Chapter 30
Days in captivity: 289
Mauro's heavy-soled boots pounded out the beat of Dorcas's own heart as he paced before the fire.
She sat on the edge of the sofa and watched him in silence.
He was offering to help her. To help her and Ryann. Help them to escape. At great personal risk. As she looked on, nervousness settling in her bones, she couldn't help compiling a list of all of the ways in which the plan they were hatching was doomed.
Three days had seemed like a luxury to her this morning when Tom mentioned the length of his expected absence. But now she vibrated with a conviction that they would never have enough time to pull together all of the loose threads of this scheme.
Tom would find out.
The loud thud of her heart and Mauro's boots beat out the wrenching conviction.
Tom would find out.
Tom would find out.
Tom would find out.
"Three days isn't enough time to carry it off," she finally blurted.
"No. Certainly not."
She supposed she might have been hoping to hear Mauro encourage her to have faith and think positively. When she looked up and met his gaze from across the room, she realized that she'd wanted him to say something to check her pessimism.
But he'd only echoed her fear.
Her disappointment was evident on her face.
Mauro stopped his pacing and drew closer. But still out of reach. Cautious of her.
"I only meant that we're playing a long game here, Dorcas. We have to make subtle moves. Very subtle. Tom is a shrewd man. As shrewd as any I've known."
Dorcas wasn't comforted by this truth. She knew that any move they made against Tom would need to be so incremental as to be undetectable.
Mauro's hand dipped into his pocket. Dorcas knew that his fingertips counted each bead of his mother's rosary as he plotted. Dorcas sent up a prayer of her own for whatever good it may do them.
"I must tell Tom that I accept the offer. But you will be against the idea. He will suspect us both if you seem too eager for the match."
Nodding, Dorcas soaked up the Spaniard's words.
"I'm not eager for the match. My daughter is fourteen. The idea is repulsive."
Mauro's head swiveled from the fire to her, piercing her with a hard glare. "Just like that, cariña. You must always be set against it."
"But it won't really happen. The marriage will never take place. Do I have your word on it?"
Forgetting the distance he'd been keeping between himself and Dorcas, Mauro joined her on the sofa and collected her hands in his.
Dorcas felt his firm grip and the conviction of his intentions through her fingertips. But there was also the stiff and unyielding jet beads of the rosary between them.
"On the love I still bear my family and with my mother's talisman between us, my words to you are true, Dorcas. I will not marry your daughter or take her to my bed. My mother's soul be damned if I tell you lies."
She knew she could trust Mauro's word. It was Tom she couldn't trust. Mauro's intentions meant nothing if Tom were to force the issue. Her mind couldn't recall specific images of his abuse. The potion she regularly took made sure of that. But the overwhelming unease that lingered beneath the fog left her cautious and fearful.
"Tom could force you," she argued.
She watched as Mauro slowly straightened at the thought of compromising his pledge to Dorcas. He dropped her hands and returned the rosary to his pocket.
"That's where you come in, cariña. You must figure out if the memory that Tom is using against me is a forgery."
Dorcas slumped beneath the enormity of the responsibility. The whole plan rested on her being able to prove that whatever blackmail Tom held as leverage against Mauro was false. Her face showed enough reservation to provoke Mauro's touch.
His fingertips brushed her jaw, tilting her face up to his.
"Do not worry, cariña. Even if you can't confirm that my memories have been altered, I could not be compelled to harm Ryann. I would go to prison first. I would die to protect her. But we have time. I will agree to the arrangement. But I will insist on waiting for her to come of age."
Her heart did a strange zigzagging maneuver, lifting and plummeting simultaneously. It soared at the relief of his insistence to wait, but fell with the realization that her liberty and that of her daughter might be over two years away.
Sometimes she wondered if she had it in her to hang on for even two more days. Now, deliverance could be more than seven hundred days away. Her mind's eye called up the pathetic hash marks concealed behind the nightstand in her room. Almost three hundred of them. And look at how much of her Tom had been able to strip away in just that small span. How could she endure twice that and more?
What would be left of her?
Brushing the thought aside, Dorcas forced a smile onto her face.
The sacrifice of herself didn't matter. Only Ryann mattered.
"Then let's begin," she stated with resolve.
:::
6 May, 1943 First Floor Classroom, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Shoving down the thought that Tom would not like the company she was keeping, Dorcas bit her lip and focused on the game of Exploding Snap going on between Myrtle and Cal.
Above the din of a dozen tables, students seated around them chattering and laughing, the miserable gray rain reminded them all of their Hogsmeade outing that would likely be canceled tomorrow.
"Nothing can ever be normal in the Wizarding World, can it?"
Myrtle's statement was punctuated violently when the pair her wand hovered over exploded, smudging her glasses with soot.
"Could you picture the chaos at a Bridge parlor?" Cal laughed and reached his handkerchief across the table to Myrtle.
Myrtle answered while wiping her glasses, "Two Hearts, Catherine, my dear." Her voice took on the quality of a dowager in pearls as she laid down a card to pair with Cal's.
Dorcas laughed as Cal's own voice pitched high to match Myrtle's. "Two No-trump, Mildred." He batted his lashes comically, laying down another card on top of the one he'd previously played, hurrying to grab up his wand when it revealed a match to Myrtle's.
Myrtle fumbled with the handkerchief, flinging it in Dorcas's direction as she lunged forward with her own wand, ready to beat Cal to the match.
A savage curse burst out of Myrtle's mouth as the pair soared into Cal's growing pile of cards. Cal's hand flew to his collar and settled over the knot in his striped tie. He wore a shocked expression as he said in his best Bridge brigade, society lady's drawl, "My heavens! Mildred, what has come over you? Such language! My delicate nerves!"
