Chapter 25
25 December, 1940 Blackpool Abbey, Upper Flagley, Yorkshire
Everything was muffled except for her footfalls on the gravel. Hers and her pursuer's.
If it weren't for the heels and the evening gown, she would be faster. She struggled to keep a level head; to not let panic drive all reason from her mind.
She stumbled slightly in the gravel.
He'd caught her around the wrist and spun her around to face him. Evlyn's blue eyes flashed menacingly.
"Let's you and I make them jealous," he said as he pulled her close.
Dorcas felt the branches of the hedgerow bite into the flesh of her bare back as Evlyn pressed against her.
His fingertips traced the length of her right arm all the way up to her shoulder. Hooking a finger under the strap of her dress, he slipped it down her arm.
Dorcas wanted to fight, wanted to push him away from her. But she found that she couldn't move any of the muscles in her arms. Her heart began to ratchet in her chest as she realized her predicament was dire.
Evlyn smiled at her inward realization and the frantic fear that must be evident on her face.
"Don't look so frightened. You will enjoy it," he purred against her ear. He brushed his lips against her neck.
She was a prisoner in her own body. Unsure of what held her to the spot, unable to get her body to listen to the commands of her mind, she was revolted to think just exactly what Evlyn thought she would enjoy.
His searching hands moved from the curve of her hips to her backside while his mouth traced a trail from her ear to her throat.
Dorcas tried to call out. Someone had to be close by. There were hundreds of people in her uncle's house tonight and the gardens were not far from the veranda where she'd just been with twenty or more of her schoolmates.
She could see his thoughts as they projected themselves into her mind. He was excited with lust. And the prospect of Dorcas unable to move, to object, to defend herself only served to heighten that excitement.
Who would happen upon them here? The hedge maze was deserted. She'd come in here to find Tom, but had found Evlyn instead.
Tom.
Perhaps she could reach him with her mind. She extended a tentacle of a thought and felt for his familiar consciousness. It was much closer than she'd expected.
The boy that was pressing her into the hedges, hands exploring unimpeded, lips kissing without being given leave to do so looked up at her.
The eyes that gazed back at her were not blue. They were a deep brown and infinitely more dangerous.
Tom.
She tried to blink away the mistaken image of her Tom. It was Evlyn that was trespassing against all propriety and decency here in this hedge maze. Why would Tom try to force affections on her? She was his already in all but deed.
He nodded in agreement, responding to her thoughts.
"You are mine," Tom confirmed. "I alone have you—mind, body, heart, and soul. Anything I ask of you, you will give me. You would open your veins and spill your own blood if that's what I required."
The thought of Dorcas's bloodshed heated his own blood. He kissed her lips with a fervor she'd never experienced before, crushing her mouth against his own. She was helpless against him.
"If I required a soldier to shield my body with their own. You would not hesitate."
Tom's hand came to her left shoulder and his fingertips glided the other strap of her dress from its position. He kissed the bare, exposed shoulder. His other hand grabbed the hair at the back of her head and he pulled her head sharply backward.
"If I required the very breath from your lungs," he hissed softly, reverently placing his lips to the place where her heart beat wildly from her chest. "You would breathe your premortal sigh for me."
As if in response to an incantation, Dorcas felt the air in her lungs diminish with each beat of her heart. Gulping like a fish above the water, she tried to fill her lungs again, but she could only exhale.
She fought to remain upright; her legs lost all strength. The only support left to her was Tom's arm around her waist.
He gazed deeply into her eyes. He relished the diminishing light he saw there.
Dorcas struggled to stay conscious. Was there no one about who could help her?
Stars danced before her eyes and before they closed forever, she saw Tom's eyes for the last time. They were not brown, but fiery red.
She awoke with her chest heaving and her heart pumping wildly. The moment she sat up and looked around, noting the room in which she slept when at her uncle's house and her cat curled up on the bed beside her, the memory of the dream receded from her mind.
