Chosen?

Chapter 10: The Vanishing Cabinet

The week before I had gone back to school had been the most stressful week of my life. My father had told me everything that he has ever kept from me and dropped his whole sheltering act. I had learned about every sad, terrifying, sadistic and scary thing about the war that he possibly could tell me. I would make a floo connection to Malfoy Manor and stick my face in the flames every day to tell Scorpius what I was learning. I was quite surprised when he had told me things that he would offer to help teach me, I knew he was incredibly good at hexes and Jinxes but I had severely underestimated his power.

My father would take me out to the small clearing behind our house every day and teach me defensive spells or charms that he thought I could find useful, he said he was surprised at how much I knew already and that I caught on quickly. It wasn't that I was a quick learner, it was that I was incredibly afraid to disappoint him.

My father wanted me to be able to cast a corporeal Patronus and had told me exactly what do. I thought of the happiest thought I could think of, the night at the Ministry ball and practically shouted the incantation. A bloodhound burst from the tip of my wand and trotted through the tall fields and disappeared without a trace.

Every day we would spend ours out in the field practicing spells and charms and then duel each other, my father didn't hold back while fighting as he wanted me to be as prepared as I could be for whatever would happen in the distant future, but what he worried about most was my emotional state.

"Lily, if you don't learn how to protect your mind now, you will never be able to battle Voldemort fairly, even if you know every spell in the world," My father said as he sat me in a chair in his study, "Now, I'm going to attempt to penetrate your mind, if I do so successfully, I want you to fight to push me out."

I swallowed the dry lump in my throat and nodded, "Okay," I said as I closed my eyes as I could almost feel my father begin prodding and poking into my mind through magic.

It was excruciating at first, but as time passed I could figure out how to close my mind off to my father. I soon could force my way into his mind and thoughts which he said could prove to be very beneficial.

The next lesson, however, I lost it.

"Dad, I did it already, please don't make me do it again," I said pleading with him pulling on the sleeve of his dress shirt. "Don't make me do it again, please!"

"You don't get a choice in the real-world, lily," he said almost shoving me off of him and forcing me back into the chair, "you don't get to quite this, you don't get a choice!"

His voice was seeping with stress and anger now, his shoulders were tense, "You don't get to choose to have it be over! It doesn't work like that! Do you think I liked being the 'Chosen One'? Do you?" his face was red now, "Do you think it was fun for me to watch my friends die for me? Do you think I enjoyed it lily? I didn't! I hated it! I had never asked for any of this!" he was screaming now. "You don't get a choice! Now sit down and do as I say!"

It was terrifying, my father had never yelled at me the way he was yelling at me now. "You think I'm stupid? I know so much more than you give me credit, I know so much more than what you had told me! You think that I'm some little girl still! I know you didn't choose this!" I was screaming back at this point.

"Don't use that tone with me," he said sneering at me.

I grunted loudly and stormed out of the room, so completely irritated by everything.

I hated every bit of this, I hated not being able to sleep through the night because of a migraine and weird visions or having to devote every spare minute of my life to training for something not Quidditch related. I despised every aspect of the whole thing, I despised being different.