Chapter 15 – And into the flames by Maeryn Lamonte – Copyright © 2021
	There was quite a lot that didn’t read quite right in this chapter. I’ve fixed most of it, but may want to come back to it at some time. Please let me know if anything feels ‘off’ – even a little.

-oOo-
Lori woke with a start. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep — hadn’t thought she could — and now she had no idea how much time had passed with everything preying on her mind — but here she was. A regular susurration from beside her indicated Raphael had also succumbed to Morpheus’ enticement despite the discomfort of his bonds.

She climbed out of bed and shivered. Sometime during her slumber, the fire had died completely allowing the night’s chill to invade the bedroom. She cast lumos, cupping the tip of her wand in her other hand, and examined the fireplace, but there was no resurrecting the fire. She turned her attention to Raphael’s second wardrobe, where a short search revealed a woollen shawl and several pairs of thick tights.

The chill encouraged a swift change, after which she crept over to the door and listened. Once she’d satisfied herself there was no-one nearby, she opened the door a crack and listened again. A gentle buzz of conversation made its way up the stairs. She couldn’t make out individual voices, but estimated numbers at somewhere between one and two dozen. It didn’t help much. She had no idea how many people made up the Order of Purity, but suspected they were close to all being there. It sounded more like a party than any sort of serious undertaking, which suggested they were a way off doing anything she needed to worry about.

She walked over to the window and slipped between the curtains. The moon was definitely higher in the sky and shining from an entirely different direction, suggesting she’d slept for hours rather than minutes. Details of the grounds stood out in sharply contrasting areas of black and silvery grey. Nothing moved, which meant either Uncle Harry was taking his sweet time coming or he and his team of aurors were exceptionally good at hiding.

She settled onto the window ledge finding it comfortably wide enough for her. She drew her knees close to her chest and wrapped the shawl tightly around her. At least this way, with hard wood under her backside and the cold sheeting off the glass, she was less likely to fall back to sleep. Squinting, she could just make out her thestral waiting patiently for her return, but otherwise nothing moved.

She passed the time scanning the hilltops, looking once more for any indication of her parents’ prison. She figured it should stand out with the moonlight shining off the layer of mist, but there was nothing. She was just beginning to nod off again when she heard a light tapping beside her.

She focused on what appeared to be a bronze knut spinning gently on the other side of the window. As she watched, it moved forward and tapped against the window a second time. She scrambled off the window ledge and unlatched the window. It was stiff and took most of her strength to open even a crack. Fortunately, that was all the coin needed. The moment Lori had lifted the window half an inch, it swooped in and hovered in front of her. Heat started leaching out through the small gap the moment it appeared, so she pushed the window closed and latched it in place before grabbing the coin out of the air.

“Lori?” Uncle Harry’s whispered voice held a tinny quality. “What are you doing in there?”

“It’s a bit of a long story. How did you know it was me?”

“Your brother told me you made yourself look like Raphael, and I doubt he’d choose to wander around in a dress. Tell me what’s happened.”

“Where are you?”

“Look at the bush in front of your window.”

She complied and a patch of air wavered briefly before a disembodied hand emerged and waved at her.

“Okay. Is it just you? Only I think it’s going to take a bit more than just the two of us to…”

“Lori…” Harry bit back on his frustration. “Yes, I have a group of aurors with me. I’m the only one in the grounds right now, but they’re nearby. Now will you please tell me what’s happened!”

Lori recounted everything from the headlong race back to the school, to the more sedate chase to their current location, her reunion with Lye, her encounter with her parents, right the way through to being caught by Raphael’s mother and the odd sensation she’d felt when the charm on her necklace ran out.

“That we’ll have to figure out later,” Harry told her. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me how come you’re wearing a dress. I mean given that you currently still look like Raphael.”

“Just because I look like him doesn’t make me any less me. I found these clothes in a wardrobe and I felt I’d spent enough time this evening pretending to be something I’m not.

“Besides, how do you think they’ll react if I go downstairs looking like this?”

“You really don’t like Raphael much, do you?”

“Not much, no – he hasn’t given me any reason to. But this isn’t about payback; I’m not trying to humiliate him. That’d be too much like the way he’s treated me most of this year, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone — not even him. This is about creating a distraction. I didn’t know if you were going to get here in time, so I figured I needed a plan in case you didn’t.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well, right now it sounds like they’re all just chatting downstairs, but I’m guessing sooner or later they’ll get down to something more serious. Raph’s mum said something that suggested they were waiting for his dad to turn up, so I was going to wait until then.

“If you hadn’t come by then, I’d have headed downstairs in my party frock and barged into the meeting. With a bit of luck, I’d have been able to get Raph’s mum and dad arguing. Then in the confusion I would have used incendio on Ekrisdis’ notebook, grabbed the Bloodstone and tried to get away before anyone figured out what was going on…”

“Not bad. Gutsy, even. It probably wouldn’t have worked, but as plans go, it’s worthy of any Gryffindor.”

“Why does it always have to be about house? I mean you don’t have to be a Gryffindor to be brave!”

“You’re right and I’m sorry. If I needed anyone to prove that point, I wouldn’t have to look much further than you. Most witches and wizards I know, when presented with a tight spot like this one, would go out of their way to avoid it. It takes someone really special – from any house – not to turn away from a situation that needs facing.

“Gryffindor may value courage above everything else, but they don’t have a monopoly on it. Your mum was a Ravenclaw who knew how to fight when it was necessary, and your great grandfather was a Hufflepuff who was much the same. I see both of them in you Lori.

“That being said, we are here and you’re not on your own, so what say we come up with a better plan?”

“Sure. Just tell me what to do.”

“Good girl. Heads up, it seems things are going to happen sooner than I thought. I’ve just received a report of another broom incoming, and it looks like Augustus Maledicta is riding it. I suspect they’ll get on with whatever they have planned soon after he arrives.”

