1830 hours
Woodstock, Oxfordshire


It was the night after Guy Fawkes, which also marked the anniversary of the Leaky Cauldron explosion. Another Ira Almasy original. If you tracked the birthday of each one you would be up to your ears in cake all year long.

Raine apparated into a quiet alleyway of Woodstock village, still nursing a mild hangover. A tall and narrow door at the end of the alley was the main entrance to their warded home in the muggle area - her childhood home, far away from the glamor of Almasy mansions and Russian aristocrats with their sobranie cigarettes. The air was soured by that afternoon's rain and the stench of rotting leaves.

She drew her wand to unlock the door and slipped in, silently.

Directly across, in a place of honour on the wall by the staircase, a family portrait greeted her. It was painted a few months before her sister had been murdered and it signified exactly why she rarely visited her parents anymore. They kept Sanya's memory alive in this house. Painfully so. Her portrait-parents, in formal wear, smiled politely. On her mother's side, Sanya did the same... grinned, really, that nervous grin of adolescence. On her father's side, Raine recognised herself at fourteen years old.

Sometimes she still felt fourteen, forever frozen to the moment her twin had died.

"Raine!" Eliza Almasy exclaimed, coming into the foyer with a bright smile. "You're late, darling. I thought you weren't coming at all. We're having pheasant, bit gamey, but the sauce is just perfect if you don't mind the lime," she drew her daughter into an awkward hug before taking her hand to lead her to their dining room. It wasn't a big home, by choice, but it was large enough for them to have dressed up the formal dining room for dinner.

Raine resigned herself to the smalltalk that the evening would entail.

            "No boyfriend yet? Or, I mean, girlfriend, if that's the thing nowadays?" mama chatted away.

This was mortifying. Raine picked at her dinner plate, shooting a fed-up look at her father. He grimaced in sympathy. They were sat at one end of the long dining table. Roman was a large and bearded wizard with hair as red as her own - he was as tall as his wife was short and compact. Anybody could tell they were Raine's parents, in the same way they could tell any Almasy or Crichton were related to her.

"Mum, I just broke up with Zel a few months ago," she sighed before setting aside her silver cutlery. "Can we talk about something else?"

            "I was only asking because Daniel's mother was complaining about him being single. Do you remember? Daniel Porter? Muggle, quite handsome."
"You mean the same one who used to bully Sunny and me?"
            "You know what boys are like," Eliza sniffed while the house elf cleared the dishes for the next course, "with girls they admire."

The incident with Porter[1] had been one of many that landed her in trouble with grownups, when she had been younger. All grownups besides Ira, anyway, who had always seemed to understand why Raine did the things she did.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," Raine glared at the wobbly panna cotta being set before her. "That's why I broke his arm, remember?" Her father snorted into his wine and smiled at her a little ruefully. Eliza made an irritated sound, leaning forward slightly to address her.

            "Let's have none of that. It's nothing to be proud of, you burnt his face! I thought you would have learned your lesson by now, after what happened to that awful woman," she hissed and Roman looked away.

That awful woman. Of course mama never liked Ira, who had always been closer to the twins. Raine decided she didn't have a stomach for dessert, and folded up her cloth napkin. "I can't do this," she swallowed. "Not in this house."

            "Reinka..." papa began but she shook her head at him as she got up, pushing her chair back.

1.	Strike One - 2005 Your Past was My Perchance

She missed her sister.

Sometimes Raine missed her sister so much, she thought she could die. As she stood in the foyer again, collecting herself, her gaze slid back to the family portrait. To Sanya. They had been such ridiculous girls. Half-bloods with a pampered pureblood life. She wasn't a purist snob and yet all her close friends were purebloods (Alex, Abby, Roger, Virgil) or similarly rich (Sasha).

So Raine wasn't a purist but if you walk like a duck and talk like a duck and act like a duck.... well. Perhaps she was everything that she hated after all. Could you really expect to turn out normal when you've been groomed by a mad witch for most of your life? Could you really escape that?

Sanya would know what to say. Sanya would tell her that it was alright to miss somebody like Ira or Layton if you were only missing the nice parts. Sanya would tell her that she was bigger than Ira's legacy or their shared history.

Would tell her to stop living in the past. But, God, how she missed her sister.