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The sight of her hands heedlessly scraping over the broken glass spurred him into action. "Stop—ju—stop," he said, trying to be gentle, wanting to be gentle, but the rough, breaking of his voice overcame it. He took the roving hands into one of his, holding her by the slim wrists as he hastily pulled out his wand with the other and did away with the shards.

Derek felt unclean, but he didn't understand why. Yes, his sister was living in absolute squalor, but it wasn't a cleanliness that meant hygiene; it was almost a feeling of violation. A desire to scrub and scourge his skin until he well enough drew blood. There was bile in his throat and his eyes burned a little and he did not understand why. There was that feeling that something was horribly wrong, but he just didn't know what.

"Why is it like this?" he asked, harsher than he'd intended, but being entirely unable to help himself because there was something wrong with his sister and he didn't know what. He gave her wrists a shake as if to punctuate his demand, but in reality it was because his own hands were beginning to shake uncontrollably. "Dianna, answer me!"