Author's Note: This chapter contains a scene that earns the M rating. So that I don't spoil anything for readers unnecessarily, I will put more info about the scene at the end of the chapter. If you would like to be made aware of the content associated with the rating, feel free to scroll to the end first.

Chapter 62

17 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London

Dorcas missed the comfort of Cal's weight half covering her when she slowly eased from sleep. She hadn't realized just how much she'd missed it until she had that comforting feeling once again.

Being careful not to move and wake him, Dorcas reached for her wand and aimed it at the alarm clock on his side of the bed, silencing it before it was able to crow and disturb this golden moment.

His arm was draped across her stomach and his face pressed into her neck, as if he'd just collapsed that way, mid-kiss, mid-embrace. One of his legs pinned one of hers to the mattress, numbing her toes. But she didn't mind.

Her senses were consumed with the nearness of him. He hadn't been aloof, necessarily. But there was a sort of distance between them since the kiss between her and Tom had become common knowledge. And then the assault that followed…

Cal was not to blame for the distance. He merely wanted to spare Dorcas the trauma of experiencing anything that reminded her of the way Tom had used his body to violate her.

But something had changed between them last night. It was her insistence that she couldn't endure the estrangement between herself and Cal any longer. If he'd rejected her last night, she was sure it would be the death of them; their love for one another.

That's not to say that physicality was all their relationship was. It wasn't. It was only one small facet of their love for one another. But it was essential.

Dorcas needed to know that Cal would be there for her in any way she needed him.

A pleasant ache between her legs reminded her that he had been there for her. Not once, but three glorious times last night.

No wonder he was draped across her as if he'd merely collapsed following the ecstatic climax of their lovemaking.

And for all of his brilliant efforts last night, Dorcas was resolved to let him sleep. The hospital would continue to operate in his absence. He wasn't the only healer in Great Britain, after all.

Despite her efforts at remaining still, Cal began to stir in her arms.

Fearful that the spell that had been cast over them last night would depart with the dawn, Dorcas braced for Cal's retreat into careful affection; passion and need completely forgotten.

But when he kissed her neck, Dorcas had cause to hope.

She answered with a tentative caress of his spine.

"Don't start something you're not willing to finish, Clerey," Cal groaned, nibbling at the skin beneath her ear.

His words and his mouth had an immediate effect on her.

"I'm willing if you are," Dorcas sighed against his cheek.

Cal lifted his head and turned to the alarm clock, a grin spreading over his features in answer to Dorcas's statement. He shifted, bringing himself fully over Dorcas, nudging her legs apart with his knees.

"I guess since I'm already late…"

Dorcas returned his smile with a guilty one of her own.

"I wanted to let you sleep since I kept you up half the night."

"Who needs sleep?" Cal teased, slipping a hand between her legs, stroking her with insistent fingers. "Mmm, ready for me already?"

His expert touch left her so breathless that she could only answer with a frantic nod.

With no more preamble than that, Dorcas was filled by him.

So overwhelmed by the feel of him pressing into her slowly at first, then more urgently, Dorcas threw back her head into the pillows and begged him for more.

But something changed instantaneously; so quickly that Dorcas had almost missed it.

Cal's mind flashed to the memory of Tom thrusting savagely into her, Dorcas screaming and pleading for him to stop. He began to pull away from her.

"Cal," Dorcas whispered, placing her hands on his cheeks to hold his face close to hers. "I want you. You're not Tom. You're Cal. You're my Cal. I'm here with you. I'm yours."

She raised herself from the pillows and kissed him soundly, a hand slipping from his cheek to his shoulder, gliding down his back until it rested on his hip.

"You won't hurt me. You never have. But don't leave me, Cal," Dorcas whispered. "That would be agony."

Cal's answer was a tentative prodding into her that Dorcas encouraged by squeezing his hip and raising hers to meet him.

"I want to feel you, my love. Please," Dorcas begged, renewing her desperate pleas from the night before.

The battling emotions in Cal's eyes caused Dorcas to fear for only a moment. But then his expression softened and he kissed her lips, parting them with his tongue. Dorcas eagerly received him, pressing herself against him hungrily.

His thrusts became more powerful, prompting Dorcas to wrap her arms and legs around him to hold herself against him.

"Yes, my love. Just like that," she boldly coached him, relieved that all reminders of what Tom had done to her were driven from his mind, replaced only by his desire to consume her.

Cal's lips dropped to her chest, tongue laving at one nipple as his hand found her other breast and squeezed.

"You're mine!" he growled against her flesh. "You're not his! Only mine!"

Dorcas felt the weight of his words, how he claimed her with his body and his heart. She was his.

"I'm only yours," she agreed as he pushed her over the precipice. Her mind became slow and hazy. She could only feel him and the powerful connection that she could only ever share with him. "Cal, only yours."

:::

Dorcas felt the proof of their passionate night and its continuation in the morning in her boneless limbs, in the sticky fluids at the juncture of her thighs, in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, weighted with Cal's palm spread across one sore breast.

She would have to remove the bruising that would surely crop up from his powerful grip without him noticing them. She knew he would loathe himself if he'd caused her pain. And she wasn't in any pain, not really. The intensity in Cal as he took her over and over last night, and twice this morning was just an effect of the rigid control he'd held himself under for three months. He'd wanted to give Dorcas the space to heal as well as afford himself the time to work through his own trauma.

Having him back in her arms where he belonged made up for any bit of roughness that came from their long absence from one another.

Dorcas lay with her head nestled in the space where she fit perfectly against his shoulder, his arm cradling her to him closely. A hush fell between them that stretched on after her last orgasm, screaming his name freely after he'd cast a Silencing Charm. She didn't want to burst the peaceful bubble of the moment, but felt she could hold in her thoughts no longer.

