NOTE

Warning for physical pain, mentions of rape, grief over lost fertility, and brief flashbacks (not explicit).

97. The Toy Train

It was snowing when I woke, white flakes filling the air outside the window. The trees were reduced to vague grey lines in the near distance. Frost bordered the glass panes.

Pouncer was still lying next to me, curled up against my lower back, which was warm from him. He purred lightly and stretched when I woke, his movement sending a tingle through my belly.

My head was heavy and my body weak, my bones like bird bones. I lay there for a while longer, watching the flakes fall. Pouncer stood and walked around the bed, paws leaving craters in the blankets, his tail brushing against my forehead and my arm. When his little show elicited no response from my broken body he sat in front of me and stared at my face, baring his sharp teeth in a meow.

I had the strangest impression that he looked just as Molly had in my adolescence, whenever I'd slept in far too late.

I shifted to the edge of the bed and stared at the dead candle on the bedside table, as well as the parchment and vials Poppy had left. With cautious movements I let my legs hang over the edge of the mattress, and stood up. My head spun for a moment, then evened.

Pouncer hit the floor with an energetic thump and meowed again, going to the open door.

I walked out of the room, my hips weak and numb but my knees and feet reliable enough. Pouncer went down the stairs, tail swishing behind him. I stared down at the smooth polished wood and feared slipping. I sat on the floor and took off my socks, putting them in the pocket of my pyjama trousers. Even the slight focus required for this process was exhausting.

Pouncer sat at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me. I waited for my will to return, then stood and gripped the bannister with my pale hand, making my way down slowly and cautiously.

The house would have seemed abandoned had there not been a lamp lit in the kitchen.

Remus was sitting at the long table, surrounded by parchment. Most of it was written on, but some blank pages sat in a stack at his elbow. His quill had dropped from his still hand and was dripping onto one of the pages, a puddle of ink obscuring the word that preceded it. He was staring into space, his eyes glazed over and absent. My heart gave a tug to see his blank expression and I didn't have to remember what I had seen in the pensieve. He was struggling, half-dead to the world, just like me.

I took a few careful steps forward, Pouncer at my ankle, and my hand reached into the air a ways in front of him. He gave a quiet jolt and looked up at me, the life returning to his eyes.

"Sorry. Is it safe for you to be walking? Here, sit down."

I shook my head and stayed standing, taking a small step closer to his chair. I couldn't help but look down at the pages, with as much curiosity as my numbness would allow. His hand wandered over the pages and he used a handkerchief from his pocket to soak up the ink blot that had formed. "I've been writing it all down. I need to remember it clearly, so I know what to say… when they ask."

I understood now why his instinct had been to give me a quill and parchment when I'd first arrived, unable to speak. It didn't sound like a bad method. But the mention of the trials made my belly tense up.

The Marauder's Map was open on the table, covering some of the papers. Remus glanced at it when I did. We both watched it for a moment, as though waiting for a pair of footsteps to wander into sight. But Hogwarts was empty.

Down at the head of the table sat a collection of what looked like wooden blocks, as well as some paints and sandpaper. A glass of water sat there with a brush soaking inside. After another moment of looking I realised the blocks formed a toy train.

"That," Remus said, standing and going to it, leaning a bit on the table as he went. "Found it in the attic. It was all old and… well, black, and I wanted to… fix it. I figure it belonged to Sirius and his brother." He turned and looked up at me, seemingly self conscious about how much he was talking. His voice seemed slightly strained. He hadn't spoken so much in a long time.

I gave him a nod to say I understood, although I couldn't imagine the Black heirs playing with toys of any kind in the gloomy, gloomy place this house had been before the Order had first cleaned it up.

I stared at the wooden carriages. It was clear how much care he'd put into working on them. Some were still covered in chipped black paint, while others had been sanded down to the soft pine wood underneath. The engine was painted brightly, red with a black smokestack, like the Hogwarts Express.

