I Was Younger Then

Our Adventure Awaits

Hey ya'll! So glad you've been enjoying A NICE SWEET SNAPE, isn't he just lovely when he wants to be? 😍 This chapter is actually twice as long as my normal chapters, it's 10k words smh.... that's why it took me so long to write it, sorry! I had to think through some important stuff, which also contributed to the delay, but I think I got it all worked out and I really hope you like this I think it is one of my favorites, for Penny. She deserved this, needed this, but I won't say more.Happy reading!

******

Life at grimmauld place was a haze of drowsiness and noise. With so many people staying in the house as well as all the members of the Order who came and went as often as they did, there was never much quiet to be found, but Mrs. Weasley did her best to keep the others away from Penny, a task that was made much easier when the others discovered Snape was staying with her. Apparently, not even Fred and George were game enough to break the rules with him watching.

That did not mean, however, that any of them had given up, and according to Harry, all of them, especially Ginny, had been hounding him about her. Though he didn't outright say it, Penny could tell by the tone of his voice that he thought Penny should speak to Ginny, a prospect Penny had complicated feelings about. In truth, she'd been avoiding the pretty girl. What was Penny supposed to say? How was she supposed to act? She could not just pretend, go back to the ease with which she moved through her life before Voldemort had changed it all.

Everyday since waking, Penny stood before the mirror in the locked bathroom and uncovered her chest to expose her mutilated body. The longer Penny stared at it, the more loathsome it and her became. Like a reel at a picture show, Penny relived again and again being pinned to the floor as the hands of the man she trusted with her life were forced to carve the vile thing into her. The worst part being, how, in some twisted way, it made Penny feel closer to Snape despite his part. This secret of theirs, it coiled around them, threatening to strangle the life from them if they resisted. And yet she found it a comfort, not being alone, that someone else knew exactly what it'd been like at that moment. Or maybe it was because the truth made them both feel somehow less—the property of something grotesque—for Penny, something to be pitied and for Snape, someone to be accused. It was a truth that when held close, naturally pushed others away because it was now a part of Penny—forever— a part she could not and did not want to share.

In what reality would Penny be able to keep this from Ginny? Not only would it be impossible to never take her shirt off again without questions, but Penny believed that staying in a relationship with something so large between them that would require her to lie was unfair to Ginny, and hurting the girl was not an option. Whatever the answer may be, Penny was terrified and confused, and she knew Ginny already had enough on her plate since Mr. Weasley had nearly died and was still staying at Saint Mungo's. So Penny did what she did best and avoided it, all the while wondering how she ever got sorted into Gryffindor when she was such a bloody coward.

A welcome distraction to her conundrum came in the form of Lupin's proposed trip, something that lifted Penny's spirits so much that Snape could not even bring himself to argue about it, or maybe he just conceded because he had to make his leave, Penny assuming he was summoned by the Dark Lord but too afraid to ask.

"You're not taking her like that," Snape said to Lupin, his typical sneer returning now that he seemed to have caught up on sleep.

"No, I don't imagine it'd be wise. I was thinking more of something like this," Lupin replied, waving his wand over Penny's head.

"Hey! What'd you do?" Penny demanded, looking up at Lupin, whose eyes were glinting mischievously.

"You're a little too recognizable with that beautiful hair of yours."