Archive of Our Own

“Delilah, go inside,” Aunt Petunia suddenly told her, her sharp tone cutting through the early morning quiet. 

“Why? I mean–”

“There’s a dog,” she said quietly. “A very large, very filthy dog, and it’s jumped our fence. It must have fleas, could be rabid, you know those things carry awful diseases. No one trains their damn animals these days as it is, and now it’s got to be our problem…”

“It doesn’t look rabid,” Lila said consideringly. “You can usually tell, you know? They’re either mad and foaming at the mouth, or it would already be up beside us trying to get us sick. It’s just… watching. And look, it’s got a collar!” she added, as the dog ran in a small circle and she caught a flash of red. 

Lila, something is still off about that dog, Tom warned.

Not rabies, though.

No, not rabies, I don’t think.

“So it’s an ill-kempt stray,” her aunt corrected, lips pursed in distaste as though that were far worse than rabies. 

“Can I try to pet it?” 

“No, you absolutely may not!” Aunt Petunia exclaimed, her voice growing shrill. “Delilah Potter, I forbid you from going anywhere near that dog. It could rip you to shreds without a care in the world– unfeeling animals, dogs, you know. Or it could destroy the garden! All our hard work,” she lamented, and Lila was pretty sure she was supposed to be concerned that herself and the garden appeared to be of equal importance.

“Well,” she tried. “Can I throw a tennis ball over on the other end of the fence to see if it’ll fetch?”

Aunt Petunia sighed, a pinched sort of look on her face that she often adopted after exchanging more than a few words with Lila. “Fine. At the first sign of strange behaviour, you’re going inside,” she threatened. “And cleaning the whole house for a week.”

“Deal.”

You should have been sent to Gryffindor, Tom told her, a grievous insult coming from him. But if you insist on this display of idiocy, you’re taking the opportunity to try and control animals with magic. I could do it by eight, and you’re nearly thirteen. If you can’t manage it, I’ll be extremely disappointed.

Her eyes widened in alarm. You’ll take over if I can’t do it, though, right?

Yes, I’m not letting us get mauled by a wild animal, he said sarcastically, and she felt the tightness in her chest release. He was always looking out for her, she knew that. There was never anything to be scared of at all.

Tennis balls, which they kept around for when Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge visited with her evil little bulldog, were kept in a bucket under the stairs that led from the kitchen to the backyard. Fortunately, Marge had not visited in quite some time, and the tennis balls were not covered in dirt and slobber as they were for several months after each visit, so Lila grabbed two and slowly headed for the dog.

“Here, boy,” she whispered, then coughed and repeated herself, louder this time. 

Merlin, that’s a big dog, she told Tom. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog that big. Looks more like a wolf, it does.

Lila, if you are about to confront a wolf, I am going to kill you.

That would mean killing yourself, she replied, rolling her eyes. You would never do that. Anyway, walk me through the animal controlling thing?

See if it’s even tame first, he suggested. If it is, you’ll try to control it. If it’s not, you’ll try to tame it. If it tries to kill us, I’ll kill it first.

Tom, no–

“Do you wanna fetch?” she asked the dog, crouching slightly. “Go fetch, boy! Come on, now.” She tossed the ball across the yard, not wanting it to come any closer to the house, and it rolled to a stop a good ways from Lila. The dog jumped up and ran after the ball, tail wagging and yipping excitedly. It ran back to Lila with the yellow ball in its mouth, dwarfed by its large frame so that it looked more like a ping-pong ball than anything else, and came to a perfect stop beside her, dropping the ball and pushing its face into her hand affectionately. “So you are trained,” she muttered. “Weirdly trained. And you’re so filthy. Are you gonna be okay if I hose you off? I’m not petting you if you’re gross.”

Says the girl who digs in the dirt for fun.

Dirt has worms, she corrected primly. This fucker probably has lice.

Strangely enough, the dog seemed to almost nod its head, which wasn’t possible, and turned itself in a little circle before laying down, watching her contentedly while she unrolled the hose and set it to spray. “Good boy,” Lila cooed. “Merlin, you’re well-trained. I wish I could take you to school with me, you know? But we’re not allowed dogs. I wish you were a cat or something. Or a rat, maybe, I heard one of the boys in my year has a rat. But I don’t think they’d give me another exception,” she said sadly. “They’re already letting me keep my snake.”

The dog barked at that, a relatively quiet sound given the size of the animal, and she got the strange impression that it was telling her to continue. 

“Here, look,” she said, glancing back to see if Aunt Petunia was watching before pulling the tiny white snake from the pocket of her apron. “Her name’s Apple, and I can talk to her.” The dog seemed to rear back slightly at this. “Not that she has very much to say,” Lila added. “I wish you could talk.”

It barked again, moving to rest its head on her knee.

Is it possible I’m already influencing it? she asked. Because this is not how dogs act, even nice domesticated ones like Mr. Number Eight’s dog.

Maybe, Tom said, but he sounded doubtful. Just be careful around the ugly mutt, will you? I’m not in the mood to be bedridden for the next week.

“…Warn the public that Black is currently armed and very dangerous. A hot line has been set up, and any sightings should be reported immediately…”

“Don’t know why we’d be seeing a man like that,” Uncle Vernon grunted at the television through a mouthful of pancakes. Lila did her best to stay out of the line of fire of spit he tended to spew. “Look a’ the state of ‘im! We wouldn’t very well be associating with those sorts, now would we?”

“Of course not, Uncle Vernon,” Lila agreed. 

“Those sorts?” Aunt Petunia had repeated warily from where she was standing in the kitchen, her voice growing reed thin.

“Criminals, Pet,” Uncle Vernon assured her, which was undoubtedly a strange thing to consider reassuring. “Not… not those sorts.”

Aunt Petunia came behind Lila as well, her hand coming to rest on her husband’s shoulder, her beady eyes opened as far as they went. The news switched to a close-up image of the escaped convict’s face, and Aunt Petunia let out a muffled shriek and dropped her teacup directly onto the ground. “I’m afraid,” she said, white as a ghost, “that he very much is one of those sorts.”

Was he one of yours, Tom? she asked, upset halfway to the point of hysteria. Tell me the truth!

I don’t remember him being one of my followers, he said, unaffected as always by her haywire emotions. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been an informant, and people who didn’t follow me can still be mass murderers.

Headmaster Dumbledore visited the next day, nearly destroying the fireplace in the process. Lila thanked every god Tom had ever told her about that her relatives were out of the house that day for Dudley’s birthday.

“Is this glass?” he’d asked, peering at the shards covering the floor. “Muggles… always inventing new things! Keeps the smoke out of the room, I’d presume, quite clever.”

“Yes, sir,” she confirmed. “The fireplace is electric. It, er, it turns on with the switch here. We do need the glass, though, so if you could…”

“Ah, yes, of course,” he agreed, waving his wand, and Lila openly gaped as the mess on the ground began to fit itself back together until it was perfectly reformed, looking in all honestly much nicer than it had before. The mantle had been cracked in a few places, the paint peeling, and a spiderweb-thin crack had formed in the glass from a few years ago when Dudley had thrown the remote a bit too hard. Every fault and blemish was gone now.

I love magic, she told Tom.

You are easily impressed and easily pleased, he replied drily. But it is a splendid thing to experience, certainly.

Easily pleased means frequently happy, she said, just like she had a million times before. It was a long-overplayed argument between them.

“What’s this about, Headmaster?” Lila asked, serving them each a cup of tea and curling up on the couch. She’d gotten her hands on lemondrop tea, and it seemed like a safe guess that the Headmaster would want some, given his preferences in sweets.

“Sirius Black, as you may know if you or your friend Miss Granger have been following the news, has escaped from Azkaban. And I owe it to you to tell you, my dear girl, that it is quite likely that Sirius Black is targeting you,” Headmaster Dumbledore told her gravely. 

“Aunt Petunia said he was my parents’ friend,” was Lila’s only response. “That she recognised him from their wedding.”

“I’m afraid so,” he said, regret heavy in his voice. “He and your father were close friends during their years at Hogwarts, but in the end he played a role in their deaths. 

“And now he’s coming back to– what– finish the job?” she asked, fidgeting nervously. “That’s… that’s insane. I mean, I’m nearly thirteen. He hasn’t cared until now ?”

“I’m afraid that is something I do not have an explanation for. In all likelihood, the opportunity simply had not presented itself until now. Azkaban has extremely impressive security. That security will be reflected at Hogwarts for the upcoming year, as well, so I do not want you to worry overly much about your safety.” She hadn’t been particularly concerned for her safety, for the record. Last year was a basilisk in the castle, which seemed much worse than a singular madman outside of the castle. Besides, when you had Voldemort after your life, nobody else seemed all that scary, she reasoned.

That’s horrible reasoning, Tom informed her, and she ignored him.

“It is extremely unlikely that he will make it near the school,” the Headmaster assured her. “But out of what I do hope is an abundance of caution, I will ask that you continue to take a professor along with you when you tend to your garden– Professor Sprout has already volunteered. And Lila,” he said, more serious in that moment than she’d ever seen him, as he watched her over the rims of his glasses.

“Yes?”

“I must ask that you do not go after Sirius Black.”

She blinked, wetting her lips as she tried to come up with an answer and failed several times. “You’re asking me not to… go looking for someone who’s trying to kill me?” she checked. “I don’t have any interest in risking my life. I can’t even cast any of the Defence spells we’ve learned, so it would be pretty stupid of me to confront a serial killer. Besides–” she grimaced– “Hermione would never let me go alone,  and she’s too clever not to figure it out if I tried to hide it, and,” she added very solemnly, “I would die before I’d get that close to losing her again.”

“A noble declaration,” he told her softly. “I would simply appreciate your word, my dear girl, if only to put an old man’s mind at rest.”

“Alright,” she agreed reluctantly. “You have my word that I will not seek out my own death this year in the form of a mass-murdering lunatic.”

Quite right, Tom agreed smugly. You really only have room for one of those in your life.

I will strangle you.

That would mean strangling yourself.

And you would be mighty displeased about that, wouldn’t you?

She quickly found out what the Headmaster had meant by Azkaban’s security coming to Hogwarts. She’d gotten a compartment on the train with Hermione, Ginny Weasley, and her friend Luna Lovegood whom Hermione apparently recognised, but Lila could have sworn she’d never seen before. She seemed sweet, though, and Lila was starting to get used to this whole “having friends” thing, so she didn’t complain. Luna had insisted on one particular compartment, as well, the third one on the left when they’d boarded the train, and in the corner by the window was a sleeping professor. 

