Stuck In The Middle With You
Omnia iam fient fieri quae posse negabam
Severus froze when they arrived at the site. He should have known. They'd been hitting the houses of the first generation fighters for months now. Thinking more, he was surprised this hadn't been higher on the list. Especially given Lucius's relations with them.
He thanked his lucky stars only five of them were at home. He was the only one who knew Virginia was there. The rest of them had missed her in their search of the house. He was the last one to leave, as had become custom. She came out of her hiding place too early. He was in the living room, doing what he could to help the boys, when she poked her head out of the cupboard under the stairs. She fainted away at the sight of him, but all three of the sets of values in him refused to let him leave her there. And her appearance stirred the plaguing memories within him. Of his first raid, years ago.
It was a small house, the middle of winter. He had helped cast up the Dark Mark, and it wasn't until he got inside that he realized they were only children. He saw the footsteps of one out the back while searching the house, but they led into the woods and he decided against informing his superior. And so there were only the three children. He had fed sleeping potion to the youngest two, as a precaution, when he heard their brother's screams from below. And somehow, when Rosier was leaving, he couldn't just kill the third child as were commands. Somehow, deep in his subconscious, something of his primary training remained. "Never hit a girl." Mentally cursing whoever had ingrained ideals into him, he took the child as he apparated away through the set of pre-approved sites, making it impossible to trace, before he stopped half a block from his flat and walked the rest of the way back home with her.
There was nothing he could do now. It would impossible to do with her what he had done with her sister, years before. It had been an insane thing to do then, the most illogical thing he had ever done, but now it would simply be impossible. She was ten years older, she hated him, she already went to Hogwarts, she was his student, the reasons kept running through his mind, getting more and more desperate. It would be impossible to do this. And yet, there was nothing else he could do. He couldn't leave her here, because it was his job to check, and he would get punished if they discovered he had missed one, and she would most likely be killed. He couldn't take her anywhere, because that would admit he had been part of the raid. He couldn't do anything to her because she was just a child. And she was his student, and she had already had more than her share of trauma.
It had been close enough to impossible the first time. Surely this couldn't be much harder.