Chapter 61
16 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London
Turning in a slow circle, Dorcas realized that she wasn't in her Mayfair townhome. Rather, she was in a tiny flat. The first home she and Cal had shared together all those years ago in Watford.
A smile played on her lips as she remembered how she began her journey as a wife and mother with such confused feelings, struggling to reconcile the life she dreamed of with the one she was living at the moment. Then, like the flick of a wand; as sudden as that, she realized that not only did she love the child she'd given birth to eight weeks ago, but that she was also madly in love with her husband.
It wasn't the dream she'd wanted, but it was still a dream.
As she rested her elbow on the edge of her daughter's cot, cradling her chin in her palm, she fantasized about the future her little girl would have.
Reaching out a tentative finger, Dorcas brushed at a dark curl that stuck up above Ryann's ear.
"Looks like I arrived right on time," Cal whispered from behind her, slipping his arm around her waist and placing a kiss on her neck.
She thought he'd meant to come and watch their sleeping daughter as she'd been doing, but she soon discovered when she'd peered into his mind that a sleeping infant meant that they could have an hour undisturbed to themselves.
Dorcas was suddenly very grateful that she'd had a chance to shower that morning and didn't smell like sour milk anymore. Still, this new intimacy that she shared with her husband made her self-conscious.
"I didn't know you would be home this early. I would have done something with my hair and... I don't know...made an effort."
She took his hand as it began to travel to the buttons at the front of her dress and pulled it away, leading him out of the room that their napping daughter occupied.
In her pocket she found her wand and cast a ward on Ryann's door in order to alert her if the baby awakened.
"You don't have to make any effort at all, Dorcas. You're dazzling."
Dorcas blushed at the compliment and squeezed his hand, leading him to the kitchen.
"Are you hungry, Cal? I can fix–"
Cal was already shaking his head in reply and tugged her in the opposite direction, toward their bedroom.
"I didn't come home for lunch, my love. I came home for you."
Dorcas's eyes were wide with surprise. "For me?"
Cal nodded slowly, closing their bedroom door behind him before pulling her into his arms and covering her mouth with an insistent kiss.
She felt his hands travel over her waist and to her hips before dipping to her backside and the backs of her thighs. He bent and swiftly lifted her, wrapping her legs around him. Dorcas gasped and clutched at his collar in surprise.
This was a very different side of Cal than she'd ever experienced before and it excited her.
In school, he was well-mannered and gentle. He'd always been kind and dependable, but never wild and passionate. Discovering now that he was capable of being all of these things combined made Dorcas love him even more.
Dorcas hurried to loosen his tie and unbutton the stiff collar of the dress shirt at his neck so that she could kiss the skin there.
Cal's Adam's apple buzzed tantalizingly under her lips as he moaned deep in his throat. Dorcas's desire to pull more noises from him prompted her to use her tongue.
In response, her husband's right hand slid over the smooth skin at the back of her thigh and to her backside, fingers ducking under the lining of her knickers.
She carded her fingers through his hair, messing up his combed waves and crisp side part. Leaning back in his arms, she took in the sight of him, unkempt and out of breath and entirely mad with desire for her.
To answer her efforts, Cal dumped her roughly on the bed, eliciting a squeal from Dorcas before clapping her hand over her mouth as she realized that she might wake the baby and ruin the mood.
"Silencing Spell," she whispered to Cal.
He took his wand from his trousers pocket and cast the spell before tossing it aside and ripping his neatly tucked-in shirt from his waistband.
Dorcas frowned for a minute, lamenting the missed opportunity to undress him herself, but found herself watching curiously as he unbuttoned the shirt and cast it aside, disposing of his undershirt nearly as quickly.
In the early months of their marriage when Dorcas had thrown all of the walls up around her, she never allowed herself a moment to really look at the beautiful body of her man. Laying on the bed, propped on her elbows, she stared unapologetically now, taking in all of the taut toned skin of his chest and his arms. She was consumed with the need to touch him, to run her fingertips from his shoulders down the planes of his torso.
When she reached for him, he shocked her by shaking his head with a devilish grin that looked so out of character for polite and steady Caleb Meadowes.
But he didn't leave her pouting for long, dropping to his knees beside the bed, he grabbed Dorcas's hips and dragged her to the edge of the bed. Her skirt bunched at her waist with the motion and Cal's grin widened.
Dorcas's heart began to beat a rapid pace against her chest wondering what this captivating and astonishing man might do next. She dared not venture into his mind and spoil the surprise.
His intentions became more apparent when he placed his palms on her knees and parted them. Dorcas felt his touch sear her skin as his hands glided from her knees to her thighs and, finally, to her abdomen, dragging her panties down in an agonizingly slow motion.
Discarding them alongside his shirt, Cal turned back to her and guided her leg up and over his shoulder before doing the same with her other leg.
The oddest thought came into Dorcas's mind as Cal's head settled between her legs. She reminded herself to press his shirt again before allowing him to return to the hospital. She was convinced that if he showed up at the laboratory in a rumpled shirt, then all of his colleagues would know what he'd been up to.
She laughed as Cal's tongue stroked her for the first time.
Cal paused and looked at her with a quizzical expression. "Ticklish?"
Dorcas's cheeks flamed. "No. I was just thinking that I needed to make sure you looked presentable again before sending you back to work."
The corner of Cal's mouth quirked up. "I'd rather look completely wrecked by you, sweetheart." He emphasized his point by plunging a finger inside of her without warning.
The sensation of his finger moving in and out of her caused her to throw her head back and gasp. When he added his tongue, Dorcas felt as if she would dissolve right into the mattress. But when his movements built momentum her slack muscles began to tense with anticipation.
"Cal," she cried, burying her fists in the blankets beneath her. An uncontrollable wave, like fire, rocked through her causing her back to arch and her toes to curl.
Cal leaned his cheek against her thigh and watched her breathing return to normal.
"What are you thinking?" Cal asked as he studied her.
Dorcas untangled her fingers from the bedding and rested her hand on her stomach.
"I didn't think I would ever be as happy and full of love as I am right now," Dorcas replied simply.
This was also a new sensation, being completely transparent with Cal. Saying exactly what she felt without the risk of judgement or rejection. She'd never had that with anyone else before.
Cal joined her on the bed and wrapped her up in his strong arms. She was finally able to reach him and run her fingertips over every exposed inch of skin. When he pressed against her hip, she felt how hard he'd become.
"All I've ever wanted was a chance to show you how much I love you," he replied.
She had an overpowering urge to feel him inside of her that propelled her fingers to unfasten his trousers and tug them down his hips. She hopped lightly from the bed, untangling herself from his arms and yanking his trousers off clumsily. Cal helped her by lifting his hips and pushing the waistband of his pants down as well.
They'd only just made love for the first time the previous evening, all of it taking place in the semi-darkness of their bedroom.
This was the first time Dorcas had seen him erect and ready for her. In his mind, Dorcas saw herself reflected there, a look of hunger spreading over her features.
"I want to see you too, my love," Cal said, resting on his elbows staring up at her.
Dorcas nodded, fumbling with the buttons of her dress until she was able to pull the garment over her head. Cal had already rid her of her knickers and so she stood before him in nothing but her bra.
Cal ran his tongue over his lips as his eyes moved down her body. The feeling of having his eyes on her was the most erotic feeling she'd ever felt and she enjoyed every minute of it. Reaching behind her, Dorcas boldly shed her last stitch of fabric, slipping the straps of her bra down her arms until it fell to the floor.