Tracing a circle around his left nipple, smiling to herself when he jerked, ticklish under her fingertip, she ventured only a syllable.

"Cal?"

"What is it, my love?" he laughed, kissing the hairs on her forehead that were plastered to her skin with sweat. "I've been listening to those gears in your brain whirring for a good twenty minutes now."

"It's almost been nine months since we lost Ben…"

She felt Cal still beside her, the laughter cut off abruptly.

"Yes, it has."

"Since that time I've felt…" she wondered how she could word this that didn't sound as if she was placing the blame on him. She didn't blame him. Not one bit.

"Tell me. Please," he urged, pulling her closer to him, bringing his left hand to her chin and tilting her face up to his.

"I've felt like a prisoner. I don't have a baby to care for. I don't have my job at the hospital, or my psychiatry practice. I don't have the freedom to walk out of this house and do anything that I used to be able to do."

Cal's chest rose and fell with his breaths, Dorcas's chin rose and fell with the movements.

He brushed her hair back from her forehead with his thumb, tracing an arc all the way down her chin.

"I don't even have my secret anymore. Everyone knows what I am. Everyone's afraid to be around me. The mindreading queer."

"That's not true," Cal rushed to defend her. "Anyone who really knows you, they know you never used what's in their mind against them. As for the rest...screw them!"

It was some of the harshest language she'd ever heard from Cal. Despite the heavy tone of the conversation, Dorcas laughed at the statement.

"Well, the point is," she continued. "I want to go back to work. I'm ready, I think–"

Cal began to object. Dorcas knew he would.

"No, hear me out, Cal," she hurried on, kissing his lips to quiet his argument. "I'm not a housewife. I can't sit home all day doing nothing. It's making me crazy."

"You're not doing nothing, Dorcas. You have a serious brain injury and you need to recover. How many Memory Charms have you already reversed in your mind? That's not nothing, sweetheart."

"Well, that's just it...I think I'm ready to face the rest of them. I'm trapped by them. And I won't get my old life back until I deal with them. I know you have a lot to do at the hospital and–"

Cal sat up a little against his pillows and looked down at her. The look he gave her was a curious one, laced with panic. It brought Dorcas up short. She assumed he would be supportive of her renewed determination.

"Dorcas?"

"I know you're needed at the hospital and you can't skive off all the time, but I need your help. I know I didn't want it at first." Pushing on over his concern, she continued. "The reason I hesitated with the last altered memory isn't because I didn't know what it was. I do. It's about you. And I don't know how you'll feel about what I kept from you."

"I don't care about that, Dorcas. I only want you to get better. But Dorcas, your nose is bleeding."

As Dorcas lifted two fingers to her nose, drawing them away drenched in red, Cal was gathering the sheet that had been draped across her chest and easing her down onto the pillow. He pressed the white cotton cloth to Dorcas's nose, pinching lightly.

"Cal, don't panic," Dorcas said with some difficulty around the sheet as she tried to breathe through her mouth. "It's just a little blood."

Agitated, Cal scoffed. "I'm not panicking, Dorcas. I'm worried about another seizure."

Calmly, Dorcas stroked his forearm. "Do we have any Healing Potion in the bathroom?"

Reluctant to take his hand away from Dorcas's bloody nose, Cal leaned over her and reached for her wand, which was closer than his.

"Accio Healing Potion!"

Dorcas was relieved when she saw a small bottle of the red liquid come sailing out of the open bathroom door.

She caught it in her hand, urging Cal to release her nose so that she could lift the bottle to her lips.

"Dorcas, how are we going to get to the bottom of that memory when just the mention of it causes your nose to bleed?" His voice was heavy with worry and it sapped the confidence right out of Dorcas.

"We have to try, Cal. And I can't do it without you."

:::

Dorcas allowed Cal to coddle her through her shower and breakfast, knowing he had been jarred by the blood and the memories of the seizures Dorcas had suffered following the Muybridge trial. She saw how it had appeared in his mind. There were several times that night that he'd worried that he'd lost her.

If their positions had been reversed, she knew she'd be beside herself with worry for him.

"We have to get to the threatening Memory Charm before we can do anything about the missing Jack Hardin memories," Dorcas said, pacing before the Pensieve, being careful not to dwell on any aspect of the memory that had triggered her nosebleed.

"Could we keep up a steady dose of Healing Potion somehow, to stave off the brain bleed?" Cal thought aloud.

"If I'm bent over the Pensieve to confirm the tampered memory, how will I continue to take it?" Dorcas sounded off, hands on her hips.

Cal dropped to the patient couch in her office, cradling his chin, deep in thought.

"Intravenously?"

Dorcas spun toward him, eyes wide. "Do you have the equipment in your lab?"

"Probably," Cal replied, popping back up and hurrying out of the room to his laboratory on the lower level.

Dorcas followed him down, propping herself on the edge of his desk while he searched through a cabinet behind it. If he had the correct device, a bag for intravenous fluids, a rubber hose and a needle, this might just work.

Distractedly, Dorcas tidied a stack of papers and files on the desk's surface. Her eyes caught a handwritten letter accompanying a fine linen and engraved invitation. It was from the hospital's chief administrator, Sheldon Bonham.

Healer Meadowes,

I urge you to reconsider. This is a tremendous honor, not just for you, but for the hospital. Don't make a rash decision, I beg you.

S.B.

Cal turned around, equipment in hand. Like a caught thief, Dorcas shoved the invitation and Sheldon's note into the pocket of her trousers and smiled at her husband.

