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Warning: this quiz contains a graphic description of the sexual abuse of a child. If you prefer not to read it, the beginning and end of the section will be marked "WMWMWMWMW." Thank you and enjoy.
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Part 3 - Remember
"She's been like this for a week, Severus," Headmaster Albus Dumbledore informs the Potions professor who's surveying with clinical detachment the small girl in the hospital cot.
"Normally I wouldn't ask you," Dumbledore continues lightly, "But in this case, I've run out of all other options. She won't speak, she won't eat, she's not a sibling of any of the students, and no one has reported her missing in either the wizard or muggle worlds."
Severus Snape stops near the foot of the cot, the girl's eyes never leaving him as she hugs herself tighter. Her dark amber curls hang around her face, and, if possible, she looks even more sickly and frail than she had when she first boarded the train. No matter how hard she has tried for the last week, she can not make herself wake up.
Honestly, she thinks herself rather stupid for even wanting to wake up from this dream. It's so nice here, she has food brought to her everyday (not that she eats it, but it smells heavenly, and it's always fresh and hot), the people always speak to her kindly, she's never hit, and she's even grown fond of the funny little elfish creatures who peer over the sides of her bed and are always asking what they can get her. But she misses Jordy.
She always misses Jordy, because Jordy went away and only Jordan was left, but Jordan is still her brother. She loves Jordan because if she loves Jordan, maybe Jordy will come back. She has to be there when Jordy comes back.
But she can't tell these people about that. Jordy told her never to tell anyone that he was the only one taking care of her. He said that they would take her away and they might never see each other again. Izzy refuses to risk it.
"Alright," The tall, sharp man in black states flatly, "I will do it. But I would like to reiterate that I do not think it's the right."
Izzy doesn't know what this man has just agreed to, but he's scary. He's old, and greasy, and he looks mean... He kinda reminds her of Uncle Richie. She can't really remember him, just knows that she always feels sick when she thinks about him and Jordy told her that he's dead and it's a good thing, but this tall, pale, thin, greasy man reminds her of that shadow from her past that never fails to make her tremble when it crosses her mind.
"Girl," The greasy, scary, hook-nosed man addresses her, "This is your last chance. Tell us where you're from, or we'll have to use other means of extracting that information from you." She hugs her knees tighter to her chest as her eyes go wide and she shrinks farther back against the cold metal of the headboard. She remains silent.
The greasy old man sneers at her as the white haired one with the little glasses, long beard, and kind smile looks at her sadly and sinks down into the cot beside her own. The old man tried to speak with her many times over the past week, and he seems nice, but she still does not trust him.
"Very well," The greasy man drawls, sounding slightly annoyed as he removes a black stick from the folds of his long, flowing black robes. Izzy can't take her eyes off it as he raises it high above his head and brings it down right at her with an indifferent cry of, "Legilimens."
A man, the spitting image of her Jordy aside from the scruffy beard, holds a dark haired toddler in his arms. He rocks her softly and coos, "I love you. I love you, my little Isabel, and I'm always gonna love you. I promise." The baby girl hiccups and gurgles, "Purple!" in reply.
With a bright flash, she's back in the cot, gasping for air as she realizes what she just saw, 'My daddy! That was my daddy! He loved me! Jordy said he loved me, and he did! He still does! He promised!' Whatever the greasy old man did, she liked it, wants him to do it again so she can see more wonderful visions of her daddy, and her mommy, and maybe even Jordy...
"Not helpful at all," The old hook-nosed man sneers, "But I suppose it does confirm that you first name is, indeed, Isabel. Did you tell the truth about your last name as well?" She's still gasping for breath, but manages a nod, figures it's the least she can do after the wonderful thing this man just did for her.
He looks proud of himself for that nod, and asks, "And that man, that was your father?" Izzy nods again. The man asks, "What is his name?" She bites her lip and whispers her first words in a week, "Daniel. My daddy's name was Daniel."
"And your mother's name?" He pries. She answers, a little louder this time, "Celeste. Jordy said it means 'heavenly.'" She's so very proud she remembered that. It's always seemed special to her.
"And who is Jordy?" He asks, and Izzy knows she's said too much. Stupid! Just like Jordan says! I'm stupid and now they're going to make sure I never see Jordy again! She can't answer anymore, doesn't trust herself enough too, she just cries silently.
