CURSES AND CANDIES - REMUS LUPIN

𝑠𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑒.

for best understanding, read slowly and carefully <3

tw - implications of rape and violence

For a few seconds, time was frozen for everyone except Hollis.

There was the horrifying feeling coursing through her mind of a door that she had wanted so desperately to stay closed being opened again, and hazy memories while under the Imperius Curse flowing through it instead of light.

It only took a split second for that mind numbing sensation to connect to her body, making her stomach turn, fingers tremble, head go light, and knees nearly buckle so hard that she would have fallen to the ground if she had been a slightly less strong person.

The second feeling that came from the sickening shock was pure dread and questioning and shame.

Hollis was terrified that the boys and their mothers would never look at her the same again, for many reasons. One from a pitying expression in their eyes that only emphasized the weakness she already felt, one that would never be able to be undone. 

The other was that they would consider her someone how had no strength left in her, that maybe she wasn't the bold girl they had previously thought and known her to be.

They could be angry, they could be hurt, they could feel betrayed that Hollis hadn't trusted them enough to tell about what had happened to her.

Just behind their children, Hope and Euphemia had felt anger like this so few times in their lives much longer than anyone else left present on the train.

After the girl had arrived half dead on her porch on that thundering night, Hope had immediately felt a strong sense of compassion towards her. Being a muggle herself, she only had so much exposure to the magical world through her son and husband. In those small windows, though, she had managed to see the great beauty that such an ethereal force could create.

But in Hollis, she saw the evil and destruction.

The ways that magic had been twisted to hurt the girl broke Hope's heart in a way it could no witch or wizard.

After seeing the bruises, Euphemia had truly hoped that there was any other possible alternative to what had happened to the young woman her sons considered a little sister.

The Potter had seen firsthand the amount of trauma inflicted upon Sirius when he stumbled to her house, yet that pain was amplified a dozen times for Hollis.

On top of literal torture and far too many close calls with death, all Euphemia could do was wish that no other sort of violence had happened to the girl.

Yet, here she was, standing before some of the most troubled teenagers she had ever seen in her entire life with a fury burning in her heart for the girl that had so quickly become like a daughter to her.

If Hope and Euphemia thought that they were angry, their sons standing in front of them were absolutely livid.

Sirius was not the kind of person to not give one any second chances.

After he had been abused in the place he was supposed to call home for years, he had started to lose any hope during the long breaks that seemed to stretch on forever that there was any good left in any humanity, especially purebloods.

Over one summer, the darkness had started to so thoroughly dig into his soul that the Black thought that he could no longer possibly live in that place any longer without turning truly evil.

So when he had run to Potter Manor, Euphemia and Fleamont had been so welcoming that Sirius decided that maybe there was some hope for the seemingly only foolish and blinded by greed adults left in him.