Mira Winters
Freedom always comes at a price.
At least, that’s what Mira Winter’s father told her before he was swiftly locked away in Azkaban, never to be seen by her again.
The memory replayed in her mind as she walked past the greenhouses, down to the Black Lake. The chilly Autumn breeze made her hug her robes a little bit closer to her body. Her long, raven black hair blew into her face and she huffed as she tried to pull it off.
Mira faced toward where the wind was coming from, so her hair would blow behind her instead of in her face. A soft smile of satisfaction etched its way onto her face when it worked. Unfortunately, that meant she wasn’t facing the Black Lake anymore. Instead, she looked upon the Forbidden Forest.
Oh well. Mira thought to herself. May as well walk around the perimeter.
Mira just wanted to get some fresh air, she didn’t care where she was. Although, if she were to be wholeheartedly honest with herself, the fresh air was at the bottom of her list of reasons to get out of the castle.
Mira and her half-brother, Leo, had been fighting nonstop since they were children. Being the eldest, Mira should, in most cases, have the upper hand, but she seemed to have drawn the short end of the stick with her family circumstances.
When Mira’s father was sent to Azkaban, her mother, Elara, had remarried just months after. It was quite a big scandal at the time in the wizarding community. The Daily Prophet published smear campaigns against poor Elara for weeks.
Then the truth came out. She had been having an affair with Lazar Moonfall, a renowned auror at the time. It had been going on for 8 years.
Everyone had an inkling that she had ratted her husband out to Lazar, which ultimately led to his imprisonment.
When her husband, Mira’s father, was arrested, all she wanted to do was reclaim her name and family from the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters. And that she did.
Elara remarried to Lazar when Mira was just 9 years old. Not long after that, Mira was introduced to her half-brother, Leo. Suddenly, her young, adolescent brain started to piece things together. The hushed conversations of the time her mother stayed with her aunt for almost a year, leaving the barely one year old Mira in the care of their house elves, the neverending tension between her parents, her father telling her not to trust her own family as he was being dragged away by Aurors.
Now, she had just had an argument in the entrance hall with Leo, who had mocked her with a smug smirk on his face, backed up with his group of friends behind him.
“At least my father isn’t in Azkaban, we all know you’ll end up like him one way or another.” Leo knew he had cut her deep, and he was proud of it. In his eyes, Mira was dead weight in the family. She was the only one who didn’t fit in, her father was rotting away in Azkaban, where he rightfully belonged, in his opinion, and he was simply waiting on Mira to succumb to the same fate.
But Mira isn’t like her father.
In fact, Mira barely knew her father at all.
In the little instances she had spent time with her father, he was cold, reserved, and ruled his family with an iron fist. His arrest was the most he had ever talked to her.
The wind rustled the leaves of the trees lining the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest. Mira shook her head in anger as she walked the perimeter, her arms folded tightly in front of her, and her brows furrowed as close together as her face muscles were willing to let them get.
I will not be anything like my father.
A disturbance in the bushes past the perimeter caught Mira’s attention. Her gaze zeroed in on a Hufflepuff student, who had darted in through the tree line and was only going deeper into the forest. He showed no signs of stopping.
“Hey! Come back! You can’t go there!” Mira shouted out to him, but her only response was the wailing of the wind weaving through the branches. Another student had run into the forest, unbeknownst to Mira until she heard the cracking of sticks and crunching of leaves to her left. A Slytherin student this time, Mira was too confused to shout after them as she had done to the Hufflepuff just moments before. In confusion and shock, she watched the two students disappear further into the darkness of the forest, before she decided to let the nearest professor know. Whatever they were up to, it was not good. No student would ever willingly go into the Forbidden Forest, especially not in such a hurry.
Mira sped toward the castle, occasionally looking behind her as she felt the hair on her neck raise. It felt like it had gotten colder since she left. The wind had picked up even more and whipped her hair and robes to and fro much more aggressively than it had been when she was walking down.
Mira was scared. She didn't know why, but she knew she should be.