The Pains of Becoming

And one more just before the Christmas mayhem starts (well, to be honest it has already started and I am hiding just for a moment).

Well here we go, Kirsty on edge!

Thanks to NutsAboutHarry for betaing!

Have a happy holiday everyone and don’t forget to review if you can!







Chapter 19

A quiet Room



The next few days went by in a daze for Kirsty. She didn’t take note of a single word that was spoken during her classes and she only hoped Lucius would not summon her any time soon. She did not know how to hide from him that Dumbledore was onto her. She missed Lucius terribly. She felt so alone. And a part of her wanted to tell him what was going on, for she did not want to disobey him. But what use would that be? He surely would find it too much of a risk to keep her and abandon or even kill her.



Kirsty spent her days feeling miserable and not sleeping, going over and over in her head how things were going to go on now, when all she wanted was go back to being just Lucius Malfoy’s pet. He had looked after her, he had owned her, and she did not have to worry about anything but pleasing him. It had not been easy but compared to what she was facing now it felt cosy. She did not want to have to bother and worry about Azkaban and Snape boring into her mind, she only wanted to worry about pleasing her Master, and receiving his attention, no matter whether that was praise or punishment.



Snape walked past her once during potions, stopping and critically gazing into her cauldron, hesitatingly grabbing the spoon and stirring. She knew her potion was grey when it should be mint green and it was far too thick but she didn’t care. Snape didn’t seem to either. He dropped the spoon back into the cauldron and bent towards her, muttering quietly:



“I will expect you back here 8pm tonight” Then he walked off.



Kirsty looked after him, and then she quickly resumed stirring as though it was of use and pushed the thought aside that their meeting tonight would most likely result in another tortures lesson in Occlumency.



Sure enough, a few hours later Snape closed the door after her and she looked ahead to his desk and saw those tools laid out and a chair placed next to his desk. She stopped in front of it and glared.



“You’re not actually teaching me Occlumency, are you? You’re only plundering my brain for information.”



“You are quite mistaken. I do not need to plunder your brain. I already know what’s in there”, he stated approaching her and pointing to the chair in front of his desk, “sit down.”



Kirsty forced herself to follow his command but kept looking at him questioningly.



Snape turned away to look over his selection of tools on the desk and continued:

“Now that you know about me it is in our interest too that you learn to shield certain knowledge from the Dark Lord.”



Kirsty remained quiet. He chose the wand like last time and turned around to face her. She dared to look into his eyes for a second. He looked at her differently. He seemed even more personally removed from her, even colder. What she had identified some time ago as some sort of feeling of responsibility or care was not there. He decided not to speak much more either and pointed the wand at her. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut.



“Try to block me out. -Legilimens!”



Everything turned very quiet. It took Kristy a moment to realise what was going on. A memory was pulled forward and seemed to paralyse everything inside her. At first it felt like other memories and thoughts tried to pop up and distort it, which made her experience a strange jump in front of her inner eye. Then the empty memory was back. However, this emptiness felt strangely familiar and she didn’t like it. She wished something would come and fill the void. It was dark. She realised she was walking down the staircase of her parents home. The house was in complete darkness. Kirsty walked through the hall into the kitchen, touching the wall to find her way. As her eyes got used to the dark she saw someone sitting at the kitchen table. The man’s face was buried in his hands. He did not move.



“Daddy?” she said, as she remembered she once did years ago noticing how much younger she sounded.



“Daddy?” she asked again and slowly walked over to stand next to the man, who did not move. She laid her hand on his shoulder.



“Daddy?”



Her father did not look up. However, he finally said quietly: “Leave me alone please.”



Kirsty felt a very familiar sadness creep up her throat forming a knot, she removed her hand from his shoulder and turned to face the door she had just come through. Now Snape was leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.



“Here we are…you did not block me out. Did I not tell you…”



“You did not tell me how!” Kirsty hissed, “Now get me out of here.”



She felt a pull that made her dizzy and they were both back in the potions classroom. She felt sick.



“Pull yourself together”, Snape said irritably.



“I want you to stay out of my personal memories!”



“Then block me out. You are not even trying. In fact, you are opening up more and more. At first, you had the benefit of irritation. Your mind instinctively tried to shield itself from intrusion. Now you got used to it and you let me right into your deepest subconscious memories. I am not your counsellor Miss Flame, you are to block me from your memory, not invite me in!”



“How? Dammit, how?!”



Snape suddenly advanced at her and trapped her between his arms in her chair his eyes glittered angrily.



“Do not raise your voice against me, girl. You are lucky the Headmaster decided to do things a certain way. If it was up to me you would get to know me from a very different side.”



Kirsty remained quiet, but this time she did not look away she took all her frustration and anger and looked straight at him. And she did not wince when he stepped back and again pointed his wand at her.



“Focus! Take control of your emotions! Legilimens!”



Again it felt as though the spell hit a hole into her head and she heard herself scream just before she was pulled into her memory. But this one was a very recent one.



