Posted: 12/26/15
An Eviction Notice
19th September, 1995
Luxminder's fears that Dumbledore might be a figment of her imagination reasserted themselves when he stayed in his corner and watched the Pervert slap her for no good reason. Surely if he were really here, here for her, with her, he would protect her. Wouldn't he?
Perhaps not. Perhaps she had misjudged him. Luxminder had considered a wide array of candidates to ask for help before she had settled on Dumbledore. Government officials (muggle and magical) – both British and American, presidents and prime ministers past and present, and even some very powerful criminals that she'd happened upon. In the end, she hadn't based her criteria on any sort of critical moralizing that took in karmic returns or universal goodwill. She had simply chosen Dumbledore because he seemed incredibly powerful, yet thoroughly uncorrupt. Unlike anything she'd seen elsewhere. With him, Luxminder thought she was unlikely to end up in a sterile laboratory cage, being poked, prodded, studied, and experimented on. Or mercilessly exploited. Not that she cared if her power to spy was exploited so much, but she wanted the freedom and protection to be able to live her personal life on her own terms.
She continued her afternoon and evening in the exact same way that she always did. She cleaned the toilets, tubs, and sinks; she swept, mopped, and dusted; she took Robbie and Dylan with her from room to room, telling stories, singing and talking to them, imploring them to be calm and above all, please,pleasestay quiet.
Dylan wasn't quite old enough to grasp that his status within the household would improve dramatically if he mimicked his elders' abuse of their nanny, maid, laundress, and cook. Since he was only two, Luxminder didn't think anybody in their right mind would hold it against him when he followed her around like a puppy and always sought her out when he had a boo-boo or needed a cuddle. But somehow, Oblivia and the Pervert managed to treat their own son like a criminal when they happened to notice the two of them cozied up together, laughing.
Robbie adored Luxminder as well, but only in secret. When his mother and father were in the room he would either ignore her or call her names and kick at her shins. The Pervert lauded this behavior, laughed and encouraged him. Even though Luxminder knew that deep down Robbie loved her, that he was simply desperate for his father's attention and his love and approval, sometimes she couldn't help feeling a bit hurt and betrayed when he treated her this way. She gave him and his brother the only real mothering that they received. She fed and bathed them, washed their clothes and dressed them, took them to the park on the weekends when the weather was good and pushed them on the swings as much as they liked. She made up games for them to play, and she'd even begun teaching them their alphabet – Robbie was four years old, so it was scandalous he hadn't already been taught this.
Although Luxminder loved Robbie and Dylan, if the see-through wizard in the corner was come to relieve her of this life, Lux knew she wasn't going to miss them that much. Not the way she missed Roxie. There were too many painful moments attached to caring for the boys. All the times she'd had to ignore her own needs because she had to mind them; or the time when she'd lost her temper and hit them. Under her parents' care spankings were very rare – Luxminder could count on one hand the number of times her father had been angry enough to lays hands on her. The Pervert and Oblivia resolved every little infraction with harsh yells, and frequently emphasized them with slaps on their bums, thighs, and even their faces. Ironically, they'd forbidden Luxminder from hitting them. But once, she'd been so upset that she'd disobeyed this injunction and she'd never stopped feeling guilty about it since. They hadn't even been particularly bad that day; she'd just been exceptionally mad and upset at the brute that had sired them.
At six-thirty she took them to the kitchen and began supper. Just a box of Dinner-Helper and some minced meat. She browned the beef, added the rest of the ingredients, lidded the pan, lowered the heat, and while it simmered she started to sing I'm-a-Little-Teapot, putting one hand on her hip and holding the other out to display her spout. Robbie and Dylan mirrored her pantomimes, lifted their sweet chirpy voices to unify with her own.
Suddenly her hair was yanked – the Pervert had come in quietly from behind. He pulled her head down and back until she cried out from the pain of it. It was what he'd been waiting for. After she verbalized her agony he slackened his grip a little and began to snarl softly into her ear, "Yer being too fuckin' loud, ya lil' cunt. Shut yer worthless mouth and finish the dinner."
He released her, and just as quietly and quickly he was gone.
Luxminder turned away from the children, kept her head down, returned to the stove to stir the meat and noodles, discreetly wiping off her tears and massaging her neck.
It was like this all the time.
In the beginning she'd been so sassy to them. But now she was broken.
