The Pains of Becoming

Thanks MaryJane for reviewing! It was very interesting what you had to say and I answered in the review section. (Will e-mail you back soon as well, all the holidays got in the way.)



Here is the new chapter, a rather dark one! And guess what, Lupin (another favourite of mine!) and Tonks have guest appearances!)



Thanks to Lilly Evins for betaing again!



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Chapter 21

An Attempt at Erasing



Kirsty held on to her seat as the nightbus stopped abruptly to pick someone up or drop someone off. She wasn’t quite sure how she had gotten on it. Lucius had not come back after Snape had left and eventually she had left the room and had found her way out. She had no idea were she was and before she could figure it out the nightbus for the stranded witch or wizard had picked her up. She had told them where she was going to, now she was not so sure anymore what she had told them. It wasn’t Hogwarts she had asked for. She felt strangely funny, -as though she had not quite reappeared completely from her memory. And yet she felt so focused, her mind set on one particular thing. But everything else around it was blurry, and impossible the get hold of.



She concentrated on what controlled her mind, because as soon as she looked out of the window and saw the darkness with it’s random lights run by, she felt fear, that terrible fear of being alone in a big world with no one to save her. She looked straight ahead, her mind set on what she had to do.



The bus stopped again. Kirsty had felt it before it happened and she held on to the seat as others fell forward. The spotty conductor came over to her and motioned her off her seat:

“York, Charlotte Lane!”



Kirsty hesitated and got up. She faced the conductor and looked him straight in the eye. He turned quiet and stepped backwards, and watched her as she walked pass him and got off the buss. The next time she turned her head to look behind her, the bus had already disappeared.

As she looked back across the street she could see the sun coming up and the pitch black night slowly lightening up into a cold blue.



She turned again and looked ahead, down Charlotte Lane. She started walking, her gaze set ahead. Her hand clutched around her wand inside her cloak. She had pulled up her hood for it was cold, and she thought it better not to be identified easily by anyone. She continued down the street, again and again turning back to the sunrise, as though she was running a race against it.



Finally she stopped, and hesitated, with her feet stuck to the pavement. Slowly, almost with fear she turned to the house next to her, Number 61.



It was a simple house, that blended in with all the others, but not to her. She walked towards it and pulled up the doormat. She knew of the spare key that was placed there in case someone locked himself out. She had used it several times before, when she went out late and her father forgot and locked her out accidentally. She opened the door quietly and entered. She looked around in the dim light. It seemed the house looked exactly the same as it always did in the last years, -like no one actually lived there. Sterile, and overly tidy, like in a display. A shudder came over her as she received a flashback from her recent memory, standing by the door. She quickly looked up the staircase and walked up, careful not to miss a step in the dark. Stepping on the upper floor she clutched the wand in her robe tightly again. She walked towards the end of the corridor. There was what used to be her bedroom on the right, now her father had redecorate it as a guestroom, not that he had any guests that stayed over night, except for her once in a while. But he had wanted to turn it from the “childish playground” as he called it into a hotel-like, impersonal bedroom.



And straight ahead was her parents‘ bedroom…. Her fathers‘ bedroom.



She opened the door carefully. She was uncomfortable doing so. When she had been scared at night as a child and she had knocked on her parents bedroom door to ask for reassurance her father often had just asked her to leave, he had been annoyed for he had to get up early in the morning.



But now when she opened the door, her father was sleeping deeply. She walked further in and remained at the foot of the bed, watching him. She didn’t feel anything.



Suddenly he awoke with a fright, somehow he had sensed the figure standing there, staring at him.



“Kirsty!”, he gasped touching in the dark for his glasses and putting them on, “what…what are you doing here? What’s going on?”



“What’s going on? You want to know?” she asked with the voice of a stranger.



“What’s the matter with you?” he asked and sat up to be able to see her better, “what…”



“What’s the matter with you”, she replied robotically. Her father hesitated as he touched for the night-light. She pulled her wand and pointed it threateningly at him.



“Leave it dark!” he froze, staring at her “It was dark when mum died…. But you wouldn’t know. You weren’t there.”



“What? What is the matter, Kirsty? What are you doing? What are you pointing that thing at me for? What do you think you are going to do with it?”



“I would explain it to you dad, but I don’t think you would understand… you would not listen, you never did”, she lowered her wand a bit as she started to think, “maybe I am to blame, too. I never made you listen, did I? I choose the easy way, like you, keeping quiet, trying to see it the way good people do. Things have been hard, it was simply too much to ask….”



He reached for the light again, but her eyes shot back to his face and her wand pointed back at him



“I said, leave it!”



He looked at her hesitating: ”What do you want?”



“I want to please my Master.”



“Your…”



“-Master.”



“I need to learn Occlumency for him.”



“Occ…-what?”



“I told you, you wouldn’t understand. I have to find a way to come to terms with my past.”



He pulled a mocking face: “What have those cloaked monkeys put into your head?”



“Mum was a ‘cloaked monkey’ and I am too. And you are a great example why we loathe and hate muggles.”



