Chapter 35
30 June, 1941 King's Cross Station, London
When Dorcas saw her mother waiting on the platform all thoughts of Tom vanished.
She was eager to get home and put the school year and all that had happened behind her.
Would her home feel different after a year's absence? Would so much time apart change things between her and Morty? Her uncle had trouble adjusting to changes in routines and companions.
Flinging herself into her mother's arms, she'd forgotten about Bing, who became wedged between them, letting out a disgruntled meow.
"Welcome home, my darling!" her mother said, taking her daughter's face between her hands and studying her. "You are so tall now! You're practically grown up!"
Dorcas blushed at the attention.
"But still rather thin," Mary-Ellen observed.
Dorcas opened her mouth to insist, as she always did, that she ate, but her mother cut her off.
"No matter! I'm making an enormous meal for you when we get home! A home cooked meal will do you good!"
"Morty didn't come with you?"
Mary-Ellen's smile faltered a bit. "You know your uncle and crowds, darling."
She lifted her daughter's trunk onto a trolley and they headed out of the station.
Dorcas tried not to read too much into her uncle's absence on the platform.
:::
When she opened the door to the second floor flat, a great shout frightened Bing from her arms, leaving raised claw marks on her wrists.
"SURPRISE!" Morty and Betty yelled as she entered her home.
There were decorations strewn everywhere.
Betty tooted a party horn while Morty popped a Christmas cracker.
"What is all this?" Dorcas asked. She wasn't sure where her eyes were supposed to land. There was so much color.
"It was Morty's idea," Betty explained, taking the bag from Dorcas's hand as she shed her coat. "You weren't home for your birthday or for Christmas, so we thought we'd celebrate both."
Dorcas saw a birthday cake on the table and a tiny Christmas tree sitting on her piano.
She hadn't expected to see her piano here at all. She assumed it would still be at Blackpool Abbey.
"Your uncle brought it by this afternoon," her mother explained, reading the stunned look on her face.
"Wow! Thanks!" Dorcas said as she spun around slowly to take in all of the paper chains and garlands hung around the flat.
"And this came for you yesterday," Mary-Ellen added, taking a letter out of her pocket and handing it to Dorcas. "I didn't send it on because it probably wouldn't have reached you in time."
Dorcas turned the envelope over so that she could see who the sender was. Her stomach gave a little flip when she saw that it was from Jack. She was tempted to open it and devour its contents right there. But so many eyes on her would invite so many questions.
She restrained herself and slipped it into her skirt pocket.
"Go and get cleaned up. Dinner will be ready in an hour," Mary-Ellen said, giving Dorcas the perfect excuse to duck into her room and read what Jack had to say about his sister's death.
She hugged Morty and Betty and excused herself.
The letter was torn from its envelope before she even shut the door. She shook the pages out and sat on the edge of her bed, her eyes jumped eagerly from line to line, seeking confirmation of what she and Tom already guessed to be true: Verity's death was more than the paper had reported.
Dear Dorcas,
Your letter was a comfort to me. Thank you for sending it.
Do you remember the conversation that we had on the night of the Riddles' anniversary party? When I told you that I wanted to leave that place? I finally have, though I wished I could have convinced Verity to leave with me.
I used to have kind feelings for Master Thomas and Mistress Mary. It wasn't their fault that their son was mad. They used to treat me and my sister well. But in the end their loyalty rested with their son and their last act for their granddaughter's memory was to give a false story to the police. One in which Verity was painted as a criminal, stealing a car and crashing it.
The truth is Verity died doing what she always did, placing herself between my father and his own foolish impulses. He'd been drinking a lot and had a row with his father about it. He stumbled out to his ridiculous little car, Verity trailing him and begging him not to drive in his condition. If I had been there, I would have shaken some sense into her and made her leave off. But she never could see how hopeless his case is.
Dorcas flipped the page, reading quickly, feeling tears on the ends of her eyelashes.
I was in the south field repairing a fence when Mrs. Penny, the cook, found me and told me what had happened. If Troilus hadn't been grazing nearby, I wouldn't have gotten there in time to say goodbye. She would have died all alone. The bastard had stumbled away and left her there.
Thomas and Mary offered me money to keep me quiet. I almost struck my grandfather when he suggested such a thing. That's when I finally realized that if I didn't leave Little Hangleton I would kill my father. I would kill him and the consequences be damned.
I don't know where I'll end up or what I'll do. But I promise to write to you when I finally land somewhere. I think about you often and I hope you are well. It makes me glad to think of you safe and happy. Thank you for coming into my life in the most peculiar way.
Your friend always,
Jack
:::
Dorcas lay in bed that night, exhausted after a long day on the train. But she couldn't find sleep. Her mind was filled with Verity's last moments and of Jack living rough on the street somewhere.
The flat was quiet after the piano music died down and the dinner dishes cleared away.
Her mother was working an overnight shift at St. Mungo's and Morty had been asleep for hours. The dark circles under her uncle's eyes gave away his worsening condition and Dorcas added this to the pile of worries that kept her awake.
A tap at her window made her start.
She looked up at the dim street light that shone down the alley next to her building. Tom sat crouched on the fire escape ledge outside of her bedroom window.
She threw back the covers, apprehensively lifting the window. Thinking about their last meeting on the train earlier gave her an uneasy feeling in his presence. He'd ignored her protests as if she'd never even voiced them. She felt, for the first time, like she couldn't trust him.
"What are you doing here, Tom?" she asked impatiently. "My uncle is asleep in the next room. I'm not alone."
"You don't need to worry about being alone with me, Birdie," Tom said a little reluctantly.
Dorcas crossed her arms over her chest.
"Don't I?"
"Look," he began. Climbing through the window easily, though he hadn't been invited in, he attempted to explain himself. "I know I messed up. Not just on the train today. I'm sorry I got carried away. And I'm sorry that I didn't stand up for you with those idiots Wes and Oliver. I don't have an excuse for my behavior in any case. I'm sorry I hurt you."
Dorcas sat back on her bed. Tom stood by the window.
"Today on the train scared me, Tom. It was like you were a different person. You didn't care what I was feeling. You didn't care that I didn't want to. In your mind it was all about what you wanted to do. Like you didn't see me as a person at all. You laughed."
"I know and I'm sorry, Birdie. I'm so sorry!"
"You know the things that other boys say about me. What they think about me. I don't need you piling on as well," Dorcas scolded.
Tom stepped closer, but stopped when Dorcas stiffened and moved back on her bed.
"What can I do to make it up to you?"
Dorcas shrugged.
"Please, Birdie! You're the one person that I care about. I can't lose you," he begged.
Dorcas closed her eyes and released a breath she'd been holding. "You haven't lost me, Tom."
