Chapter 2: With the Worse Yet to Come

A lot can happen in the span of one week for a normal family. In her family, it only takes a few days for her father to build up enough anger and frustration to near tear down the entire house.

A large branch of his work was uncovered by the authorities, meaning all his laundering business had to be shut down. Temporary or permanently, nobody knows. Cressida highly doubts that he will stay so low for long.

He hasn't told them, despite her mother's request to know if the police have linked everything back to him. If they did, and her father is taken away, her mother would be completely lost. Her mother had been with her father since she was fifteen and knows no other life. Cressida knows that it isn't even her that keeps her mother here. It's the unknown. A timid woman, scared of the world. Unable to fend for herself.

But Cressida isn't timid.

Just go. Just go to James'. Just apparate and leave.

She plans to. Through the nights, when her family sleeps, Cressida packs her Hogwarts trunk. Just little by little so he can't tell the difference when he comes into her room every night. What he's checking for, she never knows. But he always leaves with a satisfied grunt.

Running away from home is almost unfathomable in her mind. She wouldn't come back. There's no end to the year where she hugs her mother. This is where she lived for seventeen years.

Sirius did it. He said to her it was the best decision he ever made. Cressida can imagine that. Imagine herself saying something similar in just a few years' time. At a time that she doesn't have to be sad about going home. She would have all the boys over for tea at least once a week. Her home would be filled with both muggle and wizarding contraptions. The dishes would do themselves and the pictures on the wall would move.

"Elizabeth! Could you come down here, sweetheart?"

Cressida places the small, pocket-sized picture of her and Remus back into her trunk. "Coming!"

"Don't fucking yell inside my house!"

Cressida mimics the words in a mocking tone under her breath, swaying in her step as she meanders down the hall. She's just so sick of them. So sick of being the younger version of her mother when she's not. Her mother is waiting for her in the common hall, her father emerging from the kitchen with a beer in hand. Her mother is wearing a stained apron, her arms crossed neatly and diligently over the top of it. The older woman glances over her shoulder at her husband, who only gives her a tired but pointed expression.

"We were thinking," she begins slowly, "that you should stay here for the whole of the summer. You always run off to your friends and never spend any time with us. And do family things."

"Family things?" Cressida whispers through a scoff. She shakes her head quickly. "No. No. I'm leaving at the beginning of July, like you said I could since I first came back from Hogwarts."

Her father growls at the name. "We're not giving you choice." He points the tip of his bottle-necked beer towards her. "You're staying here and helping me clean up this mess."

"No."

Her mother breathes out shakily, holding her arms tighter around her stomach and turns away. Her father stalks around her, the hand not holding his beer shoved in the pocket of his brown pants. "You ain't eighteen. You don't get a say."

"Seventeen," she corrects. "I'm a witch and the age of adulthood is seventeen for us."

She won't let him keep her here. Cressida knows she could sneak away in the night, but right now, she wants them to know just how much of a fighter she is. Not a runner. Her leaving will be in victory.

"You think you're smart?" he demands, a red tint covering his face. "Smart for talking back at me? Right, now you ain't even going back to that school if they're going to teach ya to be foul mouthing your own parent."

Cressida leaps towards the hallway before her father. Her belongings. She doesn't stop at her father's grip on the back of her shirt, tearing it from the back of the neck.

"Jonathon?!" her mother cries. "Elizabeth, please stop!"

She can't look over her shoulder, already knowing how close he is behind her from the sound of his footsteps. Her hand runs along the dried and flaking wallpaper, knowing that at any second, it might be the only thing keeping her up. She just needs her trunk. Then she can apparate out of here.

A thick and firm hand digs into her upper arm, pulling her to a sudden halt from her sprinting. Cressida's neck twitches in pain as he is pulls her to the floor, one arm being held up, the other scrambling to save her head from the impact. Her legs hastily search for stability on the creaking floor. She can see her mother's frail legs at the end of the corridor, but Cressida pays her no mind. She won't be a slave to this house.

Her hand forms a fist, coming down over and over again on her father's arm that holds her to the floor. "Let me go!" He shakes her violently, the back of her shoulder blades smashing into the floor. Cressida screams, using her legs instead to kick at him.

Her wand.

The idea of using magic on her family had passed through her mind a few times. She didn't know what spell would come off her tongue.

Cressida stops hitting back at her father, who is now dragging her along the floor, away from her room and reaches to the waistband on her jeans. The wood scratches her through her ripped shirt, brushing over her already bruising shoulders. She pulls out her wand, pointing it up at her father. Her mouth opens, preparing to say anything she needs to, to get out of there. But the words don't come. Does she want to hurt him? Stun him? Curse him? Would her mother hate her for it? Would the wizarding government come after her if she did?

