Mark of Ancients

Chapter 8: THE MYSTERY GIRL

    "H-hey," he said as he took a few slow steps towards her. She turned around startled then went back to staring at the mirror.

    "What are you doing here?" she grumbled.

    "Feeling very bad lately," replied Harry. "Thought a midnight walk might cheer me up."

    "You and me both." Harry sat on the floor next to her. It was a few minutes before she spoke again. "You ever get that feeling... that something is stinging you, but you don't know what it is? Something poking you from the inside and you want to know what it is but you can't figure it out?"

    "I invented that feeling," said Harry, sounding a little resentful.

    "You know, we seem to get along well together," she said. Harry could see the back of her head looking like she might be smiling and got a little closer to her. He did feel a sort of strange bond to her, strangely like the one he felt towards his parents and Sirius but nothing like the feelings for Cho.

    "I almost feel like I know you," said Harry, moving in his spot feeling a little uneasy.

    "You need to calm yourself, gonna bust a blood vessel if you stay so tense. Sit in front of me, I'll give you a massage." Harry moved in front of her. He now had a full view of James and Lily waving at him. He wished he could actually run up and hug them but kept reminding himself the girl would think him odd and they weren't there to begin with.

    The girl got up and sat behind him. She must have done this before, Harry's shoulders let go of the tenseness he had been carrying around lately.

    "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" said Harry, feeling better than he did just a moment ago.

    "I see my parents," she said. "Mom's got long hair, quite pretty. Dad's hair is black and short, kind of scruffy, kinda like yours."

    "That's a lot like my mom and dad. What were their names?"

    "James and Lily."

    

    "Those are my parents' names..." The girl stopped massaging his shoulders.

    "What?"

    Harry swallowed many words before he could continue to speak. Lily and James continued to wave at him from the mirror. Harry would run away but he felt he couldn't stand up. "N-no," he said through a thoroughly shaken voice.

    The girl took off her hood for the first time in his presence and Harry got a close look. She had long black hair, straight as sticks but rustled at the ends, that fell down to her waist. Her eyes matched those of James. "N-no," started Harry again, "I was born a single chi-" but he swallowed the last word.

    "And I've never seen you before in my life." Harry bounced off the floor and walked quickly towards his cloak, picking it up. The girl called after him, "My dad's cloak! How-" but Harry hurried to put it on and ran as fast as he could out of the room. His nerves had gone thin and he just couldn't listen to anymore of it. Harry dashed like lightning through the halls, stubbing his toes against the statues of armor and most likely stirring attention towards himself.

    "Not again," called someone. It was the tired and sickly voice of Mr. Filch, the Hogwarts caretaker. Filch was a squib, born from a pure-blood family but without an ounce of magical ability to call his own. It was this fact that made him bitter towards every student and to him, catching a student in trouble was a dream come true. Harry had no time to stop and wait for Filch to disappear. He tiptoed out of the hallway and away from the voice.

    "What is it, Filch?" called the voice of Professor Snape. Harry froze. Snape was at the other end of the hallway. Dare he run past? Snape knows about his cloak and it was possible he would flail an arm out. Harry waited for the proper moment.

    "I heard someone kicking the statues, Severus. Sounds like a student out of bed!" His voice was overjoyed with happiness.

    "Potter," called Snape, walking closer to Harry. "It has to be. It always was and it always will be until that arrogant boy is finished with this school." Harry sidestepped to let Snape pass him. "He's got an Invisibility Cloak."

    "A WHAT?" snapped Filch. Harry tried to inch his way towards the end of the hallway. "Can't find him in one of those!"

    "Tonight I've come ready." Harry turned around to see what Snape could possibly be holding. It looked like a pair of binoculars but they were fully transparent. "A detector. Sees anything invisible." Harry, horrorstruck, watched as Snape did what seemed to be like petting the binoculars.

    "WELL USE IT ALREADY!" barked Filch. Snape held them to his eyes and slowly turned around. Any minute he would turn in the right direction. Harry tried to circle Snape and avoid the front end of the binoculars. Snape made a quick turn.