"I had to ask for the paints," Remus said, his tone darkening with bitterness. "Apparently hobbies are allowed but basic human compassion is not."

There was a long pause.

"I want Teddy to have it."

I looked up at Remus and was paralysed by the yearning in his eyes. When he spoke next it was almost a whisper. "How is he? You said he was in a safe house…"

I wondered if Rodolphus Lestrange had been found yet, and realised that if he had been then it was all over now, and Fleur and Teddy would have no reason to remain in Belgium. They could have been at the Burrow this very moment, and we wouldn't know.

Remus paused, taking in my silence. Pouncer gave a purr.

"What's the kneazle's name?" Remus tried.

But I couldn't even respond to that simple question.

"You've stolen him," he went on, smiling weakly. "He was my sleeping companion."

Another uncomfortable pause ensued. Remus's composure never dropped, not even to allow a frustrated exhale. He just stood there waiting for me with seemingly endless patience. I glared down at the table.

Finally he broke the silence, turning towards the range. "Tea? They brought bread and butter. And eggs. Are you allowed to eat?"

I nodded, and he tried to smile again. "Good."

The familiar black kettle sat heavily on the stovetop. Remus unwrapped a half-eaten loaf of bread from a paper bag and sawed two slices from it. Then he lit the fire in the little door underneath, and put the bread on the stovetop to warm beside the kettle. I went closer, watching the bread to make sure it didn't burn. Remus stiffened slightly, and I was reminded of how badly I must have smelt. I stepped away again, allowing the urge to cry to die in my throat.

Pouncer came around to sit by the leg of the table, and Remus said "ah" and tore little chicken pieces into a saucer.

He scraped a bit of butter on the warm bread and gave it to me.

I realised as I held the plate in my hands, and felt the heat on my face, that I couldn't smell it. I hadn't been able to taste the potions yesterday either. But there was a pit in my stomach, and I knew I was hungry.

I ate standing up, and felt slightly better after a couple of bites. But the muscles in my belly seemed unhappy, being given the additional complication of digesting food. I gave up halfway through and set the plate on the table, staring nauseously at the crescents formed by my teeth.

Remus poured the hot water into a teapot with some leaves and let the tea steep.

For a long moment neither of us spoke. Remus sood over the table and I stared down at his pages, looking at his handwriting. He had something on his mind but he wasn't saying it.

"Want something else?"

I looked up and saw him nod to my unfinished bread.

"I'll finish it if you won't."

I shrugged my shoulders. He moved to take the plate and I felt momentarily paralysed, overwhelmed by his presence. I turned to get two mugs from the cupboard. I had to reach for them, on a high shelf, and I got up on my tiptoes.

The action sent a bolt of sensation up my thighs and suddenly I felt it all again. My eyes went wide and one of the mugs fell and broke over the worktop, pieces falling to the floor where they shattered further.

My hands flew up to cover my face, and I wanted to run as the silent tears spilled over, but Remus said "Don't move!" and I stayed put.

My shoulders shook as I looked down at the pieces on the floor through the haze of my tears. I recognised the blue glaze and realised it had been one of the mugs we'd brought to the house when we were here, last November.

"Keep still, you'll cut your feet."

Remus came closer, and his hand was trembling too. There was a terrible moment of silence, and I couldn't look at him. He spoke slowly. "Wilma… does Severus treat you well?"

It took me too long to understand why he would ask such a thing. I nodded, but it wasn't very convincing.

Remus sighed. "It's just a mug. I'm not angry."

I stood there while he retrieved a broom from the corner and swept up the broken pottery. I was wearing socks, but when the long bristles brushed against the sides of my feet I shivered, feeling exposed.

The numbness had recovered its power over my pelvis again, and I could breathe.