“My aurors are hiding in the hills around here but it’ll take about five minutes for them all to fly in once we commit, so we could use your distraction. I don’t want you trying anything too dramatic, but if you can keep them occupied while we’re getting into position, we’ll have a much better chance of pulling this off successfully without anyone getting hurt. How do you feel about that?”

“Okay, I think I can manage that.”

“Great! Keep your eyes and ears open. As soon as it seems like they’re getting organised, let me know and get on with your distraction.”

“How do I let you know? I mean, I’m guessing the coin, but how does it work?”

“Give it a good squeeze. After a couple of seconds, it’ll sort of buzz in your fingers. Say my full name and it’ll make mine buzz too. I’ll be able to listen in on everything that’s going on with you.”

Lori slipped off the windowsill and watched from the shadows as one more broom and rider approached from the south and glided in for a landing in front of the house. The familiar form of Raphael’s father dismounted and climbed up to the front door.

She crept over to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. The sounds of chatting faded away to nothing, then when all was quiet, one voice rang out. Lori couldn’t make out the words but thought it did sound something like Mr Maledicta. Other voices followed, asking questions if the inflection in the voices was anything to go by.

A quick scan of the corridor satisfied her that she was alone. She slipped out of Raphael’s bedroom and crept towards the top of the large staircase. Glancing over the balcony, she saw it was empty, but decided not to go further just yet since she could now make out the words coming from beneath her.

“Enough!” Augustus Maledicta’s voice rose above the quiet murmur going on around him, killing it. “Pansy did her job,” he continued. “There was some risk and, unfortunately for her, she was caught. My own son put himself at considerably higher risk and managed to escape, albeit by the skin of his teeth. We all play our part and accept the risks that come with it.

“There’s nothing we can do for her right now. The Ministry has her and we don’t have the means to free her. The experiment with mors mundani worked at Hogwarts, or would have if it hadn’t been for that interfering Scamander child. We know the concept is good and that pure bloods aren’t affected by the mist. We also know that we need to keep the Bloodstone under our control so those meddlers in the Ministry don’t get hold of it again.

“My fellow order members, although we are down on numbers, we are ready to bring the gift of Ekrisdis to the world. Are you with me?”

The murmur of ascent more or less matched the degree of inspiration in the speech, but it was nonetheless ascent. The chanting began. Augustus called out a phrase in Latin and the gathered witches and wizards echoed it back. Lori understood an occasional word like lapis or sanguinum, but otherwise it was gibberish.

The time had come. She took a deep breath, trying to settle her suddenly fluttering heart, and squeezed the coin until it vibrated with a ticklish buzz. “Harry Potter,” she told it clearly, then set off down the stairs.

The dress had no pockets — one of the few things she found truly annoying about girl clothes — so she kept the coin cupped in the palm of her left hand. In her right she held her wand ready but folded back against her arm in an effort to hide it.

She reached the doorway and took another steadying breath. Time to make an entrance. She pushed the door open and looked around the room until she found Raphael’s mother. The other occupants had fallen silent in response to her abrupt entrance, which gave her the opportunity she wanted.

“Mummy,” she said in her best petulant voice. “You said you’d call me when it was time.”

Raphael’s mother recovered quickly. She made her way across the room and grabbed Lori by the arms. “What do you think you’re doing?” She hissed angrily, showing more emotion than she’d managed all evening.

“Ow! Mummy, you’re hurting me!” Lori whined just a little louder.

“Raphael?” Augustus Maledicta was perhaps the slowest in the room to show any signs of recovery. He stood behind the lectern with Ekrisdis’ tatty notebook open in front of him. “What…? What the…? What are you wearing?”

“Mummy likes me to dress like this when you’re not here. I don’t want to, but she makes me.”

“Raphael, this is neither the time nor the place,” Maledicta’s mother said through clenched teeth, her ordinarily beautiful face twisted into a rictus of rage.

“Why not, Mummy? Don’t you want to show off your pretty daughter to all your friends?” Lori dropped the whining voice in favour of Raphael’s signature sarcastic tone.

“Get back to your room!” Mrs Maledicta’s eyes blazed with a white-hot incandescence. She gripped Lori tightly enough to hurt and pushed her back through the open doorway. “We are going to have a very long conversation about this tomorrow.”

“Septima?” Augustus turned to his wife. “What’s the meaning of this? What… Why… Why is our son wearing a dress?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Augustus. We’ve more important things to do right now.”

Lori felt the grip loosen slightly. Her diversion would be altogether too short if she didn’t do something about it. She spun around hard, twisting out of the older woman’s hold, and aimed her wand at the lectern.

“Incendio!” she shouted, releasing a tongue of flame from the tip of her wand. The room’s occupants dived to get out of its way, meaning it struck its target unhindered. The Regnum Caligo erupted in a miniature conflagration drawing every eye in the room. “Axio sanguinum lapis arca!” Lori yelled and the Bloodstone in its box leapt across the room into her arms.

Whether it had been tethered there with enchantments, she couldn’t tell. The casket was in sight and close enough that her own summoning charm overrode anything else. She turned and ran from the room.

“Oh no you don’t you little freak!” Raph’s mother seemed to have worked out who she was. “Crucio!”

Lori’s body exploded with the most intense pain she could imagine. She screamed and fell to the ground, several yards short of the great house’s entrance hall.

“You’re not my son!” Septima Maledicta snarled. “Finite!” she screamed and through her pain, Lori felt her face and body trying to rearrange itself, fighting against the magical leakage that held her disguise in place.

“You don’t get to ruin my plans, you little witch. Not when we’ve waited so long, not when we’re so close. Avada…”

“Avis!” Lori managed to get her limbs under control and cast the spell in time to interrupt her adversary. A loud bang sounded, and a stream of tiny birds leapt out of the end of her wand into the older witch’s face. She recoiled, swatting them out of the way, stood back and readied her wand.