"I want you on top of me, sweetheart." Taking one of Dorcas's hands, he pulled her closer until she was forced to kneel on the bed.
She allowed him to take her hips and guide her until she'd settled over him. When one of his hands slipped between her legs and positioned himself against her, Dorcas held her breath and leaned back into him, easing herself around his length.
They both gasped together as they moved, Cal's fingers digging into the tender flesh of her thighs as she stroked the fine hairs of his chest.
Had she ever noticed the depths of his blue eyes before? Or the perfect shape and texture of his lips? She reveled in the realization that she had the rest of her life to learn every perfect thing about this man.
How had she known him for six years growing up and never understood the absolute and uncontrollable desire she felt for him until now? How had she been blind to the love he had for her and how her love for him matched it?
"I will spend my whole life trying to make you happy, Dorcas," Cal declared.
Dorcas stared down at him as his motions sent powerful shocks of pleasure through her.
"What would make you happy, Cal?" Dorcas asked, the sincerity of that statement, the deep need to know what he wanted above all else set her aflame.
The question seemed to catch him off guard and for a moment, his hips ceased their rocking motion.
"You, Dorcas. I want you," he answered, chest heaving beneath her hands.
Dorcas circled her hips on top of his, pulling a low groan from him in answer, reminding him that he already had her. Now and always.
"What else?"
Cal seemed to be holding something back from her. Dorcas almost plunged into his thoughts to get at what he was reluctant to say. But she didn't. She wanted to hear him speak what he wanted. She felt a strong urge to hear him make a request of her. And she knew she would do her best to grant whatever was in his heart.
"Children," he finally whispered. "I want children with you."
The statement created a physical response in her, igniting the blood in her veins. Her hips began to rock with more urgency.
"I can give you children, Cal," Dorcas insisted.
Cal's hands quickly caught her hips and slowed her to a languid pace. "Not now. You just gave me one two months ago." One of his large hands rested on her abdomen as if remembering how it swelled with their daughter a matter of weeks ago. "We have time, my love. Which reminds me, we should get you on a contraception potion soon. You're going to be starting at university in autumn. You don't want to fall pregnant and delay those plans, do you?"
His right hand traveled upward, tracing a trail across her abdomen and breast before finally resting against her cheek.
"But I'm happy knowing that you want that with me," Cal added.
:::
Dorcas woke to an empty bed.
Cal had recently begun stealing away silently to work in the morning ever since the trial had ended and Dorcas had that horrible night of seizures. He wanted her to rest. He wanted her to be still, to recuperate.
If he had his way, she would be confined to her bed, waited on hand and foot by staff.
She longed for the days when they had very little; only each other really, and a tiny baby relying on them. Life was simpler. They were simpler. She was.
Dorcas pushed the emptiness to the back of her mind. She was not dreading today necessarily, but tea in the company of women (most of whom she did not know) to celebrate Theresa and Gideon's impending joy was not something she felt enthusiastic about at the moment.
Sighing, Dorcas trudged slowly to the shower, the dream she'd had still vivid in her mind.
:::
13 March, 1942 Riddle House, Little Hangleton, Lincolnshire
Dorcas looked down at her muddy boots and wished she hadn't discarded Cherry's bright red Wellies before making the trip to visit Jack's aunt.
Not wanting to look like an inmate escaped from the government loony bin, Dorcas had changed out of her eccentric combination of clothing after fleeing her disastrous date with Mohit Singh.
The only part of the all-green extravaganza she'd opted to keep was the olive and brown checked trousers. They were quite lovely when paired with a simple ivory blouse and Dorcas's favorite cardigan with the butterflies on it.
She thought she'd chosen sturdy shoes for walking in the muddy, snow-melted lanes from Great Hangleton into the smaller village of Little Hangleton, but she'd been wrong. The damp was seeping through the leather and numbing her toes as she stood on the stoop waiting for someone to answer her knock.
Nervously, Dorcas reached a hand up to smooth her hair down, catching a few stray strands and tucking them into the milkmaid braids she'd hastily fastened to the top of her head. After magically undoing the tiny braids on one side of her head (resulting in an uncontrollable cloud of tight, kinky curls) and returning the other side to the same length, Dorcas had quickly tried to tame it. Only wrestling it all into plaits and pinning it up seemed to work.
"Hello?" preceded a voice before the back kitchen door was cracked. "Is that the flower delivery?"
Dorcas could only see one blue eye peeking out from the crack in the door.
"No, ma'am. I'm here to visit Mrs. Penny Hardin," Dorcas squeaked.
The door closed without further comment, leaving Dorcas to wonder if she should stay and wait for someone to return to the door, or leave.
March in Lincolnshire was a bit milder than the weather she'd just left at school, but Dorcas still wished she hadn't run impulsively from the tea shop in Hogsmeade. She thought longingly about her coat draped over the back of her chair. Cal said he'd go back and get it for her. Why hadn't she just waited for him to do that? If she had, then she wouldn't be freezing and she wouldn't have a heavy pit in her stomach where the regret of her stinging words to Cal sat and churned inside of her.
Wrapping her cardigan tighter around her and folding her arms across her chest, Dorcas stomped her feet on the stoop, trying to knock some of the mud off and generate some warmth in her limbs at the same time.
The door was wrenched open suddenly, causing Dorcas to jump and clutch her small bag containing the potions she'd stolen from the hospital wing tighter.
"Miss Clerey?" asked a woman with dark hair, a streak of gray woven into the curls pinned up on either side of her head. Her face was aristocratic but kind and her eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled. Warm brown eyes stared down expectantly at Dorcas.
Dorcas was struck by how much Mary Riddle reminded her of Verity.
"Well, are you going to stand there and gawk and let all the heat out?" interrupted a harsh voice from behind the mistress, clanging pots on a large stove.
"Oh, Nancy. Don't be rude to our guest," Mrs. Riddle chided as she beckoned Dorcas in with a wave of her hand. "This is Miss Dorcas Clerey, Jack's friend. She's here to visit Mrs. Penny. Isn't that lovely?"
The girl named Nancy must not have heard Mrs. Riddle, or maybe she did and decided not to comment.
Dorcas stomped her feet once more, dislodging the majority of the dirt from her shoes and stepped into the pristine kitchen.
Just as Mary closed the door behind her, Dorcas caught the appraising eye of Nancy zeroing in on Dorcas's boots as they stood on her freshly scrubbed floors.
"Don't mind Nancy. We've all had to shift a bit to fill the void of Mrs. Penny, the dear woman. Nerves are a little frayed all around these days," Mary confided to Dorcas, taking her arm and hooking it around her own as she led her from the kitchen and into a narrow postern hall.
Dorcas vaguely remembered fleeing the Riddle house down the steep stairs just to her left and through the kitchen, running away from the unconscious form of Tom Riddle, Mary's son, after her Tom and Jack had fought him off her.
She felt herself wince a little at her own internal label of her Tom. Not hers now, if he ever was to begin with.
Bypassing the stairs, Mary took her further into the bowels of the servant's quarters.
"Have you had many letters from Jack? Other than a few concerning the health of his aunt, I have not had occasion to write to him," said Mary.
Dorcas detected a great deal of regret in the admission.
"You don't have to have an occasion to write to him, ma'am," Dorcas answered. "He mentioned to me in his last letter that he worries about you and that I should tell him how you are when I visit."
"He asked after me?" Mary raised her eyebrows as she turned to Dorcas.
Dorcas nodded, feeling a little sad for Mrs. Riddle. She clearly worried about her grandson and missed him tremendously. She didn't know if it was the pretense of aristocratic aloofness or the fraught circumstances of Verity's death and Jack's departure from the house that kept Mary from writing to her grandson.