After she'd served the boys and the Pervert their supper, she took the little ones upstairs for a bath. They hadn't bathed much when they'd first moved in, but she'd made it into a nightly ritual which they had finally accepted and now enjoyed. As she leaned over the tub to scrub them Lux kept stealing glances at the door. Sometimes the Pervert would come in while she bathed his children and leer at her with those soul-dead eyes. A reminder of his power, what they both knew he was capable of. The first time he came in after the Soul-Breaking Night she'd tried to leave. But he'd blocked the door. Just stood there, holding her with his lewd gaze and she'd cried again. She couldn't stand being in that loo by herself, but being in there with him again was torture. Her hands had started shaking so badly she'd accidentally gotten soap in Dylan's eye. Over the months since, he'd done this less and less, but she was still cautious of him coming in.
When the kids were in bed she told them the story of Ping and sang them a lullaby. Only then did she have the chance to return to the kitchen to begin the washing up. While Luxminder was mopping the kitchen Oblivia came in to gobble down a plate of the dinner helper before she left for work. Oblivia was the shift supervisor at an off-site, and though she hated the hours, she loved the prestige of being in management. To hear her talk about it, everything and everybody would fall apart without her there. Luxminder found it a bit pathetic when she had to listen to this drivel. After Oblivia had received the promotion, she would strike up conversations with total strangers, wherever they went, just so she could tell them what she did for a living. Muy, muy patetico.
The Dumbledore-apparition remained in the corner, only watching. Luxminder looked over at him quite often as she wiped countertops, packed up the leftovers for the Pervert's lunch tomorrow, dried and put away the clean dishes. Was he going to intervene when he saw what was going to happen next? As she watched Oblivia use the reflection from the microwave to apply a thick coat of red lipstick, Luxminder's stomach began to clench with a reflexive dread and the muscles in her shoulders were aching with tautness. This was always the worst part of her day. Not the actual part when she put his dick in her mouth, as she was fairly good at tuning everything out while it was happening. It was the last moments before he got her - watching Oblivia eat and preen, wiping down all the appliances just so she could delay trying to slip past him to her bedroom – the last moments in which she could hope that he might just fall asleep or leave her be were the worst.
The Pervert waited fifteen minutes after his wife left, and Luxminder heard him get up to put on one of his videos. Oblivia knew he had them. Sometimes on her nights off they would sit on the couch and enjoy them together.
Luxminder had seen them at it a few times on her way out. She never stopped to watch though, the way she might have done if she were younger and they were simply her neighbors or tenants. She just flew straight past the Pervert and Oblivia and went to fly around London, or to search for the aurora borealis, or to New York to see Dax. She felt so free when she slipped away; pity she couldn't bring her body with her.
Once the Pervert had the raunchy movie on, he turned off the lamps and resettled on the sofa, waiting for her. She tarried as long as she dared, for if he had to get up and come for her, he invariably compensated for this inconvenience with plenty of kicks and smacks. So she wrung out the dishrag and hung it over the sink-divider. She could hear the porn stars moaning and swallowed down the bile rising in her throat. The Dumbledore-apparition was still in the corner, watching. She gave him one more look, despair and hope in equal parts, hung her head in shame, turned off the kitchen light, and started to walk as quietly as she could to her bedroom. Luxminder stayed as close to the wall as possible, wishing she might meld into it. She just made it past him when he called her.
"Oi! Where ya think yer goin'?!"
"I'm tired," she said in a soft, subdued voice.
"Get yer arse over here," he commanded.
She obeyed.
She couldn't believe this was going to happen in front of someone else. What had she been thinking when she wrote that letter? She'd invited a stranger, a strange man, into her private world of humiliation and horror. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Dumbledore was supposed to have knocked on the door and introduced himself to the Pervert and used his magic to force a confession out of him. Luxminder had fantasized about the Pervert admitting everything - that he was nothing but a sorry, disgusting pig - while he blubbered in the face of Dumbledore's righteous disapprobation – or, even better, Dumbledore's terrible fury on her behalf.
Tears were pouring down her cheeks as went to the sofa and sat down. She went to the opposite end of it, as far from the Pervert as she could manage, and she hadn't bothered doing this in months. Luxminder was trained to the point where she would go to him, unfasten his pants without a prompt, and proceed with the nasty business like an unfeeling android. But tonight, with an audience – even one that might be imaginary – Luxminder couldn't bring herself to make it so easy for the Pervert. She kept her eyes away from the telly and scanned the room for the Dumbledore-apparition, but it was too dim to see much.
