Legilimens

Attica's life had always been filled with secrets. She couldn't remember a time when she didn't have a secret to keep. At times, she felt that it was all she was truly good at. She had kept secrets for her grandparents, for Dumbledore, for Voldemort, and by extension, for Snape. In so doing, she had also kept secrets from each of these people, and she had kept them from Neville. There was not a single living person that she had ever been able to completely and utterly confide in. And for as long as she had been harboring the secrets, she had been harboring a desire to reveal them. She had trained herself not to share certain aspects of her life with others for danger that one of the secrets would slip out. The result was that she no longer trusted herself enough to share intimate details of her life with the people close to her, and if she ever did, the details were not true.

This battle between hiding and revealing had gone on for so long that she simultaneously thought that it was time to tell all and that it was vitally important for her to lie to Snape about everything. She wanted the immense relief that she knew would come with bearing herself to someone. But as soon as she imagined how it would feel, a voice, that voice, whispered that Snape would only use the information to hurt her, that exposure was vulnerability.

Snape had been watching her intently, awaiting her response. He could sense the change in her demeanor as the fear set in. A roaring noise assaulted her ears and she desperately covered them with her hands, although the noise was in her head. She began to rock back and forth as she tried to expel the noise and the voice from her mind. He knelt in front of her and looked earnestly into her eyes, gently placing his hands on her shoulders to steady her. She opened her eyes and returned his gaze, realizing that his expressions didn't seem as cold as it had a minute before. He was cognizant of her internal struggle, although he knew nothing about the nature of it. He did know that he needed to keep her grounded, to bring her back to a place of assured safety. His eyes were silently pleading with her, leading her out of her head and away from the voice that had always haunted her.

As she moved farther and farther from the voice and closer to Snape, she remembered the explicit trust he had placed in her, and she knew him well enough to know that he would not depend on someone so thoroughly and not offer the same security in return. Understanding his silent question, she relented with a single nod.

He settled her back into the chair and made sure that she was comfortable. He wanted to give her some time, let her recover from the assault, but he knew that he needed to learn the truth, and he needed it as soon as possible. Any delay would allow more time for this dark force to take more control of her mind. He had been able to bring her back from it this time, but he had no idea what this force was capable of or what it would try to do to her next. He paused only briefly. Then he took a deep breath and pointed his wand at her with a whispered, "Legilimens."

Images flashed through her mind before swirling into nothingness. Some images she wanted to grab onto, others she wanted to push away. Some of the images were bright remnants of a happier past.

Perenelle holding her hand in the garden and singing her one of the rhymes her grandparents had created.

Asphodel and phoenix feather

Whisper this, don't say it louder

Attica as a toddler sitting on the desk in the study playing with a toy Nicolas had given her.

Buying her wand from Ollivander's.

The letter she received from her grandmother congratulating her for being sorted into Ravenclaw House.

These flickers were painful only when tainted with the knowledge that the happiness she had felt then would not last.

Dumbledore in the study holding the scepter. Something green and glittering falling onto the rich carpet at the elderly man's feet.

Nicolas's voice trembling as he uttered Tom Riddle's name.

Some of the images were familiar to Attica, but others she saw as though they were happening to someone else. There was a woman with long blonde hair holding an infant. A tall man with dark hair and Attica's eyes stood beside them smiling at the baby.

The blonde woman in a rocking chair holding the baby, who was older now. The woman calling out to the dark-haired man to come quickly as a doll began levitating toward the small girl.

The next set of images was bathed in a melancholy golden light.

Her grandparents lying next to each other, their bodies cold, and McGonagall pulling a screaming Attica from the room.

The first night she spent in the Longbottom house, waking up in the middle of the night with a tear-stained pillow and puffy eyes.

Sneaking into Neville's room because being close to him kept the nightmares away.

Brewing in the Potions classroom.

Cheering for Cedric Diggory and Potter's other opponents at the Tri-Wizard tournament with Neville's hand in hers.

The light then darkened into cloying shadows when she remembered the fear of Voldemort's return and placing the vial around her neck.

The exhilaration she felt when she did.

The dark remained as the images of her in the middle of Voldemort's circle of Death Eaters flashed by.

Penning the letter to Neville, telling him that if he loved her, he would understand why she couldn't stay and that he would let her go to do what she needed to do.

The terror she experienced at the feeling of returning home when she was inducted into Voldemort's inner circle.

Hatred.

Feeling like she was someone other than the person she had been all her life, someone dark.

Overwhelming anxiety, terror, belonging, and a thousand other emotions that she couldn't explain or name.

Her Dark Mark darkening.