"Oh, come on now, we were making such progress. Tell me who Jordy is," He demands, sounding annoyed. When she says nothing, continues to cry silently, he sighs, "Very well. Legilimens."
With his messy, chestnut-brown hair falling in his kind eyes, Jordy smiles at her before he turns and leaps from the from the top of a graffiti-ed brick wall to the roof of a tall building. It was a huge jump, Izzy gasps at her brother's daring. "JORDY!!" She screams, "Please!! Come down!! It's just a stupid ball!! I don't even like it!!"
He scrambles higher up the roof, calling down to her with a light-hearted chuckle, "It's your only toy, Iz, and I'm getting it back for you. Don't worry about me, I know what I'm doing."
Izzy prays as she watches him climb higher and higher, never stumbling once on the steep pitch as he travels toward a red rubber ball wedged up against the crumbling brick chimney poking from the worn shingles. It makes her dizzy and sick to her stomach just to witness. He grabs it and waves it at her, smiling triumphantly as he tosses it down with a playful command of, "Catch!"
She's more concerned with watching to make sure her brother doesn't hurt himself than she is with the ball, and she lets it hit the ground in front of her and bounce away.
"Iz!" Jordy scolds playfully as he begins to clamber down, "I just climbed three stories for that thing, don't lose it now!" She rolls her eyes as she turns. Isabel doesn't care about that ball half as much as she cares about her brother, but he wants her to get it, and Jordy always knows best.
She chases it as it rolls along the concrete, never taking her eyes off it as she keeps bending over to try and grab it, only to have it roll out of her fingertips every time. She giggles to herself over her own inability to catch a silly, red-rubber ball.
"IZZY!! LOOK OUT!!" She glances up at Jordy, who's running toward her with panic all over his blanched face, freezing his pale green eyes on her. A horn blares, she turns toward it, realizes she's in the middle of the street, realizes a tanker truck is speeding toward her, realizes she is completely paralyzed, realizes she is going to die now.
Her mouth falls open, and her body shakes. She closes her eyes, and hopes that Jordy won't be too sad without her.
But then she's not dead, she's opening her eyes to find that she's safe on the sidewalk, wrapped in the familiar warmth of Jordy's arms. He kisses her face over and over again, not even minding that she flinches under his touch as he half yells, half cries, "Don't ever do that again!! God Izzy, I love you, don't you ever, ever do that again!! I don't know what I'd do if I lost you!! I love you, baby sister!! Don't you EVER scare me like that again!! Promise me you'll never leave me!! Ever!! If we don't have each other then we don't have anything!!"
Another flash of white light and Izzy is trembling in the cot again. She remembers that day Jordy plucked her from the street. She was seven and he didn't let her out of his sight for nearly a year, not up until he started smoking the funny smelling cigarettes with his scary friends...
"Interesting," The greasy man's comment pulls her from her thoughts, "A brother. I'm assuming that Jordy is some sort of nickname, so what is his real name?" Izzy licks her dry lips, hating to speak his real name because in her mind Jordan Cooper is not the same person as her Jordy. The man rolls his eyes, "Fine then, but this is really getting tiring, girl. Legilimens."
SLAP "DON'T TOUCH THAT!!!" And Izzy's on the floor, holding her cheek and staring up at Jordan, nothing but a blurry shadow beyond her tears.
She picked up a syringe from the floor, didn't even know what it was, but apparently Jordan didn't want her to touch it.
"I'm sorry, Jordy." She whimpers, feeling the tenderness on her face that she knows from experience will develop into a dark, angry bruise.
All her air is gone a moment later when his boot meets her stomach, "I TOLD YOU NEVER TO CALL ME THAT!! MY NAME IS JORDAN!! DON'T CALL ME JORDY!!"
She cries as she gasps for air and holds her stomach, croaking softly, "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry, what?" He asks angrily as he places his foot on the side of her head and grinds her face into the ground. Isabel chokes, defeated, "I-I'm sorry... Jordan..."
"Well," The greasy man drawls after the flash of light lands her back in the cot, tenderly rubbing his own stomach at the pain he felt along with the small girl, "That is not at all encouraging." She still doesn't know exactly what he's done to her, but she really doesn't like it anymore. She likes remembering Jordy, not Jordan.
"Does your brother hit you often?" The man asks somewhat kindly, probably, Izzy decides, as kind as he can force himself to be. She thinks she can see some flicker of caring in his beady gray eyes, but it's rather brief. She refuses to answer him.
