All Alone
Chapter 20
A/N: this is a pretty sappy chapter, but it'll be good. And about all the new reviews I got, whoa! When I checked my email, I almost had a heart attack! Special thanks to Snifflesaboutsnuffles for all of her reviews. You rock! But don't worry, I haven't forgotten the rest of you,
Adenara Yatman (CANADA IS THE SHIT!!!!! eh? I'm want to get citizenship there so I can get a summer job and stay there with my friend and her uncle for the summer)
veggy-gelfling (interesting author name. Pretty cool. Yeah I always preferred a punky girl Potter too. Thanks, I like my taste in music too! LOL)
Carley D. (thanks for reviewing! Thanks for reading the whole story. I know a lot of people see a huge story and don't read it because it's too long. Don't worry, though. I'm still updating.)
And don't think I've forgotten my oldie readers either.
The Only One You Ever Feared (There's no way I could forget my most faithful reviewer. Not only do you give out great compliments, but you're the only one I've seen who can give out constructive criticism that actually helps. Rock on!)
Anyone I've forgotten, I'm sorry, and don't worry, your reviews meant a lot too.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything other than Violet or Eric. The fluffy, sappy scene in the Forbidden Forest with Eric and Remus is based on something that happened in a Degrassi episode where Joey finds out that Craig's father beats him up. You've got to check that episode out. It'll bring tears to your eyes!
A/N: Allons-y!
Chapter 20
Violet clambered out of the fireplace and collided with Remus.
"Whoa!" he said, surprised, catching her in his arms. "What are you doing here, Violet? You don't have permission to leave the hospital yet." He studied her face. "What's wrong?"
"It's about Eric, Remus." she said, pulling away.
"Which Eric?" Remus said, playing stupid. "You mean your *boyfriend* Eric?"
Violet gasped. "How did you know?"
"I'm not an idiot, Vi." Remus said. "It doesn't take a genius to tell when you have feelings for someone."
For a moment, Violet forgot what she was there for. "Are you mad?" she asked tentatively.
Remus sighed. "No. I'm not mad about you having a boyfriend. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm just upset that you tried to keep it from me."
"Rem, I'm sorry. I just--" she suddenly remembered. "Never mind that. Remus, you have to come back to school with me. It's important."
"What, what?" he said, trying to get her to calm down.
"It's about Eric. His-his dad beats him, Remus."
Remus stood up suddenly. "Hey. Do you realize just what a serious accusation that is? You can't just go around saying stuff like that unless you know for sure. How do you know his dad is beating him?"
"For one, when he showed up at the hospital earlier, his face was practically beaten in. When I asked him, he stammered a lot and wouldn't look at me. When I told him about why I ran away from home, he asked me if you'd beaten me up or something. Then, when I asked him if his dad beat him, he acted really scared and just ran off into the Forbidden Forest. He hauled some major ass. You've got to help him!" Violet pleaded. "Please, Moony... the way you helped me over the summer, I just thought... you'd be able to help him as well."
Remus added it all up in his head and realized that it was very likely that Eric's father was abusing him. He sighed. "Come on." he said, throwing more Floo Powder into the fire. "Pomfrey's Palace!" he shouted, disappearing into the flames, followed shortly by Violet.
When they got there, Madam Pomfrey met them, looking angrier than they'd ever seen her. "Miss Potter! Where have you been?! Do you know just how worried I was? I--"
"There's no time, Poppy." Remus said. "We think Eric Miller-- has a problem, and first, we're going to go find him. Now, come on, Vi. Show me where he disappeared to."
With that they left Madam Pomfrey sputtering angrily behind them.
***
Meanwhile, Eric was still running blindly. It was pitch dark and freezing and he didn't have a cloak on. He came to a clearish spot surrounded by trees and sat down on a rock. He huddled up, drawing his knees to his chest, shivering with both fear and the cold. *Damn it... she knows* he thought. *She totally knows. Why did I freak out like that? I am sooo screwed.*
***
"ERIC!" Violet and Remus called out almost two hours later, running through the woods. Remus shone his wand around the woods and called him again. "ERIC!"
"Where could he have gone?" Violet muttered. "We can't go any deeper or we'll be attacked by Acromantulas and centaurs." And freeze in the process, she thought.
"Wait." Remus stopped and Violet crashed into him. "I know a place he could have gone. I've hidden there loads of times when I was depressed. Follow me."