Dorcas tried to concentrate on the details of what had caused her to lurch awake. Miragelike, the moment she neared the shape and substance of her dream, it shimmered and then vanished. The only residue of the dream was a sense of foreboding that she was powerless to overcome.
A knock on the door caused her to jump and Bing to raise his head inquisitively.
"Who is it?" Dorcas asked, pushing her tangled hair out of her face.
"Jonas," her cousin called from the other side of the door. "Your mother is getting ready to leave and wanted to see you."
It must be Christmas morning.
It would have been too much to hope that her mother would be able to stay through Christmas supper and leave tomorrow, Dorcas thought ruefully. She knew the hospital would not take a holiday, and so neither could her mother.
Flinging her feet to the floor, Dorcas pulled on her dressing gown and went to her mother. She spared a passing thought to etiquette and how her Aunt Eden would disapprove of her disheveled and undressed appearance downstairs. She felt a little glimmer of defiance as she thumbed her nose at the mannered and polite, but not warm and welcoming mistress of the house.
Mary-Ellen was back to East End practicality this morning. Wearing a wool skirt and jumper, buttoning a long gray coat over the utilitarian ensemble. It had been enchanting to see her mother in her Christmas finery last night. She was a beautiful woman, Dorcas thought, even though she was not an entirely objective viewer. Her mother had always dressed to be useful and comfortable and rarely gave her appearance more than a cursory passing over. She wondered when the socialite in evening gowns had gone and the hospital matron had emerged. Probably around the same time Dorcas's father had died.
She was speaking to her nephew. Dorcas could not hear the words she'd said, but watched as she kissed his cheek and bid him Happy Christmas. Jonas left and Mary-Ellen turned to her.
"I still say you look thin, dearest," Mary-Ellen said, surveying her daughter worriedly.
"I'll eat extra helpings of pudding today. Will that make you happy?" Dorcas said, crossing the grand entrance to hug her mother.
"Yes," Mary-Ellen admitted.
"I wish you could stay," Dorcas sighed, taking mental notes of her mother's perfume and the feel of her kiss on Dorcas's forehead.
"I do too," Mary-Ellen responded. "But Morty hasn't been without me for an entire twenty-four hours before since he was eleven."
"No," Dorcas agreed, feeling like a selfish child. The last thing her mother needed was for her to be burdensome when she could look after herself. "I know. He needs you. And he shouldn't be alone at Christmas with just Mrs. Spratt for company."
Dorcas attempted a brave smile and looked down at her bare feet, willing herself not to cry.
"Maybe things in London will be better for Easter Break," Mary-Ellen said cheerfully, removing an envelope from her handbag and giving it to Dorcas. "Then you can come home. Morty misses you. He asks after you all of the time."
"I'll write to him soon," Dorcas replied. She took the envelope and turned it over. It was addressed to her in her mother's handwriting. Opening it, she found a little origami crane done in red foil paper. There was a card from her mother and more cash than she'd ever received from a birthday or a Christmas ever.
"Mum!" Dorcas exclaimed. Her eyes darted quickly to her mother's face. Mary-Ellen was beaming at Dorcas's reaction.
"The extra shifts at the hospital have earned us quite a bit of savings," she explained. "I wanted you to have some of it. In case you need any books or things."
"Thank you, mum!"
"I wish you well, my love," Mary-Ellen said, kissing her daughter once more before turning to go.
Dorcas watched her mother until the door closed and hoped fervently that Easter Break would provide an opportunity for her to go home. She felt somewhat nomadic going from Blackpool to Hogwarts to Blackpool again.
"Dorcas," she heard her uncle call from some distance behind her. "I would like a word with you at your earliest convenience."
She turned and saw him standing in the doorway to the library. He was divested of the formal wear of last night. Instead, he wore dark trousers and a navy colored jumper. His hair was not carefully combed as it had been last night and his face wore an irritated expression.
She looked down again at her bare feet and wondered if "earliest convenience" allowed for her to change out of her nightgown or not.
Then she remembered the events of last night and her own part in them and felt a wave of humiliation and dread. Was he about to scold her for the scene with Callum and Roman and Gemma? Was she going to have to defend Tom's assault on Roman?
