Her heart hammers in her chest; every snap of a twig, the rustle of leaves as the wind whips through the valley, or hoot of an owl high above causes her throat to constrict. The silk dress she wears is slick with sweat and dew, it catches on stray branches as she fumbles blindly down the path. As summer draws to an end, the night is cool, chilling her skin and numbing her bare feet on the dirt path. Hogwarts castle sits in the distance, the outline of it intimidating in the darkness. Ordinarily, she would be lit up completely, giving one the impression her lights could be seen from outer space. Tonight, however, very few windows glow with candlelight. The walkways are not lit, the outer sconces do not beam, and he grand entrance is not propped open to spill light across the front lawns.
Danu can still feel His eyes on her. He tried to enter her mind, just as Severus had warned her. The fear was all consuming, it coursed through her veins and poisoned her brain. She couldn't escape the terror that clung to her entire being. Severus told her that she was a coward afterwards. All she wanted was to be safe, to be with him, to be anywhere far away from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. If that made her a coward, then so be it.
After stumbling blindly down the path towards Hogwarts for what felt like hours, she finally reaches the front doors of the castle. Her heart still hammers in her chest, but she was finally able to breathe. A shiver runs down her spine as she steps through the entrance, the silence and enormity of the Entrance Hall slightly unnerving. She can feel dozens of eyes on her in every direction but is unable to pinpoint them in the darkness. Spirits prowl the castle; the portraits are truly alive. They both frightened her at first, she would lie in bed awake, the covers pulled over her head, terrified that they were watching her as she slept. It didn't take long to become used to their presence, but sometimes, in the complete darkness, the idea that the portraits on the walls could actually see her was slightly more than she could bear. She wanted Severus to hold her hand and tell her that he was there, but also wanted to be as far away from him as possible at the moment.
"Forgive an old man for being too forward," A voice breaks the silence, she gasps at the intrusion and spins around, her heart in her chest. A white glow emerges from the shadows, the bright light blinding her slightly, making it impossible to see who, or what, was behind it. "But you are truly breathtaking tonight, Missus Snape."
"I did not mean to frighten you." Says the intruder.
The figure adjusts the light lower, she squints her eyes and can just make out a white beard in the blinding glow. It was Dumbledore. She brings her hand to her chest and lets out a breath she did not know that she was holding. She knew that she must be a sight to see in the darkness. She could feel curls coming loose from the pins she had used earlier in the night to secure them. The mascara she had applied was undoubtedly smeared down her face from crying, she was barefoot, and could feel more than one twig stabbing into her skin as they clung to the silk fabric of her dress.
"You look as though you could use a drink." Dumbledore admits as he comes closer to her. "Come. Let's go and see what we can find." He offers her his arm and leads her to the kitchen.
Danu sits across from Dumbledore in the dimly lit kitchen. He produced a bottle of Firewhisky and a glass for each of them. She watches as he fills each of the far more than he should have. The Firewhisky burns her mouth as she sips it but warms down her spine and makes her head feel fuzzy. It was halfway through their first glass when she notices his hand is blackened and shriveled. She gasps involuntarily, he seems to know exactly what had caused this reaction, because he stretches his fingers in front of her and smiles kindly at her from across the table.
"Does it hurt?" She asks, her voice smaller than she had intended.
"A bit. But do not worry, all will be fine." Dumbledore assures her, his icy blue eyes kinder than she had ever seen them.
"Is there a potion? Can Sev—"
"Severus is handling it; I am in great hands."
"Good." She smiles back at him, feeling a small sense of pride that Dumbledore trusted Severus enough to have him handle his care when he could have gone to St. Mungo's. "Do—do you know where he is at?"
"No, I have not seen him" Dumbledore sighs slightly, a strange look crosses his face. "Would you like to tell me what happened?"
Danu drains her glass and explains everything to him. She tells him about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the fake Veritaserum, and Severus calling her a coward. Dumbledore listens intently, nodding his head periodically, and offering her a kind smile when she began to tear up.
"Severus can be a very stubborn man." Dumbledore finally admits with a small chuckle.
"You know though, right? You know about his Mark, about He—"
"About Voldemort?" Dumbledore says the name as if he were an old friend, a shiver runs down her spine. "Yes, I know. I trust Severus more than I trust any other living person."
