angry
—— 1974 summer ——
She stood in the surf with her arms outspread, buried to her ankles in wet sand that she squelched between her toes. She'd had to wear a dress today, a worn white linen whose fraying hem danced about her knees in the wind. Her curls were tugged this way and that by the wind, and instead of lamenting the tumbleweed mess, she thought today it added an air of intrigue and enchantment to her. Yes, because today was a very special day. She took a deep breath and pointed her sand-buried toes, imagining instead she was on a craggy rock and swan-diving gracefully into the glistening waves below.
"I want to be a mermaid," Penelope Fawcett announced over her shoulder.
Not bothering to remove the arm slung over his shut eyes, her lazing brother replied, "I reckon you'd be fetching with scales."
Her bottom lip jutted out in an unconscious pout as she faced forward again. "I'd be a pretty one," she protested. "Like those drawings in that book of fairy stories Da has."
Laughter rang out in the wind, and she whipped her head around accusingly to see. Her sister Sorcha was dotting the moat of her rather extravagant sand castle (more of a palace, really) with seashells. "Drystan's just mad because he looks more like one of the trolls," she offered. "You'd make a lovely mermaid."
Spouted by such a standard of beauty, it was high praise to a gangly young girl that was still all sharp angles and too-long limbs.
The troll in question was perfectly at ease with this assessment and merely balanced his ankle on his upright knee. "Yes, and you're the spitting image of a harpy," he said in a very bored tone.
Pursing her lips briefly before the spread in a wicked grin, Sorcha launched her bucket full of sand straight at Drystan's head. Before the trail of sand could shower him, or the bucket collide with his head, he lifted his hand and batted it behind him without flinching. Raising himself to give his hair one good shake, he then lay down again with not much more than a grunt.
Only slightly put out, she slumped back and broke character long enough to wink conspiratorially at Penelope, who stood some feet away and was happy to be included in the joke. "Well, I see someone has been practising."
With his arm covering his face once more, Drystan replied, "Being a reserve doesn't mean I'm being a lump."
"Of course not," Sorcha disagreed, "even if you could be starting for Kenmare, but no, you're doing fine in Montrose, not being a lump." Dropping forward on her elbows, she looked thoughtful. "I reckon the only reason he didn't disown you after you turned them down was because he thinks this is the best opportunity for you to make an honest woman out of Odette."
"Please." Sounding vaguely pained, his partially-visible mouth twisted into a grimace. "Don't encourage him."
Cackling a little, she grinned. "There has to be some reason to stop him from marching to your manager's office and demanding to know just how far they've got their heads up their arses for not starting you." Cocking her head in a critical study of her brother, she shook her head and announced a moment later, "I still can't believe you won't even consider trying to make it work with Elsie. She's the only tolerable person you've dated."
"You appear," Drystan said blandly, "to be forgetting the part where she broke it off with me."
Huffing, she threw a shell at him which bounded off his chest. "I'm sure she was being noble, you pig. You were leaving, and everyone knew you were trying to play professionally."
"Well, and what of you?" he asked, the mildness of his tone was the only warning of his growing impatience with the conversation topic. His lazy movements in the sand took on the air of a patient snake waiting to strike. "Don't think I didn't see you shifting Tim Pepper's little brother. Copiously."
Her dignity unruffled, Sorcha shrugged one shoulder regally with her nose in the air. "Octavius and I are merely friends, you gossip."
To which Drystan made a rude noise and muttered, "Just like all the others, I suppose," causing Sorcha to gasp and lean over to tweak his ear with excessive use of her nails.
"What is that supposed to mean, you ja—!"
"—OW, Sorrie—don't make me—"
"—you're so high and mi—"
"STOP!"
Partly tussling, mostly hurling abuse at one another, Sorcha and Drystan broke off abruptly and looked in identical expressions of bafflement at their younger sister, with balled up fists, breathing hard, and looking a little wild in the eyes as she stalked towards them.
"This," she said, panting from sheer effort of containing herself, "is the last summer we'll ever have together and you're ruining it!"
Thoroughly taken aback, Sorcha sat up straighter and began to say, "Oh, Ducks—" but Penelope wasn't having any of it.
"Drystan is moving out and starting practises, and it's going to be your last year home before you'll be gone too, and then I'll be all alone, so this is it, a-and you—" she broke off, wiping impatiently at an angry tear that had escaped, "you're ruining it," she finished with much less heat than she'd begun, her shoulders drooping.
Sorcha reached up and dragged the resisting girl into her lap, hugging her firmly around the middle despite her protests. Drystan swung his legs over and pulled Penelope's feet into his lap, tickling the bottom of one tiny foot with it, making her squeal and giggle despite her temper. When she'd calmed down a little, Sorcha pressed her cheek to Penelope's.
"You know we're just being silly," she said. "And we still have the rest of our summer trip in Montrose, spending time with Drystan!"
Pulling gently on her little toe, Drystan added, "And then you and Sorcha get to go off to school together, so you won't have to say good-bye for a very long time."