With trepidation, her unshod feet carried her to the library.
When she entered, Lysander was leaning against his desk and studying a sheet of parchment. It had the Hogwarts seal in the top corner. Dorcas wondered if Dumbledore had told not just her mother of her insubordination a few weeks back, but her uncle as well.
Then Dorcas's eyes fell on Gemma.
Gemma scrutinized her appearance from her tangled heap of black hair that fell wildly down her shoulders to her nightgown, then to her bare feet.
Dorcas did not want to hear particularly what was on Gemma's mind, but she could feel a heated rage coming off of her. Though Dorcas would have to reach for the context, she heard some hurled slander in her mind and thought she didn't want or need to hear more.
Lysander looked up as Dorcas arrived.
She looked away from Gemma as her cousin thought loudly words like "slut" and "scrubber" and "slag". She didn't expect Gemma to think praise at her as she walked in, but to brand her any of these terms mentally was more than the customary hostility.
Dorcas blocked her cousin's mental voice from her own mind as her uncle spoke to her.
"Good of you to join us. I won't keep you long."
His eyes flicked to his daughter and Dorcas had the impression from his mind that he was warning Gemma with the look he gave.
"Gemma has something to say to you," Lysander said, glaring at his daughter so directly that Dorcas was made uncomfortable even though she was not the recipient of such an intense gaze herself.
Dorcas thought of the things that Gemma might want to say to her. None of them were affirming.
"I want to apologize, cousin," Gemma said sweetly, standing and crossing the twenty paces between her and Dorcas. Dorcas mustered the fortitude to stay put, feeling a wave of menace radiating from Gemma, directed toward her. She took Dorcas's hands in her own, delivering her rehearsed lines like an actress. "What was meant to be an innocent little game, I fear may have wounded your sensibilities."
The cow batted her eyelashes at Dorcas.
"When my friend Roman nudged you accidentally, he could not have anticipated the humiliation of your embrace with Callum. I am overwrought with guilt that I have embarrassed you."
Overwrought. Dorcas fought to keep her eyes from involuntarily rolling in her head.
Lysander was not as composed. "Dammit, Gemma," he shouted and punctuated his anger by slamming a fist on his desk. "A real apology!"
Gemma jumped, as did Dorcas. Angered at her own reaction to her father's fury, Gemma squeezed Dorcas's fingers tightly.
"I'm sorry, Dorcas," Gemma managed to choke out. She looked to her father to see if she'd satisfied his demand.
He approached, his eyes never wavering from Gemma.
"I had hoped to raise a good daughter," he said. His voice was low. "But I haven't even succeeded in raising one with good manners."
Dorcas looked at the floor in front of her. Gemma dropped her hands. Dorcas felt how her father's words cut through her. She felt a momentary pity for her cousin. She would not want to be spoken of in that way by her own father.
Dorcas could feel her uncle's thoughts as well. His disappointment in his daughter was great.
"Apologize to Tom at your first opportunity when you return to school," Lysander said, turning on his heels and giving his attention back to the paper in his hand.
"You may go."
Dorcas felt that the last directive applied to her as much as to Gemma. She was about to turn and go. Gemma swept past her with a comment under her breath. "This is not over, whore."
Curious about the pointed assault against her virtue (not her intelligence, her class, her looks) she began to follow Gemma from the room, debating if she should risk looking into her cousin's hate-filled mind, or if she should brush the comments off.
Tom's warning from the night before came to her mind: "I don't think that's the end of it at all." He might be right. If Gemma had been willing to let Dorcas be, Lysander's chastisement of his daughter in front of her had pretty much guaranteed that she would not leave it alone now.
Dorcas braced herself for the incrimination she would find in Gemma's mind, when she was stopped from retreating by a word from Lysander.
"Dorcas," he said, beckoning her back. Gemma's thoughts would remain unexplored for the moment. "Yes, uncle?"
