NOTE

Warning: This chapter focuses on rape aftermath and the struggle of initial healing. Mentions of death and rape. Loss of fertility, depression, physical pain.

96. Grim Old Place

The sight of Remus standing in the doorway to the kitchen made the blood rush to my head. His face was gaunt with distress, his tall frame dreadfully thin and sunken in a soft brown jumper, white glass pieces at his feet.

My heart pounded like a hammer and I thought my chest would break. I only realised I'd slumped over when the Ministry official's voice gurgled through the fog, and I felt his hands pulling me to the sofa. His fingers felt too hard against my ribs, but once I was sat down he let go of me and brushed his palms against his maroon robes. As though wiping off some dirtiness from touching me. The gesture, his fingers, the colour… all of it was nauseating.

My body started shaking from the delayed shock of going through the floo network, recognising relative safety. I felt the fragility of my insides, as though something was at risk of bursting. Waves of numbness tingled through my muscles. Trying to ease the pain of sitting down.

Remus said something to the Ministry man in a slightly raised voice, and the Ministry man answered back in a cold, assured tone.

I stared, seeing the room as if through moving water, my ears not quite working. I saw the man step into the fire again. Green flames subsiding. Leaving a small glowing fire behind.

Quiet, for a moment.

Remus stepped into the warped frame of my vision. His limp was worse than ever and even as he stood still he seemed in danger of losing his balance and toppling like a toy soldier.

I stared at his jumper, and his hand. His long thin fingers. Trembling.

"Wilma? What… happened? Why are you here?"

My heart struggled along.

"Can you look at me?"

It occurred to me that my wand must have been confiscated by the shorter wizard. No matter. It wouldn't have done me much good to have it. I failed to feel a trace of magic in my veins.

"Can you hear me?"

At that moment I had two selves. One of them wanted to stand up and go to him, to be grateful that he was there and I was not alone, to fully realise the miracle that he was well and standing upright–despite the other terrible circumstances surrounding our entrapment here. The other self was too exhausted, too disgusted, too drained of hope to connect its brain to its legs and even begin to think about standing.

It was the latter which won over. But the little child of gentleness and peace trapped in the cage of my body compelled me to at least move my head; to look up.

Remus's blue-grey eyes were pale with deepest concern, and there were dark circles under them. They changed when I looked up at him, and his eyebrows met. I realised my face was probably battered, like the rest of me.

He took a sharp breath, as though to speak.

Then his features tightened and froze, and his eyes flashed with fear and confusion.

His lips pressed together in a thin line, and his face went even paler, as though a dark stormcloud had passed overhead and leached all the warmth from his body. His eyes stared down at me, welling with heartache.

He could smell me.

And surely I smelt like rape and death.

An assertive meow distracted me from the enormity of Remus's presence, and I looked down to see Pouncer standing at my feet. Yellow fur, big green eyes staring up at me. He let out another low meow, but didn't rub himself against my leg as he normally did to greet me.

A flinch overtook my body, sharp as a stab. I didn't even know why until after it had passed. My reflexes had responded to the sight of Remus moving in my peripheral vision. He'd only taken a little step forward, but it had read to my nervous system as a threat. I stared up at him, eyes brimming with regret. But I was too tense to speak, to apologise.

He stepped back again and lifted his hands slowly. "I won't hurt you," he whispered, his voice breaking.

My heart hurt with thumping, trying to break past the wall that my injured body had put up against his gentle self. I managed to nod my head, with extreme focus and force of will. Just the slightest shaky movement, up and down.

"Can you speak?" he said quietly.

I tried, but couldn't. There was no sound inside of me. My eyes filled with tears of frustration.

"That's okay," he said quietly, as though trying to keep me from bursting into tears with his voice. "I'll be right back." He turned towards the doorway to the kitchen, and then paused. "Stay here," he added, as though fearing he'd imagined me.

Of course I was still there when he returned with a quill and parchment. My heart sank as he moved the delicate side table over to me with slow, unintimidating movements, and set the quill and parchment in front of me.

He looked at me expectantly, but I knew already I wouldn't be able to manage it. My mind was no longer a place of words, and my hand shook in my lap at the mere thought of trying to hold the quill steadily. I stared at the blank parchment and surrendered to the barrier between my inner self and this world in which I had lost all power.

I lifted my eyes to Remus again and shook my head.

"Okay," he repeated, his voice very quiet and gentle. Every word seemed to be pushed forward from a dark place inside him, of fear and doubt. "I think we should get you upstairs. To a bed. Does that sound alright?"

