Eternal Mistakes On The Spotless Soul

A/N: Am I hurrying up and posting another chapter before anyone has a chance to review so that for the first time in like five chapters it goes straight from the author’s note to the chapter?? Damn straight!! Hehe! This should get all your blood a boiling; I can imagine the comments after the last chapter and cannot wait to read them. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Draco and Ginny, though I’m not sure they’re make it into this chapter, or maybe they will, who knows.



Sljh— perhaps more pain killers so your theories become more coherent. ;-) and my goodness, I hope you’re happy. I spent my Saturday evening in for you. Just for you!



Severus had moved from the edge of the bed to pacing around the tiny bedroom. Knowing that the woman he had loved unconditionally had been separated from her twin sister at birth led to a myriad of questions to which the girl before him did not have answers. She had grown up in the muggle world, attending Beauxbatons under the surname Winchley, a muggle-born witch for all her days, but it wasn’t until she had finished her schooling and had damn near crashed into herself in the market place in Diagon Ally on a rare trip to London that she had begun to suspect that she had not in fact been a muggle-born witch but the victim of some horrid affair.



Lenore had her nose buried in a book when she crashed into another young girl, both of the girls falling backward into the dusty side street pitching off from the main shops in Diagon Ally. As she got to her feet, she saw the girl had been carrying jars of lollies and that sweets of all colours, shapes, and sizes were strewn about at her feet. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said, offering her hand to the other girl.



“It’s no trouble at all,” said Nalina, turning to take the girl’s hand. As their eyes met, both girls shrieked and Nalina fell back into the heap of lollies. She blinked, several times as if trying to clear the image before her from her eyes. Then she rubbed at her eyes quite hard, as if waking up from a very bizarre dream. But still, her mirror image stood before her, dressed differently, but identical just the same.



After the girls had sorted out the lollies, they had taken to a small café further down the offshoot ally. It had not taken them long to surmise theories of their more than similar appearances. And at once Lenore had insisted they apparate to her mother’s home in France, and Nalina, who had told Severus that she would be spending the day shopping and to expect her later in the evening, agreed.



The frizzy red-headed French woman, Sophie De’Larcreux, had sat before her daughter and the reflection of her daughter for over an hour claiming to have no knowledge of the other girl, or where her daughter had come from. Only that she had arrived in the middle of the night on their doorstep. Sophie explained to Lenore and Nalina that she and her husband, Bernard, had tried for many years to have a child of their own and that when Lenore had arrived in the basket it was a blessing, an answer to their prayers. They had named her Lenore for the strange raven bird that had sat on the mailbox just above where they had found the basket, not leaving, even when shooed away, for several days.



Lenore had insisted that there had to be something more to the story, but unfortunately Sophie had no answers. Bernard, her father, had passed away earlier that year, just after she had completed her magical schooling. Another hour of tea and biscuits had Sophie trekking up into the attic of her French cottage to retrieve the basket Lenore had been found in. At once Lenore began blasting spells at it, and within minutes a tiny piece of parchment had fluttered from between its weaving.



The parchment had led the girls to Molly Weasley. “You see,” Lenore said to Severus. “She was reluctant to talk…nearly blasted us off the porch when we arrived, chasing us down the drive and telling us that we couldn’t be there.” She sighed. “And as she grabbed me by the wrist to drag me from her property, she pressed a shiny blue marble in my palm. It turns out it was a portkey, and we met with her that night, just after midnight in a tavern inside the muggle town of Ottery St. Catchpole.”



Severus nodded. The plot thickened. “But surely—” he was interrupted.



“I promise, it’s not like Nalina didn’t want to tell you. It’s just with Lucius…well…” she trailed off. “Anyhow, we met with Molly Weasley that night and she told us that we had been separated at birth. That she was summoned by the midwife, just after my mother died, but before my father and Narcissa arrived.” Lenore cleared her throat. “Molly told us that she was blackmailed by the midwife into taking me away. But she made sure I received a good home, with loving parents.”



Again Severus nodded, waiting for her to continue.



“She wanted to tell you, god she fussed at me about it every day, and now I wish I’d just let her, it probably wouldn’t have hurt.” She sniffed. “I was so excited for the baby! I was going to be an Auntie…I think we would have told you after you were married, because you could protect her then, from Lucius and any hail he might rain down on us…” Lenore sat down once more on the bed. “God, I don’t know why we didn’t tell you, Molly Weasley made it seem so urgent that things be kept quiet, and I didn’t want to cause problems, it doesn’t seem to make much sense at all, now. Unless of course she knew something we didn’t, which I always assumed she did.”



“You knew of her child?” he asked, as if those words had just sank in.



“Yes, I knew—” she paused. “And the miscarriages, I knew about those.”



Severus hung his head. It was not something he wished to dwell on. “You helped her through them?” Lenore nodded. “Well, at least she wasn’t alone.” They had tried several times to conceive children, but she had never been able to carry past the first term, until she had announced her pregnancy to him upon her return after their terrible fight. “I never asked…” he closed his eyes.



“Never asked what?” she said, and watched as he moved to sit beside her on the bed. “Never asked what?” she repeated.



“She came back to me that night, I was just so happy that she’d come back, I thought I’d lost her. It never occurred to me to ask…” He muttered and squeezed his hands together. “Eight weeks pregnant…” he said. “She was due in June…” again he shook his head.



“But she was still with child at the altar?” Lenore said.



“And she’d been pregnant before the fight. It had been another miscarriage,” he said.



A loud bang interrupted their words. “The door!” Lenore cried, and bolted up from the bed. “Damnit, I knew I should have spelled it.”



“What?” Severus said, getting to his feet.



“Your child’s mother, she’s a flight risk.”



Severus and Lenore pulled the bedroom door open, rushing into the tiny front room of the cabin. The fire was doused, the table was cleared, and the room was empty. He dashed forward out into the snow, gazing in all directions. It had stopped falling from the sky, but there were no footsteps to be seen in the perfect blanket of white. Hermione Granger was gone.