Chapter Thirty-One
Ours
I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he's got one
And he ain't seen me crazy yet
(Gunpowder & Lead - Miranda Lambert)November 3rd, 1973It had taken days for the Marauders and Mia to get back to normal after dealing
with the boggart. None of them talked about what had happened—especially James, who
had gone on pretending as though the entire class hadn't seen inside his deepest fears.
Regardless of what occurred, Mia still quietly slipped into the boys' dorm late at
night, crawling into James's bed and holding onto her brother tightly to drive away her
nightmares. Nightmares that were now plagued with visions of him dead instead of the
usual images of Bellatrix Lestrange torturing her. Sometimes the nightmares would shift,
and she would see Sirius and Remus being tortured all over again in the Forbidden Forest.
She would get up quietly, so as not to wake her twin, and peek in on her other boys because
she needed to see them with her own eyes to make sure they were safe.
The mood stayed with her for well over a month; the parallels between this year
and her original third year that took place in 1993 were eerily similar: Sirius had spent his
first month in detention with McGonagall, reminding Mia that it was in her original third
year that the older Sirius Black escaped Azkaban. Remus put a great deal of effort into his
studies, meeting one-on-one with Professor Prewett. The way he carried himself made her
smile and think of the brilliant Professor Lupin she had met long ago, who raised her study
of Defence Against the Dark Arts to a higher level than ever before.
Anytime she looked at James, she would frown and the happiness in her life would
be sucked out of her as if a dementor was nearby. In fact, it was in her original third year
when she had first come face to face with the dark creatures. Mia wished that she could
conjure her Patronus to cheer her up without anyone noticing.