cii. delinquent devilry

Elara was having a terrible day.

The last few days had followed a similar pattern and she blamed it fully on that goddamn Boggart in the library. She blamed it on herself too, on her lack of control. It had been years—years!—since she left St. Giles', since she'd last seen Father Phillips. Why, then, did the panic rise up and seize her in such a vise grip? She knew he couldn't get into her house, couldn't even see it, nor would he care to try. Elara was nothing to him, a particularly burdensome child in a sea of other faceless orphans—and if by some unholy miracle he did end up in Grimmauld Place, Elara was a witch! She had a wand, a very cantankerous house-elf, and worst come to worst, she could throw something cursed at him. Or one of Harriet's snakes…preferably the large, venomous one.

They wanted her to go to St. Mungo's and visit a mind healer—but, perhaps, Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall knew better than to press her when she said no. Nothing they could possibly say would change her mind. She was not broken. She didn't need a mind healer! Even if they threatened to move Harriet out of the house, Elara would not bend on this issue, not when she didn't know what would happen, or if they'd ever let her out.

Maybe Harriet would be better off without her around anyway.

"Miss Black."

Elara grit her teeth and didn't turn her head, concentrating instead on the tuning hammer in her hand and the finicky pins before her. She'd learned if she kept preoccupied McGonagall didn't badger her quite so much.

A sigh punctuated the quiet click of a cup meeting its saucer. Elara let the hammer bang against one of the taut strings, the magical tuner wailing, and when McGonagall let out a startled squawk, Elara smirked.

"Miss Black," she said, harder this time, and Elara let out a sigh of her own. She knew she was indelibly stubborn, but so was McGonagall, and the older witch wasn't restricted by having to be polite and respectful. "We had an agreement, did we not? You speak with me, or with someone of your choosing, instead of visiting Healer Sedgewick."

"I didn't agree to anything," Elara grumbled. "Ma'am."

"No, I guess you didn't. You're certainly making this difficult, child."

"I know."

"Do you understand we only wish the best for you?"

"Yes, professor."

A pause followed her answer, and Professor McGonagall sipped her tea, the small sounds of glassware managing to echo in the cluttered, dusty music room. The space around the piano had been cleared, though many of the other instruments remained cloaked in sheets or tucked into rotting crates. "Miss Black," she started again, endeavoring on. "The scarring—."

Another long wail escaped the tuner as Elara's hand jerked. "She shouldn't have told you!"

"Madam Pomfrey is required to disclose evidence of such injuries to the Headmaster and the school's Deputy," McGonagall retorted, voice sharp. "I won't have you blaming her for that. She's rightfully concerned. Usually, your Head of House would be informed as well, but we decided it wouldn't be…prudent for Professor Slytherin to be made aware of the situation."

Elara stifled the urge to argue. "And Snape," she hissed.

"I beg your pardon?"

"And Professor Snape. He knows."

"Professor Snape has not been made aware of any particulars. He is not the Head of Slytherin House." The witch paused. "For all that he takes on most of the responsibilities, though."

Elara relaxed—if only marginally. They might not have told Snape anything, but he had a keener eye than most, and Elara did not want that eye turned to her. He'd also seen her Boggart. She didn't want anyone to know anything about her life before that owl hopped off the garden wall and into her hands.

The occasional dull note accompanied her work, the leather of her glove squeaking against the tuning hammer, the piano's knobs old and quick to complain. McGonagall eventually rose to stand near Elara, watching with interest. "I've never seen a child tune a piano before. Professor Flitwick maintains the one the choir uses at Hogwarts and tells me it's a finicky job."

I'm not a child. "The magical tuner makes it much simpler than usual."

"I'm still suitably impressed, Miss Black. Where did you learn?"

Elara removed the hammer and leaned back to test a few keys, and though she felt McGonagall's attention on her, she didn't look at the older witch. "…It was my task," she admitted. "We all had common chores and one task we were responsible for."

McGonagall perched on the end of the piano bench. "And yours was tuning the piano?"

