Chapter 12 - Claire Kensworth

Hermione woke up to a soft sounding groan from the bunk above her. She sat up slowly and stood up even more so to see Lizzie had pushed the covers off her body. She was curled into an impossibly tight ball with her hand clasped tight over the right side of her face. The longer Hermione stared, the louder the ticking noise Lizzie was making with her tongue on the roof of her mouth became. Cold sweat drenched her face and she shuddered at a touch. Hermione stifled a scream at how quickly she opened her eyes. "Liz, are you alright?" Hermione whispered. Lizzie shook her head and stared past her at nothing in particular for a minute as the pain in her face accelerated and then subsided.

"Did you hear... her say... that they stopped dying once... once I left?" Lizzie said in a shaking breath.

Hermione brushed wet hair from Lizzie's face with a shaking hand while Lizzie bundled a blanket into her face to muffle heaving and panicked breaths that she couldn't tell the source of. The ticking continued against her chest and Lizzie screamed into the pillow with all the pressure it was creating. She squeezed the locket on her neck with enough force to shatter if it wasn't unbreakable, then let go feeling sure it had bitten her and could swear she heard it laughing. The ticking continued through the morning when she heard Ron wake up and fumble around the kitchen.

Lizzie's eyes were bloodshot, and her skin was sickly pale. She washed her face in the sink and drank down a pot of coffee without bothering to get a cup to bring some color back to her cheeks.

"When are we meeting Collins?" She asked with a dry voice.

"Noon," Ron said. Hermione was brewing a new batch of potion. Lizzie exhaled dramatically.

"On the way to the real estate office, can we stop by the graveyard? The mortuary?" Lizzie asked. Ron and Hermione looked at each other nervously. "We don't have to stay long." Lizzie had an odd feeling that answers to questions would be there.

"I think we need to let her ride this out," Hermione whispered to Ron while Lizzie got cleaned up.

"I have a really bad feeling about this," Ron said under his breath. Hermione nodded with her eyes swimming in their sockets.

"We just need to hit the last two places and then get the hell out of here, just being back here has her completely unhinged," she said.

Once Lizzie's body was ten again, her mind seemed to follow. They entered the gates of the cemetery and she practically ran to the mortuary, but Hermione stopped her and slowed her down like a child running into a busy parking lot.

When Lizzie opened the door, she stopped at the sight of Heather Coldwater's parents holding the children she saw the day before at mass.

Hermione struck up conversation with the woman. "I saw you at mass yesterday, is everything... ok?" Hermione asked carefully. Lizzie stood next to her pretending to play with a display of rosaries to listen.

"No... my daughter... I don't know..." the woman sobbed into a handkerchief. Hermione offered to take the baby from her arms so she could sit down. The woman accepted while her husband spoke to the man at the desk about two caskets.

"They're saying she smothered her husband," the woman whispered, eyeing the kids nervously. "Then she... stuck a letter opener into her eye... there's no indication of someone breaking in... I just don't know why she would do this..."

Hermione offered her condolences but gave Lizzie a fleeting look. Lizzie wiped shallow pools below her eyes but suppressed an urge to laugh again because Heather was always a complete bitch to her, and she had, after all, hit the ball that lost Bethany Lawrence one of her eyes. Her insides shook with the mixture of emotions, mostly that of pity and guilt, but laced with a distorted sense of righteousness she tried to push out of her mind. This is sad, she thought, get a grip, psycho. She refocused her attention on the conversation between the men. She came here to ask about Bethany and Nadine, but something told her that if she waited long enough she'd find out.

"My condolences of course... I can't imagine the horror... the only thing I've seen that tops this was that little girl who lost her eyes..." the man at the counter said.

"The Lawrence girl?" Heather's father asked.

"Yeah, Bethany Lawrence..." he confirmed.

"She lost both her eyes?" Heather's father asked again, he was confused because of course he knew his daughter's inadvertent role in the first. He would have paid for the surgery all those years ago.

"Yep, bloody and brutal, still gives my son nightmares," the man said sadly. "Look, I won't charge you to upgrade the caskets. You've got little ones now. You all need anything, please let us know."