She found herself sprawled across Hermione’s lap within minutes, and she realised she’d gotten very accustomed to having a very large dog-wolf accompanying her at all times trying to fit on her lap or curl up beside her when she laid out in the sun in the afternoons to rest or tan or read. She’d told the dog all about school and Hermione, and even some about Ginny when she got a letter from the other girl wishing her a happy birthday. Hermione had been wary at first, as she was not a fan of dogs– not to the extent of Aunt Petunia, however, who despised every canine creature walking the Earth and had refused to join Lila in the garden since the dog started joining them– but in time, Hermione had warmed up to the poor thing, and started bringing dog treats whenever she came over to pick Lila up for a sleepover, and the dog, which Lila had been calling Grimm, since it looked like the sort of beast out of a fairytale, had warmed to the bushy-haired witch immediately.

They were only three or so hours into the train ride, Hermione rereading their Charms textbook, Lila reading a book about magical flowers used in teas, and Ginny and Luna playing Exploding Snap, when the whole thing screeched to a halt on the tracks, which it was absolutely not supposed to do. It grew cold quite suddenly, and the lights blew out, and Tom grew angry over nothing and started quoting Marcus Aurelius again for no godforsaken reason in a way he hadn’t done since Lila was young. 

“I don’t understand,” Ginny said. “It’s… we can’t have broken down. I mean–”

A robed figure suddenly swept past their door. “Dementors,” Hermione breathed. “I’ve– I’ve only read of them, I’ve never seen one before. But the cold, the lights.”

Hermione reached over suddenly, pushing Lila upright, and shook the professor awake. He’d just barely pulled his wand when a skeletal hand pulled open the door to their compartment with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, icing it over as it did, and its face looked like something out of one of the horror movies that Dudley and his friends would watch after Aunt Petunia had gone to bed. Hermione began to cry, Luna simply stared out the window with an odd look on her face.

“None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks,” the Professor said, calm but threatening all the same, standing to confront the hooded figured with a charmed fire waiting patiently in his palm. “Go.”

Hermione had tucked her knees up to her chest, whimpering softly and shaking, nails digging into her palms hard enough to leave marks. Luna hadn’t moved. The figures– dementors, she had called them– floated past the professor as though he had said nothing at all. Ginny had just begun to scream when the professor muttered something Lila couldn’t make out, and from his wand lept a great dog, which did something vaguely reminiscent of barking until the dementors turned and left, one of them hovering by Lila for several moments longer than the others.

“I don’t understand,” Hermione said again, her voice rasping and weak. “I thought I’d never be happy again…”

“That’s their whole purpose,” Ginny managed to say, sniffling. “They feed on happiness, happy memories. They make you relive your worst ones. My dad visited Azkaban once– they’ve got dementors there, that is– and he said he had to take two weeks’ leave after.”

“You’re a Weasley, then?” the professor asked. “Arthur… ah, that would have been when…”

Ginny started to cry harder, and Lila wrapped an arm around her shoulders just like she had after the events of the year before, and the younger witch attached herself to Lila immediately. 

“Why did it affect Ginny worse than the rest of us?” Hermione asked, still looking quite shaken, but quickly returning her usual state of clinical curiosity. “Does she have happier memories? Were they drawn to them?”

“That’s entirely possible,” he agreed. “But it is also possible rather that those with worse memories than the rest of us will experience significantly more pain when reliving them. Here,” he offered, holding out a bar of chocolate to Ginny. Lila took it for her and tore open the wrapping. “Eat. It’ll help.”

“Why didn’t it affect you and Luna?” Hermione asked next, always needing the next answer once she’d gotten the first. 

“They’re misunderstood creatures, dementors,” Luna spoke up, her dreamy, lyrical sort of voice stark against the dreary backdrop of their conversation. She smiled pleasantly. “I don’t mind letting them borrow a little bit of my happiness. I’ve got enough to share, certainly. In return, they brought back some of my memories of my mother that I’d nearly lost.”

Hermione stared at her incredulously before seemingly abandoning that line of questioning. “That doesn’t explain Lila.”

Lila had no clue why the dementors didn’t have a significant effect on her, except… they had, hadn’t they? Tom had gotten angry– which was really his only emotion when he wasn’t happy or at least pleased. She’d never seen him sad. He’d reverted to the way he’d been when she was younger, before they’d made all their lovely memories: angry, fatalistic, and prone to quoting long-dead pessimists. “I think,” she wagered, “that I’ve spent a lot of my life with very, very neutral feelings. Not particularly happy, not particularly sad. So they took the happy memories, which weren’t many, but I didn’t really have all that many sad ones, so I just felt a bit blank. And I can be alright with that.”

Hermione nodded, accepting this answer, though a displeased frown creased her brow. She wasn’t fond of Lila’s relatives. “And what was that spell you used?” she asked, turning the interrogation onto the professor.

“You will get all of your answers,” he promised, holding out his hands in a calming motion, “but at present, I must speak to the driver. Excuse me.” He handed Hermione, Lila, and Luna each a chocolate bar as well before he left, only one parting word left to offer. “Eat.”

“Does Apple want an apple?” Hermione was teasing in a baby voice, holding out a tiny piece of fruit to the snake woven through Lila’s fingers. “Come on, sweetie, that’s it.”

“Miss Granger,” Trelawney gasped, flying to Hermione’s side with her eyes wide and her hands stretched out in front of her. “Have you been drawn away by the Spectres? Tell us, who do you see?”

Hermione had frozen, caught with her hand in the cookie jar of not paying attention in class, which never happened to her. That was Lila’s territory. “We were trying to figure out the shape in the bottom of my teacup,” Lila cut in to explain. “It looks a bit like a fox or a little dog, but then when I flip it around, it’s a bow. Could you have a look?”

Professor Trelawney picked up her cup carefully, tips of her fingers barely cradling the thing, and promptly dropped it with a shriek. Hermione, looking extremely fed up, had caught the cup with a levitation charm before it hit the ground, and returned it to Lila’s desk with a sigh.

“What?” she asked. 

“My dear,” Trelawney gasped, clutching the large crystal pendant she wore around her neck. “You have… the grim. ”

“Oh, I got a dog over summer,” Lila explained to the frightened professor. “I named it Grimm, like the Brothers Grimm, you know? The tea leaves probably just picked up on that.”

“That’s worse, ” the witch bemoaned, shaking and covering her mouth with her hands. “The grim, you must understand, my dear… it is an omen… of death. And you– oh–” she took a shaky breath. “You have invited it in!”

“I never let the dog inside,” Lila corrected her, frowning. “Though I suppose a lot of people have died in my life, so maybe that’s what it means. Like there’s death near me– the grim, the dog, all that– but it’s, er, not actually inside yet or anything.”

Hermione snatched the cup. “Well, I don’t see a grim,” she declared. “It’s far too small and not nearly pointy enough. It looks nothing like the picture.”

“Or perhaps,” Professor Trelawney said waspishly, grabbing the cup back, “you simply do not possess the Sight. Oh, no, my dear, very little aura around you… the resonances of the future…” She turned back to Lila and adopted a misty-eyed look. “Be careful, my dear girl,” Professor Trelawney nearly wept. “Oh, go– go! All of you! There can be no more divining today.”

“There shouldn’t be any more divining, ever, ” Hermione whispered. “Honestly, this whole class is hogwash. Telling the future, reading the leaves! It’s ridiculous! It’s impossible!”

“We’re at magic school, ‘Mione,” Lila reminded her, bewildered by the other witch’s reaction. “I mean, all that just seemed to be dramatics, but isn’t the whole point of this making the impossible happen?”

“No,” Hermione said very seriously, holding the trapdoor for Lila before following behind her. “Magic has rules , Lila. They might be different rules than, say, the rules of physics, but they’re rules all the same.” Lila was sceptical; magic certainly didn’t seem to have rules to her. “Look, there are limits to magic, right?” Hermione explained. “Like how conjured food won’t give you nutrition and no transfiguration is permanent. And then there are limits to what we can do with magic, like how you had a horrible case of magical exhaustion back in first year with the troll. If there are limits, then there are rules. Even if they’re strange. To say you can see the future– in tea leaves, no less– is something that can have no rules whatsoever. You can guess, certainly, and you can see what you want to see.”

“D’ya think that’s what happens with the grim, then?” Lila asked. “If Trelawney had that reaction to the grim being in my cup, then she could very well give herself a heart attack if it showed up in hers.”

“Exactly,” Hermione agreed, looking quite pleased that Lila had come to the conclusion on her own. “It’s all a load of hogwash. Let’s talk to Professor Flitwick and see if we can switch to Arithmancy during the same block. We can’t have missed much just in the first class.”

When Lila had stayed at the Grangers’ house the first weekend of summer, Hermione had been entirely preoccupied with picking her classes for third year, and was halfway through an application for a time turner so that she could take all of them. The two girls had sat down, along with Hermione’s mum and dad, and worked through a pros and cons list of every single class, and the girls picked the top three options.

They’d both wanted to take Ancient Runes, so that was an easy decision. Then Lila had insisted on taking Care of Magical Creatures, which Hermione didn’t mind, but Muggle Studies had received a resounding no from Lila, who had stared at Hermione incredulously before reminding her friend that they both already lived in the muggle world, and thus had absolutely no need for a class on it.

“Honestly,” Lila had said at the time, “we need Witch Studies more than Muggle Studies. I wish they offered a class like that.”

“But wouldn’t it be interesting to hear it from a magical perspective?”

“It would be annoying, because they’d get everything wrong,” Lila informed her, reaching over Hermione to cross the name off the list. “You can always buy a book about it.”

It had come down to Divination and Arithmancy, which were unfortunately at the same time, and they’d decided that Divination seemed much more fascinating, seeing as Arithmancy could be learned from a book. Hermione had purchased the books already with the intention to self-study, and Lila had supported her with absolutely no interest in doing the same. 

Divination really did appear to be a bust, though, but Hermione had quickly gotten over the disappointment when her mind had turned to their new arithmancy class, which Lila had grudgingly owl-ordered the textbooks for and sat through patiently listening to Tom’s commentary.

I thought Divination sounded fun, Lila lamented to Tom while Hermione was hunched over her desk doing her Arithmancy homework. Lila had done about half of it before turning in for the night. Professor McGonagall said it’s one of the most imprecise branches of magic, but it could have still been cool.

Your friend is right, Tom denied. Prophecies are, above all, self-fulfilling.

I didn’t say anything about prophecies, she said, frowning.

You’re in one, he explained. We both are. And I’m sorry to say I’m the one who put you there.

You’re a seer? Lila gasped. Why didn’t you tell me!