“Expeliarmus!” a familiar voice shouted from the hallway and Septima’s wand flew out of her grasp. With a thunder of feet, a dozen bodies rushed past from the hallway and the air was filled with the zip and zing of duelling spells. The fight lasted barely seconds with most of the defenders still prone from Lori’s surprise attack.

“You could have waited, Lori,” Harry said reaching down to help her up. “We were about ready to come in. Oh!” At the last he noticed her face. He fought to hide his expression, but enough of his consternation slipped through.

“What is it?” Lori asked climbing to her feet. She felt oddly off balance.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, but we’d better get you back to Hogwarts as quickly as we can. Rowena,” he called into the scene of the recent battle. “Is everything under control?”

“Yes sir,” A severe looking young witch with jet black hair appeared in the doorway. “More or less anyway. We have them all in custody and Ekrisdis’ book is okay for all that it’s a bit crispy round the edges. Just looking for the er… Ah, there it is.” She retrieved the casket with the Bloodstone in it from where Lori had dropped it.

“Can I just…?” Lori asked reaching for the casket.

“What? Whoah!” the young witch recoiled from Lori.

“What? What is it?” Lori said, alarmed.

“It’s nothing,” Harry said, pushing his colleague gently away. “Nothing we can’t sort out once we get you back to school, anyway.”

“But what…?”

“Lori, please. Between Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey we’ll have you sorted before you know it. I had nastier things happen to me while I was at Hogwarts. It always looked worse than it actually was and, in most cases, it was fixed in a really short while.

“Let me apparate you to the school and we’ll get it sorted. There’s no need to upset yourself more than necessary.”

“Okay, but can I just get my earring back, please? It’s under the cushion in the casket.”

Rowena twitched a sceptical eyebrow then opened the stone box and felt about. The second eyebrow rose to join the first when she found and pulled out the missing earring.

“It has a finding charm on it,” Lori explained briefly. “I used it to follow Mrs Maledicta here with the box. I came by thestral. He’s in the grounds, over that way. He said he’d wait for me.

“Oh, and Raphael’s upstairs, in the room above here. I tied him up and gagged him, so he’ll need letting free.”

“Anything else?” Harry asked, bemused.

“Well, there’s also a house elf named Cringe down in the cellar who knows where my parents are being held, or maybe were being held. I managed to get Lysander’s wand to Dad. I don’t know if he’ been able to do anything with it.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Rowena said before turning back to the room full of prisoners. She had her voice raised even as Harry put his hand on Lori’s shoulder.

Lori felt as though she’d been jammed in a vice. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see anything in the sudden blackness. She wanted to scream but couldn’t make a sound. Just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. She found herself standing with her uncle outside Merlin’s gate.

“Mum’s gentler when she apparates,” she said.

“Sorry. Come on we should get you inside.”

She still found it awkward to move. Something felt wrong with her body and when she attempted to walk, she lost her balance. Fortunately, Harry still had his arm on her shoulder. He steadied her then scooped her up into his arms and walked into the castle.

-oOo-

“Oh, my stars!” Madame Pomfrey exclaimed upon seeing Lori’s face.

“What? Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

Harry deposited her on a nearby bed and settled into the chair beside it. Professor McGonagall appeared somewhat out of breath. She’d noticed Harry and Lori’s arrival and had rushed down immediately from her office. Her face fell the moment she saw Lori close up.

“Oh, my sweet child,” she moaned. “Why didn’t you listen?”

“What do you mean?” Lori felt her blood run cold.

“I told you not to cast magic, especially not on yourself.”

“But I didn’t. I used the charm on the necklace Lysander gave me for Christmas.”

“May I see?”

Lori handed the necklace over. “It goes with these earrings,” she said, showing her ears. “They have a finding charm on them so if you squeeze one it’ll tell you where the others are. It’s how I tracked the stone.”

“Smart,” Harry said.

“Perhaps so.” McGonagall examined the pendant closely. “But it doesn’t explain your current predicament.”

“Whoever sold them to Lye offered to add some one-shot charms for a few extra sickles. Each of the earrings would make you invisible for five minutes and the pendant would allow you to look like someone else of similar size for about half an hour. I used the charm on the pendant to look like Raphael.”

“And it didn’t wear off,” McGonagall finished.

“Well, no. I kind of felt it run out when I was in Raph’s room earlier. I kind of felt weird — like my skin sort of stretched out like a rubber band for a few seconds, then it eased. The illusion of his clothes disappeared then, but I still looked like him.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“I don’t know. A few hours, I think. I, er, sort of fell asleep.”

“But you still looked like Raphael when you woke up.”

“Yes. That’s how I managed to distract the Order. I kind of walked in on them dressed like this.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, Raph’s mum figured out who I was and cast finite on me, that’s when I felt myself change. Can I see, please? I need to know what has you so worried.”

“I can’t find any residue of the charm here.” McGonagall seemed not to have heard Lori’s request. “Do the earrings still have their magic?”

“Well, the finding charm still works. I did use the invisibility charm on this one to get away from the infirmary, but this one still hasn’t been used.” She took off the earring she’d hidden in the casket and handed it across. “Will you please let me see what I look like?”

“In a minute Lori. I want to see what we can do about it first, and time matters. Now let’s see…”

She studied the earring closely, waved her wand over it and muttered a few words. Her face turned grimmer as she worked. Eventually she turned her attention back to Lori.

“When the pendant charm ended, do you remember what you were thinking?”

“Er…” Lori thought hard. “Not really. I guess I was thinking it was a shame the spell was going to end. It would have been a whole lot harder to do anything to stop them if I looked like myself.”

McGonagall nodded to herself. “This sort of charm really ought to be outlawed,” she said. “It’s designed to draw the magic it needs from you. To store all the magic needed to cast and maintain the spell would have needed a lot more than a sickle’s worth of magic. Instead, there’s just enough here to draw what’s needed from you for the duration of the spell.

“I’ll need to consult with Professor Flitwick on the matter because he’s more of an expert on charms, but what I suspect happened is the disguise charm simply put up an illusion of the person you wanted to look like.”