Lizzie backed up, left through the front door abruptly, and ran toward the graves, giving Hermione an excuse to hand the baby back to Heather's mother and take off after her apparent daughter. Lizzie stopped at Bethany's headstone and frowned. Her breathing was ragged and she paced down the long row passing Daisy, Nadine, Lisa, Katie, and then Melody where she froze. The locket ticked and twitched furiously. She closed her eyes so all she heard was the noise and opened them to see a woman walking the row of newer headstones at the far end of the plot.

Lizzie walked across the grass and followed her from a distance, too scared to approach or yell for her as much as she desperately wanted to. But the woman turned around and looked at her. Her face softened in a mix of confusion and remorse, but Lizzie turned away and stared at the gravestone ahead of her while Claire approached cautiously.

"You here alone, sweetie?" She asked. Lizzie looked up and watched her eyes flash with recognition at the familiar green ones.

"My mum is over there," Lizzie said in a small voice. She waved at Hermione who took the look Lizzie shot her as a que to keep a distance.

"What's your name?" Claire asked.

"Eva..." Lizzie said.

"Visiting someone?" Claire asked.

"Friends...well...one friend," Lizzie said. The locket twitched and burned against the skin under her dress. "You?" Lizzie asked.

"Me? I um... I come here sometimes to make sure someone isn't here," Claire said.

Lizzie looked up at her, "who?" She asked.

"I used to watch this little girl, and I promised I would help her but she got lost...and I worry sometimes that she'll end up here."

Claire was crying a little. "You look like her, she'd be an adult now, but you look just like her the day I saw her last..." Lizzie paused and took in the guilt Claire was feeling until, without realizing what she was doing, she hugged her at the waist in the way she used to, and the woman, hardly thirty at this point, held her breath in recognition.

"Lizzie will be buried with her parents one day, not here. Never here. Don't worry," she whispered. Claire's body went rigid and she put her hands on her knees to look Lizzie in the face. She noticed the scar on her wrist and pushed the red bangs from her face.

"Lizard," she whispered.

Lizzie shook her head and looked at the scars on her temple and eyebrow from where she had struck her violently in an episode. She thought of Skeeter making Claire think she was a social worker for information to put in articles. But then she thought about the hugs and the safe walls. The only safe walls she'd known before the Burrow. She hugged her tight and didn't let go. "Thank you," Lizzie said quietly. Claire was entirely confused but knew in her bones it was Lizzie despite seeing her almost a decade younger and leaving the cemetery with a woman who called her Eva.

The three of them headed up the hill to a set of offices and met Mr. Collins outside his real estate headquarters.

"I've got a few places I think you'll like, come on in," he said enthusiastically and shook Ron's hand.

They sat down at a table where he pushed over half a dozen flyers with homes on the cover. Hermione reached for Number 4 Privet Drive and pretended to show it to Lizzie and ask her childish opinion.

"Really like the look of this one, David," Hermione said, handing it to Ron who nodded.

"Most of these are out of budget, I hate to say," Ron said.

"What do you do, Mr. Wooley?" He asked curiously. It was rare for a Cyprian man not to be able to afford something.

"I own a dental practice," he said. "But need to open shop here and was rather undervalued when we sold the one in London... my business partner didnt have the best judgment, but I blame myself more for trusting him. Friends... easy to trust even when it's not in your best interest," he said. Lizzie stared at him with pause for a moment then looked down at the other flyers curiously. She picked up one that looked oddly familiar and she couldn't place why.

"Daddy, can we see this one? Really pretty front yard," she said and gave Ron a meaningful look. He glanced at Hermione and decided Lizzie must have a reason.

"Afraid I think I only have time for the two tours today, Mr. Collins, have another meeting about the dental practice later this afternoon," Ron said.

"Wonderful, let's head out," Collins said and they filed into his car out front.

"What do you drive, David?" Collins asked.

"Old Ford Anglia, refurbished, classic car... but the engine is being replaced so we are on foot and double decker today. Fresh air is nice, can't beat a place where everything is walking distance," he said casually. Hermione seemed impressed by his impromptu responses.