"I know that he does not like me." Danu admits, tears threatening to spill once more from her eyes. She blinks them away as Dumbledore refills her glass. She throws it back and makes a hissing sound between her grit teeth. She has grown accustomed to the numbness it leaves on her tongue, and the sting as the liquid slides down her throat.
"Severus cares for you very deeply." Dumbledore says matter-of-factly, causing her to laugh out loud.
"There is a difference between caring for someone and liking them. Severus takes care of me, and for that I am thankful, but that is the extent of our marriage. When this is all over, Severus will move on, and I will be left with nothing, nowhere to go, and no friends to turn to. He's practically counting down the days until he can be rid of me."
Dumbledore excuses himself to go to the restroom, leaving her alone in the silent kitchen with nothing but her thoughts. Her heart aches at the thought of a life without him. The mere thought of not waking each morning to see the sun glisten off of his black hair as he slept peacefully beside her, smoothing his hair from his face to reveal the grey hairs popping up above his ears and temple, then kissing his forehead to wake him makes her lower lip tremble with emotion. She takes a deep breath to calm herself, desperate not to cry again over something she hopefully would not have to deal with for a while longer. She loved Severus but knew in her heart that he would never love her back. Danu helps herself to another tall glass of Firewhisky and lays her head on her arms on the table.
"I will not pretend to know the intimacies of your marriage," Dumbledore begins as he reenters the room, she lifts her head and watches as he takes his seat opposite her once more. He was gone for quite a while, but she couldn't be sure how long. "But, I now Severus better than anyone else does. He would not send you away penniless."
"I do not want his gold." She states plainly. two of them sit in silence for what feels like an eternity, draining and refilling their glasses periodically.
"What is it that you want from him?" Dumbledore asks finally, peering over his half-moon spectacles at her.
"I….I would like for him to wa—want for me to be his wi—wife. Would it be a—asking too much for him to l0—love me some day?" She hiccups, her voice is thick and husky, her words slur from the alcohol. Being drunk is foreign to her, and she cannot be sure that she likes it.
"Severus guards his emotions, as I am sure you know. Be patient with him. For now, though, I believe it is time we get you to bed. I wouldn't want Severus thinking I've stolen his lovely bride."
Dumbledore offers his arm and leads her from the kitchen to the dungeon. It is not a long walk, but her feet feel as if they are made of lead. The hurt she had felt earlier turns to blind rage as they make their way down the darkened corridors, and she begins to shake. In this moment, she could rip an Acromantula limb from limb with her bare hands. Dumbledore leaves her outside of Severus' room and pats her arm with a warm smile. The anger that fills her only amplifies when she enters the room and Severus is sitting there smoking. He hadn't even looked for her. He left her alone in the dark and couldn't even be bothered to make sure she had actually made it to the castle.
She's lying on a cold marble floor, her body crumbled and broken. She's screaming, the sound so foreign to her ears. The pain that ripples through her body unlike anything she has ever experienced. She hears voices, she cannot place them. The next thing she knows, she's dangling midair, staring into the eyes of Severus Snape. She tries to reach for him, to beg him to help her, but her body is frozen, and her tongue is glued to her mouth. She wants to scream again, no, she needs to scream again, but she can't.
Except, she is screaming again. She's screaming, thrashing, begging for help. Severus is clutching her shoulders, shouting something at her. It was a dream, the pain, the hunger, even the cold. It was all just a dream. It felt too real, it felt all consuming. She never remembered her nightmares, but she didn't think she had ever woken like this before. Severus had her pulled to his chest, his heart hammering against her ear just as fast as her own was. She wanted to be mad at him the previous night, but she couldn't be. Right now, she needed him to hold her and tell her that he was there and that she was okay. He pries her from his chest and cups her face in his large, warm hands, and looks into her eyes. He wipes the tears from her face with his thumbs, she hadn't even realized that she was crying.
"It was a dream." He whispers to her as she tries desperately to regulate her breathing. "It was only a dream."
Summer turns to fall before her eyes, not that she would have had a chance to even notice. Danu sleeps her days away, desperate for more dreams. She has realized that they are clues to what she had yet to figure out. She recorded each dream the next morning in a notebook that she kept between the mattress on her side of the bed. The dreams are best when she pairs Firewhisky with a Sleeping Drought and a double dose of Hangover Drought. Even more exciting, was the fact that she was able to perform non-verbal magic! Nothing serious, and not nearly as advanced as it should be, but for the very first time, she was able to turn that pesky bottle into a dragonfly.
