Ron pinched Oleandra's nose, and Hermione forced the clear liquid down her throat. Sharing the original's memories, Mirrored Oleandra was beginning to regret ever having had the idea of sending a perfect copy of herself into enemy territory to uncover what Harry and the others were planning.
The Veritaserum started coursing through her mirrored system, and Oleandra's eyes glazed over. The truth serum made her feel as though she were floating on a cloud, light and carefree as a butterfly— and suddenly, keeping secrets didn't seem so important any more.
Oleandra's head sagged.
"Can you hear me?" Hermione asked curiously.
"Yes," Oleandra muttered.
Ron and Hermione stood aside, and Harry stepped forward.
Though he'd been threatened with it many times, the last time Harry had actually seen Veritaserum in use was when Professor Dumbledore had administered it to the impostor Professor Moody—Barty Crouch Junior. Oleandra was showing all the same symptoms Junior had presented then, so it seemed the potion was working.
"Why did you betray Professor Dumbledore?" asked Harry.
Oleandra blinked. What a curious question that was!
"I didn't," she said flatly.
"Maybe she's telling the truth?" suggested Hermione. "Is it possible you've jumped to conclusions, Harry? I'm not saying you're lying, but maybe you didn't get the full picture…"
At the time of the attempt on Dumbledore's life, Dumbledore himself had performed a Full Body-Bind on Harry to prevent him from throwing his life away pointlessly, faced with superior opponents in superior numbers. He had fallen on his back under his Invisibility Cloak, so he hadn't had the best view of what had transpired…
"Could she be resisting the potion?" Ron proposed.
"Those extremely proficient in Occlumency can conjure up false memories convincing enough to fool even themselves in preparation for a mental intrusion, which would be brought up by the potion," explained Lupin. "But I doubt Oleandra's that skilled… and we did drag her out of bed in the middle of the night, so I don't imagine she had much time to prepare."
"Oleandra and Snape were good enough to fool Dumbledore, all right," said Harry darkly. "They're the ones who taught me Occlumency… fat lot of good that did me."
Oleandra continued staring blankly into the distance.
"What did you mean, earlier?" Ron suddenly asked. "When you mentioned my sister?"
"I grabbed her while she was Disapparating," Oleandra explained dully. "We appeared in a field of flowers and duelled under the moonlight."
Ron's face went blank.
"What did you do to Ginny!?" he roared, his face regaining its colour as he seized her by the collar. "I swear, if you've so much as touched a single hair on her head…"
"I found out that she was the Heir of Slytherin," Oleandra replied flatly. "She almost killed me, but I won in the end. I decided to spare her, but I cut off her wand hand to prevent her from threatening me or attacking the innocent ever again."
Oleandra's head snapped back as Ron punched her hard, pain blooming dully across her face as blood began to trickle from her nostrils.
He'd broken her nose.
"Ron!" shrieked Hermione, grabbing him from behind and pulling him back.
"Lemme go!" he roared. "You heard her! She fucking maimed my little sister!"
Oleandra's head spun.
To begin with, the Aesir's Avatar-Making Spell had never been designed for Faeriekind, so, combined with the impact from Ron's punch and the mind-altering Veritaserum she'd been forced to consume, memories not her own were beginning to whirl madly inside the Oleandra-Reflection's skull, mixing and melding with her own…
"That's odd," said Lupin, frowning. "Dumbledore always said the wrong person had been imprisoned, but Ginny couldn't have been older than twelve during the opening of the Chamber of Secrets. Why on earth would Oleandra think your sister was the culprit?"
"Sure you brewed your truth serum correctly?" Sirius sniggered.
Hermione looked at him indignantly and spluttered that she was indeed certain.
"Well, only one way to make sure," said Sirius nonchalantly, lowering his face to Oleandra's level as he asked her, "What's your name?"
And without missing a beat, Oleandra replied, "Viviane. No last name. My hobby is raising strong knights." To which, Sirius shrugged and gave Hermione a mocking look.
"The potion's perfectly fine!" Hermione screeched in a high-pitched voice. "And it was working perfectly fine until someone decided it would be a good idea to punch a defenceless girl! And now we'll never know what Professor Dumbledore left her in his will!"
"Did you forget the part where the bitch told us she cut my sister's bloody hand off!?" roared Ron. "She deserved it, and then some!"
At once, the situation degenerated into a shouting match between Hermione and Ron, with Lupin desperately trying— and failing— to appease them both, while Sirius loudly commented that he'd never met a single potioneer who wasn't completely insufferable.
"ENOUGH!"
Harry's shout pierced through the clamour, and Oleandra, Ron, Hermione, Lupin and Sirius all stared at him expectantly.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves," Viviane's disparaging voice rang out. "Aren't you all supposed to be friends?"
They all stared at her bemusedly.
"Oops!" said Ron in a small voice, looking down at his feet.
A sharp crack rang out, and everyone turned to look at Ron, whose face was beginning to turn a rather vivid shade of burgundy. He had accidentally knocked the phial of Veritaserum to the floor in the scuffle… and then stepped on it.
"Just so you know, even if you manage to put the potion back into the bottle," said Viviane, shifting uncomfortably in her bindings, "I'll bite you if you try to make me drink Ronald Weasley's sock juice."
Harry closed his eyes and massaged his temples, trying his utmost to stop himself from exploding in Ron's face. It was an accident— accidents happened, and it was nobody's fault if the potion Hermione had spent a month brewing was now seeping into the cracks between the kitchen's linoleum floor tiles…
"If you're not on Voldemort's side, please just tell us what Dumbledore left you in his will," said Harry tiredly. "We brought everything we could find in your room."
Everything except the real Oleandra's most precious artefacts, naturally.
"Right, the headmaster— Dumbledore, I know who that is, don't be daft," said Viviane, chewing her lip as she searched her fragmented memories while desperately trying to find Oleandra's consciousness. "Er… what was the question, again?"
Sirius turned to Ron and clapped him on the shoulder.
"I think you broke her, mate," he said sardonically. "Congratulations, we're now back to square one!"