"See? We're not going anywhere," Sorcha said firmly.
"But you will," Penelope sighed and lowered her gaze to her hands in her lap. "Summer always meant you would come home, and now it doesn't."
Drystan and Sorcha exchanged uneasy looks, before Drystan patted her leg. "Being at school will be different for you."
Nodding, Sorcha added, "You'll make lots of friends, mum and dad will owl you care packages, you can come find me whenever you like. And Drystan will write us all the time." Drystan looked immediately queasy and opened his mouth to modify the statement, but Sorcha aimed a square kick to his rib cage.
"Ouch," he hissed, rubbing the spot. "I mean, yes, I'll—write you all the the time, Pen."
Sniffling, Penelope dashed away at the drying tears on her face. "It's all right," she mumbled. "Yours are a bit boring, anyway."
A mixture of disbelief and amused coloured his expression as he said, "O-ho. Boring, am I? So I suppose we won't be having any need of these boring firecrackers I'd brought along."
Her face broke out into a smile as her eyes lit up, and she strained forward against her sister's arms. "Truly? You didn't forget?"
"After ten years of tradition? As if we could," Sorcha laughed, tugging on an errant curl.
"Happy Midsummer!" Drystan declared, to which they echoed, "hear, hear!" Then, grasping the sides of her head, Drystan pulled Penelope to him and kissed her smack on the forehead. "And happy birthday, Ducks."
And as she and her sister curled up under a blanket, watching their brother line the firecrackers up on a beached log as the sun began to set, she thought it just might be at that.
stunned
—— 1980 fall ——
Penelope Fawcett liked to come to breakfast in the Great Hall early. She believed it gave students the opportunity to approach her if there were matters they wished to discuss, and she took her Head Girl privileges very seriously. The one flaw in her logic was that there were significantly fewer students awake and breakfasting when she sat down, so the time more often than not turned into a moment of solitude before a busy day stuffed full of N.E.W.T. level classes. Being that she applied herself very diligently to lessons and studying, she did not find them noticeably more challenging than the material last year, and she thought that was good progress for being half-way through term. She was positively determined to improve from Exceeds Expectations to an Outstanding in History of Magic, and Professor Binns sounded quite surprised when she'd approached the subject of tutoring.
No, these morning interludes really gave her a time to catch up on her post, read over homework, and skim the headlines of The Daily Prophet when she didn't have time to read it in-depth. Though Penelope was able to admit to herself she avoided making the time, as even the headlines were horribly depressing of late.
Today, she was just a bit more delayed to breakfast than usual, but that was all right. She'd passed a terrible night and the lack of sleep had made her sluggish in her morning routine. Though the Hall was fuller, there was still plenty of room at the Hufflepuff table, and she sat, noticing with a shiver how bleak the ceiling looked today. As she idly served her plate, she flipped through the post with one hand, noticing a letter from her mother. It contained the usual, complaining about the antics her father got up to, admonishing Drystan for never writing, cooing over some wonderful feat Stephen had picked up. Her mother was a very doting grandmother, despite being initially horrified that she was to be called such at so young an age. The letter went on to say they missed her at Stephen's first birthday party, which still upset Penelope that she hadn't been able to attend. Her mother promised pictures a-plenty, to be sent in further letters.
Smiling, Penelope tucked aside the letter by her plate and thought about how excited she was for term to end so she could see them all. Buttering a slice of toast, she unrolled the Prophet and skimmed the headlines as usual, hoping today would report something less bleak than all the days before it. The front page story above the fold was about the Minister, but it was a story under the fold that caught her attention and her sympathy. FAMILY OF POPULAR QUIDDITCH STAR SLAIN, it read. Penelope shook her head, feeling saddened at the state of their poor world as she read on to see Drystan Fawcett. The piece of toast dropped from her hand. Declan. Dione. She choked on the pile of ash in her mouth. Sorcha. Wesley. Stephen. Spots swam in front of her eyes and she keened. This couldn't be right. Cornfoot & Trimble. She was hallucinating. More things popped out at her, as if by aim, such phrases as bodies found, or early this morning. Her hands were shaking as she strained to focus on the last paragraph. Unforgivable Curses, it said. She shot up on unsteady legs and retched horribly onto the table.
Penelope didn't know why the paper said those things, because they weren't real. They weren't even possible. There was a letter from her mother, sitting right there next to--next to her breakfast plate.
She'd ruined her letter.
Penelope vomited again, reeling away from the table on unsteady feet. There was a commotion, she could hear it buzzing like bees in the back of her ears. Everything was strange and echoing, as if she'd jammed a fish bowl on her head. She could not take her eyes off where the newspaper had been, the newspaper full of lies and impossibilities.
There was a terrible noise starting to grate on her nerves, a high-pitched, virulent-sounding rattle.
It was coming from her.
Blinking, she jerked her gaze away from the dreaded spot.
Everyone was staring.
