This chapter contains memories of abuse (although I've tried not to be too graphic).
'That was very good, Miss Laverstock; you must have read up on the subject with Miss Granger?' Professor Flitwick squeaked happily, getting to his feet. He waved his wand at his pile of books and they flew into his arms, causing him to stagger slightly. 'Well, same time next week? Try to read chapters one through six if you can and try these questions and one or two of the spells. Don't overdo it please or Madam Pomfrey will feed me to the dragons! Magical exhaustion is not to be taken lightly!'
Tansy smiled at him and nodded as he handed her the roll of parchment, then remembering herself she managed to whisper an almost inaudible thank you. Professor Flitwick beamed at her and left the room. Tansy glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that dinner in the Great Hall had just ended – Minerva would probably be on her way back up. Then she looked down at the pile of parchment and open books, suddenly feeling exhausted. For several minutes she simply sat, gathering herself together.
'Are you done, Tansy? How did it go?' Mrs Weasley appeared in the bedroom door, holding a sleepy Hope in her arms. Although it was still early, the baby was already dressed in her pajamas as she had refused to go down for her afternoon nap and was going to bed early as a result. Tansy smiled at the sight of Hope's fat fist tangled in Mrs Weasley's hair, feeling a wave of almost overwhelming love for her daughter. She stood up slowly, walked over, and gave them both a hug.
'How did it go?' Mrs Weasley repeated, returning Tansy's hug with a tight squeeze that left her gasping for air.
'I don't know,' Tansy said truthfully. 'Professor Flitwick said it went okay but…' She trailed off and stood on tiptoe so that she could kiss her daughter on the forehead. She smiled as Hope grabbed at her hair and gently untangled the baby's fingers.
'But what, dear?' Mrs Weasley asked, looking down at Tansy with a gentle expression.
'It's just… I find it hard to concentrate… sometimes the fog just takes over and… it happened a few times… I forgot where I was… Professor Flitwick had to keep reminding me…'
'Professor Flitwick said you did very well, Tansy.' Minerva said, catching the tail end of what Tansy was saying as she walked in through the door. She crossed the room to give Tansy a hug and then looked keenly down at her before she turned to Mrs Weasley and Hope. 'I see that someone is ready for bed,' she said softly. 'Is she still grumpy?' Mrs Weasley nodded and Hope reached suddenly for Minerva's glasses which caused all three of them to laugh.
'No no…' Minerva said, rescuing her glasses and using her wand to remove the smudgy fingerprints on the lenses.
'Tansy, you need to give yourself time, dear. You're doing so well but you can't expect your recovery to happen overnight.' Mrs Weasley said quietly and Minerva nodded in agreement. Hope started to grizzle and squirm in her grandmother's arms, saving Tansy from having to think up a reply.
'I think she's ready to go down, shall I put her to bed while you have some food?' Mrs Weasley asked. Tansy shook her head and opened her mouth to say that she wanted to put Hope to bed herself.
'Yes, that's an excellent idea, thank you Molly. You need some dinner before Professor Snape comes up, Tansy.' Minerva said, before Tansy could speak. 'Goodnight little one.'
Tansy felt a flood of heightened anxiety thrilling through her body at her mother's words and immediately had to swallow a rising nausea that sent all thoughts of food to the back of her mind. She watched as Minerva kissed Hope lightly on the forehead and crossed over the room to the kitchenette where the day's menu lay on the table. Mrs Weasley nodded in agreement and then went back into the bedroom with Hope, leaving Tansy standing frozen, her anxiety rooting her to the spot. It took several seconds of determined focus before she managed to unlock her knees again. Numbly she walked over to where Minerva was studying the menu.
'Professor… I mean…' Tansy stuttered to a halt, suddenly realising that she had started trembling.
'Tansy…?' Minerva dropped the menu back onto the table and swiftly closed the distance between them, immediately on edge by Tansy's renewed use of her title.