While the rest of the castle is in the Dining Hall having dinner, Danu slips into Severus' potion room down the hall from their bedroom, there she stays until the following morning. Severus occasionally stops by to ask her to brew Blood-Replenishing Potion and Calming Droughts during his midnight patrol, but for the most part, he had left her alone since they had returned to Hogwarts. It wasn't until she slipped into the kitchens for a bottle of Firewhisky late one night and noticed the fall décor lining the entrance hall that she had even noticed time had slipped past her.
Danu slips into the darkened kitchen, her hand trailing along the wooden tables lining the room in the exact way they are in the dining hall above. Severus told her once that it is an exact copy so that the house-elves only need to place the food on the tables in the kitchen, and they appear on the tables in the dining hall above. She had yet to see the house-elves during her nightly prowls, but she did hear them scurrying around in their make-shift homes that lined the back walls of the kitchen. She stands on her toes to reach a bottle of Firewhisky on the top shelf of a dusty cupboard when she hears a noise behind her. She whirls around, nearly dropping the bottle in the process, and realizes that she was not alone in the kitchen. In the corner of the room, sitting at a small round table, was Dumbledore in his periwinkle blue sleeping gown and matching cap, helping himself to a rather large scoop of cranachan.
"I have had my mind set on this since dinner." Dumbledore's voice cuts the silence in the room, and for a moment, she freezes like a deer caught in headlights. He smiles warmly at her and beckons her closer before reaching for another saucer and scooping a second portion of the cranachan onto it. "Join me, won't you?"
Danu places the bottle of Firewhisky on the wooden counter and joins Dumbledore. She closes her eyes as she spoons a bite of the dessert into her mouth; the nutty aroma of the toasted oats paired with the tartness of the raspberries that topped the cream almost too much for her taste buds to handle.
"I would prefer a lemon tart, but I can never say no to cranachan." Dumbledore smiles at her over his bowl, his lips stained pink from the berries, a dribble of cream in his beard. She couldn't help but smile back at him.
"I've never been a fan of sweets, but I do love a nice cranachan myself." Danu answers, smiling back at him between bites.
"You know," Dumbledore begins, clearing the plates from the table with the flick of his wrist, "Severus had been quite worried about you."
"Why?" Danu's drops her eyes to her lap and begins to pick at the skin around her thumb nail.
"He knows that you have been….unable to adjust since meeting Voldemort. He knows that you have been drinking." Danu peaks up shyly, Dumbledore looks at her over the rim of his glasses, his blue eyes therapeutic.
"It—it isn't like that. I….I've been having dreams after I drink." Danu admits, her voice cracking slightly at the admission.
"Yes. He told me about the nightmare you had the morning after."
"No, not that. I mean, yes, but..also no." Danu sighs deeply, her face reddening slightly at the thought of Severus telling Dumbledore that she had a nightmare as if she were a child. "I think they're telling me something."
"There have been more?" Dumbledore asks as he stands and makes his way to the stove. He pulls a kettle down and begins to heat water as he readies to teacups.
"Yes. Every day since then."
"And you believe they are telling you something?" Dumbledore turns towards her slightly and raises once brow at her, reminding her suddenly of the way Severus raises a brow at her when he wants to call her a Dunderhead. "What are they telling you?"
"I—I think they may be memories. I keep a journal of them. I write them down every morning, so I don't forget them. I've never remembered my dreams before, not ever. That night, when we drank here in the kitchen, Severus gave me a hangover drought before bed. The next morning was the only time I have ever remembered a dream."
"What makes you believe that they are memories?" Dumbledore places a steaming cup of tea before her and takes his seat, propping his elbows on the table to focus his attention on her.
"I—I don't know. I just feel like they're important."
"What was the dream? The first one."
"I was on a floor. I was so cold and hungry. Everything hurt; it felt like a thousand hot knives stabbing me all at once and I was screaming so loud. Then I was….hanging, or maybe floating, I don't know which, but then I opened my eyes, and there was Severus. I tried to get him to help me, but I couldn't. Then I woke up."
"What else have you dreamt?" Dumbledore takes a sip of his tea and urges her to continue.
