Hawknest143: Thanks for reviewing! I was worried some readers might be confused and have questions about how it was done, so I wanted to preface the chapter, haha. I'm glad it made sense!

Ldub: Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you're loving it! And I'm glad I can throw in some twists that you don't expect!

EmilyCMalfoy: Thanks for reviewing! I'm not offended. Aurelia definitely has fewer problems than Charlotte and isn't bogged down by so much, so I can see why you'd like her more. You don't have to thank me for responding to your reviews, I enjoy it! Thanks for taking time out of your day to review!

PineappleBearr: Thanks for reviewing! I hate seeing Charlotte like this too

CHAPTER 13

You need to trust him. You need to trust him.

"I…" I look away from him, the girl from my vision coming to my mind, the image of Severus puking on me almost haunting me. How do I not remember that? How do I not remember the circumstances leading up to that? Finally I force myself to meet his gaze. "Okay. Help me."

Severus watches me for a second, then smiles, his face relieved. He stands to his feet, tucking away my wand into his robes. He offers me his hand, and I accept it, letting him pull me to my feet. Once I'm up, he leads me around the sofa and waves his wand at the bookshelf. The shelves move aside, revealing a door. He leads me down a hidden staircase. "An Undetectable Extension Charm." A table in the middle of a large room at the bottom of the staircase holds a cauldron, but it disappears, a single chair replacing it. "Take a seat, Miss Lestrange."

I obey him without question, and I don't know why that is. But I don't fear what might happen when I sit down. For some reason, I feel as if he will never purposefully put me in harm's way. I believe he is trying to help me.

"You need to trust me," he says gently. "This might hurt, but you need to trust that this is for the best and that this will help you." I nod, my heartbeat racing. I know I can handle it. Or at least I think I can. He frowns at me. "I know that you're nervous, but you also need to know that you've experienced much worse than what's about to happen."

"It's going to hurt so badly that you need to put it in perspective? That's incredibly discomforting."

For a moment, a pleased look crosses his face, but it passes quickly. Why does he seem to care so much about this? Severus raises his wand and casts the spell, and everything goes black.

I'm running through a crowded street.

I'm sitting in a cellar by myself. The door opens, and Aunt Narcissa descends the stairs to collect me. We reach the top of the stairs, and I see who I'm guessing is Severus, his back toward me.

Mum Cruciates me, the Dark Lord watching it happen and doing nothing to stop it.

A witch with glasses and her hair in a tight bun helps me learn Conjuration.

With small hands I plunge a knife into a man's back.

Then everything goes white, and a fire ignites in my skull. But my shrieks of pain do not stop the spell, and I feel myself puke but cannot seem to wake back up. My heart beats so quickly I fear it might give out, and my lungs stop working properly. This is how I'm going to die. This is the end of the line for Aurelia Lestrange. Because I trusted someone I don't know. And now he's ripping my mind apart. Someone is hitting me over the head with a hammer. It's Severus—he's trying to kill me, trying to bash my head open and spill my brains all over this floor.

I'm going to die.

Then, suddenly, everything comes back—my vision, my hearing, my consciousness—and I am lying on the stone floor in Severus's hidden basement. He stands just a few feet away from me, but it feels like he's so much further, like I couldn't reach him if my life depended on it. I curl into myself. "What happened to me?" I whisper.

"Your memories have all been altered with Dark Magic cast by a powerful witch." Something in his eye leads me to think that he knows exactly who has done this to me.

"Is…is there a way to change that?"

He crouches in front of me, his eyes somewhat hopeful. I want to feel that hope, but I don't know what's actually going on. "You spent many months learning Occlumency. You used it successfully against the Dark Lord himself. Even while you are unconscious, your mind should be protecting itself, which means there is a chance I can reverse this. But it will be painful."

I watch him through blurry, unshed tears. "Are you sure you can do it? Are you sure I can handle it?"

He looks away. "Part of you, the real you—Charlotte Rodgers—must still be present. I need you to answer this next question truthfully." I nod. "Have you been hearing a voice in your mind speaking to you?"

"Yes." Heat rises to my cheeks. "I've been hearing your voice."

Severus opens his mouth, then closes it again, his lips turning up in a smile, an unreadable look on his face. Or perhaps it's only unreadable because I don't currently know him. Maybe if I were—well, Charlotte Rodgers—I'd know why he's looking at me like this. "I can help you." He takes my upper arms in his hands and helps me to my feet and back into the chair. "This…this reversal is all or nothing, Char—Aurelia. I will break each section of the spell, but…if it is not all destroyed within a few days, each will return, and I don't believe I'll be able to reverse it again."

