The Pains of Becoming

Christmas is not even over and here is Chapter 20! It must look like I spand Christmas on my own in a box with nothing to do, ha! But I am actually very busy with entertaining family and things, I wrote this chapter ages ago and it is thanks to Lilly Evins, who beta’d this one, that it is up now. Thanks Lilly!!





Chapter 20

A hole, dug too deep



Kirsty slept terribly that night. Her dreams were distorted with those memories, filled with their emptiness and silence. It felt as though it was swallowing her and overpowering her, she felt paralysed and drained.



Even when suddenly during Charms class her bracelet started heating up it could not get much of a reaction out of her. She ignored it until it burned so bad, that she distorted her face and finally snapped out of it. She pulled it off hidden under her desk and looked at it.



‘Port key at 5pm tonight.’



A shiver of exhausted excitement washed over her, she did not know whether to like it or not. As she dragged herself to her next class it dawned on her what this ment. She was longing to see him again and at the same time fearing it, she had enough reasons to. She focused on hoping for two things. First, she hoped he did not know anything about her having been discovered and secondly she hoped he was not giving her a new mission. She wanted to progress, she wanted to work for him, but as soon as she had a new mission Snape would know and stop her and then it would all come out. …Unless she really learned occlumency of course… but it seemed not a likely possibility, Snape had even told Dumbledore that she was apparently ‘seeking invasion’, even though she was quite sure that was everything else but true.



Her nervousness built up until it was finally five to 5 o’clock. She hurried down the corridor from her last class, no time to get changed, she had to look for a deserted place where no one would see her disappear. Around a corner suddenly appeared one of the people on her top list of individuals she did not want to meet at the moment. Harry Potter, framed by his two friends who supportively guided him up the corridor. The boy looked pale and sad in the face. Kirsty felt guilty and dropped her eyes to the floor. She was not sure what Dumbledore and Snape had told him. They could not have told him that she was the one who smuggled the box under his bed but who knew what information he had gotten by himself? He did not look well at all but Kirsty could not distract herself with this now. Any guilt that was creeping up on her she repelled by thinking how much she hated that boy-who-lived. He was making a face as though he nearly escaped death and his friends pitied him as though that was their purpose in life. He did not need her pity, he had more than enough of it.



She found an open broom cupboard and locked herself in, waiting for the pull of the bracelet.

She did not have to wait long and she lost the floor under her feet and shortly found herself dropping harshly on the cold, rough stone floor of the Death Eaters hall. Even before she could orientate herself she was pulled up by the arm.



“I’ve had enough. Someone tell Lucius to not have his halfblood friends portkey in and out of our secret location.”



“Leave her!” she heard another unpleasant voice say.



“If Lucius leaves his toy lying around, we might as well play with it” said another.



Her head was still dizzy from portkeying. Someone else now helped pulling her along. Finally she realised what was going on. It was Goyle’s father, who had her in the grip of his moist hands now, dragging her across the hall to where a few others were standing. They cornered her and started groping at her, one hand pulling on her collar, another hand gabbing her breast painfully hard, another creeping under her skirt. She squeezed her eyes shut and started to struggle, but there was no chance to get away from them.

She left her eyes shut hoping desperately they would just stop and disappear, she tried to bit a hand near her face but someone else pulled her head back and covered her mouth. She didn’t have a chance.



“I think you want to leave that” she suddenly heard a familiar voice say rather disconcerned.



She opened her eyes and spotted Snape standing in the back of the hall. He had just appeared out of a corridor. She held her breath.



“It’s not your business, Snape”, hissed one of the Death Eaters.



“Well no, but Lucius is just next door, you know he will be very unhappy if he hears about you touching his toy.”



They loosened their grips on her and one of them snarled: “And you are going to tell him, are you …traitor?”



“You know me so well, McNair” Snape only answered and McNair pushed Kirsty away from him. Snape made an impatient gesture wanting her to come over to him. She hurried over to him immediately. He did not wait for her and continued down a dark hallway. She hurried up to walk beside him.



“Thank you, Sir”, she muttered still shaky.



He did not answer. He seemed tense and pre-occupied.



“I did not know you would be here”, she said finally, as they quietly continued down the hall. Again he did not answer.



He stopped and motioned for her to go through the door first. She entered and saw Lucius standing by a window. But she could not see landscape behind it, for thick plants were growing in front of the window like a jungle. He turned his head to her. And she hurried forward and threw herself on her knees.



