Hello All, I know, I've been gone a while. What can I say, it's winter and I get sick. I'm back writing most days so things should come more quickly. Thanks to anyone who is reading anymore. MNF
Chapter 17:
Bully
Anwen Llyn Parker-Potter-Black was sure of three things in her life. One, she was saved by being adopted by her mum and dad and that her brother was her closest friend. Two, she had loved her husband since she'd met him when she was six. Three, her children were the most precious beings in her life. She was willing to lose every material good she had – and there were many – but if she kept these important people in her life, she'd consider herself the wealthiest person in the world.
Unfortunately, at this exact moment, that was all she was sure of. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing but an inky vastness that provided her with no clues as to where she was. Fortunately for Anwen, she could search with more than her eyes and reached out through her magic. Seeing the landscape with her witch's eye revealed ragged scenery that held barren trees, earth that was pitted and divided and lightning the blueish hue of the curse that hit her. It didn't take her long to discover that she wasn't in a physical place, although she wasn't sure if the location was spiritual or psychological.
While Eva had trained specifically as a Mind Healer, Anwen had studied the art along with her. Her visualisation skills had made the study of physical healing easier than expected, so she allowed herself to be Eva's test subject in return for reading the books and quizzing her friend. Gauging by the muffled sounds she heard, she thought it might be psychological; she just wasn't sure who's mindscape it was.
The remarkable thing about mindscapes is no two were absolutely the same. Albus' was a castle-like fortress with every possible weapon the man could imagine trained at the person who would even attempt entry. Sirius' was the manor house at Linfred Hall, the place he found his first real home. James' was a Quidditch Pitch. Eva's was a beautiful lagoon and little Alfie's resembled his nursery, although she'd only recently been able to see anything other than colours and sounds in either of her children's heads. Anwen's looked like a kitchen, one of the places she was most happy in.
Whomever owned this mindscape was unhappy and had suffered some serious damage; possibly self-inflicted. The young woman traversed the path she found through the woods, until she reached an impressive structure. It was many stories tall but devoid or windows or doors. The monolith was black, highly polished and felt cold when Anwen's magic brushed up against it. The top came to a point, and it was either attracting the blue lightning or it was creating it.
"You're my prisoner, Anwen," a familiar voice seethed and Anwen mentally groaned. Would this ponce ever leave her alone?
"Well, sort of," she quipped back. "You don't have my body and I'm still in control of my mental faculties."
"It won't take long until I break your mental defences," he said haughtily. "I will make you a quivering mess of a person. That's what this spell was designed for." Anwen turned to look at Lucius Malfoy and felt like vomiting. He lifted his wand and attempted to unleash a spell at her, but nothing happened. He tried again, and again and nothing happened. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything," Anwen said with a cloying tone and a smile on her face. "Who taught you mind arts? One of the first things you learn is that magic spells can't be cast on the mental plane."
"I learned from a master, my master."
"Yes, but from what I've learned, Tom was born with the skill to manipulate people. He's a natural Legilimens. What he might be able to do and what the rest of us can do are different things," Anwen explained. Malfoy's eyes flashed at the use of Tom Riddle's real name.
"You're still stuck in my domain. You are my prisoner. The things I will do to your mind—"
"Stop it," Anwen yelled, which shook Malfoy. "You're not going to do anything to my mind. You'll never find the way in." Much like the man who taught her Occlumency and Legilimency, Anwen's mind scape was well warded. Monty Potter's mind scape resembled the fortress that surrounded Linfred Hall as it had been hundreds of years ago. The parapets of the walls were armed with archers and there was a garrison of soldiers who could come to defend him. When he taught his children about how to defend their minds the summer before their fifth year, he made sure they were well protected.
Anwen's kitchen mind scape had a host of knives that would fly towards an attacker at the sign of intrusion. Fry pans of hot grease and kettles of boiling water would follow, and then an array of spices that would sting the eyes, burn the inside of the nasal cavity and mouth would beset the intruder – or at least give the impression all of this happened to the person's body. If they proceeded further, there were cookbooks filled with diversionary memories, her real ones were in locked cupboards and the ice box. There was a back door, however, something she learned to put in during her training as a healer. It looked like the mud room off the kitchen and three people knew how to enter it; the question was if they would remember it. As hard as she tried, however, she couldn't open it from the inside.
"Of course I'll find a way in. You're quite predictable. I'm assuming it looks like the Gryffindor common room or that paltry apartment your husband owns," Malfoy spit at her.