No, I’m not a– No. Rather, there was a prophecy about me and about a child who would lead to my downfall, and it was my belief in the prophecy that caused me to see that threat in you.

Well, why haven’t you told me that? she asked crossly. If it’s about me, I deserved to know.

I wonder often if I should have told you earlier. I wonder also if I should have told you less. But it would be a lot of lies to track, and your mind had not been clouded by… other influence, at that point. Also, it is due to this prophecy that I required you to memorise your lines before meeting with Dumbledore that very first time. Lila perked up. I did say I’d tell you eventually, he chided, and she felt bad for ever doubting him. I feared he would want to train you, to set you up to face me one day. Instead, you remind him of me. He’s too wary to expect heroics from you.

You’re always looking out for me, she told him through a yawn. It’s not like I’m happy about all the other stuff, but I’d rather have you than not. And imagine if you’d picked somebody else! Then somebody else would have you, and I’d never be okay with that.

Neither would I, darling, Tom agreed. Neither would I.

“Today, we’re going to be learning the pruning charm!” Flitwick announced, flicking his own wand and sending a small potted plant onto each student’s desk. Lila shot up to attention, and Hermione sighed. “Repeat after me, class. Co-in-qui-or! ”

Lila repeated the spell dutifully. You won’t let me forget that one, will you, Tom? she checked. 

Of course not, he agreed, and she knew that if he had eyes he’d be rolling them. You know, he added, I don’t think we ever covered this charm when I was in school. Either it’s been invented since then, Flitwick has some personal inclination toward it, or he’s teaching it specifically for you .

She smiled so wide it could have split her face in two. She managed the charm the very first time she tried it– even Hermione had to try twice!– and the two of them won fifteen points for Ravenclaw, ten of them hers.

“Can anyone take a guess what may be in this wardrobe?” Lupin asked, a clever smile hinting at his lips. “No one? Restless creature, small, dark, confined space…”

You , Tom told her. 

Rude.

“A boggart,” Hermione announced, her hand up so high it was brushing one of the crossbeams. “They’re frequently found in cupboards and trunks. No one knows what a boggart looks like– or rather, no one knows what a boggart looks like on its own. It takes the form of your worst fear.”

“What form would it take if I let it out now?”

“Well, I think it would be rather confused,” Hermione ventured, “seeing as there are so many of us close to it. It would be shifting through forms, wouldn’t it?”

“Quite right, Miss Granger. Three points to Ravenclaw.”

I never got the points thing, Lila told Tom absently. Like, some teachers will give you one point at a time, and some just give them out in ten or twenty point increments. It’s not like they need to make an official point-earning system, but you think they’d want to be on the same page.

Pay attention to your class, Tom replied, and she pouted.

“The incantation is Riddikulus,” Lupin explained. “And there’s no specific motion. The trick to this one is to think of something happy, something funny. Fear is very weak in the face of laughter.”

Padma Patil was horribly afraid of mummies. Apparently she and her sister had a run-in with one as children and neither had fully recovered, but the wrapping unravelled until the mummy was just two wrapped feet running around aimlessly. Daphne Greengrass faced her adopted sister, who tilted her head in confusion. “Who are you?” the boggart-girl asked. “Have we met?” Michael Corner had stepped in front of her when they realised she wasn’t going to be able to cast the spell, and revealed that he was absolutely terrified by the very sight of snakes. She couldn’t really understand that one, but it had started hissing wordlessly, which she definitely didn’t like. She supposed snakes must be much scarier when you couldn’t understand them, though Hermione couldn’t understand Apple, and she never seemed to mind. He cast the spell, and the snake turned bright pink and shrank down to the size of a quill, though it hissed just as imperiously.  

“You gave me the idea,” he whispered to Lila. “The way you shrank the snake last year.”

“I’ve still got her,” she told him. “If you ever want to say hi, even from a distance, she’s very well-trained, and the professors determined that she was completely harmless.” He’d nodded gratefully and said he’d consider it.

Draco Malfoy’s father came out of the wardrobe and told him he was horribly disappointed in him and that he wasn’t deserving of the Malfoy name, but the Slytherin cast the counter-spell with a look of determination, and his father donned muggle sunglasses and began breakdancing while he gave his lecture. That was definitely Lila’s favourite, and Tom still hadn’t stopped laughing by the time the line was almost through.

Hermione shook nearly imperceptibly when it was her turn, but she held her wand high. The boggart turned into Professor McGonagall, and Lila frowned. “An unprecedented failure,” the stern professor declared. “You’ve failed every single class. You, Miss Granger, are hereby expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please turn over your wand–”

“Riddikulus,” Hermione said, voice still shaking, but McGonagall’s robes simply changed from burgundy to green as her tirade continued. Lila reached out hesitantly, hoping to comfort her friend. Hermione glanced over to give her a tight sort of grateful smile. “Riddikulus,” she repeated, stronger this time, and McGonagall turned into Lila, in the same pointy hat and green robes, doing a horrible imitation of the professor’s accent and reciting what Tom informed her was a speech from Macbeth.

“Good, good!” Lupin praised. “Not quite as funny as Snape in a dress like we got from the Gryffs yesterday, but I suppose I’m biassed. Next up, Miss–”

Lila had already stepped forward, as she was the only one left, but the wariness on Lupin’s face nearly sent her back to her seat. The boggart shifted a few times, a faceless man with glowing red eyes, something she couldn’t make out but she was pretty sure was Quirrell, if she was guessing right that the purple blob was his turban, it even seemed to pause for a moment to become a glowing orb of brilliant green, but it didn’t last long, and the scene settled. Hermione, laying frozen on the ground, left arm extended just like she had when she was petrified the year before, but instead of a mirror or a scrap of paper, she crushed a sprig of forget-me-nots in her fist. Lila was leaning over her helplessly. 

“Riddikulus,” she spat, and the lifeless form on the floor shifted into Sirius Black. Boggart-Lila laughed, a high, clear sound, and Lila joined her. Lupin had gone white as a sheet.

Beautiful , Tom breathed, pride saturating her mind. Oh, darling…

Hermione had gone to Hogsmeade with Evelyn and Orla, but Lila had turned down the offer to join them, citing her potions essay as her excuse. She loved Hermione, but the other girl had been stressing about midterm examinations non-stop for the last two weeks, and she no longer had the respite of her own room at the end of the night, so she really needed a break. With Sirius Black on the loose, it had seemed like the smartest idea to share a room, just as an extra protection, but Lila was beginning to wonder if Sirius Black would be preferable. Hermione had also gotten a cat– or, kneazle, technically, though Lila wasn’t sure of the difference– and as sweet as it was, it left hair all over the room which Lila desperately needed to clean. Besides, she didn’t have much of an interest in buying new quills or chocolate, and she did have an interest in tending to her garden. 

Unfortunately, Professor Sprout had already agreed to hold a revision session for the fifth years that afternoon, and Lila had promised the Headmaster she wouldn’t visit the garden without a teacher present. This was what brought Lila to the Defence classroom at precisely noon, a displeased look cutting into her brow.

“Lila!” Lupin exclaimed, opening the door wide. He’d redecorated since Lockhart, she noted, flashy posters and a shelf of displayed awards had been replaced by a sturdy oak bookshelf, stocked to the point of overflowing with different sized tomes. “What can I do for you today?”

“Why didn’t you want me to face the boggart?” was what came out, and she cursed herself.

“I–”

“Actually, that’s not why I’m here,” she interrupted. “I’ve got a garden a bit away from the castle, and I’m not allowed to go there without a teacher since Sirius Black’s on the run, and Professor Sprout is busy, so I was wondering if you’d take me.”

“Certainly,” he agreed, brows raised at her request. “If you don’t mind, we will have to stop by the dungeons on our way out, however. I owe Professor Snape a brief visit.”

Lila nodded, and Lupin collected his briefcase before following her out of the office and charming the door shut. “Snape doesn’t like me,” Lila said conversationally as they walked. 

“Professor Snape, Lila,” he corrected, not unkindly, but certainly more than a bit bemused. “He and your father never got along well in school. In all likelihood, it’s a bit of that leftover.”

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Mostly he’s just mad that I don’t follow all the Potions instructions, but sometimes they’re much more complicated than they need to be. I’m good with plants, see, so I can usually swap things around when I need to.”

His mouth twitched. “No, I can’t imagine he’d be particularly pleased. Ah, we’ve arrived. Severus,” he greeted when the dour professor opened the door without fanfare. 

“Wait there.” Snape walked away, not opening the door far enough for them to enter the room even had they wished to. “Your potions, Lupin,” he said when he returned, thrusting a small case at the Defence professor, who opened it to reveal three identical vials. Lupin nodded sharply, snapping the case closed again. 

“Thank you, Severus,” he said, sounding quite earnest. “I greatly appreciate it, as always.” The door slammed in their faces. “Ah, well,” Lupin said mildly. “I suppose I can’t expect him to change, but I’ll hold out.”

“Have you known him for long?” Lila asked, turning them in the direction of the garden.

“We went to Hogwarts together. I was in the same year as him, and your father as well.”

“Were you friends?” she had to know. “Not you and Snape– Professor Snape, I mean– but you and my father. I haven’t met any of his friends, though Professor McGonagall told me a little bit about him. She said he was wicked good at Transfiguration, but that Mum was better at Charms.”

“That he was,” Lupin agreed. “I remember he managed that matchstick to needle spell the very first day of class– couldn’t comprehend why the rest of us hadn’t. You’ve got his eyes, you know. Always kind, his eyes. Where exactly is this garden?”

“Not much further,” she assured him. “It’s just behind those fir trees up there. Hermione turned her matchstick into a needle the first day, too, you know. She’s gotten better about remembering that normal people aren’t nearly as smart as she is, but she still hasn’t quite caught on that not everyone cares as much as she does. I haven’t managed any of the transfigurations yet.”

“Any of them?” he asked, not critically, but certainly befuddled. 

“Nope,” she confirmed. “I’ve only gotten a couple of charms either, and the boggart thing was the first spell I’ve ever managed in a Defence class.”

“Professor Sprout regularly sings your praises,” he told her, the question implied. 

“I’m good with plants,” she repeated. “Here, look.” She knelt down and cleared a bit of snow away, revealing a patch of dead grass and rocks. She pressed her hand into the dirt, shivering at the touch, but dug her fingers in all the same, knowing they’d be red-raw later. She let a little of her magic seep out and cover the ground like a blanket, and where it did sprung poppies, red as blood, white as snow. 