"Find it?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes," Cal confirmed. "I hope this works."

"You and me both," Dorcas added.

:::

Dorcas bit her lip nervously as Cal set up the Healing Potion drip, finding a vein in the back of her hand and easing the needle in. With detached professional interest, Dorcas watched him tape the needle securely to her skin and manage the dosage. Watching his clinical movements kept Dorcas from dwelling on the memory she was about to revisit.

Cal wasn't going to go into this memory with her. He needed to monitor her from outside the Pensieve. But to Dorcas this didn't excuse the information that she's kept from him for nearly sixteen years.

"Cal, before I go in there," she began, swallowing hard. Tears came to her eyes immediately.

"You don't have to explain anything to me, my love," Cal rushed to say, brushing his knuckles across her cheek, catching a tear.

"Yes, I do. Even if this memory has been altered–and I know it was–it doesn't excuse what I've been keeping from you all this time."

Cal sat beside her, taking her hand and holding it gently around the IV.

"I told you before that I've killed people."

Cal nodded. "But the American's death wasn't by your hand, sweetheart."

Dorcas agreed. But she'd still never disclosed to him that she thought she was a murderer.

"I know. But Myrtle Warren was."

The breath that Cal sucked in and held seemed to stop time. Dorcas blinked and watched Cal as he stared back at her, wide eyed with surprise.

"You ki–" Cal began, but stopped, swallowing. "You think you killed Myrtle Warren?"

"Yes. And that means I also had something to do with what happened to you."

Dorcas's confession felt like an out of body experience. She watched her husband carefully for a reaction.

"That was Hagrid. It was an accident," Cal argued, looking away from her, checking the dosage of the potion.

"No, Cal. Tom gave Rubeus up to Dippet to save me. I was the one who killed her…"

She was met with stubborn resistance in Cal's mind. He wouldn't believe her confession. He held a handkerchief up to her nose and dabbed at a droplet of blood that had escaped her right nostril.

"I'm willing to bet that's all bollocks! That's how Tom controlled you. Now let's do this before you begin to hemorrhage again."

Dorcas nodded, gripping her wand in her right hand and pressing it to her temple. She siphoned off the memory and placed it in the Pensieve on the coffee table at her knees.

Myrtle's pale and lifeless eyes swirled on the smoky gray surface of the memory fluid.

Dorcas startled slightly when she felt Cal's hand rest between her shoulder blades.

"Let's get this over with, my love," he urged. "You're one step closer to being free of him."

Free of him.

The statement hung before her in a tantalizing promise. It was what she wanted more than anything. To be free of him.

:::

13 June, 1943 Girl's Lavatory, Second Floor, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Dorcas felt anger rolling off of her in waves. She didn't have time for this today.

Myrtle's sobs, coming from the second to last cubicle in the row, grated on her nerves and set her teeth on edge.

When would this mewling baby grow the hell up?

"Myrtle!" she screamed. "Enough of this. You have nothing to cry about!"

"YES, I HAVE!" Myrtle challenged. "Olive's made fun of my glasses again. I hate everyone!"

"Yes, well, we all hate you too and your endless sobbing!" Dorcas said. She didn't feel the slightest bit sorry for finally telling Myrtle how insufferable she was.

The cubicle's door clicked and creaked open.

"IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE MEAN TOO, THEN GO AWAY!" raged Myrtle, stalking toward Dorcas.

For a moment, Dorcas thought the little bitch was going to strike her. She welcomed it. She was so angry at Myrtle Warren that she invited the opportunity to slap some sense into her.

"I don't have to go away. You don't own this toilet," she goaded.

That's when she heard it.

The monster was slithering up the drain pipes. He was close. She could see the beast's mind.

If she didn't get Myrtle out of here, they would both be in danger.

"What?" snarled Myrtle. "Are you setting up shop for the day? Am I killing the mood and scaring off your customers, whore?"

Dorcas narrowed her eyes at Myrtle. Here she was, thinking that she needed to get the girl out of here before she was killed, and the little wretch was throwing those awful rumors back at her.

The sink marked with the snake on its faucet trembled and began to move. Dorcas could feel the enormous serpent at her back. She knew not to look at it. She was the only thing standing between it and Myrtle. And, somehow, she couldn't muster enough concern to push the girl out of the serpent's path.

With a cold, calculated step, Dorcas moved aside.

She felt a sick sort of glee when Myrtle dropped dead at her feet, her lifeless eyes staring.

"Birdie?" came Tom's voice from behind her. "What are you doing in here?"

Dorcas blinked down at Myrtle, frozen by the horrible but triumphant feeling that overcame her when she stared down at the dead girl.

"What did you do, Birdie?" Tom was saying, shaking her. "You killed her, Birdie!"

Dorcas thought she saw Myrtle's blank stare flicker for a moment, making eye contact with her, accusing her.

:::

17 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London

The first thing Dorcas noticed when she emerged from the memory was blood dripping into the misty gray liquid of the Pensieve.

"It was tampered with, wasn't it?"

Cal's voice came to her as if from a distance and through a tempest.

The blood rushing through her veins was all she heard in her ears and her fingertips were numb as she grasped the coffee table to steady herself.

Then it all went dark and silent.

:::

She woke sometime later in unfamiliar surroundings.

Dorcas would have expected to lift her head from a pillow in her own bed. Or, at the very least, she should have been laid out on her patient's couch in her office.

But she didn't recall rising from a recumbent state. She merely became conscious while standing here in this...bedroom?

The furnishings, the vanity, the sconces on the walls; all of this was familiar to her. She recognized this as if it was a set to a movie she'd seen a couple of times.