"I have received a report from the school concerning Jonas's improved marks. I know I have you to thank for the turn around in him."
"He worked very hard, sir," Dorcas said, struggling to make herself heard, but her voice came out as a whisper.
Lysander smiled at her timid deflection of praise. "You are a good girl, Dorcas."
Dorcas wanted to smile and to bask in the affirmation. But she could not help but to notice the distinction between his praise of Dorcas and the cutting words he'd said to Gemma.
Hurrying up the stairs and back to her room, Dorcas could not shake the awful anticipation inside of her that Gemma would be planning an unpleasant retribution. Dorcas was regretting the spell she cast over the summer that called every spider at Blackpool to Gemma's room. If last night's scene on the veranda was any indication of the type of retribution Gemma favored, Dorcas was certain she would not be the victim of a curse or spell. Gemma would plan something socially humiliating. Something with many witnesses.
Opening the door to her bedroom, Dorcas could see that Tooey had already been there. The bed was made, the dress taken away for repairs, and a lovely red day dress laid out on the bed.
Dorcas's eyes then fell upon an enticing brass bathtub that had been placed in the center of the room, steam rising from the water inside. Tooey was the best! A bath was exactly what she needed now.
Her plans were thwarted when another knock on the door came. It was not Tooey's gentle knock, but a firmer, more insistent rap.
"Come in, Jonas," Dorcas said, looking at the waiting bath regretfully.
Her cousin peeked through the barely open door. "I have a present for you. Is now a good time?"
"Sure," Dorcas said, pulling her hair into a shoddy approximation of a plait.
Jonas entered and glanced at the bath. "I can wait and give you this later," he said accommodatingly.
"Let's exchange gifts now. I have one for you, too."
Jonas threw his thin, silver wrapped package on Dorcas's bed as she went into her trunk to find the green box with a silver bow.
She joined him on the bed and handed his gift to him.
"Open mine first," Jonas demanded, shoving the present at her. He placed hers on his lap and watched her in anticipation.
The package was thin but firm, completely square. Dorcas couldn't fathom what it was.
She picked at the tape, too slowly for Jonas, who ordered that she rip the paper already. She did rip the paper back to reveal two records.
"Your mother told me what you'd like," Jonas said, pleased with his ingenuity and initiative at finding the perfect gift for her. "I wanted to get you something good because you've been helping me this year and I appreciate you."
One record's sleeve told her that it contained the music of the Benny Goodman Sextet. This was a very good album; Dorcas had listened to it once in Bell's Music. The other one was Bach's Adagios. Her mother knew her musical sensibilities ran in many directions and must have directed Jonas to pick these.
"Wow, Jonas!" Dorcas enthused as she studied the records' sleeves. She regretted not having a means to play them immediately. A magical household probably didn't have a muggle turntable or even an old gramophone. "Thank you!"
"I don't know what you even do with those, but your mother said you'd like them. The pictures on the front don't even move. Your mother said it's music, but I couldn't get any sound to come out of them."
"I do like them. You need a turntable to play them, though. I'll have to wait until I'm home to listen to them."
Jonas shrugged as if to communicate that Muggle things were beyond his understanding.
"Open mine!" Dorcas said, setting her records reverently on the pillow and tucking her feet under her.
Jonas picked up the box and shook it. "It's not alive, is it?"
"Well, not anymore after you jostled it around like that!" Dorcas teased.
Her cousin ripped off the paper to reveal a wooden model kit of a Supermarine Spitfire. Dorcas remembered him confiding in her over the summer that his future wish was to be a Spitfire pilot.
He opened the box and many intricately worked balsa wood pieces fell out onto the counterpane of Dorcas's bed.
"Oh no!" Jonas exclaimed. "I broke it! Damn! I shouldn't have shaken it so hard!" His voice was full of regret.
"No," Dorcas said, flipping the box in his hands over so that he could read the instructions. "It's supposed to be like that, Jonas. You put it together."
Jonas's eyes scanned the box back and became relieved. "This is really nice, Dorcas! Thanks!"