“Your power is highly impressive, for your age especially,” Lupin said very seriously, resting his hand on her shoulder. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and transfigured it into a pair of gloves. “Here. You must be freezing, touching the snow like that. James would kill me from the grave if I let his daughter catch pneumonia.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sheepish smile, pulling on the white gloves and pressing her hands to her cheeks. “Here we are. You’ve got to climb over some of the rubble, but the door is on the opposite side, so I don’t think we need to walk around.”

“It’s beautiful,” he told her. 

“It’s overrun with weeds,” she corrected, pursing her lips. “Hermione usually studies at the picnic table while I work, if you’d like to do the same. Well, not study, I suppose, but whatever it is you brought in the briefcase.”

He nodded, but didn’t move to leave her side. “Lila,” he began. “About the boggart…”

“It’s really alright, Professor.”

“No, you deserve an answer,” he told her, shaking his head. “They show our greatest fears, of course. Most children your age have rather standard fears, but you… you’ve been through quite a lot more than some of your peers. A handful of students in the last class had summoned dementors, and that seemed like about as far as it needed to go. I feared that your boggart, Lila, would take the form of Lord Voldemort.”

“Oh,” she said. “I guess it would be a bit disturbing for the rest of the class if it was.”

“Quite so.”

“I didn’t think of Voldemort, you know,” she said conversationally, crossing a few paces and kneeling to pull up a few weeds that had been bothering her from the corner of her eye. Obviously, Tom muttered. “I mean, I thought about Quirrell, I guess– did the Headmaster tell you about him? He was possessed by Voldemort and attacked me, and I killed him. But it’s hard to be scared of someone you killed, so it didn’t stick. But Hermione got petrified last year by the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, and that was properly horrible,” she said sadly. “There wasn’t much I could do to help, even. I helped Professor Sprout with the mandrakes, but… I was twelve, you know? And Orla and George and I went down to the Chamber to help Ginny, but Hermione couldn’t come, and–” She broke off before her voice could crack, lilacs blurring in her vision. 

“It’s a generous fear,” Lupin said gently, fortunately not addressing too much of her bramble of emotions. “To want to always protect the ones we care about. But I do hope it’s not too much pressure on your shoulders. It’s not possible to save everyone– sometimes we have to settle for doing our best.” He sounded like he was speaking from personal experience.

“I think you’re making me out to be a bit more heroic than I am,” Lila laughed bitterly, keeping her eyes on her hellebores. “I would have ended the world twice over if that’s what it took to save Hermione.”

“You remind me of an old friend of mine,” he said, shaking his head. 

“Sirius Black, you mean?”

He snapped to face her, paling at her words. “Excuse me?”

“You said you were friends with my dad,” she explained with a shrug. “And he was best friends with Sirius Black, which means you must have been friends with him, too. My aunt saw him on the news and said he was my dad’s best man at his wedding. She said he was a little too charming, and then he turned out evil or whatever.”

“We all fell for his act,” Lupin sighed. “I have to wonder if it had been honest up until it wasn’t. And I didn’t mean to imply that you seemed ‘evil or whatever’ to me,” he added, air quotes and all. “Only that he was always just as protective, to a fearsome sort of extent. He would have killed for your dad and me– or we always thought he would have.”

“I would kill for Hermione, if I needed to,” she said very certainly, and Tom groaned at her lack of subtlety, reminding her that the Defence professor was looking less than pleased and comfortable with all her talk of murder and destruction.

“Your boggart…”

“What about it?”

“I haven’t seen a boggart respond that way before,” he said after a moment of consideration.

She tugged at a growth of bindweed. “The shifting?”

“That’s not particularly common, but I’ve seen it before,” he dismissed. “That usually occurs if the fear is either quite complex, or else the subject simply doesn’t experience a lot of fear, despite the opportunities available for it.”

“I don’t scare easy,” she answered the unspoken question. “A lot of things are just… unpleasant, rather than scary. It’s like I said on the train, right? A lot of stuff is pretty neutral. And if it’s solvable, it can’t really be scary.”

“I figured as much. No, I meant the form it took when you thought of something amusing. Lila…”

“I’m not gonna go trying to kill Sirius Black, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she assured him, and his shoulders seemed to relax a bit. “After all,” she added. “I promised the Headmaster I wouldn’t.”

Hermione had given her a dictionary of poisonous flowers– complete with pictures– for Christmas, and Orla and Evelyn had given her and Hermione matching shawls dotted with constellations and the Ravenclaw crest as the pin. Luna Lovegood had sent her a pair of earrings, buttercup blossoms in little bottles, and a cat toy, a little squeaky rat made of felt, which she brought back to school with her and let Crookshanks chase around the bedroom. Ginny Weasley had sent her a box of lavender chocolates along with a cornflower blue sweater with the letter L on the front in cream. From Mum, the note read. She makes them for all of us every year– get used to being a regular recipient. Lila wore it to sleep nearly every night.

She’d gotten Ginny a fairyberry bonsai tree, since they had calming properties, and she was pretty certain the other girl still had nightmares of the last year if the dark circles perpetually under her eyes were anything to go off of. She’d meticulously written out how to make a tea from the leaves, how to make syrup from the berries, and general care instructions. She’d considered paying a post owl to bring it, but they were notoriously slow around the holidays, especially for large packages, so she’d just purchased an inexpensive mutt of an owl from the shop in Hogsmeade and told it to stay with Ginny when it got there.

She’d gotten one other gift, the sender anonymous. ‘Use it well,’ read the note, and she pulled from the wrappings a long, shimmery cloak. 

Oh, how the hell did you get your hands on one of those? Tom complained. 

One of what?

Put on the cloak and go look in the mirror, he instructed, a mocking note in his tone that let her know that he was setting her up for what he’d consider an amusing reaction. Regardless, it was Tom, and she listened to him, dutifully clasping the cloak about her shoulders but leaving the hood down so it didn’t mess her hair. She turned to the mirror and let out a muffled shriek. 

Where did my body go?! she screeched in her mind, and Tom just laughed and laughed. She watched her reflection suspiciously, and carefully folded a corner of the cloak away from her body, and just like that a sliver of her torso came into view. The cloak makes me invisible? she checked excitedly. Wicked.

“Oh, Great Heiress of Slytherin,” came a voice from above her.

“Might we trouble you with our presence?”

“Might you bless us with your attention?”

“Might–”

“Shut it, please ,” she snapped. “I’m busy.”

“If you insist,” the boys sighed reluctantly, one sitting backward on the chair beside her and the other jumping up on the table. “We’ve got something for you.”

She looked up. “For me?”

“Yep,” agreed the one she was moderately certain was George, if the F on his jumper was anything to go off of. She had a hard time believing they’d be wearing the ones with their actual initials on them.  She was wearing her jumper, too, as had become a habit. It was easily the warmest thing she owned. “As a thank you,” he added, “for, you know–”

“Saving lives, kicking ass–”

“All of that.”

“And we hear you’re in danger again, not to mention.”

“Homicidal maniacs find me wildly irresistible,” she agreed without inflection, poking at Tom in her mind. “When it’s not one, it’s the other.”

“Well, never fear,” proclaimed Fred. “Because with what we’re about to give you, you’ll never have to worry about anybody after you ever again.” From his robes he produced a blank piece of parchment.

“Um.”

“I solemnly swear I am up to no good!” both twins chorused, Fred touching his wand to the paper. Ink began to surface on the parchment, painting spindly lines in a sort of grid…

“Wait a minute… That’s Hogwarts!” Lila exclaimed.

“Yep,” agreed George. “This map shows you everyone.”

“Everyone?” she asked.

“Everyone,” Fred confirmed. “Where they are–”

“What they’re doing–”

“Every minute–”

“Of every day!”

“Did you make this?” she asked, dumbfounded. 

“That’s all the Marauders,” Fred said, sounding quite put out that they couldn’t claim any credit.

“They’re our heroes,” George added. “And here, look.” He tapped his wand against the front of the folded parchment, and ink bled onto the page. Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs present the Marauders’ Map.

“And you want to give this to me?” she checked. “I mean, well, Orla says you two are the pranking masters of Hogwarts. Don’t you use this to, like, properly carry out your pranks and whatnot?”

“Miss Quirke said that?” George repeated in delight, a glimmer in his eye. 

“Er, yeah,” Lila said, hoping she hadn’t just revealed something the other girl had intended to keep to herself. “And, um, Evelyn said you two know the castle better than anyone else. Though I guess you’re sort of cheating, if you have the map and no one else does.”

“And that from the charming Miss Chambers?” Fred repeated. “Fred, my good man, do you hear that? I believe we just might have a mission more important than pranking coming up…”

“George, I do believe you just may be right. We ought to plan! To plot!”

“But first, we’ve got to pass along our genius, old boy. Now, we nicked this from Filch back in our first year, so we’ve had time to learn all the passages, all the secrets, all the schedules of the stairs–”

“Which means we’re ready to pass it to you. You can watch all the little people scrambling about– see, there’s your Hermione, in the library, of course, and there’s Dumbledore up in his office pacing–”

“He’s always pacing,” Fred cut in. 

“–and make sure no one’s after you.”

“You saved Ginny,” Fred said seriously. “We never really got to thank you properly. I don’t know what you did in that Chamber, and I don’t care. We’ve still got our little sister.”

“We’re eternally at your service,” George agreed with a dramatic bow, but she knew he was serious under the theatrics. 

“Thanks,” Lila said honestly. “And if you ever need to borrow it, let me know.”

“Of course,” they chorused. “And happy Christmas!”

“I want you to teach me that spell,” Lila demanded, barging into Lupin’s office the morning after the most disastrous quidditch match she’d ever seen. 

Lila and Hermione only begun going to quidditch games this year, and had found them about as exciting as they’d expected, which wasn’t much. But the first game, Ravenclaw against Hufflepuff, had made for a pretty fun day regardless, since they got to join their housemates in their cheers and later in the celebration, after Cho Chang’s risky catch had won them the game. The second match, which had been the day before, had been between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and so they’d worn green head to toe and cheered on Ginny beside Evelyn and Orla, who were cheering for Gryffindor and wearing red and gold scarves which they’d received from Gryffindor’s twin beaters.

Then came the dementors, which, until then, had done a relatively good job of staying only by the perimeter of the school like they were supposed to. They had gotten onto the pitch in the middle of the game, and Ginny, as the Slytherin seeker, bore the brunt of the attack, as she was on the far end of the pitch a few hundred feet up when they arrived. 

Lila felt a bit bad about just coming in without warning, but the map said Lupin was in there, after all, and he was pacing, so it wasn’t as though she was waking him from a nap.

“Good morning to you, too, Lila,” he said, sounding surprised and more than a little taken aback.