"Yes, he said he was concerned with your health and that he worried that you were trying to care for his aunt all on your own."
A smile broke the careful facade of Mary Riddle's face, but didn't touch the sadness in her eyes when she looked at Dorcas.
"Jack is a dear boy. I miss him and…"
Dorcas realized that Verity's name had almost escaped Mary's lips. But she pressed them together instead and looked down at the wood beneath their feet as they stopped at the quiet end of the hall in front of a door that stood ajar.
It must be hard for Mary Riddle to mourn the death of a granddaughter that, under the gaze of society, she was not permitted to claim as her own. And she'd lost her grandson on top of that when he left home almost immediately after Verity's death to join up.
She made a mental note to ask Jack to write to Mary more often, not just on the pretense of asking after his Aunt Penny's health.
"Well, here we are," Mary recovered, dropping Dorcas's arm to knock lightly and open the door.
The air inside the room was heavy and stale as Dorcas followed her in and lingered by the door.
"Penny, dear," Mary said, coming to stand beside a bed with white sheets and a blue ring-patterned quilt spread out over them.
Mary blocked the bed's occupant from Dorcas's view. She could only see the peaks of two feet beneath the bed coverings. Mary reached for Penny's hand and folded it in between her own, squeezing gently. Dorcas was struck by the tenderness of the gesture, as if Mary was comforting a close relative instead of a member of her staff. She hadn't remembered seeing Mary Riddle quite like this when she was here a year ago taking advantage of the Riddles' anniversary celebration to dig around for clues about Tom's parents.
Mary turned to Dorcas and nodded, encouraging her further into the room.
"Look who's come to visit you. Dorcas, a friend of Jack's," Mary explained gently.
As Dorcas moved around the bed and closer to the chair opposite Mary Riddle, she swallowed a gasp that had bubbled up into her throat.
The commanding woman that Dorcas remembered presiding over a bustling kitchen was gone. In her place was a woman who was much thinner, frail, with the left side of her face slack, drool glistening on her chin.
Mary quickly reached into the pocket of her navy dress and took out a handkerchief, dabbing at Mrs. Penny's chin.
"There. That's better," murmured Mary. "Do you remember Dorcas, Penny?" To Dorcas she turned, her cheeks reddening. "Jack mentioned that you were serving at the party last year. I'm sorry that I don't remember you."
"It's okay," Dorcas rushed to excuse her. "You had a lot to manage that night."
Mary smiled sadly. "That's putting things mildly."
Just then, Penny Hardin looked in Dorcas's direction, using her right eye to stare at her. Her lips worked for a moment before she managed to utter a word.
"Munsch," Penny said on a sigh.
Mary leaned over Penny and tilted her head to study her former cook. "What was that, dear?" she asked patiently.
Dorcas knew that the word came out garbled because Penny's communication was stunted due to an apparent stroke she'd suffered, but her mind was perfectly legible.
She laughed and supplied an explanation. "She called me "mouse". She remembers me," Dorcas offered.
Mary smiled and looked between Dorcas and Penny, blinking in confusion. "Mouse?"
Dorcas blushed a little. "Jack wrote to say that his aunt didn't remember the girl he described in his letters, only a mouse scurrying around her kitchen during the party last year."
Mary chuckled and patted Penny's hand affectionately. "Yes, well we are all mice under your feet in the kitchens, aren't we?" she asked. "And you are a fearsome cat, my friend."
Dorcas sank into the chair at Penny's bedside, her bag sagging heavily to the floor. Sadly, nothing that Dorcas had smuggled out of the hospital wing could help Jack's aunt with her condition.
"Mm get bacht wer vr'zoon," Penny replied.
Mary leaned over patiently and concentrated on Penny's words.
"I'm going to get back to work very soon," Dorcas repeated, smiling.
Mary straightened and regarded Dorcas with awe. "You have a gift with her, Miss Clerey." To Penny, she added, "I don't want you to give the kitchen a single thought. Nancy has it well in hand."
"N'see sa schullym ayd hookah may ktosh," Penny argued, glaring sternly at Mary.
Mary looked to Dorcas to translate.
"Nancy is a scullery maid who can't make toast," Dorcas supplied with a grin, thinking back to the hostile reception she'd received from the scullery maid-turned cook.
Penny raised her right hand and pointed at Dorcas as if to emphasize her words.
"I'll have no more worrying about the kitchen from you!" Mary teased, fussing with Penny's sheets, tucking them in around the frail woman. "But I agree, her cooking is appalling."
Penny lifted the corner of her mouth that wasn't stuck in a permanent droop, laughing at Mary's admission. Then she turned to Dorcas.
"Cha kro t'm bow too all thy mm." Jack wrote to me about you all the time.
"He did?" Dorcas asked, a smile stretched across her face at the mention of Jack. "What did he say?"
Mary's smile faltered, realizing that she could not follow the conversation without help, simultaneously realizing that she was intruding on Dorcas's visit.
"If you'll excuse me," she said, gently laying Penny's left hand across the woman's chest. "I'm expecting the doctor to arrive in a few minutes."
"Bah!" Penny responded with a dismissive wave.
"Now, Penny! You will be good for the doctor today. I won't have you biting him anymore."
Dorcas's smile widened.
Mary left, with a similar smile pinned to her face. But when she paused at the door, her look clouded over into one of grief. Dorcas barely caught it, but the slump of her shoulders under the weight of the sick woman's care was much more noticeable.
Jack said he's over the moon about you and that you're the most unique and most special girl in the entire world.
Dorcas beamed. She didn't think her cheeks could pull higher. She flushed under the relayed praise, feeling the closeness of the air in the room more acutely.
"Do you mind if I crack the window a bit?" Dorcas asked.
Penny eagerly nodded, longing for some fresh air as well.
He also said you're a complete nutter.
"I'm a nutter!" cried Dorcas playfully, spinning away from the window she'd just opened. "Why would he say such a thing?"
He thinks you're crazy for giving him the time of day. Penny closed her right eye in mirth.
"It's not crazy, falling in love with him! Not at all! He's so thoughtful and kind. He's genuine and uncomplicated. Honestly, I wonder why he chose me!"
There are a lot of girls in this village who fought for his attention.
Dorcas wasn't surprised by this admission. A boy as dashing and brave as Jack obviously could not lack for admirers. But the idea of having competition among the unknown populations of women in this village still rankled her.
"Did he love any of them?" Dorcas asked.
Penny shook her head. I've never heard him talk about any girl the way he speaks about you, dear.
That set Dorcas's mind at ease.
He told me he wanted to marry you when he came home.
Dorcas blushed again. "I hope that we can be married someday. I'm still in school for four more years, though."
Penny relaxed against her pillow and closed her eye again.
I wish he were home now. I miss him. And Verity.
"I miss him too. And I wish I knew Verity better. She seemed…" Dorcas searched for the right word. "Lively."
Oh, she was! You think Jack has admirers? She couldn't walk down the lane without all the boys' heads turning in her direction. And it was more than just her looks, though she was beautiful. She had a spark, just something that made you sit up and take notice…
"I remember," Dorcas agreed. She wondered if this was a quality she'd inherited from her mother or her father. The thought of Tom Riddle, Sr. made her shiver.
It's a waste that he's here and she's gone! Penny said.
Dorcas blinked, thinking for a moment that Penny was talking about Jack. But she understood, Penny had meant that it was a waste that Master Tom was still here.
