This chapter contains scenes of self harm, which, after one rejection, i tried to make less grafic. I do not, under any curcumstances, incourage such a behaviour, my gole was soly to mirror the character's feelings.
At any rate, please be warned.

Behind the night

Just like every day, there was a dress on her bed as she finished with her bath. It was pretty, as always: a white summer dress with spaghetti straps and frilly borders. She ran a little finger along the lace border, a smile on her face. She liked the dresses her mother chose for her, she would wear it gladly. Annette came out of the bathroom, fretting, her curls sticking out of of the tidy bun in which she usually kept them.

"Dorcas, for heaven's sake! You don't go out of the bathroom without your robe on, you wild child!" As soon as six year old girl heard her nanny's voice, she started running across the huge bedroom her little body still in the nude and squealing with glee.

"Hush! Hush child! What would happen if your mother heard you?!"

"You silly goose, mother is not even here!" Was Dorcas's response with a bubble of laughter as she crawled up on her high four poster bed before Annette could get to her and started jumping on it, punctuating every jump with a little screech, her wet hair all about her. Annette draped the soft robe on the girl like a hunter would do to trap an animal and started rubbing her dry frantically. She was such a spirited, slippery little thing; it might take an hour, immense amounts of patience and sometimes energy that the fifty year old woman didn't have, just to get her into her morning clothes. Today it was even more difficult, she was restless, wouldn't stop moving, laughing and teasing her poor nanny even more than usual. Dorcas didn't mind for the noise she was making, because nobody but her sister was home and the little devil didn't much care for Cassandra's beauty sleep.

"Your father said you ought to join him as soon as you are ready." Annette's voice came from the closet, as she picked out the silk ribbon to put in the Dorcas's hair. She chose a crisp-white one, thinking it would contrast beautifully with the child's raven hair and match the dress nicely.

"Come now, sit still so I can put this on you." For once, Dorcas stopped jumping, seated cross-legged on the middle of the bed and stood completely unmoving, as the nanny worked on her hair. She was so still that Annette started to become suspicions. She was about to ask what naughtiness had the little devil done now, when a scream of surprise made way to her lips as she realized that the bed was floating so high her head was almost touching the ceiling.

"Dorcas! How many times must you be told not to do this anymore! Put us down this instant!" Annette regretted saying that the moment she saw the smile on the child's lips.

"Ok." The little girls said simply and the bed fell instantly through the air, stopping only an inch before it hit the floor. Annette stopped her shriek with her hand. Dorcas didn't even bother masking her giggle. She flung herself in her terrified nanny's arms with a sweet smile on her round face.

"I can do more. Look."

"No, no no child, its enough." But as usual, Dorcas didn't listen and objects started flying around the room.

I am too old for this… Anette thought impulsively as the silver brush missed her ear narrowly. She couldn't deny she was fascinated by the control the little girl had over her magic, but there was only so much her unstable blood pressure could handle. There was only one way Annette knew to make the girl end these magical tantrums.

"Dorcas, there is only so much time your father can save for you and you are wasting it!" she saw the girls face fall a little and then shine again with a brilliant smile. The furniture that was flying around the room speeded dangerously to its previous place and Dorcas jumped off the bed, stretched out her clothes and checked her hair in the mirror, as if she wasn't six, but twenty-six years old.

"How do I look?" She asked, turning to her nanny.

"Like a little princess." Was the response that made the child smile and fly out of the door.

-

It was the dead of night when she felt someone shake her and whisper her name. He saw the look of fear in her wide eyes as she quickly woke, but it was over and replaced by one of confusion and worry when she recognized his face in the semidarkness. He instantly felt guilty about what he was going to do but his resolution was stronger.

"Daddy? Is something wrong?"

"No, no. Nothing is wrong, we are going to play a little game." He said as he helped her up and put a heavy cloak over her. Scared or not, fugitive or not, he was going to do at least a few things right.

"Can't we play it in the morning? I'm sleepy…" Even though she was indeed sleepy, she still stood up straight as her father fastened the cloak about her. There was a quickness in his movements, making them seem almost like spasms, and she started to feel uneasy despite what he was telling her.

"This is a game we play at night love, when nobody can see us."

Her curiosity took the better of her. "Like hide and seek?" She asked as her father scooped her up and started to walk fast towards the door.

"Yes." His voice was suddenly very deep. "Like hide and seek."

They were out in the grounds in a matter of minutes, her thin arms tightly around his neck, keeping quiet because those were the rules of the game. Once outside, she noticed her father was almost running, his grip on her getting tighter.