'Mum…?' Tansy whispered, suddenly feeling completely overwhelmed.
'I'm here, Tansy, what is it?' Minerva said quietly, placing a hand on Tansy's shoulder.
'I… I can't… I don't want Professor Snape to… to do it here…' Tansy stuttered incoherently. She looked around the small living space which had become her safe space and shuddered at the thought of having her mind invaded here. 'I…' She tried again but then stopped, unable to find the right words. Minerva looked at her for a few seconds but she didn't ask for clarification, she simply nodded.
'Okay, Tansy, if that's what you want. I'll send Severus a message and we'll go down to his office after you've had some food.' Minerva tapped the menu with her wand and then crossed over to the bedroom door and said something quietly to Mrs Weasley which Tansy couldn't make out.
A house elf, wearing a tea-towel stamped with the Hogwarts crest appeared abruptly out of thin air by Tansy's elbow, the loud crack making her gasp and jump to one side, her heart hammering violently. It placed a large tray of food carefully on the table, bowed low enough for its long nose to touch the floor and then vanished again before Tansy could say thank you. Tansy stared miserably at the salmon fillet, roasted vegetables and new potatoes, her stomach in knots. She heard Minerva's footsteps behind her and felt her adoptive mother's hand on her shoulder.
'I can't… I'll be sick…' Tansy mumbled, struggling not to cry. The anxiety she was feeling suddenly felt all-encompassing and she suddenly longed for a calming potion or sleeping draft to help her manage it. Minerva sighed and pushed the girl into a chair and sat down beside her.
'Okay, not the fish but you need to try to eat something.'
Half an hour later, after Minerva had coxed half an oat biscuit and a glass of milk into her adoptive daughter, the two of them set out for the dungeons, leaving Mrs Weasley watching over Hope and knitting something brightly coloured that Tansy felt sure would feature prominently in Hope's wardrobe in the coming weeks.
Severus Snape's POV
There was no denying it; Severus felt almost sick with nerves as he stared at the young witch sitting in front of him, knowing what he was about to do to her. He exchanged a look with Minerva McGonagall, who was sitting beside her adoptive daughter, looking almost as anxious as he felt and she nodded at him. He took her nod as the go ahead to start.
'Right, Miss Laverstock,' Severus began, keeping his voice low, 'the last time you studied Occlumency, the aim, if you recall, was to prevent me from entering your mind.' The girl in front of him nodded, her eyes wide and scared-looking. 'Tonight, I need you to do the opposite, however hard it is. I need you to let me in.' Tansy Laverstock nodded again and twisted her fingers in her lap in such a way that Severus felt sure that she must be causing herself pain. He glanced at Minerva again and saw that she was staring worriedly at her daughter.
'Once I am inside your mind, I should hopefully be able to steer my searching towards what we are looking for. I will endeavour to cause you as little distress as possible but I want your word that you will tell me if this becomes too much.' Tansy Laverstock stared blankly at him. Severus realised that she was barely holding herself together and glanced again at Minerva, wondering if they should continue.
'Tansy…?' Minerva reached out and took one of the girl's hands and the girl jolted violently out of her trance and shook her head suddenly, trying to clear her mind.
'I said that I want you to tell me if this becomes too much, Miss Laverstock.' Severus said, staring into the girl's eyes, looking for even the faintest flicker of a lie.
'Yes… Professor…' Her voice was like a soft sigh of wind.
'I will try very hard to keep myself on track and steer clear of any memories that aren't relevant, Miss Laverstock. I will, of course, not pry, but I can't guarantee that I will be wholly successful. Do you understand?' Tansy Laverstock nodded again, her face bloodless in the torchlight.
'Are you ready?' He waited for her to nod. 'Brace yourself now. I need to you to try to let me in. Let… me… in…' He stared into her deep blue eyes, wincing internally as he read the dread and fear that she was feeling in their depths. 'Legilimens!'