Suddenly Luxminder wanted to call out to him. She wanted to scream and sob and beg Dumbledore to stop this, to please help. If he wasn't actually here, what would The Pervert do in the face of such insane behavior? Would he take pity on her and let her go to bed? Doubtful. He might take her back to the loo though. He might think she needed to be re-broken.
"Wotcha think yer doin'?" The Pervert intruded into her mad reverie.
Luxminder was so frightened. With the chance of someone watching them, she could see everything with new eyes and this felt exactly like the first time. The initial shame and loathing washed over her, so fresh, so undiluted by the numbing tedium of routine.
The Pervert was getting mad, as patience was merely one drop in a fathoms-deep ocean of virtues that he had never dipped so much as a tentative toe into.
"Do we need to make a trip to the loo?" he whispered.
"No!" Luxminder cried while she shook her head as hard as she could. And she rigidly began to scoot over to him.
As soon as she was within reach the Pervert put one arm around her and with his free hand he began to paw her chest. She froze. This was new. He'd only ever done this to her once before. But before she could ponder what new form of abuse this presaged, the lamps were lit and Dumbledore, no longer imaginary or a ghost, was walking toward them with his wand out. He seemed to embody the wrathful nemesis of her fantasies except he was even more intimidating than she had envisioned him. Rings of power seemed to distend outward from his very center, and his eyes were like penetrative stabs of coldness. The concentricity of magic rippling through her – tidal waves really – left her with a sensation of tightly curbed vehemence, a barely governable retribution. She shivered and shied from it. Luxminder was dearly relieved that she was not the focal point of this alarming vision.
Within seconds of the lamps lighting, the stick of wood he held blurred as fulgurous colours whipped out of it, to the side of her and into the Pervert.
In her present shame she turned away from them both, couldn't bear the rawness of Dumbledore's furious conviction, though she knew it wasn't directed her way. But the nakedness of his indignation made her achingly aware of the iniquities she suffered. To be seen in this situation by anybody, but especially by the man before her, who had always seemed so kind and good, made her want to curl up and die. She didn't even check to see what had been done to the Pervert. She dropped her head and started to sob uncontrollably. The fact that it was all really over wasn't inside of her head yet, giving her the succor she'd sought, but it was only this moment, this couch, these salacious sounds of moaning and hips slapping against buttocks from the television, this man beside her, who mere moments ago had been taking reprehensible liberties with her breasts. She was here, it had all happened to her, was happening now, and with a sympathetic witness there was no mental escape. Luxminder could no longer pretend that it was all okay. She was as shattered as she'd been the Soul-Breaking Night.
Strong but gentle hands took hold of Luxminder, lifted her off the sofa, and she was delicately, carefully led to an armchair and deposited into it. A soft piece of fabric was placed in her palm. She understood. Her savior, her benefactor, without words, was telling Luxminder that she was being rescued from the Pervert. Only to the other side of the living room now, but very soon across a canyon of security that the Pervert would have no means to span.
The act, this silent commiseration penetrated her mind - Luxminder's heart - and she began to take deep, soothing breaths. By slow degrees calm returned.
Using the handkerchief to sop up her face, she finally whispered, "I'm sorry."
"You've nothing to be sorry for," Dumbledore told her.
His words only brought home the fact that she was indeed a victim, and they threatened to unravel her again. She marshaled her emotions, however, sick of the self-pity-party and ready to move on, she simply nodded her acknowledgment and told him, "Yes."
She finally looked at him. Luxminder and Dumbledore, without magical or bodiless barriers, faced one another for the first time. Decades and indeed centuries later, this moment would be speculated about in history books and spun into stage plays, for it was to become the stuff of legends. But neither of them knew this. It was a grave, awkward moment for them both, but a very secluded and intimate one as well. Both wondered what the other thought, both tried to make assessments based on the other's appearance and foreknowledge. If Dumbledore felt himself at a disadvantage because she had spied on him, it was all canceled out by her current vulnerability. Whatever she might know based on her invisible observations of him, he knew her most shameful and deepest secret. Thus far, they were equals.
"Will you make him leave?" she asked suddenly.
"Make him leave?" Dumbledore returned, confused.
"Yes. Will you make them all leave my house? I don't want them here anymore," she told him earnestly.
"This-" he began, but then it all fell into place. A line from her letter came back to him: There just using me for free room and board, and slave labor! Of course it was hers. She hadn't been brought here to live with them when her parents passed. These people had invaded her once-beautiful house. Now she wanted him to remove them from her home.