"You think I'm predictable. Your mind scape is a barren forest where once things were living and now is dead with a giant phallic symbol in the middle. A cold, hard substitute for your male member sticking out of the ground. If it's any indication, I suspect you're trying to convince yourself that yours is not so…inadequate." The obelisk really was ridiculously large.
Malfoy screamed and tried to curse her, but nothing untoward happened to the witch. The dome, however, did form a crack.
"Interesting," Anwen commented. If the dome could crack, then he wasn't stable. If she could create a fissure large enough, she could escape. "I must have brushed up against a raw nerve there," she muttered to herself. "Is it just that it's insignificantly small or is violence the only way you can rise to the occasion?" Sirius will love the memory of this, she thought.
"How dare you say that to me, you little bitch," Malfoy screamed and shook his wand at her. The only thing that happened was a crack forming just above her.
Anwen was certain Sirius was with her; he only left her side when he had to go to work. She began to chant silently a single word, "door". If she could get Sirius to hear her, then he could open the door and let her out. She wasn't sure what would happen to Malfoy, but she didn't exactly care either.
"Is your body inaccessible too or are you hanging out with your band of merry murderers and your half-blood leader?" she asked.
"That's not what he is!"
"It is absolutely who he is. His name is Tom Riddle. He went to school with Walburga and your dad. He was head boy and supposedly a very good student. Monty, my father, taught him. Then he disappeared for a while. He came back looking a bit less than human with a dippy, made-up name. Believe me he is neither a Lord in the wizarding world nor is he gentry. I should know."
"I heard about your little stunt with some of those who are weak minded –"
"They're not weak minded. They want to live."
"We will find them. There are ways of finding even those who are hidden."
"Like what you did? Who told you where to find the wards and how to dismantle them? Whose mind did you break into?" Anwen wondered.
"The information was given up freely," Malfoy boasted. This gave Anwen pause. Her chant continued, although she began to consider who could have given them up.
A&S A&S A&S A&S A&S
Outside of her body, James and Sirius noticed a quickening of Anwen's heartrate. They called Eva into the Black's bedroom, and while she could agree her heartrate was slightly elevated, there was still no sign of her magic or any consciousness within her. Sirius sighed as their friend returned to the nursery to check on the children, who were wildly out of sorts at Anwen's disappearance.
"I swear I can hear her," Sirius said.
"What do you mean?" James asked.
"It's like she's in this room, talking to me. The weird thing is she's only saying one word though; 'door'."
"You think my sister is telling you 'door'? Mate, I know you're freaked out about her being silent and all, but why would she tell you door?"
"No idea, it just must be an echo or something," Sirius mumbled before putting his hand to his head and looking at his wife. "She's got to come back to me."
"She will, she'll fight out of wherever she is."
"Yeah," the oldest Marauder said to his brother-in-law. James wasn't sure how he was supposed to keep Sirius' mood up when his own was plummeting by the hour.
Eva returned as the sun was setting to check on her friend. "Has there been any change?" she asked.
"Not since her heartbeat quickened a few hours ago," Sirius answered. "Weird thing is, I keep thinking I hear her saying door."
"What did you say?" Eva said as her head snapped to him.
"I keep thinking I hear Anwen saying 'door'."
"Bloody hell," Eva swore, something that made the two men look at her in shock. "We all swear, get over it. Anwen's back door, I completely forgot about it."
"Oh Merlin, so did I. Do you think she's in there? Stuck in there?" Sirius asked the bed as much as the others in the room. "How could I forget?"
"Someone want to tell me what you're talking about?" James asked.
"The back door to Anwen's mind. If she's trapped in her own head, we wouldn't register anything – magic, memories, brain activity – nothing. Sirius can you do it?"
"No," he muttered, "I left her in there."
"Sirius, you can't go into that guilt thing you do," Eva said. "James, snap him back to reality. I can get into Anwen's mind."
A&S A&S A&S A&S A&S
Anwen felt when the back door opened a crack and hoped that the fissures in the energy dome would be enough for her to leave. She enacted her emergency plan toward where Malfoy was stalking toward her and then ran toward the small anteroom off the kitchen where people left wet cloaks and muddy boots from being in the gardens and dove for the door. She was able to slide outside and slam the door shut.
Anwen's eyes fluttered open, the first thing she saw was her husband and brother, their heads closely together and whispering rather urgently. "Siri," she muttered and reached out her hand for him. Sirius turned, wonderstruck, and reached out and pulled her into a tight embrace.