He sighs, "Miss Cooper, we have to know what to do with you, and we cannot figure that out unless we know where your family is. Is your brother all your family? If he is then we need to know."
'This is the part where they take me away and never let me see Jordy again,' she decides, 'I can't let that happen.' She remains silent.
"Very well," He drawls sadly, "Legilimens."
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"Stop struggling, my pretty little Isabel." He smells like peppermint and she can't see his face in the dark.
"P-P-Please," She gasps as she feels his massive body press down on her tiny frail one, "It hurts. I don't want to."
He strokes her hair, almost lovingly, and insists, "You like our game. It's a special game for special girls." He's pinning down her wrists now, easily done with one of his hands, barely requiring any effort at all, using the free one to maneuver her pink and green Little Mermaid nightgown up to her stomach, and her white cotton underwear down to her knees.
"It hurts!" He squeezes her wrists, the biting pain becoming secondary to the one she feels when he enters her, tearing into her soft flesh without ceremony. She shrieks and thrashes, but has nowhere to go. "OOOOWWW!! Please s-stop!!" She begs him, tears already cascading down her cheeks and soaking into the frilly pink and white pillow behind her head.
He grunts and thrusts, completely indifferent to what he's doing to her small body. "You love me, don't you, my little Isabel? Ungh!" He asks, he always asks, mid-thrust.
"Y-Y-Yes," She manages to gasp between sobs, "But it hurts so much. S-S-Stop!! PLEASE!!" More heavy breathing, more uncaring hips bruising her own, and he grunts, "This is how you show Uncle Richie that you love him. You and Jordy can't stay if you don't love me. Do you love me, Isabel?"
She's scared now. He only threatens when she's really made him mad. She tries to be brave and get through this, for Jordy, "I-I-I do. I promise. Please don't make us leave. I like the game. I-I-I do. It feels OOOWWWW... good. I like it. I'm sorry I said I didn't. I want OOOOH... to play more."
She thinks she can see him smiling in the dark, she knows he likes it when she begs, "Good. You're not going anywhere. You're mine, Isabel. You're special. Only special girls get to play the special, secret game. Say that you're mine, Isabel, that you're my good little girl."
She swallows down a lump in her throat, "I-I-I'm yours. I-I-I'm HICCUP your g-good little girl."
He lets out a loud moan, "That's right, my good little girl. My sweet little fuck, begging for this, my cock in your tight, hot cunt. Seducing me with those big brown eyes, wanting me tearing you open. Maybe if you're good I'll tear open your arse today, fuck your sweet little arsehole. You'd like that, you'd cry my name while I come far up your arse. Cry for me Isabel, cry for me to fuck you." No more words are spoken, only shallow grunts and moans.
When he finally finishes with her, she can feel blood and fluids dripping down from between her legs, and she wants to close them, but they won't move. Before he leaves, he forces her to drink down a foul tasting liquid from a bottle he brings with him every time. The worst part is always how he coos, "I love you, my Isabel," before shutting the door behind himself.
Alone, in the dark, feeling her body mend itself, all she can do is cry. Isabel doesn't get a lullaby to sing her to sleep, she gets only her own broken sobbing, the broken sobbing of a broken girl.
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She's sobbing when the flash of light brings her back to the cot, crying, and hugging her knees as she remembers. Because she does remember now, how Uncle Richie smelled like peppermint, how he made sure to give her the room next to his own, how the doorknob sounded, a groaning squeak and then a click, as he invaded the chamber of pink walls and frilly white lace in the dead of the night, how he had made her hold his hand wherever they went, how she tried to hide whenever she saw him give Jordy money to go to the movies with his friends because she knew he would lead her by the hand to her room and hold her down and make her...
She vomits over the side of the bed. Her stomach was empty, but the revulsion she feels is strong enough to conjure it, sticky and warm and sour and now in her curls and on her cheek. This is why they left, why her vague memories of Uncle Richie have always made her feel hollow and afraid, why Jordy got furious whenever she him asked why... 'He knew...'
"Oh god," She hears the greasy man groan just before she hears more vomiting. She opens her eyes and sees him leaning over a basin on the other side of the room, his body heaving violently.
"What is it, Severus?" The old, white-haired man asks, sounding concerned and grandfatherly, not that Izzy knows what a grandfather should sound like, never having had one, but she imagines it must be something like the old, white-haired man.
After a brief minute of the greasy man retching in the basin, he stands slowly, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand as he turns.