    "COME HERE, POTTER!" The proper moment had come. Harry made a mad dash towards the far hallway. His skin glowed - smoky-quartz black - and his legs moved faster. Snape could not keep up and after a few seconds, Harry gained enough ground to put Snape out of view. Snape would eventually corner him in Gryffindor Tower or tell Dumbledore, either was not good. Dumbledore had always had an excuse to not expel Harry and when he thought he would be, it turned out he was just protecting him. What would be his savior this time? He was caught red-handed, or rather, black-skinned, out of bed after hours and worst of all, he had upset Snape to a boiling point.

    Harry reached the Fat Lady who sleepily opened up and admitted him inside. He fell hard onto his four-post bed, eyes wide open, and fell asleep minutes later, possibly due to fainting.

    His eyes opened to slits. Something white stood over him.

    "Harry," it said. A hand shook his shoulder and his eyes opened slightly whiter. The girl was standing over him.

    "Go away," said Harry, turning over to face the wall and pulling his sheets up, trying to lay comfortably.

    "You're not even in pajamas, get out of bed," she said laughing. "Mom would kill you if she found you creasing your clothes." Harry stopped his moving.

    "What?" he said, staring at the wall directly. "No, I don't want to talk to you. Especially not in the morning."

    "It's almost nine o' clock. Everyone's finishing up eating a breakfast and you're sleeping. It's obvious from last night we have a lot to talk about."

    "What do you want?" said an annoyed Harry, turning to lay on his back and looking up at her. "Who are you?"

    "Wouldn't you like to know," she said. She gripped Harry's comforter and tore it right out of his hands, tossing it onto the floor. "Up." Harry got up, but he didn't stay. He walked right out of the portrait hole... where Professor Dumbledore was standing to meet him. His stomach sunk several miles.

    He beamed down at Harry and said simply, "Inside." There was no worth in arguing against him. The Fat Lady hadn't closed and he stepped back inside. The girl sat on a chair in front of the fire in the commons.

    "My name is Michelle. My full name, according to Dumbledore, is Michelle Potter."

    Harry felt like someone had just smashed a crystal ball over his head.

    "What is this, a joke? I don't have a sister," he said coldly, "I would have known."

    Michelle leaned forward, hands folded, arms on her knees.

    "Just listen to what I have to say," she said comfortingly. "Trust me that I'll understand if it comes as a shock because, as you can imagine, I didn't believe it either."

    "I'm listening," said Harry, still cold, getting into the same position as her.

    "I'm Michelle..." she said slowly, "your sister... Michelle. I'm an Auror, four years older than you." She seemed to be taking deep breaths after every few words. "I was born just four days before your birthday. Mine's July the twenty-seventh." She changed position, sitting back heavily into her chair. Spilling this story was as hard for her to tell as it was for Harry to hear. "I grew up with our parents for four years until they had you. Your first birthday was the day Voldemort, had, well... and you know Sirius was framed by Pettigrew for killing loads of Muggles and shipped off to Azkaban. He knew Pettigrew had been the Secret-Keeper to leak their location. They took you to the Dursley's house on his motorcycle.

    "I didn't come with you because they feared not only for our lives, but the Dursley's sanity. Dumbledore told me it was dad's idea to separate us if they ever got killed. Mom wasn't so sure about it, thought we'd never meet each other if it ever happened. Mom thought it was a very bad idea, separating us. They seemed to think Voldemort would get them and they did everything they could to stop it. She followed through with it, though. UGH! I HATE PETTIGREW! And they put me with the Weasleys." Harry shared the same hatred. Pettigrew's animagus form fit perfectly with his personality: a rat. Michelle rubbed her eyes.

    "My eleventh birthday, I started school at Hogwarts. You were seven. I did very well here, rivaled the seventh years when I was just in my second. My third year I had my mind set to become an Auror. The Ministry of Magic accepted it." She paused for a moment. "You know," she said giggling nervously and looking down, "our family has consisted of powerful wizards from as far back down the family tree as anyone knows. You do have more skill at magic than I do." She looked Harry in the eye then went back to looking down. "I had known about it longer than you, if you just had more confidence in yourself..." Harry's skin began to glow perfect-white.