I was unable to respond, just staring at him, not quite believing in his presence.

My mind tried to trace what had happened to bring me here. Yes. The floo network. The Ministry men. Mum. Severus… His calm blue sky and willow tree…

Poppy's wand–

Blood–

I blinked. My body had tensed, unwilling to go any further back, and the rest of my recent past was obscured by a blank haze of nothingness. There was a faint twinge somewhere inside me, like the poke of a pin. But the numbness quickly rushed there, and I was left stranded in the misty wasteland of amnesia.

Remus had slipped away again. I blinked and stared at the fire. The log glowed and crackled. Books sat in quiet order on the shelves at either side. Pale winter light came through the windows and shone in the corner of my eye, making my head throb. My eyelids clenched shut and my ears rang.

Pouncer rubbed his soft side against my shin, and when my eyes opened Remus was back, pushing a cork back into a small glass vial, which held a drop of yellow potion at the bottom. He slipped it into his pocket and I noticed the difference in his movements, smoother and more efficient. His hands were no longer quivering. A strengthening draught, probably.

He looked down at me as though I were one of the creatures he'd once kept in his office. "Alright… May I…"

His hand moved closer, and a sound came out of me, half whine, half sob. My control shattered and fear swallowed me.

His hand stilled in midair, but didn't retreat. I stared at his fingernails, gasping quietly as I struggled to breathe. Tension twisted in my belly and my fingers pressed into the fabric of the soft pyjama trousers on my knees. I was fragile and confused, shutting my eyes as my body remembered flashes of pain.

"Wilma," Remus said, in a voice struggling to remain steady. "You can't stay on the sofa. I need to help you."

Pouncer purred, the vibration running up my leg and giving my mind a moment of clarity before the numbness shrouded me again. Remus was crumbling too, but doing his best to help me. I needed to allow him.

But the sight of his hand still drew forth a quiet sob, my stomach aching from the slightest tightening of muscles.

"Please… I will be gentle…"

Guilt overwhelmed me. I'd been treating him like a stranger. I let my vision go soft again and managed to nod my head a little.

Remus took a very slow step closer and moved the little table aside, the possibility of writing abandoned and forgotten.

"I'm just going to put my hands under your arms."

I stared straight forward at the small stitches of his jumper as he bent over me, letting myself drift into dissociation.

But it was his turn now to stiffen.

I couldn't ignore the sound he made, the way he paused. A tremor ran through his body, as though he were about to be sick. Being so close must have come with a thickening of the nasty scents that clung to me. Tears filled my eyes but my face didn't move. I felt so wobbly and weak. Disgusting.

Remus recovered himself and very carefully slipped his hands under my arms, as though I might break apart or burst into flames if his touch was too firm. But the only effect his hands had was to send pins and needles deep into my muscles. I shivered, and tears fell. He leaned over me and my cheek pressed into the soft fabric of his jumper, my heart pounding as I felt his warmth.

He spoke quiet, encouraging nothings as he lifted me up, his arms wiry but steady thanks to the potion. While holding me close to his chest, he reached towards the backs of my knees, intending to lift me. I grabbed his shoulder in a vise grip and he hesitated.

"Like this?" he said carefully.

I nodded.

"Okay."

But it proved impossible. I couldn't hold myself up whatsoever, my legs too numb and trembling too much to bear weight, Remus unable to hold me properly because of our difference in height.

He tried, my toes dragging across the rug, then the smooth dark floorboards of the narrow front hallway. I stared blankly at the front door, so black and cruel-looking. Remus panted and paused, his arms shaking and his hip making a quiet popping sound. Clearly the potion was not strong enough to entirely cancel out the chronic weakness his captivity had caused.

"Please let me carry you," he finally implored, at the bottom of the stairs. "It will be faster." Beneath his soft tone was a desperate need for my trust.

Awkwardly hunched against his body, my hips shaking and nausea rising in my belly, I managed to nod.

My mind went somewhere else as he picked me up very slowly, my arms folded against his chest and my head heavy, his unshaven chin brushing my hair. Arms trembling from my weight, he began the climb up the stairs. I was completely stiff, eyes open and staring at the wood panelling on the wall. The bannister. The strange dizzying shadows in the dark stairway.

He was shaking by the time we reached the top, and carried me quickly into the first bedroom, setting me down with as much grace as possible on the duvet. I stared up at him from the pillow. He was panting and shaking, pale, as though the climb and my weight had taken nearly everything out of him.

His hands didn't come near me again, though I sensed his urge to touch and console.

"Want the blankets on?" he said, his voice unusually low.

