Seven Years, Chapter 14 (End of Year 1).
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Beta Reader: Chocolateowl.
Merula woke up slowly, blinking the light from her eyes as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Much to her surprise, she recognized the room around her despite the darkness. She was back at Malfoy Manor, and that was strange, because she didn't feel like she had been sleeping for four days.
It took a few minutes of shifting around for her to realize she would never get any sleep, especially not on an empty stomach, so she decided to slip out of bed and head downstairs. If she had any luck, she could kick Dobby awake and get something to eat without waking anyone, although she was annoyed she had to do so in bare feet and pajamas, something she hated given how cold the stone staircase was.
It was three steps down those stairs that Merula froze. She heard voices: quiet, hushed ones. Even though she tried very hard to listen in, she could not hear anything.
Part of Merula wanted to head back up the stairs, back to the safety of her bed. She could possibly even raid Draco's room for his candy stash, though she doubted she would find anything worth eating within. Another part of her was so hungry she was willing to eat Dobby, if it came down to it.
So Merula walked down the stairs quietly, taking confident strides until she turned at the second flight of stairs, looking down at the main hallway of Malfoy Manor.
She had expected the conversation to be taking place in the central meeting room with the massive feast table that was the centre of every celebration at the manor, or at the very least, taking place in the kitchen. Instead, she saw Lucius standing in the main hall, his arms crossed and his face furious, standing with three grim-faced Aurors.
Just the sight of the Aurors alone made Merula think of the night she last saw her parents, and how they had taken them away. Was the same thing going to happen to the Malfoys? Merula had never truly come to love Narcissa, but Lucius? He didn't deserve to be thrown out a window to his death.
It was as her legs froze in place that one of the Aurors turned to her, and he offered a slight smile. Despite the storm of horrors running through her veins, Merula almost felt calmed by the presence of the young Auror. He seemed like a cross between the nice, friendly Weasley brother and the mis-sorted Hufflepuff that had drawn her a map to the Forbidden Forest.
But when the other two Aurors turned over to her, Merula almost crumpled to the ground entirely, as if the bones in her legs had disappeared. How could she not? The other two Aurors had been right there in her mother's room, that horrible night where she lost her family forever.
And now they were back, standing only a few feet from her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they had killed her mother.
"Merula!" Lucius called, his tone even but tense, though she lacked even the strength to look over to him. "I'm glad to see you're awake, but please, this is not related to-"
"Incorrect," one of the murdering Aurors snapped, cutting Lucius off mid-sentence. "We are here to speak to you."
"Not without a lawyer present," Lucius shot back. "And the Malfoy family lawyers are out of the country at the moment."
"She will talk to us," the other murdering Auror growled. "We are not-"
"Enough!" Merula heard Lucius shout over the Auror. "Why don't you come back in the morning? She's obviously tired, and if what you're saying is true, then she has encountered the most evil wizard in Britain since Grindelwald and lived to tell the story!"
"Pardon me sir," the young Auror said after a long silence in a calm tone that reminded Merula of a Hogwarts professor. "Wouldn't it be better for us to simply extract the memories in question? We could view them through a Pensive on our own time."
Merula looked over to Lucius, hoping to find a way out. She didn't want to use a Pensieve, especially not with two of her mother's killers in the same room.
"Merula, if you are feeling alright with it," Lucius said, his tone even and clear, but Merula saw an expression of panic in his eyes, and she felt her heart sink, because she knew that there would be no avoiding it.
Two of the Aurors before her had killed her mother, and torn her away from her father. If she didn't do as they said, then would Lucius suffer the same fate?
She didn't want the answer to that question, and Merula nodded, trying to steel herself for whatever would come next.
"Good," one of the murdering Aurors growled. "I will retrieve a Pensive from the office, and we'll be done with this whole mess in an hour."
"Could we use your dining room, Mr Malfoy?" the young Auror asked as he turned back to Lucius.
"Very well," Merula heard Lucius say. "I will be in the room though."
"Understandable," the other murdering Auror said. "Come along now."
Merula took a small, hesitant step forward as she tried to make eye contact with Lucius. She was uncomfortable enough as it was, but to sit at the same table as her mother's murderers was a nightmare far worse than the leering face on the back of Professor Quirrel's head.
But still, with Lucius gesturing for her to follow, Merula wasn't sure she had much of a choice either way, not when she was seated at the same table as one of the murderous Aurors.