"Yes." She moved on to tuning the unisons, adjusting the rubber mutes. "There was a choir. I wasn't—I played, and the…the Matron used to take care of the piano, but she had arthritis and couldn't manage very well."

"Do you enjoy playing?"

Elara lifted one shoulder and let it drop, concentrating on finishing the tuning. She wriggled the rubber mutes free and removed the tuning hammer, dropping the magical tuner back on the shelf across the cluttered room, shutting the brass cover over the miffed horn. In truth, she didn't know the answer to the question.

"Would you care to play something now, Miss Black?"

Again, she shrugged, growing more suspicious as the professor avoided the topic she clearly wanted to discuss, but Elara decided she might as well play something. She'd tuned the piano as an excuse to ignore Professor McGonagall and couldn't think of a good reason to not test the instrument. Exhaling, she went to the bench and Professor McGonagall stood aside, letting her have her space. Elara considered what songs she knew well enough to play without sheet music and, after a minute of nervous hand wringing, started How Great Thou Art.

It sounded…off. A few pins needed readjustment still, and Elara missed a note or two as she tried to remember the song in its entirety. It was a jarring sound. She could play it better, she knew she could—but with McGonagall's shadow at her shoulder and the warbling song in her ears, Elara suddenly felt younger. She was five again, learning her scales, her legs not quite long enough to touch the piano's pedals. The music echoed in the church's empty sanctum and the Matron hummed along, adjusting Elara's hands with firm, impatient taps.

That was before the weird things began. Before the sisters started whispering behind their hands about devilry.

"They didn't like my magic," Elara heard herself whisper, her voice seeming to come from a mouth other than her own, her fingers still moving on the keys.

McGonagall folded her hands together. "We've found in that past that religious, Muggle-born families have the most difficulty accepting their child's abilities. You're not alone in that regard."

Elara let out a derisive sniff.

"Children in orphanages have an especially difficult time as enforcing the Statute of Secrecy can be all but impossible in those situations. It's been written into the bylaws since my own school days for magical students to be removed from group homes and placed with magical foster families."

"Like the MPA?"

Lips thinning, McGonagall's expression tightened. "No. Not like the MPA." She moved into Elara's eyesight as she tilted her head, the anger replaced by something more curious. "Is that what you wanted before Hogwarts? To be fostered into a family."

"No."

McGonagall's brow rose at her definitive statement. "Why not?"

Elara missed a note and her hand bounced across the keys, the song coming to a horrid, discordant end. "I don't want to talk about this, professor. There's no point."

"It's important to express your problems for your health. Things can seem much less pressing or impossible to handle once they're given voice." She made as if to touch Elara's shoulder and didn't, which Elara appreciated. "Harriet's life with her relatives wasn't proper. You know this."

"Yes."

"Do you think she should hide the things she went through? Wouldn't you want her to come to you if she felt overwhelmed?"

Elara stiffened and didn't answer, fidgeting.

"Come then, Miss Black. Can you play us another song?"

She did as requested, starting Abide With Me, which McGonagall commented had been one of her father's favorites. The music rose around them, still not quite right but preferable to their current conversation. Elara knew what the witch wanted her to say, what she wanted her to talk about—and a terrible, impetuous part of her wished to blurt it out, to let the words leak from her like poisoned bile being purged. The memories kicked inside her head, boots against a shut door, and the door kept shaking, kept wobbling—.

Her bedroom door creaked on the old hinges as it came open. The Matron stirred her from her bed, Father Phillips and three other priests waiting in the hall, and Elara didn't know what time it was, what was going on—.

"They hated my magic at St. Giles'," she reiterated, talking to her hands, to that pale sliver of flesh visible between her sleeves and gloves. "They said it was devilish and unnatural. And the more I tried—tried to not do it, the more it did happen."

Father Phillips had his hand tight on her arm, her tired questions going unasked, her bare feet scraping the floor.

"This isn't right," said the youngest priest, a man Elara didn't know. "The assessor—."

"The assessor is wrong."

"The more I apologized for it, the more they didn't believe me."

The cold of the cellar floor bit into her skin as they pounded down the stone steps and fear built in Elara's heart. Something shattered in the dark, spurring the priests faster.