Remus got the pieces into a little pile and stared down at it. "No good binning them. You'll be able to fix it with magic, once…"

He trailed off for a moment, and didn't look at me. Then a determined glint entered his eyes. He took a piece of parchment from the table and began to bend down, but he stopped and drew up again, giving a quiet hiss of pain and holding his bad hip.

Worry pricked at my heart. I put out my hand and took a step forward, sinking to my knees. He gave me the parchment and I brushed the pieces carefully onto it. Then Remus took it and placed it on the worktop in the corner. I hated the sight of it there, all broken in the shadows. I resented everything.

The cupboard door was still open. "I'll get them," Remus said, leaning the broom in the corner and taking two mugs down, setting them by the teapot. His voice was excessively gentle, probably because I was still crying and couldn't make it stop.

"There's no milk."

A vivid flash of memory cast itself over the kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. For the briefest moment I was back at the beginning, in his cottage on that windy October day, and he was warning me he had no milk before he put the kettle on.

I had to go. The sight of him standing there pouring the steaming tea into the mugs was too much. I turned towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

His face was drawn with concern and anxiety.

The numbness pushed empathy aside and I pointed at the train.

"The attic? It's quite cold up there. You don't want tea anymore?"

I cut off eye contact and shook my head and went.

The one thing that kept me from feeling entirely cruel was that Pouncer stayed with him as I walked away.

The attic was the one room we hadn't cleaned up last year, as attics were meant to be messy. The Christmas wrapping paper was still in the corner, along with huddles of furniture and old white sheets. My legs shook from all the stairs, and when I sneezed my stomach cramped.

Dust motes hung in the air, illuminated by the pale light streaming through the oval window. I could feel the house under my feet as I walked over to it, and looked out.

Lying in bed I'd been able to see the chimney tops and trees, but from up high I could see the cobblestone street, and the doors of the houses. Some had wreaths on them. The house just across the garden had a lit-up tree twinkling through the downstairs window. No-one was out walking in the pretty snow, but I did notice a black cat slinking around the street corner.

Something about the lonely silence of this place was making me more vulnerable to my past, and at the sight I remembered the little black kitten–the one Fleur had dreamed about before giving birth to Victoire; the one in Professor Trelawney's tarot card, seated at the feet of a woman crowned with stars.

I waited to see if it would come back, but it didn't.

Leaving the window, I sat down on the chilly floorboards. My feet seemed very far away, and when I moved my toes it was strange to me that they were mine. I cried a little more, then made myself stop because the tension in my belly felt dangerous.

I wondered what Sybill's cards would say now. Perhaps now I would put more faith in them; now that Remus and I were stuck here with no knowledge of what would become of us.

While sitting there I tested my magic, trying to make something happen. To make the edge of one of the sheets ripple as though in a breeze. Or make one of the rolls of wrapping paper fall. But there was nothing. I was an educated witch of twenty and I had as much control over my magic as I'd had as a child.

No. I hardly had magic at all.

At least there hadn't been any sudden outbursts.

I only hoped I hadn't lost it along the way. That it was only dormant, like a heavy bear in winter.

It was indeed cold up here, but there was comfort in it. My spine grew tired of holding up my head and I curled up on the hard floorboards and slept again. Perhaps I was beginning a gradual transformation into a cat, myself.

That wouldn't have been so bad.

Wilma.

Wilma.

I heard his voice beyond the bubble of my sleep, and it slowly melted the bubble away. My eyes opened heavily and I looked at him through narrowed lids. He was standing across the small attic room, looking as worn from the stairs as I'd felt when I'd first climbed up.

I shifted to sit up and a low throb of pain threatened in my abdomen.

"At least move to the bed," Remus said. His whole demeanour was careful and hesitant, as though I might explode. At that moment I nearly forgot who he was and wanted to explode, his gentleness too infuriating. But of course I didn't. I had no voice.

"Will you come down? It's after noon. I'll run you a bath."

I continued to lay there, stuck inside myself, and I felt the anger in my eyes as I stared up at him.