When one of the murdering Aurors disappeared into the fireplace, Merula shifted awkwardly in her seat, fidgeting slowly in her seat as the room fell into silence, the only sound in the air being the cracking of the fireplace.
"There shouldn't be much trouble," the voice on the young Auror said, his tone gentle enough for Merula to feel comfortable enough to look up at his friendly eyes. "If everything goes well, we should be done in only a few minutes."
"From what our colleagues at Hogwarts tell us, it does appear that the stories are little more than fanciful rumours spread by overactive imaginations," the murdering Auror sighed. "Still, the subject matter is serious, and as you are the first eyewitness to wake, we will be questioning you."
"What happened to Potter?" Merula asked. "I- I mean, he saw everything too."
"Mr. Potter has yet to awaken," the young Auror said. "And the accusations from the other two students cannot be substantiated unless you wish to help us."
"Father?" Merula asked, turning over to face Lucius, wondering, hoping that she could be spared the leering face of Voldemort and the dead unicorn. "Could I… not?"
But while her father's face was neutral, she saw a flash of terror in his eyes, something she had never seen before. That alone told her enough- he was afraid.
For a second, Merula felt a spark of rage that threatened to boil over. What was it that the Aurors had threatened him with that caused the fear in his eyes?
"I-" Lucius started after a moment of silence, his tone sounding forced, as if someone was holding a wand to his back. "I would like to hear your account, as… He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had put me under the Imperius Curse for several years."
"He liked doing that now, didn't he?" the murdering Auror muttered under his breath. "I could have sworn that I've heard that a hundred times."
Just as Merula was gathering the anger in her chest to do something, the flames in the fireplace turned green, and the fire was crushed under a wave of fear, for there were now two more Aurors in the room.
Merula recognized the murderous Auror who had left to fetch the Pensieve, but she didn't recognize the other Auror, a tall man with dark skin and piercing eyes that melted whatever anger had been in her chest and replaced it with a naked terror.
"Auror Shacklebolt," the young Auror, the closer Auror to the fireplace said as he stood up from the table. "The witness is awake."
"Thank you, Joseph," the Auror named Shacklebolt said before Merula met his eyes. "And you must be the witness, yes?"
Merula nodded a little and sank back into her seat, her throat drying as she watched the other murdering Auror sit no more than three chairs away, her voice having failed her.
"Let's see," Shacklebolt said, opening a manila folder. "Miss Merula… hmm."
Merula blinked as the man paused mid-sentence, his eyes meeting her own for a moment before he looked down at the papers again. "That is rather unfortunate."
"What is?" It was the murdering Auror three seats to Merula's right that had spoken, and he stood up, as if to get a better look at the papers before Shacklebolt. But Merula noticed the man stepped back and went back to his chair when Shacklebolt stood and gave him a long dirty look.
Shacklebolt looked back at Merula, the two of them looking at each other for a long moment before he spoke. "Miss… Snyde, if you're uncomfortable with their presence, I am perfectly capable of asking the questions on my own."
"Yes." The answer came naturally for Merula. As terrifying Shacklebolt was, he wasn't a murderer, as far as she knew. And yet he could silence a murdering Auror with little more than a glare. How could she lie to a man like that without putting her world in jeopardy?
"Aurors Norton and Hadley," Shacklebolt spoke without even looking up from the file. "Return to the office, we will be finished here shortly."
"Sir?" The murdering Auror to Merula's right had jumped out of his chair. "Why us?"
"That was not a request, Norton," Shacklebolt said. "Perhaps if you had looked over the file, you may understand why you should not have been sent here."
"Fine then," the man named Norton growled. "Joseph, we're going."
"There is no need for that," Shacklebolt said, his voice unflinching even as Merula noticed he didn't even raise his eyes from the paper. "It is rare for an Auror-In-Training to get experience with a Pensive as is."
Merula turned to the young Auror named Joseph and met his eyes. "It's alright," he said quickly. "We can start whenever you want."
Merula sat in place, tapping her fingers against one another as the two murdering Aurors left, disappearing into the fireplace one by one.
"Someone in the head office needs to be canned for this," Shacklebolt said as the flames in the fire changed back to normal after the second murdering Auror had left.
