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Who is Mia Black?


The lie-in came to an end Monday after lunch when Professor Slughorn mentioned to Minerva at the staff table that he’d been missing half her Gryffindors in the morning Potions class and she’d excused herself immediately from the Great Hall. James and Peter turned on the Gryffindor table benches to watch her go past and Peter, who’d been filling one of the white boxes he’d conjured with lunch for John and Yoko, stopped and sat back down. “I’ve a feeling they’ll be down in a minute,” he said when he saw the look on McGonagall’s face.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, McGonagall entered the Great Hall again, pulling the two boys along with her and deposited them on the bench across from James and Peter. “And if I hear about chains on bedposts again, I’ll see to it you’re given detentions for a month, Mr. Black!” she stormed off, dusting her hands off as she went back up to the staff table.

Remus looked relieved.

Sirius however kept glaring after Minnie and sighing dramatically. “How are we supposed to get anything done around here if our freedom to protest is restricted?” he complained.

“In all fairness,” Peter said, “I don’t think anybody noticed what you were doing except us.” He pointed at James and himself, “And we already agree with you.”

Sirius replied, “Of course they knew!” he paused then, “Oi - Longbottom, d’ya know what I was doing all weekend?”

Frank looked up from his plate of chips. “Remus?” he guessed.

Alice choked on her stew as James hooted with laughter and Remus’s face turned as red as the raspberries he was shoving into his mouth.

No I was not doing Remus,” Sirius said with a sigh. “Although that did happen once or twice, didn’t it Moonshine?”

Remus concentrated very hard on the food.

James said, “Oi! Rule. Number. One. RULE NUMBER ONE.”

“You were in Herbology! You weren’t coming back ‘til after. I made sure we waited ‘til you were gone for a long while. Moony was just so horny and I --”

Remus looked up, eyebrows shot so high they were nearly in his hairline, “Do not blame this on me!”

Sirius grinned.

After lunch, they had Charms and Transfiguration - so Peter left to go work on his homework for Divination, which he was taking by himself since even Remus had decided it was a rubbish subject and dropped it. The other three trooped to their classes. Between the two, when they were walking in the corridor, they bumped into Professor Urquart, who looked to be in a decidedly bad mood… it was unfortunate because he was catching them just as Sirius was in the middle of rearranging one of the suits of armor into making a rude gesture.

Professor Urquart walked past them - stopped a meter down the hall, and backed up to see what Sirius was doing.

Sirius gave him his very best innocent grin. “Professor, would you look at what somebody else has done to this poor armor? I’m just fixing him.”

The armor’s helmet clanged in protest and Sirius jumped off the plinth, surprised at the betrayal.

Professor Urquart shook his head, “Mr. Black, I am appalled.”

Remus murmured, “Told you not to do it mate.”

Professor Urquart said, “Thinking too small! There are far funnier things to do with the suits of armor. Mia would be disappointed.” He shook his head and walked on down the corridor.

Sirius, Remus, and James all three stared after him, jaws dropped.

“But he’s a teacher!” Remus said in protest, “He’s - he’s not supposed to encourage you at mischief!”

“Bang on! I think Urquart’s my new hero,” James grinned.

Sirius rolled up his oxford sleeves, “The man’s right…”

When McGonagall stepped into the hall to let the boys into the Transfiguration classroom five minutes later, she let out a choking gasp, “What are those suits of armor doing!?”

Sirius said, “Make love, not war, professor!” He grinned at his masterpiece.

He gained himself a detention for that very evening.

“It isn’t fair I get a detention, Professor,” Sirius was complaining as Lily, who was running late somehow between the classes, charged into the room past McGonagall, who was still holding the door opened and staring, aghast at the coats of armor, “Professor Urquart’s the one that’s given me the idea! I mean, it was practically a bloody assignment!”

“Oh he was, was he?” McGonagall scowled, “Well, never you mind, Mr. Black - you’re still expected to attend detention. Mr. Urquart will hear it from me!”

“Did Sirius do that?” Lily whispered to James, looking over her shoulder at the pornographic display the suits of armor were shaped into.

James didn’t answer, he just stared down at his book.

“James, did you hear me?” she demanded.

He looked up. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think I was worthy of having you speak to me. I assumed you were talking to Remus or somebody else you like.”

Lily stared at him.

In the corridor, McGonagall waved her wands to send the second coat of arms back to his own plinth and make the one stand upright instead of bending over as he’d been doing. “Absolutely filthy,” she muttered, shaking her head.

Sirius was rubbing his chin when she joined them, closing the classroom door and walking to the front of the room. He raised his hand as she passed by him and she looked down at him with suspicion. Usually, Sirius didn’t bother with such required formality as raising his hand and simply spoke out of term whenever he felt like it. She stared at him for a long moment, then said, warily, “Yes?”

“Professor,” Sirius began - another thing that made McGonagall narrow her eyes at him in suspicion - “Mr. Urquart’s been mentioning somebody called Mia Black and comparing me to her nearly constantly.” A funny look flickered over McGonagall’s face. “Who is she?”