Collins laughed. They passed over the bridge Lizzie remembered swerving on with Claire many years ago, the same one they said Daisy went off of. Collins pulled up to the house Lizzie suggested and she stepped out ahead of Hermione who shut the door behind them. "It's funny you picked these two properties actually. Both were repossessed by the banks because the owners...passed... required to give you full disclosure. Neither in the homes though," he explained.

"This one is a beauty, belonged to a surgeon. Pristine condition," he said happily as he unlocked the door and showed them in, this answered Ron and Hermione's question about why Lizzie picked it from the lineup.

Lizzie closed her eyes and heard commotion on the stairs. "No! You are telling me who!" Damien yelled. She heard the clatter of keys and the slam of a door before a car backed out of the driveway. Lizzie had never been inside Damien's house. She wandered into the living room and looked at the shelf next to the mantel. There was a photo of him and Vernon as school boys, and another of him and Marge when she was very young, possibly before she married her late husband at sixteen. This struck her as odd. Then in a sea of family pictures and people she did not recognize, she spotted Daisy.

There was a loud thud on the stairs again and Daisy scrambled to her feet in night clothes as she lunged for the door, clutching her stomach. Lizzie remembered him being the man she left the church with, she also recalled Dumbledore explaining she stole her husband's car but didn't know how to drive it, hence losing control on the bridge.

They walked through the upstairs to see the bedrooms and Lizzie felt certain she'd been inside the master before. She racked her brain for a memory of him bringing her here, but couldn't recall anything aside from him coming to their house. She looked in the mirror on the far side of the room and saw Daisy with her night shirt up over her midriff while she ran a hand over a small bump. She looked pale and nauseated.

Lizzie heard a familiar creak under a floorboard she was putting weight on and waited for Collins to show Ron and Hermione to the other bedrooms before crouching down to dig up the edge of it and see what was underneath.

She'd hoped a curious object would surface because the locket got hot and beat like a drum, but it was an envelope of letters. Lizzie tucked them in her dress and followed the rest of the tour with her eyes peeled. There was nothing they needed here, and if it had been vacant this long, she whispered to Hermione they should consider making it a safehouse considering how many death eaters were in the area.

"I don't know how to do a fidelious charm, Lizzie," she hissed under her breath.

"It's better than a tent, that's all I'm saying," she whispered back. "The other enchantments work..."

Hermione didn't say anything. Ron didn't seem opposed to the idea though. Comfort and food were probably his biggest concerns.

On the way back over the bridge, Lizzie closed her eyes and held her breath. The ticking of the locket was like tiny jabs on her exhausted eardrums at the point. Her entire body twitched when she watched headlights swerve to avoid hitting her.

When they reached Number 4, Lizzie hadn't realized how long she'd been holding her breath. The house looked the same.

"The family that lived here had a little girl almost identical to Eva here," Collins said. "The wife's niece I think she was..."

Lizzie knew she was imagining the smell of brandy when she entered. Hermione walked through the house sadly, eyeballing Lizzie with intense apprehension. It was obvious to Lizzie that they both expected her to fall apart. Years and years of abuse echoed in her ears but she looked around for anything that seemed oddly valuable or riddled with magic.

When Collins showed Ron upstairs, Hermione silently pulled up the floorboards with the swish of her wand, but Lizzie didn't find anything before they were forced to repair them with another quick swish. Remembering her dream, she rushed to kitchen while they still had time and rummaged through the pantry. It was rather depleted aside from non-perishables packed up for charity. "Accio sardine box" she whispered, and the small cardboard box shuffled its way through a stack of packed up dry pasta and into her hand. She held it knowing something was inside. Hermione got down next to her to see, and when Lizzie opened it her heart stopped and so did the ticking of the locket. She pulled out an eye, rather decayed, but still recognizable as an eye. Hermione had hands clasped over her face in horror.

"I knew something was here," Lizzie whispered.

"Whose?" Hermione said with a trembling lip.

"Bethany's, the one she didn't lose on the tennis court," Lizzie whispered. She felt the urge to both vomit and scream but the feeling that someone invisible was holding her mouth closed smothered her. Hermione put the box in her bag, and they left the house shortly after. Lizzie was surprised not to have seen death eaters at either home, but the realization gave her more pause than a sense of security.