She struggled for a moment to place the movie set when the door to her right swung violently open. A tall man with dark hair and a dark coat stood backlit in the bright hallway.

Tom.

A voice from inside the room drew her attention from the ominous arrival of her tormentor. She hadn't realized the room was occupied when she made a cursory survey of the space.

"You're late," Gemma said, raising a glass apathetically to her lips, drinking back a clear liquid, draining it.

"I'm here," Tom replied coolly in response, closing the door behind him.

Dorcas felt a cold dread creep down her spine. It was happening again. She was somehow accessing a memory of Gemma's unprompted.

Gemma's black nightgown and carefully made-up face suggested that they'd planned on an assignation. But as she'd stated already, he was late.

"You were with her, weren't you?"

Tom's reply was a flick of his wand, transforming Gemma's nightgown into a shade of blush pink, the neckline tailored into something familiar to Dorcas.

Her breath caught in her chest. He's rendered Gemma's attire a perfect replica of the nightgown she'd worn to surprise Cal for his birthday. The reminder of what they'd done together rose like bile in her throat.

Gemma dipped her head, unimpressed. "It's really not my color, Tom."

The way she spoke his name was aimed to agitate. Dorcas could tell it had the intended effect.

"Not my color, my lor–"

"Sod off, Tom. I'm no longer in the mood."

Tom's eyes flashed dangerously at Gemma as he shed his coat, letting it drop to the floor.

"You will address me properly, pet. Or there will be consequences," he threatened, tugging his shirt free of his waistband, kicking his shoes off.

Gemma sighed, bored.

"Were you with her?" Gemma asked, watching him move closer to where she sat at a table in the corner of her bedroom. She added, "My lord" at a sharp raise of his eyebrows.

"I just came from your cousin's house, yes," answered Tom, not even attempting to deny it. "But not for the reasons you assume."

Gemma laughed and looked pointedly down at the pink confection she was now draped in. "Probably because she threw your arse out as soon as your intentions became clear."

"Intentions?" Tom cocked his head to the side as he moved closer. He'd discarded his shirt and his belt; a trail of clothing was left behind him.

Dorcas could see Gemma hesitate; could feel her growing fear as she cast a sidelong glance at the table beside her bed, a good twenty paces away, where her wand lay. Her fingers tightened around the empty crystal tumbler in her right hand, the only thing she had within reach.

Perhaps reading her thoughts, Tom's hand reached for her shoulder, fingertips gliding down her arm, until at last, they rested on the lip of the glass, pushing it away from her to the middle of the table.

"It's no secret to anyone how much you want her, my lord," Gemma answered, her voice much less steady than it had been when the distance between her and Tom had been greater.

Tom smiled down at her, taking the hand that once held the crystal tumbler, guiding it to the front of his trousers.

"How much I want her? It should be obvious to you that I want you, pet."

Dorcas could see the war taking place in Gemma's mind between rage and jealousy aimed at her and terror and self-preservation in the presence of Tom.

"Are you still in no mood to entertain me, Gemma?"

Self-preservation seemed to win out, though Dorcas was afraid that Gemma would use her fingernails on him, or spit in his face. Another part of her wished Gemma would.

Gemma's answer was to unbutton his trousers and draw down the zipper. The taught, turgid flesh that she'd released hung forward into the space in front of her.

Tom had only to quirk one eyebrow at her and Gemma obediently took him in her mouth.

Dorcas wished she could turn away, though in her limited involvement in Gemma's memories, she knew she would see and experience everything that Gemma did.

Her cousin's shame and self-loathing was acute.

"Look at me," commanded Tom.

Gemma's eyes found his as she ran her tongue along his length.

Through a series of deep sighs, the last of which was punctuated by a groan, Tom's brows furrowed as he considered something.

"Perhaps I should change the color of your eyes…"

When Gemma didn't respond, his hands found the neckline of her nightgown and pushed it down, causing her small breasts to spill out. He covered them with his palms as he thrust into her mouth.

"Or, maybe, I should enlarge your–"

Gemma's eyes became flinty and she pulled away, freeing her mouth of him.

"No fucking way, Tom!"

"I didn't ask for your opinion, Gemma," Tom snarled, grabbing a handful of her loose dark hair and hauling her to her feet.

"I never require your opinion. I only require service and loyalty. And yet, you insist on vexing me…" He shook the fistfull of hair in his grip, jostling her head painfully, jerking her neck.

Dorcas had pieced together the context of this encounter. This was the evening that he'd shown up at her house in Watermead. The evening of Cal's thirty-third birthday. She'd been so close to letting him have his way with her; would have done if he hadn't pulled away, restraining himself. This confrontation with Gemma was probably occurring at the same time that she was hunting Muybridge in the Hendon department store.

Gemma's mouth hung open in silent shock as Tom pushed his trousers the rest of the way off of his hips and stepped out of them, dragging Gemma behind him, wand in hand.

Dorcas was truly afraid for Gemma now. She'd seen Tom treating her roughly before, but never with quite this level of violence.

She felt the wind being knocked out of Gemma as she witnessed it. Tom threw Gemma against the bed, keeping a tight grip on a length of her hair, like a horse tamer, breaking a headstrong filly.

Gemma was bent over the edge of her bed, stunned by Tom's strong hand that jerked her head forcefully backward as his other fumbled with the flowing material of the nightgown, searching for the hem and throwing it over her back, exposing her backside.

He transferred his wand into his left hand that held her head back firmly by the hair, kicking her bare feet apart with his own to spread them.

There was a loud crack and a cry as Tom used his right hand to smack Gemma's bum.