Danu closes her eyes, and after taking a deep breath, recounts the next several dream to Dumbledore. She was in the bedroom her and Severus shared at Spinner's End, he was trying to pour a potion down her throat, but she was fighting him. She knew that it was him, kept telling herself that it was, but her mind could not process that it was him, that she was safe. An unnatural fear coursed through her body, pain consumed her, she knew that she was safe but could not rationalize it, could not comprehend how or why she was there.
Next, she was inside of The Three Broomsticks, and there was a man inside who frightened her, but she didn't know why.
Finally, she told him about being in a dark room, she was cold and terrified. There was a man there, he asks her if she knows what he is going to do to her in a nasally voice. A bright red light shoots from the end of his wand and then there was nothing.
Dumbledore listens intently, the kindness in his eyes not once faltering. He stands suddenly and holds out his good hand for her. "Follow me." He commands, and she does.
Dumbledore leads her to his office, standing proudly next to his desk is a golden mirror with clawed feet and words written in a language she did not recognize. She looks to Dumbledore, who had made his way around his desk and taken his seat behind it. He nods towards the mirror, and she steps forward. At first, all she sees is herself. Pale, scrawny, with unkempt wavy hair cascading down her shoulders. Suddenly, Severus is next to her, and the pajamas she had been wearing only seconds before were transformed into a uniform of some sorts. She had dirt beneath her fingernails, and a bit smudged on her cheek. She gasps and turns her head to the side to ask how he had appeared so suddenly, but he isn't there. She takes a step closer, her fingertips grazing his arm in the mirror. He seemed younger, happier, there was a smile on his face. They were standing in the sunlight, he wraps his arms around her waist, whispers something in her ear, and kisses the top of her head before turning to greet someone else. A woman appears, identical to her, holding the hand of a child with black hair and piercing blue eyes. The woman smiles down at her, then turns and laughs at something Severus had said as he scoops the child up off of the ground. A pang hits her as she realizes that Sirius was not in the mirror. Perhaps it was the future, and she really would find her mother, and Sirius isn't there because he was already dead.
"What do you see?" Danu pries her eyes from the mirror to see Dumbledore sitting behind his desk, looking at her intently.
"I see Severus, and a woman. I think she may be my mother. What is this?" Danu asks, intentionally leaving out the child, and gesturing towards the mirror that had now changed to be just an ordinary mirror.
"The Mirror of Erised." Dumbledore stands and makes his way around the table to stand behind her in the mirror. "It shows one what they desire most in this world. Men have wasted away in front of it, not knowing if what they see is real, or even possible."
"So, it doesn't show the future?" She asks, her heart breaking a bit at the realization that this would not, or maybe could not, be a reality for her.
"No. It cannot predict the future. I bring it out from time to time, just for a look. It's much too dangerous to just leave about for anyone to find. It will go back to its home tomorrow. But for tonight, well, an old man likes to dream occasionally." Dumbledore sighs and pries his eyes from the mirror. The longing on his face told her not to ask what he saw in the mirror. "I wanted you to have a look, for you to see what your heart truly desired. Trust Severus, do not block him out. And please, try not to go opening any more doors."
Danu tries to take Dumbledore's advice, truly, she did. The thought that these dreams could actually be memories that her mind had blocked was just too enticing. It was like a bad sitcom, she had to keep watching to see what happened next. She saw less and less of Severus. He was sound asleep when she would enter the room in the middle of the night, and long gone when she woke sometime in the middle of the day. He stopped coming into the potions room during his midnight patrol and was usually gone on the weekends. She stopped going to the kitchens at all, instead, an elf would bring her a tray of food and a bottle of Firewhisky up to the room at some point during the day.
She stands in the her and Severus' shared room, a bottle clutched in her fist, staring at the sucker ring of the giant squid. A chill runs through her as she stares into the razor sharp teeth inside of the sucker ring. She hadn't intended to throw the curtains back, well, she had, but she had forgotten that it wasn't actually a window. She had wanted some air, maybe it was the alcohol that had made her forget, or just the fact that she had locked herself in this room for months on end. Perhaps she was going crazy. The giant squid removes itself from the window, and floats away. Severus was right, it was much too murky to actually see anything. She laughs out loud at herself for being so silly, leaves the curtain open, and falls back on to the bed fully clothed, bottle still clutched in her hand.