"Father Phillips, the church won't allow the rite to be performed on a child—!"

"I won't abandon the girl to the demon simply because the monsignor won't see reason—."

The song continued off-key, as lopsided as crooked witch's hat. "They thought there was something—wrong with me. Something evil. Something that needed to be…removed."

The iron key twisted in the thick wooden door's lock, the door Elara had never been inside before, revealing the stone bunker beyond, cracks liming the blocking, candles bracketed to the walls. It must have been there since the war. There sat a lone, narrow bed inside, one with no mattress or linens, only a thin mat and restraints trailing from the metal posts like snake tongues—.

"And I—I just—."

Male voices raised, shouting, bellowing godly verses, not letting her rest or think or breathe—and Elara just wanted to go home, home to a place she'd never known. The longer she stayed, the more devilish things happened, that unseen force slamming the priests into the floor, the walls, groaning and shrieking and crackling like lightning—.

Abruptly, Elara yanked her hands from the keyboard and slammed the cover down. "I was exorcised." The admission came out blunt and rough, jagged as broken glass. She stared at the Black insignia inlaid on the top of the cover, concentrating on it as she gasped for breath and told herself she'd never go back there, would never have to pretend again, that she was blessed, not cursed, and Father Phillips could rot in Hell for all she cared—. "I don't want to talk about this anymore!"

The ancient violins displayed in the far cabinet moaned and whined, the chandelier shaking free fat cobwebs as it swung back and forth. Professor McGonagall was sitting next to her and Elara hadn't realized the witch had moved, her hand rubbing soft, slow circles between Elara's hunched shoulders. Water speckled her gloves. When did she start crying?

"There now, just breathe, Miss Black. You're at home, safe. Just breathe and calm yourself down…."

McGonagall continued rubbing her back and uttering low, comforting words until the objects in the room stopped jittering about and Elara's breathing evened.

"Look at me, Miss Black."

She did so, raising her stinging eyes to her professor's, McGonagall's expression stern but not without compassion. Her own eyes looked suspiciously pink, her cheeks flushed, and Elara wondered if McGonagall was angry—but no. She couldn't think of a reason why she would be. "They were wrong. They were wrong in what they said and in their treatment of you."

"I know, ma'am."

"There is not a single thing evil about you, young lady. You are a loyal friend, a good person, and a talented witch. You belong at Hogwarts. Do you understand?"

Elara nodded, lowering her head.

McGonagall removed her hand but didn't leave, the two of them remaining silent on the piano bench, the professor radiating furious tension as if she direly wished to yell at someone or something and couldn't. Elara just felt tired.

"It's getting late," McGonagall said, attention on the curtained window and the slip of darkening sky visible under the valance. "I need to return to the school. I'll return again in the morning, Miss Black."

"I don't want to discuss this again," Elara told the professor as she rose and straightened her robes. She injected as much sincerity as she could into her voice, dreading the next day already, wishing she hadn't said anything at all, that she'd kept her wits about her—.

"Then we'll discuss something else. The point is to make you comfortable and to unburden your mind, child, not make it worse."

Elara grimaced, a slight twitch in her brow and her cheek, hands clenched tight on her knees.

A warm weight settled on her arm, Professor McGonagall giving it a light squeeze. "Tomorrow, then. You should go off and find Miss Potter. Merlin knows what mischief she's gotten into with only Severus watching over her…."

"Okay."

"Promise me you'll go and stay with Harriet. I don't wish for either of you to be alone."

"I promise."

The professor left, and though she'd made a promise, Elara remained, shutting her eyes and listening to the footsteps fade. She leaned against the piano's cover, buried her face in her hands, and cried.

x X x

A half-hour or so passed, in which Elara gathered her composure and forced herself to play one of the only non-religious songs she knew, Für Elise, taught to her by an older girl at the Institute before the Matron caught her and punished them both. Anna, her name had been. The music helped calm Elara, and so she felt almost normal by the time someone bolted up the stairs outside the room's door and Snape's menacing yell of "POTTER!" chased after them.