Everyone's mind was different. Severus marvelled at this each and every time he performed Legilimency and entered someone's mind. Some were well ordered, arranged in neat grid-like lines, like the booths of a well-maintained library stretching far away into the distance beyond anyone's capacity to search. Most were only well ordered near the centre and became more and more disarrayed and muddled as one travelled towards the edges. Tansy Laverstock's mind, however, was a chaotic maze of tunnels and darkness, flooded with fear, anxiety and panic.
Severus pushed through this labyrinth until he stopped at place where the feeling of fear was so potent he could almost taste it. Pushing through the skin of darkness and fear that enveloped the nearest memory, he found himself standing in a small clearing in a forest, completely surrounded by tall conifer trees on a cold, dark, winter's night. Tansy Laverstock lay facedown on the ground in front of him, frozen by a full body-bind as five snatchers in threadbare robes surrounded her. As Severus retreated back through the skin of darkness, he saw one of the men using a hard boot to turn the girl over and the air around him seemed to throb with a renewed burst of fear. He moved on slowly; so many of Tansy Laverstock's memories seemed to contain fear and panic that it was hard for him to choose which ones to search.
Sadness abruptly suffused the darkness and when he pushed forwards he found himself standing next to Hagrid's cabin as twilight fell over the castle grounds. Tansy Laverstock looked a few years younger here; she was wearing baggy school robes and she held a small cloth wrapped bundle in her arms. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she knelt on the frozen ground and lowered the bundle into a small grave in the pumpkin patch. Severus backed away again and the scene dissolved. He pushed on to the next one.
Anxiety. Nerves. But there was also something else. Something that Severus couldn't identify until he found himself in a small and unfamiliar bedroom. Severus caught one glimpse of the girl and the red-haired young man moving as one on the bed before he withdrew as quickly as he could, wishing he hadn't chosen this particular memory and berating himself for the invasion of privacy. He realised that the feeling he hadn't been able to identify had been anticipation.
He needed to go deeper. Severus pushed himself forwards and down through the darkness until he reached what felt like a thick rubbery skein of shadows which did not yield to his touch but seemed to flex inwards as he probed and sprung back again when he withdrew.
No not there…
The darkness seemed to whisper around him. Severus focussed and forced himself forwards and down, through the rubbery skein. There was a brief stretching and tearing and then the fear and panic that filled the darkness surrounding him seemed to double and the labyrinthine night of Tansy Laverstock's mind was suddenly suffused with a feeling of profound disgust and shock. Moving forwards, Severus found himself in the familiar bare room at the top of Malfoy manor with the single stained mattress below the barred window. Nausea gripped him and he struggled not to retreat as he watched Lucius Malfoy violating the girl. It seemed to go on forever.
No no no no no not that one please no no get out out OUT OUT
The words were not words, not a coherent sentence anyway, more of a feeling that became so intense that it pushed Severus from all sides at once until he couldn't bear it any longer and he was forced backwards and out of the memory. He found himself falling upwards, back through the thick barrier of rubbery darkness that gave easily now that he was travelling I the opposite direction and immediately sealed behind him as he passed through. Severus reached out and with a supreme effort stopped his retreat before he could be pushed right out of Tansy Laverstock's mind. Without pausing to assess, he hurled himself forwards through a faint barrier of alarm and determination and found himself in dungeon one with a tiny, eleven-year-old Tansy Laverstock who was stumbling to answer his own sneering words. As he watched, he felt her determination to speak waver as her apprehension grew and felt sick to his stomach that he was the one who had crushed her so badly as she fought to find the courage to utter a few quiet words. Without looking at himself, he pushed backwards and away, moving forwards and down until he could break through into the closed off portion of Tansy Laverstock's mind once more where he knew the memories that he searched for awaited him.