“It fooled the house elf, Cringe.”

“Well, if it did that I have to wonder if he was looking that closely. One of the downsides of keeping a house elf scared is that it may be too distracted by its fear to notice little things.

“I have a feeling that your subconscious desire to keep the appearance of Raphael beyond the limits of the pendant’s charm acted on the part of you that’s leaking magic to make it a physical change in you. When the illusion dropped, the appearance of Raphael’s clothing went, but your desire to keep looking like him found the means to alter your appearance.

“Then when Septima — Mrs Maledicta — cast finite on you to end the magic, she did so against the same resistance I encountered undoing the felis sensorium, only she was a little less successful in reversing the effects.”

“What does that mean?”

McGonagall nodded at Madame Pomfrey who, at some stage in the proceedings, had withdrawn long enough to find a hand mirror. She passed it to the headmistress.

“I need you to prepare yourself for a bit of a shock, Lori. This won’t be easy.” She handed the mirror to the young girl who looked in it and gasped.

Her face was divided into two parts by a diagonal line that ran from the top of her head across the bridge of her nose and down through her right cheek. Beneath the line, she recognised herself, her chin, her mouth, her nose, her left eye, but above it she still retained Raphael’s appearance. His right eye, his high forehead, his short hair. His head was larger than Lori’s, so it gave something of the effect that she was wearing a mask of Raphael’s face, the bottom part of which had been torn away. Close examination of the division between the two parts showed them joined by an irregular ridge with no break in the skin.

“Am I stuck like this?” she asked. “Am I going to look like this for the rest of my life?” She looked down at her arms and legs, her right arm larger, hairier, more muscular than her left, her left leg longer than her right.

“I don’t know, Lori, but I think not. Whether we’ll be able to get you back to looking just as you were, that I can’t promise. At the very least, you’re due a growth spurt soon and that should even out your face and your body. Beyond that, there are a great many things we can try, both here and at St Mungo’s and, whilst I think that you’ll have to accept some degree of permanent change from your experience, you are at a flexible age which should make it easier to repair most of the harm done. It will take time though.”

“How long?”

“That is a very good question and one that I don’t feel able to answer with any degree of precision. If I were to guess — and it’s only a guess mind — I would say a matter of weeks or possibly months.”

“I wish my mum and dad were here.”

“We’re working on that, Lor,” Harry said. “Would your brother do in the meantime?”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for him to see me looking like this.”

“You may not have a great deal of option there,” Harry risked a slight grin. “If I know Lysander, he’ll be breaking the door down to see you by the end of the day.”

“Besides,” Madame Pomfrey said as she prepared a bed for her young patient, “if you’re going to be weeks in the mending, I have no intention of having you hide in here for all that time. You are going to have to face your schoolmates sooner or later.”

“I suppose so. all right, but can you show him a picture of what I look like before he comes to see me. I don’t know if I could handle watching his first impression of my currentl appearance.”

“That can be arranged,” Professor McGonagall said, straightening her shoulders. “I shall ask Professor Spooner to bring down his daguerreotype.”

Harry stood and straightened his robes. “And I need to see what we’ve found out about your parents. I’ll send you news as soon as I have any.”

The two left together leaving Lori with Madame Pomfrey who helped the young girl out of Raphael’s dress and into a nightdress. She tried not to react at the sight of Lori’s transformed patchwork body, but it took all her years’ experience not to do so.

Lori may not have noticed in any case. The night’s events had caught up with her at last and she fell into a deep sleep the instant her head touched the pillow.

-oOo-

Lori woke to find her mother smiling down at her.

“There you are,” Luna said reaching down to brush Lori’s hair to one side. This took more imagination than effort for both of them since the top of Lori’s head mainly sported Raphael’s short haircut.

“Mum, you’re all right!” Lori exclaimed, launching herself forward to embrace her mother.

“We have you to thank for that, sweetheart,” Lori’s father said from the other side of the room.

“Dad!”

Rolf moved in to sit on the bed next to his wife. His face looked drawn, but his smile was strong and genuine. “You look like you’ve been through the wars a bit,” he said. “That’s a Muggle expression I picked up recently.”

Luna smiled at him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Professor M has been telling us about your adventures, you and Lye,” she said. “It makes what we went through like a… what was that thing love?”

“A bit of a cakewalk,” Rolf supplied.

Lori didn’t have much of an idea what that was supposed to mean, but she wasn’t much bothered. “So, what did happen to you?” she asked.

“Well, er…” Luna began.

“Start at the beginning,” Lori interrupted. “From when you disappeared.”

“All right,” Rolf said, taking over. “We were in our room, waiting to hear when we could come visit you, when the door opened.”

“No-one came in,” Luna said. “Or at least we didn’t see anyone come in. This is Hogwarts though, so it might have been nargles.”

“It wasn’t though.” Rolf again took over. “It was that Maledicta boy. He had an invisibility cloak and something I couldn’t quite see in his hand. He shouted into it, ‘Now Cringe,’ and before either your mum or I could reach for our wands, a house elf appeared and clicked his fingers.”

“The next thing we knew,” Luna said, “we were up in that place where you found us. Raphael had his wand with him, so we had no way to fight him. The house elf put us in manacles and the two of them vanished.”

“We had no idea where we were,” Rolf picked up the tale, “just that we were in a that shallow bowl with a thick white cloud overhead. It was cold and damp and the chains kept us from getting any rest.

“When darkness came, so did the Dementors, at least that’s what I assume they were. We couldn’t see anything, but we could feel them flying above us, sucking all the hope out of the air. We couldn’t see how anyone would be able to find us.

“After the moon came up, we began to see them shifting about in the clouds. It looked like they were testing their boundaries, seeing If they might risk leaving the cloud to attack us.”

“That’s when you turned up,” Luna said. “I’d just about given in to despair. Your dad, of course, was doing whatever he could to keep them back…”

“I was shouting at them for what good it did.”

