𝙏𝙒
ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴏʟʟᴏᴡɪɴɢ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪɴᴄʟᴜᴅᴇꜱ ᴛᴏᴘɪᴄꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀꜱ ᴍᴀʏ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴜᴘꜱᴇᴛᴛɪɴɢ. [ꜱᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ,ꜱᴍᴏᴋɪɴɢ&ɪᴍᴘʟɪᴇᴅ ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ᴀ ʙɪʀᴅ]
*
Lilith wasn't having a very good day. Glares and snarky remarks seemed to be following her everywhere she went or people seemed to be ignoring her completely.
Rumours were flying around as to how Sirius Black had gotten in, almost all of them referring back to her in some form or another– whether it was Lilith telling him how to get in or giving him a potion to turn into a flowering shrub, according to Hannah Abbot.
Then there were the first years from magical families accusing her of being a dark sorcerer, muggleborns hiding from view as she walked past after being told that her father killed twelve muggles, and the teachers keeping their eyes glued to Lilith's every move.
In lessons people were staring at her warily, as if expecting her to brandish her wand and summon Sirius Black out of nowhere and kill them all. During meals accusing glances were thrown her way and she wanted it to stop. She didn't ask for any of it yet she was being punished in a horrible, sick sort of way.
She wished, simply, to just disappear, vanish out of thin air so slowly that no one would notice that she had even left. No one had noticed (if they had, they didn't mention it) when she didn't appear in herbology on Friday; or maybe they were just too scared to point it out to Professor Sprout.
No teachers ever went round the back of the school- there was no need- making it the perfect place to do things you shouldn't. It was a dank and lonely place , cigarette butts decorated the floor amongst the strangled weeds, dead flowers and dead grass, gravel and pebbles. Many students had sat where Lilith was, they too had sat there alone, thought the same things and smoked the same cigarettes.
Lilith sat alone, taking a puff from one of the cigarettes she found in a half empty packet that was on the floor next too her, slightly damp from the rain. She had never smoked before. She always thought it was bad; that was until she had felt the relief of taking a slow drag and watching the smoke swirl in mesmerising patterns in front of her.
She coughed the first couple of times, but soon got used to the feel of the toxic air coming from her. Her shoulders ached and her mind was whirring with uncontrollable, whistling voices.
She spent the next two hours she should have spent in a double herbology lesson sitting on the floor, knees bent towards the gloomy November sky where a lonely magpie flew past, alone.
She puffed out a whirl of grey smoke and watched it morph into a swirling cloud of nothingness as the minutes ticked by.
A thought came to her. Ever since Merlin had told her about who she used to be, she had searched and dived into ancient books to find out about Mordred and Arthur. A tome she found (in the restricted section) held nothing of Mordred, but did hold ancient spells and rituals. Old magic.
"Hors, beride tha heofinan." She recited, watching the cloud of smoke morph into the shape of a horse. She watched it, a thin smile curling on her lips, a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. It was the first bit of wandless magic she'd done, even if it was as simple as manipulating something so malleable. She couldn't help but feel a bit better.
She sighed, watching the horse fade away into thin air; oh how she wished it was that simple to leave. But she knew it wasn't.
She stood up, getting slightly dizzy from the sudden movement, stomped on the cigarette and walked slowly back to the castle so she wouldn't be late for potions.
She was quite oblivious to the shaggy black dog that watched her from afar with longing eyes– eyes that longed to see her without keeping it a secret forever.
To cap off Lilith's absolutely brilliant day, Professor Snape had summoned her to his office after school. His office could have possibly been the most miserable place in all of Hogwarts.
So there she stood, awkwardly wringing her hands together, "I didn't do anything."
Snape stared for a moment before sighing irritably, "You are not in trouble, Black." he said, rolling his eyes, "Do you know anything about occlumency?"
Lilith sighed in relief, "Yes," she said hastily.
He raised his eyebrows, "I believe you need to place barriers at the forefront of your mind," he began monotonously, "With Sirius Black on the loose, your mind may be subject to attacks or intrusions. Professor Dumbledore thinks it will be, should we say, difficult to protect yourself but I believe you to be capable." He stood up from behind his desk and walked across the dark and depressing office.
"In these lessons I will attempt to penetrate your mind. You will progress to being able to do so whilst your mind is occupied, to the point where permanent barriers are in place ." He picked up his wand, facing Lilith, "but we must start with the basics. Legillimens!"
Before Lilith could react, Her vision was plunged into complete darkness before a bright light flashed before her eyes and a scene was played in front of her.
Lilith, about six years old or so, was curled up on the bed, the very same that she still slept on at Clem's Group Home. Her nimble fingers were fidgeting with the long sleeves of her polyester pyjamas. Moonlight was seeping through the blinds, bathing her with stripes of white light.
She was crying silently, but why? Nothing was happening to her– on the outside. Only Lilith knew why she was crying, in fact, as she looked over the scene, it was difficult to recall exactly why. But six year old Lilith had tears streaming down her cheeks, snot running from her nose and whimpers falling from her lips.