"Apologies, Catherine. I don't know what brought that on. It was the vapors, I suspect."
Dorcas laughed, folding Cal's handkerchief and laying it across her lap for safe keeping. She supposed she should find something else to do besides watching her two friends pose as card-playing spinsters. Tom would be angry to find her frittering away her time in Cal's company. It was something she promised him she would not do.
But she was feeling a bit rebellious since he'd refused to clear the air with Myrtle. Even after she'd helped him to confirm what Clay Atwood remembered about his petrification at the hands of the basilisk. Even after she'd helped him to return to the hospital wing and wipe Clay's memory with the spell that she'd discovered in a dusty old book in the library.
He still would not concede that Myrtle was owed an apology.
Instead, he'd reminded Dorcas of the thing she wished she could forget the most.
"Owe you?" he'd hissed, only inches from her face the night before last in the Secret Room. "You have that wrong, Birdie."
She exhaled impatiently and reminded him that he'd agreed to set things right with her friend if she helped him with Clay. He'd be expelled, after all, once Clay woke up and told Dippet everything he knew about the basilisk, Tom, and Slytherin's Secret Chamber.
He was rough with her after that. She tugged at the sleeve of her uniform shirt in a subconscious effort to keep the bruises around her wrist covered.
"I hid a body for you, Birdie," he'd snarled as he grasped her wrist and twisted. "I covered up a murder."
She could still hear the condemnation of her actions last New Year's Eve ringing throughout the vast chamber of the Secret Room.
There was nothing she could say to that.
Myrtle and Cal would both become off limits to her. Part of a short list of people that Tom forbade her to associate with. She wished she could convince him that he had nothing to fear from her friends. But he was right. He didn't owe her anything.
If anyone had a debt to pay, it was her.
As she watched their farce carry on, she debated whether it would be best to tell them that she could no longer spend time with them, or if it was better to just distance herself without an explanation.
"So this is how you choose to play it?"
His voice sliced through the graymatter in her skull and right to the core of her mind.
She forgot to hide her reaction to words that had not been spoken aloud. Dorcas was so fearful of Tom's ire, that she whirled around in her seat and stared directly at him as he stood in the classroom's doorway, staring at her.
There was silence to her right and left as her sudden reaction to Tom's presence pulled Cal and Myrtle out of their game.
"Is something the matter, Clerey?" asked Cal as he followed her gaze to the doorway.
Dorcas swallowed around a lump that had formed in her throat and watched Tom as he slowly approached their table. His tense features brightened to a smile as Cal spoke and Dorcas knew that it was for his benefit and Myrtle's that Tom's demeanor had become sunny in an instant. She was not fool enough to believe that he was happy with the scene he'd just walked in on.
"Afternoon, all," Tom greeted lightly as he stopped beside Dorcas's elbow.
"Alright, Tom?" Cal returned as he collected the Exploding Snap cards in the center of the table, casting a Shuffling Charm on them before dealing a new hand for himself and Myrtle.
Holding her breath throughout this civil exchange, Dorcas cast about for a way to extricate herself from the group before Tom could become more enraged by her defiance of his wishes. But Tom spoke first, dismissing both her and Cal.
"Warren, come with me. I wish to have a word."
Myrtle's eyes, enlarged by the magnification of her thick glasses, widened in surprise as she looked from Tom to Cal and then to Dorcas before settling on Tom once again.
"Why do I have to go with you? I haven't done anything wrong."
Tom shook his head slowly with a small smirk playing on his lips, amused. "I'm not on Prefect business. I just want a word with you." As Myrtle began to object, he added, "That is, if you would grant me the favor."
Dorcas's heart leapt at the gesture. Tom was asking for a moment to beg for Myrtle's forgiveness. He hadn't pushed Dorcas's request aside callously as she'd thought. He was just looking for the right opportunity to approach the Third Year.
Eager not to waste the show of goodwill that Tom was attempting to extend, Dorcas stood. "We'll leave you two to talk. Right, Cal?"
Cal's eyes bounced from Dorcas's to Myrtle's before deciding to take Dorcas's cue. And right he should, Dorcas thought. She knew how hard this must be for Tom to do. She didn't want to make it harder for him by giving him an audience while he talked to Myrtle.
"Right," Cal answered, standing beside Dorcas and stacking the deck of cards once more. "I should get up to the infirmary anyway. Visiting hours are over soon." He lifted his school bag to his shoulder and began to thread his way through the tables of students.
"Wait!"
Myrtle called to Cal's retreating back, causing Dorcas to startle before her shoulders settled into a defeated slump. Myrtle wasn't going to allow Tom the opportunity to set things right. Cal continued to make his way to the door, deaf to Myrtle's protest over the thrum of recreation.
"That's his letter, isn't it?"
Dorcas's eyes dropped to Myrtle's hand as it pointed to an unopened envelope on the corner of the table beside the spot Cal had just vacated.
She didn't want any excuses from Myrtle. She wanted her to hear Tom out and forgive his moment of anger last September. It made her frantic to take away the excuse before Myrtle could seize it.
"I'll take it to him."
"No." Tom's voice had a warning ring to it. "I'll take it to him once I've finished with Warren."
"Let's don't and just say we did," Myrtle chimed, leaning forward to collect her playing cards.
At the same moment, Dorcas lunged for the letter, wrongfully assuming that Myrtle was about to snatch it up and insist on delivering it to Cal. The flash of anger in Tom's eyes warned her that she was in for a lecture later on the meaning of her word and honoring her commitments. Her wrist throbbed as she remembered a recent conversation on the same topic. The letter clutched in her hand felt whitehot under her fingertips.
"Stay and hear him out, Myrtle. Please. I'll just run this down the hall to Cal and then I can meet you in the library afterward, Tom."
