Wild Heart¹ ★ [Sirius Black]

Chapter 15

Sirius and Chloé had stood in that corridor for a while since Sirius was examining her cautiously to see if she was ready to tell them whatever it was she was hiding. But he could tell her mind was made up so he took her hand and together they walked back into the common room.

Luckily for them, the only people left were the Marauders, Lily, Dorcas, Marlene, and Kendall, and the Marauders were all complaining about the fact that they had been roped into helping up cleaning by the girls. "I won a quidditch match today! I should be passed out drunk in my bed, not picking up cups!" James was whining

Sirius cleared his throat loudly and the group turned to them. The tears in Chloé's eyes were evident by their bright red colour and immediately all of them stopped moving, and Chloé swallowed nervously. She never wanted to do this but now that the Slytherins seemed to know, it was only a matter of time before her secret was exposed to everyone, and Chloé couldn't just keep crying without explanation every time it was brought up. "I need to tell you all something"

Most of her friends looked confused, but some seemed to have a look that suggested they knew what this talk would be about. Lily of course already knew her secret and she gave Chloé a sympathetic smile, which comforted her a little, but Chloé was still terrified so Sirius squeezed her hand tightly and began to lead her over to the fire place and their friends followed them.

Chloé curled herself into the big armchair and Sirius was going to go sit on the armchair, but she clutched his hand tighter when he tried to leave. "Do you want me to stay?" he whispered. She nodded and Sirius smiled and sat down on the arm of her chair, keeping their hands tightly intertwined.

When everyone else was settled around them, Lily spoke first. "It's okay Chloé"

The others, apart from Remus, looked at her in surprise, but didn't question it. So Chloé nodded and took a deep breath before starting to speak. "Um, I think you guys should know this because there's something about me which has somehow got out and I don't want any of you to hear it from anyone else or assume anything about me. It's about what Snape said during my duel with him, and he's not the only Slytherin who knows, and I don't know how because this is something I have only ever told a select few people." Her hands were beginning to shake and Sirius began to rub his thumb along the back of her hand to reassure her and Chloé smiled sadly at him. "Back when I was nine years old, on New Year's eve my parents decided to go out and celebrate their anniversary and left me and my brother home with our uncle babysitting us. Damien had babysat us before and we always used to love when he did. But this time was different. We had fallen asleep watching a movie downstairs and so he carried us up to bed one by one, but um," tears were beginning to brim in her eyes and she breathed out shakily. "Because I was asleep I didn't see or hear him cast a silencing charm around my room, or lock my door. He just put me on my bed and I only began to wake up when I felt his hand...touching my thigh"

From around the group there were a few sharp gasps of fear and Marlene also had tears in her eyes. "Oh my god"

Chloé avoided looking at them because she knew if she saw their pitying looks, she would bust into sobs there and then, so she swallowed down her tears and continued to talk. "I had no idea what he was doing but his hand started to move higher and higher, and I started to scream, but because of the charm no one could hear me. I screamed and cried and begged him to stop but he didn't, and I was powerless against him. I felt like I was going to die in that moment." Sirius squeezed her hand tightly but Chloé had a feeling it was more to reassure himself that she was okay, than her. Tears were spilling over her pale cheeks and she let out a choked sob before continuing. "I had no idea what I was doing because I was too young to have learnt any real control over my abilities, and over my screams I couldn't hear his. All I knew was that one moment he was above me and then the next moment he had collapsed onto me, so I used that chance to push myself out from under him and ran to turn on the lights, and-" she choked again and covered her mouth with her hand. Beside her, Sirius's entire body was consumed with rage and anger and he had to fight himself to not scream or throw something or punch someone in a fit of anger. "-when I turned t-them on I saw what I had done. H-his whole body was covered in third degree burns to the point that he was unrecognisable. I didn't know what I had done and I was terrified, s-so I ran to my brother's room and woke him up." She sniffed loudly. "Ant-Antoine and I dragged his body outside into the woods and we burnt it. We cleaned up any evidence of the blood and wrote a fake suicide note for my aunt and went back to bed like nothing had happened"