It wasn't a playful smack by any stretch of the imagination. If Dorcas hadn't caught the power behind his movement dispelling the illusion, Gemma's cry would have.

"How do you address me, Gemma?" he asked her, his voice struggling to remain calm, all the while anger was fighting to the surface of his emotions.

"My lord," Gemma cried.

There was a livid handprint covering part of her cheek and thigh, red fingertips extending a quarter of the way to her knee.

"Then why do you insist on calling me Tom?" Another slap as powerful as the last punctuated the question.

"I don't know. Please, my lord," begged Gemma.

Another crack caused Dorcas's ears to ring. Gemma's cries excited him. Dorcas could see the thrill of her anguish plainly on his face.

"You do know. Don't lie to me, Gemma!" Another smack.

Dorcas could see the overlapping livid red welts on her backside and thighs.

"I was angry," admitted Gemma through her tears. "I wanted to make you angry."

He didn't relent at her honesty, favoring her with another hard blow, never loosening the grip he held on her hair, though one of her hands scrambled against his fingers in an attempt to free herself.

"You've succeeded, pet. And now you'll suffer the consequences of my anger."

Gemma's eyes were wide with fear and glistening with tears.

"Please, my lord. Please don't. You may change what you like about me. I don't mind looking like her. If–" she choked on the admission which seemed to tear at her pride. "If it pleases you, my lord. Change my eyes and my breasts."

"It's too late for that, Gemma," Tom purred, stroking the red handprints on her backside, periodically prodding a finger between her legs. "You'll have to pay for your transgressions."

Gemma shook with dread, her sobs becoming louder. "Please, my lord. Lay down upon the bed and I will make you feel so good. You can use me how you wish."

Tom laughed at her frantic pleas.

"Oh, I will use you, Gemma. I plan to use you hard. I will use all of you." His right hand reached for his wand once again.

"Crucio!" he muttered, pointing his wand into Gemma's spine.

She stiffened with the sharp jolt of the spell as if being electrocuted. Her screams rang throughout the room, buzzing Dorcas's eardrums.

Tom released her hair and allowed her to flop forward onto the bed's counterpain, freeing his left hand. He reached between him and Gemma's stunned body and positioned himself against her, once again taking up the reins of her hair and savagely thrusting into her with a resounding grunt of satisfaction.

"You are nothing, Gemma. You were nobody until I made you somebody."

Gemma didn't fight against him as he pulled her hair or pounded into her, exhausted from the Cruciatus Curse.

"You're honored by me. Far above any right you think you have."

He battered her with his hips. Dorcas felt the sting of flesh tearing, the squeeze of cramped muscles, and underneath all of that, the burn of humiliation. Dorcas followed a faint trickle of thought beyond the overwhelming pain of her body.

He would never do this to her. Dorcas wouldn't let him.

A tear escaped her as she watched Gemma's limp body, the resignation in her eyes as she allowed Tom to continue the assault.

Sensing her passive resistance, Tom cursed her once again while taking her from behind.

"Tell me. How does that feel, pet?"

If he expected her to respond beyond the grating cries deep in her throat, he didn't show it. He seemed consumed by the sensations of her electrified, pulsating body around him. He grunted loudly as he kept up the punishing rhythm of curses and penetration.

Dorcas's cries mingled with her cousin's, jarring her from the memory.

She jerked upright, causing her head to spin sickeningly.

Cal was beside her when she blinked her sight back into focus.

"Cal," she panted.

"I'm here, sweetheart. What is it?" he was dabbing at her nose with a handkerchief, spotted with red.

"I want to see my cousin. I need to see Jonas." She threw back the covers that pinned her to her bed, struggling as Cal placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.

"You're not going anywhere, Dorcas."

"Cal, get out of my way. I need to talk to him. NOW!"

Her fingernails dug into her husband's wrist as she tried to pull his hand away.

"Dorcas, you'll have another seizure if you don't calm down!"

Perhaps something in the look she leveled at him shook some of his determination to keep her from standing, but he pulled away.

"I'll send a Patronus for him. But you're staying right where you are."

"Do that!" Dorcas said, petulantly throwing herself back onto her pillows, as much out of exhaustion as frustration.

:::

No more than twenty minutes passed between the disappearance of the silvery Saint Bernard and Jonas's arrival.

"Sorry, mate, if I pulled you away from something," Dorcas heard Cal apologizing on the other side of the bedroom door. "She was in such a state and I couldn't calm her any other way."

"What's got her upset?" she heard Jonas ask worriedly.

The door was opened and Dorcas felt relief flood her body at the sight of her cousin.

Cal launched into a brief explanation of the memory investigation, the intravenous Healing Potion, and the nosebleeds and seizures. Cal wouldn't have known about her inadvertent lapse into Gemma's repressed memories, so he left it at that.

Dorcas heard Cal's unasked question and felt his pang of inadequacy. What could Jonas help her with that I cannot?

She would explain later. This wasn't about her. It was about Gemma.

"Jonas!" Dorcas called, holding her hands out and beckoning him to her bedside.

To see herself reflected in his mind was shocking. She hadn't noticed when she looked at her own reflection how wan and skinny she was. But he was too polite to voice this opinion out loud.

"I'm here, Dorcas. What do you need?"

Dorcas was eager to answer, but cast a glance at Cal before opening her mouth.

Before she could ask for him to leave, Cal graciously stepped out and closed the door behind him.

"You need to get Gemma out of that house and someplace where Tom will never find her!" She was clutching his hands tightly in her own as she spoke. "Please, Jonas!"

"Gemma? She's what's got you so worked up?" he asked, confused.