“Master.”



He eyed her slightly puzzled and then said: “Well, well, lets not be too dramatic.”



She hurried back to her feet. She had not tried to be dramatic, she was just so glad to see him again.



Snape spoke: “You should know that Goyle and McNair have taken a liking to her. Maybe she should not port-key into the hall anymore.”



“Thank you for your concern, Severus,” Lucius said in a mocking voice and then looked at Kirsty as he continued, “how about you? Have you fucked her yet?”



Snape sighed to make clear how he did not wish to go down that road again: “No, Lucius, I have not.”



“Just what is the matter with you?!”



“Nothing”, his dark eyes shifted to Kristy, “she is repulsive, is all.”



Lucius scoffed: “Hardly more repulsive than you, now is she?”



Snape only rolled his eyes: “Will you leave it alone, Lucius?”



Kirsty only followed their dispute with flushed cheeks, looking from one to the other and back.



“No,” countered Lucius, “are you saying she is good enough for me, but not good enough for you?”



“Could we possibly focus on the matters at hand?”



“Well, I have not seen my pet in a while, so if you don’t want her, you won’t mind…?”



Snape hesitated and gave Kirsty a look she could not interpret.



“I’ll be outside.”



Lucius only stared at Snape who turned and walked out of the room. He grabbed Kirsty by the hair and pulled her violently closer. She whimpered loudly more out of surprise than pain. But this was clearly his intention. For some reason he wanted to get some kind of reaction from her that Snape would hear before he left.



Lucius kept staring at the door Snape had left through and held her tightly by her hair.



“What have you done to the man, that he despises you so much?”, he asked.



She hesitated. She wanted to believe it was all because he was truly on Dumbledore’s side and it would simply not be right. But maybe she really was repulsive to him, he seemed so convincing.



But she had no time to think about it. Lucius pushed her against a chair so she had to kneel on it, bending and holding onto it’s back.



“Get yourself ready”, he growled. She could tell he was in a very bad mood. She tensed in expectation of something surely uncomfortable.



“I said get yourself ready!”, he repeated impatiently. She could not understand what he meant by that and he did not give her time to ask as he pulled her skirt up and her knickers down impatiently.



“Fine, if you insist on making it painful for yourself. –I don’t have the time today to play games.”



She gripped the back of the chair tightly as she heard him unbutton his trousers. An instant later he was pressing hard at her dry entrance. She gasped. She forced herself to breath, in order to make herself relax but the searing pain of his rough intrusion made her tense again. Yet she did not want to and simply could not object to him, so she embraced the pain and her fate and let tears fill her eyes. She muffled her whimpering and silent cries of pain in the back of the chair.



He forced himself deeper and deeper inside but then stopped suddenly and pulled back out.



“This isn’t working. Come here.” He pulled her back up towards him by her hair and pushed her across the room against the wall right next to the door. He pushed her face forward up against it so hard, her breasts got painfully crushed by the cold stonewall. He pulled her skirt back up and gripped her hips so hard she could feel him bruise her flesh. Then he forced himself back inside her, but this time even more violently than before. She let out a scream. He pushed in once more just as hard to make her repeat it.



“That’s it, my pet. I want him to hear you”, he hissed into her ear. She could feel his lips touching her neck and her ear. It gave her a comforting shudder, but then he pushed in yet again. He moved inside her, wanting to cause her more pain so she would scream and cry for him. She didn’t care that her Professor outside might be able to hear it. She gave Lucius those cries that he wanted from her. If it satisfied him to know he hurt her this way, than she would not hold back.



He kept whispering into her ear as he went on: “That’s my girl… feel me…. do you feel that?… you like it when I hurt you, don’t you, pet?”



His thrusts grew even harder as he came closer to his climax, they smashed her harder up against the wall. Finally he spilled into her with a hiss brushing her ear and stepped back from her. Almost in the same motion he grabbed her arm and pushed her towards the door.



“Tell him, we’re finished”, he said and tucked his clothes back in place. She looked back at him through her tear-blurred eyes. The pain inside her was still burning terribly. But she sensed he wanted her to show herself to Snape this way. She did not know why he was doing this, maybe only to tease him somehow, but maybe there was another reason too? He stared back at her fiercely and she turned quickly and stepped outside.