"I will, Luxminder. But not tonight."
"Please!" she exclaimed, her eyes glistening again. "I can't sleep another night under the same roof as him!"
"I know," he said in an assuring, propitiative tone. "Remain calm. We cannot wake the little ones at this time of night and put them out on the streets. I will make sure they vacate the premise in as timely a manner as is reasonable. Tonight, though, you and I will go to London. You will stay there with someone I trust until suitable arrangements can be made for your living situation. Is this acceptable to you?"
Luxminder considered this proposal. What she wanted, more than anything, was to be out of the Pervert's power forever. When she wrote the letter to Dumbledore, she hadn't specified how he was to accomplish this; she had vaguely begged him for help and merely asked that he liberate her from an unlivable life. Nothing more or less. Luxminder's thoughts turned over the bitter prospect of the Pervert remaining a resident of her father's house for one more second, but then the faces of Dylan and Robbie overtook her mind's eye. Where would they go at this time of night? A motel. But no, Dumbledore was right of course. Impetuosity was a child's game. She was no longer a child and must put this idea away.
He could see her mind churning in her eyes as he told her his plan and asked for her consent. After very little contemplation she gave it. "Yes. Okay, you're right. Should I pack some clothes?"
But, as she asked him this, her head tilted to see past him. "What did you do to him?"
"He's fine. For now. Temporally unable to move any muscle in his body, save the ones required to give him breath."
"What- What will you do with him, sir?"
"Well, I was planning on letting you decide," he said, with a serene, yet searching look. "What would you like me to do to him?"
Luxminder was quite confused by his question. "Do to him? Well, I- " She stopped. Suddenly the suspicion that there was a subtext to this question stole through her. "I told you. I want you to evict him. Please." He was giving her such an appraising look, one that made her feel unclothed and transparent.
"Shall we call the police? Have him arrested?" he asked her.
"No!" she was swift to answer. "Please, sir. I don't want to do that!" Luxminder was feeling a bit panicked now. This wasn't what she wanted. All the fuss and the questions, even a trial perhaps, where she would have to talk about what had happened to her in front of a courtroom full of strangers. "Please," she whispered pleadingly. "I just want to forget everything."
Dumbledore inspected her for a moment longer before he gave a small nod.
He stood and began to cast a panoply of different coloured spells around the ceiling and doorways.
"The spells that I'm casting are going to keep all sounds contained in this room. Now the little boys will not be awakened by any noises that should occur while I- er- talk to this man," Dumbledore explained as he sound-proofed the room. "What is his name?"
The Pervert, she almost said. "Stephen Sheffield," she quietly told him.
After a few moments, once Dumbledore had finished sealing the room with magic, he turned to the Pervert, and, so quickly Luxminder could hardly see, he waved his wand at the Pervert. Lux watched as he started to blink and cough. The Pervert was on his feet in a moment, advancing toward Dumbledore with his fists raised.
With a lazy flick of Dumbledore's wand the Pervert was lifted off of his feet and, as though bound at his wrists and ankles, his arms and legs were splayed ignominiously.
"Geroff!" the Pervert shouted. His eyes bulged in shock and anger, and he was looking wildly around. "What the fuck! What the fuck!" He sounded like he was about to cry.
"There's no need for this crass language, Mr. Sheffield," Dumbledore told him in a composed voice. He loosely hooked his wand-free hand around his other wrist and held them together in front of his body; he seemed completely at his ease.
"What the f-fuck are y-you?!" spluttered the Pervert.
"I am a wizard," Dumbledore told him. "And while I can appreciate how alarming this revelation must be for you, and how uncomfortable it is to be suspended mid-air without any visible or tangible devices holding you there, still I must insist that you refrain from using foul words until I have taken Luxminder and departed. If you continue to do so, I shall use my wand," Dumbledore held the wand up for Stephen to see, "to seal your mouth until I have said my piece and gone."
"Take the cu- the girl?!" Stephen asked. "What the fu-" He looked at the wand with trepidation and closed his mouth.
He was a quick learner. Luxminder had to give him that.
"Yes, I am here this evening to collect Luxminder," Dumbledore continued. "She wrote a letter to me a few weeks ago, asking for my assistance with her terrible home-life. I came here earlier today, used magic to make myself invisible, and have been observing your appalling treatment of her since she returned from school. She did not lie to me in her letter. You and your wife's treatment of her, I find, is just as despicable as what she described to me in her desperate plea for help. You not only have a complete lack of interest for her well-being – not to mention what you seem to lack for your own children – but I have witnessed you brutalizing her, without provocation, twice. And this," Dumbledore gestured toward the naked people on the telly, "well, this is just contemptuous beyond description."