“Yeah, good morning,” she agreed dismissively. “Now, I need you to teach me the spell you used on the train. The one that made the dementors leave the compartment.”

“It’s an extremely advanced charm. I am not refusing you,” he cut her off before she could argue. “I am simply warning you. A majority of witches and wizards will never manage a Patronus.”

Can you cast a Patronus? she asked Tom immediately.

It’s one of the lightest spells in existence, he sneered. Absolutely not.

“Well, I don’t care,” she said stubbornly, to Tom as much as Lupin. “I can get it, I know I can.”

“Alright,” he agreed carefully. “May I ask what sparked this particular drive? You haven’t indicated any interest in learning a Patronus– in learning any defensive charms, actually– so far this year.”

“The dementors showed up at the quidditch game yesterday,” she explained. “And Hermione started crying again, and Ginny hasn’t stopped shaking and nearly fell off her broom. And so I’ve got to learn. I’ve got to.” 

“Alright,” he said slowly. “You will learn, and I will teach you. How about Tuesday after dinner? Perfect. I’ll have to prepare a few things. And Lila?”

“Yeah?”

“There is no shame in it if you do not manage it. You have not failed your friends without this.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But I don’t plan on failing. Sorry about interrupting like that.”

“Padfoot, you devil,” she heard the man mutter to himself before she’d shut the door. “I should have known you’d come back and haunt me in some form or another.”

“This place is going to the dogs,” Malfoy was sneering, arms crossed from where he leaned nonchalantly against a tree, holding a green apple consideringly, like he hadn’t decided yet if it was worthy of being eaten. “First that pauper teaching Defence, now this oaf leaving us all in the Forbidden Forest while he searches for some ugly beast to show off. My father will have a fit when I tell him–”

“Oh, shut it, Malfoy,” Ron Weasley shot back. “No one cares about your stupid dad. Hagrid’s great, really, and you’re trying to ruin his class for all of us.”

“He’s been taking care of the school’s animals for years, hasn’t he?” Hermione spoke up supportively. “I’m sure that makes him more than qualified to teach a class on them. After all, there’s–” she looked quite uncomfortable with what she said next– “there’s some things that can’t be learned from a book.”

“Yeah!” Ron agreed, nodding his head enthusiastically. “Hermione’s right. I bet he’ll teach us loads more than you could get from a textbook with anybody else. And what would be the point of taking a class on magical creatures if you don’t get to actually see some? My brother Charlie works with dragons, you know, and they’re a lot riskier than a, er–”

“Flobberworm or a Hinkypunk,” Hermione filled in helpfully.

“Exactly. But he’d read a million books on dragons before he started working on the reserve, and he still had loads to learn when he got there. It’s about experience,” he concluded, surprisingly sagely, and Hermione offered a hesitant smile which he returned, turning bright red as he did.

Lila looked away from the interaction, bored, and nearly screamed at what she saw. “What is that?!” she cried.

“Ooooooh,” a Gryffindor girl said, pointing. “That’s a Hippogriff! I saw a picture in a book.”

That did little to resolve Lila’s confusion. It was the most bizarre creature she’d ever seen, with the back legs, hindquarters, and tails of horses, but the front legs, wings, and heads of what seemed to be giant eagles, with cruel, steel-colored beaks and large orange eyes like anemones. The talons on their feet alone looked deadly, but Lila was sure the beast could find ten other ways to kill them if given the chance.

“I don’t think I like this class anymore,” Lila told Hermione under her breath. They’d been working their way through the textbook and observing smaller, safer animals for the start of the year, which was always fun, and pretty easy as well since Hagrid didn’t assign any homework, but this was not what Lila thought she was signing up for. “I can’t go to my garden without a teacher because it’s too dangerous, but this is fine?”

Hermione looked uncertain. “Maybe we’re just looking at them,” she suggested.

“‘Ey there!” exclaimed Hagrid happily. “Saw you admirin’ Buckbeak ‘ere, eh?”

Lila had no clue how to respond, but Hermione cut in. “He’s a very… majestic creature?” she tried.

“Tha’ he is. ‘Ere, would you like to come up an’ say hi to ‘im?” he asked, and Hermione’s eyes flew wide in alarm as she stepped back, and Lila stepped a bit in front of her friend defensively.

“I would!” declared Ron, stepping forward boldly with his hand up in the air. Lila was pretty certain she’d never seen him with his hand raised before. “I want to say hi to him!”

Hermione and Lila scurried back as the redheaded wizard ran up to Hagrid’s side. “Wonderful, wonderful! Now, firs' thing you gotta know abou' Hippogriffs is, they're proud," said Hagrid. "Easily offended, Hippogriffs are. Don't ever insult one, 'cause it might be the last thing you do.” Ron didn’t look quite so bold now, but he made no move to step back. “It’s an easy fix, though. You jus’ gotta wait for ‘im to make the firs’ move. Walk up to ‘im, bow, an’ wait.”

Ron nodded, seemingly more to reassure himself than anything else, and he approached the Hippogriff carefully. “Hey there,” he muttered, and Lila could barely pick up what he was saying. “Try not to kill me, eh? I’ve got girls watching me right now.” He bowed slowly, an awkward motion, and for several long moments nothing happened, and Hermione squeezed Lila’s hand tight. Then, the Hippogriff began to lean its long, strange, gleaming neck forward, bowing in return.

“Well done, Ron!” Hagrid said, ecstatic. “I reckon ‘e migh’ let you ride ‘im!” 

Ron grinned at Hermione from atop the beast before it flew off, the wizard’s loud whoops ringing through the Forbidden Forest as he clung on for dear life.

“Expecto Patronum,” Lila said clearly, waving her wand and conjuring up a memory of Hermione tickling her cheek with a feather and laughing, the moment of purest joy she could conjure. A tiny wisp of silver smoke slipped out, but nothing else. “I don’t get it. Why isn’t it working? My magic doesn’t hate this one like it does with all the other charms, and my memory is plenty happy.” She’d already gone through memories of Tom, memories of saving Ginny, memories of Hermione coming back to consciousness after her petrification, memories of receiving awards for her garden back home and grinning so wide it hurt while Aunt Petunia looked on with pride. Even the memory of killing Quirrell, which she hadn’t expected to work but still wanted to check off the list, had been a let-down. 

Lupin watched her for a moment, and she could nearly see gears turning in his head. “Try this,” he said abruptly, pulling a small chest from one of the shelves. “This holds a boggart. I want you to cast the Riddikulus spell and repel it.”

He released the creature and stepped back. It took the expected form of Hermione, petrified on the ground with a purple hyacinth crushed in her hand. Lila shook with anger. “ Riddikulus, ” she hissed, because how dare Lupin make her face this again, how dare the boggart presume to know her, to threaten her. Hermione became Quirrell this time, and Lila choked out a laugh.

“I do wonder. Was this really so amusing in your mind?” he asked, nothing but curiosity in his tone. 

Lila shrugged. “Not really? I mean, it’s much funnier, certainly, but there’s also not really anything funny to do with this. So I turned it into the least scary thing I could think of, just like Michael with the tiny pink snake and Padma with the detached feet. Quirrell being dead isn’t scary. Mostly because he’s already dead, and I put him there, but also because it’s not like I’m afraid of him being dead. It was a relief, and so the reminder that he can’t hurt me, even though he really wanted to, is pretty funny.”

“I think, then, that your Patronus is also going to be unique,” Lupin suggested hesitantly. “Emotion-based charms may just come differently to you. In fact, the boggart didn’t even seem very much to scare you. You seemed more angry than anything else.”

“Well,” she said, chewing on her lip. “With the boggart, I had to find the opposite of the feeling it gave me, which wasn’t exactly laughter in my case. So I guess with these I have to find the opposite of a lack of happiness, which would be…” She came up blank. 

“When you’ve got any idea,” Lupin instructed, “I want you to picture it clearly in your mind, focus on nothing else but it. It should take over your entire mind, Lila. It’s the power of your belief that allows you to overcome the dementor. Think on it. When you’re back from break, we’ll try again.”

“Oi, Lila?”

“Yeah, Big D?” Lila said, keeping her eyes on the frying pan, unable to resist mocking her cousin’s nickname. Certainly he was big, and his name did start with the letter ‘d’, but the simple accuracy only made it more ridiculous.

“At your school, do you still learn, like, maths and stuff?”

Lila turned in surprise. None of her relatives had ever asked her about Hogwarts aside from a single letter which asked if she was able to remain at school over spring holiday back in first year, before Aunt Petunia had realised that she didn’t want to do all of the spring planting by herself, and so Lila had returned for break both years since. “Er, not exactly. I’ve got a class sort of like it, though, and there’s a class a bit like chemistry that involves maths.”

“I was gonna ask if you’d help me with my assignment,” Dudley asked sheepishly. “You know I’m not good with numbers.”

She did know that. Even at eleven, he’d grown flustered just trying to count the number of presents he had– though, in his defence, he did receive a truly absurd number of presents. “Yeah, I can do that,” she agreed, nodding slowly since she was still a bit shaken by her cousin taking any interest in her at all. Hermione usually had to help her with Arithmancy assignments, but basic maths were still basic, and Lady Catharine’s had taught them up through a pretty advanced level before she left, so she knew she would at least be better at them than Dudley was. Tom pushed to the front of her mind as she served the eggs and sausages onto four plates. “But in exchange, you’ve got to call your gang off. Piers and the others wouldn’t let me have a second of peace when I was home for Christmas.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Sure,” he agreed. “Yeah, that’ll be fine. I wasn’t the one who told them to mess with you anyway.”

“I figured you weren’t,” Tom lied for her. She had absolutely figured he was, and still believed it now. “Two sausages or three?”

Tutoring Dudley ended up being considered a priority over cooking and cleaning, so Lila found that she had far more time on her hands during the week of Easter than she’d previously anticipated. Unfortunately, she’d had to leave her school things behind, as the Dursleys had threatened to throw it all away if it crossed the threshold, and, while she’d kept her wand carefully concealed on her person, there wasn’t much to do with it.

Instead she watched the map nearly obsessively from where she laid around in her room, staring at the little figures scattered across the parchment while they left tiny ink trail footprints and sprouted little speech bubbles. Unfortunately, the map couldn’t tell her what they were saying, only that they were talking, but she would often make things up, narrating both sides of the supposed conversation in her head to Tom.

“Mischief managed,” she sighed, and she folded the parchment up carefully. She tapped her wand to the front absently. “I wish I knew how you worked,” she said quietly, not wanting to draw the attention of her relatives. “Though, I guess it would be sort of rude to be able to eavesdrop on everybody’s conversations. Hermione thinks it’s creepy to know where everyone is, so I think she’d have a fit if it showed me what people were saying, too.”