I shook my head and stared at him, almost angrily. I couldn't understand this. Why I was here. Why he was here. Why any of this had happened. My eyes burned with tears.

"Don't cry," he whispered. "It's time for me to take care of you. If it's the last thing I do."

And I shivered from the words, my body giving up a tiny surge of unexpressed energy. We were here because we were dangerous. Because Remus had bitten children, and I had turned men inside out.

He said something to me but I didn't hear it, my ears ringing again. He left the room and was gone for a few minutes. But I wasn't alone. Pouncer had followed us upstairs, and he curled up in the bed near me, not touching me, just staring and tapping his tail.

Remus came back with a pot of tea and an earthenware mug, which he set on the bedside table. I numbly listened to the pouring sound. I kept my lips closed when he brought it close to me, when the steam touched my nose.

Remus looked heartbroken. At last a tear slipped down his thin cheek, following the slight indentation of the new scar that cut across his chin.

"I should never have left you," he whispered hoarsely. "I am… so sorry. So sorry."

My eyelids flickered slightly, the movement soft as butterfly wings. Some meaning was contained in it. But not even I could decipher it, and I let my gaze drift away.

Remus struck a match and lit two candles by the bed. He was wandless too, his wand destroyed by Magnus all those months ago. His wrist shook slightly as he touched the flame to each wick in turn, focusing on the task and then blowing the match out weakly.

I expected him to go, leaving me under Pouncer's supervision. But he stayed, sitting down in a chair by the bed, his eyes caring and gentle.

I wondered how he could stand the smell.

I couldn't comprehend that he was sitting here in the room, and that the only reason he was sitting here was because of me. I couldn't comprehend this, when it seemed I barely existed. As immaterial as Arthur's patronus as it had lost its light and become an outline of dust before disintegrating in the wind.

I blinked.

I had forgotten.

George was dead.

The window in the bedroom was large enough that I could see the tops of the houses on the other side of the square, through the cold thin branches of the trees in the garden. Chimney pots stood like broken teeth on the roofs, spilling white smoke into the sky. Black birds sometimes darted past the panes. Or lit for a few moments on one of the dripping black branches, before leaving for someplace more interesting. Two or three times there was the sound of a muggle car on the cobblestones below. It was absurd that we could be so close to the world, yet so isolated.

I did not move from the position Remus had set me down in. He tried to help me to drink, and to eat a little. But I still couldn't even talk, and my lips remained closed, my chest rotting with suppressed pain.

I might have summoned the will to speak. My heartstrings had tied themselves around Remus long ago, and there was some tiny part of me that was comforted by his presence. But my body was too disconnected from itself to recognise reality. And so I remained silent, regarding him as one regards a mute and ancient ghost.

After some hours the light outside faded. The grandfather clock chimed downstairs. Remus was still sitting in the chair, staring at me with tired, sad eyes. Pouncer was beside me, his warmth and occasional purring filling the bed, but not quite reaching past the cold shield of my insensitive skin. Remus stood and went out of the room. I listened to his footsteps on the stairs, the footsteps of an old man, and then the quiet.

When he returned he had a vial of sleeping draught in his hand.

"There's no Dreamless Sleep," he said. "This is the best I have. I won't take any tonight. I'll be right here."

I stared at him. Uncomprehending of his selflessness. His face was a map that had become unfamiliar to me, and I could only study it for so long before my head grew tense and tired, and resentful of its own confusion.

At first I declined to take the potion. But as time wore on I wished to be asleep. Finally I looked at him and gave him a slight nod, and he tipped the vial little by little between my barely parted lips. I coughed quietly, but swallowed it down.

It should have tasted of elderberries.

But it was tasteless.

The room became too heavy to hold, and I closed my eyes.

I woke in the night to the sound of my own sobbing.

Whatever Poppy had given me for the pain had worn off, and now the agony had returned, the agony that had made a haze of my surroundings as I laid on the kitchen table in the cottage, Severus's arms pinning me as I writhed and screamed.

There was no writhing now. Nor any effort to hold back the devastated sounds that spilled from my aching throat. I laid still and heavy on the bed, face-down, talons raking through my insides. My body felt hot, and the pain in my belly immobilised me. It was so terrible that I felt I should have been bleeding. I couldn't tell if I was.

Pouncer jumped off the bed and went yowling out the door.

Remus entered moments later. I could only see the shape of him through my pouring tears, the night turning the room to insubstantial grey shadows.

He came to my side and said my name, and I was in too much agony to care when his hand stroked the hair out of my face so he could look at me. His eyes were watering, his face tight with distress, his voice barely audible over my continuing sobs of pain. "What can I do? I'm right here… Are you hurting?"

