I'm currently in an extended hotel with shitty internet waiting for my apartment to be ready and for my new job to start making sense. I absolutely abhor writing on my Chromebook, but I'm making due with Google Docs until I'm set up at home. I promise that updates will come more regularly and I throw myself at your mercy for forgiveness.
Please enjoy Chapter 11.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The smoky carcass of a grand town home sent tendrils of soot towards the London night sky. Charlotte overstepped the charred remnants of what had been an 18th century executive desk - a gift from Walburga for Regulus' promotion - and peered down in the smoldering remains illuminated by her wand.
"See anything?"
Somewhere behind her, Louisa called out softly in the night. Their voices remained hushed, though the Death Eaters had come and gone hours ago. In a fit of desperation - or perhaps stupidity - Charlotte had come to inspect the bones of her home.
Shining out between blackened beams and glowing embers, a glitter caught her eye.
"Over here," Charlotte called in a whisper.
Louisa climbed over a fallen banister and the pair of schoolmates observed the preserved paperweight sitting in the dust.
"Go on, add it to the bag."
"It belonged to Regulus."
"Do you want it?"
Charlotte looked at the paperweight. She recalled the day she had spotted it in Knockturn Alley, glittering in the window of Borgin and Burke's. It was rumored to bring good luck to its owner, and it had been nestled alongside a disgusting Hand of Glory. Sizable and appropriately expensive, she had supposed it would be a suitable gift to a graduating Slytherin, with a tiny sterling-silver serpent suspended in gold-leaf littered glass. It peered out to her with its genuine-emerald eyes, and she had purchased it without much of a thought.
Now it lay in the rubble, nearly untouched.
Charlotte's throat began to burn - not from the slow, deep breaths of smoke she inhaled over the last hours searching the rubble for anything of worth - but the burn of a coal residing snugly in her esophagus.
"He'd want you to have it, Charlie."
A sob spit out of her mouth, and her sooty hands caught her face as her eyes leaked the tears that had been held since the first spells were cast and caught, building a roaring symphony of flames that had engulfed her home and her house elf.
Severus was watching her as she forced herself out of the pensieve's grasp. She gasped for air and for several moments could still smell the charcoal that had lingered in the air, feel the heat that had radiated through her shoes.
"Was it that moment?"
Charlotte shook her head, still choking for her breath to return to her lungs.
Over two weeks had passed since her hen night with Louisa in Knockturn Alley. No more than a day had passed - giving her enough time to nurse her hangover - before Severus had begun his grueling new regimen.
It had begun with compiling a list of memories.
Perhaps at first, Severus's plan had appeared innocent enough. Charlotte was of enough intelligence to surmise that Severus simply wanted to know the most traumatic events she had experienced. Compiling a list was not terribly inconvenient, and Charlotte had gone about her normal day with a roll of parchment haphazardly shoved into her pocket to add to throughout her day.
She had not dwelt on her responses, nor had she particularly given much thought to the memories she chose. They had varied greatly - from the time she was informed of her parents' deaths and her first nights in the Black house on Grimmauld Street, to her first successful possession.
Charlotte supposed now that she should have been more selective.
For thirteen days, Charlotte had spent the better part of six hours diving into the pensieve Severus had purchased in London. It had been a relatively pretty basin - carefully formed tiles of mother of pearl, rimmed with a thick lip of silver.
Looking at it now as she struggled to breathe, Charlotte supposed she had never seen any object look more heinous.
They had passed the awkward stages of Severus's new regimen for her recovery. There had been moments that Charlotte would have preferred to remain out of her husband's knowledge - the day she had first come to the Black house the first of them - and Severus's mood shifted and altered greatly with each passing day.
Memories which contained any murmur of Sirius - and there were many - resulted in Severus remaining in his basement for the entirety of the evening.
But those which contained Severus - perhaps just as many - commonly resulted in Severus remaining in the living room for several hours to complete his lesson plans, rather than his typical descent.
Charlotte worried her lip each time Severus instructed her to pull a memory from her mind. She carefully thought of each second that would be cut from it, and the analysis that would be completed afterwards.
For if Severus appeared to dislike Charlotte displaying images of Sirius, he loathed any memory that hinted at her relationship with him.
Severus peered at her as she calmed herself, wrapping her arms tightly across her chest.
"Was it that moment?" Her husband repeated himself.
Charlotte shook her head, her body trembled.
"To the next," Severus turned to the pensieve, "I leave for Hogwarts in six days."
Despite her best efforts, Charlotte could not shake the anxiety which spilled over her skin and filled her belly at the thought of him leaving.
