Chapter 29

19 April, 1943 Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

A hand grabbed hers. The arm that encircled her waist grew rigid. Before she knew that she'd even descended the stairs and emerged once again into the Great Hall, Dorcas was deposited gently on the edge of a bench and a glass of water thrust into her hand.

"She looks pale," a voice observed. Zelda…was that Zelda Weston?

The hand clutching hers squeezed. "Dorcas? Dorcas, can you hear me?"

That was Myrtle.

"You said "Cal", honey. But he's not here. Why did you say his name? What's wrong, Dory?" Cherry asked.

There was a pause, but it wasn't silent. More voices, audible as well as mental flooded into the Great Hall and she felt as if she was being crushed under the weight of them all.

"Is she having another fit, or something?"

Zelda.

"Should we take her to see Madam Higgins?"

Cherry.

"We can't take her to the hospital wing," Myrtle pointed out. "We can't go past the second floor."

The second floor. Lying in the corridor. A body. A striped tie. Gryffindor colors.

"Cal," Dorcas gasped.

The hand that was around her waist pulling her back down the stairs was now rubbing soothing circles on her back.

"He went up to the Owlery, honey. Remember? He had to post a letter?"

The talking and the questions and the thinking. It was all so loud in her ears. She threw her hands up to cover them or to scratch away the intrusive inside voices, she didn't know which.

But the voices subsided with the shattering of a glass and the noise tapered off.

Myrtle stood back, her large eyes studying Dorcas curiously. At her feet was a glass, fragmented into tiny pieces. A distant notion in Dorcas's own mind told her that she was supposed to be holding that glass. But she wasn't holding it anymore. Her hands were covering her ears.

"Look," Cherry said, breaking the frozen scene with her bright exclamation. "There he is. D'you want me to wave him over?"

Following Cherry's finger that traced a path toward the Great Hall's large oak doors, Dorcas glimpsed the tall blond, his head bent in conference with Tom, who frowned and nodded.

Relief like a sunbeam spread throughout her icy stomach as she began to realize, little by little, that she must have been mistaken when she dove into Clementine Frawley's mind to see what had happened in the second floor corridor. It hadn't been Cal she'd seen. And she couldn't be certain that whomever she had seen was dead like she'd assumed. But it was someone. And that someone was unmoving, in a heap surrounded by teachers.

"Cherry," Cal called, making his way through the growing crowd to where they sat, Tom in his wake. "You should join the Gryffindors. Is everyone you ate dinner with still here?"

"Jonas went down to his dorms while the rest of us tried to go up the stairs. But we were turned back," Myrtle informed him while simultaneously waving her wand over the shattered pieces of the glass at her feet, catching it, perfectly repaired, in midair.

Cal looked at Tom.

"He should be fine. I'll look for him as soon as I get this lot down to the dungeons." His chin jutted in the direction of the Slytherin table. "You should round up all the Gryffindors."

Cal nodded in reply. "I will as soon as I find Patil and Ashby."

"Why do you need to find them?" Zelda asked, sliding closer to Cal.

But it was Tom who answered her. "Ravenclaw needs to be rounded up and held here until the corridor is opened again, the same as Gryffindor––"

"There's Nelu," interrupted Myrtle, jerking her head to the Great Hall's crowded entrance. "OI, PATIL," she shouted. She punctuated this by shoving her fingers into her mouth and whistling shrilly. The Ravenclaw Prefect jumped and then shuffled toward the group.

"Seen Sam?" Cal inquired when the Ravenclaw finally made it to them.

Nelu shook his head. "Sorry, mate. He's got Quidditch practice, yeah?"

Cal shrugged. "No idea. Clementine, then? Have you seen her?"

"She's upstairs guarding the corridor with Ines," Dorcas supplied. Knowing now that Cal was not the body she saw in Clementine's mind had settled her nerves and thawed her frozen insides. Her eyes flicked to Tom. "Can we speak? Alone?"

"Can it wait? We have to find someone to take the Hufflepuffs down to their dorms. Dippet's orders."

"No, Tom. It can't wait," came Dorcas's firm reply. "There's Beau and Anneliese. Have them take the Hufflepuffs to the kitchens," she shot toward Cal and Cherry as she grabbed Tom's arm and pulled him away from the group.

"Birdie, what is it?" Tom asked, studying her. "You look pale."

"I saw something."