"I've never had anyone close to me die. I know that I didn't know Verity for very long, but I hoped she could be something like family. I wasn't thinking when I kissed you and then pushed you for more. I just wanted to stop feeling like that."
She gnawed on her lower lip and considered Tom's plea.
"Have you eaten?" she said by way of peace offering.
He shook his head. She remembered her mother's concerned words to her earlier about looking thin. Tom appeared pale and drawn now that she really looked at him.
"Wait here," Dorcas said, taking his hand and guiding him to the bed.
She went to the kitchen and filled a plate with all of the wonderful things that her mother had prepared for her homecoming that evening. She topped it off with a piece of cake and a glass of milk.
Opening the door with her elbow, she quietly entered with the feast and laid it out on her bed for him.
"Whose birthday?" Tom asked, pointing to the festive cake.
"Mine," Dorcas answered with a smile, remembering the warm and unexpected surprise she'd received from her uncle and her neighbor when she came home.
"No, it isn't," Tom argued. "It's in September."
She laughed a little at his confusion. "Yes, that's right. But I was at school for my birthday and at my uncle's house for Christmas. So my family threw a little birthday/Christmas party for my homecoming."
Tom stared at the plate in front of him. "That's nice," he said as he tucked in. Dorcas knew he must be famished. It had been a long time since breakfast.
She caught the thread of his thought: it would be so special to come home to the sort of welcome where your family made a whole meal and decorations. He wondered if he would ever get to experience that feeling of belonging to a family.
Dorcas never thought of herself as poor. She wasn't the type to focus on what she didn't have, but hearing Tom's thoughts reminded her how very rich she was in love and family.
"Look, Tom. What I said earlier," Dorcas began, tucking her cold feet under her nightgown as she sat beside him.
"What did you say earlier?" he asked, finishing the steak and kidney pie and turning to the piece of cake.
Dorcas watched him. "I still love you. That won't change."
"Yeah. But you don't want to be with me anymore. I know."
His dismissive tone irked her. "I still want to be your friend. I don't want you to be out of my life entirely."
"I have friends, Birdie."
"Yeah. You've picked some real winners, Tom. Evlyn and Roman?"
"So?" he challenged.
"So?" Dorcas huffed. She cleared away the plates as Tom finished his milk. "Tom, you know what Evlyn did. And Roman mentally undresses me every time he looks at me. How about a little loyalty?"
"You're telling me who I can be friends with?"
Dorcas fixed him with a steady gaze. "No. I'm telling you that if you're okay with the way those two treat me, then we can't be friends."
"Oh? So can I pick your friends for you? Meadowes is out. So is Jack Hardin, come to think of it."
Dorcas shook her head at his stubbornness. "You have no reason to be jealous, Tom."
He raised his eyebrows in argument.
"Speaking of Jack. I had a letter from him. Do you still want to know what happened to Verity?"
Tom shot up off the bed. "Yes, I do!" His voice was instantly hard.
Dorcas stood and opened the drawer to her bedside table. She pulled the two pages that Jack wrote to her out and unfolded them.
She handed them to Tom, knowing that he would take the information hard. She regretted opening the wound again. But it was right that he should know the truth.
Tom retreated to the corner opposite her bed to read Jack's letter.
Dorcas crawled under the covers and lay watching him in the semidarkness.
After a long pause, the noises of the street creating the ambient soundtrack to the moment, Tom dropped the two pages to the floor.
"He left her," he said, looking up at Dorcas with a glassy stare. "He left her there to die."
Dorcas had no words of comfort. What he said was the truth. The horrible, cruel, heartless truth. Tom Riddle had driven his car into a tree, throwing his daughter through the windscreen and left her to bleed out on the crumpled hood of his expensive Delahaye 135 convertible.
Instead, she lifted her covers back and wordlessly invited Tom to curl up next to her.
He crossed the small room and climbed into the bed, laying his head on Dorcas's pillow.
"It's okay, Tom," she said. Wrapping her arm around him she pressed against his back and kissed his neck. "I'm here, Tom."
He took her hand and kissed her palm. He traced the marks that Bing left on her wrist.
She couldn't help how she felt about this mercurial boy. She knew she would always love him. She knew he would always count on it.
:::
23 November, 1958 Watermead, Aylesbury
Dorcas was nervous to finally show Cal the hidden memory she'd uncovered on the Astronomy Tower when she was twelve.
She knew the contents of the memory would enrage him. She knew his anger at Tom for deliberately placing her in danger in the department store in Hendon was boiling near the surface. Revealing Tom's childhood cruelties to Cal would certainly send him over the edge.
But she couldn't let Cal confront Tom.
She remembered how he'd shouldered the responsibility for her poisoning and his failure to protect her and their son. She knew he would feel the same way about this memory, though he'd taken no vows then that assigned him any responsibility for her safety.
Dorcas wouldn't be able to keep this from him. He would want to know who had altered her memories and compromised her mind. And she knew there would be plenty more memories to uncover. Memories whose alterations she had yet to uncover. Cal would want to know about every one of them.
If the first memory was this brutal, she shuddered to think what the next one would reveal.
"You don't have to see it again if you don't want to. I can go alone," Cal offered. He was studying her face as he spoke. He would have noted how pale she'd become, how she tried to swallow around the knot in her throat.
"I'll go with you. Nothing in that memory can hurt me anymore. I want you to remember that, Cal. It's in the past and can't be changed."
He nodded and slipped his hand into hers.
"I want you to promise me that you won't seek Tom out after seeing this memory. I want you to promise me that you'll never speak to him about the memories that I've uncovered. I don't want him to know that I know about them."
Cal hesitated.
"Promise, Cal," she insisted, squeezing his hand.
He inhaled deeply. "I promise."
She nodded in agreement. Cal was a man of his word. If he promised, then he wouldn't break it.
They bent over the Pensieve on Dorcas's desk and felt themselves falling into the memory.
:::
"That was the night before I found you with a concussion and a broken wrist," Cal said after a long silence between them.
Dorcas nodded in confirmation.
"The bastard didn't even heal you after he beat you. He just dumped you in your dorm and left you," Cal said. He was staring at the space between them and the Pensieve, eyes blank. Dorcas knew he was recalling the events of his encounter with Dorcas the morning after the beating.
"I don't think he knew how," Dorcas offered.
"Then he should have taken you to the bloody hospital wing! You could have died, Dorcas! And you're defending him?"
Dorcas placed a hand on his arm and projected a wave of calm outward toward Cal.
"I'm not defending him. I'm explaining the facts," Dorcas responded in a rational and even tone.
Cal began to pace Dorcas's office.
"I know I promised you, Dorcas. But if I see him again I'm going to break every bone in his body."
"Cal–"
They were interrupted by the doorbell.