"You know," Dorcas said, thinking out loud. "Cal's brother flies planes in the RAF."
Jonas dropped the box and looked at her with wide eyes. "I didn't know that!"
When Jonas left, all of the pieces of his model plane safely back inside the box, Dorcas settled into her less than hot bath and let her mind wander over the troublesome events of the party the night before.
She settled on the memory in the hedgerow maze beyond the back veranda and Gemma's boyfriend, drunkenly cornering her. It was the first time since it'd happened that she spared any thought for his wellbeing. Leaving him stunned at point blank range like that was careless. She wondered how long it had taken him to recover. Dorcas felt guilty for her actions and then became angry at herself for her guilty feelings.
:::
11 January, 1941 Secret Room, Seventh Floor, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Dorcas had been trying incantations all week to enchant the turntable that her uncle had given her for Christmas. Muggle inventions were famously unreliable on the grounds of Hogwarts, but Dorcas was convinced that she could find a way to make it work out of the bounds of the school's warding.
She sat in the mouth of the furniture cave tinkering with her present as Tom studied Crux Anima Bodhi, taking copious notes in the diary that Dorcas had given him.
"At least I know what your Christmas present shall be from here until the end of time," Dorcas had joked one evening. He carried the diary with him everywhere. When a far off look came into his eye and he pulled the book out to scribble down a thought, Dorcas was struck with a surge of pride for a gift well given.
"Try a shield charm. Maybe it can shield the machine from the warding," Tom suggested in an offhand way, never taking his eyes from the book he was studying. He popped an orange slice in his mouth.
The oranges were a gift from Tooey and Gimlet. Dorcas had a whole bag of them stashed in the little cave.
"Protego!" Dorcas said, directing her wand at the turntable. She followed it with "Luda Musicarum!" and the record started spinning slowly at first and then gained speed. Dorcas placed the needled delicately on the record and Bach wafted in through the opening to fill the cave.
Dorcas, satisfied that she'd triumphed (with Tom's help) over the school's enchantments, settled back against the cushions next to Tom and listened contentedly watching Tom read and take notes.
She didn't know when she'd drifted away from the secret room and into a dream. She never realized that it was a dream.
She was at Wingate Institution. The dust and rubble beneath her feet crunched loudly, the sound bouncing off of the damaged and dilapidated walls. The percussion of bombs and machine gun fire, the whir of airplane engines told her she must get herself undercover. But where was Tom?
She spun in a circle, desperate to find him, determined that she would not abandon him to danger.
"Tom?" she called.
A massive BOOM shook the ground under her feet. She ran for the stairs, wondering if he'd made it to the basement before her.
Dorcas found the closet with the dented steel door that she knew would be there when she'd descended the stairs into the basement.
"Tom?" she called again.
Flinging the door back, praying that he'd reached the safety of the broom cupboard before her, Dorcas grabbed her wand and lit her way forward.
At first, she thought she was alone in the cramped space, but slight movement at her feet bid her to shine the light on the floor.
Dorcas recoiled at the horrific sight and stumbled over a chunk of cement behind her heel. The sound of her banging into the steel door stirred the thing on the floor. It appeared to be a small child, curled fetally with its knees pulled up to its chest. It fluttered one arm feebly, reaching out for her.
Recovering her footing and immediately coming to the side of the tortured child, she grabbed the hand. It was damp and bloody in Dorcas's grasp. The sight of the child was sickening. Had the child been burned by a bomb's blast as it retreated from the air strike?
It had no clothes and appeared to have very little skin. What remained was charred and bloody muscle and sinew and bone.
Dorcas didn't know what to do. She searched her mind for a way to help. She couldn't go to anyone for aid, pinned down as they were by the air raid. She had no idea what spells she might cast to alleviate the child's suffering.
She thought of it as a child. But she couldn't be sure at all.
"Hold my hand. Everything is going to be alright," she said reassuringly, though her voice shook and her eyes began to brim with tears. There was little doubt in her mind that the pitiful creature would die of its wounds.