"So you've done this before then?"

"Yes." He clears his throat and looks away from me, another strange look on his face. "So you face a choice now. I know firsthand how terrified you—Charlotte Rodgers, that is—are of your duty, but do you feel that way right now?"

"No, I—it's an honor. Why would I be afraid of it?"

"Because of your past experiences," he says plainly. "You're horrified of it."

"Am I?"

"And you currently have good childhood memories of your mother, but I also know that this is not the case for Charlotte Rodgers. Charlotte Rodgers grew up as an orphan. She watched the murder of mother figure."

How could she—how did she handle witnessing something like that? "Where was Mum? Why wasn't I with her?"

"She was in Azkaban with your father and uncle. She helped tortured the Longbottoms shortly after your death was faked. You never knew her, and the two of you only recently discovered each other."

"Why're you telling me this?"

"Because I'm giving you the choice to keep your fake memories and be happy or to remove your fake memories and live with your pain."

I don't want to lose the memories of my mother. Mum and I had such a good time when I was a child. We're—we're best friends. She's the greatest part of my life and always has been. She raised me by herself, but we were happy and we still are. Even though the Dark Lord has kept us apart as of late, we're happy. And she loves me.

But none of that is true, Severus's voice says in the back of my mind.

But those memories are real to me.

How can I possibly be willing to give up everything that I know and love? Charlotte was an orphan—I am not. I am loved and well-taken care of. People want me to be safe. Charlotte had no one. Why would I ever want to go back to something like that?

Because that was real, and this is not. Your experiences, your memories, are all false.

"Could…could I have a chance to think about it? Just for the rest of the day?"

He nods, almost frowning at me. "The Dark Lord—he plans to announce that Charlotte Rodgers was really Aurelia Lestrange all along. He told me when I was meeting with him."

"When?"

"I'm not sure. He wants to make sure that the spells have completely taken hold on you. I doubt he'll wait more than a couple of days before seeking reports on how your mind has adjusted to these new memories."

I wipe my eyes impatiently and force myself into a sitting position. "I'll decide before then."

Severus offers me his hand and helps me to my feet. "Take all day if you need to."

We walk back up the stairs together, but he doesn't conceal the basement door again. I take a seat on the sofa and lie down, my head on the side farthest from his armchair so that I can see him should I decide to talk with him. His eyes land on me for a second, a strange look of sadness crossing his face, a noise coming from the back of his throat. Then he looks away from me and turns his attention to a newspaper. "Do you make potions down there? In the hidden basement thing?"

"Yes."

"Am I distracting you from making them now?"

"No," he says, not even looking up from his paper. "If I wanted to be down there, I would be." He doesn't elaborate further, and I don't try to push him for answers.

We're quiet for a short while as he finishes reading the whole paper. Once he sets it aside, he looks back at me. "Are you hungry?" he asks.

"Now that I think about it, yeah. I actually am."

I sit up with a grunt and make my way behind him to the kitchen. I take a seat and wait patiently, but he doesn't begin cooking. Instead, he just sits down across from me and waves wand, and plates, glasses of water, and a tray of food appear on the table. For a moment I debate asking where he got it from, but ultimately decide it doesn't matter. Food is food.

I take a few of the sandwiches off the tray and put them onto the plate he provided. A question burns in my mind, and I want to ask it, but I'm actually afraid to. What if it offends him? Severus doesn't notice that I'm staring at him, watching him carefully as he drinks his glass of water. Finally I cannot contain myself any longer, and I ask it abruptly. "Are we sleeping together?" He chokes on his drink. "I mean, you and Charlotte Rodgers."

He continues coughing loudly, banging his fist on his chest, his eyes watering. "What?" he croaks.

"Did you and Charlotte Rodgers sleep together? Are the two of you fucking?"

It takes a moment for him to catch his breath, but the sound of his voice suggests that the water is still irritating his throat when he says, "No, no, why would you ask that?"

"I'm just trying to figure out why you were so—huggy—when you saw me—her—again. And why you were so upset about Azkaban—and what was that about anyway, I mean, did she actually go to Azkaban? And why you're so willing to help me become myself again if there's nothing in it for you."

"There's plenty in it for me, Miss Lestrange, I assure you."

That's annoyingly vague. "Like what?"