Dorcas nodded frantically. "The last time I saw her, early January, I asked her to come with me. I know why she wouldn't. She hates me. But she loves you, Jonas! She'll leave him if you ask her to."

Jonas freed one of his hands from her grasp and pushed her back into the pillows by the shoulder.

"You don't need to be concerned for anyone but yourself, Dorcas. Just rest for a while–"

He was coddling her the way that Cal did. It was infuriating to her.

"No! Jonas! She's in danger. He's hurting her!"

"I went to her place the same afternoon you told me what Tom did to you."

That brought Dorcas up short. "You did?"

Jonas's eyebrows raised. "Do you think I want my sister with a bloody rapist?"

"Of course not!" Dorcas answered. "What did she say?"

"She refused to believe that Tom would do that to you. Dismissed the idea right out of hand."

Dorcas blinked and thought back to the notion that had trickled through Gemma's thoughts as Tom dealt violently with her: He would never do this to her. Dorcas wouldn't let him.

Gemma seemed to have a lot more faith in Dorcas–and also in Tom, for that matter–than she had any right to. She wondered if Tom had somehow framed the situation differently for Gemma. Had she already had an accounting of the events from Tom by the time Jonas came to talk to her?

"Was Tom there when you visited Rackharrow Hall?" She held her breath and waited for the answer.

"I don't think I'd be sitting here now if he had been," Jonas replied gravely. "I would have attacked him if I'd seen him. And he would have killed me."

Dorcas was at least thankful that Jonas and Tom hadn't clashed.

"But you couldn't convince her?" she replied in a small voice, knowing the answer already.

Jonas shook his head slowly. "You said he hurt her. What did he do? How do you know?"

Dorcas felt a knot climbing up her throat. She couldn't communicate to Jonas everything she'd seen. It would kill him to know his sister was being abused while not being able to do a thing to prevent it.

"I went to Rackharrow Hall with Cherry just before Christmas," began Dorcas.

"She told me."

Dorcas knew that Cherry had recounted all of the details of their frantic investigation of his whereabouts when he'd gone missing during a NATO covert mission. He'd been surprised that they'd gone to Gemma for word of him, knowing how little Dorcas or Cherry relished being in his sister's presence.

"Then she told you how I hit her?"

Jonas nodded gravely.

He was always putting himself in the middle of the conflict between Gemma and Dorcas and regretted how much his last remaining family members loathed one another.

"I did it to get past her Occlumency barrier because the b–" here Dorcas paused at the pulling together of Jonas's brows into a deep frown. "Because she wasn't being helpful. She wouldn't tell us whether she'd heard from you or not. She hadn't, but I wanted to confirm it–"

"And punching her was just a nice bonus?"

Dorcas smiled sheepishly, regretting her violence toward Gemma when Tom was already doling out more than her fair share.

"The point is, from time to time, I see these sort of deeply buried experiences of Gemma's."

"How?" Jonas asked, sitting up straighter, squeezing her hand.

"I must have...picked them up when I got into her mind. They only come on when I…" here Dorcas paused to consider just how these memories came on.

The first time she'd experienced one of Gemma's deeply personal memories unprovoked was when she was bleeding out in the forest by herself after Cherry and Jonas's wedding. The second time was...when she was unconscious, having been put under a Sleeping Draught so that Cal could try to save her ruptured uterus.

"They seem to come on when I'm experiencing some sort of trauma myself; blood loss or unconsciousness…"

Nodding, Jonas urged her on. "What did you see? What makes you so worried for her now?"

Dorcas couldn't do it. She couldn't relay what she'd seen and experienced to Gemma's brother. If he'd risked his safety to convince Gemma to leave Tom after he'd found out about Tom's violence toward Dorcas, what would he do to ensure the safety of his own sister? She only wanted him to use his brotherly influence to convince Gemma to go to Blackpool Abbey with him. She didn't want Jonas to stand up to Tom directly.

"I saw him hurt her...curse her. She was crying," choked Dorcas, on the verge of tears herself. It was a close enough approximation of the truth. She spared him the less savory details.

Jonas sat back, trying to decide what more he could do.

"Perhaps you just saw an argument."

"They were definitely arguing. But Tom had a wand and Gemma did not. It was hardly a fair fight."

Jonas released a breath he'd been holding.

"Perhaps I can go talk to her again…"

Dorcas sat up, propelled by an idea. "What if you made it about you...pretended you were having some trouble...maybe with Cherry? Make her think that you need her instead of insisting she leave Tom."

Jonas rolled his eyes. "Cherry would love that!"

"It's between having Cherry cross with you, or Tom continuing to torment Gemma. Which is worse, in your opinion?"

"You're right. I'll try…" conceded Jonas.

"You'll go there now?" Dorcas urged.

"I'll go now."

:::

18 March, 1959 14 South Audley Street, Mayfair, London

Twenty-four hours later she was allowed to leave her bed.

It had been at least twelve since her nosebleeds had abated and her headache had receded to a manageable pulse at the back of her skull.

Still, Cal hovered close by, hands out, ready to catch her if she felt the slightest bit dizzy.

While he'd been worried about the altered memory bringing on another bout of seizures, it turned out to be an unfounded one. A bloody nose and a migraine seemed to be the only fight the Memory Charm had put up.

It was, to Dorcas at least, as if even the false memory knew its days were numbered.

She felt a bright optimism that she hadn't experienced in many months.

She wasn't unshackled by all that Tom had done to her. Not by a long shot. But one more link in the chain had been weakened. It was only a matter of releasing this last and most threatening memory and Dorcas would have her old life back. Or, at least a shot at it.