He turned around and went left for a while. Soon enough, they came apon a crooked path that took them to a clearing in the woods. They could just make out a boy huddled up on a rock in the clearing.
"Stay here." Remus motioned to Violet to stop when they reached the edge of the clearing. He walked slowly up to Eric and put a hand on his shoulder. "Eric?" he said gently.
The poor kid nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt Remus touch him. "What do you want?" he said defensively, standing up.
"Hey," Remus said, putting up his hands defensively. "I just want to help you."
"I don't need help!" Eric shouted. "I'm fine!"
Remus gave him a look that clearly said he wasn't buying it for a second. "Yeah right, you're not fine. Look at you." He tried to put his hands on Eric's arms. "Now just calm down, and we can get out of here!"
Eric jerked backwards and laughed bitterly. "Where am I supposed to go, Lupin? What, back home? Back to my dad so he can--?" He stopped suddenly.
Remus leaned in. "What?" he asked. "What does he do to you?"
Eric realized he'd said too much. He abruptly turned to walk away.
"He hits you, doesn't he?" Remus called out, before Eric could get anywhere.
Eric stopped.
Remus took a couple of steps toward Eric. "Doesn't he?" he said softly.
Eric slowly turned around, tears blurring his vision. "Yeah." he said huskily, feeling a burning tear slide down his cheek. "He does."
Remus had been expecting it, but it still came as a shock. He felt the same emotions he felt when he found out that Violet's uncle had been beating her up: anger, shock, and sadness. In the dim wandlight, he could just make out the boy standing feet away from him, tears streaming down his face.
The pain and humiliation hit Eric like a bulldozer and everything he'd kept bottled up exploded in his face. He all of a sudden began sobbing uncontrollably, and before he knew what he was doing, he walked straight into Lupin's chest, buried his face there, and started bawling.
Remus was even more shocked, and kind of scared when Eric walked toward him, sobbing, but he pulled Eric into his arms and wrapped them around the sobbing teenaged boy. He did the best he could to comfort Eric, rubbing his back while he just let him cry himself into exhaustion.
Eric cried on Lupin's shoulder for at least fifteen minutes, until he could cry no more. He turned his head slightly on Lupin's shoulder so he could see Violet standing there. Lupin still patted his back clumsily and it was then that he felt like a huge ass. He pulled back, looking away from them both. "I'm really sorry about that, Mr. Lupin." he said, embarrassed that he'd been crying on the shoulder of someone he barely knew.
"It's no problem." Remus said sincerely, putting a hand on Eric's shoulder. "We've got to get back to the castle. You'll freeze to death out here." He put an arm around Eric and squeezed his shoulder gently. "Let's go."
Violet followed them as they all walked slowly down the crooked path. There was something strangely comforting about seeing Remus rubbing Eric's shoulder and talking to him reassuringly. They didn't look gay or anything, but there was just something about it she couldn't put her finger on. She tried to figure out what it was. After a minute, it hit her. She'd once seen a father comforting his son while she watched on with envy. She recalled that day and looked at Remus and Eric and realized that the scene was nearly identical. Violet reached into her cloak pocket and pulled out a camera. After a minute, she quietly took a picture of them. Remus still had his arm around him and was leaning in to tell him something. Eric had his head turned enough to catch his gorgeous profile.
Surprisingly, they got back to the castle without being attacked by anything. Remus led them back to the hospital wing.
Violet sat down next to Eric and Remus sat across from them.
"Eric," Remus said gently. "I need to know everything that's happened to you."
"The last thing I want to do is tell you all the shit that I went through..." Eric said softly, staring into space.
"Come on, Eric, please?" Violet pleaded, forcing him to look her in the face. "Look, I'm sorry for telling Remus that we were just friends, and you can hate me for that forever, I promise. He knows the truth anyway, and he's fine with it, okay? Eric, Remus has helped me out more times than you'll ever know. He can help you too. Just please tell us what happened."
Eric looked at her for a minute. A part of him still wanted to be mad at her, but seeing the pleading in her eyes made tears well up again.
"Please." she begged, her voice breaking. "Just trust us."
