Warnings for this chapter: Occlumency/Leglimency. (Mostly) Canon-typical child abuse, verbal and physical. Threats of sexual abuse. Sexual molestation.
16. LINES (UN)CROSSED
Severus had known, despite his best efforts to convince himself otherwise, that Holly Potter's life with her Muggle relatives had not been ideal. There had been no way around it with Minerva, who was usually very tolerant of the idiosyncrasies of Muggle homes, bemoaning just that fact on a regular basis in the teachers' lounge and arguing with Dumbledore about what in her eyes were untenable living conditions for a young witch, let alone the Girl-Who-Lived.
But he had been content not to invest any more time than absolutely necessary in these thoughts. He was her teacher, nothing more, and as far as he was concerned any responsibility of his began and ended at the door of his classroom. Keeping her from ingesting any poisons and out of the blast radius of any exploding cauldrons was all that could be reasonably expected of him.
But of course, as with all his favourite self-delusions, this one, too, had its flaws, namely Dumbledore's grand idea that he should teach the Girl-Who-Lived to guard her mind against the Dark Lord, said Dark Lord's insistence that he continue his efforts to keep Dumbledore from snooping through Holly's thoughts and of course her absolute lack of talent when it came to all their lessons. Holly's Occlumency shields, if he could call them that, were flimsy at best and though he could charitably say that she was making some progress, their lessons still felt like an exercise in futility most of the time. And he knew that this time she was trying, that she wasn't just stubborn and refusing to listen to his instructions and not doing her assigned exercises. She was trying and she was polite and she was respectful, which just made things more complicated for Severus, because with every look into her mind, with every painful memory that she couldn't hide away from his gaze, his armour of hatred got one more chink.
He usually tried to avert his mental gaze as much and as soon as possible, to ease both of their discomfort, but something in this particular memory arrested his retreat. It seemed to be a very recent one, perhaps even from that same afternoon when Lucius Malfoy had spontaneously decided to invite the Girl-Who-Lived into his manor – a decision for which Severus had still not received a satisfactory explanation. Holly was dressed in her ill-fitting Muggle clothes, a too wide short-sleeved shirt that kept slipping down to expose the fragile frame of her shoulders and the delicate arch of her spine, and a pair of old jeans, haphazardly cinched around her small waist with a thin cord of string. She was kneeling on the kitchen floor, a bucket of soapy water next to her as she scrubbed the floor with a coarse-bristled brush.
And her uncle was there, a beefy Muggle that bore a striking resemblance to a belligerent walrus bull with his dark moustache, heavy built and sweaty complexion. He was watching his niece with beady, resentful eyes and there was something in his gaze – something a little too avid, too calculating, too greedy – that made Severus feel sick to his stomach even before he focused in on his words. He was clearly drunk, his rotund body slumped heavily against the doorframe, a mostly empty beer bottle in his meaty hand and the sounds of some Muggle sports event drifting into the kitchen from the television set in the living room.
Holly was doing her best to ignore her uncle's angry mutterings, but Severus could see the tension in her back, the way her fingers clenched around the brush. She had probably heard most of her uncle's complaints before, but the alcohol seemed to have further loosened his tongue, and in addition to his hackneyed tirades about her unwelcome presence in their lives, there were a disturbing number of inappropriate musings about how Holly could make herself useful, how she could pay him back for all the trouble she had caused him, and how her blooming womanhood related to that. Severus ached for his wand, for the chance to hex that man into oblivion and rewrite the harm he had already done. Instead he was rooted to the spot, a helpless observer, complicit in her pain at least in so far as he ignored her clear, but futile attempts to kick him out her thoughts. She didn't want him to see this, which only increased his morbid curiosity.
"… only thing you're good for… not like they're teaching you anything useful at that freak school of yours… end up on the streets, anyway … don't think we're going to put up with you any longer than we have to!" He kicked at her shin. "Answer me, girl, I will not have you disrespect me in my own house!"
"I'm sorry, Uncle Vernon, I didn't hear the question," she replied in a pressed voice, not turning around or interrupting her work. "I'm almost done with the floor, though."
"You forgot the corners!" he bellowed with sudden rage, kicking for her leg again and then chucking his beer bottle at her.
She twisted away just in time, with the reflexes of a Seeker, the bottle shattering against one of the cabinets instead, shards of brown glass and yellow fluid splattering over the clean floor. Holly stared up at her uncle with wide green eyes for a few moments, her chest heaving with too quick breaths. Then, like a switch being flipped, her gaze shuttered, her fear tightly packed away as she gracefully rose to her feet, took up a broom and calmly started sweeping the floor.
"I'll clean this up, Uncle Vernon," she said softly. "I think the halftime break's about over."