She's seven years old, it's a bright and sunny summers day. She's playing in the park in Cokeworth with the rest of the children at Bernadette's. The child opposite her kicks the bright red ball they had been playing with too hard, and it skips down the sidewalk. Danu runs after it as fast as her little legs could carry her, up ahead, a man dressed in all black is walking towards her on the sidewalk. The ball bounces off of his shoe as he takes a step, and he snatches it out of the air just as Danu skids to a stop in front of him. She looks up at him; dark hair hangs in curtains around his face, his black eyes seem sad. The man raises a brow at her, then a crease forms in his forehead. The saddened look in his eyes deeps as she reaches out for her ball, he passes it to her reluctantly and pushes past her before she can even thank him.
Danu wakes with a jolt and sits up in the bed, she looks around the room to find the curtains have been closed. Severus sits at the desk on his side of the bed, the soft glow of lit candles lighting his face, he lifts his head from the parchment he was writing on and raises a brow at her.
"It was you." She mutters, feeling breathless.
"What was me?" Severus asks, his voice deep and smooth. It felt like ages since she had heard it.
"The ball! In Cokeworth. The ball got away, and you caught it and gave it back to me!"
"I have no idea what you are talking about." Severus replies, staring into her eyes. A pain shoots through her head, she closes her eyes and can see cracks of light behind her eyes and feel an unknown fear in the pit of her stomach. The pain leaves as quickly as it came, and she takes a deep breath.
"Why aren't you in class?" Danu asks, looking around the room for any indication of the time. She can feel the rage radiating off of Severus from across the room and turns her attention back to him. Severus was gripping the quill in his hand so tightly it snaps, sending little droplets of black ink spraying across his hand and face.
"When was the last time you even left the dungeon?" He asks through grit teeth.
"I..I—"
"It is December. First day of Christmas holiday." Severus spits at her as he wipes the ink splatter from his face with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket.
"No. It can't be. It was ju—"
"YOU WOULD KNOW THE DATE IF YOU WEREN'T DRUNK ALL THE TIME!" Severus bellows at her, causing her to shrink into the bed as he stands and stalks towards her. He grabs the half empty bottle of Firewhisky that had fallen to the floor on her side of the bed and shakes it in her face. "If I so much as smell this on you one more time I will lock this door and you. Will. Not. Leave."
Severus slams the bathroom door against the wall, and she watches as he pours the remainder of the bottle down the sink drain. "You are better than this!" He shouts from the bathroom before returning to the room to stare down at her. "I. Will. Not. Be married to a drunkard!"
"You don't want to be married to me at all." She mutters beneath her breath. Severus grabs her by the arm and jerks her from the bed before marching her into the bathroom and shoving her in front of the mirror.
"Look at yourself!" He shouts and pushes her closer to the mirror.
Her face was sunken and pale, her eyes bloodshot. Her hair hadn't been brushed in god only knew how long and hung matted and tangled over her shoulder, the hair tie she couldn't even remember using lost in the mounds of knots. Her skin was broken out and was a sickly color, the skin on her lips cracked and bloody. She could hardly recognize herself.
"How can you expect to be anything in this state!" He shouts at her as she pushes her body away from the mirror and stalks out of the room.
"I'M NOTHING NOW!" She shouts, turning towards him with shaking fists. The anger bubbling beneath the surface came from nowhere, but she knew that she needed to release it. "I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND I'M NOTHING! IT ISN'T FAIR!"
"It may have escaped your notice, but life is not fair!"
"You don't think that I don't know that?" She laughs as she tries to run her fingers through the knots in her hair. "I have nothing! Oh, I'm sorry. I have a husband that I didn't ask for who does not want me, and a room I can barely leave!"
"What do you want? Tell me and I will get it for you, you know that!" Severus pleads, his voice cracking slightly.
"I don't want your things! I want the life that I had planned! I want to work at St. Mungo, I want to see Luna, I want a life, I want Bram! I want you, damn it!" Danu slams her clenched fists against her thighs to fight the urge to scream and begins pacing the room. "I worked so hard, and for what? For nothing! I never gave up, even when you made my life hell! You did everything you could to make me fail and I didn't, and what do I have to show for it?"
"I pushed you, and you excelled." Severus states dryly as he takes a seat on the edge of the bed to watch her pace.
"You did not push me, you tortured me! I was terrified of you!" Danu shouts, she stops her pacing to stare down at him, her hands shaking from rage.
"It was not my job to make you like me."
"I have done everything I can to make you like me, to be a good wife and it's never enough! I don't know what you want from me!"