"You saw something? What do you mean?"

"Clementine and Ines wouldn't let us past the second floor. I wanted to know why, so I peeked in Clementine's mind."

Tom inhaled a sharp breath as his hands came up to Dorcas's shoulders, gripping them. "What did you see?"

"Do you know what's going on up there?"

"A student got hurt. That's all I know." There was a tone that Dorcas detected. He knew more.

"Who was it? At first, I thought it was Cal. It was a Gryffindor. A boy. A tall boy. That's all I could make out."

She watched a muscle in Tom's jaw working while she spoke. She knew he would make something out of her worry for Cal, but she couldn't focus on choosing her words to placate him at this moment. She wanted answers.

"So that explains the I-want-to-jump-into-your-arms look you were giving him back there."

Dorcas rolled her eyes. "I didn't give him a look. I was worried about a friend. I'm still worried. Who is it, Tom? Who's hurt?"

That muscle in his jaw tensed again as if the name was pinned between his teeth. She speared his consciousness with her own but was knocked back by his defenses.

"Birdie, I have to do my duty. I don't have time to trade gossip. Go back to your house table and don't leave it until Patil leads you all up to your common room."

"Tom––" Dorcas began. She reached up to rest her hand on his arm, feeling his fingers press impatiently into her shoulder. He cued off of her. If she was suspicious of him, he would become more implacable. If she was soft and yielding, he would let his guard down. Her thumb found the skin of his wrist beneath the cuff on his sleeve and she stroked it. His fingers on her shoulder relaxed.

"You would tell me if you knew what happened. Wouldn't you?"

His elbows bent and he pulled her closer, wrapping her up in a hug. He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before pulling away again. "A student was hurt. You say he's a Gryffindor. That's more than I know. The teachers are handling it. But they want the rest of us accounted for. Now go back to the Ravenclaw table and leave me to handle the Slytherins."

She prodded his mind once more, knowing she would meet the same stubborn wall that she met moments ago. She sighed then nodded and returned to Zelda and Myrtle.

Several moments later the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs were organized into neat rows and led out of the Great Hall. It wasn't until nearly forty minutes later that the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were queued and marched up the stairs toward their common rooms.

:::

Days in captivity: 282

She'd resisted falling into the alluring indifference of her doctored Calming Draught for ten days. At first, the need to wipe away all trace of memory of the way Tom had used her while Mauro looked on consumed her, motivated her. She remembered the jumpy tension that had set into her limbs while the potion brewed. Four long days of waiting for it to be ready.

Proper obliviation was mere moments away.

But when she'd raised the phial to her lips, it was Ryann's face she saw.

Swooping Evil venom wiped away bad memories when diluted properly. Whether the venom discriminated, choosing which memories were pleasant or not; which to wipe away from her consciousness and which to spare, she did not know.

And so, she did not risk indiscriminate oblivion.

If she had been allowed to make a choice for herself and herself alone, she would not have hesitated another moment. She welcomed a stupor that would make the hell she lived tolerable.

But she couldn't make this choice selfishly.

The moment she had placed the stopper back onto the mouth of the phial, she knew she had to endure it all. Or risk leaving Ryann without the guidance of a parent who loved her.

The image she had of Ryann that night, from her vantage of just over the table's edge, staring down on her, ashamed, was one she wanted to forget. More than anything that Tom had ever done to her or would ever do to her, she wanted to wash away what Ryann saw when she looked at her mother.

Even when the dinner party had broken apart and traveling cloaks and pleasantries were taken up before departing, Dorcas was made to remain behind on her knees.

Ryann did not spare her a final backward glance.

Dorcas wouldn't have wanted her to in any case.

But on her next visit, Ryann had to watch Dorcas kneel beside Tom once again, accepting bites of food like a dog waiting for scraps and she knew she could endure no more of it.

Yet, when she was allowed to stand and go up to bed, the potion was in her hands once again. And once again, it was Ryann's face that pulled the phial from her lips and stoppered it.

Tonight, as the potion warmed in her palm, she wasn't going to let Ryann's face be the thing that stopped her from taking away all of the anguish in her mind. Tonight, she knew just how far her limits of toleration actually extended. Tonight, she felt she finally found the absolute rock bottom.

And rock bottom was a letter.

An open letter in the sink. Her own daughter's handwriting declared that she'd read the article that Dorcas had insisted Ines Nott publish in the Prophet. The one that declared that she was not stolen away from her life, but, rather, had fled it and taken Ryann with her.