    "What is with this?" asked Harry, still slightly amazed at the mark of ancients.

    "I thought Dumbledore told you about that?"

    "He did, but there's just something that I don't like about it."

    "It is the mark of ancients... no idea where it came from." She looked up at Harry with caring eyes. "The summer of my third year, Voldemort had come after me. Being only fourteen, you might say I overreacted. That was my first encounter with the mark. I put a memory charm on everyone I ever knew... hoping they'd forget me... with it glowing white. Back then I didn't know what it was and was sure I just needed to get away from Voldemort. I fled to the United States by Apparating into a known wizard city.

    "Voldemort's, and therefore our name, isn't known there. Word had got around of a missing girl, who's name was unknown, back in our home town. I went back to finish the job, taking dad's cloak so no one would see me. Soon there were just rumors of someone missing, everyone denied it. Memory charms aren't supposed to work on memories that strong, but the mark seemed to be strong enough to make it work. I disappeared from everyone I ever knew." She got up and took the seat next to Harry.

    "I went to try and catch Voldemort after a few months, feeling better about myself. I learned what the mark was in a few months and learned to control it. What was your third year, I found him in the United States. I tried to kill him but the spell backfired and knocked me out. I didn't die but he must have used a very strong charm on me because I forgot everything about my relatives." Her eyes began to water and she held back tears.

    "Something bugged me for so many years since that day. Like I lost something but I didn't know what. It wasn't until just last night Dumbledore had recognized me from a book he was reading on Aurors and saw my name next to a picture of me. We had a talk like this and he told me everything. At the end of the conversation, my memory fully returned on it's own. It's unlikely yours will because you were too young for it be made permanent." She paused again.

    "It's funny," she took a deep breath, "Dumbledore had placed the Mirror of Erised last night in that room and told me to go look at it. That must've been when he found the book. That's also why you aren't in trouble." She beamed at Harry brightly. "Snape had some pride to suck up and Dumbledore took the detector binoculars away from him." Harry grinned back.

    "Anyway, after that episode with Voldemort, I was somewhere in the U.S.A. totally lost. After another year of having no memory, your fourth year, I went looking for Voldemort again. Just this summer, you had sent Voldemort to the U.S. with an out of control Disapparation and I found him. He tried to come after me, tried to control my mark, but he couldn't. Someone who said his friend was named Alastor Moody told me to come here, said Voldemort was after some kid named Harry Potter. The name rang a bell, so here I am." Harry suddenly became very aware of his heavy breath.

    "Voldemort... here?"

    "No, not yet at least. Last I knew he was still in the United States, waiting to get here. You look scared?"

    "OF COURSE I'M SCARED!" bellowed Harry. He sighed, having, immediately for once, realizing what he said. A tear dripped from one eye. "I-I'm sorry... it's... it's just that everything has gone bad since as long as I can remember," he said, his voice getting softer with each word. He looked up at Michelle. "I had too close a call with him last year and I'd rather not relive it any time soon. If it's not living with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon it's having a Dark wizard trying to get me. I pissed off two girls, both friends of mine and scared away another friend. My owl is missing delivering a letter to Sirius for a few weeks now. Everyone I used to talk to is gone." He sniffed.

    "You're not that sad, Harry," she said consolingly as she stood up. "Fight it off. And I know what you're thinking about the mark. You think the ancients were good wizards but then they turned evil. You're right. There's plenty more secrets about them. We need to find them out." Harry didn't need to hear anymore. He jumped up and threw his arms around Michelle. He had it. He had someone other than Sirius to spill himself out to and Michelle didn't have to go in hiding. She had everything.

    She had experience with magic, she had years beyond him and they shared history together. He grabbed as tight as his weak arms let him and felt her arms around him. Harry didn't want to fight off the sad spell from the mark. He was too happy to care and there was no one around to make him feel embarrassed. He stood there, for what seemed like days, in a warm embrace with the first person he could ever truly spill his heart out to. She would understand better than Sirius, he knew it.

