Mirror, Mirror

Over the next few days Percy watched Terence closely. Terence would smile at him and would tell jokes. No one ever joked with him besides Oliver, at least with him in on the joke. His parents were still processing the information as was his siblings. They were treating him more like a freak than they had before. But it was like everything they did, Terence would just treat him better.

Kingsley had to be wrong, there was no way Terence had killed him. For what purpose? He wasn’t a dark wizard; he had never been. It didn’t make any sense that he would kill him. But it did make him more suspicious of everything Terence did. It was an odd feeling waiting for your death, knowing it was coming but not knowing either. Right now, he was still in denial about the whole thing.

His mother was so happy to have Lucy to hold onto when they left. He knew the feeling; his arms would feel so empty until he got to hold her again. Hopefully soon he would be able to take his daughter and go through the mirror. He didn’t know what dark magic Kingsley had used to get there to see him, but dark magic always came at a price.

Once they were on their way back to school, it was only Terence who joined him in a compartment. The twins seemed scared of him now and Ron probably wanted to tell his friends everything that happened.

“What’s wrong with you lately?” Terence asked.

“What do you mean?” He didn’t look up from the book he was reading. It had been a Christmas present from Bill. It had information about Horcruxes in it. He wondered where his brother got it from.

“Would you look at me when you’re talking to me?” Terence snapped.

Percy lifted his gaze and stared at Terence, he looked angry. Not just annoyed but actually angry.

“I’m looking at you. What do you need?”

“You’ve been watching me like I’m going to steal your potions work. What is wrong with you?” More like watching him like he was going to kill him.

He had been turning things over in his mind for the last few days. One thing he kept coming back to and he hadn’t thought much of it at first. Now it was all he could think about.

“You took us maybe not getting back to our time pretty well. I know that if that happened to me, first thing I would have done was break into the Ministry to try and get back to my child.”

Terence’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t have the chance; we both know the Ministry is well guarded.”

“When we worked there, yes. But before that, this is a time of peace. There are no night guards, no wards. Those don’t go up until after Ron and his friends broke in along with the Death Eaters.”

“Don’t you mean Lucius? I couldn’t risk it, is all.”

“That sounded right until I was faced with Lucius again. I remembered how he could twist me up so much where I didn’t know up from down. I played right into your hands, didn’t I?” Terence didn’t say anything just looked at him sharply. “How long have you been planning to kill me?”

“Kill?”

“I’m so angry at myself for forgetting. You started out as an Unspeakable. The Department of Mysteries was your territory. I finally remembered where I heard about the shortcut. It was between you and Croaker. It wasn’t an accident; you knew that I hated going through the main exit because it made me sick. You figured out I was pregnant, and you knew that I would take the shortcut. You waited, not doing anything the first few times, letting me get comfortable. But then you moved the mirror. I don’t know what makes it work but you do and knew what would happen. Nothing that day happened by accident. And I think I know why.”

Terence folded his arms over his chest. “Do enlighten me.”

“If Lucy were separated by time and space, I would do anything to find her. I would crawl over broken glass to get to her. You accepted everything like it didn’t matter. There would only be one reason you would do that. And it’s if Calen wasn’t there anymore. He died, didn’t he?”

Percy could feel Terence’s magic sparking around them. It was showing how out of balance Terence was feeling.

“You don’t talk about him.”

“That’s what I thought. I just don’t understand why you would orchestrate all of this.”

“Because it is your fault. He was so little and so innocent but then he started to get sick. I was young and didn’t know much. I took him to St. Mungo’s, and they didn’t know what was wrong with him. Then a muggleborn healer did some muggle tests. She said that there was nothing in the wizarding world that could help him. There was no potion or spell. But she pointed me in the direction of a muggle doctor. I was willing to try anything.

“The muggle doctor said he needed blood. That there was something wrong with his. They said if he had a full sibling that there was a 25 percent chance that that child could donate. I swallowed my hate and anger at his other father to try and get pregnant. All that mattered was Calen. I would love the new baby, but I needed Calen to live.”

It was all incredibly sad, but he didn’t understand where he came into this. His heart broke for Terence, but he hadn’t done anything to him. “I’m sorry your son died. I can’t imagine the pain.”

“NO! YOU CAN’T! I can’t say that if I had another baby that he or she would have been a blood match, but you didn’t even let me have the chance.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Augustus. You killed him before I even had to chance to get pregnant again. I didn’t know it was you at the time. You walked around that building like you owned it, acting like you were so much better than the rest of us. Like you weren’t a murderer.”

“Augustus?” It hit him like a stinging jinx. “Rookwood.”