I can't begin to understand why you would leave a man so devoted to you and to our family for a man who treats you with such disrespect and cruelty as Tom does. And I'll never forgive you for dragging me into this life with you. I've asked to be allowed to discontinue our visits. I cannot watch another moment of torture, mum. So this is goodbye. I love you.

Rock bottom was "Goodbye. I love you."

Wherever Cal and Wren happened to be…

No. She couldn't allow herself to go there.

She threw the potion back and felt a hollow relief the moment it hit the back of her throat.

"Goodbye. I love you."

It was better to forget.

It was better that they forget.

:::

27 April, 1943 Secret Room, Seventh Floor Corridor, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

The Easter holiday prevented Dorcas from following up with Tom concerning the mystery of Clay Atwood's paralyzed state. Her reprieve from panic at learning that Cal was not the prone, motionless Gryffindor she'd spied in Clementine Frawley's mind had been short lived. Tom's reaction to her questions in the Great Hall that evening confirmed what she wished she didn't already know: Clay Atwood lay lifeless on the flagstone floor of the second floor corridor because of Tom's basilisk. Clay Atwood was frozen, at this very moment, in a bed in the hospital wing because he'd acquired that photograph of her, copied it, and sold it.

If she'd hoped to catch Tom alone in the Secret Room, she was disappointed. She couldn't even plan on stealing a moment with him on the train back to London, or back to school after the break, because he never left Hogwarts for holidays. Except for the summer holiday. But that was unavoidable.

That's not to say that Tom actually stayed at school during holidays. He usually traveled to London when it suited him. He just preferred the Vanishing Cabinet over the Hogwarts Express.

But if Dorcas thought Tom would be knocking on her bedroom window during the Easter holiday, she was wrong there too.

Not that she'd have the time to spend with Tom when she returned home. When she stepped onto the platform and through the magical barrier, it was Betty who'd swept her up like a tornado and deposited her in a strange alternate universe like Dorothy. Not in Kansas anymore.

"We're getting married!" the cyclone squealed, shoving a small diamond in her face.

The rest of the holiday was spent at dress boutiques and charity shops where her mother and Betty competed to outdo one another's talent for thrift.

"Of course," Mary-Ellen had lamented. "Budgeting would be wholly unnecessary if Morty would consent to having the wedding at Blackpool."

"He won't consider it?" Dorcas asked, opening her arms a little wider to accommodate the excess of faded silk flowers that her mother was thrusting into them.

Mary-Ellen's head hung a little as she shook it. "Won't even let me tell Lysander about it, let alone allow him to host it."

Dorcas knew that Morty associated his eldest sibling with his own tortured childhood. He hadn't spoken to his older brother in a decade. When Lysander visited their small London flat, Morty always hurried out of a window. Lysander covered his disappointment every time Mary-Ellen greeted him with an apologetic smile and an excuse for their little brother.

There were four months until the wedding date. She'd try to work on Morty's resolve between now and then to see if she could bring about a change of heart.

This was what occupied Dorcas as she draped herself across the burgundy velvet of the sofa in the Secret Room as she patiently waited to ambush Tom.

A scuffling noise, like shoes kicking aside random detritus, sounded off toward the room's entrance. Similar sounds had her shoving the letter to her uncle aside twice before, but this time the sound was accompanied by a low, hissed swear.

The letter was abandoned on the sofa's lumpy cushion as Dorcas scurried behind a wobbly cabinet near Tom's makeshift laboratory. She listened as Tom settled into his methodical inventorying and checking the various stages of his Horcrux potions.

"Nearly finished with it?" she asked, stepping out from her hiding spot.

There was a sharp intake of breath, Tom's shoulders rising then falling before he turned to pin her with suspicious eyes.

"Spying on me?"

Dorcas shrugged. "More like lying in wait. You've been avoiding me."

Tom leaned a hip against the workbench and slung a rag over his shoulder. "You've been in London. I've been here. How was your holiday?"

Dorcas only answered with a half-smile as she hoisted herself onto the workbench beside him. He didn't care how her holiday was.

"Atwood's still in the hospital wing," she said, ignoring Tom's question. "They have to use a dropper to put saline in his eyes because they're frozen open."

"We're lucky to have a matron so dedicated to the healing arts," Tom parried.

