Chapter Three
On the days upcoming to the full moon, Mia drowns herself in all the schoolwork she’s managed to neglect since the start of the year. Apparently, Ravenclaw’s were meant to be quite studious, and yet the brown haired girl seemed to be the opposite. Of course she’d be the first blue tie to absolutely tarnish the house name.
Mia spends most of her week suffocating in the library, where she’s found a nice corner to sit on the floor and finish up on all her essays. She has a practical exam for Transfigurations she still needed to practice for, twelve questions for Potions and a three parchment long essay for History of Magic on the famous troll robberies. The brown eyed girl feels absolutely swallowed by it all but welcomes the distraction from the lunar calendar with some gratitude.
“I didn’t think to see you here,” Cecilia Tyler laughs, plopping down in front of Mia as she shoves some parchment and textbooks to the side to make room. Mia frowns, she really hadn’t been hoping for any company, especially not Cecilia’s.
“Do you always look like that?” The blonde asks after a moment of silence, dropping her chin into the palm of her hand as she gives the Ravenclaw an assessing look.
Mia sharpens her eyes, hoping that her expression could convey her thoughts. The brown haired girl knew she wasn’t exactly looking her best right about now, considering she hadn’t been able to sleep the whole week leading up to the full moon and the eyebags were beginning to show. Plus, she had the whole scar thing going on. But to have it pointed out seemed quite rude.
“Sorry,” Cecilia winces, stretching her legs out so they hit the bookshelf on the other side. Mia goes back to scribbling her essay, absentmindedly hoping that Professor Binns wouldn’t take points for rubbish handwriting. Knowing the man, he probably wouldn’t even grade it.
She gets through half a piece of parchment before she realizes that Cecilia is still there.
The blonde seems to notice her confusion, “I’m just trying to get away from my friends.”
Mia gives her a look. She didn’t exactly want to know but then again she did.
“You won’t repeat any of this, will you?” The Slytherin suddenly begins to whisper, eyes wide as she nervously gnaws on her lip. Mia takes note that Cecilia didn’t usually ravage her appearance like that, so something must be really eating at her.
The brown haired girl shakes her head, dropping her pile of parchment to the side. She’ll just do it later.
“Of course you won’t,” Cecilia laughs, “That’s kinda why I came to you. Or um… found you.”
A pause of awkward silence.
“Well, anyway,” Cecilia continues, dropping her hands onto her lap and wiggling them together nervously, “I’m just horrible at keeping things to myself and I just need to tell someone. So, what I'm trying to say is that I’m well…” the next part she says so quietly Mia almost doesn’t catch it, “a Muggleborn.”
Mia blinks. What was so special about that?
“In Slytherin,” Cecilia adds with a shake of her head. Then she wails, “They all hate me! I can tell they do, they’ll throw secret jabs my way and everything! It’s unbearable.”
The brown eyed girl is unsure of what she’s supposed to say. Her usual headache was beginning to come back full force.
And then, the worst thing happens. Cecilia Tyler starts crying in front of her. Full on sobbing, snot and all. Mia feels half bad and half disgusted and full on uncomfortable. This is not at all what she had in mind when Cecilia had come to see her. She thought she was just going to get some regular gossip she could wonder about in History of Magic, but this was… a lot.
Mia isn’t stupid, she knows about pureblood society and the likes of it. When she was little and her father still lived with them, he used to complain about losing jobs to those in the Sacred Twenty-Eight all the time. In her opinion, she thought it was all a load of rubbish.
But that didn’t mean people still weren’t affected by it.
“I just wish I’d never told them,” Cecilia sobs, “Then they’d actually give me a chance.”
Mia nods, turning her head to look down the hallway and make sure no passerby’s came through. She didn’t want people thinking she made Cecilia Tyler cry. She also just wanted the girl to have some privacy.
“Well,” the blonde breathes after a moment of loud sobbing, “That’s a relief!”
Mia blinks at the girl. Her eyes were so red they looked bloodshot.
“Thank you for listening,” Cecilia smiles, using the edge of her palm to gently blot at her eyes, “It was nice to get that off my chest. I’ll see you later, alright?”
And then the Slytherin jumps up, flattens down her skirt and walks away. Just like that. Mia has never seen anything like it. It was so unnatural, the brown eyed girl was beginning to think that maybe she’s dreamt it.