"Was there something wrong with the Aurors?" Lucius asked as he stood up, putting the chair where one of the Aurors had been sitting back to its original position.
"Aurors Norton and Hadley were present the night the Snyde household was arrested," Shacklebolt replied, his eyes meeting Merula's own for a second before he looked down at the papers in the folder. "From the look on your daughter's face, I say she recognized them too."
"Merula?" Lucius sounded a mixture of horrified and furious.
"Yes," Merula said in a quiet voice. "They were there in the room, were they not?"
"Auror Hadley had carried you out of the house that night," Shacklebolt said, sliding over a long, faded piece of paper, tapping at one line in particular, though Merula could not pull her gaze away from his eyes. "For what must be a… traumatic experience for you, I would like to apologize on behalf of the Ministry of Magic."
"That's outrageous," Merula heard Lucius say, and she turned her head over to look at him as his voice raised in tone, now standing, his form illuminated by the light of the fireplace. "I will file a complaint at the Ministry first thing tomorrow!"
Fear spiked into her heart when she heard Shacklebolt shut the file, the sound, like a heavy slap on bare flesh seeming to drown out her adoptive father's voice even as she saw Shacklebolt rise to his feet, something cold and terrible in his eyes.
The look in his eyes made Merula flinch. She was afraid of Shacklebolt, for she feared him for what he could do to Lucius.
"Father!" Merula cried, almost choking when she felt all three sets of eyes turn to her, two sets she recognized as hiding blazing anger. "Could we please just finish with tonight?"
For a second, Merula held her breath, her imagination conjuring a scene of horror, with rivers of silvery blood pooling across Malfoy Manor.
But then she heard the sound of the chairs moving against the floor again, and she heard Shacklebolt's calm voice address her, though it took time for her mind to snap out of the hellish parody of her home.
"There are a few light questions that we need you to confirm," Shacklebolt said when she managed to focus on the work at hand. "These are from Miss Hermione Granger and Mr. Ronald Weasley."
"Weasley?" Merula heard her father say.
"Yes," Shacklebolt said. "I understand your… past experiences with his father, but apart from your daughter, he is one of the few witnesses we have in relation to this incident."
"Merula, is this true?" The question didn't catch Merula off guard, but Merula could swear that Lucius almost seemed panicked.
"Yes father," Merula said quietly, playing with the mostly-full bag of crisps as she tried to avoid meeting his eyes. "Potter and Weasley have been friends since the start of the year."
"Mr. Malfoy," Shacklebolt's voice came again, this time hard and annoyed. "I would ask that you refrain from further outbursts. It is quite late, and we don't wish to extend your daughter's bedtime needlessly."
"Yes," Merula heard Lucius mutter, sinking back into his seat. "Of course, carry on."
"First question," Shacklebolt said as Merula turned back to face him. "How many times did you encounter… He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?"
"Two," Merula said, her memories flashing to the face on the back of Quirrel's head. "Once in the Forbidden Forest, and once in the… corridor."
"This is the corridor that led to the Philosopher's Stone, yes?" Shacklebolt was writing something down on a small sheet of paper. "The one declared off limits?"
"Yes," Merula said, feeling a flash of embarrassment at the confession. "Potter and the others thought it was Professor Snape who had wanted to steal the stone, but I believed they were wrong."
"And why was that?" Shacklebolt asked.
"I had seen Vo- his face in the forest," Merula said. "When he was drinking the unicorn's blood. Since his face was on the back of someone's head, it could not have been Professor Snape, as Potter and his friends believed."
"And you have a memory of this, correct?" Shacklebolt asked.
"Yes," Merula said quietly.
"Very well," Shacklebolt said as he rose from his seat. "We will remove a copy of the memory for further study. Joseph?"
Merula glanced over to the friendly face of the trainee Auror and managed a weak smile as he pulled out a wand, taking a few quick steps so he stood right over her.
"Simply close your eyes and think of the memory in question," the young man told her. "I will not be long."
Merula closed her eyes as the Auror neared, her hands clasped tight in her lap, her memory returning to the warm night, just a few days prior. She thought of the moon, the trail of blood, and Potter's presence next to her.
But when the memory shifted to the leering face, reflected in the darkness, panic tore at Merula. The blood, the pale, taunting moon above, and the screaming of a madman snapped her concentration as her mind flashed to the worst of the night her mother had died, and Merula screamed.