Tom's eyebrows lifted in silent protest. "Just run it down to him. I'll be in the library waiting for you."
"Why don't you put a tracking spell on her, Riddle? Or better yet, charm some pixies to fly a banner over your head that reads I'm a jealous git." Myrtle narrowed her eyes on Tom and sighed.
The words Jealous git rang in Dorcas's ears as she weaved her way to the classroom door and debated which way Cal had gone. There was a heavy pit in her stomach that told her this apology would not be sincerely given or sincerely received.
:::
Days in captivity: 290
Plunging into the silvery memory beside Mauro, Dorcas silently coached herself as if this were a rather important test. A test that she couldn't fail.
"Be aware of every detail. There's nothing too small to escape your notice. Concentrate on the smells, the quality of the light, the faintest sound. Anything could reveal a frayed thread. Any thread could be tugged on and the whole bloody tapestry could unravel."
They needed to find that thread. Three lives hung in the balance.
When she reached the ground, she was instantly alert.
This was a kitchen. Little idiosyncrasies made her immediately understand that she was no longer in Britain. The glazed terracotta beneath her feet, the colorful ablaq masonry of the walls, the sharp tang of spices hinted at a warmer, more exotic environment.
Beside Dorcas, Mauro pulled in a lungful of the savory, heady aroma coming from the hot coals of the open stove across the small space.
A woman stood with her back to the pair and hummed as she stirred and tested the broth from a steaming pot.
"Mama."
It came from Mauro at her side at the same time that the word announced the entrance of a boy. Tanned skin and wild dark hair told her that this was Mauro at the moment in which one foot was caught in childhood while the other confidently strode into adolescence. He carried about him that impulse to release the apron strings that he'd spent his formative years clinging to.
Dorcas detected some annoyance in the furrowed brow of the boy as he pushed into the kitchen.
"This is your childhood." It wasn't a question, but there was an invitation to explain in her words all the same.
"Yes, Dorcas. This was my home. The boy there is twelve years old."
"It's you."
Mauro nodded, confirming the obvious truth.
"But why are we here, Mauro? How can this be the memory you mean for me to investigate?" Dorcas felt her patience waning.
It was a risk to start in on the study of the memory that tied Mauro to Tom when he was due to return home this evening. Dorcas felt the chance to confirm its tampering slipping away with this stroll into Mauro's more distant past.
"I want you to understand."
Dorcas shook her head impatiently. "Understand what exactly? Is this the memory that you believe to be altered?"
"No. It is not. When the bells of Santa Maria sound moments from now, my family and my village will be no more."
A wave of pity nearly washed away her irritation, but the vibrating impatience remained.
"I need you to have context," he explained. "When I reveal to you what I've done. I need you to see the moment that began the course of action that I took."
Dorcas shrugged, returning her attention to the mother and son who'd begun to argue.
"––to go into the mountains to hunt with the other boys. I'll only be away for two days," the boy Mauro was saying.
Dorcas watched the woman's shoulders stiffen and her head shake before her son had even finished his sentence.
Her traveling companion leaned in, dipping toward her ear to repeat the boy's words. But Dorcas belatedly realized that she did not need a translation.
"I can understand well enough. I think it's to do with the subconscious link between you and the memory. You understand. Therefore I understand."
"Hunting. That is the word you chose to use here? With me? As if I don't know that you've been in the Nationalists' camp, killing men."
The sharp gasp Dorcas gave at his mother's words stiffened the man's shoulders next to her. His tension seemed to thicken the air around them.
"They are not men. They are animals. They killed Papa. Why is your heart filled with pity for these men but not for our people?"
As Dorcas watched the boy, he drew himself up to his full height. He was tall, but thin. There was a determined man behind that child's face. But, Dorcas supposed, the war and its sub-conflicts had made adults of many children before their time.
The Spaniard's mother turned and Dorcas was stunned by her arresting beauty. The dark waves of her hair framed the most extraordinarily green eyes. They bore into her child, who boldly returned the glare.
"The gift you were given was not meant for murder, Mauro. The more you exercise the muscles of hatred, the easier it will be to flex them."
A sudden pop followed by the skittering noise of glass behind Dorcas caused her to jump. Mauro's arm came around her waist and turned her to the scrubbed butcher block table at her back. A crystal vase, now in jagged pieces, had the attention of the four inhabitants of the small kitchen.
"Are you going to stop me?"
It took Dorcas a moment to realize that it was the boy who'd spoken. She looked away from the pulverized vase, water and flowers spilling out across the table top, and saw Mauro's mother's expression. Frightened and sad. Her answer was written there in the lines of her worried face. No, she could not stop him.
The bells of Santa Maria tolled in the distance and the boy Mauro turned away from his mother, leaving her to ring her apron in her hands.
An explosion reduced the wall of the kitchen to gravel a moment later before opening a chasm in the floor of the upper level room.
A pair of arms came around Dorcas to pull her in, sheltering her beneath Mauro's chest as they plummeted with his younger self and his mother into the dust and the chaos.
:::
6 May, 1943 Hospital Wing, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
"You visit Clay Atwood?" Dorcas asked as she walked quietly over to the bed nearest the window.
She'd gotten halfway up the staircase between the second and third floor landings before she'd remembered that Cal said something about visiting hours in the infirmary.
As she approached, she was reminded of the close call she'd had with Madam Higgins a week ago when she'd used the Chameleon Charm to sneak up here to threaten Clay. The sight of Cal, book marked by his index finger as he closed it and looked up at her, convicted her.
She was not a kind person.
Cal was the kind one. Cal read to Clay. Talked to him.
She'd only visited the once. And it was for the purpose of terrorizing the boy and intimidating him into keeping his silence about Tom's involvement in his accident.