Cal continued to furiously pace. Dorcas wondered if he'd even heard it.
She left him to steep his anger and answered the door.
"Auror Prewett," Dorcas said, pasting a pleasant smile to her face. Fabian Prewett had always been friendly and professional. Her falsely cheerful greeting was in no way directed at him, but his timing just now was terrible. "Come in. Do you need to speak to Cal?"
"To you both, if you're not busy," the Auror answered, removing his snow-dusted coat and hat.
Dorcas was a bit relieved that Fabian required them both. She could continue to ply Cal with calming waves of consciousness while Fabian said what he came here to say.
"How is Gideon?" Dorcas asked, out of politeness, but also out of concern, taking his coat and hat and hanging them on the coat rack.
"He's home now and completely recovered. That potion you and Healer Meadowes concocted really is a miracle drug!"
"If I know Theresa, she's still treating him like an invalid," Dorcas replied.
Fabian laughed. "Can't lift a finger without her."
Dorcas led Fabian to the dining room and poured him a cup of coffee.
"I'll get Cal and then you can tell us why you've come."
She found him perched over the Pensieve once again with his face submerged in the memory magnifying potion. Tapping on his shoulder, she waited for him to surface from the memory.
"I don't want you to look at that memory again. I forbid it!"
Cal nodded, his simmering anger surfacing once again.
"I mean it! It won't do you or me any good to dwell on the past. Fabian is here to speak to us," she added.
"What about?"
Dorcas shrugged in response and followed him out of her office, closing the door behind them.
"Coffee, Cal?" Dorcas asked, pouring herself a cup.
Cal's face was a blank mask as he shook Fabian's hand and asked after Gideon.
"No, thank you," he replied, taking a seat and pulling a chair out from the table for her as well.
"Muybridge has been charged with the murder of Jim Allen. He went before the Wizengamot this morning for his arraignment."
Cal sat up straighter. "For the murder of Jim Allen? Not for our son?"
Dorcas had a sinking feeling in her gut. She set her coffee down. She wasn't sorry for letting Stephen Muybridge go. She knew it was the right thing to do. But now she wondered if she could trust the Ministry to give her son justice. It was an unexpected blow.
If she'd killed him, her son's death would be avenged.
"There's not enough evidence to bring charges for your son's murder, or your poisoning," Fabian added, addressing Dorcas.
"But he confessed," Cal seethed, already on edge from the memory he'd just surfaced from. Dorcas wondered if his breeding and manners would be enough to keep him from flipping the table over.
She placed a hand on his thigh and pushed every ounce of calm she could summon into that gesture.
"We all heard him confess. Ask Gideon." Cal's voice was still hard edged, but he was mastering his emotions with great effort.
"I talked to Gideon before coming here. You were hearing the words of a Polyjuiced copy of Muybridge, correct?"
Dorcas slumped a little in her chair. Cal's hand covered hers as it rested on his thigh.
"Gideon will tell you, that won't hold up in court."
"Then he'll get away with it," Dorcas said, regret beginning to build in her for showing Muybridge mercy. She'd had him at her wand's tip. And she let him go.
"Hardly!" Fabian argued. "He'll spend the remainder of his days in Azkaban for murder."
"Not my son's murder!" Cal replied bitterly.
"I was told it was quite a spectacular sight," Dorcas muttered, under her breath.
"Pardon?" Fabian asked, sipping his coffee and staring at Dorcas.
Cal turned and stared as well.
"That's what he said. The decoy Muybridge. "I was told it was quite a spectacular sight." He was talking about my poisoning. Who told him that?" Dorcas was thinking fast. She knew she was onto something. Muybridge hadn't meant to spill that little clue. He had someone at the hospital reporting to him.
"You found me, right?" she asked, turning to Cal.
"Yes," he hedged. It was clear he didn't want to relive those moments.
"Who else was with you?" Fabian prompted.
Cal ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. I was out of my mind with worry! How am I supposed to know who else came into the room? My concern was for my wife and child."
"If you saw them or heard them, then you remember them, Cal." Dorcas pushed back from the table.
"But I don't!" Cal insisted frantically. She knew he wanted justice for their baby as much as she did. And it hinged on him remembering something from a time that must have been chaotic and blurry at best.
"Luckily, I'm an expert in memory modification and retrieval," Dorcas said, standing.
The three of them filed into her office.
The Pensieve sat on her desk where they had left it. Her childhood memory swirled on its surface.
"Fabian," Dorcas ordered, "Siphon that memory off and bottle it. The phial is next to the Pensieve. Cal, lay down on the couch and try to relax. Breathe in and out deeply. Concentrate on your breaths," she instructed, crossing to the cabinet and pulling out an empty glass phial.
Cal laid down and closed his eyes.
She knew that he would probably never be able to look at that scene objectively and without emotion. It was definitely an emotional moment. But Fabian was a trained investigator. And she had studied hundreds of memories, concentrating on the smallest of details. They would find this person, Muybridge's contact at St. Mungo's. And she knew Fabian could put pressure on that person to turn on Muybridge.
"Cal, think about that scene. Tell me what you see. Describe every detail," she said, guiding him the way she did her patients.
She missed this.
"Dorcas…"
She heard the reluctance in his voice. She understood how much it would hurt him to relive that scene. It would hurt her too.
She took his hand.
"Cal, do it for our son. Do it for Ben."
Cal inhaled deeply once again. "I opened the door to your office. I was going to ask you if you wanted to grab some lunch before you left."
"Go on…"
:::
Dorcas's feet met the utilitarian tile of her hospital office. She was standing between Cal and Fabian behind the two chairs that sat opposite her desk.
Memory Cal's face was a white sheet when he noticed her feet sticking out from behind her desk.
He rushed around the desk, flinging one of the chairs aside. It would have hit her as she stood behind it if it was made of something solid.
"Dorcas? Sweetheart?" Memory Cal called.
She watched as he knelt down, somehow avoiding the spilled Moonseed Poison as he did. He patted her cheek to revive her. She was limp and unresponsive.
Cal's breath hitched beside her. She felt tears in her eyes. She remembered knowing just moments before that she and her baby were going to die. She remembered the fear and the helplessness she felt.
She took Cal's hand and held it tightly.
"SOMEBODY! ANYBODY! HELP ME!" Memory Cal called toward the open doorway.
Dorcas saw Fabian out of the corner of her eye turn toward the door. Expectant.
A nurse answered Cal's call for help first. She worked on Dorcas's ward. Roberta.
"What is her name?" Fabian asked.
"That's Roberta Westbrook. She's a nurse on the Long-Term Spell Damage Ward."
Roberta was a grandmotherly woman with gray streaks in her hair and the sweetest beside manner of all of the nurses on the ward. Dorcas ruled her out immediately.