She sits on the floor for a moment, looking at the space Cecilia once sat, and just stares. It feels like forever until she can brush off her shock, and when Mia finally turns back to her essay, she finds that she’s forgotten whatever it was she had been writing about.
She didn’t get back to her dormitory until five minutes before curfew, just when the Prefects were beginning their patrols, and Mia finds that when she looks up at the ceiling of the Ravenclaw Common Room, the moon looks close to full.
The morning of the full moon, Mia doesn’t make it down to the Great Hall for breakfast. She just covers her head with her bedsheets, and hopes Pandora will go down without her. The silver haired girl seemed able to take the cue, and left their dorm room as quiet as she could.
She was left in silence for a moment, and then a sharp knocking was heard on her window. Mia sighs with her face planted onto her pillow, waiting for the noise to stop itself. It does not.
With a melodramatic groan, the brown eyed girl manages to drag herself out of her bed, falling to the floor and looking to her window, where an owl was waiting for her, a letter entrapped inside its beak.
As quick as she can, Mia grabs her secret stash of coins that she hides inside an old sock of hers. She figures it’s probably gross to do that, but in the girl’s opinion, it was the safest place to hide her allowance. The brown eyed girl didn’t think anyone was creepy enough to go through her shock drawer for a couple of sickles. At least, she hoped not.
Grabbing a golden galleon, Mia makes her way back to the window, where she opens it gently and winces at the sunlight. It was unbearably bright today or she was just extra sensitive. In a quick exchange, the owl drops the letter in her hand and pecks the galleon out of it too. And before Mia could nod in thanks, the owl was off again.
She figures Hogwarts’ owls must be pretty busy with how many students they need to attend to.
With a sigh, and a quick flop back down onto her bed, she opens the letter that she knows is from her mother. She’s been waiting for it for days now, but knew her mother would take awhile to send it. She’d never been good at the whole ‘owls are your new postman.’
Mia,
I heard about the incident in Potions. Your brother and that Madam Pomfrey both seemed to make sure to send me letters of concern. Those owls still scare me and they dirty my windows! I don’t think fainting is that big of a deal but do think about maybe becoming a vegetarian? I do hope the full moon goes well, and know that I will be there to comfort you and Rem in the morning. My dearest love, I admire your gentleness and your strength.
xx, Mummy
With a smile, the young girl places the letter right on top of her heart. It was true that her mother had changed a lot since she was a girl; Losing her children and husband in the same year had damaged her in an irreparable way, but moments like these made Mia feel like that child once more. It reminded her of the smell after a thunderstorm and mint leaves and their old trampoline in the backyard.
To not unsettle her mood that was already quite unsettled, the brown haired girl tries not to think about the fact that Remus had written to their mother about her. The audacity of him. He hadn’t even gone to visit her in the Hospital Wing!
Shoving the letter into the pocket of her plaid pyjama pants, Mia figures it was about time she went up to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey had instructed her to make her way up in the morning of the full moon, so she could rest for the day before such a long night. But the brown haired girl had been prolonging the walk, not only because it seemed like so much effort with her aching limbs, but also because she knew her brother was going to be in there too.
“I noticed you didn’t feel well,” Pandora sighs, coming into their dorm with a small smile and a napkin wrapped muffin in her hand. Mia widens her eyes, raising her head a little as she props herself up onto the bed. She hadn’t been expecting the silver haired girl to show backup until later in the evening. She had classes after all, and Mia knew that, unlike her, Pandora always kept up with her studies.
“I know I have classes,” Pandora shrugs, seeming to read her friend’s thoughts. “I just wanted to make sure you at least ate something before I left.”
With a grateful smile, Mia takes the muffin and does her best to eat all of it. She never had much of an appetite on a full moon, and today was only worse with all of her nerves. Mia couldn’t help but think about what could go wrong. A student could find out, Dumbledore might realize how much of a monster she is and kick her out of school, there were so many countless things and Mia analyzed them all. She thought of every outcome, every possibility, and was practically driving herself mad.
“You look like you need to go to the Hospital Wing,” Pandora remarks after a moment, inspecting Mia up and down with some layer of concern. The brown eyed girl just shrugs. She definitely needed to go to the Hospital Wing but wasn’t sure if she should ask for Pandora to help her get there. It felt like too much. She felt like too much.
“I’ll help you get there,” Pandora says because of course she does. Mia doesn’t have the energy to get her to not. Instead, she just lets herself grab onto her friend’s hand, and lets the girl drag her up. Together, they make their way down the many corridors of Hogwarts, and Pandora lets Mia lean onto her shoulder, even if it was probably uncomfortable.