As though an invisible hand were writing upon it, words began to appear on the blank parchment in the same great, curling script she recognised from the rest of the map.

‘Padfoot thinks that sounds like a brilliant suggestion,’ the words read, and Lila gasped.

“You think so?” she asked excitedly, trying to keep her voice down. “I wish I could do it. I’m rubbish at Charms. And I’m Lila, by the way, Mr. Padfoot. Lila Potter.”

The next words that appeared were in a different handwriting, crammed and rushed, the letters appearing so quickly they nearly blended together. Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Padfoot, and would like to add that he is quite certain Lila Potter is capable of fantastic things in everything she attempts.

She grinned. “Thanks, Mr. Prongs,” she whispered. 

‘Mr. Moony would like to register his concerns regarding the ethical implications of such an addition, but will support Lila Potter in her endeavours, and has highlighted the sections of the library most likely to contain the needed charms.

Mr. Wormtail is very glad to see a new generation of Marauders come to Hogwarts, and hopes Lila Potter has a lovely night.

Between Tom and the Marauders, whom Lila took great care to talk to nearly every day, she knew she was at little risk of growing lonely. Even if she’d wished to, every minute not spent shut up in her room or helping Dudley was spent in the garden.

When she looked up from her rosebushes after a long day of extremely productive work, if she did say so herself, it was nearly dark. “Merlin, I’ve really been focused, haven’t I?” she giggled to Grimm, who had been curled up by her feet since she began, before she froze. Perfect neutrality, focus to the point of distraction, blankness turned into something calming and creative rather than sad. She raised her wand in her right hand, dug the fingers of her left into the dirt. “Expecto Patronum,” she whispered, and breathed out a cloud of silver so bright it was blinding against the night sky. 

A tiny deer jumped around in the sky. It’s… it’s sort of small, isn’t it? she asked Tom uncertainly.

Oh, this is rich, he replied, laughing hysterically in her mind. It’s a fawn! Your patronus is a baby.

Says the man who can’t even cast one, she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest. Sorry I can protect us from dementors and you can’t.

Grimm just howled and howled.

Lupin was fascinated by her progress when she returned, recording her findings in a notebook and muttering to himself about theories and ideas regarding emotion when spellcasting, or something like that. Lila didn’t pay too much attention; she’d managed the spell, and that was what mattered, not the explanation behind it. He’d taken her to the garden again, since she had a lot to catch up on after a week at home, and she had a lot to update him on as well, which could all be done while she worked.

“Could I see it?” he asked softly. “Your patronus. You can say no, of course– if you’ve managed it, then I suppose our lessons can come to an end, but I would love to know.”

“Sure,” she said, since he’d been the one to teach her in the first place. It seemed like she owed him at least the proof of her success. She threaded her fingers in the weeds she was in the process of pulling up and focused on that gorgeous feeling of mindless concentration, raising her wand high. “Expecto Patronum,” she cast, and out leaped the fawn, white spots and a tiny tail in a cloud of silver smoke. “See?” she asked, watching the Patronus play. “The opposite of that dreary emptiness was peaceful emptiness, or it is for me.”

Lupin had gone pale, a tear welling in his eye.

“Professor?”

“Your father’s patronus was a stag,” he told her firmly. “And your mother’s was a doe. You’ve… well, you’ve completed the little family, I suppose. It brings back memories.”

“What’s yours? When you cast it on the train it was just a cloud, like a force field or something.”

He laughed drily, like there was a joke in it that she didn’t know the context for. “A wolf.”

Ron Weasley had joined Lila and Hermione for exactly two study sessions, one where they practised a transfiguration turning tortoises into teapots, which hadn’t gone particularly well, mostly because Lila had promptly decided she did not care and began playing chess against Tom– which, to Ron and Hermione, looked like playing chess with herself– and Hermione had turned her usual chastisement onto Ron, who was much less adept at tuning it out and much more interested in giving his input on Lila’s chess game than practising Transfiguration. Eventually, Hermione had given up, and the two of them played chess while she studied. Ron was good, Lila discovered. Really good. Better than her, certainly, but not as good as Tom.

The second study session went much better, because they were working on an essay for Care of Magical Creatures, which they all had together. Ron was quite passionate about the class, on Hagrid’s behalf mainly, and Hermione still clung to the memory of Ron volunteering to handle the Hippogriff for her, so they had quite a lot between them to start with. Lila had only stuck out Magical Creatures because of Hermione, and announced just that, which earned her a fervent speech from Ron about the importance of knowing about animals, which earned him a proud smile from Hermione. 

Lila thought they were both ridiculous.

However, shortly after the second, successful, study session, Ron got it in his head that it was Hermione’s cat who must have eaten his rat, as Hermione had begun taking Crookshanks– her cat– with her to Care of Magical Creatures, and Ron took Scabbers– his rat– with him as well. Hermione grew quite upset at the accusation, and the two were back to their previous hostility. Tom found the whole thing hilarious for reasons Lila hadn’t quite caught on to, but she knew she wasn’t particularly fond of seeing her friend so upset.

In mid-April, Sirius Black broke into Hogwarts, and, strangely enough, Gryffindor Tower, leaving the portrait at the entrance ripped to shreds and near a hundred screaming Gryffindors in his wake.

“If he’s looking for me, don’t you think he would have known I’m a Ravenclaw?” Lila reasoned the next morning at breakfast, frowning at Hermione in confusion. “Either he’s not looking for me, or he’s not a very good stalker. What?” she asked, when the other girl didn’t respond.

“It’s Ronald!” she burst. “I heard that he’s the one who saw Black, leaning over him with a knife! And he still isn’t speaking to me, so…”

“Do you want me to ask him if he’s alright?” Lila guessed. 

“Oh, would you?” Hermione asked, turning pleading eyes on Lila.

“Yeah, of course.”

She walked over to the Gryffindor table with little fanfare and approached the boy, interrupting the story which he told to a wide-eyed, rapt audience.

“You alright, Ron?” Lila asked quietly. “Hermione and I, we heard about what happened. She wants me to tell you she hopes you’re alright, but she wasn’t sure if you’d want to hear from her.”

“I’m just fine,” he claimed, to the ooh’s and aah’s of his friends. “I wish he’d come when I was awake– I would have caught him myself!”

Lila rolled her eyes. “Glad you’re alive, Weasley,” she said, turning to get back to her breakfast.

“And, er,” Ron spoke up. “Tell Hermione I said thanks.”

Ridiculous.

Hagrid, it turned out, had found Ron’s rat, and once he’d gotten it back safe and sound, he and Hermione made up, and Ron joined the two girls for the project they started in Care of Magical Creatures, leaving his friends– Finnegan and Thomas, Hermione had filled in for her– to work by themselves.

“Say, Hermione?” Lila asked suddenly, pointing towards the Forbidden Forest. “Don’t you think that looks like Grimm?”

Hermione followed her gaze over to the edge of the trees where a massive black dog stood, unnaturally still. “It does,” she said worriedly. “But that wouldn’t make any sense at all. We’re in Scotland; your house is in Surrey. It couldn’t have followed you if it tried.”

“That’s no dog,” Ron said, white in the face. “That’s… that’s the grim . Lila, it’s just like Trelawney said.”

“Trelawney’s a hack,” Hermione dismissed, but she didn’t sound completely convinced. 

“I want to see if it’s Grimm,” Lila said wildly, not sure what possessed her to do so, and hopped from the tree she sat in, two branches up. They were in her garden, and while Ron wasn’t inclined towards gardening the way Lila was, he’d helped his mum in the yard enough to understand basic care, and usually gave in and helped her out when he got tired of Hermione’s relentless study habits. He’d climbed further up in the tree than she had, and Hermione sat in her usual spot at the picnic table right under them. She made a run for it, and the dog ran at her as well, meeting her halfway with an excited bark. “Hey, boy!” she said, wrapping the dog in her arms and smacking a kiss to its head. “You heard me, didn’t you? When I said I wished I could bring you to school.”

I suppose you really were controlling it, Tom said, sounding extremely surprised by the discovery. Hogwarts is Unplottable. It would take very strong magic to compel an animal through the wards, not to mention all the way here from Little Whinging.

You’re always underestimating me, she pouted, not believing her own words for a moment. I bet Grimm would do anything I asked.

At the beginning of May, Lila received a very strange package.

“That’s a broomstick!” Ron exclaimed, dashing over to the Ravenclaw table and sitting down beside Hermione. “No doubt about it, mate. Open it!”

Lila ripped open the package dubiously, and pulled out just that. She stared at it like it was going to bite her.

“That’s a Firebolt!” the Gryffindor said in a hushed tone, as though it would be disrespectful to speak at full volume in its presence. “That’s an International Standard broom, that is. Best fly on the market, or so I’ve heard. Who d’you think would buy it for you?”

Lila looked from the broom to her friends helplessly. “No clue. Aren’t broomsticks expensive?”

“Very,” Hermione answered. “That one especially. That must have cost hundreds of galleons.”

Lila’s eyes bulged as Ron nodded confirmation. “Well, there’s no card,” she said. “So I guess it’s supposed to be anonymous.”

“I know who it could be,” Ron said suddenly. “It could have been Lupin. He’s a teacher, so he couldn’t very well admit to sending you something like this, but you said he was friends with your dad, and he certainly likes you.”

“Lupin couldn’t afford something like this,” Hermione denied, but quickly added, “though it’s a good thought. Besides, Lila doesn’t play quidditch. Lupin knows that.”

“I do like flying,” Lila pointed out. “I probably mentioned it at some point. But you’re right, if he had hundreds of galleons lying around, I think we’d know.”

“You know who it is, then,” Hermione said, looking resigned. “Ron was on the right track with your parents’ friends. This broomstick must have come from Sirius Black.” 

“Black?” Ron repeated in horror, likely thinking about the man holding a knife over his head.

The Blacks are richer than God, Tom mused. He’d barely notice a few hundred galleons.

“The Blacks are richer than God,” Lila repeated to Hermione, who nodded sharply like this confirmed everything. 

“Then we must give it to Professor Flitwick,” she said. “He can strip it down and make sure it’s not cursed or anything. Black’s a madman, and a wealthy one at that. I wouldn’t put it past him to send you a broom hexed to throw you off or something.”

Lila nodded, passing the broomstick over to Hermione so she could take it to the teacher. Ron looked more horrified than before. “Strip down a Firebolt?” he repeated, furious. “That’s– that’s– You can’t do that!”