The Muggle stared at her with his beady, blood-shot eyes, almost literally grasping for words and uselessly clenching and unclenching his sweaty hands a few times, seeming almost surprised to find them empty. He shook his massive head, squinted at his niece and then turned around to lumber back into the living room.
"Bring me another beer, girl," he commanded loudly, already halfway back to the sofa that still showed the marks of having borne his great weight.
Holly sighed silently, her thin shoulders slumping, whether in exhaustion or relief Severus wasn't sure, and murmured a dull, "Yes, Uncle Vernon."
The memory ended and Severus retreated from Holly's mind before he could slither into yet another painful revelation, finally yielding to her feeble attempts to push back his mental attack. When he focused on her present, real-life self again, she had crumpled to the floor of his study, pale-faced and trembling ever so slightly, and with a look of mistrust in her emerald green eyes that he had been surprised to find absent these last few weeks.
He moved away for a moment to give her a chance to collect herself and to gather his own thoughts, pouring her some water from the carafe on his desk and offering her the glass when he turned back around.
"Thanks," she mumbled, still watching him warily as she accepted the glass and took a tiny sip. Maybe she thought he had spiked her drink with a Calming Draught, which, he thought, might have been a good idea in hindsight. "Did you find what you were looking for then, sir?"
"I was looking for your defences, Holly, and no, I did not find them," Severus replied with a sneer, immediately chiding himself for his snarky answer and the fact that he could see her closing off even more, even before he had a chance to broach the subject of what he had seen. "Holly… Did your uncle… Did he ever follow through on those threats?"
She put the glass down on his desk, moving half around it to create more distance between them, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Does it matter?"
"Of course it matters!" Severus snapped back.
"Really?" she asked with a derisive snort. "Because all the rest of it didn't seem to matter. No-one ever cared before. No-one cared when my relatives kept me locked in a cupboard for days, weeks, a month, with hardly enough food and water to keep me alive. No-one cared when they told me my parents died in a drunk driving accident and complained that they didn't even have the decency to kill all three of us so as not to burden such hard-working and upstanding citizens as my aunt and uncle with my ungrateful presence. No-one cared when Aunt Petunia hit me with a frying pan or a broom or whatever else was at hand because I didn't do my chores to her exacting standards. No-one cared that my cousin's favourite pastime was 'Holly-hunting' with his friends and my uncle's only reaction to all my bruises and split lips and black eyes was to clap his son on the back and tell him that he would be a fine man one day. And no-one cared when my aunt caught my English teacher with his hand up my skirt and told him that he was lucky that he hadn't tried that with any of the other children, any of the children that had a family.
"But I guess that's all okay, is it? Because no, my uncle didn't follow through on that particular idea. That's the line, is it? Tell me, if he had crossed it, if he had only crossed it, would someone have cared? Would someone have come? Is that the line?"
She had started out angry, but now her voice broke, tears starting to stream down her face as she wrapped her arms tighter around herself to contain her shaking, looking small and miserable and too much like her mother's daughter.
"Holly…" He pulled her into his arms before he could think better of it.
She jerked, but then buried her face against his chest and clutched to his heavy black robes as she tried to calm her breathing and stifle her tears. Severus hesitated, very aware that comforting people wasn't where he excelled, but then carefully started to rub her back in lieu of trying to come up with anything helpful to say. He realised vaguely that she had always seemed taller than she did now, trembling in his arms, her face on one level with his heart. But of course, Lily had been a petite woman as well and James Potter, despite his inflated sense of self and his overbearing presence, had never come even close to Severus' height. It was certainly the most palatable explanation, but more likely her delicate built was yet another consequence of her relatives' mistreatment of her, the years of abuse and malnourishment she must have suffered through.
He sighed tonelessly, looking down at her wild mop of hair that had caused such an uproar this morning. His own surprise had been kept within reasonable limits since he was used to her arriving back from the school holidays with different versions of the same bad haircut. He had always seen it as just another ploy to gain attention, but things were shifting into unpleasant perspective, and he wondered with a knot in his stomach whether Petunia had known about her husband's lustful thoughts regarding their niece, if she had cut Holly's hair out of jealousy, to try and take away some of Holly's beauty.
He scowled to himself, muttering a curse in his mind, because that was exactly what he would expect from Lily's measly sister. He must have made some noise because Holly startled back, hastily wiping at her wet cheeks and skirting away from him, a look in her eyes like a spooked fawn.
"I'm sorry, Professor, I didn't mean to lose it like that. I'll get out of your hair and I'll try to do better next time," she all but pleaded with him, sniffing back tears and giving him a wobbly smile.
"You should never apologise for speaking your mind and posing valid questions," Severus corrected her, making sure to keep his voice even and his stance non-confrontational.
"Really?" she whispered. "Because that was rule number one at the Dursleys: Don't ask questions."