The Pervert was eyeing Dumbledore now with leery heedfulness.
"If you were the father of one of my pupils - for you see, I am the headmaster of a very prestigious school for magical children - I would not only have you arrested immediately, but I would personally see to it that you were prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If I was an unprincipled man," and here Luxminder saw his eyes take on a slightly sinister gleam, "I would like nothing more than to maim or, perhaps, kill you. However, I have asked Luxminder if she would like to let your Muggle – Muggles are non-magical people – police men come here this evening and remove you from decent society, in keeping with what you most definitely deserve, but she has indicated that all she wants is your removal from her sight, her house, and her life forever. So, as her new guardian - which, by the way, I fully intend to make legal as soon as time allows - and as a clever, magical wizard whom you can never hope to outwit or overcome, I am ordering you to pack up all of your belongings and procure some new lodgings for your family and yourself without delay. You have-"
"Aargh!" the Pervert cut in, looking quite livid again. "We ent got nowhere to go and no money! Where ya spect us ta live!" (This was a lie. Stephen and Meredith Sheffield were saving almost all of their expendable income and were planning to buy and run their own mechanic shop, as soon as they procured sufficient funding.)
"That is none of my concern. You have been living here for-" and here he turned to Luxminder as he guessed, "a year?" Luxminder nodded and said, "About that. Yeah." Dumbledore looked at the man dangling in the air before him and continued, "You have been living here for a year without any rent or mortgage payments to make. You and your wife, from what I have gathered, both work. If you have no money, that is nobodies fault but your own. I will give you one week to gather your things and clear out. You are not to live in this town. You are never to come within seventy kilometers of this house, and if, years from now even, you ever see Luxminder walking down a road in another country, I suggest you turn around and head in the opposite direction. For, from this day forth, I will always be watching out for her, and I will know if you violate any of the rules I have just laid forth for her protection.
"Now then, I am going to release you. You will go to bed, and in the morning you will begin the process of packing and finding a new place to live."
The Pervert made a noise that sounded angry, derisive, scared, and plaintive all at once. "What will I say ter Meredith, eh? 'Ow will I explain the girl's done a bunk an' we gotta move outta town?"
"Well, I highly advise against the truth. Anybody you try to convince that a wand-wielding wizard used his magic to pin you up in thin air will think you mad, and your wife might try to have you put in an insane asylum. But rest assured, whatever you have to say to convince your wife that your free ride is over is highly recommended, because I will return here in one week," and with another casual wave, the Pervert was spun around until he was now hanging upside-down, "and if you haven't done as I've said, there will undoubtedly be repercussions."
"Alrigh', alrigh'!" the Pervert conceded, his face turning purple from the all the blood rushing downward. "We'll get out by the end of the week! Let me down now, so's I can go ter bed!"
Dumbledore turned him right side up and, after a moment of intense eye contact, released him.
The Pervert stood there for a moment while the blood that had collected in his head redistributed itself to his lower extremities. He threw Luxminder one look, and so thick with hatred it was that she took an unconscious step backward.
Once the Pervert went up the stairs and his booming steps were heard from above as he went to his and Oblivia's bedroom, Dumbledore turned to Luxminder and asked, "Are you alright?"
She nodded a bit, and then answered, "Yes. Shall I go pack?"
"Yes," he agreed. "That's a good girl."
She headed down a hallway off the living room. Dumbledore followed her, his eyes drawn back to her mismatched gait. He decided against saying anything about it for the time being.
Her bedroom was small and sparsely furnished. He quietly watched as she began to pack up a navy-blue shoulder bag with some garments. She fetched a toothbrush from the lavatory, and an extra pair of boots from the closet. In a very short amount of time all the worldly possessions she needed or wanted were put away and ready for transportation.
He held out an arm for her and asked, "Ready?"
"Sir," she turned serious, troubled eyes to him, "sir, will you promise me something?"
"Well," he hesitated. "If it's within my power and inclination I shall."
She was silent for a moment and then she began her request, "Will you promise me that…no matter how things between us work out- I mean," she stopped again. He watched her gathering her thoughts and saw that her eyes were glistening with some suppressed emotion. "I just want you to promise me that, no matter what happens from here on out, you'll never bring me back here, to him."