"Has he gotten any better since her death? Has he stopped drinking?"
The scoundrel will never stop. Not the drinking, nor the carousing. She deserved a better father. They both did!
Penny coughed in agitation as she became worked up about the younger master of the house and Dorcas scrambled for a change of subject.
"Tell me about Jack as a boy." Dorcas bit her bottom lip. She couldn't pass up the opportunity to find out things about Jack that he would never tell her.
He was a sweet boy.
Aunt Penny lifted her right hand and shakily gestured toward a framed photograph on a table beside her bed, at Dorcas's elbow. It was a picture of a boy, dark hair swept to the side out of his eyes in a sailor's costume, a fat baby in a white dress was propped on his lap.
He called her "my baby" and carted her around as if she was his doll. Even when he went on adventures with the other boys in the village, he would lift her up onto his back and run off with her like she was a rucksack. He always included her. The other boys teased him for his little pet. But they were inseparable.
Dorcas looked at the pair of young siblings and felt a stab of loss for Jack. She could tell on the brief visit she'd made last year that there was a strong bond between the siblings.
As always, she was struck by the stark contrast between Jack and Tom. She couldn't imagine that Tom would ever be as attached to a companion as Jack and Verity had seemed. How different would he have been if he'd had someone to watch over, instead of growing up in a solitary childhood where putting oneself first was not only habit, it was survival?
I fear for him. He's too young to be putting himself in danger in a foreign land.
Dorcas pulled her eyes away from the photograph and looked at Jack's aunt once again.
He only joined up out of impulse. He just wanted to get away from here before he did something he regretted. When he flew off after Master Tom, I prayed that he would never find the cursed wretch. He would have killed him if he had. He couldn't stay after that…
She pressed her lips into a thin line. Dorcas wanted to give the diminished woman any small comfort that she could. But she also wanted to remain cautious. She must remember that for as intimate as their conversation seemed now, Penny Hardin was little more than a stranger to her.
Dorcas set her shoulders and in the next moment decided to relieve Penny's worry.
"Ma'am–" she began.
Please call me Aunt Penny, the former cook stammered.
"Very well," agreed Dorcas. "Aunt Penny, I have magic. I learn it from a school of magic. I'm going to do my best to protect Jack while he's away in Africa. I know you can't possibly believe that, but it's true."
:::
16 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London
"Tea, ma'am?" Frost asked as she stepped out of the damp behind Dorcas and into their foyer.
Dorcas smiled, taking her dripping umbrella and drying it immediately with a flick of her wand. The smile was a mask that she knew did little to fool her hawkish housekeeper.
Frost's hand came to rest on the arm with the umbrella, urging Dorcas to turn to her. The older witch had more compassion on her features just now than Dorcas had ever seen on the woman.
"Don't concern yourself with the words of an empty-headed poodle, Dorcas. She was thoughtless, but she didn't mean any harm."
Dorcas swallowed past a painful knot in her throat. Had Frost ever called her by her own name before? She looked away from her housekeeper, afraid that opening the subject again might renew her tears.
"Tea would be nice, Frost. Thank you." She shrugged out of her coat and felt Frost remove it from her hands.
"Shall I bring it into your study, ma'am?"
Dorcas hesitated. In her office, Dorcas would only be forced to brood over the mystery of Jack Hardin and how impossible it seemed to get at the truth of an entire person missing from her life.
Deciding that it would be better if she remained busy, Dorcas turned to her. "Bring it to the laboratory instead, if you don't mind."
"Very good, ma'am."
Dorcas knew she'd be able to find enough menial tasks in there to keep her fingers busy and her mind numb. When she descended the stairs, she saw immediately that a sink full of glass laboratory equipment beckoned to be washed and dried.
Reaching for her apron on the hook next to Cal's lab coat, Dorcas tied it off and donned the rubber gloves in the pocket and set to work.
The lab wasn't a mess exactly. Cal was too careful in his habits to allow that. But it had been neglected in all of the little ways that Dorcas attended to. There was dust on some of the shelves and equipment. Some ingredients were dwindling, empty jars reproaching her from the cupboards.
She should have come down here this morning and given the place a good scrubbing in lieu of going to Theresa's baby shower.
Instead, Dorcas had dressed in a light blue taffeta frock and arranged her hair and went to the Prewett's house to support a friend that had been incredibly loyal and helpful to her.
Aside from the bank outing and returning Ryann to school, Dorcas hadn't left her Mayfair home since the Muybridge trial concluded.
Going out socially made her feel extremely vulnerable and paranoid, even with Mrs. Frost in tow.
Theresa and Gwen were the only women of the party that she knew, but it seemed once she'd had a chance to survey the minds of the other women, they knew who she was. Courtesy of the Daily Prophet, Dorcas's infamy as a natural Lelgilimens preceded her everywhere she went.
"Do you know what you'd like to have?" a blonde with similar features to Theresa asked. She'd been introduced to Dorcas as a sister, but she couldn't remember the woman's name.
Theresa shrugged, balancing her tea cup and saucer on her knees. "I don't care which. I guess, since I have Billy, a little girl might be nice."
"A little girl!" a woman with mousy brown hair perked up with a sigh. "That would be lovely!"
Dorcas smiled, following the conversation wordlessly. Little girls were precious, indeed. Dorcas remembered all of the frilly dresses that she enjoyed dressing hers in when they were babies. Wren bore the porcelain doll treatment with more grace than Ryann ever had.
She didn't know, she realized with a stab, how it was to raise a little boy.
Gwen cut across her sad thoughts cheerfully. "Dorcas has some tricks to share for raising girls, I'm sure."
"Oh yes! Dorcas has the cleverest daughters!" Theresa added, beaming at Dorcas.
There was a pause and Dorcas realized they were expecting her to take up the thread of conversation. Dorcas faltered and raised her cup to her lips, sipping her tea.
"The littlest is a sunbeam, always cheery and energetic. The older," cut in Mrs. Frost, expertly pulling focus away from Dorcas. "Like a whip, that one. Spitting image of her mum."
"Do you want anymore? Wouldn't your husband like a little boy?" asked the mousy-haired witch with an innocent raise of her brows.
Dorcas saw Gwen set her tea cup on the table and Theresa cut her glance sharply in the woman's direction.
"Millie, Dorcas lost her little boy last year," Theresa explained gently.
"It was in the papers, you ninny!" Theresa's sister jabbed.
The mousy witch's eyes widened. "Oh! How stupid of me. I'm so sorry, Dorcas."
Dorcas couldn't speak. She could only shake her head dismissively.
To cover for her slip up, the witch named Millie added. "You could still have another."
Her strangled response wouldn't come and she felt her numb fingers lose their grip on her tea. Frost's wand was out and quickly flicked the cup, teaspoon, and saucer onto the table without allowing a drop to spill.
Her housekeeper was standing and consulting the timepiece pendant attached to a pin on her lapel. "Miss, it's nearly time to get back. Master Cal will be waiting for you."
This was a lie. Cal was at work. But Dorcas took the escape that Mrs. Frost had crafted for her.
"This was a lovely tea, Mrs. Prewett," Mrs. Frost rushed to say, gathering up Dorcas, her handbag and her coat as the other women stood awkwardly by, stricken expressions on their faces. "Many felicities to you and your family. And congratulations to you as well, Miss Gwen," the housekeeper added.
Dorcas managed to hold herself together until the cab pulled away from the curb. If Frost hadn't been there to swiftly extricate her from the baby shower tea, she would have dissolved into a puddle of tears right there on the settee in Theresa's sitting room.
