January 6th, 1976The new year brought with it a new world.
James and Mia returned to Hogwarts wearing matching slings. She had fulfilled her
gift to James, and the moment the two of them mounted his broom, everything went south.
They ended up crashing in the orchards, each breaking an arm. Despite repairing the breaks
with potions and magic at St Mungo's, they were forced to wear the slings under the
insistence of their mother and Tilly until they were both fully healed.
Peter came back to Hogwarts looking sickly and haunted. Mia had read in the paper
that his father, Evan Pettigrew, had been arrested for suspicious behaviour in Knockturn
Alley. Though he had been released later on for lack of evidence, she knew that this was
the beginning of the end for Wormtail. If Peter had not been involved in the Dark Arts
before, he was now connected to them through his father.
Lily stepped off the Hogwarts Express in tears after Mulciber and Avery called her
a Mudblood to her face, and Snape stood by, averting his gaze in front of his friends. Lily
was not prone to emotional outbursts like that, but Mia knew this had been building over
a long period of time. Soon, Snape and Lily would break permanently, and everyone but
Lily would have seen it coming since the Sorting Hat had placed her into Gryffindor.
Though Sirius continued drinking and smoking over the holidays, he returned to
school with a new nervous habit: fidgeting with the chain Mia had given him whenever he
was visibly anxious. Even when he was able to control his expression, touching the chain
became a dead giveaway to his emotional state.
He had not sent a single owl to his friends since leaving Potter Manor on Christmas
morning to return to Grimmauld Place, but Mia could tell something was very wrong.
Instead of stepping off the train and fighting his brother, the two Black siblings had scarcely
looked at one another. When they did, instead of the typical look of repugnance in
Regulus's face, Mia could see trepidation.
It unnerved her.
When she found Sirius sitting alone in the common room after the start-of-term
feast, fiddling with the chain around his neck as though he were already contemplating
using it to escape back to Potter Manor, she took a seat beside him. He had not rolled over