"I read to him," Cal answered as he looked up from the chair he sat in. "I alternate between school reading and fun reading. Tonight is Robert Louis Stevenson." He held up Treasure Island so that she could see the title.
"That's kind of you." Dorcas felt an uncontrollable squirming in her limbs at her own inferiority in the face of Cal's goodness.
Cal shrugged off the compliment. "It must be frightening. Being trapped like that. When I heard what had happened, I couldn't stop thinking about how he must feel. I don't know if he can hear me or not. But I think if I was trapped like this I would want to know that someone was there. Even if they couldn't do anything for me but take my mind off of it." He paused and smiled, the color rising in his cheeks. He was embarrassed by his own thoughtfulness.
Dorcas's mind went blank for a moment as she stood there and looked at him. When a thought did find its way back into the void it was a declaration.
There is no one else like him.
"Was there something you wanted, Clerey?"
His voice was kind too. She liked the way he said her name. Even when he called her Clerey like she was one of the fellas at Quidditch practice.
"Clerey?"
She swallowed and shook the fuzzy notion from her mind. "You forgot this. You haven't read it yet. It's from your mum. Not that I was interested in who it was from. I just––" She thrust the letter awkwardly toward him. "Here."
His smile widened and the corners of his eyes crinkled.
Dorcas felt her own cheeks heat under his gaze.
But his eyes left her as they dipped to the neat script on the envelope, allowing her a moment to recover her bearings.
"D'you want to hear how I'm disowned from my family on account I refused to take the girl my mother's hoping to marry off to my brother to some silly dance, Clay?"
When Dorcas could pull in normal breaths once again, she realized that she'd probably been gone longer than Tom would want. She knew she shouldn't linger any longer.
She turned to leave as Cal began to read aloud from his mother's letter.
"My Dear Son, it pains me to be the one," he read before breaking off. "Thanks, Clerey."
She waved, but did not turn back to look. If she did, she knew the sight of her kindhearted friend would entice her to stay and bask in his selflessness like a coldblooded reptile basking in the borrowed warmth of the sun.
The slap of a book on the sterile tile floor of the infirmary jolted her resolve and she spun toward the sound, forgetting all about Tom and his expectations.
As she turned, the sight of Treasure Island on the floor at Cal's feet trapped the breath in her chest. Cal was suddenly standing in stiff shock, staring at the sheaf of paper in his hand before he crumpled back onto the chair he'd just left.
"All over."
That was all he said before the letter joined the book on the floor as his head sank into his hands.
Tom was forgotten. Dorcas's promise to meet him was forgotten. She could only think of Cal. What was wrong with Cal?
Stevenson's words were brushed to the side along with Cal's mother's. With her breath still caught in her chest, Dorcas struggled to push out the words she needed to say.
She choked, "Cal, what is it? Are you going to be sick?"
His head was heavy in his hands, yet she tried to lift his chin or pull his hands away. The shudder in his shoulders and chest suggested silent sobs. But he'd been smiling only seconds ago.
Some innate reflex in her tugged at her arms, urging her to put them around him and pull him to her. Her voice whispered comfort to him even as her own distress weighed heavily on her ribcage, refusing to expand and pull in air.
It wasn't distress that squeezed her. It was Cal's arms that crushed her to him.
"He's gone, Dorcas. It's all over for me. He's gone."
She was in an uncomfortable position, half-kneeling, half-crouching before Cal as he held her against his chest and rocked back and forth on the chair. His desolate voice and the indiscernible words did little to help her understand.
The letter. Where had it gone? Maybe the gaps could be filled in with his mother's words.
"Who's gone, Cal? What happened?"
He continued to cling to her and she could feel his tears through the blouse she wore soaking to her collarbone.
She flailed behind her with one hand, searching the ground for the bit of paper that held the context of his grief, snatching it up and holding it behind him as she continued to soothe him with her other hand, stroking his hair.
Scanning the words on the page quickly, Dorcas connected them to form the tragic truth. Cal's brother had been killed when his plane was shot down over the Channel. There was no hope this time that he had survived and been sheltered by the Resistance like before. A body had been recovered.
"Oh, Cal! I'm so sorry!"
:::
Days in captivity: 290
The heavier debris had settled, but a permanent cloud of dust hung in the air, obstructing her view. She blinked reflexively to wash the haze from her eyes even as the logical part of her brain tried to remind her that she would feel no effects of the explosion while in Mauro's memory.
A cough several feet to her left announced that the skinny boy had survived the blast and the collapsing of the structure around him.
Dorcas blinked again and strained her eyes in the direction she believed she'd last seen Mauro's mother standing at the stove. All that remained was a heap of stone and tile where the kitchen had caved in around them.
She knew that the woman was dead. But, for the boy's sake, she prayed for a sound to come from that direction.
"It was a two-hundred and fifty kilo medium high-explosive bomb. Dropped on the home of our neighbor. We didn't even feel the direct impact."
Dorcas couldn't reconcile his matter-of-fact account with the smoke and the screams, the fire and the continued concussive impacts of more bombs with her instinct to urgently run for safety. A memory of her own prickled at her skin. A bombing that she'd survived. She and Tom. Just barely.
The boy was stirring from his place beside the door he'd been about to exit. But the door was now several feet above him, hanging by a hinge. He emerged from a spot on the ground level of the building that was a perfect circle of order amidst the chaos around him. Not even a speck of the pulverized wall dotted the immaculate rug beneath him.
Gone was the cloak of maturity he'd been wearing in his earlier interaction with his mother. He scurried from his perfectly formed nest of safety, over large sections of the floor, support beams, and heavy furniture to his mother.