Pain. Severus pushed through the hardest barrier yet and found himself in a bleak windowless cellar that he recognised as being the one at Malfoy manor. Bellatrix Lestrange's insane laughter rang through the bare little room as she trained her wand first on the naked girl in front of her and then on the young man with red hair who lay beside her. The boy screamed but the girl made no sound, simply curled in on herself as the pain tore through her body in waves. Severus heard a cruel, mocking laugh from over by the open door and saw that they had been joined by Lucius Malfoy. A feeling of combined horror and revulsion swept through the memory as Malfoy approached the girl on the floor, swiftly undoing the lower half of his robes.
No no no no not now please please no out OUT OUT no NO NO
As the man forced himself onto the girl and Bellatrix Lestrange's manic laughter flooded the room once more, Severus felt himself being hurled head over heels out of the memory. Fear and darkness swept by him as he fell upwards at astonishing speed. This time he was unable to slow himself down and catch himself and he was thrown right out of Tansy's Laverstock's mind. Reeling with shock, he found himself back in his dungeon office, breathing heavily with his back flat against the hard back of his chair as if he had been physically thrown against it. Tansy Laverstock sat, wide eyed and white faced in front of him. She seemed as surprised as he was to find herself back in the office.
'Miss Laverstock?' His voice hitched slightly and he swallowed his emotion. Tansy Laverstock stared at him for one long second. Then her expression crumpled and she dropped her face into her hands and began massaging her forehead. Severus saw that the backs of her hands were covered in bleeding scratches from her own fingernails.
'Tansy, it's okay. You're in Professor Snape's office.' Minerva edged her chair closer to the girl and placed her hand on her shoulder. 'Try to calm down. They were just memories. It's okay.' She glanced at Severus and her concern seemed to double as she took in his expression. He imagined that his own face was as pale as the girl's.
Still reeling from the shock of the memories, he stood up abruptly and walked shakily through his bedroom and into his bathroom. He glanced in the mirror as he opened the bathroom cabinet and then looked away again disgusted by the haunted expression in his eyes and his sallow pallor.
'Deep breaths, try to calm down.' He heard Minerva saying softly as he returned to the office.
'Miss Laverstock, do you need a calming draft?' He held out the bottle to Minerva and realised that his hands were shaking.
To his surprise, when Tansy finally looked up, she was shaking her head although she looked like she was on the verge of vomiting or passing out.
'I'm… I'm… I need to…' She took several ragged breaths. Then she shook her head violently, obviously fighting a fog attack. 'Can… can I use the bathroom please, Professor?' Her question took him by surprise but he nodded and she staggered to her feet so quickly that she lost her balance and he was forced to reach forwards and steady her.
'Are you okay, Tansy? Do you need help?' Minerva asked, getting to her feet too, her knees giving an audible creak of protest. The girl shook her head and walked shakily through the bedroom and into Severus's bathroom, closing the door behind her.
'Minerva,' Severus suddenly felt afraid as he looked at the closed door and remembered what had happened at the start of the school year. He made a mental inventory of the bathroom and concluded that there were plenty of items in there that the girl could use to harm herself with. 'She shouldn't be alone.' Minerva looked carefully at him.
'Did you find it, Severus? She asked. She seemed to sag a little when he shook his head.
'I'm sorry, Minerva, I barely scratched the surface before she threw me out.' He shuddered and looked at the closed door again. 'I don't think she should be alone.' He said again, his voice shaking slightly.
'Are you okay, Severus?' Minerva seemed unsurprised when he mutely shook his head and sank into a chair.
'Check on the girl.' He said, his voice gruff with emotion.
He watched Minerva cross the bedroom and knock once on the bathroom door before pushing it open. As she hobbled inside, he caught a glimpse of Tansy Laverstock sitting on the floor beside the toilet, her knees drawn up into her chest. The smell of vomit stung his nose from across the room. Then the bathroom door swung shut again.
With a flick of his wand, Severus shut the bedroom door too, to give them an added measure of privacy. Then he used his wand to uncork the calming potion and downed it in one gulp.