To settle herself, Mia listens to Pandora’s heartbeat. Tries to get hers to line up with it.
“Has this happened before?” Pandora asks, tightening her hold on Mia whose bones were beginning to ache so much her legs started to wobble. Everything hurt. It felt like her heart was beating for two.
Mia nods. Pandora doesn’t ask anymore questions but squeezes her a little tighter.
When they get to the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey is there waiting for her, and with a flick of her wand, she scoops Mia out of Pandora’s arms and into a bed.
“You must get to class, Ms. Lestrange,” the woman sighs, “I’m sure Emilia is most appreciative of your help.”
“It’s Mia,” Pandora says after a moment, poking her head away from Pomfrey’s body so she could stare at the brown haired girl in concern. Not wanting to worry the girl, Mia sends a thumbs up, trying to muster up some semblance of a smile. Everything hurt. Her brother hadn’t shown up yet.
“Right, yes, well… I imagine Mia is most appreciative,” Madam Pomfrey smiles kindly with a nod, clearly trying to get Pandora to leave as quickly as possible. The silver haired girl didn’t seem too keen on leaving.
“Will you update me on her condition?”
“Of course, dear! Now please go to class, you don’t want to be awfully late.”
Pandora purses her lips, clearly looking displeased. She looks to Mia again, and Mia just nods. Secretly, Mia didn’t really want Pandora to leave but she knew she had to. Knew it was better that she did.
It only got worse from here.
“Alright then,” Pandora relents, then turns to Mia, “I’ll check on you as soon as possible,” she promises.
Mia just nods, sort of hoping that wasn’t true. She was torn between wanting Pandora to stay and wanting the girl to get as far away from her as possible.
Eventually, the twelve year old leaves the Hospital Wing and Mia is given a sleeping drought.
She dreams of basements and cages and needles.
In a daze, someone is carrying Mia to the forest. Her eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of her head. Her limbs feel rusted. It is all wrong. She closes her eyes again. This time she dreams of running and rabbits.
When she wakes, her bones are breaking and she is alone. The girl recognizes the place she’s in as a makeshift cave, deep in the forest. Dumbledore had explained it all to her before Hogwarts. He’d refused to tell her where Remus would be.
Mia lets out a sharp cry that she muffles by pressing her mouth into the sleeve of her shirt. She’s been through this a thousand times before and yet she can never get used to it. The pain always starts with the blood pooling in her mouth, where she knew fangs were beginning to form.
Mia feels disgusting. She isn’t a wolf yet but still feels it’s anger. She scratches at her face and her neck and anywhere she can. Anywhere she can punish herself she does. When the girl brings her hands up to her face, her nails are growing claws and underneath their plates, blood begins to pile up.
It was all a mess. She was all apart.
Mia closes her eyes and lets herself fade. For a moment, she is six years old again, laying in a field with Fenrir Greyback’s weight pressing down onto her mouth, his bite on her neck. She remembers screaming but remembers it being silenced. In another moment, she is eight and the doctor's treatments aren’t working.
In the present, fur is beginning to grow and her back is shattering.
In her head, Mia is still eight, and the doctors have her strapped to a bed.
What was it they had told her? “It will only hurt for a moment. We only mean to wake you up.”
She never knew what they meant by that. Their waking up had only meant two wands pressed to the temples of her head, and the whispering of a spell that felt like lightning in her brain. She’d faded more then too.
Mia felt her brain leave her body, and knew the full moon had risen as high as it could. A howl littered the night air. Had that been her own or her brother’s? The wolf’s heart rate picked up. She, it, wanted to find him.
Mia told it no. As she always did. It was beginning to get harder to make it listen.
The wolf got so mad it dropped to its back, letting out a string of howls that sounded more like cries. Mia told it to be quiet. It didn’t.
And then the attacks on herself began. As they always did. Mia drifted as far from it as she could, trying to pretend she wasn’t really there. But the pain was as real as anything. It was sharp and dangerous and unloving. The wolf always went for her eye, where the crescent moon scar lay in human form. The wolf always tried taking that eye out. Never managed it though.
The pain was as cold as ice. It brought Mia back down to reality once more. She and the wolf were in the same body once again, and her right eye was being pulled out. She needed to say something. Tell the wolf something.