Fabian wrote in his notebook.
"Oh no! Dr. Meadowes!" Roberta sprang into action and began taking orders from Cal. She raced to the door in the next instant to call for a gurney.
Then her assistant came into the office. "Dr. Meadowes?" she asked, perplexed.
Fabian looked to Dorcas to supply a name again. "Gwen Stanley, my assistant."
Dorcas didn't know Gwen as well. She was young. She'd worked with Dorcas for less than a year at St. Mungo's. But she thought she was just as unlikely to inform on Dorcas to Stephen Muybridge as Roberta Westbrook.
She stared at the scene, studying Dorcas's unmoving form on the ground. "Healer Meadowes, is she…?"
Gwen couldn't finish her question, Roberta was back with two orderlies and a gurney, shunting Gwen to the corner.
"They are?" Fabian asked.
Dorcas didn't recognize the two young men.
"Billy Hodges and Zachary Tate," Cal said next to her.
They silently watched as the memory Dorcas was lifted onto the gurney and wheeled out of her office.
"I'll head down to St. Mungo's to see if any of the witnesses are on the roster today. There are only four, so it should be easy to narrow it down," Fabian said as they surfaced from the memory.
"I don't think you have to bother with Roberta. She worked with my mother. I've known her since I was a child," Dorcas said, following Fabian out of the office. "She would never hurt me."
Fabian grabbed his hat and coat.
"Still, I'd like to be thorough. Your little boy deserves justice. This may be our only chance to get it."
"I'll come with you," Dorcas said.
Fabian shook his head as he shrugged into his coat. "It'll complicate things if you're there."
"Let me talk to Roberta and Gwen on my own first. I think I'll be able to tell if either of them betrayed me."
"We'll need something more concrete than intuition, Dr. Meadowes," Fabian argued.
"That's not what she means," Cal said, emerging from the office with a weary slump to his shoulders.
He looked to Dorcas for permission to give away her most closely guarded secret. In this case, she would make an exception for Fabian. He was trustworthy.
"Dorcas is telepathic," Cal explained.
Fabian paused and leveled Dorcas with a curious stare.
"I can hear the thoughts of others," Dorcas clarified. "If I can have a conversation with them, steer it in the direction of my poisoning, I think I could tell who and why. That might help you to direct your…" Dorcas searched for the delicate wording. "Interrogation."
"We'll do what we can. But keep in mind that it's not an easy thing to get a suspect to flip. This isn't a James Cagney film. It's a long shot at best."
"We understand," Cal said, grabbing his coat and Dorcas's.
:::
4 July, 1941 Galbraith Street, Bell's Music
Dorcas noticed Bobby's absence in the music store. She missed the casual way he would say "Hi, D!"
Morty had picked up that greeting years ago from Bobby, always referring to her as D.
She held onto Morty's hand, perhaps a little too tightly, fearing that something might happen–a fit or an accident, maybe. She'd spent a few days at home with her uncle before venturing out with him. She wanted to be certain that he was comfortable around her again after a year apart.
Mrs. Spratt was supposed to be with him today. Maybe Dorcas's mother had given her the day off? Dorcas had pinned a note to the door of their flat in case she showed up and no one answered.
They still wore the customary wartime London accessory: a gas mask in a box secured with a string over one shoulder. Dorcas wondered when things would go back to normal–if they would go back to normal.
The answer to that question seemed to be a resounding no. All of the buzz on the street, the newspaper headings, and even the radio program being broadcast inside of the music store at this moment proclaimed the shocking updates from Russia. The Germans swept through the Baltic states and were headed toward Leningrad. There was a large faction of allies throwing their weight behind the Germans. Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and finally Finland joined the Germans in crossing into Soviet territory.
Dorcas would like to believe that the countries of the world would stand together in condemning the Nazis, but now it seemed the opposite was happening. Great Britain seemed wholly alone in her resistance to the Axis.
"A fine thing when a man can't keep his word," Mr. Bell said.
Dorcas was engrossed in the news report and hadn't registered his statement at first.
"If Hitler backs out of his pact with Russia, well, who is safe from the Jerries then, I ask you?"
When Dorcas realized that Mr. Bell was speaking to her, she made a noncommittal grunt that she hoped sounded agreeable.
"Maybe our Bobby will be sent to the Eastern Front to teach old Adolf a lesson, heh?"
Dorcas hoped not. She couldn't bring herself to think of someone she knew living a perilous existence in the trenches under a heavy cloud of death. It was unimaginable to her.
"Leave the girl alone, Gene. You'll scare her with your war talk," Mrs. Bell chided.
She turned to Dorcas. "I've just restocked the jazz stacks if you'd like to have a look."
This was a different Mrs. Bell. She was usually the one Dorcas had to look out for. She was constantly being shooed out of the store under the matriarch's hawkish gaze. After a year's absence, it seemed that her presence had gone from nuisance to delight. So many changes brought about by the war seemed to have given Mrs. Bell more of an appreciation for Dorcas's familiar presence in the music store.
Dorcas pulled Morty over to the section that Mrs. Bell indicated.
As she flipped through the records the old familiar feel of the sleeves under her fingertips soothed her. She could forget that the world was rushing headlong into some unknown precipice. She found the Benny Goodman record that Jonas had given her for Christmas. The one that now lay shattered on the floor of the secret room in Hogwarts.
"Are you going to buy that one, D?" Morty asked as she stared at the cover.
"No, I already own it," Dorcas replied absently.
Her mind traveled back to the secret room where she'd been used to spending so much of her free time with Tom. She couldn't shake her last vision of their little habitat in ruins.
"I want to hear it when we get home," returned Morty.
Dorcas couldn't quite decide how to explain that they couldn't listen to the record when they got home without either explaining that it lay in pieces in a special room in Hogwarts or lie.
"We can listen to this one now," Dorcas responded instead, directing them toward the farthest booth, the one she used to sneak into when Mrs. Bell wasn't looking.
Out of habit, Dorcas hurried to the booth, scanning the store for the matron's watchful gaze. Mrs. Bell only winked at her and smiled.
Things have certainly changed, Dorcas thought.
Morty bounced in the seat beside Dorcas in time to the rhythm of the music as the songs brought Dorcas back to Valentine's Day when she'd danced with Tom to these tunes.
He'd been such a sweet and attentive boyfriend on that occasion. She wished that side of him didn't only emerge in rare moments of contrition.
As if conjured by her rememberings, Tom strolled through the door of Bell's Music.
Reflexively, Dorcas slid a little lower on the bench beside her uncle, knowing that the glass of the listening booth wouldn't afford her total invisibility.
Magnetically, his eyes found hers and he smiled.
Dorcas watched him slowly make his way back to the booth that she and her uncle occupied.
He knocked.