"I do not dislike you."
"Then why can't you just show it?" Danu demands, her face reddening from shouting. "You know what I thought of to produce that Patronus? You! I thought about brewing potions with you because it was the only happy memory I had! Do you want to know what I saw in that mirror in Dumbledore's office? I saw you, and you were happy to be there with me!"
"I fear that you do not understand the importance of the situation that we are both in." Severus stands and begins to circle her like a hawk. "You need to play the part. This is not a game! So, life didn't turn out the way you wanted it to? Join the club!"
Severus stops circling her and grabs her firmly by the shoulders, forcing all of her attention on him. She opens her mouth to speak, but he stops her before any words can leave her mouth. "I have some rules. First, there will be no more drinking. I will not tolerate this behavior. I have been far too lenient with it, and it will stop now! There are things that I need to teach you that I have been unable to teach because you're too drunk to function. Do I make myself clear?" Danu nods her had sharply. "Good. Second, you are creating cracks in your mind that would easily be permeable to anyone powerful enough to pull them down completely. The Dark Lord will do it in a second and I assure you, you will not like the outcome. No more trying to open doors. Finally, I do care for you, so stop telling yourself that I don't!" Severus releases her suddenly and she stumbles backwards slightly, catching herself on the back of the chaise lounge.
"Also," Severus begins again, towering over her. "I would like to see the journal." Danu raises a brow at him, Severus hold his hand out, waiting for her to give it to him. "Albus told me about the journal, I would like to see it."
"That's private!" Danu objects, suddenly self-conscious of anything he may read in there that would make him think differently of her.
"Not to The Dark Lord it isn't. Not to me, not to Albus. Not to anyone who will break down your walls and catch a glimpse of whatever is in there that you are tearing down!"
"What do you mean by tearing down?" Danu asks, stalling the inevitable. Severus will get her journal one way or another.
"Albus believes that you have built walls in your brain to protect yourself from….unsavory memories. He believes that this is why you are unable to use non-verbal magic, Apparate, and why your mind is impenetrable. You are tearing down these walls with your insistent dedication to disregard everything Albus warned you of." Severus stalks towards her and stared down his nose at her, no doubt an attempt to intimidate her into getting what he wanted. She stands tall in defiance. "I already know that it is under the mattress; anyone with a brain would know that. I am not an idiot. I was giving you the option of dignity, but we can do it the hard way, if you wish."
Reluctantly, Danu moves to her side of the bed to retrieve the dream journal from under the mattress. With shaking hands, she passes it to Severus. He takes her hand and leads her to the small dining table in front of the window and pours them each a cup of coffee from the carafe in the center and prepares hers just the way she liked it; a touch of vanilla, two sugars, and double cream. His is black, as usual. Danu keeps her eyes glued to her mug of coffee, her face reddening slightly at the sound of him turning the pages in the nearly full notebook. Hesitantly, she looks over at the journal to see which dream he was reading about.
She was fifteen and at Bernadette's for the summer. A boy had taken a liking to her and followed her around like a lost dog. In her dream, he was nameless, whatever his name was had been lost to her. He was handsome, with tanned skin, shaggy brown hair, and eyes so green you got lost in them. He wore a brown leather jacket, even in the dead of summer. The boy was older than her, that much was clear. Danu's face blushed each time he spoke to her, when his fingertips grazed her hand in pacing, butterflies flocked in her stomach. There were snippets of them kissing in darkened halls, but never anything more than that. She cried on the train back to Hogwarts at the end of summer. Upon her return to Bernadette's for Christmas holiday, she learned that he had been killed in an automobile accident only weeks after she had left.
When Danu was thirteen, she got her first Buddy. A Buddy was a younger child that the older children helped watch, care for, and lead in a sense. Since she was only there during the summers at this point, her buddy was a seven month old little girl that had only recently been placed at Bernadette's. She knew the chances of the girl being adopted were high; she was young and absolutely adorable. She had curly blonde hair, big blue eyes, and dimples on her cheeks when she smiled, which was all of the time. She carried the baby around everywhere, she taught her to sit up, taught her to crawl, and her first legible word was "Anu" which Danu was convinced was her own name. She sobbed while holding her for the final time while waiting for her new parents to finalize the paperwork to adopt her at the end of the summer.