"What's that smile for?" Cal asked, adjusting the blanket over her shoulders.

They were taking advantage of the early afternoon sun on their back terrace. The air was still chilly when the wind whipped past the tall houses and buildings, but there was a promise of Spring in the melting snow and the birdsong.

"I feel hopeful, Cal," she replied simply, taking his hand and tucking it securely under her arm.

There was still a hint of insecurity in his mind. Insecurity that she'd asked for Jonas once she'd emerged from unconsciousness after she'd seen the memory of Myrtle. He pushed it down with the mantra, If he helps Dorcas come to terms with her memories, it shouldn't matter to you. As long as she's healed.

She'd tried to explain it all after Jonas left yesterday, but Cal had insisted that she'd taxed her mind enough and should rest.

"I'm glad Jonas could help," he said grudgingly, squeezing her arm in an affectionate way.

"Oh," she said, turning to him. "He didn't. I needed to see him for an entirely different reason."

Cal fixed her with a quizzical stare. "No? Why, then? I mean, you don't need an excuse to see him, it's just...Nevermind, I'm a prat."

Dorcas leaned into her husband's side. He'd had to bury a lot of insecurity, jealousy, anger, humiliation...and the list went on...because she'd needed him to be strong for her through this whole ordeal. All of it. Losing her baby, the trial, the memory damage, the rape. It left him barely anything of his own to grieve over or cling to.

"You're not a prat, Cal. Not ever. It's okay to feel insecure. You don't think I lean on you enough. But I feel differently. If I didn't have you through all of this...I don't know what I would do. I would, in all honesty, probably develop some very self-destructive habits."

Cal had the wherewithal not to object out of politeness.

"Anyway, I needed to see Jonas because another of Gemma's memories surfaced after I'd lost consciousness yesterday."

She felt Cal stiffen beside her. "It did? What was it?"

Dorcas wondered if she should say anything specific. Gemma would hate that Dorcas saw any of it, let alone confided even the smallest detail to Jonas.

As she paused, Cal cleared his throat. "That's alright. I don't think it's any of my business. But she's okay, right?"

Gemma had never been anything but wretched to Cal. But he always surprised Dorcas by showing concern for her because she was family.

"I don't know, Cal," she answered in a low voice. "That's why I needed to talk to Jonas. I wanted him to go and convince her to leave him."

"Leave Tom?"

She nodded.

"I hope she'll listen to Jonas," replied Cal.

"Well, that's what I wanted to say to you. I heard your thoughts when I asked to see him. I know I sometimes relied on Theresa to help me lift memories, especially the ones where Tom assaulted me at school. That bothered you because you thought I couldn't trust you."

She shifted her weight against him, feeling a bit sapped for energy. But she wouldn't say anything to Cal because she didn't want to be shut away in her bedroom again.

He seemed to sense both Dorcas's fatigue and her reticence to return to the house, so he led her to a teak lounge chair, pulling her down onto his lap.

He studied her face for a moment, and silently pushed a windblown lock of hair behind her ear.

"I do trust you, Cal. Implicitly. But I don't want you to have to see all that he did to me. I wanted to spare you that trauma. When you saw the last time he–" she swallowed, feeling her throat become thick with emotion, but pushed on. This explanation was long overdue. "The last time he raped me. It seemed almost like it hurt you more than me. I just didn't want you to experience all of that."

His hand lingered at her neck and he rubbed his thumb along her collarbone as she spoke.

"After you finally told me what he'd done to you, when he made himself look like me, remember what I told you?"

Dorcas thought back to that heartstopping moment when she realized she wouldn't be able to conceal her secret any longer. The evidence of her encounter with Tom was a miscarried pregnancy that nearly killed her.

"What happens to you happens to me," she repeated.

"What happens to you happens to me." Cal pulled the blanket protectively around her. "I'm sorry that I made you feel like you couldn't share any of that with me. And I'm sorry that you've held onto this last memory as long as you have because you were afraid of how I would react."

"Tom had me convinced that I did those awful things, used Slytherin's monster to petrify students and...and kill Myrtle Warren. Even if I didn't do those things in reality, I believed I did. And I never told you. How could you ever trust me again?"

Cal pulled her close and kissed her forehead. "If you'd told me years ago that you were behind what happened, I wouldn't have believed you, my love. You had no reason to hurt me or anyone else. I couldn't believe that. You're good, Dorcas. But you never quite believe that of yourself."

Dorcas thought about this for a moment.

"Perhaps I heard differently from Tom so often that I began to believe that."

Cal nodded thoughtfully. "Someone like that erodes you until there's nothing left but what they can use. If he'd let you believe you had any value, then you'd have refused to be used by him."

She felt the solid weight of that truth lifting off of her shoulders. The relief was acute.

"I'm so glad I have you, Cal," she whispered, overcome with emotion.

He pressed his lips to hers, parting them tenderly without any agenda; just to convey to her how much he valued her.

"I thank God everyday that the fool gave you up. As painful as that was for you. And I pray I have many more with you. I'll spend every one of them showing you just how good you are. Just how precious you are."

She swallowed around a knot that had formed in her throat at his direct and sincere words. How different things were than how she'd expected them to be when she was seventeen. She remembered how Tom's refusal to share a future with her was like a thousand arrows piercing her lungs, spilling her blood, blinding her. She could hardly believe how reluctant she'd been to accept Cal all those years ago when he'd proposed marriage to her.

How could she have lived her life without this man loving her and showing her how to love?

He planted one final but earnest kiss against her lips.

"Are you ready to lift that memory, my love?"