The grown Mauro beside her also stirred and lifted her by the elbow to draw nearer the boy as he struggled to push the upended butcher block table off of his mother. It felt unnatural to watch the boy's efforts and not lend her aid. But she and her travel companion just watched.
He narrated the scene that Dorcas wished she could turn away from.
"The stew that she'd been preparing flew into her face. The hot coals from the fire buried her. I don't know what she suffered at the end or if she could have lived if I had been a little faster getting to her."
Dorcas's hand found his forearm and squeezed it sympathetically. "There was nothing you could do. The impact alone was enough to kill her."
Both onlookers watched silently as the boy searched in one apron pocket and pulled out the jet rosary that she saw Mauro toying with sometimes.
"My last words to her were a threat. I resented her for putting obstacles in the way of my vengeance."
Dorcas leaned into him, comforting him with her weight. "You couldn't have known what would happen."
"I thought it was me. I thought that my magic had gotten away from me. I remembered wanting to unbridle its full force. I can still feel the building momentum of my magic, begging for release. And I believed this was the result."
The boy stood, wiping tears from his dusty face, leaving a smear of earthy brown beneath his nose like a moustache. And they followed him as he cleared a path from a space that was once the home's parlor.
He stopped when a section of the ceiling impeded him in his progress through a narrow hallway. Extending his right arm, he blasted the rubble aside and continued through a cavernous hole in one wall.
"Grandfather?"
Dorcas could make out pieces of a smashed bedstead. A massive support beam from the ceiling had collapsed onto it, splintering the wood in places. She knew that if the bed had an occupant, they were no longer alive.
"My grandfather had taken to his bed after he learned of my father's death in the war. I don't know if it was a stroke…an illness. He never spoke after he heard the news. He was crushed when the upper level came down on his bed."
She heard the sob that knotted his chest and made his words faint. Pulling him into her, she hugged him tightly and imagined that the boy might also feel the consolation.
"You said the rest of your family also perished? Your sister and brother?"
His response was a nod and a jerk of his head, indicating that the boy had moved on, crawling from the wreck of his grandfather's bedroom and out into a side yard where a garden was in full bloom. Its beds had been brutalized by fallout of the explosions too.
Dorcas saw the boy disappear behind a chunk of wall that once belonged to the neighboring house. When she rounded a bend with Mauro, a small body became visible. A child, a boy by the look of the short trousers he wore. His body was riddled with glass. A deep wound cut through his right ear and the shard of glass that had done the damage protruded from his temple.
"He's gone," came a faint voice. Dorcas had assumed it was the boy Mauro, confirming his fears aloud.
"What can I do, Carmen?"
Peering around the boy's huddled frame, she saw that it was a girl of about sixteen who'd pronounced the little one's fate. Dorcas could only make out the upper portion of the girl's frame because it rested beneath a section of brick wall that had crashed onto the garden.
"There was no time," the girl whispered. "I tried to get to him."
"It's not your fault. Let me help you."
"I'm alright. It doesn't hurt."
Mauro pulled away from Dorcas to lean over the portion of the wall that pinned his sister to the ground.
"I regret my thoughtlessness when I tried to save her. I did not realize that a bit of iron bracing had pierced her lung. She didn't feel it when I tore the bricks from her and healed the wound. She was paralyzed from the chest down. I watched her slowly drown in her own blood. Too ignorant to know what was happening."
He took Dorcas's hand and pulled her away.
"But you do not need to witness my clumsy attempts to save the last of my family."
:::
6 May, 1943 Ravenclaw Common Room, Fourth Floor, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Dorcas left Cal in the care of Madam Higgins. He'd calmed considerably once the matron had convinced him to drink down a potion. A house elf was sent to fetch Professor Dumbledore and at that point, Dorcas realized there was no use for her there anymore.
She knew that it was pointless to go to the library looking for Tom.
He wouldn't be there. Chances were very good that he was in the Secret Room breaking things and cursing her for a liar. It wasn't something she wanted to seek out. It was better to let him seeth alone and try to speak to him tomorrow once he'd calmed down. He would have to understand that she couldn't walk away from a friend when he was in as much distress as Cal had been.
"It didn't work."
Dorcas blinked in the dim light of the nearly deserted Ravenclaw Common Room and found Myrtle sitting on the sofa before the fire. Its flames reflected in the lenses of her glasses giving her a deranged look.
"He didn't apologize?" asked Dorcas, disappointment pulling her shoulders to the floor with an invisible weight.
"Oh, no. He did apologize. But it didn't work. I'm not on board with this."
Dorcas plopped heavily onto the cushion beside her friend. "On board with what, Myrtle?"
"With him. And you. The both of you. It's not going to work. You won't get over it so quickly with another bloke."
"Another bloke? Myrtle, what are you on about?" Deflated only a moment ago, Dorcas felt herself begin to swell with indignation.
Would she have to defend her friendship with Cal on all fronts? When Cherry did her usual bit of teasing about her and Cal being perfect for one another, Dorcas could brush it aside. But if Myrtle thought she could lay it on when Dorcas was already pressed to convince Tom there was nothing there, then she didn't know what else she could do to convince the world she didn't have feelings for Cal.
"Yes. Tom is just a distraction from your grief, Dorcas. It's not going to work. When Tom finally throws you over––AND HE WILL––" she continued, raising her voice over Dorcas's confused objection. "You'll miss Jack even more and you'll hate yourself for using Tom."
"Jack?"
Dorcas stared into the fire trying to make sense of Myrtle's words. How did Myrtle know Jack? Was she even referring to the same Jack that Dorcas knew? She didn't know of a Jack that was mutual between Myrtle and herself. She only knew Jack Hardin.
But…how did Myrtle know him?
Myrtle sighed. "That's not funny. Jack. Jack, your fiancé. Jack who died last fall. Jack."
