"I grew up in Maine in a comfortable house by the shore. My
mother reared me. My father passed on when I was five. I don't remember
him. My mother was kind and caring. She sent me to school at Azylum when
I was eleven. She was a witch, of course. My father was a wizard as well.
I excelled in my studies because I was shunned by the other students. I
was a know it all, in their eyes. Too good for my own good. There was
nothing else for me to do, so I spent all my free time in the library or in
my dormitory. I became obsessed with success in school. Graduation with
honors was my all-consuming goal. Not surprisingly to anyone, I got it.
As I said, I was offered the position as potions master at Azylum. I took
it, and I taught for a year before I met the dark arts professor, Mr.
Jageilo.
"It didn't take long before he and I were seeing quite a lot of each other. Everyone thought we were dating, including him. He was quite let down when I told him that I thought we should take a break from our nightly meetings in the staff room. I had become frightened of him. All he ever seemed to want to talk about was the dark arts. Personally, I began to find him morbid. He was too interested. His specialty was torture. He spent a year studying the forms of torture commonly used in the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The last straw, though, was when he wanted to start turning ours into a…well, a physical relationship. When I told him no he became irate. He told me that if I hadn't been interested I should not have strung him along. He said that I was rightfully his and that if he couldn't have me then no one else should either. I put a protective charm on my doors and windows that night and wrote a letter explaining myself to the headmaster of Azylum. I spent the entire evening packing my things and then I left the following day before dawn.
"I sought refuge at my aunt's house in Ipswich. I was there only two days and into the third night when he showed up pounding on the doors and windows. How he found me I'll never know. In any case, my aunt did not see it necessary to put extra security on the house. 'How would he ever find you here,' she asked me. He burst in, and before I could even reach for my wand he had annihilated my aunt, her husband, and my cousin who was only twelve. It would have been merciful for him to kill me. Instead, he performed the stunning spell. When I came to I was completely disoriented. I had been blindfolded and taken to a cabin somewhere in the middle of the forest. My shoes had been taken so that I couldn't run. I was locked in the house when Jageilo left. The windows were nailed shut. I had never learned how to disapparate. Jageilo knew it. And so I was bound to him through my own inability to escape.
"Needless to say, he wasn't happy with me for leaving him behind and running away. At first I cursed him. I told him he'd never get away with it, that the Ministry of Magic would find him out and send him straight to Azkaban. I soon learned that he was supremely stronger than myself, and that he usually felt the need to demonstrate his power when I mouthed back to him. He could have done a lot worse to me, but his favorite punishment was hitting. He loved to hit. Especially around the head. Of course, when he tired of hitting he was quite fond of burning, cutting, and…well…lets just say that he's guilty of more than one occasion of rape.
Snape's breath visibly caught in his throat at the last word. "I had no idea." It was his turn to speak in a voice barely above a whisper. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything. I'm not telling you this for sympathy."
"How did you get away from him?"
"Good question. He left one day and just didn't come back. I assumed he met some sort of detainment, because he was only meant to go to the lake and back. It was a mile's walk both ways. It should have taken no longer than an hour and a half. I waited for two days. The only reason I waited so long was that I had learned before the punishment for trying to escape."
Half afraid to ask, Snape cleared his throat and posed his question. "And what was that?"
Selene stood and undid the hooks and eyes on her robes revealing a thin cotton shirt underneath. She lifted the hem of the shirt to reveal countless slashes which were slowly making their way from scabs to scars. When she was satisfied that Snape had seen enough of her cuts she redid her robes and lifted the sleeves to reveal a multitude of burn scars. Snape nearly felt a lump in his throat. "Can't you see someone about having them healed? Madam Pomfrey can heal anything."
"Not these. Jageilo cursed me before he even began. No scar on my body may ever be healed. He didn't want to kill me. He wanted to torture me. And he made sure that I would never forget it."
"You waited for two days. Then what?"
"Then I smashed the window out."
"That seems awfully simple. Why hadn't you just done it before."
"Because I was under the Imperius Curse."
"But that's an unforgivable curse."