The sound of the hinges on the door at the top of the laboratory's stairs shook Dorcas out of her morose thoughts.
"What are you doing?" Cal asked.
Dorcas blinked and stiffly turned at the sound of his voice.
"I thought you were Frost," Dorcas replied.
Cal tucked his hands into his pockets. "I'm not. But I can fetch her for you, if you want."
Dorcas blinked once again and turned back to the glassware she'd been washing. To the left of her was a cold cup of tea. All of the suds had evaporated from the now tepid water. She wondered how long she'd stood in front of this sink, unmoving.
"No," Dorcas dismissed. "What time is it? Do you need something?"
"It's half past five. Have you been down here the entire day? And why are you dressed like that?"
Dorcas's mind was sluggish and she had trouble concentrating on everything Cal was saying. She dropped her eyes to her front. She was wearing the dress she'd put on for Theresa's shower, a lab apron over that.
"I had Theresa's tea today. A baby shower."
Cal nodded, possibly remembering her mentioning this earlier. But his eyes carefully assessed her as he stepped closer.
"Is there something wrong, sweetheart? Any numbness? Trouble with your vision? Dizziness?"
Dorcas pulled off the rubber gloves and laid them beside her untouched tea. Cal thought this was about her brain injury. She was just fine with this. She would rather he thought her troubles were medical rather than what they really were.
"A little tired, maybe."
"That's all?" He raised his brows, as if to suggest she was holding something back.
She shrugged. "What else do you want me to say, Cal?"
He leaned against a workbench and held her stare, challenging her. When she didn't offer any other insights into her dejected mood, Cal moved on.
"I've been thinking about how we might approach this problem with Jack Hardin?"
Dorcas seized on an opportunity to steer the conversation away from her mood and onto the mysterious missing person from her memory. She turned fully and untied the apron, tossing it onto the counter next to the lone beaker she'd cleaned in the hours she'd been down here.
"Tell me."
:::
13 March, 1942 Riddle House, Little Hangleton, Lincolnshire
Dorcas followed Mary Riddle into a fine drawing room that was decorated in the opulent way that people with money seemed accustomed to. It was rather like the rooms that her Aunt Eden occupied in the imposing estate at Blackpool Abbey.
She was reluctant to leave the servant's quarters when the doctor arrived to check up on Jack's aunt. Jack had asked her to give him a faithful update about his aunt's condition, but she wouldn't be able to do that from this ornamented room on an entirely different floor of the house. It was too far away for Dorcas to peer into the physician's mind.
Nancy had grudgingly laid out tea for them and disappeared once more with a scowl in Dorcas's direction.
"She doesn't like me," Dorcas observed as Mary handed her a cup on a saucer.
Mary smiled and took a sip from her own cup. "That is something you'll have to become used to, my dear. You'll find more than one pair of narrowed eyes glaring at you in this village."
Dorcas cast about in her mind for a reason for such animosity to be aimed at her, a stranger to this region.
Mary clarified, handing Dorcas a slice of cake. "Though he never paid any attention to a single one, many a young lady around here had set her sights on our Jack."
"Oh."
Dorcas dropped her eyes to her tea. Beyond her own jealousy that simmered at this statement, Dorcas saw a sort of pride in Mary's mind that none of the common girls of Jack's acquaintance were good enough to attract his notice. Fidgeting a little, Dorcas wondered if the lofty mistress of the Riddle house counted her among the common girls that she assessed as being beneath her grandson.
"You have a way with his aunt, you know. I cannot seem to manage to understand her the way you can, my dear. I have a mind to hire you to be her companion."
This surprised Dorcas and she lifted her eyes to the mistress of the house. It seemed to confirm Dorcas's fear that Mary Riddle thought of her as help, as common. Not as a match for her Jack. Dorcas felt compelled to shape Mary's opinion of her differently.
"That's kind of you ma'am. Mrs. Penny is a nice lady. But I live about a half a day's journey from here."
"Oh?" Mary asked, tilting her head in confusion. "I asked Mrs. Wharton about you when Jack wrote to me that you would be paying a call. She said that you're from a nearby village. Has she mixed up her information?"
Dorcas suddenly remembered that she'd lied to the Riddles' housekeeper in order to secure a job serving at the Riddles' anniversary party, pretending to be a Lincolnshire girl, Daisy Smith.
"I attend school in the north, ma'am," covered Dorcas. A little truth to temper the fib. And a hint to Mary that she was destined for more than a life of servitude.
"Please, call me Mary," Mistress Riddle insisted. "Where do you attend?"
She snorted a little into her cup, caught off guard by the question. She recovered, deciding to continue without artifice.
"It's a school called Hogwarts, ma'am. Mary."
Mary lifted her eyebrows and sipped, a distant look in her eye. "I don't think I know it. Is it religious?"
"No, ma'am. It's a school of…" Dorcas searched for an appropriate description of Hogwarts that a Muggle would understand. "Of science."
"Ah," Mary said, nodding in understanding. Dorcas's chest swelled a bit as Mary regarded her with a bit more interest. "And what do you study there? What do you plan to do with your education?"
Dorcas evaded the first part of the question and answered the second instead, finding it easier to tell the truth there. "I would like to study medicine. To be a doctor, ma'am."
The look that Mary Riddle cast at her in response was a mercurial once, one worthy of her Tom. The resemblance was all of a sudden uncanny. But she didn't reply.
Dorcas decided to change the subject. "Jack doesn't know how serious his aunt's condition is. He seemed to think she'd be better soon."
Mary's expression fell, she lowered her eyes on her teacup with a guilty expression.
"When I wrote to him, the doctor had given me every reason to hope. Then she had a mild stroke about a week ago. The latest one has left her as you find her now."
Dorcas swallowed. "Do you mind if I tell him about her?" she asked. She knew that she would not have the heart to lie to Jack about his aunt's failing health.
"I do not mind. I wrote to him two days ago about the last stroke. I just don't want to burden him with terrible news. I want him to have a clear head when facing all that he has to fight in that godforsaken place."
Dorcas set her tea down beside the piece of cake that lay untouched on the table.
"You care for him a lot, don't you?" Dorcas asked.
Mary blinked and met her eyes with a watery glance before setting her tea aside as well. Dorcas knew the truth, but she suddenly had a strong desire to hear Jack's grandmother admit that she loved Jack. Nothing seemed as important as that did just now.
"He's a dear boy and I've known him since he was a baby. Him and his sister," Mary replied, dusting imaginary crumbs from her skirt before standing. "I'll have Mr. Hudson drive you to the station, dear before it gets too late."
"Thank you, ma'am," Dorcas answered, her heart sinking a little at the older woman's expert sidestep. She was very practiced in her careful denial of the familial connection, but Dorcas seemed to suspect that this was not by her own choice. "But I'll walk."
Dorcas stood and began to button up her butterfly cardigan, preparing to go out into the chilled afternoon weather once more.
"Did you not bring a coat with you, my dear?" Mary asked, appraising her as she buttoned.
Shrugging and doing her best to laugh it off, Dorcas replied, "I thought it'd be warm enough without one. I was silly." In truth, her warm coat probably lay abandoned still in the tea shop in Hogsmeade. She had her school cloak as an option, but discarded it on the bed in her dorm. She did not wish to appear eccentric to the villagers of Little Hangleton in the long black garment.
"Well, I know I must have something that will suit," Mary responded, bustling from the room with Dorcas in her wake.