"I had a fiancé? Jack was my fiancé?" Her mind was reeling. None of these statements that Myrtle made so sincerely were resonating with any part of her memory. The pounding of her heart and the squeeze of her lungs made her vision swim. There was a searing pain at the back of her skull that caused Dorcas's hand to fly to the spot and massage it.
"Don't play games, Dorcas," Myrtle growled. Her hands came to Dorcas's knees and turned her away from the fire, studying her carefully. "Do you really not remember him? Jack? He was in the army. In Egypt. He died last November."
Dorcas slowly shook her aching head.
"I don't remember."
:::
Days in captivity: 290
Dorcas followed Gilly down the hall, fighting the urge to twist her hands in knots as she tried to order her mind and prepare for the dinner hour that she was required to spend with Tom.
He'd returned a little earlier than she'd expected, setting off a subtle charm that Mauro had placed to alert them. The last thing they needed was to be caught huddled together over the Pensieve in the laboratory.
She departed Mauro's company hastily, leaving so many of the questions swirling in her mind unasked. With a furious whisper of "Get rid of it," she rushed up to her room to tidy her appearance and distract Tom in order to give Mauro some time to collect himself.
"There's my pet. Did you miss me?" Tom asked from his place at the head of the long mahogany table.
It was excessive to pass every supper so formally. With only Dorcas and Mauro as dining companions, it was unnecessary. But Tom insisted.
It was all about optics. Even if those optics were only marked by Tom.
Dorcas only replied by placing a quick kiss on his cheek before taking her own place on his right side.
"Is it just the two of us tonight?" she asked innocently. Implying casually that Tom would know more about Mauro's whereabouts than she did.
Tom smirked as Gilly laid dishes before them. "Do we need a chaperone?"
Dorcas distracted herself by pouring wine. She avoided looking at the elf who bustled at the table's edge with her ears and bulbous eyes barely peeking over its surface. Mauro reassured her that the elf had been confined to the kitchen while they explored his memory in the Pensieve and remained unaware of the afternoon the two of them had spent combing the wreckage of Mauro's past.
She trusted his skills when bamboozling a house elf, but her mind raced with alternatives. Did Gilly suspect anything?
"Gilly."
Tom's voice caused the glass in Dorcas's hand to jerk, sloshing a Burgundy red onto her fingertips. The accident didn't go unobserved, even if no comment was made.
"Find out what is taking Mauro so long. Tell him he's expected presently."
Before Gilly could finish her obsequious bow, the door to the dining room slid open and Mauro joined them with a quiet apology.
"I half expected you to try for a runner," joked Tom. "You know I mean to have an answer from you tonight."
Mauro hung his head apologetically. "I will not avoid my duty, my lord."
"Glad to hear it!"
Tom lifted his glass before him and gestured for Dorcas and Mauro to do the same.
"So it is to be an engagement, then? The joining of our powerful magic is something to celebrate!"
Dorcas dropped her arm without toasting the grotesque scheme.
"Engagement?" she asked. The squeezing of her throat around the word was not rehearsed. It was a mother's natural response to the casual way in which two men struck a bargain for her daughter.
"Yes, Birdie. I put the idea forward for a union between our daughter and Mauro. You remember, surely."
Dorcas sat back in her chair. "I didn't think you were serious, my lord. There's a span of twenty years between them."
The corners of his mouth began a deliberate trek upward into a slow grin. She couldn't look at that gloating smile and so her eyes drifted their accusation in Mauro's direction instead.
"We have a wedding to plan, pet."
Dorcas cut across Tom's words, knowing that the breach could have her eating her supper out of his hand as she knelt beside his chair once again. But that didn't matter. Her objection would be noted even if it couldn't stop the insidious plot from moving forward.
All her trust was placed in Mauro's sense of decency and honor; two qualities that had been called into question with the memory she'd experienced this afternoon.
Her stomach roiled as she imagined how easily Mauro could manipulate her. But he was her best hope at getting Ryann away from Tom. Another opportunity for escape may not come her way again.
"You aren't serious about this, Mauro."
Mauro didn't return her glare. He kept his eyes trained on the meat he was cutting.
"Why shouldn't he be? Our Merry is a fine young woman. It's high time she had an understanding with an eligible–––"
Dorcas could hear no more. The ring of her knife colliding with her dinner plate cut off the rest of Tom's grotesque statement.
"She is NOT a young woman, you unmitigated bastard! She is a child of fourteen! And you're so eager to sell her off to a man who…" Mauro's glare cut to her finally as he stiffened. She knew he was attempting to transmit a warning. Play your part, but not too well. "What do you know about him? Besides the fact that he has more magical ability than you could dream of. What do you know of him? Is he a good man? Is he caring? Gentle? Cruel? Neglectful?"
"You were a child of fourteen once too, Birdie. Shall I remind you of the sort of girl you were at that age? Better she marry young than carry on as you did. You're a hypocrite."
Dorcas was out of her chair before she knew that she'd even stood.
Tom stared a challenge up at her.
When Dorcas realized that she only had the option to strike him or flee she paused to consider. Her fingers itched to close around his throat. But she couldn't cover the distance in one leap. Not in the cumbersome robes she was wearing at any rate.
Taking advantage of the silence, Mauro attempted to placate her.
"I will not wed a child, my lord."
Tom's searing eyes left Dorcas frozen in her limbo of fight or flight when he turned in the Spaniard's direction.
"What do you mean? You just accepted the proposal."
"Dorcas," Mauro pleaded. "Please sit so that we can discuss this rationally and calmly."
"There's nothing rational about this. The two of you are plotting with my child's future."
Abandoning his attempt to reason with Dorcas, Mauro turned instead to address Tom. "I will accept your offer of marriage to your daughter. But I will ask for an engagement period of two years. Merry will be of age when I wed her, my lord. Two years seems like a reasonable period to get to know the young woman."