"I understand that. In any case, after two days of Jageilo being gone I began to come out of it. I simply smashed the window and ran for it. The first place I came to was a rural farm. The master of the house was afraid of me because of my appearance and my clothes. And so I wandered, and I wandered, and I wandered. Eventually I was lucky enough to come to a wizarding family who recognized me from the story in the Daily Prophet. Apparently Dumbledoor had placed the article in hopes that someone would find me. They called Dumbledoor immediately, and he brought me here. The end."
"It didn't take long before he and I were seeing quite a lot of each other. Everyone thought we were dating, including him. He was quite let down when I told him that I thought we should take a break from our nightly meetings in the staff room. I had become frightened of him. All he ever seemed to want to talk about was the dark arts. Personally, I began to find him morbid. He was too interested. His specialty was torture. He spent a year studying the forms of torture commonly used in the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The last straw, though, was when he wanted to start turning ours into a…well, a physical relationship. When I told him no he became irate. He told me that if I hadn't been interested I should not have strung him along. He said that I was rightfully his and that if he couldn't have me then no one else should either. I put a protective charm on my doors and windows that night and wrote a letter explaining myself to the headmaster of Azylum. I spent the entire evening packing my things and then I left the following day before dawn.
"I sought refuge at my aunt's house in Ipswich. I was there only two days and into the third night when he showed up pounding on the doors and windows. How he found me I'll never know. In any case, my aunt did not see it necessary to put extra security on the house. 'How would he ever find you here,' she asked me. He burst in, and before I could even reach for my wand he had annihilated my aunt, her husband, and my cousin who was only twelve. It would have been merciful for him to kill me. Instead, he performed the stunning spell. When I came to I was completely disoriented. I had been blindfolded and taken to a cabin somewhere in the middle of the forest. My shoes had been taken so that I couldn't run. I was locked in the house when Jageilo left. The windows were nailed shut. I had never learned how to disapparate. Jageilo knew it. And so I was bound to him through my own inability to escape.
"Needless to say, he wasn't happy with me for leaving him behind and running away. At first I cursed him. I told him he'd never get away with it, that the Ministry of Magic would find him out and send him straight to Azkaban. I soon learned that he was supremely stronger than myself, and that he usually felt the need to demonstrate his power when I mouthed back to him. He could have done a lot worse to me, but his favorite punishment was hitting. He loved to hit. Especially around the head. Of course, when he tired of hitting he was quite fond of burning, cutting, and…well…lets just say that he's guilty of more than one occasion of rape.
Snape's breath visibly caught in his throat at the last word. "I had no idea." It was his turn to speak in a voice barely above a whisper. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything. I'm not telling you this for sympathy."
"How did you get away from him?"
"Good question. He left one day and just didn't come back. I assumed he met some sort of detainment, because he was only meant to go to the lake and back. It was a mile's walk both ways. It should have taken no longer than an hour and a half. I waited for two days. The only reason I waited so long was that I had learned before the punishment for trying to escape."
Half afraid to ask, Snape cleared his throat and posed his question. "And what was that?"
Selene stood and undid the hooks and eyes on her robes revealing a thin cotton shirt underneath. She lifted the hem of the shirt to reveal countless slashes which were slowly making their way from scabs to scars. When she was satisfied that Snape had seen enough of her cuts she redid her robes and lifted the sleeves to reveal a multitude of burn scars. Snape nearly felt a lump in his throat. "Can't you see someone about having them healed? Madam Pomfrey can heal anything."
"Not these. Jageilo cursed me before he even began. No scar on my body may ever be healed. He didn't want to kill me. He wanted to torture me. And he made sure that I would never forget it."
"You waited for two days. Then what?"
"Then I smashed the window out."
"That seems awfully simple. Why hadn't you just done it before."
"Because I was under the Imperius Curse."
"But that's an unforgivable curse."
"I understand that. In any case, after two days of Jageilo being gone I began to come out of it. I simply smashed the window and ran for it. The first place I came to was a rural farm. The master of the house was afraid of me because of my appearance and my clothes. And so I wandered, and I wandered, and I wandered. Eventually I was lucky enough to come to a wizarding family who recognized me from the story in the Daily Prophet. Apparently Dumbledoor had placed the article in hopes that someone would find me. They called Dumbledoor immediately, and he brought me here. The end."