She crossed the home's grand foyer and entered the cloak room. This was the very same room that her Tom had pulled her into, hands roving as he admired her maid's uniform. A knot began to form in her throat as she remembered leaving the closet only to be accosted by Master Tom.
As she thought the name, the very man opened the front door with a loud bang, staggering before throwing it closed behind him.
"Jenny, I need you upstairs," he barked, barely glancing at her before shuffling up the grand staircase, missing a step as he went.
Dorcas looked behind her, expecting to see a maid waiting to attend the younger master of the Riddle home. There was no one but her standing in the entrance hall.
Mary emerged from the cloak room with a sturdy wool coat in a light blue tone.
"Jenny! Now!" barked Tom once again.
Dorcas looked between Mary and her son above them on the landing. His riding boots and trousers were splashed with mud and he wasn't wearing a riding jacket as one might expect a country gentleman to do.
"Son, this is not Jenny," Mary explained patiently. "Jenny left us four months ago for the WLA. Remember? This is Dorcas–"
"Whatever your bloody name is, get up here and help me with these damned boots." Tom blinked down at her and Dorcas could see that he was assessing her, perhaps recognizing her. Dorcas squirmed under his gaze.
Mary made a strangled noise as she helped Dorcas into the borrowed coat. "Dorcas is not our maid, Tom. She is your s–" here she stopped herself. "Jack's friend."
"Hang Jack's friend! Hang Jack!" Tom yelled. "JENNY!" he continued as he climbed the stairs, then he paused and looked down, regarding them both with a wild look in his eyes.
He raised the back of his right hand to sweep his tousled hair out of his face.
A tremble began in Dorcas's shoulders and moved down her spine.
Clutched in Master Tom's hand was a revolver.
Mary calmly stepped in front of Dorcas and addressed her son, placing herself between the gun and Dorcas.
"Tom, go upstairs to your study and I will send someone up to assist you shortly." Turning to Dorcas she added, "I'd better go and see what has gotten him worked up into such a state."
It was as if Mary hadn't seen the weapon he was brandishing. But in Mary's mind, Dorcas saw that this was not the first time her son had flown into the house in a rage. Nor even the first time he'd waved a gun around in front of her.
Dorcas clutched at Jack's grandmother, wrapping her fingers around the woman's wrists. "I can stay. I can get help...or call someone."
Mary pinned a patient smile to her face and straightened the pearls at her neck, gently shaking Dorcas's hands off.
"There's nothing to worry about, my dear. My son is often agitated. He'll calm down soon. Now, hurry along before you miss the last train back to school."
Dorcas was being dismissed and she numbly followed Mary Riddle to the front door.
"Goodbye, dear," she said, taking Dorcas by the shoulders and kissing her cheek. "Thank you for visiting. I hope you will again under happier circumstances."
The sight of Tom, Sr. waving a gun flashed before her eyes. But she understood that Mary was referring to Mrs. Penny's condition, the gun completely gone from her mind.
When her lips left Dorcas's cheek, she hastily added, "Please do not add that little tableau concerning my son in your letter to Jack. He will worry needlessly."
She was nodding her acquiescence wordlessly and she descended the stairs at the front of the grand home and turned up the lane toward the village.
As she crested the hill, she spared one look back at the house and the stables beyond that. She watched as six men loaded up a lorry with shovels and drove off in the opposite direction of the village. In the paddock behind the stable, the dapple gray mare that Jack had introduced her to as Cressida carrened wildly from one end of the fence to another. She paused every so often to rear onto her hind legs and scream a fearsome cry into the heavy, leaden clouds.
Dorcas shrugged her bag onto her shoulder and huddled into her coat, turning up the collar against the wind, and hurried away to catch the Knight Bus, all the while wondering if her visit had helped anyone in the slightest.
:::
16 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London
"Felix Felicis."
Cal had taken her by the hand and led her up the stairs and out of the laboratory. She followed him silently into her office.
Finally she spoke when he offered no context for his statement.
"Liquid Luck? What about it?"
"I remembered you telling me that you and Tom had taken it when you were trying to steal something from a factory somewhere."
Dorcas felt a growing apprehension. She didn't want to rehash her sordid past with Tom once again. She'd been worried that Cal would dwell on the more intimate aspects of her former...love? Could she call it that? She certainly didn't think of Tom in that way now that she knew the true dynamic of their relationship.
"We did," she grudgingly conceded.
"But you said he took a second dose and you didn't?"
Dorcas exhaled and sunk onto her patients' couch in her office. I guess we're doing this again, she thought with exhaustion.
"Yes, and I wanted to keep him from suspecting anything so I touched him, got him off with my hand to distract him," she replied crudely.
Cal sat beside her, grabbing up the stack of letters that she'd discovered in the bank's vault box. At first he didn't seem to respond to her frank assessment of the interaction she'd described to him before.
"That's not the point, sweetheart," Cal dismissed, shuffling through the envelopes, looking for something specific.
"Then what is?"
Cal drew out one envelope and handed it to her. Dorcas recognized this as one of the last letters that she'd written to Jack, though she remembered writing none of them. The stamp marking it Undeliverable stared back at her.
She slipped the page out of the yellowing envelope and unfolded it.
"There," Cal pointed to two words written in Dorcas's hurried script.
Felix Felicis
Dorcas read the cluster of lines surrounding the potion's name.
I pray constantly that you used the Felix Felicis that I gave you. You promised me that you would use it if you were in danger. Did you forget? Did you lose it? When do I give up? At what point does my heart accept that you're gone?
"Do you think I was holding back my dose of the potion for Jack? But how would I even get it to him? It's not like I could just send a mysterious substance through the Muggle post. Especially if the military was monitoring mail."
"Dorcas, this is a shot in the dark, like the mirror at Hogwarts. We have to exhaust every avenue, explore every clue. Let's just call up that memory on the train and...see if Tom altered it in any way."
"It could be something…" Dorcas sighed.
:::
14 March, 1942 Ravenclaw Common Room, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Finding herself once again in the reluctant role of referee between Myrtle Warren and Olive Hornby had depleted Dorcas's reserves of patience. And it was only eight o'clock in the morning.
So as she entered the common room on her way out of Ravenclaw Tower to head down to breakfast, her mood darkened even further when she found Mohit waiting for her.
He clutched at a piece of paper nervously and ran his hand through his hair when she narrowed her eyes and glared at him.
"Dorcas, can we talk?"
She opened her mouth to speak only to be cut off in that annoying way Mohit had of talking over her.
"Just for a minute, I swear. And then I'll never bother you again."
Dorcas turned to Myrtle with a heavy sigh. "I'll see you at breakfast. DON'T choose a seat near Olive Hornby."
Myrtle nodded, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and departed, sparing a curious glance over her shoulder for Mohit.
He beckoned Dorcas to a quiet corner of the common room near the fire and Dorcas immediately became suspicious.
"Mohit, say what you have to say. If you're going to threaten to tell Slughorn that I cut myself on purpose, then go ahead and do it already. I don't care."
Mohit took a half a step back. "No, I won't. I promise I won't. I just wanted to apologize. Here," he stammered, thrusting the sheet music he'd bought for her at the music store into her hands.
Dorcas ground her teeth. His bribes wouldn't get him back on her good side. He'd shown just exactly what kind of creep he could be.
"Keep it."
"No, I bought it for you. Besides, you looked so happy when you were learning to play this in the shop's display window."
She closed her eyes in acknowledgement of the statement. It was an interesting piece and she'd lamented leaving it behind in her mad dash to escape the embarrassing conclusion of her date in Hogsmeade.
"Thanks."