"A lot can happen in two years, Mauro. A better suitor could present himself. It would be a shame if you let such an opportunity slip through your fingers."
Mauro was unswayed, even as Dorcas felt herself go cold at the threat of Ryann being married to someone else in the meantime.
"If a better opportunity for the young lady presents itself, I will not begrudge her for it."
It was subtle, but Dorcas saw a calculated acquiescence soften Tom's jawline. Then he nodded.
"Two years. You'll wed on Merry's seventeenth birthday. I reserve the right to dissolve the agreement in the intervening period if a better offer is presented to me."
Mauro nodded solemnly. "That is a fair offer, my lord. I accept."
"May I be excused?" asked Dorcas through clenched teeth.
Tom watched the wine in his glass as he swirled it and considered.
"You haven't eaten anything."
"I'm not hungry."
She worried that Tom might keep her here because of her insubordination, but he seemed bored with her presence.
He waved her off. "We don't require your histrionics. You may go."
:::
8 May, 1943 Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Supposing Tom would suspect her if she allowed her absence to carry on longer, Dorcas numbly descended the stairs to the Entrance Hall. Like a ghost, she drifted into the Great Hall and floated amidst the noise of students who ate with books spread before them. Examination season and the end of term was looming.
Dorcas knew she should be preparing her own time tables for studying, but she could find no room for them in her mind. It was taken up with torturous thoughts of memories melted away like snow in a great blaze.
Her first instinct had her lashing out at Myrtle. If she thought creating a fiction about Dorcas and Jack was a good joke, then she was a miserable comedian. But Myrtle's push back was too convincing. She'd even taken Dorcas up to her own bedchamber where she threw open the school trunk at the end of her bed.
"Where are the letters, Dorcas?"
Dorcas didn't even know how to respond to that. She watched as Myrtle dug through robes and nightgowns. She upended a wooden box that held jewelry and other trinkets.
"You wrote to one another all the time. I saw you with at least a dozen of them."
Bending to collect her sapphire earrings, a key on a black ribbon, and the necklace that Tom had made her, she replaced them all except the necklace with the alabaster bird. This, she placed around her neck as if it could convince Dorcas that her relationship with Tom was legitimate.
But the more she watched Myrtle search for evidence of a person Dorcas was barely acquainted with, a person she insisted that Dorcas knew intimately, the talisman of Tom's affection hung like an albatross.
She'd spent the ruined Hogsmeade weekend in the library, pulling down any book Madam Poole could help her find that referenced Memory Charms.
Although she couldn't remember Jack beyond their first couple of encounters in Little Hangleton, the way Myrtle described her anguish when she learned of his passing convinced Dorcas that her friend was telling the truth.
The only way that Dorcas could make the deep erasure of the boy she loved make sense was to acknowledge that someone had wanted her to forget.
Only one person benefited from Jack's disappearance in her mind and heart.
She couldn't push away the look on Tom's face as they left the infirmary after confirming Clay Atwood remembered every second of the basilisk's attack.
"Have you ever heard of Obliviate?"
Her own words rang like a death knell in her ears. Tom's curious stare did not say, "Tell me more." Instead, it asked, "How did you come to know about it?" There was alarm in that look. There was fear.
Dorcas had interpreted that look incorrectly at that moment. Now she understood what the expression communicated. It declared that he was only just realizing how close Dorcas was to lifting the curtain.
And the pain of Tom's betrayal ripped through her mind like a throbbing chasm.
She straightened and walked past the spot she usually occupied across from Myrtle at the Ravenclaw table. Instead, she took up the empty space to Tom's left at the Slytherin table with a weak smile.
"With Mudblood Meadowes gone, you'll have no competition for first in your year," observed Leander Yaxley. "May not even come back to sit exams, I hear."
Cal had left school yesterday morning to attend the memorial service for his brother. Dorcas knew he'd left concerned that his father might not allow him to return, even to finish out this term.
She dropped her gaze to the plate of food that Tom put in front of her, grateful for something to focus on instead of the infuriating speculation.
"Well, if anything good has come from this bloody inconvenience of a war," Roman Flint chimed. "It's all the dead Muggles, to be sure."
Dorcas turned and narrowed her eyes at him, but her troubled mind couldn't think of a single reply to that hateful comment. Uncharacteristically, it was Tom who'd come to Cal's defense.
"Meadowes was close to his brother, from what I understand. He'll be called upon to fill the void for the family. It'll be Muggle schooling for him in the fall."
"His sort don't belong at Hogwarts anyway." Evlyn Rosier sneered in Dorcas's direction as he said this. No doubt, he meant to communicate that Dorcas's half blood put her in the same category. She choked on her hatred for the Sixth Year, no words coming forth to defend Cal or herself.
Tom slid a goblet of pumpkin juice close to her plate and urged her to drink. She did, feeling a sense of peace come over her as the cool liquid slipped down her throat.
In an instant, she felt her doubts about Tom drift away. The miraculous effect that the pumpkin juice had enticed her to take another long gulp. It fortified her faith in Tom's love for her and exorcised any misgivings she'd had about Tom's intentions to control her through her memories.
The mention of Jack was simply a cruel joke. Myrtle was jealous of Dorcas's bond with Tom. It pulled her away from Myrtle and forced the awkward Ravenclaw to make other friendships. It was good for Myrtle to have to branch out and find new friends. Dorcas could not always be her constant companion.
"You're not one of the fools who subscribe to the adage The Only Good Muggle is a Dead Muggle, are you Flint?"
Tom asked the question with a smile in his voice. Dorcas knew his words were offensive, but was lulled into a sense of contentment by the amusement she heard there. She took another deep drink of her juice and settled in to silently follow the joust of ideals.
