I Was Younger Then

Penny's Worst Memory

WARNING GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF DEATH AND VIOLENCE 

*****

Wormtail undid Penny's binds only to replace them with new ones trapping her a hard wood chair. When he was satisfied they were tight enough, so tight Penny could not move an inch, he dragged her toward the fireplace where he'd set down the creature in an armchair. Penny struggled, turning to Wormtail, "Please, don't do this!" she pleaded, knowing full well there was no getting out of this situation.

He didn't respond to her, pausing to wipe several beads of sweat from himself, Penny unable to take her eyes from his ugly, nervous face. The closer she got to the thing in the chair the more terrified she became. Her brain still had not fully recovered and caught up with events, but it functioned well enough to remind her of the prophecy Trealawny had given Harry during his exam in their third year, a premonition declaring the servant would return to his master.

For obvious reasons, Penny had never taken it seriously, she'd seen enough of Wormtail to determine him to be far too incapable to locate Voldemort. After all, if all the best aurors and even Dumbledore hadn't found him, then what hope was there for Wormtail? But, now she was forced to accept the reality that he'd been successful, meaning she, the sister of Harry Potter, was now captive of Lord Voldemort. It was the most awful of feelings, and the first time in Penny's life where the only thing she wanted to do was openly cry. She could not think, not figure out how to do anything. All she could do was feel the suffocating terror that she would soon be dead.

She'd survived her first encounter with Voldemort, how could she possibly survive again? There was no doubt in Penny's mind that he would want revenge, to make her suffer as a way to inflict pain on Harry. It wasn't fair--Penny did not want to die, the thought filled her with a vast emptiness, death felt like a very heavy blanket, one that she could never escape; beneath which, she could not breath, move, or be heard. Even Snape could not find her in death--Snape--she thought, her heart skipping a beat. If Penny died she knew the man would feel responsible, and she'd never get the chance to apologize to him, or finally get him to admit he cared for her.

There was too much more for her to learn from him, if only she hadn't been so awful to him, had taken a moment to let him explain, but instead she'd attacked him for a choice she knew nothing about, for a life she never so much as asked him about. She wished very much for a second chance, to find those dark eyes again and get the chance to tell him how annoyingly important he was to her, but that didn't matter anymore because Penny's life had taken an unfortunate turn, all she wanted was to understand why--how she had landed on their doorstep?

She remembered losing control, but she had no idea what her magic had done. The conversation she'd had with Tom was clear and crips in her head, but everything after that was blank. It was almost like she'd been asleep and merely woken up on the grass. Perhaps her expression had apparated her, but people could not apparate in the Hogwarts grounds, so how could she have left? Yet, Penny distinctly remembered feeling as though her body had been pulled apart and scattered into a dozen or more pieces and then sucked through a tube, which was not congruent with the descriptions she'd read about apparition, so perhaps it was something else entirely.

The feeling of helplessness only increased as Penny's mind raced with all the possibilities, a desperate attempt to distract her from the truth she could no longer ignore. Wormtail spun her around to face the thing ; the monster of her dreams, the evil that plagued her life; the murderer of her parents: Lord Voldemort. A wave of sickness stirred in her stomach as she laid eyes upon the revolting sight before her. She knew he wasn't a man, he'd barely survived that night, according to Dumbledore, but Penny had never imagined in what form he did manage to flee in, it was truly a picture of the most grotesque of nightmares.