Fenrir Greyback’s claw was on her mouth. There were no words. Her face felt like a crater. It hurt so bad Mia started to seize.
She needed to say something. Mia didn’t want to say anything.
When she was six years old, what was the last thing she’d said before she was quieted? The girl could never remember. Couldn’t even make up what her voice or her screams had sounded like.
The wolf’s face was not a part of her. When has it ever been a part of her? They were separate entities, Mia’s body merely a host.
She let herself fade again. The pain was not hers. It was its.
Mia’s gone again, and this time she is eleven in the Hospital Wing, and Pandora is holding onto her hand. For a moment, everything is good.
The wolf is doing something bad. She can tell because it’s whining. Mia has no part of it. Right now, Pandora is holding her hand and she feels like she’s five years old when nothing bad has yet to happen.
The world goes dark. The wolf must’ve passed out. Mia lets the dark take her too.
She wakes up to someone stroking her head. Mia knows it's childish, but her pain is so sudden and great she lets out a sharp cry and the tears come so fast she can’t stop them.
“It’s Madam Pomfrey dear,” a voice shushes, “I’m here to help. You’ll be alright.”
Mia doesn’t think that’s true. Her skin is sticky with what she knows to be blood. At least she is human again. Or maybe that isn’t true. Maybe her human form has been tainted with monster too. It’s dark and echoey and she knows they’re still in the cave.
She can’t quiet her cries. Madam Pomfrey’s moving, shuffling something around, and it sounds like the clanging of glass jars and the ripping of bandages. Mia desperately wants to say something.
“It’s alright,” Madam Pomfrey whispers, smoothing back Mia’s hair.
Mia needs to say something. Pomfrey wasn’t running from her. When she was a kid and transitioned in the basement, the doctors never got close to her after a full moon. They were always told to stay six feet away, in case Mia was still rabid. She was just left to let her wounds fester.
But not now. Pomfrey wasn’t running and she didn’t have a lab robe. Her mouth still felt tight, her tongue still weighted, but there was a gap. Mia felt the ache everywhere in her body and reached a hand out desperately, successfully grabbing onto a patch of Pomfrey’s robes. She didn’t feel the woman flinch. That was a good sign.
Mia lets out a whine, slightly animal.
She parts her lips.
“Hurts,” the eleven year old whispers, not registering her own voice. Her lips are cracked. Blood spits out from her mouth.
She can feel Pomfrey stiffen in shock. Mia lets her eyes close. Fenrir Greyback hadn’t heard her. He wasn’t coming. His claws weren’t here.
Mia says it again, hoping someone would understand.
“Hurts.” Her throat was like sandpaper. Has she always sounded like that?
Pomfrey puts something cold on her face, and then the bandages begin to be wrapped around her. It feels like a weighted blanket, like being tucked up to her chin.
“I’ll fix it,” the woman whispers, “I’ll fix it for you. I won’t let it hurt anymore.”
Mia feels all apart. She can’t even stop the tears.
She wakes up in the Hospital Wing again, half blind on the right side of her face and right next to her brother. When she turns her head, he’s sitting up in bed, and that black haired friend of his is folded in a chair right next to him, breathing lightly.
“Mum was here,” Remus says, noticing her stare. He shifts uncomfortably in bed. “But Madam Pomfrey pulled her away for a moment. She said you talked.” He looks at her with a soft smile. Mia tries to be angry at him but all she can do is notice the new scar that lines his throat. It’d been a bad night for him too.
The brown eyed girl just nods, moving a hand up to caress the crescent moon on her face. Her finger finds only bandages. She is still blind on one side.
“Pomfrey said it would heal soon,” Remus remarks, looking down to avoid his sister’s eyes, “But it might scar again.”
Mia shrugs. Tries not to feel bad about it. She never looked in the mirror anyway and no one ever paid attention enough to think critically of her. She thought of Pandora anyway, though, and thought about what the girl might think.
Monster, a voice in her head whispered. Mia purses her lips. Pandora was nicer than that voice. Mia was sure of that.
“You talked,” her brother reminds, eyes sort of wide.
For a second, Mia has the instinct to just shrug, to say nothing at all. And she almost does, but then she remembers the thoughts she had before she opened her mouth. What had she been thinking?
That Fenrir Greyback wasn’t here. He wasn’t coming to silence her.
Had that always been the reason she couldn’t lift her tongue? Or was it something deeper than that? Mia doesn’t know.