    Michelle's grip loosened a little and she looked down at him. "After all you've been through, I can make it up to you," she said smiling with a tear. "I promise."

    "What's Voldemort want here?"

    She let go of Harry and sat down on the chair next to him as did he. "What else? He won't come after the two of us, he knows both of us can out do him any day. I think it's obvious the mark of ancients has to go. Can't let him get you again and remove the rest of your blood. He'll be much too powerful. I don't know why it glows black. It just seems to show in two sets of colors: a golden, gray or black glitter and a white or black glow. The ancients themselves did this to intimidate others."

    "And no one has any idea how we have this..."

    "Nope, not a clue. Someone said we could be descendants of ancients but that's just ridiculous. I'll eat Hedwig if that's true, they're five thousand years old and long gone. Someone else suggested to me that it spontaneously jumps from person to person or could come from being touched by, and rebounding, a curse. In your case, the scar. In my case, Voldemort's first hack at me, which, mind you, never left a scar."

    "Do you know what the scar is?"

    "I really don't know and not many offer an idea. Dumbledore said it best when he called it a warning to protect you from Voldemort. He knows you've had dreams, like last year you were dreamt of Voldemort killing a Muggle with the Killing Curse and saying Bertha Jorkins had died." Harry looked alarmed.

    Harry had another question he was burning to ask.

    "Mom and dad..." he said, quivering, "what were they like?"

    The two of them talked uninterrupted for hours.

    That afternoon was most enjoyable. Michelle got Ron and Hermione speaking to Harry again, but not Cho. She must have done it in the few minutes it took Harry to get changed and run down to the Great Hall. The four of them sat at the Gryffindor table talking amongst themselves about next term when,

    "Hey, Potter!" sneered Malfoy from behind Harry and Michelle. Harry turned around as did she. "Got a new girlfriend?" Michelle giggled. Only a small handful of people knew who Michelle was. She stood up and began to shake Malfoy's hand. Ron and Harry waited for the show. Hermione just sat there, waiting for the brutality to come and go.

    "Draco Malfoy, I presume?" she said calmly. "How are you! I'm Michelle... Michelle Potter. Pleased to meet you!" Malfoy stopped shaking her hand and tried to pull his hand away. Her grip was too tight. "What?" she said innocently. "Oh! You think I'm going to hurt you!" She let go of his hand but he looked too scared to run away.

    "Go on," she said threateningly, "say something bad about my brother." Malfoy's pale face turned paler, if that was at all possible. A small crowd of people gathered around. "Too scared?" Michelle ignored the people, as did Harry. She grabbed his hand and her skin glowed perfectly white. Malfoy had been transfigured.

    Ron, Harry and Hermione howled in laughter, spraying bits of food and drink all over each other.

    "Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret, makes an encore!" said Ron, tears of laughter in his eyes.

    "Thought you'd like it," said Michelle, winking at Ron. She proceeded to make Malfoy bounce up and down like a bunny stepping on hot coals. In their fourth year, the supposed Moody turned Malfoy into a ferret for trying to attack Harry by surprise. He bounced the ferret up and down, to the great embarrassment of Malfoy. The moment was to be engraved in Ron's mind forever. "I really hate that kid," she snapped, taking a bite of her Blast-Ended Skrewt burger.

    "Um, c-can you t-"

    "Tell you how you are able to use spells you never knew?" Her tone became serious. "Listen and listen good. The ancients were damn powerful, no one denies it. There's a lot of history surrounding them but a lot of it went missing. Being an Auror, I have unrestricted access to the Ministry of Magic's very own library. Tomes, scriptures... anything in writing that concerned magic back as far as we have written documents of and in any language. A whole section as big as the library here is devoted to the ancients alone. There's plenty of lost knowledge." She leaned in close. "But what we do know for certain is that they did become Dark wizards. Every - single - teacher - here knows... but they won't let on."

    "Why not?" asked Hermione.

    "Don't know. I do know the mark has to be removed from Harry and myself before anything truly bad happens."

    "Won't You-Know-Who have a better chance then?"