“Then I heard him shouting at someone else, then the next thing I was looking at you. You were wearing that boy’s skin, but I could see it was you inside.”

“You tried to attack me, Mum.”

“I couldn’t let you give me your wand.”

“You didn’t need to,” Lori’s dad said. “You’d already given me Lysander’s. After you disappeared, I was able to free your mother and myself, but then we were stuck. We tried getting through the mist, but the moment we entered it, the Dementors advanced on us. I cast my Patronus which kept us safe while we retreated, but we had no idea how thick the mist was. We couldn’t risk it.”

“So, we settled down to wait. Your dad’s Patronus discouraged them from attacking us and we figured we could hold out until sunrise. Dementors don’t much care for sunlight, and we figured we could escape then. Only we didn’t have to wait that long. A bunch of ministry aurors arrived with that house elf and apparated us out of there a few hours ago. We came straight here, but by then you were asleep.”

“We weren’t about to be kept away from you a second time though,” Rolf said.

“Your dad made a bit of a stink and eventually Poppy let us in so long as we promised to keep quiet. We’ve been here waiting for you to wake up since.”

“What about Lye?”

“He’s here too.” Luna pointed at the bed next to Lori’s where a small figure huddled beneath the blankets. “He had quite a night too. We thought it best to let you both sleep.”

It was still dark outside, which didn’t mean a great deal in the highlands in winter. Lori felt hungry, but mostly she still felt tired. She lay back.

“So, what happens now?”

“Now you get better.” Lori’s dad took a hold of her hand – the one that was most like her own. “I think your Uncle Harry may want a word with you later, but from what his aurors were saying, this mess seems to have been sorted. Mostly thanks to you if I understood half of what they were telling me. So now we do whatever it takes to put you back together.”

Lori was asleep before her father had finished, but she heard enough to feel comforted and hopeful.

-oOo-

When she awoke next it was to the feel of a gentle tug on her hair. She sat up and looked about her.

“Good, you’re awake,” Anneka’s cheerful voice said. “Now just keep sitting up like that and keep your back to me. It’ll be easier like this.”

“What are you doing here? I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Well, you don’t always get what you want, do you? Your mum said it would be okay if I came in and I figured you’d feel better if I sorted your hair out for you.”

Lori pulled away and turned to face her friend. She scanned her eyes for any hint of horror or sympathy and found it lurking in lines of concern her feigned good cheer couldn’t mask.

“Do you really think brushing my hair is going to make much of a difference to this?” She could hear the bitterness in her own voice but couldn’t help it.

Anneka looked away from the intensity in her friend’s eyes then dipped her head, hiding her own face behind her curtain of hair for a moment. Only a moment though. She raised her head and angrily wiped away the tears that had so rapidly flooded her eyes.

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference, but it’s all I can think to do. And if it makes any difference at all, isn’t it worth doing? Look, what happened to you sucks big time, I get that, but in case you haven’t noticed, you’re surrounded by people who love and care for you, one in particular who is desperate to do something to help? Will you let me do that?”

“How can you love this?”

“I didn’t fall in love with your looks, you idiot. Don’t you remember what I said to you back then? Why I decided so quickly you were a friend and more than a friend?”

Lori’s eyes drifted away and focused on the space between them. She couldn’t find a retort.

“Everything you did from the first moment I met you was about putting other people first. Your brother, me, the rest of Hufflepuff House. You put your feelings aside and did whatever you could to make us feel better, even when it made you feel worse. That’s the Lori Scamander I fell in love with, and that’s the Lori Scamander I’m still in love with, regardless of what she looks like.”

Lori looked up at that, surprised.

“Just ‘cos you’re finding it hard to like yourself at the moment doesn’t mean that the rest of us have the same problem, so let us in. And let me finish brushing your hair. You look kind of stupid with it half done.”

Lori managed a smirk. “You’re calling me stupid?”

“Never. You’re as clever as they come, which is all the more reason why you should let me help you not look it. Now turn around.”

Lori did so, feeling the tension inside her ease, then ease even more as Anneka’s gentle caressing brush strokes worked their magic.

“Besides,” her friend said, “everything’s going to be all right.”

“Because of faith?”

“You remember?”

“When good things can happen, you find ways of making them happen, okay, we’ll try it your way.”

“I knew you’d come round.”

“It really doesn’t bother you that there’s bits of me look like Raph?”

Anneka stopped her ministrations and turned Lori to face her. “I don’t see him when I look at you,” she said. “You have none of his nastiness in your eyes. All I see are a few unfortunate consequences of my amazing friend putting herself at risk for the sake of the rest of us. I know you don’t care for it much, but you should wear it like a badge of courage.”

“No. That’s going too far.”

“Like you and your modesty.”

“Hey, you’ve brushed my hair enough. My turn.” Lori reached for the brush in Anneka’s hands.

“Not just yet.” She reached for the hand mirror Madame Pomfrey had left and held it up to show Lori.

For a brief, bright moment, Lori’s heart lifted. Under the ministrations of Anneka’s magic hairbrush, her hair had lengthened and increased in volume, taking on a golden, honey-blonde hue. It cascaded over her shoulders in shimmering waves, and a part of it had been brushed to fall over the right side of her face, obscuring the misshapen part that still resembled Raphael. For that fleeting instant she was herself again and all was well with the world.

Then reality crashed in. She lifted an oversized and somewhat hairy hand to touch the hair on her right side, brushed it aside just long enough to see what lay underneath. Dropping the mirror, she stared at her two mismatched hands.

“I hate this,” she said. “All the last two terms I’ve been dreading what would happen to me when I reached puberty, and now I can’t wait for it. I hate what it’ll make me, but at least I won’t be this freak.

Anneka took hold of both her hands. “There’s a thing my dad says that I didn’t really get till now. It’s ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think it means that whatever you do, whether good or bad, there are consequences, and no matter what you try to do, there’s a cost.”

“So, every bad deed gets punished as well?”