He clenches his teeth. "Charlotte Rodgers is my friend and my mentee. She is the only living person who knows the truth about me."

"Merlin's beard, you're gay, aren't you? I almost—"

"No."

"Oh." I clear my throat. Hopefully he won't hold that against me. "Then what truth?"

He levels his gaze at me, a frustrated look on his face. "I'm not revealing my darkest secrets to Aurelia Lestrange. And to be quite frank with you, I'm unsure how Charlotte Rodgers discovered them."

This actually makes me smile. "She sounds quite brilliant."

"She was," he says quietly.

"Does she know that you know that she knows your secret?"

"She's brought it up to me briefly once. She put it all together."

"How did she do that?"

He stops chewing. "Things happened. I can't talk about it with Aurelia Lestrange, because what if you decide to remain Aurelia Lestrange? Anything you learn about Charlotte Rodgers could lead to the both of us being put in danger." He exhales. "Mostly me now, I suppose. You're not Charlotte anymore."

He turns his attention back to his food, but he doesn't eat it. Instead he just picks up his water and begins drinking quietly. Severus seems genuinely unhappy with the current situation, and I almost want to know who this Charlotte Rodgers person is, how she could have done something to mean so much to him. After a few minutes of watching him, his eyes not drifting back to me at all, I realize what I want. So I take a deep breath, but I can't speak. Part of me still wants to cling to Aurelia Lestrange. Because that's who I am. No, it's not. "Mr. Severus," I say quietly. This is what I want. I know this is what I want. "I think I want to be her—my true self—again."

Severus smiles at me, his joy actually reaching his eyes, and it makes me smile back at him. This isn't a bad idea, is it? "Then let's get started," he says.

"I kind of want to finish my sandwich first though, if that's okay." He kind of smiles but allows me to finish my meal, his eyes not leaving me while I try to finish eating, but I ignore it to the best of my ability.

Only after I've finished the food and my glass of water do we head down toward the basement thing we were in earlier. "So will this be a mild pain or like 'someone please kill to make it stop' kind of pain?" His somber expression answers my question for me, and I close my eyes to brace myself for whatever horrible thing is about to happen to me anyway. "Very well." I meet his gaze. "And if Charlotte Rodgers is truly your friend, will you be able to hear her shrieks of pain and know that you're the cause of her pain?"

"I don't believe Charlotte Rodgers is here right now."

I sigh. "All right, fine." Severus motions for me to take a seat, and I do, only shaking slightly at the idea of experiencing whatever agony he believes I'll go through. "If I beg for mercy or for it to stop, ignore me. I…I don't want to live a lie." But part of me does. Giving up all of my memories of Mum and me? Giving up a happy, loving childhood for one filled with loneliness and nothing? I saw a flash of Mum Cruciating me. Do I really want to live a life where my own mother is willing to use the Cruciatus Curse against me? Do I want to give up all of my good memories for some horrible truth? Is it necessary?

Severus nods. "I won't stop no matter what you say. Brace yourself, Miss Lestrange." He lifts his wand and aims it at me, a hesitant look on his face. He exhales, then casts the spell at me just a few seconds later.

Everything goes black as my body bursts into flames. My throat rips in two from my screaming. My fingernails tear themselves away from my hands, my toenails following soon after. I slip my fingers into my mouth to suck away the pain, but it doesn't work, and I'm left gnawing down to the bones, the gross taste of iron overwhelming me.

Two soft hands grab me and yank my bloodied hands from my mouth. "Charlotte, Charlotte, you need to stop!"

"I can't see, I can't see!"

"Charlotte—"

"I don't know who Charlotte is!" I cry, ducking my head into my arms, wincing from the movement in my fingers. "I just want to go home!"

I hear a frustrated groan before another round of pain assaults me. Then something happens that makes me forget about the pain in my head.

A honey-eyed girl smiles joyfully at me before taking me into her arms and kissing me deeply. Zoe, my own voice says in my mind. Zoe is dead. But for a short while, I watch us happily cooking dinner together, falling asleep in each other's arms, making out. I see her show me the scar on her chest from the car wreck that should have killed her as it did her parents. I see myself letting her remove my clothes on her bed. He killed her. I see us moving the sofa and coffee table out of the way so we can dance in the living area of her small flat, all smiles and laughter.