If Severus noticed, he pretended not to.
"Which one is next?"
Severus peered at the parchment. It would be their last journey into the basin for the evening, and Charlotte hoped that it was a good one. Tonight, she decided, she needed his company.
"The day Sirius was arrested."
Charlotte felt nauseous.
She shook her head and stepped towards the pensieve despite this.
For despite her lack of effort with Remus - which was proving to become more and more difficult to hide - Charlotte wanted to get better.
She wanted to stop blowing up their tea pot and the other errant explosions that erupted during her daily activity. For once - the thought caused a wave of warmth to spill over her - she wanted to sit on the sofa with Severus and be able to read an entire article in the Daily Prophet without causing the paper to catch fire.
As much as she hated the basin - and she truly loathed it - Charlotte wanted it all to end.
"Prepare yourself," Severus's voice was icy.
Charlotte flipped through a copy of the Daily Prophet. It was perhaps the last edition she had ever read front-to-back, and she was skimming through an article on the newest breach of security at the Ministry of Magic.
A knock thundered through the door of her room in the Leaky Cauldron.
Charlotte paused in her reading, quietly folding the paper, and drew her wand.
Her steps were calculated and measured as she approached the door and peered through the sickle-sized peep hole in the door.
As she swung the door open, Severus stepped through.
"Sirius Black has been spotted in London."
Alarm rang through her, and as it swept over her skin, it registered on her face.
"Where?"
It had been nearly six months since she had seen Sirius.
Their infrequent meetings in her room had grown more infrequent as the search progressed for the 'murderer' Sirius Black.
Sirius had never forgiven her for becoming a Death Eater, but in the moments after several heavy glasses of fire whiskey, he could often forget it.
Charlotte dove for her cloak, shoving her feet haphazardly into her shoes. She didn't care if they were on the wrong feet, her fingers stretching to snag the charmed bag she took on Death Eater raids.
"Charlotte, you cannot go there," Severus's voice was cold, "You will expose yourself."
"And just leave him there, Sev? We could hide him-!"
"There will never be a moment in my life in which I assist that filthy blood traitor."
Charlotte stared at him from across the sitting area of her room. Across the threadbare sofa, she could take note of the cold set of his mouth, but the burn of fire in his eyes.
"Please help me," she whispered feverishly.
"If you go, Charlotte, I will not come to prevent the aurors from arresting you. I need not remind you that our access to Azkaban has become increasingly narrow. If you go there, you will meet the dementor's kiss."
Charlotte hovered before the door, her fingers wrapped around the knob.
"Don't go," she heard the wizard murmur softly.
Charlotte threw open the door.
Her feet carried her down the winding staircase and into the London streets. Before she could catch her step from the Leaky Cauldron to the sidewalk, she was gone.
As she cracked onto the sidewalk in London, her eyes craned for the sight of trench coats. It was rather stupid, she thought, that all of them appeared to have created a uniform of their own.
Sirius had been an auror trainee, before this nonsense started, he would spot them in an instant.
It only took several moments for the next events to occur.
She spotted Alastor Moody, sprinting down the sidewalk with his wand drawn.
Her eyes caught the short fringe of black hair disappearing behind a dumpster.
And perhaps mere milliseconds passed before her foot arched to begin her chase, and a body slammed her into the alley wall.
Charlotte caught the scream that threatened to erupt from her mouth as she heard the aurors begin the cacophony of curses thrown down the street. She could envision their pursuit as she struggled against the body which held her firmly to the wall.
Strangled sounds slithered from her lips as she shoved and squirmed. They sounded inhuman, almost animalistic in their wails.
Her eyes caught those of her captor, and she froze.
Severus stared at her, his body caged around hers. His chest heaved with the effort to keep her contained, his fingers dug into her shoulders like grappling hooks. For the first time, she noticed his eyes were not entirely black, but sewn with specks of silver and gray.
"Let me go," she sobbed relentlessly, "Let me go to him."
"For once in your miserable life, Charlotte, pick yourself."
"He needs me, Sev. Let me go!"
"If you find yourself incapable of this burden, then I will carry it for you."
Only a moment or two passed before she felt herself being crushed against his chest as she attempted to claw her way through his impenetrable grip and the familiar pull from her navel as Severus apparated them from the war erupting on the street.
As Charlotte spilled out from the pensieve, she did not look up at Severus.
She felt the chill hanging in the air like a fog.
"Was it that moment?"
Severus spoke coldly, his voice frigid.
"No."
In several moments he would descend to the basement, not to reappear until she had closed herself into her bedroom. She would spend those hours alone, staring at the door she could not walk through.