At the sound of her voice, the child's eyelids fluttered open. The deep brown eyes that greeted her were as familiar as her own.
"Tom?" Dorcas asked, not daring to believe that the flayed and dying figure beside her was her beloved. It couldn't be.
Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she couldn't think of what to say or what to do next. She couldn't shake the absolute certainty that he was doomed.
'How?" was all she could manage to choke out.
"You did this," he rasped.
Horror stricken by the accusation, Dorcas stood and backed away. She shook her head in frantic denial.
Dorcas's eyes flew wide and she knew that she was not in the basement of the Birmingham hospital any longer. The furniture cave came back into view and the dull scratching of the record needle on the Bach album supplied white noise to the space.
She lay on her side, with Tom pressed against her back, his arm draped across her. His breath on her neck reassured her that he was alive and well. But she couldn't shake the jarring scene and the accusation that rang in her ears.
Gently moving Tom's arm so that she didn't wake him, Dorcas grabbed her wand from beside the record player and left the secret room. Not knowing exactly why she headed there, Dorcas's feet carried her to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.
There were questions circling in her mind that only the boggart could answer for her.
Unlatching the bolt from the cabinet, Dorcas stepped back as a torrent of water spilled out at her feet. As it receded, Tom's drowned body lay before her once again. She knew that the boggart would change into Tom instead of her uncle. She just didn't know what had altered in her hierarchy of fears to bring about the change.
Her mother had spoken to her on Christmas Eve, reassuring her that she needn't fear for her uncle. But she knew instinctively that this was not the reason the boggart had reverted to dead Tom instead of dead Morty. It had to do with the words of the dying, burned, diminished Tom in her dream. Her resolve to help him rend his soul at any cost had wavered.
If she helped him to divide his soul, helped him to plan and carry out a murder, she knew that the words spoken by the bloodied, suffering Tom in her dream would be true. She knew that she could not help him to inflict such an eternal wound on himself.
The boggart confirmed for her one essential truth. Without Dorcas's complicity, Tom would not succeed in making a Horcrux. And she knew with complete certainty that she could not condemn Tom to the torment that she'd just witnessed in her dream. A dream that was so much an inevitable conclusion that Dorcas did not doubt it for one second.
"There you are," Tom said, relief in his voice as he entered the classroom. "I woke up and you weren't there. I was worried."
His eyes fell to the boggart, which cracked audibly as he approached, but did not change shape. He turned dark and cautious eyes to Dorcas.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his brow furrowing.
"Tom," Dorcas said, taking a deep breath and bracing herself for the tempest she knew would come when she told him everything she'd just realized. "Sit down. I have to talk to you."
He said nothing, but sat next to her, taking her hand and looking between her and his own dead corpse.
"Did I tell you about my detention with Dumbledore?" she asked, trying to gage how far back she should go in order to make this make sense.
"A little," Tom admitted.
"I was afraid to stand before the boggart because I knew it would turn into you and I wouldn't be able to explain it to the professor."
Tom nodded.
"But I'd just had a conversation with Cal about boggarts," Dorcas saw a dark look pass over Tom's features but ignored it. "He assumed that mine would take the shape of my uncle, since he was there when my uncle went into the hospital last Christmas."
Dorcas took a breath. "I think the real reason my boggart changed was because you and I had just decided to look into making a Horcrux. I knew that you and I would keep you from dying and that I wouldn't have to fear this any longer," she waved a hand at dead Tom.
"I don't get it. So what changed?' Tom asked.
"I thought I could go through with it. I thought I'd solved some of the problems that I had with you making a Horcrux."
"Like killing someone?" Tom asked in such a casual tone that Dorcas shuddered.
"Yeah," Dorcas agreed. "But I can't let you do it. I can't let you rip your soul apart."
Tom shrugged. "It's my soul. Only I can decide what to do with it."
Dorcas didn't have anything to say to that. She could not stop him from doing what he was planning to do. But she could not be a part of it. She could not have that bare, bloody, stripped down, finished Tom accusing her of being responsible for his pathetic plight.