He sighed sharply. "Wilma, please."

There. There was the slightest hint that his patience was not, in fact, unending. And something about that made him seem more human, and made me feel more human too. I brought my knees under me and pushed myself up to standing, my ears ringing as I steadied myself against the wall.

We went down the stairs slowly and I collected the clothes Poppy had left from the bedroom while he ran the bath. I also took another vial of the pain relief potion. I never wanted that midnight agony again. I set the empty vial down and stared at it, remembering why I was hurting. I couldn't yet comprehend everything that had happened to my body.

I hugged the clothes to my chest, standing in the hallway until Remus emerged. "I've made lunch. Come down when you're finished."

He gave me an uneasy look, and then went down the stairs. I watched him for a moment, his top vertebrae showing disturbingly at his nape, then went into the bathroom and locked the door.

I did not stay long in the bath. The water was warm, but I didn't enjoy it. I didn't like being naked. Hated the sight of my knees, two little boney hills rising above the quiet water. I lightly rubbed some soap over my arms, but that was as far as I got before I gave up.

I dried off and put on the cool cotton knickers, the soft trousers and jumper and socks. I put the old clothes on the chair in the bedroom and picked up the parchment Poppy had left. I looked at it a little but didn't read any of the instructions. Then I folded it again and put it in my pocket.

Remus was sitting on the sofa when I went downstairs, a bowl of warm pea soup waiting for me on the small table. "That wasn't very long," he observed. His tone was growing progressively harder, and each time he spoke I felt my own will to speak lessening.

I stood by the sofa, looking at the bowl of green mush, and the pale steam rising from it.

"You really should eat."

My stomach clenched against the thought of eating.

"Can you try to speak?"

I did try. I at least thought about it. But the muscles were dead and my breath too thin.

Remus stood up, his eyes full of pain and frustration. His nostrils were flaring again as he took in my scent, and the yet unexplained scents that clung to me. He had reached a limit. He shouted.

"Will you please say something!"

It was more the shock that he had changed so abruptly than the sound itself that made me stiffen. My eyes went wide and automatically prickled with tears, but none fell. I felt my own heart beating, and was aware of my body in a way I hadn't been since before George died.

Remus himself looked shocked. The anger in his eyes quickly cooled into guilt.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I just feel like I'm going mad! Like you're some… ghost!"

He looked at the floor, and his voice dropped to a hoarse mutter.

"I shouldn't have said that either. You don't have to talk. It's alright. Just… eat something?"

I stood there for a long moment, and there was something about me that felt distinctly alive. My body was still numb and disconnected from itself, but the important parts, the parts that weren't inside, that weren't anywhere in particular, had woken up. I thought there might have been a bit more life in my eyes than before. My brain was turned on and there was more of myself that I recognised. Even if it was only a little.

I took a breath, and pointed at his hip.

He looked down at himself, his expression confused.

But I already knew what I wanted to do. I went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. The bottles of Chamomile and St John's Wort were still there, though quite dusty. I found the same mortar and pestle. I remembered the recipe.

The floorboards creaked behind me and I felt Remus watching as I leaned over the worktop, grinding the herbs into a powder and adding drops of oil, until it was a paste. The effort made my wrist ache, but I did it anyway.

His face was unreadable when I turned around, and held the mortar out to him. But there was some lightness in his eyes. As though I had come from a place where a different language was spoken, and had just made the first gesture he could clearly understand.

"I will use it," he said. "But only if you eat."

I stood by the fire and ate a few bites of the soup. It wasn't much, but when I looked up he seemed satisfied enough. For the moment, at least.

It felt wrong, having food in my body. But the discomfort was worth it when he picked up the mortar.

"I ought to bathe too. Then I'll put it on."

Like removing my socks that morning, even the slight energy I'd put into making the poultice and eating the soup had drained me. I stared at the wall.

"Wilma," Remus murmured.

I looked up.