She found herself naked in front of her Potions Master, who stared at her. She heard Lucius’s velvety voice from behind her as he tried to talk her Professor into taking her body. In terrible embarrassment, she felt once more how wet and stimulated she was from Lucius treatment. Now it was even more embarrassing somehow. The real situation had passed; there was nothing else anymore to worry about but her terrible self-consciousness and shame. However, suddenly the memory changed as Snape did something he had not done then. He stepped one step closer and said factually:



“Please Miss Flame, it can’t get any more embarrassing than this, please try harder to block me out …”



Kirsty felt herself grow so angry; she thought she would explode if she did not do something. She screamed and leaped at him, within less than a second reality had her back and she felt her rage making her shake violently as she pulled on Snape’s robe as they both stumbled backwards. She was still not quite with it again when she felt his painful, hard grip on her neck and he pulled her away from himself and pushed her back. She stumbled backwards into her chair and caught her breath. She was still shaking. Her rage was still rushing through her blood and instinctively she dug her fingers into the arms of the chair. Through her raging eyes, she saw Snape’s face, dark and set as though it was made of stone. He walked towards her. She knew she would have been terrified if not her rage was completely in control of her, making her feel reduced to an angry animal.



“Leave me alone”, she whispered, her voice shaking audibly.



“I will not.”



“Then fucking tell me, how to block you out!”



“Do not swear.”



“STOP IGNORING ME!” Kirsty screamed as loud as her lungs would let her and in the next second she felt the back of his hand painfully hitting her cheek. Her body stopped shaking in an instant. It was quiet and she felt terribly exhausted and cold. She hugged herself and fixed her eyes on her knees.



“Don’t make me do that again”, he said, then pausing, “Pull yourself together you need to be in control of your emotions in order to practice Occlumency.”



She felt tears filling her eyes. She started blinking repeatedly to make them go away. She did not want to cry. She wanted to be safe, to go somewhere safe. She felt terribly alone. She had no one, absolutely no one to go to.



”You must be really good at it then… How am I supposed to control my emotions? You have no idea…you don’t understand…”



“I understand more than you can imagine”, Snape said.



Kirsty looked up at him.



Snape hesitated: “Like I said, if it was up to me we would do this differently, but it is not, so we will continue in this manner and you will submit to it.”



Kirsty was trembling, she had nothing left inside her, neither anger nor strength of any kind. She only felt small.



“I can not, Sir”, she said, longing to have her head of house back, instead of this cold interrogator.



He looked at her hesitatingly, then he said: “This is what Lucius wants you to do. I got the impression you were rather…. submissive to him.”



She looked back up at him.

“You can make fun of me as much as you want. He gives me what I need. You wouldn’t understand that.”



“You think so, do you?”



She remained quiet, what was that supposed to mean? She caught him still looking at her, what was he thinking? She could not catch anything recognisable in his black eyes.



Finally, he said: “What if I told Lucius you are not willing to learn Occlumency?”



“That’s not true. Maybe you are not good at teaching it.”



“I have never seen anyone failing so entirely at Occlumency as you.”



“What if I told Lucius that you are working for Dumbledore?” she countered daringly.



A hint of a smirk came over his face as though he enjoyed her attempt to challenge him

“I invite you to try.”



Kirsty remained silent; she knew it was too risky. Lucius would not believe her; he would punish her for telling lies, and even if he did believe her, she would give herself away. Lucius would not keep her if he thought that Dumbledore already knew. She felt crushed and lowered her head.



“What if I can’t learn it? What if I just can’t do Occlumency?”



Snape hesitated.

“Then we can not let you proceed. …Is that what you want?”



She shook her head quietly, knowing that it didn’t matter. She was doomed anyway.



“Then lets stop wasting time”, he said pointing the wand at her again, “Legilimens!”



Kristy was lying in bed in her room at home in York. Again it was dark outside. Heavy rain was hammering against the window. She was lying very much awake watching the shadows of the branches near her window dancing on the wall. There she heard a feeble but desperate knocking at the door. Her eyes widened. She jumped up from her bed as the knocking continued.



“No…Professor? Not this one! Make it stop!”, she said her voice trembling as she looked around the room for Snape. It was so dark she could not see him.



“Make it stop NOW!”



She had hardly noticed it, but she was pulled out of the memory back in her chair. The potions classroom seemed suddenly more than welcoming. Snape looked down at her quietly.



“You chose the memory, not me”, he said almost softly. She hugged herself.



“I would never recall that memory willingly.”



“That just shows how little in control you are.”



“I don’t give a damn about control”, she said her voice dangerously shaky again.



Snape hesitated.

“Obviously. Perhaps we really should continue this in the presence of Lucius Malfoy. Anyway, I think there is no point continuing today. You may go.”



Kirsty looked up at him as though to figure out if he really meant it. His gaze was rather indifferent. So she jumped up and left the classroom.



She ran all the way down the dungeon, she didn’t even care were to. She was running from her memory. She played with the thought of throwing herself out of a window, but there were no windows in the dungeons. When she was completely out of breath, she stopped and threw herself against a wall. She sank to her knees and broke into tears.



She sat there for a very long time, finally falling silent and only staring ahead. Then she heard voices. She listened closely and soon made out Snape talking. Quickly she got up and hid behind an old suit armour.



The voices came closer.



“It is a waste of time. She is not going to learn it, Headmaster. She doesn’t even understand the concept of Occlumency. I have to say I expected it. She is seeking invasion as supposed to fighting it off. It’s no use.”



“I need you to continue trying, Severus.”



“I’d rather not, Sir. It is not becoming her well.”



“What are our options? We can not risk exposing you.”



“We have to gain time. I will tell Lucius that she is progressing, that will keep him happy for a while, but after that...”



“Voldemort will not wait for very long.”



“No, he won’t. Eventually we will have to find another way. But this gives us time to think”, Snape paused, “I expect you have not forgotten what I told you.”



“No Severus, I haven’t… I haven’t.”



They both fell silent as they turned into another corridor before they even passed Kirsty’s hiding place.