    "You mean Voldemort?" said Michelle, smiling. "Yes and no. No because he won't have a prayer to control Harry. And yes, but don't forget he's failed five times now."

    "What's he here for?" asked Harry. Everyone had thought Voldemort was far away. Apparently not. Something tickled Harry about the current state of affairs. "I thought he was in the U.S.A?"

    "Why else? I was on his tail and he ran, probably hoping he could get away from me and get to you first. He most likely doesn't know I'm here, and that's good." Harry had another burning question.

    "What's he want to," he said, gulping, "kill me for, anyway?" Michelle took a deep sigh and a deep breath.

    "Dad was an Auror, the best of the kind. Old Voldie knew we had the mark since the first day he caught word of our birth. How, well, I don't know that either. With me out of the picture, now that I think about it, if he got you, I would be easy to get rid of."

    "All this talk of people dying is making me sick," said Hermione, indeed, looking sick. "Can we change the subject?"

    "What about Sirius," said Harry, looking sulky again. "Hedwig hasn't come back for so many weeks now... I'm beginning to think she got caught." Michelle put an arm around Harry.

    "She'll turn up. Don't worry." At those words, lunch was over.

    Harry continued to try his best to avoid mistletoe, but it was Dumbledore's fault, had to be. There was one hidden high above the entrance to the Great Hall. One fateful morning, Harry and Cho found themselves under it, with Dumbledore standing right behind them.

    Cho stopped dead. Harry almost found himself dead. They looked up, and there it was, smirking at them. Dumbledore smiled. It didn't look like he was leaving until they kissed. They nodded at each other. It was to be quick and not noteworthy.

    Cho closed her eyes. Harry leaned closed. He couldn't explain it himself. He gave short peck on her lips. They hurriedly walked in opposite directions once it was finished. It was the last day of Christmas, and nobody saw. Not one. He kept kicking himself all through that day, wondering why he didn't just do it on a cheek. Now would be a good reason to use a Time-Turner, an artifact capable of sending the owner back in time a certain number of hours.

    Harry really had no reason to feel so self-conscious. It was a one time thing, no one saw it, Dumbledore wouldn't tell, it was over and somehow Pansy Parkinson found out. He stood in front of the Fat Lady with Parkinson right behind him. Harry was giving the password when he was so rudely interrupted.

    "Hey! Potter! You found yourself a better girlfriend this time! Much better than that Mudblood Granger!" Harry's skin glittered golden.

    "You better run before I decide to make up another spell," said Harry, fists clenched. The situation was bad enough without the entire school knowing. Harry whipped around to face her and clasped his hands and began to chant... but only he knew it was merely another wind charm. Parkinson ran like a bat out of hell. Harry's skin flickered smoky-quartz black and a rush of energy shot through him but stopped as sudden as it appeared. It was these bursts of black that worried Harry the most. It has happened before and all the time gotten him out of trouble. What is the black glow?

    It was night and Harry wanted to sleep. Ron and Neville had beaten him into the dormitory, both fast asleep. Harry changed into his pajamas and crawled into his four-poster. This was the first time he decided to think about recent events. He had a sister. He more than appreciated the fact, he would give his soul for the it. Sirius had gotten into trouble, deep down he knew this. Hedwig's absence became much too long to ensure the safety of Sirius.

    There were other things in the back of his mind he had forgotten. Sirius was supposed to contact several other wizards and one Harry knew personally, by the name of Remus Lupin. There were things to be done in preparation for Voldemort's rise to power again. It was very surprising, at least in thought, that more bad things had not started to happen. Lord Voldemort had gotten a new body and he was clearly at least as powerful as before his downfall. He, Harry, had caused it. Could he do it again?

    At least, at the moment, things seemed to be almost settled. Sirius was a small thought sitting idly in the back of his mind. For the time being, things seemed to be going smoothly. Harry hoped to himself things would continue to go uphill. Another thing that seemed to bother him was the voice he heard. The Chamber of Secrets, it's not open... and he saw the basilisk die. Things had hit curbside only a few, short, painful months back. These things troubled Harry over the next few days, his immediate fear being Sirius had gotten into trouble.