These Dear, Unfinished Tasks

Chapter 7: A Locked Door Needs a Key

May 31st, 2017

"Try again," Sybil said calmly, taking a long sip from her teacup.

Daphne still laid flat on the ground staring up at the wooden ceiling, breathing heavy. They had been at this for hours. Second-year had ended last week and just like before, Daphne was sent home with Trelawney and Cosette.

For Cosi, she was under the impression that her mother was trying to tutor her friend. She busied herself during the day by doing her own research in the garden as well as going into town frequently to brush up on No-Mag culture for the course she would be taking in the fall. She had talked Daphne's ear off the night before listing all the things she found strange about No-Mags.

While Cosi seemed to be having the summer of her life, Daphne was in pain.

It seemed like everything hurt these days. Trelawney had ratcheted up their training tenfold this summer. Her wand arm was sore for the spells Sybil was making her practice from sunrise to sundown. They had only just resumed their training a few days ago and Daphne was not sure she would make it to the end of the month.

Let alone until school started again.

Along with her arm, her head was pounding. It was like all the reading she was doing was filling up her brain and there was no room left. She was bursting with information and they had only scratched the surface.

Daphne let out a deep breath and sat up, wincing slightly.

"Now dear, let's try again, focus. Think of your mind like a room and you need to keep the door shut. Jacob when you are ready."

Daphne shuddered and turned her attention back to the elderly man Trelawney had introduced her to a few days ago. His hair was mostly white, a few wisps still held their coppery color, his face was deep with wrinkles and laugh lines, jowls drooping when he would smile. His eyes were terrifying.

On the surface they were average. Plain and brown and unassuming. But those eyes had glimpsed her mind and naked soul.

They had seen everything.

"Begin," Jacob said crisply, and then it started.

Daphne tensed and prepared herself for his assault.

It was absurd to think that the most painful thing she had ever experienced required no physical contact at all. Jacob was a skilled legilimen, even in his old age he could reduce his victim to nothing more than a prostrate figure, hyperventilating on the ground. It was such an odd gift, to be able to slip into someone's mind, but Jacob could do it.

And he was doing it now.

Daphne could feel it, and was powerless to stop it. Her mind was a room, her mind was a room, her mind was... It always started out like a tickle, something fuzzy in her brain that was making her thoughts cloud. She rotated her neck trying to clear it, her vertebrates snapping with the motion.

And then it would start.

Every memory, every thought was flying by. She was locked in the room that was her mind, but Jacob was there too, standing in the corner, watching out the window as her thoughts rushed by. A glimpse of her fifth birthday when she had spent it in the adoption center.

Her time she had spent with her fourth family that had made her pray for hours on end. They had been so strict, so strict. She saw herself remembering things she had longed to forget.

Jacob was pushing them toward her.

Daphne was back in that bedroom. Could feel the carpet under her toes. The crosses on the wall, the Bible on the floor. She was being shoved back into the closest. The door being locked behind her, scratching and clawing, not knowing how long she would be stuck in there this time.