"Daddy… there is someone over there." She whispered in her father's ear.

"I know love. Don't be afraid, its just aunt Sybila." She was not afraid at all – she was with her father – and even if she weren't with her father and that hadn't been aunt Sybila, she had found out that she could hurt people if she wanted to. However, she felt an unknown emotion in her stomach, something that the thrill of knowing she was playing a mysterious game with her father could not overshadow anymore. Under the stars, everything seemed different from when she was in her room. It felt more real and even thought she was but a child, the strangeness of the situation started to get throught to her.

"Where are we going?" Maybe it was his anxiety playing tricks on him, but when she asked she didn't sound like a little girl at all. She sounded as if she was accusing him. Because he did feel guilty about taking her away froma life of privilege, but maybe one day, when she got older she would understand that freedom was worth every luxury.

"Somewhere safe honey. I'm taking you somewhere where you can be safe."

"But what about mother… and Cassie?" She had never thought of Cassandra as a half sister, he knew that, he had taken care for it to be that way. He doubted that his little girl even knew that fact. It didn't matter, apparently, to neither of them. In her way Cassie loved her, at least enough not to tell her that they were only half siblings and Dorcas… Dorcas loved the only way a child can love: wholly and whimsically at teh same time. It bit at his heart that she should ask for them. In his mind, he already despised the mother and ignored the her child.

"They will be just fine without us." When he heard her go silent and her tiny hands fist, he drew her back to look into her eyes that were so much like his own. The absolute trust he found there almost knocked the air out of him, a luxury he couldn't afford. He felt so guilty that had he been a weaker man, he would have started second-guessing himself. This time he spoke in whispers, to control his voice better.

"I promise you, I have only your good at heart."

"Ok..." He hugged her close and kept walking faster. It was all he could do to keep a tear from slipping out. He would do this, he had to. He would rather die than let his little girl become some monster he wouldn't recognize. He believed in many things his pureblood kind believed, but he would rather root in hell than let his child be sacrificed for those ideas. He would raise her as he had been raised and he would give her a choice when she was ready to make it.

As soon as he stepped out of the gates, they would be free to apparate. He walked right through the metal gate and hadn't even taken a breath of relief when Dorcas went rigid in his arms.

"Daddy…" She was struggling to speak and he looked at her with worry. He saw what he had never seen in her face before. Pain poured from her eyes and it seemed to him like he would drown in it. Sybila was at his side in an instant.

"What is it? Speak, what's wrong?"

"It hurts." Now she was starting to whimper and big tears poured out of her eyes. "Make it stop! I'm burning!" She was screaming now and Septimus was in panic. It only lasted a few seconds because the Sybila, as prepared as ever, stunned her out of contiousness. Septimus almost had his siter by the throat for pointing a wand in his child's direction, but he couldn't deny that there was no other way to make the pain go away. Dorcas was still shuddering in his arms.

"The bond has been forged Septimus, you can't save her now. It's too late for her." His sister's voice was coming as if from a distance. He knew it was too late, listening her say it didn't make it anymore real, didn't absolve him of his mistake. With his blindness, he had condemned her, his own child. Listening to her screams almost broke him. Knowing that it was his fault added the final straw. He had gone from a proud, arrogant man to a broken man in less than a week.

He put his daughter back into her bed, covered her with the warm blankets, brushed her corvine hair from her clammy forehead. Her hair was rich and soft like fur and straight like an arrow. Little beads of sweat had formed all over her small body but she was calm now, breathing staidly. He kissed her forehead and felt his chest being crushed so much he had to sit down and hold on to something not to get lost in that monstrous wave of grief that was menacing to pull him under.

"I will come back for you, I promise." It was more of a promise to himself than to the unconscious child before him. He was promising himself that he would come back to save the only part of himself that mattered. It was the only defense he had against all the pain for leaving her behind. He stepped out of her room like a shadow and always looking back…

…

The next morning when she woke, she was aching all over in a way that was completely new to her. She couldn't move without wincing. The whole event of the night before came to her like a dream, lost in the middle of the pain she had felt. That part she remembered well. It glared red in the middle of all the confused dark colors of the night. She wanted to ask about everything that had happened and why but something deep in her stomach stopped her. A hole that was forming there that she had never left before. It left an ugly taste in her mouth that combined with the aching of her little body was too much for her to take. She started crying, large tears rolling down her cheeks without even knowing why, but feeling whatever was heavy thing that was on her chest that day lighten with every tear and sob. However the feeling in her stomach wouldn't go away. It made her cry harder, her mind always on her father. She didn't understand where all those tears were coming for, they scared her but she kept crying because she couldn't stop.