“Maybe, except bad deeds you do for yourself, so there’s usually a reward — for you at least — that outweighs the cost. Good deeds you do for other people, so you only really see the cost.”

“Sounds like a good enough reason to make you stop doing good things.”

“Unless you care more about other people than you do about yourself. I think it’s meant to be ironic though, that saying.”

“I don’t really get irony.”

“It’s kind of when you say one thing but mean the opposite, I think.”

“So good deeds aren’t punished?”

“Well, like I said, anything you do has its cost, it’s just that the benefit of doing good is hard to see sometimes, but when you find it, it’s worth more than anything you have to give to get it.”

“Like?”

“Like stopping whatever the Order of Purity were trying to do. If it was anything like what happened here, it would have been really nasty.”

“Except they wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t stolen the Bloodstone for them from the ministry.”

“Don’t you think they’d have found another way to get their hands on it without you? You may have taken the stone, but you also interrupted them using it and brought in all those aurors from the Ministry to get it back. I’d say that counts as stopping them.”

“I only did it to rescue my parents.”

“Which is also something you succeeded in doing. Lori, I love you, but there’s one thing about you that really frustrates me. You never let yourself see the amazing in you.”

Lori allowed herself a half-smile — on the left side, the one that still most resembled her. “By the way, where are my parents?”

“Oh, they went to lunch. They’re saving us a couple of seats.”

“Lunch! How long have I been asleep?”

“Well, given that you only went to bed in the early hours of the morning, no more than seven or eight hours. Your brother missed most of the morning too. He went to lunch with your parents about the time I got here. Come on, time to get up.”

“I can’t, Anni. I can’t let people see me like this.”

“Well, I don’t see how that’s going to work, because it’s the only way you’re going to get anything to eat today.”

“What?”

“Madame Pomfrey told me, what was it? ‘If she’s well enough to run out of here in the middle of the night, she’s well enough to go back to her normal school day.’ I’m pretty sure she plans to kick you out if you don’t go willingly. I brought you some clothes, but you’d better change quickly or there won’t be any food left.”

“Anni…”

“Nope.” She jumped off the bed and pulled the curtain across. “You have two minutes to get changed, then I’m dragging you out of here whether you’re decent or not, so get a move on.” With that she stepped out to give her friend some privacy.

Lori sighed. The underwear went on without a problem. Even the tights fit reasonably well despite one of her legs being an inch or two longer than the other. The skirt also helped there since she didn’t have to deal with having one trouser leg either too long or too short. The blouse was more problematic as her right arm was considerably too long, but she left the cuffs unbuttoned and rolled the sleeves back on either side as far as her elbows. For shoes, she had two pairs, one apparently from Raphael’s wardrobe and the other from hers. They were similar enough in style that wearing one of each didn’t look too out of place, and the larger heel on hers helped to even out the leg length to some degree.

She pulled the curtain back to be greeted by Anneka’s ever present smile.

“Here,” she said passing her a familiar cloak.

“Where…?”

Anneka passed him a note.

“Dearest Lori,

“This turned up in our search of the Maledicta Mansion. Professor McGonagall informs me that you are its rightful owner, so I’m returning it to you in the hope that, unlike my son, you will use it when you need to rather than when you want to.”

“That’s an odd thing to say,” Lori said, passing the note across.

“I think he’s telling you that you should only hide when you’re in danger, not just when you don’t want anyone to see you.” She dropped the note on a nearby bed and grabbed her friend’s hand, giving Lori no choice but to follow.

Despite the heel on her shoe, or maybe in part because of it, Lori found herself limping quite badly. She felt lumpy and hideously ugly, and the nearer they drew to the Great Hall, the more apprehensive she became. Anneka kept her moving to keep her distracted, but as they turned onto the staircase that led up to the entrance to the Great Hall, Lori dug her heels in.

“I can’t Anni,” she said.

“Yes, you can.” Anneka stopped in front of her friend and stared into her eyes. “Remember our first morning together? We share whatever happens, good or bad. Come on bestie, I’ve got your back.”

As before, Anneka’s mood won Lori over. Reluctant still and more resigned then willing, she hobbled up the last few steps and into the hall.

The place fell silent as every eye turned towards them. She felt panic grip her and would have run had Anneka not held tightly to her arm. Then one by one every person present stood to their feet.

It started with Gryffindor, with Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw close behind. A few in Slytherin — Morgana Melrose among them — rose to their feet a little ahead of the professors, then, with some reluctance the rest of them followed suit.

It was difficult to say where the applause started. A few individuals from each house began it, but they were joined by their fellows building to a crescendo with the entire hall echoing with the sound of it.

It took a moment for Lori to realise this was for her, but as it sank in, her eyes welled up and streams of tears flooded her cheeks. How long it lasted, how long she stood there in the midst of it all, she couldn’t say, but eventually the sounds of appreciation dwindled away leaving her standing in silence.

She managed to bring her tears under control and gazed around the hall where everyone remained on their feet, looking at her expectantly. Professor McGonagall stepped forward.

“Good afternoon, Lori. I am so very pleased to see you back among us.” The elderly headmistress allowed herself one of her rare but genuine smiles. “As you no doubt can tell, the same goes for your schoolmates.”

Lori felt rooted to the spot, trapped under the gaze of so many attentive stares.

“Perhaps you’d like to join your parents up at the professor’s table?” McGonagall hinted.

Anneka gave Lori’s arm a tug and succeeded in getting her to move.

“How do they know?” Lori hissed. “I mean, it only happened last night.”

Anneka gave her friend a bemused look as they settled into the two seats offered them.

“This isn’t about last night,” she said. “Nobody’s seen you since your stunt in the forest, have they? That’s what this is for. Silly goose.”

“More like ugly duckling,” Lori’s father said, brushing her hair aside.

“That’s not very kind, Rolf,” Luna chided.

“Stage of the journey love. We should acknowledge it for what it is.”

Lori wasn’t ready to acknowledge any such thing and settled the curtain of hair back over the transformed part of her face.