The bleak knowledge that she had some sort of insight into the Dark Lord's mind.

The desolation she felt when she realized that she couldn't go to anyone for help.

She was alone.

Blood-red hatred began to taint the images. Snape was getting closer and closer to the images of Potter. She tensed and used every last bit of strength she had to expel him from her mind.

~~~

She slumped forward in the chair, gasping. The exercise had drained every last ounce of her strength. She placed her elbows on her knees, cradling her aching head in her hands.

"There. That's all I remember," she said in barely a whisper. Snape had not moved from his place in front of her. He was out of breath himself. She desperately tried to steady her erratic breathing, but she had been exposed to memories that she had made every effort to repress, because recalling them only made her ache with grief.

As Snape had sifted through her memories, he had not only seen some of the most personal and emotional moments of her life, but he had also practically shoved them in her face, parading them before her as he looked on. She had been forced to relive every painful memory she had ever tried to forget.

Attica finally straightened in the chair. The Potions Master stared at her from the seat he had taken across the room. He was fatigued, and he looked it, but some other reaction had painted his features as well. Attica could only guess at this unknown emotion, but it looked a lot like disappointment to her. She had no idea how much time had passed, but the light trickling through the stained glass windows was the weak sunlight of twilight. She tried not to analyze his expression too much, but he appeared to her to be a man who had just had his worst fears confirmed.

"Did you get what you wanted?" she asked, her breathing finally returning to a semblance of normal.

He looked at her for a time and then stood wearily, trying to pool all the strength he could muster. How could he explain to this child that the last three years of her life had been spent in an angered haze that she did not knowingly create, and that she had been bestowed with a burden that should not have been hers to bear? How to explain to her that an item she had held close to her for years as a token of a connection to the grandparents she had prematurely lost was in all actuality something that possessed more evil than it did memories? Maybe she would be relieved that her madness had a source, maybe she would welcome the answers she had sought for so long, despite their dire implications. But she would be far from comforted, he knew, to learn that she, for more than two years, had been wearing a Horcrux around her neck.

Snape sighed deeply before he spoke.

"I found what I was looking for, Miss Flamel. Though it is hardly what I wanted."

~~~

The exchange of information had been fundamentally important to Voldemort's cause. For the duration of her servitude, she had witnessed these exchanges in every form. Secrets and information from the light poured in on a daily basis. Lies from Snape were less frequent but significantly more valuable to her master. However, the exchanges she remembered most involved the victim's of Voldemort's wrath. She watched as countless witches and wizards were dragged in and placed before the serpentine monster. She had always been particularly intuitive and was usually able to tell how they would react to the information the Dark Lord was going to share with them. The information was never pleasant. It mostly always involved a threat to the victim's family, if the threat had not already been carried out, as well as Voldemort's intent to end their life as a circle of his masked minions looked on.

Sometimes, they were faced with knowledge that so unfathomable to them that it became laughable. Crazed, rasping laughter would escape their lips before the green light flashed and their helpless bodies crumpled to the ground. Others who did not have the strength to process the information would try to escape, which was always much worse. The most sickening reaction for Attica to witness was of the victims who blatantly accepted the circumstance for what it was. They did not try to dispute or argue the fact that they were going to fall at the hands of this abhorrent being because they knew that this was their fate. During his time in her mind, Snape had dredged up the memory of a man she had desperately tried to forget. Snape had also been present at the execution of this man who had been brought to Voldemort for trying to save the life of an innocent woman who had crossed the path of a group of Death Eaters. He hadn't even known the woman's name and yet he had tried to save her from the same fate that befell him as a result of his valor. Attica had been able to see the slight panic in the man's eyes as his mind tried desperately to find an answer for why this was happening, for exactly the right thing to say to save his own life. Before standing and walking directly into his death, his eyes had glossed over and the panic was replaced with resignation. His heart had registered the fact even as it shattered.

This is how Attica Flamel felt as she sat in the study of a home she never remembered living in while the man who had become her protector and her only confidant explained the nightmares and the darker than ever mark on her arm. He told her, as gently as the customarily callous man could, about the existence of Voldemort's Horcruxes and Dumbledore's suspicion about the scepter he had brought to her grandparents. Dumbledore had been wrong about the scepter, but he had been correct in assuming that Tom Riddle had created an eighth Horcrux. It wasn't in the scepter, however, but in the flawless stone that had been affixed atop it, the one that Attica had found on the study floor that night. Snape had to choke back tears for the first time in his adult life as he told Attica that she had been carrying a piece of Voldemort's soul with her and that for years, she had possessed the very means of his possible return.