"They still don't know what's wrong with him."

"Why are you here?" Tom asked the question on the wave of a long suffering sigh, as if he didn't have the energy to spar with her.

Dorcas tilted her head and studied him. He looked back at her stoically.

"I've missed my boyfriend. But he hasn't missed me."

Sliding his hip down the bench, taking one languid step and then another, he settled himself between Dorcas's legs and rested his forehead against her collarbone.

"I have, Birdie. I've just got a lot on my mind."

Dorcas allowed the excuse to linger against the cotton of her blouse for a moment before replying.

"Clay Atwood must be a heavy weight on your mind." Her hands left the workbench and rested on his shoulders for a moment before gliding up his neck and into his hair.

He exhaled, his breath raising gooseflesh on her arms and neck.

"I only wanted to scare him."

She brought her hands down to his face, his cheeks resting in her palms. She raised his gaze until it was level with hers. "You promise you weren't trying to kill him? For your Horcrux potion?"

Tom blinked, stunned by the question. "No. You saw the way I used the basilisk to threaten the others. As long as I can keep them from making eye contact with it, they're safe."

Dorcas nodded slowly. "So what went wrong? How did that happen?"

There was a small jerk of his head, but her hands were holding him firmly before her.

"I should have blindfolded him. I told the basilisk to lower its eyes. Atwood was looking down as well. I thought he would be safe."

"Then what happened?" Dorcas pressed. Her thumbs stroked Tom's cheeks. She needed to know what happened. She needed to know how to help Tom out of this.

Tom's shoulders lifted and then dropped in a hopeless shrug. "Then he went rigid and collapsed. The snake didn't make eye contact with him at all. I didn't know it was possible for a basilisk to stun someone. The stare is supposed to kill a person outright. But I felt the pulse in his neck. He was alive. I banished the snake and brought him back up here with me."

Dorcas nodded, piercing him with a sincere stare. "You did the right thing, Tom. Higgins, and Slughorn, and Dumbledore, and Dippet will figure this out. No one needs to know what happened. The professors will heal him."

"Ar––Are you sure? Y––You don't think they'll chuck me out?"

The fear written on his face melted Dorcas's heart. She could see plainly that what happened to Clay Atwood was an accident and that Tom had been carrying the burden of what he'd done for more than a week.

Closing the distance between them, Dorcas pressed her lips to his, kissing him in reassurance.

"No. They won't chuck you out, Tom. How could they possibly connect this to you?"

Tom pulled away, a darkness overtaking his expression. "He could wake up and remember."

Dorcas was struggling to find a counterargument to this glaring, awful truth. But she couldn't. Still, she looked directly into his worried eyes and fumbled for the brightside.

"Maybe when the basilisk stunned him, it somehow wiped his memory too."

"Maybe it didn't."

"But you didn't know that the basilisk could even stun a person in the first place. There's obviously a lot concerning them that's uncharted territory." She hurried on when Tom opened his mouth to argue her down. "Think about it, Tom. Who could even study them and live to tell the tale? Who knows how it happened, or if he'll even wake up?" Even as the last words left her, she was disgusted by the hopeful tone in her voice. But when it came down to Tom or Clay, she knew she would be hoping for the Gryffindor's death over Tom's punishment. After all, he'd only gotten himself into this position because he was trying to keep Dorcas's bullies at bay. He was in this mess because of her.

Tom's voice pulled her from her own morbid thoughts. "There is one thing we could try. Just so we know if he remembers anything."

Dorcas nodded, anticipating the request. "You want me to look through his thoughts?"

In answer, Tom's hands moved from her thighs, over her hips and to her waist, squeezing gently. "You could try, couldn't you? That way we could at least see if he'd have anything to tell when he wakes up." Tom swallowed as his eyes became glassy. "If he wakes up," he whispered.

She pulled him tightly to her chest, wishing he hadn't avoided her. He'd been carrying around the fear and regret for a whole week. She exhaled, basking in the realization that he needed her. She felt closer to him now than she ever had.

"I'll visit Clay for you, Tom. But could you do something for me too?"

Tom stiffened in her arms. "What do I have to do?"

"Could you clear the air with Myrtle?"

"Warren?" he scoffed, pulling back to fix her with the most surprised look. "What did I ever do to Whinging Warren?"