"I'm surprised to hear you proclaim that you don't, Riddle," Flint chastised.
Rosier broke in with his encouragement. "He's only joking. It's his bleeding destiny to set the world to its proper order once again."
"If all Muggles were dead, Flint, who would do the laboring? Do you expect wizards to do all of the harvesting? Or, do you mean to propose that the magical population starve to death?"
Abraxas Malfoy chuckled to himself as he cut his meat and listened. "Enslaving Muggles. It's only a dream, Riddle. It's never been done."
"Never been done is not a compelling reason to dismiss a thing," argued Tom. He smiled at Abraxas and smoothly offered a counterpoint. "Think of all of the things that have been impossible until they were possible. Flying was for the dragons and doxies until a wizard enchanted a broom. Time was a linear construct, only moving forward until the Time Turner. And death was an absolute until alchemists defied it with a stone."
He turned to Dorcas and winked with a sly smirk, sharing a joke with her that no one else understood. "They doubt me when I'm on the brink of immortality. Simple minds. Lacking imagination."
Her stomach somersaulted. She felt the secondhand drunkenness of his awesome ability. Ability that she played a part in as well.
:::
Days in captivity: 291
Dorcas stretched her jaw, wincing immediately as pain shot through her cheek. Dizzy with the shock of it, she nearly missed a step on the way downstairs. With one eye swollen shut, she reminded herself to take extra care when navigating the house.
When she gained the first floor corridor, she pushed into the laboratory and immediately went to the storage cupboard for some Fog. She did not want to remember the more painful details of last night.
But the way she'd emasculated Tom was not unpleasant to remember, so that memory would be safe from the Swooping Evil venom. His reaction when he found that his impotence persisted no matter what he tried to arouse himself was the part she wanted to forget.
"Jesus Christ!" she swore as a sharp inhale to her right told her she was not alone in the lab.
Obstructed by her swollen right eye, she hadn't noticed his presence.
Mauro immediately placed a hand on her chin and tipped her face in his direction. "What did he do to you?"
Jerking her chin from his gentle grip, Dorcas chuckled darkly. "I've had worse from him. You shouldn't be here."
"He left last night. Had I known that he'd done this, I would have––"
Dorcas didn't need the self-soothing platitudes. She cut across him, negating whatever oath he meant to swear.
"It doesn't matter. You and I need to maintain an indifference to one another."
"I'm anything but indifferent, Dorcas. You know that. Let me have a look at that." He reached for her chin again and she batted him away.
"Leave it," she commanded. "It doesn't matter. I don't matter. You don't matter. The only thing that matters is getting Ryann away from him. I'll not let you fuck it up with your feelings."
Mauro's hand was back at her chin, tipping her face toward the bright light of the window. "I'll leave the bruising so he won't suspect me. But I'm afraid your cheekbone is shattered."
"I know it is," she snapped. Did he always forget that she was a healer too?
"How did it happen?" asked Mauro. He prodded the purple and blue skin around her eye, wincing when she winced.
Dorcas shrugged. "He couldn't… perform. I laughed at him."
There was a rapid and violent curse that Dorcas didn't understand but needed no translation for. Following the gentle stroke of his thumb, Dorcas felt the insistent throbbing subside as something beneath the skin shifted and her eye socket clicked sickeningly.
"Leave the swelling and the color at least. He'd be upset to have his handiwork erased."
"He should be embarrassed by the reminder of his childishness," spat Mauro.
Dorcas moved out of his reach the moment she felt herself healed. They couldn't waste a single moment of Tom's absence.
"I'm glad we have a moment to speak. I'm not pleased that you kept things from me. If I'm to help you with your memory, I'm essentially your therapist, Mauro."
The Spaniard shook his head and blinked. "I don't understand. I showed you everything from that day, Dorcas. I left nothing out."
"You showed me a scene from your childhood that had fuck-all to do with the memory that Tom is holding over you. D'you imagine that we have time to examine the myriad of reasons why you're a psychopath?"
Mauro, stunned as if slapped, stepped back a pace. "Psychopath?"
"Don't think that little detail slipped past me for a moment. You called it hunting. You've been killing since you were twelve." She paused, narrowing the full force of her one-eyed glare on him. "Or do you expect me to believe that memory was altered too?"
"It's true. I stole into the enemy camp and murdered men for revenge. I do not pretend that I was innocent, even at that age."
Dorcas snorted. "You once told me that you didn't remember why you and your mother quarreled just before her death. But you did. How am I supposed to trust you, Mauro? How do I know that you won't abandon me and Ryann the moment I uncover the truth for you?"
"You can trust me, cariña!"
Her eyebrows raised in challenge, pulling the swollen skin around her right eye tight. "Trust you? Based on what? Some vow you made on your mother's grave? This is my child at stake. I would be a fool to trust you. And what if Tom marries her off to someone else while you're showing me memories that you hope will absolve you from guilt in my eyes? Hmm? What then?"
"I do not wish for absolution. Even if you find some evidence that the memory was tampered with, it would not absolve me from all of my guilt. You told me once that you hoped I'd go to prison because I was likely guilty of something. I am. I am guilty of so many things, Dorcas. But abandoning you and Ryann to the Dark Lord will never be one of those things. And as for the better offer that Tom threatened, it was a bluff."
Dorcas felt the tension leaving her as she voiced each of her fears aloud, hearing Mauro refute every one of them.
"How do you know it was a bluff?" she asked in a calmer voice.
Mauro reached for her and gently placed his lips against the livid mark on her cheek. "Because there's nothing that he wants more than a witch or wizard with your talents combined with mine. No one else alive can give him that besides me and you."
"Except you and my daughter."