the_debt_of_time

He knew they had talked about it already. Once, shortly after Sirius's first arrest
following his Auror resignation, and again after a drunken one-night stand where he tried
to provoke Remus into beating the guilt out of him. Remus had not taken the bait, but
instead dumped him on James and Lily's sofa and let Lily play Mind Healer as she tried to
help Sirius work through his grief.
Remus seemed to move on the fastest from Mia's supposed death, though no one
could really tell considering that he had always been good at keeping his emotions bottled
up compared to the rest of them. James, thankfully, had fatherhood to look forward to as
well as a cause in the war to keep his mind occupied so as not to dwell on Mia's
disappearance.
Sirius, however, firmly walked the fine line between anger and denial.
When Moody and Dumbledore announced Mia's official death, Sirius had lodged
an actual formal complaint after he had found an old copy of Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding
Genealogy. The old book, given to only the oldest families, was magically spelled to update
on its own. Births, marriages, and deaths were all automatically logged on the parchment.
Sirius had opened it to the Potter Family Tree where Charlus and Dorea's births and deaths
were listed. James and Lily's names were written down as well, marking their marriage. A
floating light hovered beneath their names which Sirius had assumed was the magic waiting
for their child to be born before it would write their name down in the timeworn text.
But there, next to the name Mia Potter, was no date of death. Strangely, in fact, Mia's
birth date was not written down either, something Sirius assumed had to do with the fact
that she was adopted. Stranger still, while the other names were written in dark black ink,
Mia's faded in and out as though it had been improperly Disillusioned, or as though the
book did not know where she fit: dead or alive.
It was just enough hope to drive his already unstable mind to the brink several times.
"I'll get you off the booze once I get this kid out of me," Lily declared with a bright
smile and then winced when the baby kicked again.
"Maybe I was wrong," Sirius offered, rubbing her belly. "Maybe he's not a Beater. I
think he might just be a Bludger," he teased.
Lily laughed and leant against him. "He or she will be a bloody Quaffle by the time
I give birth to them. At which point I think I'll go back to hexing James. It's been a long