:::

Days in captivity: 283

"Are we going to finally talk about it? Or are you going to continue to pretend that it is not happening?"

Mauro's voice came from the doorway to her laboratory.

She was here most days, accomplishing a two-fold purpose. She kept up a constant stock of her Ex-Nebulae Elixir and helped her lord and master to apply it whenever and wherever he requested. The other purpose was to maintain such a healthy stock of the potion at his disposal that he wouldn't question Dorcas when she requested the time and ingredients to brew her Calming Draught plus.

She really needed to come up with a better name.

When she'd needed a chemical high to pretend that she had recovered from the loss of her son, she'd invented Bliss.

But her brew did not offer her bliss anymore. No, this concoction did not have such exalted expectations placed on it. It was a simple little chemical lobotomy. It needed a simple little name without a lot of lofty potential.

Fog.

That's what it was. That's what it did to her ability to remember. It left a shimmering haze over the things she wanted to forget. A beautiful fog to get lost in. To disappear into.

"Dorcas?"

She spun around, surprised to hear his voice.

"Hmm?"

"Did you not hear me?"

Dorcas blinked. Her shoulders moved up and down in an impatient shrug. "Course I did. You said my name."

Mauro moved into the room. His shrewd eyes accounted for all of the ingredients being processed and the cauldrons set to boil. Then they rested on her, their shrewdness stirring up an annoyance in her that was always close to the surface.

"Yes," he said slowly, those eyes never leaving her face as he approached. "But before that I knocked and asked whether we were going to continue ignoring it."

"Ignoring what?"

"The Dark Lord's offer," Mauro supplied impatiently. "He presses me for an agreement constantly."

The eagerness that she detected in his tone sickened her. He tried to hide it. But Dorcas knew. She knew that there was little impediment to bringing about a yes. Why did he think Dorcas's approval of the scheme mattered one ounce? Why did either of them?

Tom and Mauro would carry out whatever plans they thought up. Since when had Dorcas ever been required to stamp her blessing on any of them?

"I hear it in your voice, you know?"

Mauro sighed. "Hear what, cariña?"

"How much you want this," she accused, turning slowly with the knife in her hand. She held it between her, pointed at his chest before dipping lower. "A girl of fourteen, Mauro? Is that what gets your prick hard?"

Her wrists were in his grip in a flash, her own arms crossing in front of her as he spun her away from him before pressing her into the workbench, his chest against her back.

The hair at her temple grazed her cheek as the Spaniard's breath moved it, his lips touching her ear. "You know better than anyone what gets me hard, Dorcas. And it is not a girl of fourteen."

His hips pressed forward as he squeezed the wrist of her right hand harder. When her fingers became too numb to continue gripping the knife, it fell onto the wooden work surface with a clang.

Mauro's chest moved against her back as his breaths became rougher with desire. Every breath transferred that desire right into her bloodstream like an injection. As if to demonstrate the truth of his words, Dorcas felt a hardness pressing into her lower back.

She didn't know what made her do it. Perhaps she wanted to torment him a bit because it was unfair how the torment was never spread around equally. She always shouldered the lion's share of it. She moaned and pressed herself away from the workbench and into him.

His response was expected. Her wrists were released as one of his hands gripped her shoulder and the other fisted the robes at her hip, raising them.

The magic that poured off of him in these moments was better than anything she could brew in this laboratory. And she indulged far more than she should.

The intoxicating promise of pleasure mingled with the triumph of taking something away from Tom was too tempting to resist. He would be murderous if he were to catch them.

Maybe that was a little bit of the allure as well; the danger in what they were doing.

"Do it," she urged, biting her lip to stifle a smirk that she knew shouldn't be on her face to begin with.

The hand that gripped her shoulder pressed forward, bending her over the workbench, while the other dragged her robes higher.

He might actually call her bluff this time.

Her knees wobbled at the thought that he just might.

Her hands helped him along by gathering the fabric of her garments and holding them above her waist. He was freed now to make a decision: pull down her knickers and advance, or pull down her robes and retreat.

He'd never advanced yet. Dorcas's throbbing core begged him to make this time different.

"Curse you! Goddamned sorceress!"

He released her and fled to the other side of the room, huffing and scowling.

Triumph belonged to her no matter how this scene played out. She dropped her robes and turned slowly grinning at him. He never lingered long once he inevitably made the decision not to endanger both of their lives by fucking her.