I nodded.

He brought me vials of every sort of pain potion in the house, but none of them was strong enough, only serving to make me delirious. Now I remembered everything. The pain of the rape. Of the restraints. The knives. Their boiling blood and their steaming entrails. Blue light falling on their bones. The slime of Rowle's ribs under my cheek, and the filth inside me.

More agonising than the physical pain was the knowledge that I was nothing more than flesh now. There was no separation of my body and my spirit. I was stuck here, in my aching and my nastiness, my prison of flesh. The beach where Fred had waited was nothing more than an escape. A fabrication in a moment of shock too great to bear. A safe place which was now inaccessible to me.

Remus knelt by the bed, his hands holding mine, our fingers bathed in sweat and the tears that fell from his eyes. His head was bent, and his breath touched my knuckles as he whispered, "Oh gods… I'm sorry…"

I let him stroke my shoulder, crying into the pillow, now wet with tears and snot and drool.

I didn't know how I managed to fall asleep, with my body throbbing and burning as it was. But it must have been after a long time shaking, with the pain flaring up again and again, my body trying to fight it with insubstantial numbness. When I did fall asleep I did not know it, and it was from absolute exhaustion, and it was not peaceful.

Poppy's face was looking down at me when I next came to. My eyes blinked open, the fog of sleep lingering around the edges of my vision.

She was working over me silently, her eyes looking down at me, her lips closed in silence. The pain was over now, and I could feel something cold on the skin of my upper chest. Ice, I realised.

There was a stranger in the room, sitting in the chair, which had been moved against the wall by the closed door. An old wizard with grey hair, sharp cheekbones, and unfeeling brown eyes.

Remus wasn't in sight.

Poppy held my left wrist and placed the cold ice on it, over the veins. Then she did the same with my right. Her hands disappeared into a bag on the bedside table and reemerged with a tiny vial with a cap and an eyedropper. "Look up," she instructed, her voice quiet and brief. I obeyed, and she dropped some of the clear solution into my right eye. It itched a little.

I stared over at the strange silent wizard as Poppy replaced the glass objects into her bag. I knew he was aware of me, but his eyes remained fixed on the window.

Poppy turned to him. "May I discuss something with her?"

Her voice was tight, and I realised that the wizard must have been here to make sure Poppy didn't give me any information of the outside world that I was not supposed to hear. Poppy must have fought to be allowed to visit me at all. I was grateful that she had. I didn't know what would have happened, had the pain of last night been allowed to continue.

"Outside," the man said, in a thin voice.

They both left the room and I stared at the door, hearing their muffled voices. Then the door opened and Poppy returned, the man sitting down in the chair again.

She placed her hand gently on my shoulder and spoke in a low voice, trying to keep her words between the two of us.

"I am sorry Wilma. But your internal injuries have been severe. This may come as a shock. I do not think you will be able to have children anymore."

She paused.

"It is very unlikely you will ever become pregnant again."

She paused again.

"I would have told you this before, but there was no time before… you had to leave."

I blinked up at her, and realised there were tears on my face.

The puzzle pieces were coming together. The curse Rowle had used on me, and where he had used it. The pain inside.

I lacked the presence of mind to form an opinion on this new information about my body. Or even a feeling. All there was was a sense of emptiness.

Poppy's eyes were a watery grey. "Do you understand what I just said?"

I nodded.

She was silent for a long moment, and her thumb made a slow circular motion on my shoulder. It wasn't until she'd ceased to touch me that I realised she'd meant to soothe me.

"Have you walked?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"You are able to. Here." I watched her take out two other vials from her bag. One I recognised as a basic healing potion to restore wellness. The other was unfamiliar to me. "This will strengthen your joints and help with your tremors. As I understand it, someone comes every two days with food. I will try my best to return, but if I am not allowed I will ask them to bring more of these. In the meantime, you need to form a habit of physical therapy so your inner muscles can heal."

I stared at her as she uncorked the vials and pressed them in turn against my lips. Her factual, authoritative tone gave me comfort. There were still tears on my face but no new ones came.

No baby.

Ever again.

Poppy put the empty vials away.

"Have you urinated?"

I shook my head.

"You need to, in order to clear out any infection."

She wrapped her arms around me and helped me to sit up in the bed, then to stand up on my own two legs.

It was a strange feeling. My hips stacked on top of my knees stacked on top of my ankles. It felt as though it had been much longer than two days since I'd last walked confidently on my own two feet. And I knew that without Poppy's potion I would have been shaking too hard to stand.