Snape was leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed. He looked at her indifferently. She knew she was a mess, her eyes puffed up and red from crying, her hair messy, her clothes crumbled and though he surely could not see that, her knickers were not where they were supposed to be, but probably lying somewhere on the floor in the next room. She stumbled into the corridor in front of him. The door fell shut behind her. She sniffed and uncomfortably pulled her hand through her hair and over her clothes. She could not look at him. Maybe Lucius simply got amusement out of humiliating her, maybe it was as simple as that and there was nothing more behind it. She didn’t care anyway. Snape neither moved nor said anything. He simply stood there. She sniffed again but did not quite know how to phrase what she was supposed to say.



“Finished?” He eventually snapped, his arms still crossed.



She didn’t know where to look or what to say. The pain was still there, pulling on her nerves. She bit her lip and tried hard not to break down now, it wouldn’t help anything, she thought. Why would she cry, she had no reason… there was no reason, and why now? How come it was again in front of Snape that she was about to cry? She bit her lip hard and heard him say, his voice threatening:



“Don’t! Not now!”



She breathed and tried to calm down and looked up:



“What is going to happen next?”



“What do you think?”, he replied, “Occlumency”.



She felt herself trembling again. She shook her head: “I don’t think I can…”



“Stop it!”, he said sharply and stepped forward and added more quietly but still with all the threat of his voice, “pull yourself together. This is not the time to cause a scene.”



“Do you really think, I will improve because we are doing this in front of him? You are making a mistake. I am doing what I can, it doesn’t matter if he’s watching or not.”



“Shut up already!” he hissed and hesitated, looking around, as though to check no one was listening in “this wasn’t my idea. Lucius wanted to see for himself how you’re progressing.”



“But I am not progressing!” she panicked.



“I said, be quiet! –I know you are not. Just pull yourself together and don’t make a scene. Leave the rest to me.”



“What do you mean?”



“What I said. Do not complain, do not cry, and do not attack me, no matter what happens and leave the rest to me.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her with him back inside, where Lucius was just draining a glass of wine by the fireplace.



“What took you so long?” he asked.



Kirsty looked at Snape, but he ignored Lucius question.



“Sit”, he told Kirsty and pushed her towards the chair she had been bending over before.

Snape stepped back from her and turned to unpack his tools. Lucius watched him with crossed arms, leaning casually against the wall. His eyes narrowed when he saw what Snape was unpacking:



“Merlin, what is all that stuff, Severus?”



“Tools” Snape answered without looking up.



“You will ask me before you put a mark on her, won’t you?”



Kirsty’s heart melted at the concern she heard in his voice.



“I won’t need them”, Snape simply replied. Lucius still had his eyes narrowed at the things Snape laid out on the table.



Half suspiciously and half curiously he asked further: “What are they for, exactly?”



“They help with legilimency if a more skilled occlumence is encountered.” He gave a brief glance at Kirsty, “she is not that far yet.”



‘Well, that was one good thing’, Kirsty thought to herself as her nervousness grew.



Lucius turned with a sudden dreamy smile: “You know this does remind me of the old days.”



“Naturally”, Snape commented without looking up. Lucius had started to smile at Kirsty as he continued to be in a slight dreamy state.



“You should have seen your Potions Master back then…”



“Leave it, Lucius.”



“I have never given you enough credit for your creativity, Severus.”



“I forgive you.”



“But we really did have a good time together. I got the girls and he had the best ideas of what to do with them…”, he turned to Snape, “though you did have a weird fixation for girls with red hair.. what was that all about?”



Snape had somewhat hurriedly selected the same wand as last time and ignored Lucius completely as he turned back towards Kirsty. At once Lucius seemed to snap out of his dreamy state. His eyes followed him carefully as Snape stepped towards Kirsty.



“Prepare yourself! Remember what I told you. Get hold of your emotions”, he ordered. She tensed, which was all she knew she could do.



“Legilimens!”



As the now familiar pain and chaos of memories faded she was once more pulled deep into darkness and terrible silence.



Her father was dropping her off at King’s Cross Station, looking bewildered at the wall that he saw another Hogwarts student with his parents disappear into. He looked at Kirsty, who was just 11 years old.



“I’ll just say good bye here, ok?”



“Ok”, she answered and they looked at each other in silence for a moment then he continued:

“Well, I hope you have a good time there.” He patted her shoulder, turned around and walked away from her. She looked after him, a bitter taste forming in her mouth. She picked up her trunk, turned to the wall and walked towards it. The memory stopped. Kirsty found herself back in her chair, feeling sick.



Snape lowered his wand.