He would make a quick departure and be taticturn for three days while he licked his wounds.

The grin never left her face as he opened the door to leave.

"Think of anything but my daughter while you handle your business alone upstairs," she called after his stomping footsteps on the stairs. She lowered her voice and spoke the rest only to herself. "Are we going to talk about it? No, Mauro. I'll geld you if you so much as touch my Ryann. No words needed."

The threat made a vibrant zing that left the knife trembling on the cutting board where she buried it.

:::

27 April, 1943 Hospital Wing, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

That numbness in her fingers and toes that she remembered the last time she used the Chameleon Charm was back. It was disorientating and exciting at the same time to look down at her invisible hand and know that she was stretching and balling her fist even though she couldn't see it.

Dorcas recalled the adventures that she and Tom used to have when they were hunting down the ingredients for his Horcrux potion. Would they have many more adventures like this? Or would this be the last? The potion was nearly complete.

"Can you hear the matron?" his disembodied whisper asked beside her.

She extended a tentacle of consciousness and found the matron in her office at the far end of the infirmary. With the exception of the light coming from a burning candle on her desk and a larger flame in a wall sconce near the office door, the place was dark and quiet.

The matron was updating a stack of patient charts. Her quill scratched today's date under the heading DISCHARGE DATE on a file named Henrietta Oliver.

"She's in her office completing paperwork," Dorcas whispered back.

The door to the infirmary opened a crack, the hinges protesting with a low whine. Dorcas raised her right hand, holding her invisible wand aloft and cast the Silencing Charm on the hinges to quieten them. The door swung open confidently but mutely and Dorcas slipped in behind Tom.

"He's in the bed at the end of the row there. By the window," Dorcas informed Tom as they crept across the infirmary's main floor. She watched the glow of the candle and kept her connection to the matron's mind as she tiptoed past the office's open door.

"You'll have to keep watch in case the matron leaves while I'm in Clay's mind. I can't be in both at the same time."

"Okay," Tom agreed by mental consent.

It was the first time in a long time that Tom had given her any access to his mind. The connection warmed her heart because it meant that he was trusting her. That trust, she reminded herself, was not something she should treat lightly.

Her footsteps plodded on without his as he took up his post watching the matron at the beginning of the last row of empty hospital cots. Dorcas slowly approached the only occupied bed, an odd shape draped in a sheet and a scratchy wool blanket bathed in moonlight.

Dorcas's eyes drifted from the blanket, tented where one of Clay's arms was half-raised in what looked like an attempt at a defensive gesture. She wondered if his muscles felt fatigued at being forced to hold that pose indefinitely.

As she neared, Clay's face appeared, frozen with his eyebrows raised and mouth opened, eyes widened in surprise.

"Were you going to say something?" Dorcas heard herself ask aloud. It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to elicit a response.

"Who's there?"

The question, thought with the most panicked mental voice Dorcas had ever heard, startled her. Clay heard her. And he was terrified.

She knew she would be too if she had been in Clay's position. Unable to move, to flee danger, or even to call out for help. Her skin prickled with sympathetic fear.

But she knew she could use it to her advantage, and Tom's as well.

"Don't you know who I am?" she asked, leaning on the end of each word, drawing the whisper out into a hiss. Was it convincing? Did she sound snakelike?

"Rr-riddle's beast?" the mental voice supplied, quavering over Tom's name as he responded.

"That'sss right, morsssel."

She could feel the impulse in Clay to shudder, to leap down from the bed and run. But his rigid form could do none of those things. Two beads of moisture collected at the corners of each eye, but never mustered the strength to spill over the edge. His eyes were too dry. He couldn't even give in to the reflex of secreting his terror through tears.

"Do you know what will happen to you if you tell anyone what you sssaw below the ssschool?"

"Yyy-you'll k-kill mm-me?"

"That'sss correct. I will kill you."

In his head, Dorcas watched as Clay Atwood made the startling realization that if the serpent positioned himself above the hospital cot and fixed his gaze on Clay, he would be powerless to look away. She felt his brain straining its synapses to flex the tiny muscles of his eyelids in vain. She felt his desperation tug at her heart.

But still…her need to protect Tom urged her on.

"I can hear what you are thinking, morsssel. I won't harm you. But I warn you…"

"What do you want? P-please! D-don't hurt me!" Clay begged silently.