“He was my superior and I made the mistake and slept with him, a few times. I got pregnant but never told him because by the time I knew, the world as we knew it was on fire. So, I had a baby while a war was going on. Calen was everything to me. I hid my pregnancy and made up a story about a fictional Scottish woman who was his mother. Augustus went to Azkaban and that was it for a while. Then he got out and the world hated him. It wasn’t even like he was as bad as Malfoy. Malfoy killed hundreds and you forgave him. You have a child with him. But a stray spell hits a wall, and your brother dies, no forgiveness there. Didn’t matter that he was released. You took the law into your own hands.”

“Isn’t that what you’re going to do? Make yourself my judge, jury, and executioner?”

“No. That’s actually not how any of this started. I thought if I put the pieces in place. When you walked through the mirror it would take you to the night you killed Augie. No one had ever used the mirror before so I didn’t know what it would do. I just know that once, I saw him begging you for his life. I saw you use that spell over and over again. You tortured him to death. Before I could work up the courage to walk through, it disappeared. I thought if I could get you near it, it would show that night again and I could save him and maybe save my son. But when I followed you through, I found myself in my childhood bedroom.”

“Then your plan changed to murder.”

“Vengeance but not murder.”

“You wanted to take her away from me. That’s why you kept pushing the blood adoption. It takes two years for the potion to complete. I bet you’re almost finished with it.”

“One year down, one to go. I did plan to take her away from you. But then, you did something that was the worst thing I could imagine.”

“What?”

“You made me fall in love with you.”

Percy laughed bitterly. “If you loved me, why did you kill me?”

“These last few months, it was all real. I swear it, on Calen’s memory.”

“Kingsley said we are changing the future but not all is good. He told me that in two weeks I’m killed with the Sectumsempra curse. He said you confessed. If you love me, why did you kill me?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine ever hurting you now. How can I know why I did something that hasn’t happened yet?”

Terence looked at the walls again, closing one eye then the other. This was his entertainment in his prison cell for the last fourteen years. There wasn’t much to do besides that. It had been a while since Shacklebolt questioned him about when and where to go back. He made sure that it was way before the night that Percy died. The years he spent rotting away in this prison, going over and over what happened that night.

Percy put everything in that bloody diary of his. He put that curse, the same curse he killed Augustus with, but he didn’t put what the spell did. There was no reason to blame them; they were just children. They thought if it were in a book that Percy had it couldn’t be dark or dangerous.

It all happened so fast that he couldn’t stop it. Percy hadn’t even had time to react, after all, the worst you expect from first years would be jinxes. Terence didn’t know the counter spell. Percy had tried to tell him, but blood was gushing from his throat, and he couldn’t understand him. There was real terror in Percy’s eyes as he was dying, Terence knew what he wanted, what he needed. “I will protect them,” he whispered as Percy’s eyes glazed over. He couldn’t stand it anymore and closed them.

Percy died in his arms in less than a minute. There had probably not been a way to save him unless he knew the counter spell and it seemed Percy knew it, but he was such a stupid know-it-all git he didn’t put it in the bloody book or a description of what the curse did. The four Slytherin first years were crying and screaming at him to do something. It was too late to do anything other than what he did. He promised Percy he would look after his little brother and his friends and protect them.

He had always been good with the memory charms. He wiped that night from there memory and knowledge of the curse. Percy had gotten his diary back on the train so they wouldn’t learn it again. The four walked in a daze to the castle, innocent and free of the knowledge of what they had just done.

Terence couldn’t leave him; Percy hated being alone and in the dark. He stayed there with him until the next morning. Hagrid found Percy with Terence sitting beside him, telling him everything would be alright. Dumbledore had been trying to look in his mind, but he had successfully blocked him. No one would know what happened except him.

Molly would have Lucy to keep her going in those dark days ahead. She would care for her and raise her to be brilliant just like her father at least that’s what he thought at the time.

To stop any kind of real investigation he confessed to Percy’s murder. Afterall, he couldn’t chance them using Veritaserum on him. He didn’t know if his father would get into trouble for being the one to create the curse, but he decided to keep that a secret too. Snape got out of Azkaban the next day; his name finally cleared of poisoning the people in St. Mungo’s. If he had just been there the night, maybe Percy would have had a chance but probably not. Harry had swung his wand around, the curse slashed right through Percy’s throat, it was shocking he lived those few seconds.

Looking at the wall again he imagined Percy’s laughing face. Everyone thought he didn’t have a sense of humor, but it was simply different. He realized that the first time they went to school together. If he were honest with himself, that was when he started to fall for him. When he was only a first year, Percy tried to tell a seventh year Slytherin to stop running in the hallways. He was hexed and then stuck to the wall with a sticking charm. Terence had only been a third year and would never stand up to the other Slytherins but as he trailed behind them, he heard Percy yell that he would be putting it in his report to McGonagall.

The idiot git, why couldn’t he have just put the counter-curse in the diary. Why did he always have to be the one with all the information? If he weren’t so hardheaded, he would still be alive today.

Once a year his brothers or sister, sometimes his parents would come and ask why he killed him. He would always tell them the closest he could without telling the truth about who used the curse.