Eric took a very shaky breath. "It's happened for as long as I can remember." he started. "Ever since my mom died when I was a baby, life was a living hell. He worked a lot and that stressed him out, so when he wasn't working, he was drinking and doing drugs. Half of the time he was too drunk or high to even walk toward me, let alone h-hit me, but when he wasn't too drunk or when he was hung over, he took everything out on me. I swear, I once looked at him wrong and he broke my jaw." He took another great shuddering breath and continued. "When he was in an actual normal mood, which was almost never, he would go over to me and apologize for everything, give me money, and tell me he loved me and it would never happen again. I wanted to believe it so badly..." Another tear welled up in Eric's eye. Violet reached over to touch his hand. "Don't! Please... I just--" he choked, and Violet pulled her hand back understandingly.
"Come on, Eric." Violet said gently. "You can keep going. I know you can."
"I can't, Vi!" He bawled, burying his face into a pillow and sobbing even more, showing a vulnerable side of him that Violet had never seen. It scared her. "You just d-d-don't under-understand!"
Violet looked helplessly at Remus. "What do I do?" she asked frantically.
Remus moved to sit on the bed beside Eric. "Eric." he called softly, putting his hand on the boy's back. Eric pulled away, but Remus kept his hand there. "You're not alone, okay?"
Eric sat up, his breath coming in short gasps. "I'm sorry, but how could either of you understand just what I went through?" he glared at them through tears.
"There is one of us who understands..." Remus said sadly, looking over at Violet. Violet met his eyes and gasped.
"No way in hell, Remus." she said. "I can't talk about that."
"How do you think Eric feels then?" Remus demanded. "Look, if you care about Eric as much as I think you do, you'll tell him what happened to you."
Eric looked back and forth at the two of them. "What the hell are you two talking about?"
Violet sighed. "D'you remember all those scars you saw all over me, Eric?"
"Yeah." he said quietly.
"I never did tell you how I got them, did I?" she asked, looking down at the floor.
"No..." he said, starting to realize what she was talking about.
"See," she began determinedly, staring at the ceiling. "I didn't always live with Remus. I used to live with-- with an aunt and uncle. They've hated me since day one. My uncle, mostly, started..." she swallowed. "Beating me up when I was about three. It wasn't too often at first, just when I did something that pissed him off. But, when I was seven, he, like your dad, started up with alcohol. He didn't do drugs, but I don't think it would have made a difference. I used to hide in closets, praying he wouldn't find me. But he always would. And then I got it even worse. Like your dad, he once broke my jaw so badly that it had to be wired in place. Along with physical abuse, he forced me to cook, clean, and everything that would have required him to get off of his fat ass to do. He often refused to feed me until I did things just so and even then, it was often Dudley's leftovers. And, if you've ever seen Dudley eat, you'd know that he doesn't leave that many leftovers. That's why I was so thin before."
Violet paused, looking over at Remus, who nodded encouragingly, and managed to continue. "It wasn't so bad after I got accepted to Hogwarts. I was rarely beaten after that. They were afraid of me for quite some time, then, when they found out about my godfather, they left me alone. But after what happened last year, Vernon kicked it up a notch. It wasn't as bad as it had been years ago, but still... He's cracked quite a few ribs, broken my nose, and a lot more. In fact, I'd probably be living there still if it hadn't been for Remus here." Violet smiled at her guardian, who grinned back at her.
"Remus came to bring me to Ron and Ginny's house. Well, after he sent me inside to get my clothes, my uncle had apparantly been waiting for me. He grabbed me by the face and slammed me into the wall. First he slapped me, then he broke my nose, and then he threw me into a china cabinet. I suppose Remus came along sometime after I lost consciousness. That was the last time I ever saw him. Hopefully, I'll never have to see him again."
Remus spoke up. "Thanks, Vi. I know that was hard." He turned back to Eric.
Eric stammered, "I-I'm sorry! I never knew. I didn't have a clue..." After a minute he added, "Did he do anything... else? Y'know, worse?"
Violet met his eyes and knew what he was talking about. "No." she said, noticing how relieved he looked then. "Thankfully."
Remus interrupted. "Do you think you're ready to continue now, Eric?" he asked gently.