She heard the wizard say something else, something equally menacing, and the portrait of her grandmother on the landing started screaming. Heaving a loud, irritated breath, Elara shoved the bench back and stood, letting the cover come closed on the keys a final time. The screaming intensified outside the door and didn't stop even after Elara told Walburga to shut her gob. Kreacher came hobbling from whatever dark corner he preferred and wailed over Elara's "mistreatment" of the portrait, the whole scene cumulating in a harsh telling off for both the house-elf and the painted hag on the wall. She dragged the drapes closed with a grunt, Walburga huffing in rage until out of sight.

"You'd better leave those curtains alone, Kreacher!" she snapped when he made to open them again.

He snatched his hands back. Sneering, Kreacher croaked, "Kreacher only meant to check the curtains, Mistress."

"Is that right?" Elara snarked, a headache building in her temples. "Go check some other curtains, then. Don't wake the portrait up in the middle of the night again, or Professor Snape will put your head on the wall with the others."

"Kreacher would never do such a thing…."

Elara went upstairs—ignoring the backbiting drifting after her—and sought Harriet. She needed only to follow the stilted susurrations of Parseltongue drifting under the girl's shut bedroom door, and though she almost walked in unannounced, Elara decided to knock.

"Bugger off!" Harriet shouted, voice high and reedy.

Well, then. Elara eased the door open and peered into the shadowed room, Harriet sitting in the middle of her unmade bed, Livius wrapping his thick coils around her scrawny torso. Red rimmed her green eyes.

"Are you all right?"

Harriet spotted her in the doorway and slumped. "Oh," she sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Elara cringed. "Yeah. Sorry, I thought you were Snape."

"Not to be dramatic, but if that's how you answer him knocking, I have to ask if you have a death wish."

A hiccup of laughter escaped the bespectacled witch and she twitched Livius' weight into a more comfortable position. The Horned Serpent had grown in Elara's estimation, dwarfing Harriet considerably. "I guess I do. I called him a bastard downstairs."

"I'm surprised he didn't curse your mouth shut. Can I sit?"

Nodding, Harriet kicked a rumpled jumper off the bed and Elara took its place. She almost crushed Kevin, who wriggled out of the way in the nick of time, diving beneath Harriet's folded knee.

"Well, he can go bugger himself, the arsehole," Harriet grumbled as she fished the green snake out, Rick making a mess of her already impossible hair, skinny body draped over an ear. "He came outside and started telling me off for minding my own business. I don't care what his issue is; where does he get off?"

Elara laid back and stretched, gazing at the ceiling, stifling a yawn. "He's not going to let that go unanswered."

"No, definitely not." Harriet prodded Rick off of her glasses. The defiant cast in her eyes dimmed and she dragged the quilt over her head, hiding her face from the single candle left burning on the nightstand. "How's meeting with McGonagall going?"

The initial response Elara wanted to blurt out was, 'Horrid,' but Professor McGonagall devoted a lot of time attempting to help her and Elara had no desire to belittle her efforts. Discussing the…therapy meetings with Harriet made her feel a tad queasy, however. "Fine, I guess. She…she wants to talk about how things were before. In the—the orphanage."

A scoff left the other witch and when Elara turned her head, confused, she explained. "Dumbledore tries to catch me out and asks about the Dursleys. One second, he'll be on about some kind of sweet or something he did in his own days at Hogwarts, and then he's asking about the cupboard, or my cousin, or how the teachers in primary treated me." Harriet blew air through her lips in a raspberry. "Then I start remembering things I didn't even know I knew, and it makes me feel like shite."

Elara folded her arms against her middle. "Well-meaning people are the worst, aren't they?"

"They are!"

They laughed, two weak chuckles that nonetheless relieved the looming cloud of depressing thoughts pressing upon them both. Professor McGonagall had compared Elara and Harriet's situations, but Elara hadn't equated them as equal in her head; the Dursleys denied Harriet basic human rights like food or hygiene or companionship, whereas the sisters gave Elara all of that. Against her will, Elara seemed to have decided that she deserved some of what happened to her at St. Giles', at least in part, whereas Harriet had been blameless. Innocent. Her family should have loved her as Elara did.