"Oh, my goodness... What is it love?" Annette dropped the dress robes she was pulling out of the closet and was by the girl's side in a second, hugging her close, whipping the tears and rubbing her back to comfort her but her sobs only got more violent, so much that they started carrying through the nanny's body. She had never seen a child cry that way, with so much pain it hurt to see; it was scaring her, a bad feeling starting to press against the womans chest as if whatever Dorcas had inside was contagious.

"Dorcas, my love, what is wrong? Tell Anny. Tell me, baby." She begged, but the girl she had tended to from when she was a little bundle of pink flesh and blankets didn't speak, just cried harder. It was almost an hour before she calmed enough to take her for a hot bath. Annette put extra Chamomile essence in the water, to soother whatever could be pressing into a six-year-old girl that had everything a child's imagination could create. Dorcas never looked at Annette in the eye, she just put her head back and sat there unmoving as her nanny rubbed her body with the familiar soft fur. Looking at her face, Annette thought that the child look much too pensive, too wrapped up in her own world. More so than a little girl could ever be...

When she got out of the bath, Dorcas stood unmoving, her eyes distant, as Annette put the bathrobe on her. She said nothing as she walked into the room but abruptly stopped by the bed. She stared at the dress on it, taken out according to madame Meadows's orders, the little girl's mother. It was fancier than usual and Dorcas remembered about the breakfast she had to attend with mother's friends from one of her clubs. She didn't know what was different in her, didn't understand that wrenching sense of loss that had made her so weak she could barely stand up, but as she processed that thought, she felt something in her tick. She bypassed the bed, went into the closet and came back soon enough, with a new dress on her hands under the unbelieving eyes of her nanny.

"Dorcas dear… why don't you try the one your mother chose for you. It's so pretty."

"I like this one better." The nanny swallowed hard, her moth suddenly dry at the way the little girl spoke.

"But this has the sewed flowers you love so much. And the ribbon!"

"Thank you Anny... but I like this one better."

Dorcas dressed herself that day. To Annette it seemed like she didn't want anyone to touch that dress she was putting on. It was pale blue, made to fit her perfectly and make her look like a flower. Her father had goten in to the child for one occasion or other, or at least Annether thought so. it was hard to keep track of the clothes in the child's closet. A week later, when Dorcas would start putting away some of her clothes in a separate part of the closet, never wanting her nanny or anyone but herself to touch any of them, Annette would understand the reason behing this behaviour, but in that moment she did not. And Madame would not like the child's newfound desire to dress herself. Annette didn't yet know how that was going to influence her job, but as she looked at the rigid face of her little girl, she didn't much care for that. This day had been singular, in all six years of that child's life. What Annette didn't know was that it was the first of many to come, some even worse. But the nanny would not be there to see the worst. It would hurt her feelings when, much later - at age 11, it would be Dorcas herself to send Annette home.

As for the silent promise her father had made her, the one only her heart had heard, it was a promise he took to his grave, only seven days after he made it.

-

I was safely away from the party now, sorrounded by semidarkness in the garden on the other side of the great building that was my house. I tried to breathe and calm down that foreign animal in me. Being in a crowd with these people always gave me the need to stop breathing the same air. I increased the force of my nails in my shoulder and felt the pain as they dug deeper in my flesh, the skin there crying red drops. I just wanted to feel this, really feel it, so the physical pain would take my mind off that small nod in my chest that was in risk of making me blow up like a bloody balloon. I needed teh distraction, I needed teh endorphine. It seemed that every feeling in me concentrated in my chest and then heaved on my ribs, trying to break them and free themselves.

I had resisted the urge to hurt myself for a long time, trying to prove that I was stronger, but in the end, like everything else I had ever tried that mattered to me, I had failed. I was too much of a slave of the relief that it brought, of the addiction that it created.

I had to stop the animalistic urge to conjure the most powerful exploding spell I knew and blow the whole place up, along with my self. I needed to distract myself from the unbearable desire to walk into the puddle in front of me and breathe in all the water I could, until me lungs exploded from it. I longed for that peace I had only read about, when everything would be quiet and I would be free of this flat line that was my existence.

Oh great, now I'm being melodramatic… Disgusting.