“You’re not eating,” Anneka complained a minute later.

“Everybody’s looking at me.” Perhaps a slight exaggeration, though it wasn’t far off half of everybody.

“Get used to it.” Anneka started loading Lori’s plate. “You’re famous and the Saviour of Hogwarts is going to get a lot of attention.”

“I’m hideous is what I am,” Lori replied morosely, “and the Freak of Hogwarts doesn’t like people gawping at her.”

“Oh, for the love of Pete. Look, come with me.” Anneka grabbed her friend’s hand and dragged her away from the table. McGonagall looked up but held back on intervening. Most individuals in the crowded room turned back to their plates of food. Anneka made a beeline for the nearest who hadn’t. A small girl on the Hufflepuff table. “You know Allys, don’t you?” Anni asked her friend. “Allys Greenwood?”

“Er hi,” Allys said, blushing deeply. I guess I…” Tears washed her eyes. “I’m sorry for staring Lori, but I probably wouldn’t be alive if not for you. I’m Muggle born and I… Well, all I remember of this term is suddenly not being able to breathe on the train. Then I woke up a week ago with Madame Pomfrey telling me everything was going to be alright. I… Just thank you. It’s not enough, but…”

“Then there’s Gwendolyn Whisp.” Anneka pointed.

The last time Lori had seen her, she’d been gasping for breath, now she was equally dumbstruck, though the expression on her face spoke more eloquently than any words she might have spoken.

Anneka puled Lori across the Gryffindor table to a boy sitting in a group of third years. “This is Ainsley Miggins,” she announce.

He made a heroic swallow to clear his throat. “Half-blood,” he said. “Dad’s a wizard, Mum’s a midwife. I went to bed feeling unwell a few weeks ago. Woke up last week with the St Mungo’s Healer telling me I was lucky to be alive. I wish I had your guts Lori, but for now I’m just grateful to be alive. I wonder if you’d mind showing me and some of my friends how to cast a Patronus sometime.”

“Er, sure…”

But Anneka was already pulling her towards another Gryfindor, this one wearing a prefect’s badge. “Sheldon Landys,” Anneka announced.

Sheldon stood and offered Lori a hand. Self-conscious, because it meant putting forth her transformed right hand, Lori hesitated, but eventually took it.

“A pleasure and an honour,” he said with a winning smile. “Dad’s an auror. You kind of get used to the, er, the wear and tear shall we say? Mum’s a Muggle so it’s harder on her, but she understands why he does what he does. The mist got both me and my younger sister a few weeks ago. I hate to think how she’d have reacted if… Well, but we didn’t, thanks to you.”

Anneka moved on to the Ravenclaw table to a girl who was sitting apart from the rest of them. “Jeanine Lynch,” she said quietly.”

The girl looked up with red-rimmed eyes and tried to smile. “Marietta was my sister,” she said. “They told me when I woke up a week ago. I wish you could have done what you did just a little sooner.”

“I’m sorry,” Lori said.

Jeanine shook her head. “No. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m alive because of you. So many of us are. I couldn’t have done what you did. I just wish…” She broke into quiet sobs as Anneka led her away, this time towards the Slytherin table.

A slender witch with a long nose and sharp features stood as the approached. “I’m Elfina,” she said. “Do you mind?” She reached out a hand to the veil of hair covering the right side of Lori’s face. Lori stood still as she moved it to one side. Her expression remained unchanged as she took in what she found there, then she carefully let the hair back down. “There are some in Slytherin who aren’t that pleased about what you did, but I’m not one of them. I owe you. We owe you,” she indicated a small group of young witches and wizards behind her, all of whom nodded, “and we’re not about to forget it, okay?”

Lori nodded and let Anneka lead her back to her seat at the high table. “See what I mean?” she asked. “If they’re staring, it’s because of what you did, not what happened to you. Now stop being such an idiot and get some food in you. We’ve got potions and transfiguration this afternoon, so you’re going to need your strength.”

Lori’s appetite returned. Eating felt strange as the transformed side of her face stretched differently in response to her chewing, but she felt better. At the end of the meal, she kissed her mother and hugged her dad.

“We’ll be waiting when you’re done with your lessons,” Rolf said. “Come and find us in the guest wing, both of you,” he added, looking at Lysander. “Professor Longbottom has invited us all to dinner, so we’ll be heading to Diagon Alley.”

Lori looked at Anneka.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she laughed. “I’ll probably sick of your moaning by the end of the afternoon anyway. Besides, I have something I need to work on this evening.”

Lori’s limping gait slowed her enough to make her and Anneka a few minutes late for potions. Professor Mugglewump glowered at her but did little more than indicate a couple of free seats up near the front. He seemed somewhat subdued, nodding thoughtfully without passing comment at Lori’s attempt at making a forgetfulness potion.

Next came transfiguration, led by Professor McGonagall. She began the lesson by calling Lori to the front. Worried that she was going to be used as an example of what could go wrong, she approach apprehensively, but all the professor did was ask for her right shoe, which she then transfigured into a platform wedge, extending Lori’s shorter leg to match the other. She still limped back to her place but managed to move far more easily.

After an hour working on transforming a teapot into a toadstool, the lesson and the day finally reached its conclusion. Professor McGonagall asked Lori to stay back for a quiet word. Anneka inevitably remained too.

“I wanted to check how you were feeling at the end of your first afternoon back,” she said.

“Okay,” Lori responded. “I mean it was better than I thought it would be.” The whole afternoon, people she barely knew had approached her to thank her for what she’d done. None of them had seemed in the least bit phased by her appearance.

“That’s good. I also wanted to ask if you’ve finished with my spectacles yet.”

“Oh, I have those, professor,” Anneka interrupted.

“You do?” Lori asked.

“Yes. Remember, you said I could borrow them and Randolph’s journal when you’d finished with them. I kind of took them this morning while you were sleeping. Can I get them back to you tomorrow professor?”

“Next transfiguration class will be soon enough Miss Peasbottom, but please don’t forget.”