She fell hard from the chair, and Merula cried out when she hit the hard floor, her left ear deafened from the impact as a conundrum of inhuman voices assailed her right.
"Merula!" she heard Lucius calling from somewhere in the distance, his panicked voice rising above the din in her ear. "Merula!"
Merula didn't respond, not that she would, even if she wanted to. She could see more of the night now. The Auror named Hadley's scowling face when he grabbed her and tore her from the only home she had known, the coppery streams of blood that had spread from her mother's corpse, like snakes of black oil in the night, inching ever closer.
She tried to run, to kick herself free from the murdering Auror, but she could do nothing but watch.
Suddenly the murdering Auror was gone, but the nightmare remained, and the streams of black oil twisted and turned, dancing as Merula felt her body freeze up again.
In the darkness, Merula watched her mother's corpse rise from the ground, an unholy light behind her dead eyes, but her face having been changed into the face of Lord Voldemort, now wearing a leering grin.
"You will join me one day," his voice taunted her, speaking through his mother's lips. "You will join me one day. You will join me one day."
Merula tried to block out the words, but her own voice was silent, and the words droned in her mind relentlessly as she tried, to no avail, to stop the endless words.
But then the monster wearing her mother's corpse walked forward, stiff, inhumanly strong arms grabbing her and pinning her still, like a stiff board, still repeating those six haunting words.
Merula wanted to scream, but her voice was gone, and her mind filled with the maddening voice, repeating the six words.
And her mother's corpse-hands were strong. Stronger than anything she had felt, the black serpents of blood binding her to the monster and the six words that defined her nightmare. Then the voice changed, one more time. It was no longer a chant, but a voice in triumph, and Merula felt a smooth, solid surface under her bare feet, and rough, unyielding rope around her throat.
The monster that stood in her mother's bloodstained corpse smiled a monstrous smile as it stepped back from the tree where Merula's childhood swing had been set up.
"You will join me one day," it repeated one last time as the smooth surface under Merula's toes disappeared, and the darkness tore the last light away from her eyes.
Merula woke up in a cold sweat, her hands trembling, so much so that she couldn't even clench them into fists until what seemed to be several minutes later.
She sat up slowly, placing a frigid hand around her neck. There was no rope there. Nothing to suggest the monster inside her had claimed her. It was then that Merula noticed the pain in her throat, and she managed only a weak, choking cough. She was tired, weary, and starving, and a little part of her wanted to crawl back into bed, but the habits she had experienced at school came back to bite her, and Merula heard her stomach growl.
She slipped out to the washroom across the hall, filling a small cup of water from the sink, almost dropping the cup when she saw the girl staring back at her in the mirror. With her hair having degraded into a wild mop and the hint of insanity in the eyes staring back at her. She couldn't look like that, could she?
With trembling fingers from her free hand, Merula ran a hand through her wild and unruly hair, and winced as she touched the lock of hair that had always been a lighter shade of brown compared to the rest of her hair.
Then Merula took a small sip of the water. She choked most of the water out and the pain in her throat pressed tears out of her eyes. Water was no good, but… perhaps milk could help her, and Merula turned and headed out to the hallway, leaving the half-filled cup of water abandoned by the sink.
Getting downstairs was easier than what she had imagined, but Merula couldn't help but shiver at how cold and empty Malfoy Manor seemed to be in the early morning, even when she stood in the warm sunlight that came from the closest window to the cold, imposing stairs.
The sensation only got worse with every room she had passed, the kitchen empty and deserted, and the various rooms she still had been allowed to explore as a child held nothing that could soothe her burning throat.
When she stepped back into the central hallway, having discovered nothing but disappointment, Merula saw that she had only three options left, and none of them good.
The bedroom of Lucius and Narcissa was on the second floor, and Merula couldn't bring herself to climb the two sets of dark stairs, and she wasn't willing to go into her adoptive father's study. That had always been off limits unless he had invited her in.
Which led her to turn to the doors to the dining hall, where the centre of her nightmare still lurked. She wasn't sure if the Aurors were still there, but Merula didn't want the answer to that question, even as her stomach rumbled again.
Then a small idea came to mind, and Merula grimaced as she headed back up the stairs, to her room. There was a small bag of Galleons hidden in a drawer, the results of a few years of avoiding Draco whenever he bought everything good from a sweet shop. She could go to Diagon Alley and find something to sate her hunger and soothe her broken throat.