"Y-y-yeah." he lied. He wasn't at all ready, but after what he'd just heard about Violet, he realized that compared to her story, his was quite easy to tell. "Well, once I went to Hogwarts, it was great. I didn't have to see my dad for almost four months. I'd hoped that I could stay at school for Christmas, but no such luck. Once I'd gotten off at King's Cross, the smell of the booze nearly knocked me down. I could see it in his eyes too, along with something else... ecstasy, maybe, or even acid. He did his best to act sober, like a loving father happy to see his son, until we got in the car at least. Once we got in the car, he'd drive off crazily, nearly killing a thousand people in the process. On the way he'd rant and rave about how much trouble I was in but he never would say for what. When we got home..." he gulped. "I would honestly have to say that he beat me within an inch of my life. When I woke up, he was passed out on the floor and I could barely walk. Normally, I wouldn't have done this, but I knew that I was worse off than I'd ever been, so I Flooed over to the hospital, and, well... that's it."
Both of them were staring at him with their jaws dropped. It was getting uncomfortable. "Um... you can talk now... or blink... or breathe if you want to."
They both reacted at the same time, stammering apologies. Once they'd stopped babbling, Violet elbowed Remus and made one of those, "Say something!" faces. Remus made a, "WHAT?" face and Violet elbowed him again. Remus sighed and spoke up first.
"Eric," he began, wondering what he was going to say. "I'm going to help you all I can, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do for you. The most I can do right now is talk to Dumbledore."
"No!" Eric jumped up suddenly. "You can't tell him! You can't tell anyone! If my dad finds out, I'm dead!" he put his head in his hands. "Oh, shit... I already am screwed."
"Eric, it's okay!" Remus forced him to sit down. "You can trust Dumbledore."
When Eric looked desperately at Violet, she looked at him apologetically. "Remus is right, Eric. Dumbledore can help you. We have to tell him."
"No way." Eric said stubbornly.
"Eric, we've done all we can for you." Remus said, now looking frustrated. "And unless you want to be sent back to your father, you have to cooperate with us and see Dumbledore."
Eric had that look of a trapped animal. "So, you're saying..."
"Yes."
Eric slowly got up, followed by Remus and Violet. Remus turned to Violet and said, "Stay here."
"Remus!" Violet whined.
"There's nothing you can do. I won't be long. Dumbledore will probably want to speak to Eric alone. I'll be back."
He turned around and led Eric out of the hospital, choosing to ignore Violet cursing angrily at him.
***
sorry for such a dumb ending, but otherwise the chapter would never get finished. later
Chapter 20
A/N: this is a pretty sappy chapter, but it'll be good. And about all the new reviews I got, whoa! When I checked my email, I almost had a heart attack! Special thanks to Snifflesaboutsnuffles for all of her reviews. You rock! But don't worry, I haven't forgotten the rest of you,
Adenara Yatman (CANADA IS THE SHIT!!!!! eh? I'm want to get citizenship there so I can get a summer job and stay there with my friend and her uncle for the summer)
veggy-gelfling (interesting author name. Pretty cool. Yeah I always preferred a punky girl Potter too. Thanks, I like my taste in music too! LOL)
Carley D. (thanks for reviewing! Thanks for reading the whole story. I know a lot of people see a huge story and don't read it because it's too long. Don't worry, though. I'm still updating.)
And don't think I've forgotten my oldie readers either.
The Only One You Ever Feared (There's no way I could forget my most faithful reviewer. Not only do you give out great compliments, but you're the only one I've seen who can give out constructive criticism that actually helps. Rock on!)
Anyone I've forgotten, I'm sorry, and don't worry, your reviews meant a lot too.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything other than Violet or Eric. The fluffy, sappy scene in the Forbidden Forest with Eric and Remus is based on something that happened in a Degrassi episode where Joey finds out that Craig's father beats him up. You've got to check that episode out. It'll bring tears to your eyes!
A/N: Allons-y!
Chapter 20
Violet clambered out of the fireplace and collided with Remus.
"Whoa!" he said, surprised, catching her in his arms. "What are you doing here, Violet? You don't have permission to leave the hospital yet." He studied her face. "What's wrong?"
"It's about Eric, Remus." she said, pulling away.
"Which Eric?" Remus said, playing stupid. "You mean your *boyfriend* Eric?"
Violet gasped. "How did you know?"
"I'm not an idiot, Vi." Remus said. "It doesn't take a genius to tell when you have feelings for someone."
For a moment, Violet forgot what she was there for. "Are you mad?" she asked tentatively.
Remus sighed. "No. I'm not mad about you having a boyfriend. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm just upset that you tried to keep it from me."