Sure enough, dementors had swarmed the area surrounding the campsite when they returned to the area. Hermione had just enough time to round up their supplies and apparate them out before an incriminating and revealing patronus needed to be used.

Lizzie was speechless when they found themselves back at Damien's house. Hermione hurried the shutter the windows and conjure protective enchantments.

"Just for a day... you need to get out of this town, Lizzie. Even if we have to camp for weeks, we just have to get out of here. But until we decide where to go next..." she said hurriedly.

After a few hours of settling in, and Lizzie making something for them to eat, she sat down in the kitchen and opened the letters.

She read one from Vernon arranging his marriage to Lizzie. She read several from Marge in the tone of an old lover, though from context it didn't appear he had ever responded. They were very dated, from the late 1970's, before Lizzie was born. She gathered that Marge knew Damien because he was a boyhood friend of Vernon's, that they had a relationship when she was about fifteen, and he was nearly twenty, but that it ended abruptly when she married her late husband, Ross, which apparently coincided with her already being pregnant.

"I'm sorry we cut this so short. I told Ross the baby was yours, but it's not, and I wish there was another way. I'm giving it to the Clines. I wanted Vernon to marry early and take it but he's just finishing school. I don't think I can stomach it. You're the only one I ever told about Saul aside from Vernon. Please keep that between us. I don't want that shame on the family..." Lizzie reread it. Saul... Saul... Dursley? Giving to the Cline's? Is she talking about Daisy? They only ever had one child, Marge never raised one of her own.

Lizzie gripped hair tight in both her fists as her stomach churned. Saul was Vernon and Margorie's uncle, died two decades ago. Vernon knew his uncle was hurting his sister? He knew Damien later married Daisy, no doubt because she was Marge's, Lizzie reckoned. Vernon refused to take one niece but took me years later, no wonder the woman despised me, Lizzie thought as her mind spun. But Daisy was pregnant by the time she married Damien. Did she know who I was? Lizzie dropped her forehead down to the table and exhaled all the air in her lungs.

Maybe that really was just a car accident, she thought, but her gut told her otherwise. She flipped through the rest of the letters for clues and found one from 1988, addressed to Damien from Father Matthew. What he was asking Damien to do in his surgeon capacity to a pair of girls he'd caught having "inappropriate" relations, made Lizzie whimper in retrospective agony on their behalf. Daisy was one of them, he'd mentioned further down in the letter than Daisy Cline would be eligible to marry once her indiscretions had been dealt with through the aforementioned reparation, but that she earned herself marriage by informing him of two other girls she suspected were involved in the same behavior. "Your friend, Vernon Dursley's niece and Martin Warren's daughter," he'd wrote.

Lizzie barely made it to the sink before losing her dinner at the thought of them being maimed. Had he actually followed through? She thought. She racked her brain for why a girl so much older than them had told Father Matthew her and Melody were having some sort of affair given how young they were but could only remember a time at a Sunday School lesson during break, when Melody said a boy had kissed her, and kissed Lizzie in the same fashion to demonstrate. It was possible Daisy had seen, she supposed, but...

Lizzie's insides boiled. The look Daisy gave her that day she left the church carried so much more than warning or fear. She felt guilty, she'd been maimed, severed from a girl she probably loved, and she was pregnant, no doubt with Matthew's child, and married to the man who had some sort of fixation on the mother she did not know. Was this why Melody spent so much time in Father Matthew's office? She thought back at the year prior to her death and could see her face reduced to misery over the course of that period. Is this why her father thought it necessary and sat complacent while his only daughter was molested? Trying to somehow fix her, or punish her, or both? Why Vernon thought it necessary?

If Daisy hadn't said anything about the two of them... as sorry as she felt for the girl, she would want to strangle the life out of her if she were here. She no longer felt any remorse or regret over what happened to Damien. The situation scared her senseless at the time but he deserved it.

Lizzie took liquor off the shelf and poured a drink, chased the burn down with another, and then a third for good measure before she entered the sitting room with Ron and Hermione who both looked up at her sharply with a twinge of horror.