He regards the small girl with actual tears in his eyes, and tangible pain oozing off him. He felt it, like he was there, the terror, the pain, the degradation. Severus Snape is by no means a kind man, but he would have to be a monster to not have his heart splitting in half in sympathy for the little girl's pain, 'empathy,' he thinks, because he feels it too. He feels unclean, and ashamed, and completely alone...
He doesn't know what to say, or do to make her pain go away. She's crying, her face lying in a puddle of her own vomit as she curls in on herself and sobs, the same sobbing from the vision, that broken, defeated, aching sob. He is sorry for making her relive it, truly, truly sorry.
"How old are you?" For some reason, he thinks she might be more willing to answer questions now, even if it is only because she fears having to experience any more of her past. She chokes in reply, "Ten."
"And who takes care of you?" He asks as he waves his wand to remove the puddle of vomit from the girl's cot. She's still crying, "J- Jordy."
"Where are your parents?" He's fairly sure he knows the answer to that, and is not mistaken, "Dead."
There is no way in hell that he is going to ask about the uncle.
"Does your brother hit you often?" He's sitting beside her now, moving to smooth her hair back from her face in an effort to provide some comfort, but she flinches under his touch and he quickly pulls back because he instantly understands why. Lingering remnants of that vision have him hating the feel of touching another person just as much as she does. "Yes," She whispers, "B-But he doesn't mean to! Jordy loves me. Please, I just want to go home to Jordy. He's gonna be sad without me. Please, please, I want to go home." She cries harder. She just wants to get home to Jordy, no matter how nice this place is, she just wants her Jordy. Jordy will make everything better again.
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The kindly matron ultimately has to sedate poor little Isabel, scolding Professor Snape all the while for getting her riled up so badly in the first place.
Snape is still shaking and he doesn't really give a damn about what that woman has to say. She doesn't know anything about what happened.
"What happened, Severus? What's wrong?" The headmaster asks kindly as Snape sinks down to the floor outside the hospital wing with his head in his hands. For a long moment, Snape doesn't respond, just tries to make his stomach stop churning, and the horrible emptiness inside his chest, and the searing pain between his legs go away.
Finally, he half screams, half sobs, "What's wrong? What's bloody wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong!! I just forced a ten-year-old rape victim to relive her attack!! That's what's wrong!! I told you this wasn't right!!"
Silence echoes throughout the hallway, and neither man knows how to handle the situation.
"What did you find out?" Dumbledore asks softly as he sinks down beside the potions professor who is still visibly trembling and green in the face. He sighs deeply, "From what I could gather, both her parents died when she was very small. She and her older brother were sent to live with an uncle," He practically chokes on the word, "There was sexual abuse, long term. I don't know what happened after that, but they left him, and the brother was taking care of her. He seemed very attentive and loving for awhile, but then he started beating her. It looked like it was a few years back."
The headmaster remains quiet, and speculative. Snape adds, "We can't send her back to the brother. He's a junkie."
Dumbledore nods, "We should still tell him where she is. What is his name?" Snape sighs, "Jordan Cooper. I got that the uncle's name is Richie, or Richard, I don't think they've lived with him for awhile though."
Dumbledore looks slightly startled, "I think I know those names..." Snape snorts, "You might. The uncle was a wizard. Used to force healing potions down her throat after he..." He trails off and squeezes his eyes shut tighter as a new wave of nausea comes over him.
"Then it must be him..." Dumbledore states thoughtfully. After another moment of silence, he quietly elaborates, "About six years ago, the charred remains of a wizard by the name of Richard Wyatt, a former Hogwarts student actually, were found in the ruins of his home. Arson was the cause of the fire, but the cause of his death was the sixty-two stab wounds in his chest."
Instantly, Snape's head snaps up, and his sharp mind quickly puts two and two together. "Well," He states calmly, "If it is the same man, then good riddance. I hope he's burning in hell as we speak, and for all eternity after."
Dumbledore nods, "Indeed. It was quite a mystery. Especially when his niece and nephew, his sister's children I believe, could not be located. They have not been found to this day. I believe the niece was four, and the nephew fourteen at the time. Today, that would make the girl-"
"Ten," Snape cuts him off, "That would make the girl ten." He sighs heavily, and asks, "What do we do with her?"
The old man stares straight ahead of himself as he declares resolutely, "We enroll her."
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There you have it. Reviews are appreciated my peoples!