“I won’t, professor. Thank you.”

“Is that what you ‘need’ to do this evening?” Lori asked as they headed back to their dormitory.

“Mm hmm. I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ve been looking forward to getting my teeth into that journal all day.”

“Did you find my list?”

“Yes. I think that’ll help a lot.”

“Do you think so? Because I didn’t think I found all that much in there.”

“Well, let me give it a go and we’ll talk about it this evening. You know, two heads are better than one kind of thing.”

“Said the hydra to himself.”

They both broke down into giggles, surprising Lori who hadn’t thought she would ever laugh again.

-oOo-

The visit to the Longbottoms’ turned out far better than any of them had anticipated. Neville walked with the Scamanders to Merlin’s Gate where the group of them disapparated, reappearing outside the Leaky Cauldron at the entrance to Diagon Alley.

Hannah Longbottom, formerly Hannah Abbot during the time Luna had known her at Hogwarts, had closed the pub for the evening, much to the dismay of many of her regular customers, and had put together a veritable feast for them all. She invited Luna to help her set the table and struck up a conversation about their time at Hogwarts that had Lori’s mum laughing and reminiscing as though the two of them had been fast friends back in the day.

Rolf and Neville, meanwhile, set to talking about their own various interests. Neville’s deep fascination with all things floral matched neatly with Rolf’s love of fauna, and before long they were deep in discussion.

Lysander took Lori’s hand and led her towards the exit. “Mum, Dad? We’re just going for a walk,” he said.”

“Alright love,” Luna looked up briefly. “We’ll be eating in, what…?”

“Half an hour,” Hannah supplied.

“Half an hour, so be back by then.”

“Don’t go far,” Rolf called, “and certainly not anywhere near Knockturn Alley. I think we’ve all had quite enough adventures for the moment.”

“Okay,” the twins chorused and walked out to the back wall behind the pub. Lysander tapped out the sequence with his wand and the two slipped through to the quiet of the wizarding world’s most famous shopping precinct.

Lysander kept his pace slow, adapting to Lori’s limping stride.

“You can say it you know? ‘I told you so.’”

“No.” Lysander was emphatic. “Of all the things I was worried might happen to you, I could never have imagined this in a million years.

“I kind of feel responsible. I mean that charm…”

“Would have done me no harm at all if I hadn’t messed myself up with that Patronus maximus spell, and if Raph’s mum hadn’t tried to dispel it.”

“Still…”

“Lye, without your charm I’d never have found where Mum and Dad were being held. They’d probably have ended up feeding a bunch of Dementors before anyone got to them.”

“Don’t.”

“Well, it didn’t happen, did it? And it’s partly thanks to you. Anneka’s right. If this is the price for making them safe, then it’s worth it.”

“It shouldn’t be you who pays for it though. It’s not fair.”

“Hey, it’s not over yet. What Dad said at lunch. Ugly duckling for now, but I’ll get to be a beautiful swan before this is all over.” Lori smiled and it was genuine. Anneka was right about so many things. The people who mattered most in her life, who loved her most, still loved her. So what if she looked like something from a horror story.

“You’re taking it really well.”

“Well, it does mean you’re not going to have to deal with any more snide comments about having an identical twin sister, doesn’t it?”

Lysander laughed. “You are amazing, you know that?”

“Well, Anneka has mentioned it once or twice, and she’s been right about a lot of other stuff, so I guess I do.

“Hey, what do you think? Have I got a better chance than normal becoming an auror looking like this?”

“What made you think of that?”

“Something someone in Gryffindor said to me earlier today. Don’t worry, I don’t particularly want to be an auror. Knowing my luck, I’d end up standing guard outside the room of some reckless kid who got herself in too much trouble.”

“What do you want to be? I mean, you know, I told you what I want.”

“You did, Professor Scamander. For me… I don’t know. It hasn’t been all that long ago I found out what being me actually meant. I’m not copping out; I just really don’t know.”

“Well, you’ve tons of time yet.” They stood in front of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, staring at the display. “You’d do well in here. I mean walking advertisement for Disfigurement Doughnuts or what?”

Lori punched him with her right arm.

“Ow!”

“Sorry, I forget I’m a bit stronger on that side.”

“You know I didn’t mean it?”

“I always know, Lye. I’m lucky to have a brother like you.”

“Just like I’m lucky to have a sister like you. Do you think it’s been half an hour yet?”

“Am I boring you?”

“No, just not that great with all the lovey dovey girly stuff.”

Lori hugged him and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek by way of retaliation. They turned back towards the Leaky Cauldron and dinner.

-oOo-

Anneka was sitting up in bed waiting when Lori stepped through the door around eleven o’clock.

“No Hortensia?” Lori asked.

“Date with Morgana as usual,” came the sleepy reply.

“What did you find out?”

“Hmm? Oh, the journal?”

“Of course the journal! Come on spill.”

“Well, it’s like you said, it doesn’t look like it’s all here, but he seems to have left clues.”

“That bit at the end? I thought so too. That bit about not having enough spine. I don’t really get what he was saying, but he was suggesting the knowledge was there for someone with enough courage.”

“Is that what you think? I suppose it could mean something like that.”

“You don’t think so though?”

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it for a day or two.”

“What did you make of that bit about what can’t be said might be sung?”

“There’s a lot of nonsense nursery rhymes date back to that time. I wondered if she might have hidden the clues in something she sung to her children. Now I have some names, dates and a location, I thought I might try my friend from the library. You remember I wrote to you about him?”

“Was that the genealogy guy.”

“Yeah. With a few extra details he might be able to find something “

“You seem a bit distracted.”

“I’m just tired is all. How was your evening?”

So, Lori regaled her with the stories the Longbottom’s and her parents had shared until Hortensia finally made it back to their room about midnight. An awkward silence followed in which their roommate avoided looking at them. She changed and slipped into bed then, by unspoken agreement, they all doused their lamps and settled down to sleep.