The bag was still where she had forgotten it, months before she had attended the Crabbe party, and untouched since. While her clothes had been abandoned since the end of the previous summer, there were small charms cast on them that kept them clean and fresh.
It was because of those scents and the pain in her throat and stomach that Merula barely noticed the pain that the Mudblood's so-called gift brought her, slipping on the boots by where she had found them by the front door and wincing with almost every subsequent step.
Then, with everything accounted for, Merula headed to the door that led to the fireplace and turned the doorknob. The sturdy door was an unrelenting obstacle until Merula slammed her shoulder against it, blocking out the pain by gritting her teeth and imagining something warm, like a soothing tea somewhere in Diagon Alley.
Then Merula heard a voice calling from within, and she cautiously slipped in, though she heard the sound of crushing glass under her boots.
"Lucius!" the voice of Narcissa called from within, her slow, shaking voice combined with the stench of spilled Firewhiskey enough to make Merula reconsider her plan. Still, seeing no other solution, Merula pushed onward, taking another step and crushing more glass underfoot, making her suddenly grateful that the Mudblood's curse at least protected her from shattered glass.
"I'm sorry I said that," the voice of Narcissa, somewhere deep in the dark room, came again, though her voice drifted off into a hiccupping fit. "We should have returned the damn girl."
Merula froze in place as the words of Narcissa brought a new spear of ice into her heart. Narcissa wanted her gone? Why?
"You were right," the slow, slurred voice of Narcissa continued. "If he really is back, then we can show him…"
Merula took another step forward as her adoptive mother's voice fell off, trying to strain her ears for more.
"If he's coming back-" her voice continued. "We can show him, him and Albert alike that we did good with their child. We could tell them that we raised her right, like a pureblooded child should have been. Let them have her- so long as we keep Draco."
Merula froze in place. What was Narcissa talking about? Her adoptive father had always maintained that he had been under the Imperius Curse when he was in the Death Eaters, and yet Narcissa's words suggested the exact opposite.
"Mother?" The question came out as a dry, scratched whisper, and Merula doubted that Narcissa heard her, but she still took a few steps closer to the source of her adoptive mother's voice.
"I thought I told you that you were right," Narcissa's voice came, along with the sound of more shattering glass. "Say something, Lucius!"
Merula dunked low and backtracked, avoiding the side of the table where Narcissa sat. She still made her way toward the fireplace, which possessed a small fire, still burning, though it left much of the room in flickering shadows.
She was halfway across the table when she heard Narcissa stand, taking a heavy, uncertain step toward where she had been. "Lucius! Please- when the time comes, at least make them spare Draco! Have them take her instead! He's our flesh and blood! She's just a stranger!"
Merula had heard enough, and she darted toward the dimly burning fireplace, but she was three steps from it when she saw it flash a bright green.
And Lucius stepped from the fireplace, his face cross and his eyes darting around the room.
"Lucius!" Narcissa called from behind Merula. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"
Merula watched her adoptive father stiffen as his eyes met her own. For a moment, she felt a flicker of some force in her mind, but then it was gone, and Lucius staggered back, almost stumbling back into the fire, his posture breaking as he gave Merula a long, pained look.
"We will talk later," he said Merula watched him take Narcissa by the arms, hauling her up, and leaving Merula alone in the dark room, seemingly ignoring her drunken rambles as he marched across the dark room.
Merula folded her legs and waited, watching the small fire in the fireplace smoulder and burn, trying and failing to find an answer she could swallow. She wasn't sure how long she had been waiting, watching the flames go, but Merula turned at the sound of the heavy wooden door moving and the sound of broken glass crunching under heavy shoes.
"Merula," she heard Lucius say. "Come here."
Merula stood up and turned around, noticing that Lucius had sat where she had seen Narcissa sitting before. His face was grim in the weak light of the dying fire. She walked over to the other side of the table and found the seat where she had been sitting the previous night. The seat was still with the Pensieve and abandoned packet of crisps, though she had no desire to eat them anymore. Instead, Merula watched as Lucius placed a heavy bottle of milk on the table, pouring her a tall glass before gently pushing it across the table.
For a moment, Merula reached across the table and took a sip of the cold, refreshing milk, and she felt relief as the pain in her throat began to die. She felt like she could talk without ending her sentence in a coughing fit.