It would be another long evening.
There were seven days left before Severus returned to Hogwarts to begin preparing for the new school year. They had completed his lesson plans days ago. Severus did not confine himself to his study for any purpose now other than when he was determined to avoid her.
Charlotte did not want to be avoided anymore.
"Why did you come, that day?"
Her voice was a soft murmur in the dark as Severus lit the living room. His footsteps were measured, his face already turned towards the doorway.
"There were aurors everywhere. Even if you were already working for Dumbledore, they would have arrested you - for helping me."
Severus returned the heinous basin to its cabinet.
"I always wondered that - why you came. It never added up to me, after all these years. The Dark Lord was gone. You had struck your deal with Dumbledore."
He closed the cabinet, but did not move.
"I was just another Death Eater."
As he turned his focus seemed to be on anything in the room but her.
Charlotte persisted, seeing him leer at the basement door.
"I wasn't worth anything to you."
Severus had crossed the room with relative ease, but at her words his fingers closed the door they had begun to draw open.
"What did you just say?"
"I wasn't worth anything to you. I was just your protege. I wasn't worth anything anymore."
"Is that what you think?"
Her husband was peering at her now, with the strangest expression upon his drawn, stern face.
For a moment, she wondered if she had ever seen Severus look incredulous before.
"You said it, that night. When we got back to the Leaky Cauldron."
His face turned passive, "I did not."
"You gave me a calming draught and told me to go to bed, but I wouldn't stop crying," even now her eyes burned, "And you told me that I was worthless."
Severus straightened, his eyes narrowing, "I have never called you worthless."
"You did, though, that night."
"You are mistaken."
"Then what did you say? Because I'm confused, Severus. You tell me that you want me here, and that you don't want me to run off to Boston. You say I'm supposed to be useful here, and I'm trying to get better. But you're leaving in a week, and I'm going to be here all alone! Why should I stay?"
Charlotte's chest heaved as the words left her throat in a scratchy, heated jumble.
"Just go on, then," She found herself continuing, unable to stop the verbal vomit that spilled from her mouth and had reduced her husband's eyes to slits, "Go on. I'll just stay here and be useless."
She was crying now, the hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes to dribble and collect at her jawline. Charlotte supposed she had never felt more idiotic in her life.
Her husband crossed the living room and opened the cabinet. Rather than draw forth the mother-of-pearl basin that by sight could make her skin crawl, he pulled forth the bronze one beneath it.
Severus drew a silvery line from his temple to his wand tip. He reached and roughly grabbed her wrist to drag her to the bowl.
"I have never called you worthless," he snarled, before shoving her in.
Severus watched as Charlotte dribbled the doctored whiskey down her chin.
Her choked sobs caught with each sip.
"Why did you do that," the witch's voice left her mouth in shuddering cries.
Severus's fists clenched.
"Drink the fucking draught, Charlotte."
The witch continued to choke down the dosed liquor. With each swallow, her trembles began to slow, her breath began to even.
"I never suspected you of such worthless behavior."
Charlotte's eyes continued to stream.
"I expect better from you. I require better from you."
"I'm not worthless," she sobbed as the calming draught took hold, "I need him."
"Go to bed," Severus snarled as he threw himself down on to the threadbare sofa, "Your nonsense is tiring me."
Severus watched his fists clench and release, his knuckles whitening with every movement, striped with marks from Charlotte's nails.
Charlotte remained silent.
When her breathing slowed, he looked up to stare at her slumbering on the bed, her eyes still leaking.
Severus smoothed her hair away from her forehead.
His thumbs caught the leaking tears from her lashes.
"You are mine."
Charlotte did not look at Severus as they left the pensieve, nor did she dare take her eyes from the close inspection of her shoes.
Silent tension filled the room as she wondered if she could apparate from that spot on the living room carpet to somewhere she could be entirely alone.
"That is why I came for you," his voice interrupted the silence with ice, "That is why you are here. That is why you will remain here."
Charlotte swallowed.
"Do you understand?"
There we go! Chapter 11! This chapter was incredibly difficult for me to write. I rewrote it at least five times this week. So PLEASE let me know what you think because I'm genuinely tempted to rewrite it again...
Let me know what you think in the reviews section. Hit the Follow/Favorite buttons so you know when the next chapter is up.
Because I am on my Chromebook, I will not be calculating House Points in this chapter because I do not have my key (it's on my PC, still packed in the trenches of my Ubox rental). I will recalculate at the next update so do not forget to throw your House name in the comments for a chance to win the House Cup!