"Can I be sssure that you won't tell a sssoul about me or how Tom Riddle brought you into my lair?"

His mind hurried to reassure the snake that he would never tell anyone what had happened to him in the secret chamber.

"I promissse you thisss, moresssel…if––"

"Birdie!" Tom's voice sounded in her head. "She's coming. Hide!"

Dorcas startled, dropping her playact as Slytherin's monster. Casting about for a hiding spot, she ducked behind a folding curtain discarded in the corner of the room beside the window. While it was true that the Chameleon Charm tricked the senses of sight and touch into believing that the person cloaked in the magic did not exist in the space, she knew firsthand that if the sense of sight was disconnected from the sense of touch she would be found out by the matron.

In the dark, the matron could easily bump into her, her sense of touch confirming Dorcas's presence before her vision could trick her into believing there was nothing there.

Behind the privacy screen, Dorcas could not discern the matron's position beside Clay. She could only see the matron's candle flame as it bobbed over to her patient in the bed as it reflected in the window's panes.

"Birdie! Don't move, wherever you are. She's at Atwood's bed. Don't make a sound."

Dorcas could hear tinkering, glass against glass, as the matron set down her candle and picked up the phial of saline beside the bed on the wooden table.

She watched the hazy shadow that the matron's form cast upon the screen as she moved in front of the candleglow.

"You must be monstrously uncomfortable, lad," Madam Higgins murmured.

In the matron's mind, Dorcas watched as she administered the saline drops into Clay's eyes. Two in the right eye and two in the left.

"HELP ME, MATRON!" she could hear Clay shouting in his mind. "The beast is here! It could eat the both of us! PLEASE HELP ME!"

Deaf to Clay's desperate pleas, the nurse hummed a moment as she set down the saline and dipped a cotton swab into a small pot of ointment. She applied this to Clay's chapped lips before taking another cotton swab dipped in water, touching it to Clay's tongue.

"Don't you worry, my boy. All of the professors are putting their heads together on this one. We'll sort you out in no time."

Latching onto the hope in the matron's confident tone, Dorcas lost her concentration and bumped into the screen. It gave a sudden, squeaky lurch. The matron's shadowy form looked up in surprise.

"Is someone there?" she asked, carefully setting the glass of water on the bedside table.

"YES! MATRON, IT'S THE SERPENT! SLYTHERIN'S SERPENT!" came Clay's mental cry.

Dorcas held her breath and pressed herself deep into the corner behind the screen, cursing her clumsiness. Her eyes darted to the matron's reflection in the windowpane. The woman's eyes made contact with her own reflected eyes. She would have thought she'd been discovered if not for the charm concealing her.

The sound of glass shattering across the ward caused the matron to spin on her heel.

"Who is that? Is anyone there?" The nurse huffed with impatience. "Lumos Maxima!"

The infirmary was suddenly ablaze with every chandelier, wall sconce, bedside lamp, and candle bursting to life at once.

The nurse's reflection receded from the windowpane as Dorcas watched her retreat down the length of the ward with her wand before her, muttering about rats. "––dearly wish Miss Clerey's cat was still with us, useful creature!"

As the nurse moved off to investigate, Dorcas risked a faint whisper in Clay's direction.

"I heard what you were thinking, morsssel," she hissed with irritation. "What did I sssay I would do if you told another sssoul?"

"S-she couldn't hear me. I didn't tell anyone. Not really." The panic in Clay's voice made Dorcas's nerves jumpy. He was frightened. His body sang with terror and had no outlet for the adrenaline coursing through him. She imagined his heart beating violently against his ribs as if making its own bid for freedom.

He could have a heart attack at any moment.

Dorcas thought she had scared him enough to keep his mouth shut about the basilisk. But in his fear, she knew he'd have told the matron all about the creature if his voice hadn't been paralyzed alongside the rest of him.

"You will not recssieve another warning, morsssel. If you sssay anything about my exissstence to anyone. I will kill you. When you are well again, you will sssay you don't remember how you came to be like thisss."

"I will. I promise. Don't kill me. Please!"

Dorcas wanted to be satisfied by Clay's promise. But she wasn't. She tiptoed across the ward while the matron cleaned up the remnants of a water goblet beneath a table, cursing the castle's vermin as she did.

Slipping out of the infirmary's door behind Tom, Dorcas had the disorientating feeling in her limbs as they appeared before her once again. Tom suddenly appeared moments later.