“Well done”, he said. Kirsty only looked at him, wondering why he was praising her.



“What happened?” Lucius asked.



“She managed to block me out”, Snape said. Lucius looked concerned.



“But that took far to long, didn’t it? The Dark Lord would know everything by now.”



“Yes, well, I told you she’s not quite there yet. She will have to learn to hide certain memories smoothly, so the Dark Lord doesn’t feel that she is blocking something from him. It is not at all easy. We need more time.”



Lucius started moving around nervously: “Is there no way for her to learn faster?”



“These things take time, Lucius.”



“I am not sure we have time”, Lucius replied and his eyes fell on Kirsty. He stepped towards her, “you better make an effort, I don’t want to have to get rid of you.” His eyes told her this was a truly deadly threat. She looked down.



“Continue”, he said to Snape and stepped out of the way.



Snape looked at her as though to give her a moment to prepare then he pointed his wand at her again.



A moment later she was hit again by the spell. She screamed at the sharp pain in her head and felt herself falling through space of memories into another deep, dark one. She struggled, somehow trying to not go so deep and leave the darkness in her mind alone, but it was as ineffective as struggling against gravity in a free fall.



And there she was again, lying in her bed at home, in the dark, with those shadows on the wall and the rain hitting the window. She shook. She wanted to scream for Snape to get her out. There the knocking started feebly but impossible to be ignored. She could not scream, she did not know what it would look like to Lucius if she started panicking. But she needed this to stop now!



The knocking continued. She tried to concentrate. She had to block this memory from Snape and that way save herself from having to go through this again. ‘Focus…. control…emotions…’ she tried to remember what Snape had told her, but they were only words in her head, none of it had any power here. The knocking grew more desperate, she felt herself moving towards the door of her room. She felt the handle in her hand and pressing down. ‘I don’t have to do this. This is only a memory’, but she noticed she had no control over herself. She simply followed the tracks of her memory without being able to do anything about it. She wanted to scream, she wanted to struggle violently but she could not. She could not make Lucius believe that she was refusing or not at all progressing. She went downstairs. The rain hammered against the windows around her. The front door continued making those feeble knocking noises. She approached the door. She could only barely keep herself from screaming out loud. But she tired to concentrate on something else, on the terrible thing she was about to witness for the second time in her life. Her shaking hand touched the door handle and pressed down. She stumbled backwards as the door fell open towards her and her mother fell into her arms, blood on her clothes and skin mixing with rainwater. Kirsty stumbled further back, trying not to fall as her mother pulled on her in panic. She was shaking.



“Mum! Oh God! Mum!!”



Her mother seemed not to recognise anything. She stared, the white had gone red in one eye, her wet, blood soaked hair in her face and kept pulling on Kirsty’s jacket in a deadly reflex.



Kirsty was pulled out of the memory, back in her chair. She covered her eyes and sobbed painfully.



“What the-”, Lucius started and stepped forward.



Snape held him back: “It’s alright. It can have strong emotional side effects.”



“This is taking far to long!”, Lucius argued and walked pass Snape towards Kirsty who was still hiding her face.



“Snap out of it!” he shouted. She didn’t react. He grabbed her hair and pulled her hands away with the other hand so she had to look at him.



“Stop crying. This is by far not good enough! Do you hear me? Try harder! Or we are done, -you are done!” He let go and gave Snape another angry look then he stormed out of the room.



Kirsty stared in front of her, breathing deep and calmly now. She slowly put her hands down on the arms of the chair. Snape stood there looking at her. It was quiet for a long moment, then he said factually:



“We must not let our past dominate us.” She was barely listening.



“The events of your childhood have manifested in your subconscious in a very deconstructive way. Though there may be defences in your conscious there are none in your subconscious. You will pull me straight into related memories, with no chance to block me out. You have to find a way to come to terms with your past.”



“Ok”, she said absently, staring at the floor.



Snape seemed a bit unsettled by her strange calmness. He looked at her slightly worried, not sure what to do next. But eventually he spoke again:



“You may think it didn’t go well, but we archived to give the impression that you are improving but need yet more time. Lucius might not like it, but he will give us time. There is nothing else he can do. Do not worry. …I will see you back at Hogwarts.”



She nodded faintly without looking at him. He hesitated and left the room.



She was alone, still sitting there. She raised her head and looked to the window, it was getting dark.



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So, finally some more Lucius action! And I am afraid we are heading towards a rather dark next chapter! Please leave a review, always helps!