I see myself going through her paintings and sketches and other drawings. You love her. And she loved you. I see myself weeping uncontrollably in her flat, a man I recognize to be Jesse entering and trying to apologize. I see myself lunge at him, across the coffee table to stab him to death, not caring about the blood soaking me and getting into my mouth. None of that matters because he's dead and the Dark Lord can never hurt her again. I see myself Apparating to the house I'm currently in and falling onto the floor, covered in blood, before Severus picks me up and carries me to the shower and sets me down full-clothed under the water. The blood rinses off of me. How could you forget that?

The spell ceases, but the pain remains, my chest caving in on itself and aching more than anything I have ever before felt. She's dead. Zoe's dead because of me. Voldemort killed her because I'm weak and couldn't stay away from her. I double over on myself, crying, the sobs wracking through me.

Severus crouches in front of me. "It is not just a physical pain you will feel," he says gently, placing a kind hand on my knee, "but an emotional one as each of your memories is returned to you. Take a few minutes before we start again."

I nod, refusing to meet his eyes. He didn't warn me about this. I was expecting a physical pain, but this—this is so much worse than anything I could have ever imagined. How much more am I going to have to remember and process to become myself again? How much more am I going to suffer?

When Severus feels I am ready, he says, "Brace yourself again, Miss Lestrange."

And I do, though I know it helps nothing at all.

Mrs. Stoico. She holds me tenderly in her arms and tells me how much she loves me, how she will never leave me, how she wishes only the best for me. She tells me the others at the orphanage will not always be around to harm me, that I will eventually find a home with parents who love me dearly and will protect me.

Oh, how wrong she was.

I watch as Avery Cruciates and murders her. I watch myself slaughter him, as I did Jesse, before running away from the orphanage.

The spell does not cease, and I see another woman—McGonagall. She shows me genuine kindness and tries to help me. Then she is attacked by Umbridge's goons, her body falling to the ground, lifeless. I watch myself Cruciate Umbridge and torture Umbridge as best I can before breaking down because I am just like my mother—evil. I am evil.

I see myself and Draco being happy at Malfoy Manor before discovering who I am. I see my mother offer to Cruciate me to insanity before I shove her off of me and run away. In fear. I feared my mother. Perhaps I still fear her.

Flashes of me fighting with my mother soar through my mind. Our duel in front of Voldemort. Her Cruciating me on Voldemort's orders, her choosing Voldemort over me. Her apologizing to me while I tell her I don't care.

I see myself lying in St. Mungo's after the cursed knife. I see Zoe lying next to me on the small bed, and for a moment my pain lessens.

I see the Weasleys, all of them being so accepting of me even after finding out that I'm Aurelia Lestrange—the daughter of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange.

I see myself running to my mother after Fred leaves me. We're happy for a short time, then I'm gone. I watch my relationship with my mother grow and then be destroyed because of Voldemort. I watch our good times at Lestrange Cottage fade away because she chose Voldemort over me.

Mum—Bellatrix—chose the Dark Lord over me, her daughter.

Severus's spell releases me once more, and though I am still in pain, I find myself more livid than hurting. My own mother does not love me as she loves her precious Dark Lord. I'm nothing, not even to my mother.

I vomit on the floor, and Severus sighs before vanishing the mess and coming toward me again. "Once more, Ch—Miss Lestrange. You can do it once more, then we will be done for a while. Your mind is breaking."

I nod.

Then he casts the spell.

My childhood flies across my vision. Growing up at the orphanage. Facing the bullies who tormented me because Mrs. Stoico loved me so much more than she cared about them. Running away from the orphanage after she was killed. Living in Muggle homes. Killing that Muggle family. Stealing to survive. Finding myself in caves when it seemed that every Muggle home I tried was occupied—I never wanted to risk hurting another Muggle family. Visiting the graves of the Muggle family every year and placing stolen flowers on their graves while crying and begging for forgiveness that I will never receive.

Running from Lucius Malfoy and attempting to throw myself off that building because death is so much better than being a slave to Voldemort.

The first time Voldemort ever used magic in an attempt to impregnate me—the pain of what felt to be a searing fire-poker being rammed inside of me while I could do nothing to stop it or garner any sympathy from him. Crying on Bellatrix's shoulder who still believes having Voldemort's child is an honor before hobbling to Hogwarts and crying to McGonagall who later escorts me to Zoe.

When the spell is released again, I find it hard to breathe. No matter how badly I want to be, I am not Aurelia Celaeno Lestrange.

I'm Charlotte Rodgers. But I don't think I want to be anymore.