"Did he remember anything?" Tom asked in a rushed whisper as they crept along the corridor and back up to the Secret Room.

She didn't want to give Tom false hope. It was better to face the situation as pragmatically as possible. That way, she and Tom could put their heads together to come up with a plan in case Clay was not a man of his word.

"I'm afraid he does."

Tom exhaled audibly, his hands shooting up to his head, fingers raking his scalp nervously.

"I need to think." He wasn't speaking to her.

As Dorcas silently followed Tom back up to their hideout on the seventh floor, she chewed her lip and debated the ethics of her next suggestion.

"Have you ever heard of Obliviate?" she asked as her stomach plummeted.

:::

Days in captivity: 289

"Dorcas, we need to be adults about this."

Mauro stood in the doorway to the study with a stern expression leveled at her.

She set down her book. She predicted that they would have another round of…whatever this was the moment Tom had departed the house for business on the mainland.

Mauro only chose to come to her now when there was no threat that Tom could walk in on them. It never ended well. The conversation always seemed to get away from him and he usually fled the room with a…stiff reminder of his obsession with Dorcas.

Getting Mauro turned on and frustrated was becoming her new favorite pastime. Every time he lost control of himself, she gained a little bit more of the high ground.

If he thought he would ever come away from these "chats" with her blessing to marry Ryann, then he and his blue bollocks were sorely mistaken.

She sighed and laid her book aside. "Do you even know what an adult is, Mauro? A fourteen year old is not one, just to be clear. We're not having this conversation again."

"Hear me out," he plunged on, walking to the table in three long strides to pull a chair away, facing her. "Please."

That brought a smile to her face. He was going to plant himself half a room away from her in order to maintain his distance and keep his passions in check.

"If she were under my protection, Dorcas. I might be able to find a way to get her out of this."

The rushed statement that met Dorcas's ears caused her spine to straighten. She silently replayed the words in her mind, unsure just exactly what he was offering.

"What do you mean, out of this? Out of what?"

Mauro leaned forward on his elbows, dropping his voice lower. "What I mean is, I might be able to get her away from Tom. He would have to leave us alone on occasion, would he not? I could get her back to her family without raising the Dark Lord's suspicions."

Dorcas threw her blanket off of her knees, swinging them over the couch to perch on the edge of the cushion. She leaned forward in the same attitude as Mauro.

"That is quite a risk for you. Why would you suddenly want to place yourself in danger in order to help me and Ryann? You've had nearly a year to do it."

She had to swallow the last statement that formed a knot in her throat. Nearly a year. She just realized that she and Ryann had been held here for nearly a year. The thought made her skin prickle with desperation.

Mauro's head hung between his shoulders, heavy with regret. "It's all becoming too much. His treatment of you. The way he punishes you in front of your daughter. Now she won't see you because she can't bear to witness it anymore. And he wants to breed her with a man twenty years her elder. But, I'm afraid, Dorcas. I'm afraid that if I don't say yes to the Dark Lord, he will find another match for your daughter. Someone who may be even less suitable than I am. What if he gives her to someone cruel and her whereabouts become a secret to us?"

Dorcas worried about the same thing.

She was willing to berate Mauro and hassle him about wanting her undeage daughter. But she knew deep down that he was a good man who was repulsed by the idea of marrying and bedding a child. Others among Tom's association might not have any qualms against it.

If she had to choose among Tom's circle of acquaintances, she supposed it would be Mauro that she would feel the most comfortable having as Ryann's protector and provider.

"But you're a prisoner here. Same as me. Tom has that memory that he could use to send you to prison. If you take Ryann away, he won't hesitate to turn you over. Why would you take the risk?"

Mauro raised his head and pinned her with the baldest look she'd ever seen on his face. "I'm willing to risk a lot for the woman I love."

Only the sounds of cracking and popping coming from the logs on the fire and the beating of her own heart filled the room for a long moment. Her instinct was to play up some sentiment to match his. But the truth was, as long as Cal drew breath, she would never feel the same way about another man that she felt for him. And it was wrong to let Mauro believe otherwise.

Would his help be dependent on her returning his affection?

"Mauro, I cannot love you back." She held her breath. She waited for him to withdraw his plan of support. But he didn't. He only nodded.

"I know, cariña. But if you say you trust me with your daughter's future happiness, then I will trust you with the memory that could destroy me."