The Durmstrang Potter Twin

To Walk

She blinked slowly, and her head tilted to the side, and for the first time, I realized that in the past weeks, the mischief had left her eyes and the energy had followed. But now a fire seemed to return, small and uncertain, but I knew that determination when I saw it- Harry was so like her sometimes, and he had yet to notice it. Her hand moved to tap on the wheel at her left side, and sparks danced under her fingers, the physical manifestation of an idea that flew to her a moment later, her brows flying up in surprise in response. "I hadn't- I didn't..." She went breathless and then she was tearing through her drawers, making me take a step back.

I looked at the sudden, growing mess on the desk and floor around it, "What're you looking for?"

"You know how it's damn near impossible to get in touch with Alastor without going to straight to his house nowadays?"

She tossed something over her shoulder and a knife embedded itself in the wall behind me. I gave myself a small pat on the back for not flinching, as it had flown only a foot over my head at a velocity that had it in the wall to its hilt. "Yeah. Why?"

"Well, a while ago, he found me."

"What?" My entire world stopped for a moment. Moody had known. He had known where she was, all those years.

Her movements paused and she turned to lock those dark eyes on mine, daring me to say something more. I kept my mouth shut, and she continued, "It was really only about five years ago, when Harry had just been brought to school, and I was looking around the school for a way to find a place to see him without anyone other than Albus suspecting. Alastor had been hired by Albus to scout the campus and make sure nobody dangerous was lurking around, trying to get a taste of The Boy Who Lived. He stumbled across me on his third pass of the clearing I was in, told me his instincts had insisted someone was there. He agreed to keep my secret and gave me something to contact him, in case of emergency."

"And what, in his mind, would classify as an emergency here?"

She raised a brow and gestured to herself, "I am in need of an inventor, obviously, and Alastor has made himself quite able in this world with what he has done for himself. I might be able to create things, and the gods I serve may even be able to do wonderful things, but nothing has done anything to help. You and I both know that Moody's got a stubbornness even worse than mine- how do you think he managed to figure out a way so that he could get around so well."

"All he has is a prosthetic leg, though."

"Ah," she pulled a small conductor's watch out of the drawer and shook it slightly before setting it on the desk beside her and reaching into the drawer once more to pull out an ancient sheet of paper and a unique looking pen. "That's all he lets you see. Just as all I usually allow is the sight of the scar and my tattoo."

She paused again at the mention of the tattoo, the briefest hesitation that only someone who knew her would hear. And then I had an idea at the thought of it, "Maybe he could help design a special saddle for Tide or something!"

When her entire face fell, I knew I had said something wrong, and I watched as she forced herself to push herself closer to the desk and begin writing with the quill on the paper, "I can't find him either."

"What?" And once again, I was shocked. "What do you mean you can't find him? I thought you two were bonded?"

"We were. We are. But he has blocked me from his mind."

My voice came as a somber whisper. "Why?"

She shrugged, "Because I had to make him leave. He was too big to hide. I visited him for a while, but he hated when I left and eventually told me to stay away if I wasn't going to stay with him. We are bonded. It's painful to be away from one another. It was even more painful every time I left, both for him, and for me, and he hated to see me in pain too. So he told me not to visit anymore. We had a only a few brief conversations with our bond after that, but it felt like knives every time, knowing that he couldn't come to me and I couldn't come to him. Eventually, he blocked it and me. I'm not sure if it was to keep me or him from the pain, but either way... his magic is too powerful for me to simply break through it and I wouldn't do that even if I had the ability because it would scare him and hurt him. It would break what trust we still do have left in each other."