:::

13 June, 1943 Girl's Lavatory, Second Floor, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

She'd heard it again. That eerie, simple voice that chanted.

Must kill.

It was happening again.

She followed it from the fourth floor as she walked back to her common room from the library. She had a free period before lunch and she often spent it with Tom in their little study corner there. But today, he hadn't shown up. She knew he was consumed with his final preparations with the Horcrux potion. So it wasn't unusual that he'd stood her up.

She saw the monster's mind.

Must kill.

He was poised to enter the girl's loo. In the middle of the day.

Panic and fury bubbled up in her. Tom had assured her that he had control over it. They had this argument over and over. He didn't need the basilisk anymore. He'd gotten two feathers off of it. But it was too dangerous to keep contained in the chamber any longer. It was getting bold now.

Must kill.

She pleaded with Tom to kill it.

She'd thought about doing it herself once or twice. It would be simple enough to bring a rooster into the chamber. One crow would kill the beast dead before he got anywhere near Dorcas.

But she couldn't open the chamber without Tom. She needed his consent and his talent for Parseltongue.

And he wouldn't hear of putting the beast down.

The sight before her caused her blood to turn to ice in her veins. Olive Hornby was rounding the corner ahead of her, nearing the lavatory's entrance. She would encounter the beast if Dorcas didn't stop her.

"Olive!" Dorcas shouted.

To her relief the younger witch's hand recoiled from the lavatory door, startled by Dorcas's voice.

She raced up to the stunned girl. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to give Warren a piece of my mind," Olive replied evenly. "I know she's in there. I can hear the wailing from out here."

Dorcas could hear it too. "What happened this time?"

Olive huffed impatiently. "It's stupid, really–"

But Dorcas couldn't concentrate on the words that Olive spoke to her. Her mind was too full of the serpent's thoughts. It had already scented Myrtle, her distress calling to the creature in the way a snared rabbit's cries attracted prey.

Must kill.

Finishing her tirade about Myrtle Warren's inability to take a bit of teasing, Olive began to lean her shoulder into the heavy oak door to the loo.

"WAIT!" Dorcas cried.

She scrambled for something to say that would stop Olive from entering. The scuffing and creaking that she could hear beyond the door told her that the entrance to the chamber was opening. Dorcas could not allow Olive to meet the basilisk on the other side of that barrier.

"Clerey! You're about as dramatic as she is!" jibed Olive.

"You're the last person that should go in there and talk to Myrtle. Just go back to class and let me handle it," Dorcas replied, trying to do her best to sound older and authoritative.

For a moment, she feared that her words wouldn't have any effect on Olive. Then Myrtle bellowed "GO AWAY!" so loudly, they could both hear it ringing off the tile inside.

"Be my guest!" Olive finally conceded, pushing past Dorcas and back down the hall. She cringed and side-stepped a convoy of tiny black spiders that forded the corridor silently.

It seemed to take forever for her to round the corner. Dorcas waited before going inside. She prayed that Myrtle had the good sense to stay locked in a cubicle.

She hadn't the faintest clue how she would combat Slytherin's monster without Tom's help, but maybe she could intimidate the creature back into the tunnels somehow.

Trembling all over, Dorcas squared her shoulders and pushed into the lavatory. The monster was nowhere to be seen, which was a tremendous relief.

But the sight of Tom, standing near the sink that was the chamber's entrance, confused her.

"Tom, where did–" her voice tapered out before she could complete the question, her eyes settling on the huddled form of Myrtle Warren.

Disregarding Tom and the recently departed basilisk, Dorcas hurried to Myrtle's side, patting her cheek, attempting to rouse the girl.

"Myrtle! Myrtle, wake up."

She felt under the girl's chin, digging her fingers into her neck, searching for a pulse. Unlike the other suspected victims of the basilisk's reign of terror, Myrtle wasn't solid and stony to the touch. She hadn't been petrified.

"Tom! Help me!" she cried, remembering his presence only in that instance.

"Did anyone see you come in here?"

She blinked repeatedly, struggling to make sense of Myrtle's still form on the ground beside her.

"Olive…" Dorcas continued to prod and shake Myrtle, unable to bring her mind around to the obvious realization that she was dead.

"Who? Olive...who?" Tom prompted.

"Hornby. Olive Hornby. She's in Ravenclaw, the year below me. She was coming to find Myrtle."

Dorcas, finally giving up her attempts to wake the dead girl, sat heavily back against the cubicle wall.

"I'll find her. But you need to leave, Birdie."

She felt her head slowly shake back and forth. It was an accident. They had to tell a teacher.

"No...accident…" Dorcas began to sob.

"It wasn't an accident. Do you really think a teacher will believe you when you explain what happened?"

What would Dorcas say? How could she explain any of this?

"But Tom, we can't just–"

Tom cut her off, taking her face between his palms to force her to look at him.

"We can. You can walk right out of here and go down to the Great Hall like nothing happened. I will make it all go away. I promise you."

"How?" Dorcas asked desperately, hanging on to the last part of the statement. I will make it all go away.

Tom grabbed his wand where he'd discarded it beside his knee on the tile floor. It looked as if Myrtle's dead hand was reaching for it.

He kept his left hand on Dorcas's cheek, stroking the skin there with his thumb.

"Obliviate!"

A/N: Near the middle of the chapter, Dorcas emerges from unconsciousness to find herself in one of Gemma's repressed memories. There is a violent sexual encounter with Tom. In the scene, Tom suggests to Gemma that he wants to alter her appearance so that she looks more like Dorcas. Gemma, still trying to hold onto her own identity and fighting for a relationship with Tom, rather than just being his toy, refuses.