Finally, Severus read the one that frightened her the most. She was nine, maybe ten. She was in a home, one that she could not recall ever being in. There was a mother, a father, and three girls besides herself. She didn't know which were their own children, and which were products of Bernadette's. The mother wasn't there; the dream had begun with her grabbing her purse, kissing the father goodbye, and walking out of the door. He gave all of the girls ice cream for dinner, told them that it had to be their secret. Then he built them a fort in the living room and let them stay up late playing with their dolls. She woke in the middle of the night with his hand up her nightgown as he toyed with himself next to her. He held his finger to his lips and smiled at her when he realized that she was awake. She cried afterwards, and the girl lying next to her, who couldn't have been any older than eight, told her that it was a game he played with them all, and to just let him do it so that they could keep having ice cream for dinner. The next day at breakfast, the father pulled her on to his lap and stroked her hair while the mother made breakfast. She wanted to vomit, to cling to the mother's skirt and tell her what had happened, but he pulled her closer against his chest and told the mother how she was such a good girl and listened well the night before.
Danu forces her eyes back on her mug and swallows a knot in her throat, desperate not to spill any tears. Severus doesn't say a word, only sits in silence for what felt like a lifetime. Everything her brain had deemed too sensitive for her young mind to process had been blocked out, and now was written in ink before them. It did not feel like her life, did not feel like anything that she had ever lived through. She had no attachments to any of these memories, only a dull ache in the pit of her stomach, because this was her life, these despicable things actually happened to her. She wanted to cry for that little girl, to scoop her up in her arms and protect her from everything she had experienced.
Except, she did protect that little girl. She subconsciously put those walls up in her brain to do just that, and in only a few short months, she had torn all of that hard work down. She could not truly remember any of the events in the journal, only the pain and terror she felt upon waking when she relived them in her dreams. Severus grabs the hand she had clenched in her lap, causing her to jump slightly. She looks up at him as he removes his hand from hers and reaches into the sleeve of his robe to produce his wand. Without uttering a word, the journal bursts into flames before her eyes. She jumps from her chair and makes to grab for the journal, to save it from the fire he had inflicted upon it, but he grabs her from behind and pins her arms to her side and holds her there until the journal is nothing more than a pile of ash in the center of the table.
"Why did you do that!" Danu sobs, tears streaming down her face as he releases her. She rushes towards the table to see if any part of the journal could be saved, but she already knew that it couldn't.
"Look at me." Severus demands, but she can't take her eyes off of the pile of ashes. He grabs her by her shoulders, uses his foot to turn her chair away from the table, and pushes her down in the chair she had been sitting at moments before. With his hands still on her shoulders, he uses his foot to scrape his own across the floor to sit directly in front of hers, their knees brushing one another.
"That," Severus says, pointing towards the pile of ash on the table. "Does not define you. When this is over, if you want to know more, I will help you. Safely. There will be no more blackout drunks, we will do it correctly. Until then, just stop. You are far too intelligent to continue on the road you were heading down. I should have stopped you far before now, but I had misguided faith that you would see the error of your ways."
"I just needed to know who I was." Danu whispers, tears streaming down her face. "I needed to feel something. I thought if I kept going, I could see her. My mom. I just wanted to see her in my dreams. I needed to know why she left me."
"I told you; we will find her after."
"What if we can't? What if….what if she's dead, too?" Danu chokes on a sob as Severus pulls her against his chest.
"Why didn't Sirius want me? I waited my whole life for a family, and I finally find him, and he doesn't want me!" Danu demands as Severus holds her tighter against his chest. She clutches the sleeves of his robe tightly, her fingernails digging into her palms from the backside of the fabric.
"He told you it was too dangerous. He did what he thought he should do." Severus grits through his teeth, undoubtedly hating having to say anything remotely nice about Sirius Black.
"Did you know her?" Danu demands as she pushes herself off of him to look in his eyes. "My mother. Did you know her? You said you knew Sirius, and James Potter, and all of their friends from Hogwarts. You grew up in Cokeworth, too. Did you know her?"
"No." Severus swallows hard and balls a fist in his lap as she cries before him, desperate to know anything about the woman who created her. "I met her, a few times. I did not know her."
"What was she like?" Danu's eyes light up at the thought that he had even seen her face in real life, had possibly even heard her voice, seen her smile, heard her laugh.
"I did not know her well enough to know what she was like." Severus sighs deeply and softens his eyes, the crease in his forehead smoothing slightly. "You look like her."