“You can’t?” Lila asked curiously. “I mean, I’m assuming she means the spells on the broom, right? I don’t see why they couldn’t be reapplied.”

“Well, yes, but–”

“Then it’s settled,” Hermione said defiantly. “Lila will not be risking her life on a broomstick from a mass murderer, and the Firebolt will be fine.”

Lila did not end up risking her life on a broomstick from a mass murderer, both because the tests came back to show that the broom was entirely clear of hexes or damage, and because she promptly passed the broom over to Ginny Weasley, whose own broomstick had broken upon landing during the match the dementors crashed. Ginny was set to have the Firebolt for exactly two days before the Slytherin-Hufflepuff match, and Lila was pretty sure she hadn’t even gotten off the thing to sleep yet. Draco Malfoy had, apparently, gotten his father to buy the entire Slytherin team brand new Nimbus 2001 brooms the year before, but he’d refused to replace Ginny’s after hers broke despite having done the same for one of the Beaters, still bitter apparently that she’d beaten him in the tryouts and knocked him from Seeker to Chaser, so she was thrilled at the opportunity to show up to the next game with a better broom than anyone else on the team.

It was a politics thing, apparently. Tom had just hummed his agreement when Ginny explained, and Lila had watched on in supportive bewilderment. No politics could convince her to ride a broom in the middle of the worst thunderstorm they’d had that year.

Instead, she was waiting out the rain in Professor Lupin’s office, sipping peppermint tea and badgering him with questions about her mum and dad.

“And this,” Lupin was saying, handing her a moving photograph taken from afar of a young man with the messiest mop of black hair she’d ever seen walking directly, face-first into a tree, “was the day that your dad finally convinced your mum to let him take her on a date. He was overjoyed. He cast some of the most powerful magic of his life that week, I remember. We finally finished a project of ours, this moving map of the school and grounds. That did leave a bruise, though,” he added, tapping his finger on the tree. 

“A map– I think I’ve got that!” Lila said excitedly, jumping up from the desk she’d been sitting on to rummage through her bag, pulling from it a carefully folded piece of parchment. “I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good,” she muttered, and the map unfolded, the outlines of Hogwarts returning, right down to a spindly arrow pointing at her and Professor Lupin with their names carefully labelled above their heads.

Lupin reached for the map gingerly, like it could dissolve under his fingers if he wasn’t careful, and tapped his wand to the top. Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs present: The Marauders’ Map, read the words that bled into view in Padfoot’s flourished green hand. “We finished this our sixth year,” he said, pride and nostalgia shining through his words. “Lost it to Filch six days before we graduated.”

“Fred and George Weasley stole it from his office in their first year,” Lila told him, nodding. “And then they just gave it to me around Christmas.” She tilted her head. “I don’t think it held up very well, though,” she added, frowning. “Because I know for a fact he’s dead.” 

“Who?”

She pointed to a name skittering about the edge of what she knew to be her garden. “Peter Pettigrew.”

They trudged their way to the garden under Lupin’s large black umbrella. She certainly didn’t see anyone in there, but according to Lupin, the map didn’t simply lie. She personally thought it seemed much more likely that the map had lied than a man had come back from the dead, but he’d gotten quite uptight and jittery, and so they’d decided to make the trip anyway, at least to check. She saw exactly what she thought she’d see. Brilliant blooms of ragged robin and bluebells, a whole side lined with basket-of-gold bushes that, with her help, had grown nearly halfway up stone wall. Robins chirped from the tree branches, squirrels scampered about, snatching up the last of the sunflower seeds she’d sprinkled on the ground by the birdbath a few days before. Rain pounded against the top of the picnic table, forming a puddle where the wood had begun to give and warp.

“I don’t get it,” she said finally. 

“Pass me the map again? No, see, he should be just there. Just by the corner.”

Lila shrugged. “The only thing over there is my yellow rose bush. Hasn’t bloomed yet this year, which is strange. Something’s moving in the leaves though, a rabbit maybe. Or– oh, is that–? It’s a rat,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief and then shaking herself for being nervous in the first place. “Must be Scabbers. That’s Ron’s rat.”

“You can tell his rat apart from the others?” Lupin asked, bemused.

“Yeah,” Lila told him. “He’s missing–”

“A finger?”

She stopped cold. “Yeah, actually.”

“Lila, I need you to run back to the castle,” Lupin warned, and she nodded. She wasn’t sure what had changed in those couple of seconds, but he looked properly terrified, and Lila had no interest in sticking around if there was something there that could get the perpetually unruffled professor upset. She had just turned to run when she ran headfirst into the chest of an unfamiliar man.

“There’ll be no need for that,” said the man, in a gravelly sort of voice, before barking a low laugh. “Just like James, isn’t she? Thought I’d escaped getting headbutted.”

Professor Lupin was deathly calm, and watched the man carefully. “Funny,” he said mildly. “All this time, I’ve been thinking how much she reminds me of you.”

Lila was finding it quite hard to breathe suddenly. She shivered, having gotten out from the protection of Lupin’s umbrella, and began to shake. “You’re Sirius Black, then,” she said.

“The one and only.”

She finally got a good look at the man, and he was a sorry sight from head to toe. Scraggly black hair, caked in mud, reached down to his elbows, something which the sleeves of his shirt had not achieved. He wore nothing but threadbare tatters which clung to his gaunt, skeletal frame, drenched all the way through. She would have thought him to be a corpse if not for the grey eyes shining out of their hollow sockets. He was also, she noticed, covered in scattered, mismatched tattoos.

She punched him smack in the face. “YOU KILLED THEM!” she shouted, shoving him again for good measure. “YOU KILLED MY PARENTS!”

Black was quiet, and had not moved against her despite the attack. “I may as well have,” he said darkly. “I do not deny it. But there is far more to the story than that.”

“It should have been you,” Lila spat, kicking him in the shin and then socking him in the face again. “It should have been your ugly, broken corpse Voldemort stepped on before he tried to kill me, too, but no. You were a coward, and a traitor, and a horrible, horrible friend, and I wish you would go back to Azkaban where you belong!”

“Lila,” Professor Lupin said lowly, a sort of warning. “That is enough.”

She huffed, and tried to get in another punch before retreating, but Black caught her wrist and pushed her away. She stood a little behind Lupin, letting him face Black on his own.

“Where is he, Sirius?”

“Still there,” he said, casual as ever, waving a hand vaguely toward the rosebush which had stopped moving. Lila wasn’t sure who ‘he’ was, nor was she sure how any person could fit behind the rose bush. “Stunned, though.”

“Okay,” Lila interrupted. “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on, or can I leave and go back to the castle?”

“Go–” Black had begun to say, but Lupin spoke over him.

“We owe her an explanation,” he said. “Of all of it.”

Black nodded slowly. “You owe me an explanation as well.”

“And you owe me several,” Lupin said coolly.

“Right, how about we do mine first,” Lila suggested. “And then you two can figure out yours. My first question is how he –” she pointed rudely at Black– “got into the castle.”

“That’s one it’s better to show you,” Black said wryly. “If you’ll excuse me just a moment, er.” He looked rather helpless for a split second, his sunken eyes searching Lila’s face beseechingly, and then the man in question was replaced by a massive, scraggly, painfully familiar dog.

“Grimm?” she asked, reaching a hand out hesitantly. The dog nodded– and it was a nod, she knew, because apparently this was a man – and pressed its head into her palm. “Grimm showed up in Little Whinging this summer,” she explained to Lupin. “We assumed he was a stray, but he’d always stay in the yard with me when I worked in the garden back home. I saw him here at Hogwarts just a month or so ago.”

“And you didn’t think this at all strange?” Lupin asked, “for a dog from Surrey to end up in Scotland?”

“Well, I’d– er– read about how some witches can control animals with their minds,” she said thoughtfully. “And so I’d been trying to do that with Grimm, though I suppose it wouldn’t have worked because he’s not really a dog. But if you do properly control an animal with magic, you can call it to you, so I was thinking maybe that happened. So no one was looking for a dog, I guess,” she reasoned. “But the dementors?”

Grimm reared back, shifting back into a man. “Dementors don’t affect animals, not the same way, at least,” he croaked. “Never caught on, either, did they. I was a dog every night for twelve years, just to stay sane.”

“He doesn’t look sane,” Lila muttered.

“No, I suppose he doesn’t,” Lupin said, somewhere between cold and fond that Lila didn’t really understand. “A bit ragged now, are we, Sirius? I suppose the skin can only ever reflect the madness within.”

Black looked nearly relieved at his words, like Lupin had reached over and removed a heavy burden from his shoulders. “And you’d know all about the madness within, wouldn’t you now, Remus.”

Finally, Lupin moved, nearly jolting into action as he threw himself at Black, and Lila wondered for a moment if the professor was going to kill him, even just sheerly by accident due to Black’s emaciated frame, but instead he embraced the man like a brother, and Black did the same.

Lila sighed, entirely lost on what to say to the scene she witnessed, and she had no clue whatsoever which other questions she wanted to ask. “Merlin,” she realised with desperation, “I need Hermione.”

Her prayers didn’t go unanswered for long. “Lila!” came a cry, and Lila turned to find the source, but the men didn’t notice the disturbance in the least, too wrapped up in their reunion. “You get away from her, you monster– you madman!” Hermione was demanding, wand raised. Ron was hardly a step behind her, his wand pointing directly at Lupin and Black with narrowed eyes. Lila made a run for it, dashing to Hermione’s side gratefully, though Ron pushed her behind them. 

“If he wants to kill you, he’ll have to get through me first,” the boy swore, and she smiled shakily.

“Black is Grimm,” she told her friends quickly. “He’s an, er… those things you were reading about, ‘Mione.”

“He’s an Animagus?” Ron gasped. 

“Yeah.”

“But– but– he can’t be!” cried Hermione suddenly, drawing the two men’s attention to the group of students. “That can’t be possible.”

“Why can’t it be, Miss Granger?” Lupin asked calmly, like they were back in Defence class bright and early and Hermione had taken issue with the textbook again.

“We’ve learned about Animagi,” Hermione pressed a bit frantically. “And I looked them up after, for my homework, you know, and there’s a register kept by the Ministry of Magic to keep track of the witches and wizards who can become animals. And when I looked for Professor McGonagall on it, there were only seven Animagi so far this century– and Sirius Black was not on the list!”

Lupin and Black looked at each other for a brief, tense moment, before both began to laugh. “Absolutely right, Hermione,” Lupin praised. “But you must take the personal initiative to be entered onto the registry. The Ministry never knew that here at Hogwarts were three Animagi, running about entirely undetected.”