"I don't think I can help you do it," Dorcas said, sobbing.
Tom wrapped an arm around her to comfort her.
"You don't have to, Birdie. Leave it to me. You don't have to do anything. In fact, I prefer it that way."
"You don't understand, Tom," Dorcas said, sniffling. She wanted to be comforted by his words, but knew he was missing the point. "Look at that boggart. It wouldn't be in the shape of you if the Horcrux had any hope of working."
Tom looked from her to the boggart Tom once more, visibly troubled by this realization. "So what changed other than your resolve to help me?"
"Nothing," Dorcas said pitifully, she knew that she was the reason that his scheme for immortality would fail. He would despise her for it.
"Then you will help me." Tom made it a simple statement of fact.
"Tom," Dorcas said, her voice careful and low. "I said I wouldn't-"
He pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. Dorcas backed away from Tom on her knees.
"Tom," she said, her voice trembling. "What are you doing?"
"Imperio!" Tom said in a softly seductive, but menacing voice. "You will help me in any capacity that I require in my plans for making a Horcrux. You will not waver. You will not question. You will obey."
There was a loud CRACK!
The boggart Tom transformed into Morty, lying in a pool of blood. Tom smiled a smile of satisfaction. Dorcas sobbed harder.
"Obliviate!" Tom added, altering her memory so that she wouldn't remember any of this conversation or the dream that had triggered it.
"Let's go back to the secret room. You're overwrought. You need to sleep," Tom said, banishing the boggart.
He grasped her upper arms and stood her on her feet. Placing an arm around her waist and tucking his wand into his pocket, he led Dorcas back to the seventh floor.
She had stopped crying but was numb and dull witted. She barely knew what was happening around her or to her.
:::
5 September, 1958 Third Floor, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
Dorcas listened to the thoughts of others. She did not want to open her eyes and rejoin the world just yet. Her instincts told her to ease into consciousness slowly.
In one compartment of her mind, she wondered at the ability she had recovered to even wake up. She should be dead. But she couldn't remember why she should be dead and not awake at this moment.
The most immediate collection of thoughts besides her own were ones she'd recognize anywhere. They belonged to one of her dearest friends. She could see what Cherry was looking at: her nails and the nail file she held in her hands. She was also inspecting a ring with an enormous stone on her left hand. Cherry chided herself for lingering over a happy thought when things were so somber just now. Finishing with the nail file, she returned it to her purse and slipped her gloves back onto her hands, concealing the ring once more.
Dorcas had a guilty feeling that Cherry's good news had somehow been dampened by her.
Moving from Cherry's thoughts, she settled on those of a nurse nearby, at the bed of another patient.
So she was at St. Mungo's.
The nurse was ticking through a chart, routine vital checks. If only she would turn in her direction, Dorcas could see herself reflected in the woman's thoughts. Then she could get a true summary of her context.
What floor was she on? In answer to her question, the nurse ran her finger down the chart. She read: Complaint: Amortentia Poisoning. She was on the Third Floor, Potion Poisoning Ward.
That also answered the why for her. She remembered Moonseed Poison. It had spilled in her office. Why did she have Moonseed Poison in her office? She couldn't answer that question by any means of her own memory.
If only the nurse would come and scan her chart.
She tried to swallow. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. She coughed involuntarily.
Cherry jumped. "Dorcas, honey? Are you awake?"
Dorcas finally allowed her eyelids to slowly open. It was hard to focus with so much light in the room. She blinked, but her friend didn't become any clearer.
"Water," Dorcas said, but no sound came out.
"What's that, Dory?" Cherry asked, standing up with such force that Dorcas heard her chair topple backward behind her.
"Water," Dorcas said, pushing the air out with her diaphragm. The effort of speaking created a curious pain in her abdomen. She freed one of her hands from the blanket that she was tucked under and rested it on her flat stomach.
"Water?" Cherry confirmed, her voice hitching with excitement. "I can get you water, honey!"
The red tornado that spoke with her friend's voice blew out of the room leaving her alone.