Elara admired the other witch's strength; Harriet was happy and unreserved as Elara could never be, outgoing and joyful. She rose above the terrible things that had happened to her—that kept happening to her, while Elara gasped and struggled like a diver being dragged down by a kelpie. Harriet had survived attempted murder as an infant—had been poisoned, kidnapped, attacked, tortured, and terrorized, and still, she beamed when Elara greeted her in the morning at the breakfast table, always quick with a joke, concerned for others' well-being and conscientious in her behavior. Even in calling Snape a bastard, there hadn't been any guile or bitterness in the statement. Just Harriet being Harriet.

Elara wished she could be as strong as her.

Their conversation veered into safer waters, commenting on nothing and everything. Harriet lamented the lack of a telly, though both witches admitted to never being able to watch much of it in their respective childhood homes. Elara speculated on Snape's reaction if they asked him to take them to see a film and Harriet laughed hard enough for her familiars to start mocking her with loud hissing.

Eventually, they dozed, though Elara couldn't recall drifting off, only the shuddering bang! that woke her. The candle still burned on the nightstand; only an hour or so had passed.

"Hmm?" Harriet said as she sat up from her tangled blankets, glasses askew. "What's that?"

The banging reverberated through the floor and followed itself into the house proper—waking Walburga again. "Someone's coming."

"Oh, fuck. It's probably Snape—."

The sudden appearance of a black, looming shape barreling to the bedroom at full speed scared Elara breathless and Harriet emitted a sudden yelp. It was, indeed, the Potions Master; he had his wand out, held in a tight, pale hand, his eyes wild and almost deranged as he searched every corner of the room. Walburga kept screaming like a ghoul downstairs.

"Up, up now!" Snape thundered.

"What the hell—!"

The wizard grabbed Harriet by the arm and dragged her out of the bed, Livius falling to the floor, Harriet tripping and landing on one knee, not that Snape noticed. He was too busy flicking his wand in silent incantations, sending Harriet's possessions spiraling haphazard into her trunk, slamming the lid shut.

"Black! Up!" He released Harriet long enough to take Elara's arm, the dry touch of his skin on her own startling. He pulled her to her feet with a hard tug. "Pack, now!"

"What's going on?"

"Pack!" Snape shouted, sending Elara skittering out the door and into her own room without another word. He followed but stayed in the corridor, holding Harriet by the upper-arm again, seeming ignorant to her attempts to pull away, her trunk shrunken and stuffed in his robe pocket. He kept scanning the hall and dark stairwell as if…as if expecting someone else to appear.

"Professor, what—?"

"Expecto Patronum!" A watery mist bled from his wand's tip and Snape barked a foul curse. He tried the incantation again, prompting the appearance of a peculiar specter, the vague outline of something four-legged and wispy, the mere suggestion of a shape. "Coming now with Potter and Black." The creature vanished through the nearest wall and its absence left Elara more frightened than before.

"Professor!" she demanded, wringing the life from a Slytherin scarf. His attention snapped to her like a hawk sighting prey, Harriet dangling from his ironclad grip, Livius tangled about his mistress and Snape's stiff arm. Distantly, Elara wondered if he should be worried about being bit. "What's happened?"

The look he gave her exuded more hatred and repugnance than Elara had ever seen a person express before. It poured from his black eyes in nothing short of a tidal wave, the kind of animosity and contempt that could drown villages or tear furrows in a man's soul. When he spoke, it came in a low, menacing sibilance like some hissing creature prying back the rocks barring passage into Hell.

"Your father has escaped from Azkaban. Grimmauld Place is compromised—we must leave, immediately, before he decides to show up for a family reunion."

Elara forgot how to breathe.

A/N: Sorry this chapter repeats the last one a bit, but I wanted to get the perspective of both Snape and Elara.

A lot of victims of neglect or abuse rationalize their punishments as their own fault. Conceptually, Elara probably understands things at St. Giles weren't right, but internally she probably felt as if she deserved to be punished or simply didn't understand—like Harriet with the Dursleys not truly conceptualizing a life outside of their hold.