"Rem, I'm sorry. I just--" she suddenly remembered. "Never mind that. Remus, you have to come back to school with me. It's important."
"What, what?" he said, trying to get her to calm down.
"It's about Eric. His-his dad beats him, Remus."
Remus stood up suddenly. "Hey. Do you realize just what a serious accusation that is? You can't just go around saying stuff like that unless you know for sure. How do you know his dad is beating him?"
"For one, when he showed up at the hospital earlier, his face was practically beaten in. When I asked him, he stammered a lot and wouldn't look at me. When I told him about why I ran away from home, he asked me if you'd beaten me up or something. Then, when I asked him if his dad beat him, he acted really scared and just ran off into the Forbidden Forest. He hauled some major ass. You've got to help him!" Violet pleaded. "Please, Moony... the way you helped me over the summer, I just thought... you'd be able to help him as well."
Remus added it all up in his head and realized that it was very likely that Eric's father was abusing him. He sighed. "Come on." he said, throwing more Floo Powder into the fire. "Pomfrey's Palace!" he shouted, disappearing into the flames, followed shortly by Violet.
When they got there, Madam Pomfrey met them, looking angrier than they'd ever seen her. "Miss Potter! Where have you been?! Do you know just how worried I was? I--"
"There's no time, Poppy." Remus said. "We think Eric Miller-- has a problem, and first, we're going to go find him. Now, come on, Vi. Show me where he disappeared to."
With that they left Madam Pomfrey sputtering angrily behind them.
***
Meanwhile, Eric was still running blindly. It was pitch dark and freezing and he didn't have a cloak on. He came to a clearish spot surrounded by trees and sat down on a rock. He huddled up, drawing his knees to his chest, shivering with both fear and the cold. *Damn it... she knows* he thought. *She totally knows. Why did I freak out like that? I am sooo screwed.*
***
"ERIC!" Violet and Remus called out almost two hours later, running through the woods. Remus shone his wand around the woods and called him again. "ERIC!"
"Where could he have gone?" Violet muttered. "We can't go any deeper or we'll be attacked by Acromantulas and centaurs." And freeze in the process, she thought.
"Wait." Remus stopped and Violet crashed into him. "I know a place he could have gone. I've hidden there loads of times when I was depressed. Follow me."
He turned around and went left for a while. Soon enough, they came apon a crooked path that took them to a clearing in the woods. They could just make out a boy huddled up on a rock in the clearing.
"Stay here." Remus motioned to Violet to stop when they reached the edge of the clearing. He walked slowly up to Eric and put a hand on his shoulder. "Eric?" he said gently.
The poor kid nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt Remus touch him. "What do you want?" he said defensively, standing up.
"Hey," Remus said, putting up his hands defensively. "I just want to help you."
"I don't need help!" Eric shouted. "I'm fine!"
Remus gave him a look that clearly said he wasn't buying it for a second. "Yeah right, you're not fine. Look at you." He tried to put his hands on Eric's arms. "Now just calm down, and we can get out of here!"
Eric jerked backwards and laughed bitterly. "Where am I supposed to go, Lupin? What, back home? Back to my dad so he can--?" He stopped suddenly.
Remus leaned in. "What?" he asked. "What does he do to you?"
Eric realized he'd said too much. He abruptly turned to walk away.
"He hits you, doesn't he?" Remus called out, before Eric could get anywhere.
Eric stopped.
Remus took a couple of steps toward Eric. "Doesn't he?" he said softly.
Eric slowly turned around, tears blurring his vision. "Yeah." he said huskily, feeling a burning tear slide down his cheek. "He does."
Remus had been expecting it, but it still came as a shock. He felt the same emotions he felt when he found out that Violet's uncle had been beating her up: anger, shock, and sadness. In the dim wandlight, he could just make out the boy standing feet away from him, tears streaming down his face.
The pain and humiliation hit Eric like a bulldozer and everything he'd kept bottled up exploded in his face. He all of a sudden began sobbing uncontrollably, and before he knew what he was doing, he walked straight into Lupin's chest, buried his face there, and started bawling.
Remus was even more shocked, and kind of scared when Eric walked toward him, sobbing, but he pulled Eric into his arms and wrapped them around the sobbing teenaged boy. He did the best he could to comfort Eric, rubbing his back while he just let him cry himself into exhaustion.