The first years were sneaking into the Forbidden Forest. Terence had been with Percy in the library when it happened. It was just by chance he checked the map and saw the four leaving the castle. They went to stop them before they got their fool selves killed. They wouldn’t be the first kids hurt in that forest. Dumbledore uses it as a scare tactic, but it was just a miracle there hadn’t been a death in there.

They stopped them just on the edge of the forest. Percy being Percy demanded them to go back into the castle. They were young and didn’t want Percy telling them what to do. They knew in their minds that they were from years in the future, but he didn’t think they really understood.

The kids were looking for something in the forest, what he still to this day don’t know. A flash reaction from a child that didn’t know better. Didn’t know what the curse did. Harry had thought it was like a jinx because that idiot Terence loved had put down in his book “to get even.”  This was Percy Weasley they were talking about. He would never have a dark curse in his diary, until he did. Why had he even put it in the diary? All he wanted to do was scream at him for being such an idiot for being so smart.

Terence had forgiven him for Calen’s death. He had come to realize it wasn’t Percy’s fault. Percy had done something inexcusable but no matter how much he tried to deny it to himself, Augustus was evil. He really was probably trying to kill two Weasleys, Harry Potter and Hermione in one spell.

After that Christmas and his heart was already completely Percy’s he decided to let future past die. Nothing was going to bring Calen back, even if he was taken to the time of Augustus’s death.

There was no way he could let Harry, or the others remember what happened. The memory of Percy gasping, grabbing at his throat, his body shaking uncontrollably while the blood never seemed to stop. No, he had done the right thing.

Snape came to visit him every other week. His father had been upset when he found out what spell had killed Percy. So ashamed he went into his classroom found his old book and set it on fire. Sirius visited every month. He told him once that if a prank he had planned wasn’t stopped by Harry’s father, Severus would have been killed. He told him there isn’t anyone alive without skeletons in their closets, just some are more visible than others.

He hadn’t gotten to meet his little brother and sister; Azkaban was no place for them. Sirius had told him all about his wedding to Bertha Jorkins. She had been killed the first time around. Finding that out, Sirius wanted to make sure she was alright because they had been in school together and she was a bit scatterbrained. After a while, they fell for each other. It wasn’t one of those written in the stars things, but he was happy in his life. And they had his little brother not long after they married.

Severus had been another surprise. After he was released from Azkaban and Percy died, he put in his notice at Hogwarts. He had told him that Dumbledore had used everything he could to make him stay…mostly guilt. But he didn’t back down and he moved abroad. Maybe if he stayed, something might have happened with Sirius. But his father met a woman in Italy, where he had moved, and they had a baby very quickly after he met her.

The woman whose name was Bria had died in childbirth and left his father a single parent. When he moved back, he brought his daughter. His father had shown him a few pictures. One of her playing in the snow. If he hadn’t known his parents couldn’t stand each other he would think Elaina was Sirius’s. According to his father she had a wild streak and was sorted into Gryffindor when she started school.

Harry got the family he always wanted, two little boys and another baby on the way according to Sirius. They had apparently changed Hermione and Ron’s future. They dated in Hogwarts, but it didn’t last, and they went their separate ways. Hermione was all about her work and Ron shocked everyone when he started married a man. Percy would have laughed because he had told him about his brother’s obsession with Viktor Krum. A lot can change when you’re not paying attention.

Lucy, the child he wanted for a daughter changed after that. Percy didn’t grow up and didn’t meet Lucius Malfoy and didn’t have a baby with him. So, she should have ceased to exist but that didn’t happen. They weren’t sure if it was because she was born in this time or not. But Sirius had said that a few things had changed about her when he saw her. Her red hair had turned black as did her eyes. He had only known one man to have black eyes. Sirius had the same questions and did a renewed paternity test on her. The names that popped up was Percy Weasley and…his. Severus had theorized it had something to do with the mirror and them going through seconds apart. Lucius couldn’t biologically be the father anymore Lucy’s magic reached out and grabbed the most compatible and because the magic in the mirror was strong, it picked him.

He didn’t know how much of that he believed but his father was just speculating because it’s not like that mirror had a handbook. It had been sitting in a room in the department for years. No one had seen it show anything but their reflections until he did that day. Then again when Percy walked through allowing him to follow.

Lucy knew he was her father but because of the lie to protect Harry, she believes he murdered her other father. Because they knew they visited him often, the Weasleys didn’t let his parents see her. They had gotten bits and pieces like when she started Hogwarts, she was sorted into Ravenclaw. He always thought that’s where Percy should have gone. Not because he’s not brave but because maybe there they would have appreciated his intellect.

“You made me fall in love with you.”

There was a bitter laugh from the redhead. “If you loved me, why did you kill me?”

What? When had that happened? Where did that memory come from?

“Kingsley,” he whispered to himself before everything went dark.