. She must have been only sixteen or seventeen.

He lost that train of thought when she produced a crystal scrying ball – but a crystal ball the like of which he had never seen before. It was a perfect sphere, and so clear that he half-wondered whether it was really crystal, or perhaps was actually glass. Lee held it in the palm of her left hand, fingers curling up around it, and it sat there for about half a minute before it, and her eyes, began to glow.

Winds whipped through the world inside the table and Lee’s robes swirled around her, but she paid no heed. For perhaps two minutes this went on, the winds gradually escalating until they reached hurricane strength.

Then they stopped, and the silence was deafening.

Lee looked up, her eyes still softly glowing, and she said in a monotone, “The third flower of the fire will be saved by a Princess and her Prince. She will be the Queen, and the Sword her companion when her soul abandons her. Trial by fire awaits her; trial by a limitlessly terrible Pact and the green haze of death. The first flower will die aglow in the green light; the second will be scarred by it; and the third will escape it.”

She closed her eyes, tightly wrapped her fingers around the scrying ball, and collapsed motionless in the floor.

Sirius was brought back to reality a few minutes later by the return of the gold liquid to the table, and the unmistakable, heart-wrenching sound of Caroline weeping, the sobs wracking her frail body.

* * * * *

Draco fell asleep over the last chapter of Interview with the Vampire early that night, just as the sun was setting over London, its smoggy grey daughter. He was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by the now-familiar sound of the window being opened, and he smiled slightly as he listened to her climb through. After several long, silent moments, the kindling in the fireplace burst into flame, and he saw Mica, once again enveloped in the billowing black robes that made her look even smaller than she really was.

“Morning,” she said, taking a seat on the floor. He assumed this action was intended to be a compromise between forcing him to move off the couch and admitting defeat by taking the chair. His smile did not go unnoticed. “You have no right to look so smug at this hour. It’s unbecoming.”

He choked back a laugh. Mica frowned at him – more like at the couch – and suddenly he found himself lying on the floor next to her. She was shaking with laughter.

“You play dirty,” he commented. She snorted.

“Perhaps.” With a wry grin, she leaned over him, her brown hair falling over her shoulders in honey-coloured waves. “At least I know you’re awake. Listen, I’ve talked with one of my- friends from Hogwarts. Her brother knows you, and he’s got a few inside links with the League. He’s going to help us tonight.”

“Tonight?” he exclaimed. “But it’s not-”

“It’s September 30^th.”

“Then we ought to get going, hadn’t we!” He quickly made a move to sit up, one that quite accidentally brought him nose-to-nose with Mica. She smiled, and softly brushed his cheek with the tip of one finger.

“You haven’t changed a bit, you know.”

They sat there for a few moments like that before, quite suddenly, her smile faded, and she stood up, holding a hand out to him.

“Come,” she said, “Change your robes. I’ll get us some breakfast and let Sirius know where we’re going, and then we’ll be off.”

He let her help him up, and then watched as she walked down the hallway. Something had changed between them, Draco realized, whether over the past fourteen years or in the dim light before dawn, and he was not sure if he liked it.

After he’d taken a perfunctory shower and bathed, they met again in the kitchen, a room now full of the delicious aroma of cinnamon buns. After quickly devouring one apiece, they left the flat. Mica led the way, and he followed, brimming with curiosity, but not saying a word.

Draco was beginning to think they might walk forever when a loud, booming “Oi, Weasel!” came from the direction of a street lamp they had just past.

With a sense of foreboding, he spun around to find Skunk Montague bowing to his highly amused companion, and he decided that it was going to be a very, very long day.

* * * * *

Lily Elizabeth tossed and turned on her makeshift bed, haunted by the new dream that had kept her prisoner for the duration of her capture.

“No!” Lily screamed, “I won’t let you touch her. Don’t come near her. Leave us alone.” She stood on the front porch of a small cottage, in front of a small girl with terror in her eyes, who clung to Lily’s leg. It was late at night, and they stood in the shadowy recess of the front door.

A tall man with straight, shoulder length black hair stood perhaps five feet away from them. “You don’t understand,” he said, his voice desperate. “I want to protect her. He wants her dead. He knows he’s here, and if you’re not careful- he’ll find out about you too.”

She stepped forward into the small circle of light from the street lamp, and she knew he could see the slight rounding of her belly. “He knows, Severus,” she said quietly, tiredly. “He knows enough to want to kill me, and James, and our baby. She’ll be gone by nightfall tomorrow- safe enough by the vernal equinox. It’s the only time he could kill her, or us. We’ll be in hiding.”

“The autumnal?”

“I don’t-” Lily put a hand to her forehead, and then sighed. She rubbed her eyes. “No one can see that far. We’ll be safe, though,” she insisted.

“Let me take her,” Severus Snape repeated, holding out a large, slender hand.

“And who would care for her? Severus, I trust you, because Albus does, but Albus, unlike you, understands that she is my charge. Mine and mine alone.”

“Very well,” he hissed at her. “Lily Potter, I warned you. I know what Voldemort is planning. You know how your end will come.”

With that, he turned on his heel and walked off into the night.