I stared down at my socks on the rug.

Poppy kept her arm around my waist and led me out of the room and into the loo across the hallway. The man from the Ministry followed us and stood outside the door with boredom in his face.

My eyes had seen too much since I'd last looked into a mirror. It was an accident when I glanced at the reflective surface, but once I had I couldn't look away. Staring back at me were the dark depths of the black lake, the crumbling cathedral of the mermaids, the coldness of the Gringotts vaults, the destruction of the stone, George's fading, blood and slaughter.

My right eye–in which Poppy had dropped the solution–was bright red around the iris. Both pupils were small black pearls of shock.

I shuddered and looked away.

Poppy closed the door around and helped to steady me as my trembling hands pulled down my pyjamas and my knickers, which were lightly spotted with dry-rose blood. I stiffened at the sight. "That's normal," Poppy reassured me. "And it's nothing to worry about."

She helped me to sit down on the cold porcelain seat, and gave me a hydrating potion. Then she stepped outside and closed the door.

I swallowed the potion and sat there, holding the fragile glass in my palm, waiting. Soon I felt a fullness in my bladder, almost uncomfortable. But my muscles wouldn't let go. My skin prickled from the coldness of the bathroom and I sat there shivering, an ache building in my pelvis.

"Alright?" Poppy said, from outside the door.

After a moment of silence she stepped inside again. I looked up at her blankly.

"Your muscles are holding on because of the trauma. Take this relaxant."

I did, and finally there was the sharp sound of my urine against the toilet bowl. Tears sprang to my eyes because it stung and was humiliating. Then it was over, and I touched a bit of soft paper to myself, grimacing from the soreness.

Poppy helped me stand and pull up my trousers again, and I was bleary and confused and sad.

She helped me out of the loo and towards the bedroom, the old man following.

A meow sounded from behind a wall, and one of the doors down the hallway opened a crack. I saw Pouncer standing there, his green eyes looking out. Quite farther up, Remus stood, only part of his face visible in the gap, his eyes gentle with concern. I looked back at him, dreadfully aware of my bloody eye.

The Ministry supervisor stood a bit taller. "Not quite yet, Mr. Lupin."

Remus retreated, and the door creaked closed.

I sat in the bed against the headboard and Poppy wrote up a list of strengthening exercises for me to do. "Do them twice a day. They may be uncomfortable at first, but they are necessary."

She folded the list and set it beside the candle. Then she set another two vials of intense pain relief potion beside it. "One dose will last twenty-four hours. Be sure to take another as soon as you feel something. Walk a little every day even if it's only around the room. Be very careful on the stairs, and definitely don't take them two at a time. You need to eat properly, nutrient potions won't do. And take a shower and change into new clothes for the sake of your mental health."

She pulled a pair of soft corduroy trousers and a warm jumper from her bag, along with some cotton knickers, a bra, and striped socks, and left them on the bed.

"Is there anything you wish to ask me?"

I should have spoken, or somehow shown gratitude. But I was a shell. The more I kept silent the more my throat tightened, made of thick clay that no sound could get past. I just shook my head.

Poppy leaned forward slowly, and put her warm hand on the side of my head.

The Ministry man stood up with a creak of the chair.

Poppy collected her bag and went out the door without a backward glance, the man following behind her. The door closed with a click of the doorknob. I heard their footsteps going down the stairs, and a little minute of silence.

Then floorboards creaked in the other room, and Pouncer's paws were running down the hallway, Remus's slow, uneven steps following after. They both entered, Pouncer jumping up beside me and curling up at my hip, sending his purring warmth through my body. Remus stood in the doorway for a moment before stepping closer, his limp truly awful.

I could read him more clearly than I'd been able to the day before. He looked miserable, but underneath the misery was the slightest ember of hope, still alive… because of me.

He watched me in earnest, perhaps hoping that I would be willing to speak now.

My throat remained still.

He stood there and stared at me so deeply I was forced to look away. I laid back down, resting my head on the pillow and pulling the blanket up to my nose.

This was the deepest, darkest extent of the crushing, silencing depression I hadn't experienced since the summer after the war. And my traitorous body played willing harbour to it.

Remus's voice was soft, with infinite tenderness.

"Can I get you anything?"

I couldn't even manage to shake my head.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?"

I didn't answer.

He brought the chair up to the bedside and sat down in it, his eyes so full of pain, like two frozen lakes.

Pouncer resumed his soft purring and my desire to not be awake was so strong that, eventually, I fell asleep.