"I wanted to say sorry. I made a right fool of myself yesterday and I feel truly awful. It was really bad advice," Mohit explained hurriedly, anticipating Dorcas's waning patience. "I needed that slap."
"You...what?" Dorcas asked, stunned by the apology and the concession from Mohit that he'd acted like an idiot. "Advice?"
Mohit's gaze dropped to his shoes. "Yeah, I knew that you and Tom had been together for a little while and so when he encouraged me to ask you out, I sought a bit of advice. Because I was nervous and didn't know how to act around you."
Dorcas felt a sensation like missing a step on the stairs at the mention of Tom's name.
"What did he have to say?"
Stuffing his hands into his trousers pockets, Mohit shrugged and concentrated on the toe of his shoe as he traced a pattern in the rug next to the fire.
"Well, I asked him how I should approach you. And he said that you liked terms of endearment. You know, like little pet names."
"That's where the 'babe' came from?"
"Yeah," Mohit admitted. "He said that you would pretend to hate it at first. Then he said to look for signs like if you took my hand. He said you only did that when you wanted to do more."
"Like...what more, Mohit?"
Dorcas felt her skin begin to heat as she heard Mohit's confession. All she could make of this was that Tom was using Mohit to humiliate her. Like Gemma, spreading rumors about her, Tom was actively encouraging boys to taunt and harass her.
"Like, he said you would take my hand and I would know that meant you fancied me. He said that if you excused yourself, that I should follow you because you would want to...you know…"
She stepped closer, causing Mohit to meet her eyes. "I don't know, Mohit. What?"
"He said that if you excuse yourself, that you were inviting me to sneak off with you to snog a bit. And you did, you grabbed my hand and then you excused yourself. I thought you were beginning to fancy me, to like me."
Tom's angry words came back to her from the confrontation they'd had a month ago: And when one of those blokes actually gets you alone and does rape you, don't come crying to me about it.
Her vision blurred for a moment. Had he actually encouraged Mohit, hoping that he would force her to do something? She became angry at Tom, not just for designing this situation in which to humiliate her, but also on behalf of Mohit, whom he'd set up to try and hurt her.
Dorcas released the breath she'd been holding. "You know Tom was just having a go at both of us, right?"
"I realized that right around the time your hand connected with my face, yeah," Mohit answered, his cheeks reddening a bit. "Look, it was stupid of me to do what I did. I don't want you to hate me or, I don't know...be afraid of me or anything. I just wanted to take you somewhere nice and have a good time. I'm really sorry."
She raised her eyebrows. Mohit was being sincere.
"Thank you for the apology, Mohit. You know it's not true, right? All of the things you hear about me? I haven't done all that stuff. That's just my cousin, Gemma settling a score with me. And now I suppose Tom is starting to add fuel to all of that as well because he's mad at me."
"Oh...Yeah, I didn't think any of that. Well, I hoped that Riddle was giving me good advice, but I know now that he wasn't."
"I think you are a very fanciable boy, Mohit. And there are girls who like you. But I'm not one of them. I did have a nice time when we were in the music shop. If you acted like that all of the time, we could have had fun and been friends."
"Maybe something could develop from our friendship?" Mohit added hopefully.
Dorcas lifted her hand and placed it comfortingly on his arm as she let him down. "No, it won't, Mohit. We're going to stay just friends, okay?"
"Okay," conceded Mohit. "Walk you down to breakfast?"
"Sure," Dorcas allowed, tucking the sheet music he'd given her into her school bag. "I just wish you hadn't chosen Madam Puddifoot's toilets as the moment to act on Tom's advice. It gave everyone in that tea shop the impression that we were fooling around in there."
Mohit tried to stifle a grin. "Any chance you want to start a rumor for me about what a good kisser I am?"
Dorcas threw her foot out in frustration and caught his ankle with a savage kick. "No, you prat!"
:::
16 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London
Dorcas knew as she watched from the other side of the train's compartment that she and Tom had been covered by the Chameleon Charm at the moment, but her mind didn't seem to register that particular magical signature in her memory.
Dorcas had briefly hoped that she wouldn't be able to see what she and Tom did in that small bed. But it was unfortunately very visible in her mind.
It also dispelled some misunderstandings she'd had about that night and what she and Tom had done.
She remembered falling asleep to the train's rocking and waking up with Tom pressing her into the mattress, his hand slipping into her knickers.
And she was watching a similar scene play out in front of her now. It began with Tom sitting at the table beside the window in the train's compartment, brooding silently. He would cast a glance in her direction every so often. And then about thirty minutes into the journey back to London, he moved across the cabin and stretched out beside her.
Closing his eyes, Tom wrapped a hand around her and gently pulled her into an embrace. It seemed as if he would soon be rocked to sleep by the train the way that she had been.
"Thanks for coming with me, Birdie," he whispered after a long pause.
Dorcas's only response had been to turn toward him and bury her face in his neck.
"Birdie? Dorcas?" he whispered again, sweeping her hair from her forehead and pressing a gentle kiss there. "I want you, Dorcas."
Dorcas watched as her younger self responded by nuzzling him under his chin, fisting her fingers in his jumper and pulling him closer to her.
She closed her eyes. She was aware that her younger self was not thinking about Tom, not inviting him to become intimate. She now remembered that she was dreaming.
About Jack Hardin.
"Take me, I'm yours," her younger self responded.
Take me, I'm yours...Tom had accused her of saying that to him. She assumed he was trying to manipulate her memory of the situation.
She completely understood now why Tom had reacted so badly two days later when she'd rejected him. She would have reacted the same way. Memory Dorcas seemed to be encouraging Tom.
A strange fog began to cloud the room. It reminded Dorcas of the fog that had rolled into the nightclub she'd been singing at when she thought she'd recognized Jack in the crowd.
Jack was the connecting factor in both instances.
Dorcas didn't want to see anymore. She wanted to be out of this memory before Tom began touching her.
She pulled herself away from the Pensieve, meeting Cal's nervous but eager stare. He agreed to let her go into the memory alone because of the humiliating nature of the scene.
"Do you remember that strange fog from the memory in the nightclub?"
Cal leaned forward. "Yes."
"It was in this memory as well," Dorcas informed him.
Cal grabbed her hand and squeezed it, relief plain on his features. "That seems like the beginning of a trail to me!"
Dorcas nodded, but didn't match his enthusiasm.
"But is it the type of memory alteration that can be lifted with the Ex-Nebulae Elixir? That's the question."
Cal stared off over her shoulder, his eyes not landing on anything specific as he thought.
"If we can figure out what spell Tom used on you, perhaps we could modify the potion…" Cal said, thinking to himself. "But I don't want to risk that given the recent episodes you've had. If we try to lift this, and your brain hemorrhages again…"
He trailed off, but Dorcas didn't need him to finish the thought. She knew the stakes. They couldn't use the Elixir on a whim and hope that it lifted this complicated repression. They would need to lift the false memory that was creating the bleeding trench in her brain first.
Dorcas felt an uncontrollable energy within her veins, causing her to tremble in frustration. She wanted the spells to be broken. She didn't want this blade hanging over her, waiting to drop at a moment's notice. She didn't want to hide out in her house afraid of her own shadow anymore.
She wanted her life back.
"I feel like a bloody prisoner in my own mind, Cal. I want this to end." Her voice broke on the last word, causing Cal's eyes to snap back to her.
"We will beat this, Dorcas. I promise you we will." He squeezed her fingers reassuringly.
But the tension from the coursing frustration within her did not abate.