"What's wrong?" Lizzie asked, her words slightly slurred. Ron stood up slowly.

"I didn't watch more than a few seconds before I realized what it was... but you should know..." he said cautiously and handed her a tape with her name written on it "Azalea (1)."

Lizzie took it from the sleeve and set the letters down for Hermione to read. She slipped it into the player, and when she saw herself in dim light, no more than thirteen, passed out face down on her bed, she shut it off immediately, pulled the tape and slammed it repeatedly against the table until it was reduced to bits of plastic and film reel. "I - should - have - gutted - you - alive - you - sick - piece - of - GARBAGE!" She screamed between each blow. The locket was beating astonishingly fast and her heart rate matched the pace. Lizzie looked over at Ron who had his hands buried in his hair, with a box of similar tapes at his feet. Lizzie pulled them out and saw her name scrawled on most, but Daisy's on a couple. She paced furiously and sunk into a chair in defeat, shaking her head furiously and swallowing down another urge to vomit.

Hermione gathered most of the meaning from the letters on her own deduction, but Lizzie had to clarify who Saul was and confirm it was the same Marge Lizzie had magically maimed years prior.

Lizzie explained the vision of Daisy running from the house and him being belligerent about discovering a pregnancy that couldn't be his. "Lizzie, we need to get you out of here," Ron said. "I know you want to know what happened; we know you came back here to collect yourself... but... You're falling out of our world and back into this one... and it's going to kill you."

"I killed them. I know I killed them..." Lizzie whispered in defeat. "All out of spite or pity, I'm no better than him," she added, and slumped to the floor with her back against the couch cushions.

"Let's get some sleep, just put today behind you..." Hermione suggested weakly. Lizzie had her palm pressed to her face but nodded. "Who was that lady at the cemetery?" She asked suddenly.

"Claire... that was Claire. She said goes there sometimes just to check if I'm... if I'm buried there..." Lizzie said and a fresh wave of tears erupted from somewhere deep in her chest.

Lizzie fell asleep on the couch in the living room to the clicking and ticking of the locket. The thought dawned on her to tell the others what it was doing, but something persistently told her not to.

"1000, 999, 998, 997, 996, 995, 994, 993..." Lizzie muttered in her sleep while a much smaller version of herself whispered it clearly in her dream. The stairs above her were creaking with footsteps. "992, 991, 990, 989..." she continued while her insides shook in fear. "988, 987, 986..."

Lizzie opened her eyes when her scar seared in an incredible amount of pain. The locket seared with same intensity what felt like a hole into her chest. Her abdomen cramped violently and seethed with intruders, and she looked around in the dark, in a tiny space, felt for the walls and could feel the grooves of tallies and the ventilation slat of the cupboard. But she wasn't little, she was herself, crammed in this cupboard with no room to move. A shadow moved from outside the door, she could see it block the minimal light the vent allowed into the cupboard and Lizzie closed her eyes and pled silently with herself.

"He's dead, it's not him, he's dead, if he's not just kill him," she mouthed, but it wasn't Vernon, she knew it wasn't Vernon. The door opened and red eyes looked back at her with immense satisfaction.

"How pathetic...Lizzie," Voldemort hissed. He crouched down and held a wand she knew immediately was not his to her neck. The commotion was a blur after she was pulled out onto the hall floor and scrambled to her feet to run. She landed hard back down on the tile floor under a cruciatius. "Faulters under the weight of a ghost patriarch, even though she killed him, it's truly pathetic," he hissed. Her wand was clenched tight in her hand and seemed to move on its own. It caught his curse with a stream of golden flames. She heard the wand in his hand splinter down the middle, closed her eyes, and disappeared with another loud crack.

Ron shoved Hermione awake when he noticed Lizzie wasn't asleep on the couch. "She's gone," he said shortly, and she startled awake abruptly.

"Lizzie!" She yelled and ran through the house looking in each room.

"She's not here!" Ron yelled. "Where do we look? That house? The school? Did they grab her? Did those death eaters overhear that bloody nun?! Fuck!" Ron yelled in frustration. "We shouldn't have come here! Why did we let her come here?!" He shouted.