But no matter how much I scorned at myself, I knew I couldn't get rid of that longing to be out of this ridiculous dress, snuggle in my bed and sleep this night off. And the next morning get back to Hogwarts and have a nice, long and very hot bath to wash myself of the very air that contaminated me here.

I couldn't handle all this. I couldn't handle all these feelings. I was not used to having them at all. Maybe this was the real reason why I was a mask and not a real person. Pretending to be someone else made it easy not to have to deal with reality. But coming here, being with these people, always waked me up rather rudely. When facing them, when facing my mother of all people, reminded me of everythgn i did not want to be. And I still tried so hard to fit in... i didnt understand this reaction, but i hated that i was like her just as much as I hated her and myself for it.

And then that feeling of loss would come again. Like father had died all over again, like I had died.

Truly, I was indeed dying… and I was doing nothing to stop it.

A scream made its way in my throat, but I blocked it there. I had taught myself never to get hurt, only angry. So I turned my anger in a secure direction. I turned up my left forearm and stared at teh skin there. There was not one single blemish or marring... at least not now. But i knew better. The person that had invented the Bonding Seal I was submitted to from birth should be glad to have met his death before I was able to tear life from his body. I would have been very slow and cruel if I had ever met him. Because escaping from this house, this life, could have saved me, I knew it. Knew that I had to get away to be free of it, even thought I didn't know how to do it. My father had thought so and I thought so too… but the fire that burned on my skin when I tried to leave was unlike anything.

I was a prisoner, locked in my home, and even worse, in my own head too. I shook my head in order to clear it from these thoughts, but the only thind it did was bring tears and make them fall over my cheeks. For once, I let them fall.

"You know, for the longest time I thought you were just like them." I shuddered, surprised that I was not alone. The voice was deep and it was coming from the statue on my right. It was the first time I felt something when I heard it. I felt too vulnerable to deal with him, my defenses were all down, and my soul was bare in that moment. I couldn't even smooth my face of my emotions… so I tried to get out of the way. He must have been prepared because he reached so fast I didn't even see and grabbed my forearm. He had been closer than I had thought.

"But now I realized that you are far worse." His bigger frame over me was starting to bring back some unwanted memories and for his sake, he'd better let me go before I really turned on him.

"I finally understand you Meadows, it wasnt very hard once you stopped pretending. You hate everyone and everything just because you are too much of a coward to point the finger at yourself. You're so afraid it's pathetic!"

For the first time in the 5 years I had know him I looked into his eyes, really looked into his eyes and let myself look surprised at his words. No-one, and I mean no-one, had seen through me before. Not even me! I was bewildered, didn't know what to say… But my surprise ended fast as I pulled out of his grip and pointed my wand at his throat all in one fluid movement, poking at his flesh. He gulped but didn't move. When I spoke, I did so slowly, with a calmness that lacked lucidity.

"Who do you think you are to judge me? To presume about me, like you have any fucking idea what you are talking about. Get a life Black, you conceited son of a bitch, and stop projecting yourself in other people just because you can't handle your own reality."

"At least I'm not hypocritical enough to try and fit into this life, these insane ideas they want to instill in us. Not when my every sense says that it's the most arrogant concept a sick mind can create!" he looked into my eyes and he was so sure of himself. He was surer when he spoke than I had been for the better part of my life. It made me so angry I almost send a Crucio on him. I was back to my normal self now. Anger did that to me, it eased my transition, made me more aggressive, therefore increasing my survival instincts. In time it had become my only guarantee of endurance, so I clung to it furiously, regognising it for the lifebelt that it was.

"It is not a sign or arrogance of the king to rule Black. That is what he is there for!" I was in full control of myself, every telltale sigh wiped clean off my eyes and face, my body strait, a perfect posture in hold.

"You want to believe that, but you don't. I can see it in your eyes… or at leas I could, 5 minutes ago." His smirk of victory made me almost growl, but I didn't. I was above that… and I had better ways of bringing my revenge to him. He forgot that we came from the same filthy world. I knew what would bring him trouble, so I made 2 steps back and not uttering anything I turned my back on him walked away. I bet he didn't see the hex flying to him. It was not meant to be felt, I had taken care of that. I had invented this spell to have some fun with my foolish sister, but now it seemed like a good time to experiment with its effects.

"You can think whatever pleases your imagination, but if I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut tonight." As I felt his eyes on my back, I smirked, waiting for the moment he would disgrace himself. I wondered if he would know it was me. Of course he would know, he always seemed to know.