The insufferable noise in the background got louder, things were being said, shouted, hurled at her, but she didn't hear. She didn't understand. She was swaying backward, bumping into something, something was touching her, she was going to throw up again, she couldn't see, there were black spots.
FAMILY OF POPULAR QUIDDITCH STAR SLAIN.
She turned and ran as fast out of the hall as her feet would carry her.
traumatised
—— 1981 summer ——
She ran as fast as the blindness allowed. Penelope could hear the pursuit of the monsters behind her, causing her to double the speed of her step, crying out when she tripped over unseen obstacles or her own feet, scrambling to stand up again to avoid being caught by the horrifying creatures whose scrabbling footsteps were never far behind. Her pace slowed as her run turned into half-dragging herself along the wall, running her hands over it sightlessly, searching for a door, an entryway, an intersecting hall, anything to put her out of their path.
When she grasped a door handle, she yanked it open and threw herself inside, slamming it shut as she fell against shelves and bounced back against it, crumpling to the floor. It was small and littered and barely contained her, yet she still curled into a tight ball and clapped her hands over her ears, murmuring to herself over and over as she rocked, trying to comfort herself with the vibrations of the sound in her throat. She shrieked when something hurled against the door, followed by vicious growling, snarling, snapping as they tried to claw their way in, all the while she screamed for someone, anyone to help her. When at last the sounds died away, she was too petrified to notice, to even move. And when, an aching eternity later, the heavy stomp of footsteps made their way closer and closer to her closeted asylum, she cowered in renewed terror. The door creaked open, causing her to flinch away from the sound with a garbled scream stuck in her throat.
"Are you still hiding?" A voice asked in amusement. Relief flooded her. She knew that sound. In her sea of bleary, nightmarish confusion, it was like an anchor that promised to tow her to shore. That voice would help her, that voice would save her from the terrible things that chased her in here.
"There were beasts," she croaked into the crook of her elbow, hands fisting in her own hair. A memory struck her then, of her huddled in a corner for hours, just sitting quietly and combing her fingers through her hair until a bare patch started right behind her ear. She didn't know if it was real or not. "I had to be in here to be safe from them."
It was so important he see how terrified she was, so he could help her. "I know," and it sounded so pitying, so sympathetic, so understanding of the terror she'd just been put through. Wouldn't he help her? Stay with her, to protect her? "And you've been so good. If you come downstairs, you'll get a reward." But the thought of moving from the safe little haven she'd nearly killed herself to find was anathema to her.
"Don't!" she gasped, feeling the panick squeezing her lungs tight. "Please let me stay here," she begged in her thin voice, desperation making her bold enough to slide her hand along the floor until she grasped something, his shoe, and held fast. "It's not safe. They're going to hurt me."
The voice from above exhaled tiredly, the boot she glommed on to with her spindly fingers easily breaking her grip as it was raised. "You are supposed to play nice, Penelope. You said you wouldn't fuss." The ripe displeasure in the voice had her trembling, because the last thing she wanted to do was upset him. "Do you want me to leave you by yourself in here?" She blanched, because she knew for certain if he left, those horrible creatures with the red eyes would find her and she'd be defenseless, all alone. Vulnerable. She had memories of their slimy hands running along her skin from when they'd trapped her before. It couldn't happen to her, not again, not when she was so close to being safe.
"No," she choked, rocking her form, still splayed awkwardly on the floor, back and forth, "no, please don't leave me alone with them!"
"Then be a good girl and get up." It was an order, cold and petulant.
She wanted to make him happy, she wanted to be a good girl and deserve these rewards, she did, but her legs and arms simply would not work. All of a sudden, she couldn't feel them, not when she tried to waggle her fingers to see if they were still there, nor twist her legs until a cramp seized them. Her breath came out in harsh, shallow pants, trying to keep the crushing anxiety at bay, for if she didn't have hands and feet, how could she keep herself safe? Finally making a noise of disgust, he bent down and grasped her around the upper arm, not caring about the tightness of his grip or the hair caught in it, as he pulled her up roughly. Her legs immediately gave way and she slumped against him heavily, the blood slowly dripping feeling back into them. "There. Do you see what happens to you when you don't take your draught?"
Because the vexation of his tone was palpable and had her recoiling, she nodded against his shoulder. "Yes," she mumbled meekly. "I'm so sorry."
The action must have pleased him, for he softened towards her in a way that made her heart sing, tucking a scraggly curl behind her ear. "I know you are. You see why you mustn't fuss? You know how much harder you make everything when you do that. Then I can't protect you."
Such a thought had her letting out a moan like a wounded animal, at how foolish she could be to endanger both of them like that, to complicate the job he had of protecting her. She resolved right at that moment to change, to be better, and told him as much in her garbled manner, still stumbling along on not-quite-proper legs.
"What a sweet girl you are," he said, beaming evident in his voice. And she knew at that moment that she was safe from the terrible things that wanted to coil around her in the darkness.