Reluctantly, Dorcas turned down the sound, ignoring Morty's protests, and opened the booth's door.
"The hazards of living in the same neighborhood as your ex-sweetheart, I suppose, running into one another." Tom's hands were in his pockets and an amused smile was on his face.
"Is that what this is, Tom? A run in?" Dorcas asked skeptically.
Tom shrugged. "Are you suggesting that I'm following you?" He pushed into the booth.
Morty grunted in protest and grudgingly moved over.
Dorcas was wedged between Tom and her uncle, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. She regretted her kindness to Tom the other night when she'd allowed him to lay next to her. She regretted wrapping an arm around him. She regretted the kiss.
She now understood how misleading her actions had been.
But it felt right to comfort him when he was mourning his sister. She always slept better, felt safer when he was next to her. She hoped he could take the same comfort from her.
Morty turned up the volume again making it difficult to converse. Dorcas was relieved.
The music brought to Tom's mind the same remembrances that it conjured in her. She saw his musings about Valentine's Day. But they turned to regret as he recalled that this particular record lay smashed along with her Bach and the turntable that she'd gotten for Christmas.
"I'll replace them for you, Birdie," Tom's mind pushed in on her and promised.
Dorcas indulged a petty streak and continued to stare at her own hands in her lap, pretending not to have heard him.
"Birdie?" Tom asked mentally. He nudged her with his shoulder.
Dorcas smoothed out the skirt of the summery sky blue dress she wore and ignored him. But she couldn't maintain the nonchalance that she was trying to affect. The telltale warning of tears started to prickle at the corners of her eyes when she remembered how hollow and low she'd felt seeing their relationship reduced to literal rubble before her eyes.
If she'd meant anything to him, she thought he'd want to preserve the times that they shared and the space they inhabited. She'd been so wrong.
Dorcas stood abruptly. She didn't want to be held hostage by Tom in this cramped booth. She wanted to escape.
"Come on, Morty," Dorcas said, taking her uncle's hand and pushing past Tom and out of the booth.
"Where are you going?" Tom asked over the sounds of Benny Goodman's orchestra.
"To buy Cherry a birthday present," Dorcas replied dully. "Nice running into you," she added. The petty streak hadn't diminished.
She tugged her confused uncle behind her, not looking back until she was out of the store.
Hoping she'd lost him once she and her uncle had descended into the Underground, Dorcas relaxed a little.
"I remember him," Morty said, tugging on the string of his gas mask box that was slung across his torso.
"Do you?" Dorcas asked, a little breathless.
Morty nodded. "He was in here with us last year. We heard the sirens."
Dorcas was chilled, remembering the time her uncle was referencing. It gave her an eerie deja vu feeling, thinking back one year ago to the time when the three of them had crowded into a listening booth in Bell's Music and then had to rush into the Underground for cover when the air raid sirens had blared.
She was packed off to Yorkshire the next day.
"It's different now. Mama said that the sirens haven't been sounded in over a month," Dorcas said, trying to comfort him.
"I don't like it down here," Morty said, swaying from side to side.
"The train will be here soon and then we'll be up above again," she replied in a cheery but hollow voice.
"Here, Birdie," Tom interrupted, holding out a parcel to her.
Stunned to see him again, wondering why he was being so insistent, she took the paper bag and opened it. She pulled a record out and studied it.
"I said I would replace them," Tom stubbornly replied.
"She has that one at home," Morty responded matter-of-fact as he looked at the Benny Goodman record she held. He continued to sway from side to side. "I don't like it down here."
"Oh, I didn't know you'd already gotten copies." Tom was abashed and plunged his hands into his pockets again. The gesture was meant to be casual, but Dorcas could tell that he was trying to be calm, trying not to push her.
"I didn't," Dorcas explained. "Thank you," she added. She reasoned that accepting the peace offering would make Tom leave sooner than an argument. She was beginning to worry about her uncle's agitation and didn't relish a row with Tom in public.
"I don't like it down here," her uncle repeated, backing down the platform.
Dorcas kept a firm grip on his hand. Tom followed slowly.
"Let's go back up to the street then," Tom offered, keeping close to Dorcas. "I don't like it down here that much either."
Dorcas tugged on Morty's hand. He was backing close to the platform's edge.
"Be careful, young man. You kids need to be careful. This is not a playground!"
"Thank you, sir," Tom replied to the man in the dark hat and coat. His teeth gritted with the effort at politeness.
"Morty, let's go home then. We don't have to go to the shops today. Let's go home." Dorcas wouldn't let go of her uncle, though he began tugging and jerking his hand away from her.
With one strong yank, Morty was free of Dorcas. The effort of releasing himself from her grip carried him off the platform's edge and onto the tracks.
If Tom hadn't grabbed Dorcas's other arm, she would have been pulled down with him.
"Morty!" Dorcas called, shoving Tom away from her. Without thinking, she jumped down off of the platform and onto the tracks beside Morty's prone form. Her knee connected with the iron railing of the track and she felt a whitehot pain shoot up her leg.
Her uncle's blood was on the tracks and Morty did not respond to Dorcas's voice.
Tom jumped down lightly after her, landing more gracefully than she had.
"We have to get him up," she said, frantically looking for a way back onto the platform.
Tom pulled out his wand. Dorcas was aware of several pairs of Muggle eyes on them.
"Tom," Dorcas hissed. "We can't do magic here in front of all of these people. Only at school."
She grabbed her uncle's arm and tried to shift his weight in order to lift him.
"We have to get him off the tracks. I'll take the consequences," Tom rushed on.
He pointed his wand at Morty's unmoving mass. "Ftera!"
Dorcas didn't know this spell, but she trusted Tom. She had to.
Anticipating her question, Tom explained, "It's the Feather-Light Charm. We can lift him now. We just need to find a way up."
There was a thud next to Dorcas as someone dropped down onto the tracks next to her. She startled and looked up at the tall, dark-complexioned man in a pinstriped suit who stood on the tracks next to her. She swallowed down the worry that not only would she, Tom, and her uncle perish beneath an Underground train, but that this stranger would die now with them.
"Please help," Dorcas panted, panicked. "He's not that heavy, we just need to lift him up there."
"Alright, folks," the man's booming voice commanded the attention of the people on the platform. "We need to get these kids and this man off the tracks. He's hurt bad."
The man scanned those assembled on the platform.
"Black hat," he said, pointing to the man who'd chided them incorrectly for horseplay on the platform. "Reach your hand down here and pull her up."
The man looked ready to argue, but Dorcas's protests cut him off first. "No, I won't leave my uncle. He goes first."
"No, Dorcas," Tom countered firmly. "You go first, then you can help pull him up after."