Severus sighed, motioning Holly to take a seat in his desk chair and snapped for a house-elf to bring her some hot chocolate. He conjured up a second chair for himself, sinking down into it so that he wasn't speaking down on her. "Your relatives were wrong about that and what they did to you was most certainly not even within the vicinity of acceptable behaviour. It was abuse. Do you understand that, Holly?"
She shrugged slightly, her hands wrapped firmly around the steaming cup of hot chocolate to keep them from shaking. "I do now. It wouldn't have been okay if it had happened to any of my friends or classmates."
"It wasn't okay that it happened to you, either," the Potions Master stressed, hating how resigned and disillusioned she had sounded.
She shrugged again. "Maybe not, but it's over now and I don't have to go back there anymore. And you haven't answered my question, Professor: Would it have mattered? Would it have changed anything? If my uncle had crossed that line, would it have been enough for Dumbledore to decide that staying with my relatives wasn't the best thing for me after all?"
He wanted to lie or claim ignorance, but she was looking at him as if she already knew the answer and he doubted there was any lie he could tell that she would believe at this point.
"It should have mattered, and I daresay there are many people who would have moved heaven and earth if they had known about the abuse and neglect you suffered. But I do not think the headmaster would have been one of them."
She nodded slowly and then gave him a tentative smile. "Thanks for your honesty, Professor. And for caring enough to ask."
"Just drink that. It's not poisoned," Severus ordered, scowling when she gave him a jaunty salute and obediently took a sip from her cup.
"Did you talk to Remus? He always gave me chocolate after our Patronus lessons," Holly murmured, sipping her drink with a wistful little smile.
"Are you telling me that bribing you with chocolate is the only way to motivate you, Holly?" Severus demanded pointedly. "Because I find it difficult to believe that you cannot muster a modicum of mental preparedness now when you managed to produce a fully corporeal Patronus at the age of thirteen."
Holly furrowed her brow. "But, Professor, the Patronus Charm is fuelled by emotion, isn't it? I don't see how that has anything to do with protecting my thoughts."
Severus sighed expansively. "And are your memories and thoughts not linked to your feelings, Holly? We could of course debate the finer points and nuances, but in this first step, it is quite frankly immaterial whether you close your mind by learning to guard your thoughts or by controlling your emotions. As long as you just close it."
Holly nodded pensively and then got up with a surprising amount of eagerness, placing her half empty cup down on his desk. "Can I try?"
Severus rose more slowly to his feet, a little reluctant to delve into her mind again when he could still see the tear tracks on her face. But then, she had made it perfectly clear that his concern, or whatever else had compelled him to poke into her painful past, may have been appreciated, but neither helpful nor timely. He resolved to have a talk with Lucius later to see if Holly's relatives had already received their comeuppance, but for now he would respect Holly's wishes to leave that chapter of her life behind.
He let his wand slip into his hand, keeping it lowered as he waited for Holly to get into position and prepare her mind, or at least attempt to do so. He didn't hold out much hope that this time would be any different than the many times they had tried this before. But Holly gave him a determined nod, squaring her slight shoulders and raising her chin as she met his eyes.
He slipped into her mind with ease, her thoughts and memories the usual pick-your-own-adventure buffet and her mental defences regrettably non-existent. He was about to pull back, ready to call it a day and send her on with some additional reading, when suddenly a veritable wall of gratitude slammed into him, with enough force that it would certainly have imbalanced a lesser skilled Leglimens. Severus merely shored up his own mental defences to make sure that she wouldn't get a peek into his thoughts, by a stroke of that thrice damned luck of hers, and then decided to test her a little. He moved closer, further into her mind, and carefully pushed against the wall, which was already beginning to lose its definition, the opaque shield transforming into a wavering fog of different colours, the sharp edge of her gratitude watered down by a variety of less clearly delimited emotions.
It would have been easy to push past it, but he drew back instead, thinking that giving her this small victory would work wonders for her motivation and might at least help to assuage some of his guilt.
Holly was panting, short of breath, but grinning wildly. "Did I do it?"
"Passable," Severus informed her, trying not to sneer too much at her whoop of joy. "More flash than substance, of course, but disorienting enough to stop any casual intrusion into your mind. We shall have to work on refining your defences in these coming weeks."
"Yes, sir," she agreed readily, still beaming. "But I did it."
"You did it," Severus admitted with a sigh. "And on that high note, I think we shall end our lessons for today. I have some potions that need attending."
"Can I stay and watch?" she asked.
"I would think you had better things to occupy your time, but by all means," Severus said with a suppressed sigh, still not understanding her sudden interest in potions when she had never shown any such inclination in his class.
Holly just grinned at him and followed him into his lab, obediently taking a seat next to the door so as to keep out of his way and seeming almost thrilled when he allowed her to chop some of the ingredients. Severus just resigned herself to her presence. It was easier than questioning her motives and examining his own mixed feelings regarding.