McGonagall stared at him. “Mr. Urquart knows a good deal of people that I do not, Sirius, I am afraid I do not have the answer.” She looked down at her desk and took out the textbook. “Now, if you will all turn to Chapter Three, we shall begin covering the use of cellular reconstruction versus cellular fushion charms - by next class you’ll be expected to have created a spell of your own that combines the ---- Yes, Mr. Black?”

Sirius was sitting forward in his chair, “It’s just that Professor Urquart said that you and Mia Black were best friends while you were attending Hogwarts yourself,” he persisted, “So you do know her.”

McGonagall stared at him with a sour expression on her face. “Drop it.”

Her voice was firm and Sirius looked surprised at just how firm it was.

“Professor Urquart should not be discussing personal matters with you. It is… very… unprofessional… and I shall have a talk about that with him as well.” McGonagall cleared her throat. “Now -- Chapter Three --” she sighed heavily, “What, Sirius?”

“Is she dead?” he asked point blank.

McGonagall’s jaw quivered. “Sirius, I am not discussing Mia Black with you.”

The pair of them had a stare down - Sirius staring into McGonagall’s eyes and vice versa.

Remus sighed and leaned back in his chair on the far side of Sirius and looked over at James with a why does he have to be like this look in his eyes and James smirked and shrugged, then turned ‘round to find there was a paper bird on his book - a note. He glanced at Lily. She stared down at her parchment, her quill in her fist.

James used his hand to brush the little bird off his book and tugged the book closer and started to read the text as the paper bird hopped persistently on the desk before him.

Lily frowned.

At the next table, Sirius finally blinked, losing the stare down, and McGonagall turned away, “Now, as I was saying. Chapter three. Last term, we started the study of the underlying theories of Transfiguration on the cellular level and last week we reviewed the atomic particles… Today we’ll be learning about how they work together and the differences between two sorts of Transfiguration theories…” she turned to the blackboard and began the lesson.

Sirius stared down at his parchment, scratching his quill along the margins. Who is Mia Black? He wrote the words a dozen times as he stared out the window, hardly hearing Professor McGonagall, his thoughts preoccupied with the mystery.

James meanwhile was still ignoring the little paper bird - even when Lily discreetly waved her wand to make the note land on his shoulder. He simply brushed it away again.

After class she tried to keep up with him in the hallway, but James was too fast, following after Sirius, who practically ran for the Trophy Room Passageway, followed by a slightly limping Remus. McGonagall stared after them, shaking her head -- she knew exactly where they were going and she sighed. “That boy is incapable of justs letting something go,” McGonagall murmured, staring at Sirius.

“Tell me about it,” Lily replied, staring at James.

They looked at one another for a moment, then McGonagall turned and went back in her classroom and Lily turned and went upstairs, carrying the abandoned paper bird that James had left on the desktop.




Sirius went straight to the wall in the alcove off the passageway, waving his wand to light up the lanterns as he went, and he started shuffling through the photos and papers again. “There’s got to be something here!” he said. He’d done this once already and found there to be nothing about Mia Black aside from the signature on the end of the S.S.E.A.W. pledge parchment.

James threw himself onto the couch and stretched out, watching Sirius, and Remus came in a bit behind them and lowered himself onto the cushions with a groan.

“Why do you reckon she refuses to talk about her?” Sirius demanded, pushing aside a clump of pages. There were at least three generations worth of students that had hung things up on this wall - and it was all a jumbled mess of people and faces and notes and the like. “I mean if they were best friends, then she’s acting awfully strange about it.”

“Perhaps they’ve had a row,” Remus suggested.

“But even when we were rowing, I still didn’t pretend not to know you at all,” Sirius pointed out.

James yawned and reached into his robes pocket to produce a golden snitch and began playing at his little catch-and-release game. “Why does it matter so much who she is?”

“I want to know who I’m being compared to,” Sirius said. “Besides, it sounds like Mia Black may be one of the few people in my family that doesn’t completely suck. I’d like to meet her, shake her hand, and tell her well done.”

Remus rubbed his knees, “Why do you assume she’s on the wall here?”

“Because she signed the S.S.E.A.W. pledge. She should be here. Everyone else on that list seems to be. I mean, look James. Here’s your dad and Minnie.” Sirius tugged the photo he’d found of the Keeper and Seeker on the pitch and handed it over as James sat up, catching the snitch from the air and then grabbing onto the photograph Sirius held out.

James stared down at Charlus’s face - so much like his own. He smiled down at the photo as Charlus laughed and waved, his keeper’s gear making him look thick and well built. James liked the flush to his father’s face and the way he grinned and twinkled up at him. He looked up, “You ought to write to my Dad about it,” James suggested. “It looks like he was friends with them, too. Maybe he knows Mia Black and can tell you more about her. He has loads of photos and stuff in his old Hogwarts trunk back home… he used to show it to me all the time.” James smiled, “He’s got loads of pictures of my mum and him together when they were in Hogwarts together.”

Sirius sighed, staring at the wall. “I just don’t get it. Every other name on this list is here. It’s only Mia that’s gone missing.”

“Missing In Action - M.I.A., Mia,” Remus said. “Irony.”

James chuckled. “An omen.”

Sirius dropped into the chair and stared up at the wall. “It’s as though she disappeared.”

“Maybe she was invisible,” James laughed.

Sirius sighed.