It is that exact hesitation that she's lived with her entire life that costs her this moment. Her father's burly and grubby hand snatches her wand away. "No!" Cressida stops kicking, stops trying to get away from him, now fighting for her treasured belonging. "That's mine!"

Her nails dig into his skin, wrapping her fingers around his wrist, the other trying to pry it away. "You don't own anythin' inside this house!"

Tears fill her eyes but there is no moment to wipe them away as Cressida fights through the blurry world. In one large motion, her father spins them both around and barges her up against the wall. "Jonathon!"

Cressida gasps as her head hits the covered brick, grip weakening on her father's skin. Though she hasn't fully let go, he pushes her hand out of the way enough to grip her wand from both ends.

The crack is devastating. A single noise louder than any of their screams. A soft white mist emits from the inside of her wand's core, sinking downwards and evaporating.

With a quivering lip, her fighting stops. Cressida's eyes don't leave the sight of her snapped wand. Spitting to the side, her father tosses it to the ground. The two pieces roll together for a moment then separate. Her dead wand.

Her father marches to her bedroom. She can hear the sound of her dresser begin tossed. Then her trunk. Cressida's back presses against the wall, slowly sliding down it. Fingers push back through her hair, pulling on the strands and the tears fall from her eyes.

He yells out to her, but she doesn't hear it. Her wand is her protection. Her lifeline. Her confidence.

Her textbooks are thrown along the floor, one even sliding outside of her door. Magic Through the Ages. Cressida doesn't know if he's looking for something or just wanting to destroy everything, but the noise doesn't stop. She rocks back and forward, closing her eyes and pretending that she isn't there. It's a dream. This isn't real.

But reality forces itself back upon her at the sound of a mirror smashing. Her eyes snap back open, knowing that there is only one mirror in her room. "No." Scrambling to her feet, ignoring the rush of blood away from her head, Cressida stumbles towards her room.

Everything is broken. Tossed. Sirius' mirror lies on the ground, shattered into at least fifty pieces. Her diary lay open, three pages ripped from the binding. Her trunk, which she had been so carefully packing now rests on the rim of an open lid and the outermost edging. Everything that was inside it now in someplace else.

Her father stands in his actions. His demeanour too calm for what had just happened. He points a finger at her. "Clean this up." Cressida stares at the mirror as he strides past her. She imagines the sound of her door slamming shut but he would never let her close it. "And don't you help her!"

Sinking to her knees, Cressida picks up the closest clothing article she can find, placing the mirror's frame into the soft material. Then, one by one, delicately picks up each shard of glass and places it inside the frame until her floor is clear of glass. She folds her jackets over the mirror completely.

That is how the rest of her evening goes. Slowly, but surely, putting her room back to some sort of normalcy. There is no call for dinner, no call for her to do the dishes. No call for anything.

The one thing she looks for desperately is her pencil. And she finds it, rolled under her nightstand and against the wall that is rimmed with dust and spiderwebs. Knowing she has the safety of being alone for some time, Cressida sinks down in the corner furthest away from her door and opens the diary.

I'm sorry I can't see you tonight.

It takes three hours for him to respond, just half an hour after she usually sneaks out to the shed.

Has something happened?

Cressida thinks her words over carefully before writing. She can't cross anything out without him seeing it first.

He caught me with the mirror. He took it from me. But I'm fine, she adds at the last second as his reply is already forming. I'll get it back before I leave. If she told him it was broken, she would have to explain why she couldn't just repair it with a spell. And telling James that she is wandless would be a terrible idea. He's noted it numerous times already, that the only reason he let her go at the train station was because she is now seventeen. And if she wasn't, he would have gotten his mother and father to alert the 'Muggle Aurors' to help her. Cressida told him that was the worst thing he could do for her.

How is she going to leave? Apparating without a wand is hard and even more dangerous than usual. And James lives on the other side of the country. There's no way she could go straight to his home from hers. She can't call for the Knight Bus without one either.

Cressida's eyes turn to the still closed envelope that she had quickly hunted down, tucking it back into her trunk. It had muggle money in it. Her father probably thought it was just one of the many letters she keeps. She could catch a taxi to the nearest train station then travel north.

Sirius is getting worse.

Worse?

Worse?

I don't know what he's going on about half the time but he's adamant that he needs to get you. And I agree with him, but it's like he knows something is about to happen. Animal instinct?

Maybe he's just remembering things that happened in his home, she writes. But my parents aren't blood purists. They're just… rough. He's worried because his mind is tricking him into thinking he's still in danger.

His response takes a while longer than the rest. I don't think so. He won't tell me what he's thinking, but it has nothing to do with his family.