She reluctantly agreed. The stranger grabbed her around the waist and lifted her easily up to the man in the black hat. When Dorcas reached safety, she immediately crouched on the platform's edge, knee protesting painfully.
"Now," the dark stranger ordered. "You three," he indicated two men dressed in coveralls and the man in the black hat. "We're going to lift this fella up to you. Be careful of his head. He's banged up pretty good."
The men scrambled into position, shunting Dorcas to the side.
"The train's coming. I hear it," the man said to the onlookers calmly. "Best to get this done now."
Tom silently moved into position at Morty's feet as the larger man bent to take Morty under the arms with both hands.
Dorcas could tell by the man's expression, he was not expecting Morty to feel so light.
The men assembled easily pulled Morty to safety, laying his injured head in Dorcas's lap.
Her heart beat wildly as she registered the noise of the train coming around the corner. She could see its lights announcing its approach. It didn't seem to her that there was enough time to get them both off the tracks.
"Now you, mate," the man said, bending low and threading his fingers together to allow Tom a foothold. Tom was tossed onto the platform and pulled to his feet by the men who'd helped with Morty.
Now only the stranger was left on the tracks. The train's lights were illuminating him, its approach slowing as it neared the platform. But not slow enough.
The three men on the platform and Tom flung themselves on the ground and extended eight hands, grabbing arms, elbows, jacket, trousers, whatever they could grasp to pull the man out of the train's path.
Dorcas squeezed her eyes shut.
She heard the screeching of metal on metal as the breaks were engaged on the train.
She registered the cheers and applause of the onlookers around her. Only then did she dare to open her eyes to see the stranger who'd helped her and Tom laying in a heap with the other three men.
Tom, splayed next to her, chest heaving, gazed up at her briefly before closing his eyes. She reached a hand out and took his. He squeezed it in response and then brought it to his lips, gently kissing it.
:::
23 November, 1958 Janus Thickey Long-Term Spell Damage Ward
Dorcas left Cal and Fabian in the hospital's lobby. They were going to the Personnel Offices to look at duty rosters.
She wanted to have a look around her office to see if she noticed anything out of the ordinary. Or perhaps she wanted to be in the last place she remembered her connection to her baby before he died.
Sitting behind her desk, glancing at the files there, nothing felt misplaced or unfamiliar.
Dorcas sat back and let the images from Cal's memory return to her. She thought about the reactions of each person who entered the room. No one seemed particularly gleeful about Dorcas's poisoning as they moved through the doorway.
"Dr. Meadowes, I'd heard rumors that you've come back!" Roberta said, peeking into her office from the open door.
"Nurse Westbrook!" Dorcas nearly jumped out of her seat. She'd not been expecting any visitors. "I'm not back yet. Just visiting."
"Oh, it's so good to see you looking well. You're a little skinny though! Is that handsome husband looking after you properly?"
"It's good to see you, too!" Dorcas said, standing to embrace her mother's old friend. "Yes, Cal does an exemplary job of looking after me."
Immediately starting in on her figure seemed to be the purview of women of a certain age. Her mother always pointed out how thin she looked when she returned home from school every summer.
"Nurse Westbrook," Dorcas began. She was here on a mission and didn't want to let the chance to investigate Roberta's mind slip away. "My husband tells me that you were one of the first to find me after I'd been poisoned."
"That's correct," the old nurse said. "Right there on the floor behind your desk. I heard Healer Meadowes calling for help and I came running. I'm so sorry not to have found you earlier. Maybe your precious little baby could have been saved."
Roberta's shoulders slumped with the remembering of the scene.
"I keep thinking that I should have checked on you," she muttered, shaking her head.
Dorcas rubbed her shoulder comfortingly. "Why would you have come to check on me? You never had before. You have patients to attend. You're not responsible for an accident that happened to me in my office."
She took a moment to sift through Roberta's recollections. It would be very difficult to speak about a memory without recalling specific information about that event to mind. Dorcas felt confident that if Roberta had reported anything to Muybridge about her poisoning, that information would be close to the surface.
Roberta only felt shock and fear at what she'd seen. Then regret and sadness for Dorcas and Cal's son.
One suspect ruled out.
"Well, I only meant to bring it up because I wanted to thank you for your quick actions in assisting Cal. You probably saved my life and I'm grateful."
"Of course, my dear," Roberta said, accepting a tight hug. "I wish your young assistant could hear that as well. No one took your poisoning harder than she did."
"Gwen?" Dorcas asked.
"Yes, young Miss Stanley. Cried for days and tortured herself for being late to work that day. Her mother lives with her, you know? Homebound. Miss Stanley looks after her. But she was beside herself with guilt when she learned how you were poisoned by going through all of that mail."
"I remember the mail. And I remember her being late on that day," Dorcas replied faintly. "I'll talk to her now. Do you know if she's on shift today?"
Dorcas had a feeling. She couldn't explain why she knew Gwen was Muybridge's informant, she just did.
Roberta shook her head. "She doesn't work here any more."
Dorcas was shocked by this news. "What? Since when?"
Roberta shrugged. "She resigned around the beginning of October."
She wanted to bolt down to Personnel herself and demand Gwen's address. For all she knew, Gwen had skipped town weeks ago. Her chances of finding her former assistant and forcing her to give up Muybridge for her son's poisoning seemed to be diminishing by the second.
"That's too bad," Dorcas responded conversationally. She labored to keep her voice neutral while feeling the wind rushing out of her lungs at the same time. "She was a good assistant."
:::
4 July, 1941 Saint Joseph's Hospital, London
Dorcas held Tom's hand and didn't let it go.
Throughout the ambulance ride and the policemen's questions, she clung to him like a lifeline.
She tried not to remember that a year and a half ago she sat in this very waiting room after her uncle took a fall in their flat's washroom and cracked his head. She avoided looking at her own lap with his blood splashed down her dress once again.
She tried not to think about how events had repeated themselves.
True, this time her uncle had fallen on the Underground instead of inside their flat. But it was all the same. There were signs that her uncle was struggling. And she'd ignored them.
When he said he didn't want to be in the Underground, she should have listened the first time.
"Stop it," Tom said, affecting a casual tone as he sat next to her.
It took Dorcas a moment to register his voice.
"Stop what?"
"Blaming yourself. I may not be able to hear your thoughts, but I don't have to. I know you too well," Tom explained.
He couldn't hear her thoughts.
But she could hear his.
In the moment, when the only thing that mattered was getting her uncle off of the tracks, Tom didn't hesitate to use magic. Knowing that he could be in trouble with the Ministry for disregarding the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction for Underage Sorcery he'd done it anyway.
He was running through possible consequences that using magic in front of Muggles could bring.
He could be let off with a warning, although, he'd already had one from them regarding some foolish magic he'd performed at the orphanage during the summer between his first and second year at Hogwarts.