"Ron, Ron, Ron, no, no, no... we need to find her!" Hermione shrieked.

"Ron!" Lizzie shrieked when she opened her eyes in what felt like a pitch-black cocoon and smelled like death. "Hermione! RON!" She sobbed. She was lying on something uneven in a tiny enclosure she couldn't breathe in. She banged and kicked on the enclosure, the top of it only a couple centimeters from the tip of her nose. Lizzie thrashed with micro movements furiously and screamed until she gasped for air that wasn't there. The smell smothered her. She closed her eyes and heard a girl screaming for Christopher, Nadine was standing on the cliffs she'd visited once, and she reached out for her hand. "RON!" She cried while her voice still had any carry.

Ron heard a faint cry while they paced the house. He stopped Hermione mid-sentence as she reasoned they should check the Privet Drive first, he heard his name again and pulled the deluminator from his pocket. He clicked it and reached for Hermione's hand as a light screamed at them and made its way into his chest. He closed his eyes and apparated. He and Hermione stood in the center of the cemetery they visited earlier that day.

Ron heard a distant screaming from underneath them. Hermione gasped in horror when she heard her name muffled and ran the lines looking for the names Lizzie mentioned.

"The only one that - should have been - empty - is Nadine...I think..." she panted with her wand lit on each headstone. The screaming stopped and she put her ear to the ground in desperation.

"Diffindo," Ron muttered with a shaking voice and cut open the ground while Hermione stood up and moved the dirt with a movement of her wand. When the casket surfaced, Ron jumped down into the pit and pried open the wood. He let out a frightened yell when Lizzie reached out and grabbed his arm but hoisted her out.

She threw up and sputtered violently as Hermione examined her face and shook violently, crying more hysterically than Hermione had ever witnessed. The locket both screamed and laughed in her ringing ears. Hermione scrambled to get the locket off her neck and realized immediately the true effect it had been having on her when it took a bit of seared skin with it. Lizzie cried into her shoulder while Hermione stroked her hair.

Ron gave Hermione a fleeting look. "It's not empty," he said. Lizzie crawled over to the open grave and looked onto the decayed face of who she knew to be Nadine. Time paused. The image of it engraved into her eyes forever.

"I'm sorry," Lizzie whispered and her lips trembled violently. She'd forgotten about Voldemort, she'd forgotten where she was, how vulnerable they were. "I didn't want you to be buried here either," she whispered as tears streaked her face.

Lizzie had a sudden thought that intruded so violently she ran up the street toward Privet Drive, against all better judgment, without a mind for being seen.
Ron and Hermione followed, trying to reach for her to apparate, but not wanting to splinch her either.

The street was far too quiet for who she knew was on it. Lizzie held out a hand to stop the others in their tracks when she reached the outside of Number 7.

The light switched on in the upstairs bedroom and she saw Claire standing at the window looking down onto the street. Something was off. The way she moved was off. "We need to go!" Ron shouted.

Lizzie bolted for the front door, and it swung open, she charged up the stairs and into the bedroom. The door shut and locked behind her with a swift motion. She heard Ron and Hermione on the stairs while Claire turned around and looked at her. Lizzie blinked stray tears at the sight of a less than alive version of the woman staring back with white, milky eyes. Lizzie swallowed the urge to scream as a jet of light shot across the room. Her scar exploded in pain as though the entire side of her face was set ablaze. Lizzie knew Voldemort was coming, and with half a glimpse at a figure she hadn't noticed in the dark, far corner, Lizzie yelled a spell she never thought she'd use. After a flash of green light, she heard a thud against the wall. Her wand hand trembled furiously. When the man fell forward, Lizzie stared down at the lifeless face of Dolohov and desperately wished she had killed him on Toppencourt Road. The door swung open with a loud crash, and in the split second before Hermione, preemptively latched onto Ron, locked a firm grip on Lizzie's wrist, Lizzie saw Claire's body fall and crumple to the floor of the bedroom. The man possessing her corpse died, and she stared back with dead eyes and an outstretched arm. She was hit with a cruel and merciless image of her own mother before they disapparated with a loud, cruel crack.