enough to catch his mother, Mia cast a Cushioning Charm so Molly did not crack her head
on the floor when she fell. "Get her up. Set her on the sofa. No one unfreeze her unless
they plan on taking her wand and silencing her. I'm quite done with all the screaming."
"I don't understand," Harry said as he moved to help Ron carry Molly to the sofa.
"She seemed to be calming down. What happened?"
Mia moved her shirt to completely reveal the scar on her shoulder. "She
saw this. And, like every other uninformed idiot in the Wizarding world that doesn't bother
learning a bloody thing about lycanthropy, she took it to mean that Remus either claimed
me as a mate, which is impossible as he already has one," she said, rolling her eyes, "or that
he'd turned me into a werewolf, which offends me on his behalf."
Harry stared at the scar. "Hermione, that's a bite wound."
"I never said it wasn't. I will, however, say that it's no one's business but my own.
I'm perfectly fine with answering questions I feel the need to answer," she said, her eyes
darting to Ron and Molly who were now sitting side by side, the latter unfrozen but
magically silenced, as requested. "I do not owe any explanations, especially to people who
jump to their own conclusions."
"It's a Pack Mark," Sirius said, showing his own on his shoulder, informing everyone
since Mia was now too angry to do so. "It magically binds us to Remus. We were not
attacked, we were completely willing, and Mia's right, the details are no one's fucking
business." When Mia smirked at him, he furrowed his brow. "What?"
"You called me Mia," she said, her smug little grin vanishing at the confused
expression on Molly's face. "I'm going to get really tired of telling this story repeatedly.
Someone else do it while I get some fresh air." She turned to leave the room, stopping
when something occurred to her. "Oh, have Ron and Molly make an oath not to say
another word about any of this to anyone until I can tell the rest of the world. And then...
And then someone call an Order meeting. Let's get this mess over and done with."
Mia sat on the front porch of Grimmauld Place, wishing like hell that it was her old
flat in Diagon Alley or the back gardens of Potter Manor. Grimmauld Place was not home.
She brought the cigarette she had stolen from the pack in Sirius's leather jacket to her lips