“Black,” Lila said, counting on her fingers. “My father, I presume, if they were best friends.” She glared at Black again at the reminder of their closeness, and he shrank back slightly. “And you?”

“No,” Hermione said, her mouth very straight as she looked Lupin dead in the eyes. “See, our assignment in Transfiguration coincided with a lesson Professor Snape taught us, so I did some research into the overlap. He can’t be an Animagus,” she said grimly, “because he’s a werewolf.”

The garden was suddenly quite still, the sound of the rain as it beat down on stone ringing in Lila’s ears. Ron was the first to regain his voice. “A werewolf?” he repeated, trembling. “What the hell are you doing in a school?!”

“So you know…”

“Oh, yes. I’ve known for ages now,” Hermione confirmed. “But if you were here, then Dumbledore certainly knew, so it wasn’t a matter of alerting the relevant authorities. And you hadn’t seemed particularly threatening. Until now, I suppose.”

“Professor Snape has been supplying me with Wolfsbane,” he told Hermione. “I swear, I am entirely harmless, even as a wolf.”

“Only if you take it,” Hermione retorted darkly. “Which, on that note–” she pulled a small corked bottle from her bag and threw it at Lupin, who was so startled that he very nearly missed it. “I saw Professor Snape outside your office– I’d had a few questions about the homework– and I thought you might be out here with Lila, and she can stay quite late, and you are horrifically irresponsible and nearly endangered my best friend–”

“Who was the third?” Lila asked again.

Black looked back at her rose bush angrily. “Peter Pettigrew,” he told Lila while Lupin continued to try and quell Hermione’s wrath. “He turned into a rat. We called him Wormtail.”

“Like on the map? Professor Lupin said he’s Moony– ohh ,” she cut off, smacking her forehead with her hand as she realised, of course, werewolf, moon– “And I guess you’re… Padfoot? So my dad was Prongs, then!” she exclaimed.

“You killed Peter Pettigrew,” Ron said then. “You blew him to bits along with a dozen muggles. All they ever found of him was his… toe…” He’d gone quite pale. “You don’t mean to say…”

“You think Scabbers is Pettigrew?” Hermione nearly shrieked, and Lila gasped as she caught on. “Well, there’s– there’s got to be spells for that– to find out– to prove–”

“There are. Sirius, if you would?”

The haggard man waved his wand and levitated over the stunned rat.

“Is he dead?” Ron whispered, looking on with terror as his pet was dropped unceremoniously on the table, and Lila shook her head to reassure him,

“It’s him,” Black breathed, his wide eyes looking quite wild. “You know it’s him, Remus. Oh, but he won’t get the better of me this time. I can finally do it, Remus. I can finally commit the murder I was imprisoned for all those years ago.” He threw up his wand as though in a fit, and a furious curse was on his lips.

“Expelliarmus!” Hermione cried, and Black lost hold of his wand. Even Lila’s own wand, safely tucked in her pocket, jerked slightly. “What’s the spell,” she demanded, shrill. “Tell me!”

“ Hominem Revelio,” Lupin said slowly, pocketing his wand and holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “If we are wrong, and this truly is just a rat, nothing will happen at all. There’s no wand motion in particular.”

“Letting a child handle this– Remus, you can’t be serious,” Black said through gritted teeth.

“No, that’s you,” Lupin shot back automatically, before pausing slightly, as though surprised the childish retort had left his mouth. “And Miss Granger is the brightest witch of her age I’ve ever seen,” he said softly. “I have the utmost faith in her abilities.”

Hermione passed Lila the man’s wand so she could use her own properly. 

“ Reneverate,” Hermione said, matter-of-fact as ever as she first un-stunned the rat, and Lila smiled. Hermione was, at all times it seemed, straightforward and determined in a way Lila adored. She herself swayed between unbothered and entirely bewildered most of the time, so Hermione’s fierce certainty was a welcome relief. The rat began to scurry away, which she figured was understandable whether or not it was really a rat, but it wouldn’t do.

‘Catch that rat,’ Lila hissed to Apple, letting the snake slip from her wrist to the ground, where she captured the rat in a matter of seconds, coiling around it tightly. Lupin, who had seen her speak to Apple on several occasions, hardly winced at the show of Parseltongue, and Black, who had apparently seen her speak to snakes for the entirety of the previous summer while he posed as a stray dog, just watched with a strange sort of grin.

Hermione cleared her throat then. “ Hominem Revelio.”

The rat on the table began to contort strangely a moment after the pale blue spell hit, before sprouting like the flowers Lila grew at will, limbs like leaves shooting out far past those of a rat, body extending into a long, and quite wide, stem.

A rather mousy man was left in the rat’s place. It seemed rather cruel, Lila thought, for his animal form to be a rat just because he had a strange little pointy face, but from the way his nose twitched and his hands stayed poised high under his neck, she started to think instead, perhaps, that he looked this way because he spent so much time as a rat.

“ Engorgio !” Lila said as quickly as she could, and Apple returned to her original size, retaining her ability to hold the rat-man captive in her tail.

“I let that man sleep in my bed,” Ron said in horror, and Pettigrew began trying to stammer a response to that when Hermione cut in with a silencing spell.

“Alive,” Lupin marvelled, “and almost entirely unharmed. But how… unless you switched… and didn’t tell me?” He turned on Black with a curious look, and the man nodded, not taking his steely eyes off the rat-man.

“Got it in one,” he rasped, something not nearly close enough to a laugh to count coming from his throat. “I figured I’d be the first guess, the first one Voldemort would go after, so I convinced them to…” He spared a glance at Lila, his shoulders sinking as he did, his eyes seeming nearly to glisten, and he looked rather pathetic standing there in the pouring rain, pleading with a child for redemption. “I good as killed them,” he whispered. “It’s my fault, all my fault. But I never betrayed them. And now, I’ll make it right,” he promised, hardening again. “Together, Moony? For old time’s sake.” Lupin waved his own wand, and Black’s flew from Lila’s hand.

“No, stop!” blurted Lila, and she jumped in front of the wizards before either could cast any spell at all. He’d looked so warm , she thought, when he looked at her. When he’d turned back to the silent wizard, he’d grown cold again, losing whatever grip on his sanity he’d suddenly gained upon seeing her. If he was sane, and warm, and entirely indebted to her, as she knew Tom would point out– well, she refused to lose that.

“Lila, you don’t understand,” insisted Black, his voice hoarse but impatient all the same. “He gave over Lily and James when he was supposed to keep them safe. He’s the reason they’re dead. Your parents…”

“And you think they’d want you to become a murderer?” She looked away from him, feeling indescribably betrayed. “Hermione heard that you’re my godfather,” she said quietly.

“I am.”

“Then you’re supposed to take care of me,” she cried petulantly. “How can you do that if they send you right back to Azkaban? You say he’s the traitor, he’s the reason everything’s wrong and awful, but you’re the one who wants to leave me all over again!”

“I don’t– I don’t!” he insisted. “Lila, all I’ve wanted for twelve years is to see you again. Revenge, it’s nothing– nothing– compared to getting you. I’ve let you down, you and your mum and dad, and I just– just want to make it right again. They told me you were safe, protected. It’s the only reason I ever went after Peter in the first place.”

“And he’s really the traitor?”

“He is,” Professor Lupin confirmed grimly. “He’s been in hiding for twelve years with the Weasley family, isn’t that right? Hiding from Voldemort’s men. If I’d only known…”

“And you’ve never killed anyone?” she checked quickly.

“Never,” Black swore, crossing his right hand to his bloody shoulder with a wince, and Lila let out a sigh of relief. This could still work. No one could prove he’d done anything wrong at all, which was exactly what they needed if she wanted to get away from the Dursleys.

She spared a glance behind the men, where her yellow rose bush had quite suddenly sprouted magnificent golden blooms. Tom?  

A cutting curse should do it, he said, speaking up for the first time a her address. Put a good bit of power into it, too. You know better than to leave the door to vengeance open.

She nodded and turned on her heel. “ Coinquior !” she said, making a small slash with her wand and thinking of a tree trunk. The rat-man’s head fell off of his body before the blood began to spray. A bit less power than that? she asked Tom sheepishly.

Only a bit, he replied, amused. But this certainly did the trick.

“What in Merlin’s name,” Professor Lupin breathed, eyes flying wide as Sirius Black began to laugh.

The first thing Lila did upon moving into the Black townhouse with Sirius was chop off all of her hair with kitchen shears. Aunt Petunia had always insisted she keep it long to weigh down the untameable nest it usually resembled, even though Lila was not entirely convinced of the evidence for such a thing actually working. It was probably more because that’s how Aunt Petunia thought girls were supposed to look, and when Lila looked around Lady Catharine’s, she was tempted to agree.

She just didn’t really care.

Sirius had laughed his head off when she came down to breakfast the next morning with a messy blunt bob of hair that cut off just under her chin, but he just kissed the top of her head and asked how she liked her eggs prepared, and everything was alright.

“I did the same thing when I got to Hogwarts, you know,” he told her as he poured himself a cup of tea. “Got myself sorted into Gryffindor– my whole family had been Slytherin– and just when they thought I couldn’t be more of a disappointment, I clipped my hair nearly bald. It’s a sign of status to have long hair, of course, so my mum would never have let me have anything else.”

“How’d you look?” she asked, smiling teasingly.

“Your father thought I looked ridiculous, but I think I pulled it off,” he said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Your mother agreed with me– or maybe just disagreed with your dad– and shaved hers off, too. I think that was the moment James knew he was going marry her. I grew mine out again eventually– realised witches found it far more dashing like this– and your mum grew hers out, too, but for a good two or so years there Gryffindor was the House of the bald instead of the bold. Here, I’ve got the photo album, actually.”

“Everybody tells me I look like Mum,” she said, consideringly, while he flipped through the book he’d summoned from the shelf. “I’ve only seen a couple of black and white pictures, though.”

“Well, this is her here, in full colour,” he said, passing over the album. “You do look a lot like her.”

“I haven’t got her hair,” Lila said a bit sadly, tracing her fingers over the familiar pointy nose. “Aunt Petunia said my mum had red hair, too, so I always thought maybe I got that from her.”

“Nah, your mum’s hair was nearly cherry red,” he said, shaking his head. “James was convinced she dyed it that colour, but it never faded. Actually,” he said. “You know who you look like?” He summoned a different album and flipped nearly to the end. “Dorea Potter,” he declared. “James’ grandmother, she had that same copper you've got. She was a Black, the only family member James and I shared as far back as we could track.” He looked at her with a hesitant smile. “Until you,” he added. “Now we’ve both got you, too.”

Hundreds of miles away, her yellow roses had turned pink.