There was an emotion in his eyes, deep and incommunicable.

"Thank you."

I nodded.

And he went upstairs.

I was sitting on the sofa staring at Poppy's list of therapeutic exercises when Remus returned. His hair was still damp and he was wearing a Henley shirt and jeans. I'd never seen him wear jeans before and after a moment I realised the clothes must have been Sirius's.

He looked at me and managed a smile–or, at least, a small look of kindness. "It's helping already."

I looked back down at the parchment and Poppy's clear handwritten instructions. Remus came over and looked at it over my shoulder.

"She gave me some of these too."

Though I wasn't looking at him, the moment of silence between us was significant.

Poppy suggested lying on the floor while breathing deeply into the pelvic muscles and relaxing them. From there a child's pose, and a spinal roll. Once I was stronger, squats and lunges. Twice a day it was necessary that I sit on a chair and imagine trying to pick up a marble with my most private muscles.

The exercises sounded scary to me, especially the last one. I didn't want anything to do with the muscles down there. I knew there were dark things trapped there, and I didn't want to let them out. But Poppy's instructions seemed to demand that I open Pandora's Box.

Avoidantly, I went to the dark wood piano in the corner. It was clean and dusted, and I stared at the smooth keyboard cover and the little golden keyhole in the middle. It was locked, and when I lifted the piano lid I found the key sitting under the strings. Who would ever want to lock a piano? Who would ever want to lock up music?

But perhaps my own body was like that. A locked piano with a lost key.

I turned the key in the hole and pushed the cover up, revealing the ivory and black keys. I touched one of the white ones and pressed it. It made a soft, half-hearted sound as the hammer weakly struck the string. I put the cover back down and left the key on top.

Remus was now holding the paper, which I realised I'd left behind.

"You should try some of these," he said quietly. "I can stay with you. Or I can go away. Or we can do them together."

Sadness crept through me like a slow poison. He knew this feeling too.

Bolstered just enough by our woeful commonness, I left the piano and nodded my head.

Remus did his best to lead me through each pose, as Poppy had done for him before he was taken away from Hogwarts. I started by lying on the rug in front of the hearth, my feet flat on the floor and my knees pointed towards the ceiling. Already I didn't like it, but when I tried to breathe and relax my pelvic floor, tears promptly started streaming down my face.

I stared up at Remus and shook my head, already giving up on my own resilience. He slowly touched my hand with his, giving my fingers a gentle, encouraging squeeze. "Two more, okay?" he said. "Two more breaths."

I followed him as he took two slow breaths. My legs were shaking and I couldn't fathom how simply lying on the floor like this, which would have been so easy before, was now overwhelmingly difficult.

"Good," he whispered. "Now let's try the child's pose, okay? It's a little more intense, but–"

I was already shaking my head, the tight ache in my belly threatening to flower into panic.

Remus held my hand tighter and hushed me. "Everything is safe here. You're safe, and it's okay. You can do it. Just for three breaths."

Disarmed by his gentleness, I turned over and opened my knees a bit, my hands on the rug as I sat back into the pose. It was confusing at first, my body struggling to remember this configuration, my hips bent, my ribs pressed against my thighs. I wheezed in discomfort.

"Knees a little wider. So you can breathe."

I followed instructions and lay folded there in misery. An awful ache filled my belly and spread into my lower back. I held my breath at first, trying to avoid the pain. When I did breathe I made a sound that reminded me of all the involuntary noises that had been fished out of me in that dark rotting room. How I'd become nothing more than an animal on that motheaten rug. No more human than the men.

My hips burned and I was sure for a minute I'd never stand up again.

Remus laid a gentle hand on my back and rubbed slow circles over my trembling shoulder blades.

I took three shallow gasps, which hardly counted as breaths. But Remus was forgiving, and as soon as it was done he helped to ease me up again, lifting my head slowly and holding me against his shoulder. "There. Let's not do any more today."