"So," Lucius said softly, his hands on a small glass filled with what Merula knew was Firewhiskey. "I have spoken with the Ministry. There will be no more Pensieve attempts. From what was able to be recovered from last night and other testimony, the Aurors have enough evidence to close their case."
Merula said nothing, but she finished her milk, setting the glass aside as she looked into her adoptive father's eyes. She thought of the six words that still haunted her, the promise of a madman, and that she had thought dead the week before, a promise that Narcissa seemed awfully interested in fulfilling, even if the news that the madman was dead brought her a small amount of relief.
"I saw your memories in the Pensieve last night," Lucius said, his voice quiet and his eyes on the small glass in his hands. "There are ways to erase memories, but to do so would cause long term damage."
Merula nodded slowly, and she closed her eyes for a moment before she looked up at her adoptive father's face. "What was mother talking about?"
There was a shift in his posture, and Merula noticed that he placed the half-empty glass back on the table and drummed his fingers together. "During the first war," Lucius said softly. "While we didn't condone murder, we still agreed with some things that the Death Eaters were saying."
Merula swallowed quietly, but she nodded, watching as Lucius seemed to glaze far off into the distance.
"We feared the loss of our legacy," he said. "That Mudbloods would come and tear everything that our ancestors had built down. That a thousand years of history would disappear."
Merula flinched when his eyes bored into her own, his voice still silky smooth. "A few years before you and Draco were born, I had been called to a remote tavern to discuss… something between like-minded friends."
Merula didn't understand anything, even as Lucius raised his wand, pressing the tip to his temple and pulling it back, a small stream of silvery steam following the wand, until the wand and the floating strand of silver hung in the air, supported only by his fingertips.
"Someone betrayed us," Lucius said as he pointed the wand down to the Pensieve from the previous night, the cloud of silky silver mist falling away from his wand to settle into the dish like silver whispers of smoke. "And when I woke from the nightmare, many years later, I wore his black brand and all of Wizarding Britain wanted me Kissed for it."
"Kissed?" Merula asked.
"A Dementor's Kiss," Lucius said as he gestured for Merula to join him. "May you never learn what horrors that will entail."
Merula stood, her curiosity pushing her forward, step by step, until she stood next to Lucius. She inched closer to the small bowl, confused until her nose touched the mist contained within, and suddenly she wasn't in the dark but spacious sitting room anymore, but instead in a wide open field, on a frigid, rainy evening.
But when Merula turned to panic as a foreign feeling overwhelmed her, she found a strong, firm hand on her shoulder.
"Just watch," she heard Lucius say, his tone soft, almost resigned and defeated.
Merula looked around, but she could not see much, apart from row after row of cloaked figures in silver masks, each standing silent. Then she saw a younger version of her adoptive father, shivering in the cold, pulling a long, dark coat around his shoulders as he staggered forward, shoved by one of the men in black. The ragged man before the younger Lucius collapsed. Merula saw his face when she went over to look at him, his face an emotionless mask with empty eyes that had glazed over.
"Merula," Lucius called from beside her. "I need you to focus. Look up."
Slowly but surely, Merula followed the order, and the moment she did, she regretted it.
Before her, less than a metre away, stood the tall, inhuman form of Lord Voldemort, with his empty, snakelike eyes, his pale skin like stone, to the extent where Merula wasn't sure if he was even breathing, for she saw no movement on his face apart from a widening smile that haunted her worst nightmare.
Then she looked back at her adoptive father, and froze as her jaw fell.
There was a hazy look in the eyes of the younger man, his posture rigid as a dark cloak and mask were placed into his hands, the latter covering his blank face and turning his visage into a snarling beast.
And then Merula felt herself jerked back, and she found herself in Malfoy Manor again.
"There is a reason the Imperius Curse is Unforgivable," Lucius said, his hands steadying Merula as she tried to use her shaking legs again. "And for many long years I lived under that."
Something clicked in Merula's head. The combination of memories, her adoptive father's words, and what little she understood of the situation. "Is that why you were there last night? You're afraid of him if he returns?"
"Almost everyone in Wizarding Britain would fear if he was to return," Merula heard Lucius say. "But not everyone has to live with the memory of what he had done- and what he made us do."
Merula swallowed. "And mother fears the same for… Draco?"