Eric cried on Lupin's shoulder for at least fifteen minutes, until he could cry no more. He turned his head slightly on Lupin's shoulder so he could see Violet standing there. Lupin still patted his back clumsily and it was then that he felt like a huge ass. He pulled back, looking away from them both. "I'm really sorry about that, Mr. Lupin." he said, embarrassed that he'd been crying on the shoulder of someone he barely knew.
"It's no problem." Remus said sincerely, putting a hand on Eric's shoulder. "We've got to get back to the castle. You'll freeze to death out here." He put an arm around Eric and squeezed his shoulder gently. "Let's go."
Violet followed them as they all walked slowly down the crooked path. There was something strangely comforting about seeing Remus rubbing Eric's shoulder and talking to him reassuringly. They didn't look gay or anything, but there was just something about it she couldn't put her finger on. She tried to figure out what it was. After a minute, it hit her. She'd once seen a father comforting his son while she watched on with envy. She recalled that day and looked at Remus and Eric and realized that the scene was nearly identical. Violet reached into her cloak pocket and pulled out a camera. After a minute, she quietly took a picture of them. Remus still had his arm around him and was leaning in to tell him something. Eric had his head turned enough to catch his gorgeous profile.
Surprisingly, they got back to the castle without being attacked by anything. Remus led them back to the hospital wing.
Violet sat down next to Eric and Remus sat across from them.
"Eric," Remus said gently. "I need to know everything that's happened to you."
"The last thing I want to do is tell you all the shit that I went through..." Eric said softly, staring into space.
"Come on, Eric, please?" Violet pleaded, forcing him to look her in the face. "Look, I'm sorry for telling Remus that we were just friends, and you can hate me for that forever, I promise. He knows the truth anyway, and he's fine with it, okay? Eric, Remus has helped me out more times than you'll ever know. He can help you too. Just please tell us what happened."
Eric looked at her for a minute. A part of him still wanted to be mad at her, but seeing the pleading in her eyes made tears well up again.
"Please." she begged, her voice breaking. "Just trust us."
Eric took a very shaky breath. "It's happened for as long as I can remember." he started. "Ever since my mom died when I was a baby, life was a living hell. He worked a lot and that stressed him out, so when he wasn't working, he was drinking and doing drugs. Half of the time he was too drunk or high to even walk toward me, let alone h-hit me, but when he wasn't too drunk or when he was hung over, he took everything out on me. I swear, I once looked at him wrong and he broke my jaw." He took another great shuddering breath and continued. "When he was in an actual normal mood, which was almost never, he would go over to me and apologize for everything, give me money, and tell me he loved me and it would never happen again. I wanted to believe it so badly..." Another tear welled up in Eric's eye. Violet reached over to touch his hand. "Don't! Please... I just--" he choked, and Violet pulled her hand back understandingly.
"Come on, Eric." Violet said gently. "You can keep going. I know you can."
"I can't, Vi!" He bawled, burying his face into a pillow and sobbing even more, showing a vulnerable side of him that Violet had never seen. It scared her. "You just d-d-don't under-understand!"
Violet looked helplessly at Remus. "What do I do?" she asked frantically.
Remus moved to sit on the bed beside Eric. "Eric." he called softly, putting his hand on the boy's back. Eric pulled away, but Remus kept his hand there. "You're not alone, okay?"
Eric sat up, his breath coming in short gasps. "I'm sorry, but how could either of you understand just what I went through?" he glared at them through tears.
"There is one of us who understands..." Remus said sadly, looking over at Violet. Violet met his eyes and gasped.
"No way in hell, Remus." she said. "I can't talk about that."
"How do you think Eric feels then?" Remus demanded. "Look, if you care about Eric as much as I think you do, you'll tell him what happened to you."
Eric looked back and forth at the two of them. "What the hell are you two talking about?"
Violet sighed. "D'you remember all those scars you saw all over me, Eric?"
"Yeah." he said quietly.
"I never did tell you how I got them, did I?" she asked, looking down at the floor.
"No..." he said, starting to realize what she was talking about.