It was also entirely possible that the Ministry hadn't been alerted to the scene in the Underground. He'd done magic in other Muggle places before and gotten away with it.
Birmingham for one. Dorcas had used magic then as well. The Ministry seemed none the wiser concerning that instance. However, a bombing is a fraught and chaotic event to begin with; so many people and so much happening at once made it unlikely that the Ministry would even bother to investigate.
He'd also used magic in Little Hangleton against his own pathetic father. In that instance, the Ministry acted faster than Tom would have imagined possible. But they'd also assumed the incorrect guilty party and arrested his uncle, a man called Gaunt, instead.
If the Ministry was coming to expel him from school or to take his wand away from him, why didn't they just come and do it already?
Dorcas squeezed his hand and tried to convey her thanks that he'd done two things completely against his own character in order to save her and her uncle's lives.
The first thing was risking his ability to perform magic. The Ministry could very well instruct Professor Dippet to kick him out of Hogwarts. What sort of future could he expect to have after that?
The second thing was risking his own life. Dorcas knew that the thing he feared the most was his own death. She'd been surprised that he didn't hesitate to climb down onto the tracks to help her save Morty. They were nowhere close to gathering the ingredients for the Horcrux potion, let alone completing the process. Tom was just as mortal as anyone at this point.
And he'd been willing to die for her.
Dorcas leaned her head back against the waiting room wall.
She hoped that the Ministry hadn't taken notice of Tom's rule breaking. But there were so many people on that platform. So many witnesses.
As if she'd willed it into appearing, a large brown owl followed a man through the doors of the hospital.
Dorcas's head shot up and dread covered her like icy water.
She watched as the owl dropped two parchment envelopes at their feet.
Her surprise was mirrored in Tom's features as he retrieved both letters from the floor of the hospital lobby and handed one to her.
There were shouts from the waiting room nurse and hoots of protest from the owl as the two flapped at one another until the nurse could finally coax it back out of the doors.
"For me?" Dorcas asked in surprise, taking the envelope that Tom offered her.
She tore it open as Tom did the same to his.
To Miss Dorcas Clerey presently of Saint Joseph's Hospital Casualty Ward,
This afternoon at exactly thirty three minutes after two o'clock you performed unauthorized spellwork in violation of the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. Not only was the Feather Light Charm employed, disregarding the above decree, it was performed in the presence of seven Muggle witnesses. The spell named above was used in the Muggle section of London at Galbraith Street and Strattondale Street in the Underground Muggle Conveyance System.
You are hereby required to report to the Wizengamot to face a disciplinary hearing tomorrow at eight o'clock in the morning. Failure to report for this hearing will result in your immediate expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the destruction of your wand.
Hoping this letter finds you in excellent health,
Robert C. Felix
Improper Use of Magic Office
Ministry of Magic
Tom took the letter from her numb fingers after her eyes scanned it for the third time.
"Well that's bollocks!" he snorted after reading her letter as well. "You didn't take your wand out once!"
"Maybe the Ministry can only tell that magic was performed in a certain area and the magical people that happen to be in the vicinity at that moment."
Dorcas didn't know that this was true at all. She was merely thinking out loud.
"Underage magical people. The Ministry probably wouldn't have thought twice if that spell was performed by an adult wizard or witch," Tom argued.
"What does yours say?" Dorcas asked, guilt rising like bile in her throat.
"The same as yours, but only harsher as I already have a warning from them," Tom responded.
Dorcas took her letter back and tucked it into her pocket next to her wand. The wand they threatened to destroy.
"You do?" Dorcas asked conversationally. She didn't want Tom to know she'd already heard his inner monologue on the subject.
Tom nodded. "Yeah, this older boy who used to bully the little kids had it coming. I hexed his nose to sprout hair that wouldn't stop growing. He tried to run away and kept tripping over it."
"Imaginative," Dorcas complimented. "How'd you get out of it?"
"Dippet vouched for me," Tom replied.
"I wonder if he'd be inclined to speak up for you again," Dorcas mused.
Tom leaned back and took her hand once again. "You'll get off with a warning. All they can prove is that you were there when a spell was cast and that you're underage."
She felt a little better at Tom's confident tone, but didn't like that the unspoken other side of the coin suggested that he would not be so lucky.
"There has to be something someone can do to make them understand that it was an emergency. They don't really expect a wizard to stand by and watch someone be killed if they could prevent it with magic? Decree or no decree!" Dorcas insisted.
"I hope you're right," Tom answered softly, sinking back into his own mental back and forth.
Dorcas hadn't heard anything about her uncle in over an hour and almost stood to go and ask the nurse at the information booth when her mother rushed through the doors.
"Dorcas!" Mary-Ellen said, relief painting the word as her eyes locked on her daughter. "I saw the note on the door and didn't know where you'd gone or how long you'd been away."
"I didn't know how to reach you at work. I'm sorry!" Dorcas said, releasing Tom's hand to embrace her.
"Are you hurt?" Mary-Ellen asked urgently, scanning Dorcas for injuries.
"No, just Morty. We were in the Underground and he fell."
"Her knee, Mrs. Clerey," Tom indicated Dorcas's busted knee that she'd forgotten almost the moment it happened.
Mary-Ellen pushed Dorcas back into the chair and knelt in front of her to inspect the injury.
"And you, Tom? Are you hurt?"
"No, ma'am," he replied.
"Mum, it was all my fault. I decided to take Morty with me to buy Cherry a present for her birthday. We were going to take the Underground, but I didn't know that Morty was afraid of it after the air raid drills," Dorcas explained while her mother shielded her wand from the nurse at the information booth and muttered a healing spell.
"And then he pulled away from me and fell on the tracks," Dorcas continued.
"On the tracks?" Mary-Ellen repeated with dread.
Dorcas nodded quickly and continued. "He hit his head. If Tom hadn't used a spell to make Morty lighter, we wouldn't have been able to get him out of the train's path in time."
Dorcas pulled her envelope from the Improper Use of Magic Office out and handed it to her mother. "But we're in trouble now with the Ministry."
Mary-Ellen stood, taking the letter from her daughter and read its contents quickly.
"I'm surprised that they're requiring you to attend a hearing. You should be given a warning for a first infraction. What can they mean by it?" Mary-Ellen wondered.
"Tom's in trouble too. Only he's already had a warning from them before," Dorcas added, holding her hand out to Tom for his letter.
She handed it to Mary-Ellen as well, who read it with a grave expression.
"There are provisions for saving one's own life and the life of endangered Muggles. Neither of you should have to report to the Ministry," Mary-Ellen said, rereading Tom's letter, the troubled look didn't leave her face. "May I keep this for a few moments, Tom?"
Tom nodded.