The scene slowly faded to another. There was snow this time, and she looked a bit older– around ten or eleven. She was in the park forest, standing next to a chubby ginger boy who had a nerf gun in his hand. The boy was hunched over an injured bird he had shot with one of the rubber topped bullets from the gun he had gotten for Christmas, Lilith was standing, a black wool hat perched on her head and fingerless gloves doing a poor job at keeping her fingers warm as they were beginning to turn an irritated sort of red.
The bird was squealing in the snow, it's wing bent at a strange angle. The boy had shot it, just for a laugh, he said, wanted to try out his present, he said. Now it was suffering. It wasn't worth saving, it would die painfully either way.
The ginger boy was sniffing, Lilith had accused him of crying a few seconds prior but he had said it was allergies, because big boys don't cry.
She was watching him seriously, "kill it."
"W-what?" The boy had stuttered, looking up at this devil child, "W-what d'you mean kill it?"
Lilith narrowed her ebony eyes at him, "Put it out of its misery." She folded her arms, "Unless you're too yellow to finish what you started."
The boy said nothing, his cheeks rosy and stained with his fat tears. Lilith looked over her shoulder, spotting a stone large enough to do the job and bringing it back.
"Fine, if your going to be a wuss, I'll do it."
They boy had quickly stepped back, eyes wide with horror as he watched the crisp, white snow turn a horrible crimson red.
"You're a monster!" And he turned away, running from the devil child who had ruined something so perfect and pristine with bright, ugly spatters of sickly scarlet.
Her professor shouldn't be seeing this, he was shocked, startled, for he didn't expect anything near this unsettling and he had a feeling, a feeling, that this wasn't the worst.
She tried to push him away, she really did, but she couldn't. Severus knew he should have stopped but a selfish part of him wanted to discover what Dumbledore had really meant about her being troubled. He knew it was an invasion of her privacy, gosh he would have been fuming if the roles were reversed, but he desperately wanted to know more.
Memories flashed by so fast you would have had to have been concentrating completely to see them properly.
Jumping up from nightmares, the nightmares, paper rounds, summers, Christmases, birthdays, running through the woods, walking along the road, buying food, cooking meals. They sped by so fast until suddenly the whirring stopped, the spinning halted, the dizziness ceased.
A sole memory was being showcased, visible to both sides of the mirror. The light was unnaturally bright, memory Lilith was squinting, it appeared to be late night or maybe very early morning. She was hunched over the bathroom sink in the children's bathroom at Clem's, her shoulders wracking as she sobbed silently. As a child she had always cried loudly at nighttime, hoping for someone's attention, but now she cried as quietly as possible hoping that no one would hear her.
She tried to control the sobs that left her, she tried so hard to stay silent, to bottle it all up because she knew it would be better overall; she wouldn't be weak. As she looked herself in the mirror again, Lilith knew what she was thinking, it was so vivid in her mind what she had to do– she'd known for ages. The voices had told her, they were still telling her, what to do and how to do it. They repeated the same thing again and again all the time. Every moment of the day, getting faster and faster and more aggressive, more vicious, each time they'd recite the words to her.
Do it, do it, do it, do it.
Until their words merged together and they became an indistinguishable mess of high pitched whistling. A screech so long and high that they were unbearable. Lilith had to do it now.
She had took one long shaky breath as she looked deep into her own eyes, she hated how the broken barriers were smashed in her irises, so her face became stony as she emptied the bottle of paracetamol. She couldn't find anything stronger, only another packet of ibuprofen and an out of date bottle of Calpol that should have been thrown away before Lilith had even been born. It would have to do.
So, as blood trickled from her shoulders to her forearms to the palms of her hands, seeping through her fingers and staining the floor with droplets of her own crimson blood, she necked down a cup of medicine which then was followed by the handful of pills.
Gosh it tasted revolting, but it would all end soon, she assured herself as she waited for death's arms to cradle her fragile body and tell her that it was time to go with him. But it wasn't nearly as easy as the voices told her it was, and it wasn't as painless as they assured her and it definitely was not as peaceful like they insisted.
Snape let go, no quite knowing what to think. He hadn't had a pleasant life, and he liked to make it a constant competition as to who was the most traumatised with people who thought they had a hard time when their father clapped their ears for being rude. But Severus had never attempted before, maybe he had hurt himself a few times, but not to the extent that he had to be monitored constantly for months on end. He hated her father with a burning passion, for he was one of the reasons why Severus was so miserable, but he wouldn't hate Lilith. He couldn't.
He had let her go with a stony glance, knowing better than to shower her with pity; he didn't like that and he doubted that she would too. So he slumped down behind his desk once she had left, regretting how he had disliked her for who she was, he now understood the flinching and the wariness. And he hated himself for it. Great Merlin, he had not a clue what to do.
Lilith was recalling the memory as she traipsed back to the Slytherin dungeons.
One of the girls had found her and called an ambulance using the telephone, they had taken her away and attached lots of wiry machines and beeping devices to her biceps and wrists. They had told her she had to go to a special hospital for a while, only for a few days, they had promised her. Only, a few days turned into a week, and a week turned into a few of them, until she ended up spending the entire summer there; surrounded by white walls, paper cups, special door handles, no laces or sharp things and nurses appearing every half an hour to make sure she hadn't tried to off herself again.
And then people had accused her and Harry that year for being the heirs of Slytherin.
*