Dorcas reached out with her mind and tried to make a tentative link to her baby. She was met with a resounding silence.
Her heart rate increased in proportion to the fear inside of her at the realization that her child was no longer with her. Had she delivered her baby already and somehow forgotten the event? That seemed unlikely.
Trying to sit up rewarded her with a sharper pain in her abdomen. She hissed at the dull throbbing sensation and abandoned the attempt.
Instead, she focused on blinking her eyes at the ceiling tiles until her sight became less fuzzy.
Cherry entered the room, sloshing half the water in the cup she carried as she did. Cal was on her heels.
"Look who I brought back with me, sweetie!" Cherry announced, placing the water beside her bed.
"My love, don't try to move," Cal said, rushing to her side. "You've been out for four weeks."
Dorcas had never seen Cal so disheveled. He had circles under his eyes and several days' growth of facial hair on his chin and cheeks. He looked near collapse with exhaustion. She felt an urgent need to get out of bed and take care of her husband.
"Four weeks?" Dorcas tried to think. Her baby was due about now. Had she given birth? Was he in a nursery? She was recovered enough to meet her son and to hold him, surely?
"Yes," Cal said, taking her hand and holding it tightly to his chest. "You're in the Poisoning Ward on the Third Floor. You touched Moonseed Poison. You went into cardiac arrest. I had to operate to get to our baby."
She could tell he wanted to explain more, but his voice broke and he looked at Cherry.
They debated silently over her what exactly she should know. What she could handle.
Dorcas cut right to it. She would decide what she could handle.
"Where's our baby, Cal?"
Her husband was a Healer on the Dai Llewellyn Ward for Serious Bites. He was a stoic man who's seen a lot and was always cool under pressure. She rarely saw him cry.
He kissed the hand that he was clutching with both of his.
"Dorcas, I couldn't save him," Cal explained. One tear broke free of the levey and dropped from his cheek.
Cherry excused herself from the room silently.
"A boy?" Dorcas asked, her voice was weak from disuse. She felt her own cheeks grow wet, realizing belatedly that she too was crying.
Cal nodded and sobbed.
"He lived for three days," Cal explained. "But he wasn't alone. I didn't leave him alone for one second."
Dorcas's mind reacted slowly to what she was hearing. She fixated on one fact alone: she'd never gotten to meet her son.
"Where is he?" she asked.
Cal blinked and looked at her, surprised. "Dorcas, he's gone."
"Where is he buried?" Dorcas clarified.
"Next to my brother at Greygable," Cal answered.
Dorcas didn't know if given the choice she would have had her child buried on Cal's family's estate. But, she reasoned, he was a Meadowes and Greygable was where the rest of them were buried. Would she have preferred Blackpool Abbey? That was where her mother and uncles were buried. Her father's bones were in God-knows-where France.
She felt a wave of compassion for her husband, realizing all that he had endured in the last month. And he'd done it alone. They were supposed to be partners, but she'd left him to care for, bury, and mourn their child alone. She could feel the anguish in her husband's mind as her questions forced him to relive what was probably the single most nightmarish experience of his life.
She shifted her hips to one side, the pain in her abdomen, that she knew now must be the result of a cesarean wound, radiated through her. Making a space for him in her bed, she folded back the covers and bid him lay with her.
It was a curious sensation, Dorcas thought from the comfort of Cal's arms, learning of the death of your child, but not having experienced it firsthand. She should be as wrecked as Cal was, but she wasn't.
"Where are the girls?" she asked, rather than confront the feelings or absence of feelings that learning of her baby's death had brought.
"Wren has been with Anneliese and Beau for the last month. Ryann has been mostly here with you. Jonas took her back to school this morning."
Dorcas wished she'd have woken up earlier. Even if she'd just woken up yesterday, she would have seen Ryann once more before she headed back to Hogwarts. But it was good for her to get back to a normal routine. Sitting at her mother's sickbed for a month couldn't have been healthy for her.
A/N: Reviews are welcome and appreciated.