Limp as a puppet, my head pounding, I let him move me onto the sofa. He put pillows behind me and I rested my head against them, silent tears running down my face as I stared numbly at his shirt collar. His hands rested on my shoulders. "You deserve some tea now. Will you have some?"

I nodded heavily.

While I waited, I imagined squeezing the marble, as Poppy had written. But the feeling of those muscles clenching was too overwhelming, sending long shooting needles through my hips, and I stopped.

Remus brought me a steaming mug of tea and held it near me while it cooled enough to touch. The warmth of the steam touched my face.

"It's good to cry," he murmured. But my tears were spent for the moment.

Pouncer wandered in from wherever he'd been hiding, and jumped onto the sofa on my other side, sitting there as tall as a small child. The next two minutes were calm. I took the tea and sipped its warmth, and the numbness settled in my body again.

But now it was like a thin and insubstantial sheet settling over something very dark and wicked, which threatened to tire of its covering and throw it off with a deafening roar.

Remus seemed to sense my fears and brought two of the train carriages, one unsanded, the other sanded and unpainted. "Want to sand or paint?"

I pointed to the unsanded one, and he handed it to me. Soon my mind was far away, my hands occupied by the repetitive task, the heat of the friction touching my fingers through the sandpaper. Pine dust hung in the air, and my ears were strangely soothed by the quiet scratching sound. Pouncer looked less pleased, and flattened his ears. But he still stayed, lying in a bundle of yellow fur at the fireside.

We stayed there deep into the evening.

Firelight made the wet paint shine, and as it grew dark the lights in the windows of the opposite houses became more beautiful. I spent a long time staring at the Christmas tree, and the people moving around in the room behind it, only their shapes visible through the twinkling branches. Snow continued to fall, climbing up the tree trunks across the street, dusting each point of the iron fence.

My knuckles were tight and sore from the sanding, and as I stared down at the smooth wood I thought of my wand, and how they had taken it from me.

Again I tried to detect the faintest shimmer of magic in my blood, and came up with nothing. I knew I wouldn't. Not until I was connected to my body again.

It had taken months, after Rookwood. I remembered my experiments here, in front of this very fire. I'd been able to produce a patronus charm after having an orgasm.

Well. I wouldn't have an orgasm any time soon.

The word itself felt nasty in my mind, in my body.

I went back to sanding.

Remus interrupted my thoughts with a gentle touch on my forearm. I looked up at him and was stopped by his eyes, so deep, and so dark. I didn't need use of my newfound Legilimency to know that whatever kraken of ugly truth my silence had been concealing, he was about to say something that would rouse it from its slumber.

I held my breath tightly, expecting the worst.

He would demand that I explain how I had come here. Demand news of the outside world.

He would put names to the scents that clung to me, and speak them. Rowle. Macnair.

I stared into his eyes, my whole body bracing for emotional agony.

But he did not say anything besides, "You look tired. Perhaps it's time for bed," in a voice that was just above a whisper.

Everything remained unsaid.

It had been on the tip of his tongue, but he'd withheld it for my sake. I saw the army of terrors retreat behind his eyes, leaving a calm, warm patience that I doubted I would ever or had ever possessed to such an extent.

Shame clung to my insides like slime to dungeon walls. I set down the sandpaper and the carriage, and stood to go to bed.

Pouncer gave a purr and stood to follow me, but I stopped him with a pointed finger. I would not have Remus left alone. Pouncer paused, green eyes clocking the only command I had ever attempted to give him. Then he obeyed it, going back to lay by the fire where he had been.

Remus stared after me, his eyes filling with tears.

"Wilma."

My heart wobbled, but I held his gaze.

"It hurts to come back. But you have to. We both do."

I didn't nod my head, or give any indication that I had heard. But in the moment before I tore my eyes away from his he certainly saw enough to know.

I escaped up the dark stairs, and I was safely alone in my room before I began to weep.