“Don’t call me that, I am your father, I don’t deserve that.”



“You don’t? You deserve everything that happens to you.” She pulled back her wand:



“Avara..!”



“Expelliamus!” another voice shouted from the open door and Kirsty’s wand was blown out of her hand and smashed the window behind her as it was blown threw.



Kirsty turned her head to the door in utter shock. Remus Lupin, her ex Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had his wand pointed at her. His eyes were wide and awake. Another person came hurrying up the hall and appeared next to Lupin, it was a girl, a few years older than Kirsty, with purple hair and sparkly warm eyes, though now she looked tense.



“Kirsty Flame”, Lupin said carefully, “it’s over. It’s alright. Professor Dumbledore sends us.”



“Careful Remus, she might be disarmed, but we can’t know what state she is in, and what Malfoy has taught her”, said the girl behind him.



“You’re alright, Kirsty?” Lupin asked carefully and stepped closer.



Kirsty was confused. It suddenly all seemed so surreal, that her teacher would look at her with those cautious eyes and threaten her with his wand. What did he think was she capable of?



“Dumbledore sends you. Why?” she asked, as though nothing was wrong. Her father looked back and forth between Lupin and Kirsty.



“He is worried you might do something you would regret later”, he paused. Kirsty only started, “he asked me to come and get you … to take you home.”



“Home?”



“To Hogwarts.”



“People like me do not go to Hogwarts. You are going to take me to the ministry.”



“No. That is why Dumbledore asked me to follow you. Dumbledore wanted to make sure the ministry doesn’t get you. He wants to help you. Come with us. Everything will be ok when we get back to Hogwarts. Trust me”. She hesitated and her eyes fell back on her father, “Kirsty, you are not a bad person”, Lupin said quietly.



Kirsty looked into her open palm as though she was wondering where her wand had gone, then she looked back at her father.



“Yes, I am”, she said and stared back up at her father, “I want him dead.”



Lupin stepped a big step towards her, his wand still raised: “But you didn’t kill him.”



She only looked at Lupin and then down at his outstretched hand. She wanted to take it.



“Who are you?” asked her father suddenly, “What the hell is going on here?”



Lupin kept his eyes on Kirsty: “I am sorry about this. Your daughter went through a difficult time. But Professor Dumbledore will help her.”



“I’m her father! What is wrong with her? Why do I not know about it?”



Lupin hesitated and kept a careful eye on Kirsty: “I am not sure. I am only acting on Dumbledore’s orders. I am supposed to get her back to Hogwarts.”



Her father jumped up out of bed: “Well, I am coming with you! She looks terrible! I want to know what has been going on!”



“Kirsty?” Lupin reached out his hand a bit further. Kirsty looked at it for another moment. Something inside her wanted to rebel, but a far greater part wanted to take his hand. She had always liked Professor Lupin when he was a teacher at Hogwarts. He was a werewolf and she liked to imagine that they had something in common, that they both were outsiders. She remembered when he left, she locked herself in the storage room and cried and imagined she could leave with him and together they would travel and go somewhere where nobody knew them. She did not deny it to herself, she had had a childish crush on him, but then so had many other girls in school.



She took his hand, it felt nice. She stepped over to him.



The girl with the purple hair walked over to the broken window “Sorry about that”, she said to Kirsty’s father and leaned out of the window, holding her wand down into the dark: “Accio wand!” Kirsty’s wand flew back out of the dark into the girls hand and she pocketed it. She turned back to Kirsty’s father: “Well you better get dressed if you are coming with us…. Unless muggles travel in pyjamas, …do they Remus?”, she turned to Lupin.

Lupin looked unsure but Kirsty’s father answered the question by pulling the jeans lying on the chair next to the bed over his pyjamas. When he nervously followed the others out of the room Kirsty gave him a disgusted but similarly confused look.



But the girl with the purple hair distracted her as she whispered into Lupin’s ear: “She seems very confused. Keep your wand ready, just in case.”



“So, how are we going there? To uhh, the school, Hogwarts or whatever.”



The girl held out her arm and Kirsty’s father stumbled backwards in shock as the night bus appeared out of nothing.



“By nightbus”, the girl explained unnecessarily.



As they got on the bus Kirsty’s father tried a little to hard to look like he found all of this very normal, the many levels, the seats that rolled around chaotically, the strangely dressed witches and wizards. Kirsty watched him out of the corner of her eye as she made a point of ignoring him and happily sat next to Lupin, holding on to his arm.



After about half an hour her father once made an attempt to talk to her, leaning forward and asking her: “Kirsty, what is going on with you?” She ignored him. She put her head on Lupin’s shoulder instead. The girl with the purple hair, who sat next to Kirsty’s father looked at the picture before her bewildered and critical, but did not say anything. Kirsty felt safe and at peace right now, she was not sure why, but it felt like as long as she was on the bus with Lupin, on their way down the anonymous, unfamiliar streets in the dawn nothing else mattered and she dreaded the moment they would arrive.