Tansy's POV
It was lunchtime the following day and Tansy was sitting at the table in the small room that Minerva and Professor Flitwick had built with magic after breakfast that morning next to the headmistress's office. It had been designed specifically for Tansy to use as a study room, somewhere where she wouldn't be distracted by baby Hope and she could leave books or cauldrons or whatever she was using lying about without them getting in the way in the small flat.
Although her mind felt woolly and full of cotton wool, Tansy had a lunchtime Potions tutorial with Professor Snape and since Hope was fast asleep in her crib with both Ron and Ginny watching over her (and bickering) she had arrived early with a view to reading up on the relevant chapter before the lesson started. Not that she was getting very far – she had spent the last twenty minutes staring at the same page so intently that the printed letters seemed to float off the parchment and hover above it. She hadn't taken in a single word.
'Oh, come on up Severus,' Tansy heard her adoptive mother's voice through the open door. There was a slight pause and Tansy heard Snape's low reply as he mounted the stairs but she didn't catch the words. 'How are you today? You look…' Minerva trailed off.
'In all honesty, Minerva, I've been better.' Snape replied, his voice containing a mere trace of his old sneering tone. 'At any rate, I'll live I'm sure. How is she today?'
'She's… she's okay I think. Less foggy than we predicted anyway.' Tansy realised that they were talking about her and wished that she could plug her ears. She curled her hands into fists under the table.
'Has she talked to you about yesterday evening?'
'No, she seemed to… you know how she gets Severus… and I try not to push her too much because I fear that it would do more harm than good. I once promised her that I would never force her to speak to me and I try to stand by that. Her next session with Healer Knits is tomorrow which is a comfort.'
'Do you think she's coping?' Snape asked quietly.
Tansy thought back to the previous evening and she shuddered as feelings of shame and disgust rose up inside her as she remembered what had happened. Then she dropped her head to the desk and covered her ears with her hands and focussed on breathing steadily in and out, pushing the intrusive thoughts to one side and blocking out the continued conversation on the landing outside.
'Miss Laverstock?' Tansy felt a hand on her shoulder and started up in surprise; Professor Snape was standing over her, looking down at her with a concerned expression. His face looked sallower than ever and his hair hung lank and greasy almost to his shoulders. He looked exhausted. 'Is everything okay?' Tansy smiled weakly at him and nodded feebly as he took a seat opposite her. He reached inside his briefcase and withdrew a sheath of parchment and what looked like a tiny model cauldron which he restored to full size with a flick of his wand.
'How are you today after yesterday evening?' He questioned softly and his black eyes seemed to bore into hers, searching for the truth. Tansy felt her fake smile falter and slide off her face.
'I'm… I'm okay Professor,' she lied, tugging self-consciously at the sleeve of her robes. Her mind flitted back to what had happened and she suddenly felt even more disgusted at herself. Snape's lip curled slightly and she dropped her eyes to the table, convinced that he could read the lie in her eyes.
'Very well, Miss Laverstock,' he paused, 'I shall choose to believe you for now.' The scepticism in his voice told Tansy that he didn't believe her in the slightest. There was another, longer pause during which Tansy dug her nails into the back of her opposite hand because the pain helped her to focus.
'Today we will be beginning our study of the Polyjuice Potion. I believe that you already have some experience with this particular potion, do you not? Tansy thought back six years ago to the cauldron bubbling away on the toilet in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and nodded sheepishly.
'Hermione… Hermione made it, not me, Professor.'
'Overly modest as usual, Miss Laverstock. When we did this in class in November, Miss Granger's account was that you brewed it together.' Snape smirked at Tansy and handed her a worksheet. 'A rather amazing accomplishment for two twelve-year-olds wouldn't you say? Anyway Miss Laverstock, let's begin with a review of the ingredients.'
So the Legilimency sessions begin and she is already starting to struggle a little. Thank you for my reviews. I'm going away again as I have leave to use before Christmas so please be patient for the next update!