There was a flash of surprise in her adoptive father's eyes, then he nodded. "I believe so. She has always been close to him, even… spoiled him."
Merula felt a slight sense of surprise, mixed with joy. The fact that Lucius was admitting that Draco was being spoiled brought Merula no shortage of happiness, but that amount was dampened and soured by the implications of his words.
And then a further question bit at Merula, and she felt genuine panic mixed with disgust as a question she didn't want the answer to slipped into her mind.
"But she doesn't fear the same for me?"
Lucius said nothing, but his silence told volumes, and Merula swallowed as her heart hardened against the false mother that had never loved her.
"Your adoption was my idea," Lucius said softly as Merula took a step further back. "Not hers. I had never intended for you to be a… shield for Draco. Not in a thousand years."
"You promise?" Merula asked.
"Yes," Lucius said, wiping a strand of hair away from Merula's face. His face was no longer the emotionless mask she had known, but showed an emotion that Merula had never quite seen before, or one she recognized. "I knew your family all my life, and I had a duty to their memory, for all they did, to ensure that you had a stable upbringing. Not what the unfortunate Mr. Potter has had to endure."
For a moment, Merula froze as she tried to mentally picture her life had Lucius not stepped in. Potter was a celebrity, but that meant his life was in the limelight, and she suddenly wondered what the papers missed about his miserable life with the Muggles.
"As I understand it," Lucius said, his voice soft, gentle even. "You were meant to go to your aunt, a bloody Squib living in Muggle public housing."
Merula felt a wave of disgust in her as she tried to mentally picture the scene. Muggle public housing?
"However poorly things may have gone with your mother," Lucius finished, pausing for a moment as if he was trying to find the right words. "I hope that one day you'll come to understand that we've tried our best to raise you as your family would have."
Merula nodded slowly as a storm of emotions raged inside her heart and mind. It was difficult, incredibly so, the amount of information alone made it impossible to focus on a single topic, but the raging emotions inside her coloured usually clean, straightforward facts with colours that she knew she would have to disentangle in the future.
"Could I ask for something?" Merula asked softly, looking up at her adoptive father's face. "Just one thing?"
There was a sense of surprise in Lucius's face, but he nodded. "Very well."
"If… he comes back," Merula said, the six haunting words repeating in her mind like a taunting, droning chant, pointing at the Pensieve on the table. "Will you save me from him?"
"Yes," Lucius said softly. I could do that."
Just as the six words of the madman had conjured up a storm of ruinous destruction within Merula, the five from Lucius silenced it, bringing order to the crashing waves of emotion and silence to the howling winds of fear.
And as Merula buried herself in her adoptive father, she felt better than she had in a very long time.
Year One End.
AN: Year 1 is done.
Now... To answer comments (4 comments is quite literally the most comments I've ever gotten for any chapter.)
The big topic: Ron.
In hindsight, dropping the "Kill" word might have been out of character for Ron, but I intended to write him as bluffing for time, as Voldemort would have had to cut through the daughter of two of his followers (and the niece of a third) to get at three kids in a invisibility cloak. I also intended it to be clear that Ron and Merula despise each other with a capital D. Whereas in canon Ron had only the "suspected" son of a Death Eater to fight with, Merula is the daughter of two confirmed Death Eaters (and for the sake of this story, the niece of a third), added with the fact that Ron's belief that she wasn't working with Snape/Voldemort was only disproven for less than thirty seconds before his hand was forced. Given all the aforementioned factors, I believed that it would be reasonable for Ron to say something "OOC" without thinking.
Also, on a side note the OOC bit also relates to Merula's canon- she's black comedy grade unlucky, and prone to come close to dying (for example, in the game, she comes rather close to becoming a human popsicle around the end of Year 1).
The middle topic: Grammar.
So yeah... I regret publishing some of my middle chapters without checking them with my Beta Reader (yes, I have one). While I was fairly busy with senior year papers, I knew my Beta Reader was even busier, and I didn't want to disturb her. Now that the school year is (mostly) done for both of us, I feel a lot more liberal in asking for a grammar check.
The minor topic: Fluffy.
While I'm more than aware of the fact that Fluffy has three heads, not two, Merula is not (mostly because she is frozen in fear and isn't interested in checking out the sleeping, hungry monster she stumbled upon). This will be addressed later on (eventually).