:::
15 March, 1942 Library, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Dorcas felt equal parts dread and relief when she found Cal sitting in their usual place near the Herbology references. She wasn't entirely sure if he would show up for their standing Arithmancy study session today or not. She wasn't entirely sure she was going to show up either.
She hesitated beside a shelf, half obscured. She watched him sketch and listened to him think, wanting to prolong the moment before she had to set aside her embarrassment and apologize to him.
Partnering him this morning in Arithmancy had been a special kind of torment. The instant that she tried to open her mouth to utter the word sorry, he'd waved her off and told her it wasn't necessary. In his mind, Dorcas could see that he would never allow her to frame the confrontation on the lane from Hogsmeade as being in any way her fault. He had already accepted all of the blame.
But Dorcas also saw, with the heavy weight of remorse settling on her, that he'd just popped into the tea shop to get some warm drinks for his friends. He hadn't actually gone in there with the aim to spy on her and her disastrous date.
It was just very bad timing that he happened to be among the dozen or so witnesses to see her and Mohit striding away from the toilet arguing. It wasn't his fault that the scene was a damning one.
And, of course, after she'd screamed at him and told him that his presence wasn't welcome or appreciated, he'd gone back to the tea shop and retrieved her things anyway. They were folded on the end of her bed in the Ravenclaw dormitory when she arrived home from Little Hangleton. Her coat and the green jumper she'd borrowed from Cherry.
Squaring her shoulders, Dorcas walked up to the table and took her usual seat beside him.
"Don't talk, just listen," Dorcas insisted, pitching her voice forward and cutting him off before he could have the chance to shut down her apology once again.
Cal sat back and regarded her with raised eyebrows. He closed his sketchbook on a half-completed color rendering of a flamefern.
When Dorcas was satisfied that Cal would comply, she sat and turned to him.
"Thank you for fetching my things from the tea shop."
Cal stared at her and a half a second later nodded.
"Like I said this morning, I'm very sorry that I blew up at you. It was misplaced anger. I was having a falling out with Mohit and you were just...there, and an easy target."
Cal nodded again.
Dorcas rolled her eyes. "Okay. You can speak now."
"I don't think I have any claim on you," Cal admitted. "I know I'm not your boyfriend. But that doesn't mean I don't care about you."
She didn't know why the statement felt like a pain in her chest when she heard him say it.
"I didn't mean that, Cal. I'm glad that you care for me and want to look out for me. I'm lucky to have a friend like you. Can we just go back to being...us, and forget what a jerk I am?"
Cal smiled. "You're not a jerk, Dorcas. Do you want to talk about what happened in the tea shop? Or do you want me to drop it?"
Dorcas felt herself flush from her collar all the way to her hairline, imagining once again the way Mohit barged into the toilet under some assumption that Dorcas had given him some secret signal or something.
"Can we? Just drop it, I mean?" Dorcas asked hopefully.
"If that's what you want. I just want to say one thing and then I'll forget about it, okay?"
Dorcas bit her lip wondering what he'd wanted to say. "One thing?"
Cal nodded. Dorcas shrugged and sat back, staring at him warily.
"I'm not going to stand by if you're in trouble, Dorcas. I don't have it in me to be a bystander to that kind of stuff. I would be a lousy friend if I did that!"
"You're a good friend, Cal," Dorcas answered with a squeeze of his hand.
She meant that. She never had to wonder at his motives or be concerned that he was in any way being less than genuine with her. He was one of the few people that she felt truly safe around.
:::
16 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London
"Any news on the Minister?" Dorcas asked.
She pulled back the covers and slipped her feet beneath them, turning to Cal who sat up reading the paper.
"They're ruling it an accidental death. Her son is taking over in the interim," answered Cal, folding the paper and laying it aside along with his glasses.
"Baby Tuft?" Dorcas asked, absently massaging moisturizer into her hands. "I wonder what qualifies him for the job?"
Ignatius Tuft gave Dorcas the impression of a little boy hiding behind his mother's skirt. What kind of a temporary leader would he be with his mother no longer around to tell him what to do?
Cal laughed. "Maybe he thinks he can inherit the position, like a kingship."
Dorcas sucked in an exaggerated breath. "I'd hate to draw the short straw and be the one to break it to him that our government doesn't work that way."
Her husband leaned over and kissed her temple then flicked his wand, turning out the lights.
"Goodnight, my love," he said before settling back on his pillow.
"Goodnight," Dorcas replied, finding his hand resting against his chest and threading her fingers through his.
She wondered if she would have the same dream again tonight. Nostalgic, happy, safe. It had left her depressed when she woke each morning, when she realized that it wasn't real. But, when she closed her eyes, she found herself longing for that postage stamp-sized flat where she'd started her life with Cal.
:::
It was still dark when Dorcas woke from the dream. She was simultaneously grateful for the appearance of the memory once again, and sad that its emergence contrasted so starkly with the lack of intimacy between her and Cal now.
As happened often when Dorcas was visited by this particular dream, she felt tears wetting her cheeks and a stiffness in her muscles as she attempted not to wake Cal.
Would he even understand why she was crying? Did he experience the same regret that she did at her inability to initiate intimacy with him?
What are you afraid of, Dorcas?
She found that she didn't have a good answer to this question. Rejection possibly...or maybe that pursuing something physical might dredge up memories of Tom's assaults.
Either way, Dorcas decided that none of those answers were compelling enough to keep her paralyzed in the dark, afraid to tell Cal what she needed from him.
She found his hand in the darkness of their room, resting against the pillow beside her and kissed his palm.
Whispering his name, while taking his hand in hers and slipping it under the covers was enough to stir him from sleep.
"Dorcas? What's–" but the rest of his muddled inquiry was halted when Dorcas pressed his fingers between her legs, spreading them in silent invitation to touch her. He didn't finish his statement, but ground out another observation entirely. "You're so wet."
Panting with a barely contained demand, Dorcas moaned in relief when Cal began to take over, gliding his fingertips back and forth, slipping one into her core before removing it. Repeating the motion over, hurriedly and then slowly.
Dorcas struggled with words to tell him exactly what she was feeling. Tense, vulnerable, frustrated, desperate. How could she tell him that he was the only thing that could fix her? He was the only thing keeping her from falling to pieces.
Cal seemed to be slowly becoming aware of every facet of their interaction, not just his fingers and his wife's intense desire for his touch. He became aware of her tears and her strangled silence as well.
But he didn't stop his movements, propelled perhaps by the same warring feelings within himself.
"Dorcas? Why are you crying? Do you want me to st–"
"NO!" she choked out with some effort, grabbing his wrist to keep his hand from retreating. "I need you, Cal. Don't pull away from me. Please, my love. I need you."
"I'm here, sweetheart," he reassured her with a kiss. "I'm here. You have me."
She could see in his mind when the shift between his careful control eroded beneath the insistent waves of her words and her body. Raising her hips to meet his fingers, her hand gripping his wrist so that he couldn't retreat from her.
"Do you want me?" she heard herself say, suddenly terrified of his response.
The voices of the ladies at the baby shower came back to her just then. Reminding her of all that she couldn't give him. All of the promises she'd made to him that she couldn't keep.
"You are all I want," he replied.
Settling himself over her, Dorcas gasped in relief and exhilaration when he pushed down the waistband of his pajama pants and entered her suddenly, roughly. Taking her nightgown and shoving it up to her shoulders, she felt his hot breath on her skin as he pressed hasty kisses against her breasts.
He claimed her with wild thrusts, encouraged by Dorcas's lips as she begged him to show her how much he wanted her.