All she knew was that in that moment in the cave, the girl felt like she had to say something, and she felt safe enough to do it. Was she safe enough now?
Mia looks to Remus and knows her answer.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” her voice is harsh from disuse. It is not her but something detached from her. Mia seals her mouth again, moves her eyes up to look at Remus again. She hadn’t even realized she’d looked away. She finds she doesn't like her voice.
He’s looking at her softly and a little shocked too. Mia waits for him to say something. To give her an answer.
“I’m sorry,” Remus frowns, his hands fumble in his lap. Both of the siblings ignore the sleeping boy next to him and their mother in the office. Right now, they are in their own world. Mia waits for him to continue, waits for an explanation.
He reads her mind, as he always does.
“I had something of my own,” the Gryffindor frowns, practically huffing the words out. He seems embarrassed by what he was saying. Mia was so confused.
She rose her eyebrows, gesturing for him to continue.
Remus rolls his eyes but continues anyway, “It’s always been you and me, which I don’t mind,” he adds the last part in quickly at his sister’s expression, “but when I met my friends, it was like… well, it was new. They didn’t know anything about me.”
He’s quiet for a moment, runs a hand through his hair. A nervous tick of his. “It was nice. It’s nice. I’m rubbish at explaining. But I dunno, I guess I was afraid that if they got to know you, they’d find out about me.”
“They’d get to know me,” he adds after some silence.
Mia isn’t sure how to feel. She isn’t sure she understands, and doesn't know how to make herself too. She dissects his words in her head, rearranges them and replaces them, trying to make them easy to digest. But they just aren’t. They were sharp and harsh and true. They were her brother.
“I know it was wrong,” Remus says after prolonged quiet. He’s looking at her and Mia’s looking away. She’s got tears in her eyes and she doesn’t want him to see them. Both because she feels stupid for them and because she doesn’t want the boy to feel bad.
Mia knows she can’t tell him that she would not have done the same thing. Because she doesn’t know that. She’s never been in his position. Remus has always been a part of her, she’d always depended on him too much. For too long. And she can’t blame Remus for wanting space from that. For wanting space from her. No matter how much she wants to.
“I’m sorry,” Remus says again, looking real sorry.
Mia has never been able to be angry at him. She nods, laying back in bed.
After some time, Sirius wakes up and he and Remus start to quietly chatter, with the former sometimes giving curious glances over to Mia. After a couple too many, the girl turns to her side, out of the prying eyes of thirteen year old boys, and tries not to feel too self conscious.
After a while, their mother comes in, looking exhausted and beautiful and wonderfully familiar.
“I brought lemon cakes and chocolate!” Hope grins, holding up a grocery bag quite triumphantly. Mia grins the same grin back. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed her mother.
“Chocolate for Remy,” the woman hums, dropping the candy bars onto the boy's head and swooping down for a forehead kiss. Remus groans at that, blushing scarlet, as Sirius snickers from beside him, looking like he was going to make fun of the boy for it for ages.
“Mum!” Remus hisses, throwing an arm out to hit at his friend.
Hope rolls her eyes, “Alright, alright. I’ll leave you alone.”
And then Hope turns onto Mia, and she grins from ear to ear. “And lemon cakes for the sweet girl,” the light haired woman whispers, smoothing down her daughter’s hair as she drops the bag of lemon candy onto the side table.
And then Hope beckons her daughter to move some, and despite Mia’s aching limbs, she does so, allowing her mother to sit right next to her and pop a candy into her mouth.
“I heard you were quite talkative,” the woman smiles, wincing a little when she sees Mia’s bandage. Her hands are quick to smooth out the medical swathe, making sure it was comfortable. Mia nods in content when it’s right and shrugs again when she registers what her mother had said. She’d only said two words and didn’t plan on saying very much more.
“Do you want to talk about it now?” Hope asks, quieting down her voice so the boys couldn’t hear. Mia shakes her head, wincing a little. She didn’t know how she was supposed to talk about something when she couldn’t understand it herself.
“Well, that’s alright.” Her mother pops another candy into her mouth, and then gestures for Mia to have some. Obliging, the girl takes one even though she didn’t feel very hungry. She didn’t think she had much energy to do anything at all.
“But you promise to talk when you’re ready?”
Mia shrugs, notices her mother’s discontent and then nods.
When she’s ready. Whatever that meant. Really, she’d like to be silent forever. It was easier to be silent than to speak and be seen.