"I need to check on Morty. You two wait here." Turning to Dorcas she added, "I'm going to contact your Uncle Lysander. He may be able to get the Ministry to ease up on you two, considering the circumstances."
Dorcas reached for Tom's hand again, feeling a little lighter at having her mother and her uncle in her corner–and Tom's.
There was silence in the waiting room for a few moments after Mary-Ellyn disappeared into the ward to see Morty.
Dorcas settled back against the wall once more, her mind more settled since her mother's arrival.
Tom's mind was still reeling.
"Dorcas?"
The commanding voice of her uncle cut through the silence like a gunshot.
It had been mere minutes since her mother had gone to see Morty, taking their letters of reprimand with her. She must have used magic to reach her elder brother and request his assistance.
"Where is your mother?" Lysander asked. "She said that you and Mortimer were involved in some sort of accident."
He endeavored to keep his voice level and his expression neutral. But Dorcas could see that he was agitated. His mind was inventorying her for visible signs of harm.
She wanted to set his mind at ease as much as she could. "Morty fell. I'm not hurt."
"Thank Merlin for that!" Lysander replied, relief modulating his carefully controlled tone.
"Mum is checking on Morty," Dorcas answered her uncle's previous query before he could ask it a second time.
Lysander, always in possession of a room, turned on his heel and strode past the nurse who was guarding the entrance to the casualty ward.
"Sir?" she called after him as he pushed the doors open.
Lysander didn't turn or answer her. He simply held a hand up to signal her to cease her squawking as it would be ineffectual on him.
Tom admired the commanding gesture. Dorcas heard his thoughts shift briefly before returning to his rather serious predicament with the Ministry.
"Uncle Lysander will sort everything out with the Ministry, Tom," Dorcas replied with a squeeze of his hand. She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.
It was a mere fifteen minutes later when Lysander returned with the two letters from the Improper Use of Magic Office.
"Dorcas, I need your wand," her uncle ordered.
She'd never contradicted or questioned her uncle in the short time she'd known him. He commanded respect as well as obedience. Dorcas would never want to find out what the consequences were for doing anything less.
"Yours, too," he said, turning to Tom with a hand outstretched.
"No," Tom replied as Dorcas handed hers over compliantly.
She opened her mouth to urge Tom to follow her lead. To trust her family. But Lysander cut her off.
"I understand your reluctance, young man," he responded patiently. "I merely mean to have the Ministry test the wands. They will find only one Feather Light Charm was used. Their own letters affirm that the spell was used in an emergency situation," her uncle continued, holding up the parchment envelopes.
"I can't give up my wand," Tom doubled down, unsettled by the prospect of parting from his tether to the magical world.
Dorcas could understand the impulse. After relying on the small, thin piece of wood for two years now, she thought of it almost as an extension of her. She'd only part with it to someone she trusted. Her uncle was one of those few.
She knew that Tom had no one in his life that he trusted besides himself.
"Then you'll have to accompany me to the Ministry of Magic if you harbor any hope of getting them to reverse their decision. A hearing before the Wizengamot is no small matter."
"Very well," Tom said, setting his shoulders as he stood and clenched his jaw determinedly.
Dorcas watched Tom leave the hospital with her uncle. Her fingers slipped from his grip as she hoped with everything in her that the Ministry would look favorably on him for helping her and Morty.
:::
At her mother's urging, Dorcas returned home to the empty flat. She'd waited in the hospital lobby for another hour alone after her uncle and Tom had departed to plead his case and hers before the Ministry.
Mary-Ellen would stay with Morty through the night and Dorcas planned to be back at the hospital first thing in the morning.
A movement to her right caught her eye and caused her to startle.
"Bing!" Dorcas breathed out on a sigh after a sharp intake of breath. "You scared me."
The cat jumped down from her piano and lept lightly onto the sofa, not acknowledging her.
All she wanted to do was peel off her bloody clothes and go to sleep. She shuffled to the washroom, kicking off her shoes and unbuttoning the bodice of her blue dress, wondering if she could salvage it with scrubbing.
She stripped to her camisole and knickers, modesty forgotten in the quiet and empty flat. She submerged the garment in the sink and rubbed at the red stains splashed down the front.
It was no good.
Hanging it to dry over the bathtub, she resolved to see what her mother could do with magic.
After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she was ready to don a nightgown and fall into her bed. She felt weary for the first time since the accident that afternoon.
The soft cotton felt comforting against her skin after wearing clothing caked with drying blood for most of the evening.
"I feel I should announce myself before you discard another item of clothing," Tom's voice spoke from the darkened corner by her window.
Her heart leapt into her throat and she spun to face him, using her bunched up nightgown to cover her body.
"Tom!" Dorcas gasped. "Why didn't you speak up?"
"I thought I just did," he replied, staring at the floorboards between them on the ground in an effort not to ogle her.
"Tell me how it went at the Ministry," she rushed, hastily pulling the nightgown over her underclothes.
"Your uncle convinced them to let me off with another warning," Tom said, studying the floor until she'd dressed. "Here's your wand by the way."
He held her wand out between them.
Instead of taking it, Dorcas rushed into his arms.
"Oh, I'm so glad you won't be kicked out of school, Tom! I was worried that the Ministry might not listen to you. And you risked everything to save my uncle," Dorcas said in a flurry of words and emotion.
His thoughts modified her assumption that he'd acted to save her uncle. He would not have risked so much if her life hadn't been on the line as well.
Tom's hands glided over the light cotton of her nightgown at her back as he embraced her.
At the sensory stimulation, Tom's mind became an instant dichotomy of desire to touch her and to kiss her and determination to show her that he could master his impulses. He didn't want her to be afraid of him.
He pushed her gently away.
Dorcas felt her cheeks heat. She shouldn't insist to him that she didn't want anything physical and then throw herself at him. It wasn't fair.
"Are you sleeping here alone tonight?" Tom asked.
Dorcas couldn't detect his precise motive for asking it. But she knew what she wanted: Tom's presence and nothing more.
She nodded. "I hope you'll stay," she said, praying that he didn't read too much into the words.
"Of course I will."
Dorcas was surprised when he didn't crawl under the covers beside her. She'd been so used to having him close enough to touch, to reassure her that they'd both made it out of another uncertain and perilous event together. But she didn't protest.
He sat across the room from her on the floor, as a sentinel while she slept.
:::
Dorcas woke in a cold sweat, panting as she'd relived the moments on the platform of the Underground over in her dreams.
Tom's arm was draped heavily over her, his reassuring weight comforting after her troubled dreams.
He was sleeping peacefully beside her, on top of the covers, while she lay beneath them.
She smiled.
No, she couldn't help how she felt about Tom Riddle. She knew she would always love him. She knew he would always count on it.