"See," she began determinedly, staring at the ceiling. "I didn't always live with Remus. I used to live with-- with an aunt and uncle. They've hated me since day one. My uncle, mostly, started..." she swallowed. "Beating me up when I was about three. It wasn't too often at first, just when I did something that pissed him off. But, when I was seven, he, like your dad, started up with alcohol. He didn't do drugs, but I don't think it would have made a difference. I used to hide in closets, praying he wouldn't find me. But he always would. And then I got it even worse. Like your dad, he once broke my jaw so badly that it had to be wired in place. Along with physical abuse, he forced me to cook, clean, and everything that would have required him to get off of his fat ass to do. He often refused to feed me until I did things just so and even then, it was often Dudley's leftovers. And, if you've ever seen Dudley eat, you'd know that he doesn't leave that many leftovers. That's why I was so thin before."
Violet paused, looking over at Remus, who nodded encouragingly, and managed to continue. "It wasn't so bad after I got accepted to Hogwarts. I was rarely beaten after that. They were afraid of me for quite some time, then, when they found out about my godfather, they left me alone. But after what happened last year, Vernon kicked it up a notch. It wasn't as bad as it had been years ago, but still... He's cracked quite a few ribs, broken my nose, and a lot more. In fact, I'd probably be living there still if it hadn't been for Remus here." Violet smiled at her guardian, who grinned back at her.
"Remus came to bring me to Ron and Ginny's house. Well, after he sent me inside to get my clothes, my uncle had apparantly been waiting for me. He grabbed me by the face and slammed me into the wall. First he slapped me, then he broke my nose, and then he threw me into a china cabinet. I suppose Remus came along sometime after I lost consciousness. That was the last time I ever saw him. Hopefully, I'll never have to see him again."
Remus spoke up. "Thanks, Vi. I know that was hard." He turned back to Eric.
Eric stammered, "I-I'm sorry! I never knew. I didn't have a clue..." After a minute he added, "Did he do anything... else? Y'know, worse?"
Violet met his eyes and knew what he was talking about. "No." she said, noticing how relieved he looked then. "Thankfully."
Remus interrupted. "Do you think you're ready to continue now, Eric?" he asked gently.
"Y-y-yeah." he lied. He wasn't at all ready, but after what he'd just heard about Violet, he realized that compared to her story, his was quite easy to tell. "Well, once I went to Hogwarts, it was great. I didn't have to see my dad for almost four months. I'd hoped that I could stay at school for Christmas, but no such luck. Once I'd gotten off at King's Cross, the smell of the booze nearly knocked me down. I could see it in his eyes too, along with something else... ecstasy, maybe, or even acid. He did his best to act sober, like a loving father happy to see his son, until we got in the car at least. Once we got in the car, he'd drive off crazily, nearly killing a thousand people in the process. On the way he'd rant and rave about how much trouble I was in but he never would say for what. When we got home..." he gulped. "I would honestly have to say that he beat me within an inch of my life. When I woke up, he was passed out on the floor and I could barely walk. Normally, I wouldn't have done this, but I knew that I was worse off than I'd ever been, so I Flooed over to the hospital, and, well... that's it."
Both of them were staring at him with their jaws dropped. It was getting uncomfortable. "Um... you can talk now... or blink... or breathe if you want to."
They both reacted at the same time, stammering apologies. Once they'd stopped babbling, Violet elbowed Remus and made one of those, "Say something!" faces. Remus made a, "WHAT?" face and Violet elbowed him again. Remus sighed and spoke up first.
"Eric," he began, wondering what he was going to say. "I'm going to help you all I can, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do for you. The most I can do right now is talk to Dumbledore."
"No!" Eric jumped up suddenly. "You can't tell him! You can't tell anyone! If my dad finds out, I'm dead!" he put his head in his hands. "Oh, shit... I already am screwed."
"Eric, it's okay!" Remus forced him to sit down. "You can trust Dumbledore."
When Eric looked desperately at Violet, she looked at him apologetically. "Remus is right, Eric. Dumbledore can help you. We have to tell him."
"No way." Eric said stubbornly.
"Eric, we've done all we can for you." Remus said, now looking frustrated. "And unless you want to be sent back to your father, you have to cooperate with us and see Dumbledore."
Eric had that look of a trapped animal. "So, you're saying..."
"Yes."
Eric slowly got up, followed by Remus and Violet. Remus turned to Violet and said, "Stay here."
"Remus!" Violet whined.
"There's nothing you can do. I won't be long. Dumbledore will probably want to speak to Eric alone. I'll be back."
He turned around and led Eric out of the hospital, choosing to ignore Violet cursing angrily at him.
***
sorry for such a dumb ending, but otherwise the chapter would never get finished. later