Kathryn emerged from the crushing darkness in a heap on her bedroom floor back in Grimmauld Place. Immediately she locked her door and barricaded it shut with her trunk, using the old Muggle trick of wedging a chair beneath the doorknob. She collapsed on her sofa in tears, crying desperately into a cushion. She had been a fool to believe that the world would not find out.
She spent the next week shut up in her room; refusing to speak to anyone or come down for meals. Every scrap of post she received she burned, apart from the howlers that she just had to listen to. The malicious notes arrived from every corner of England and several caused the fire to burn in odd colours due to the various hexes and nasty substances that had been enclosed This was punctuated by ferocious shouting matches with Harry and Sirius; she on one side of the door and they on the other. These inevitably ended in her collapsing into tears once they had given up. Harry and Sirius were not taking this well at all and, although that in her hiding away she was giving them the time to form the worst opinion of what went on, she could not face them. She ate the food that was left outside her door by Mrs Weasley and spent many hours in bed, not bothering to get up, and thinking about all the options available to her. There weren't many.
After just over a week she decided that there was little point to shutting herself away from society and she felt, almost, ready to explain. Her arrival in the kitchen for breakfast caused quite a stir; Hermione gasped and Harry got up to leave the table.
"Well, if you don't want to hear my explanation I'll go back to bed." She turned in the doorway but was stopped by a hand on her elbow; it was Sirius.
"Stay." He implored her, leading her back to the table and piling bacon, beans and toast onto her plate.
"I know you all probably hate me." She said in a quiet voice; moving to the seat farthest away from everyone and toying with her bacon.
"We don't hate you dear." Mrs Weasley said kindly from the cooker.
"Some of us are just a little angry." Harry's voice was harsh and cold.
"You deserve an explanation; it's just taken me a while to work up the confidence to tell you what happened." She replied in a similarly harsh tone to her brother. The rest of her breakfast was consumed in silence.
An hour later, she was sat in the drawing room, her legs curled beneath her in the soft armchair.
"I lied to you when I said I was going to France." She began; Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Sirius, Lupin and Mrs Weasley all listening intently. "I felt useless sitting round here all summer just listening about what was going on so I decided to do a bit of snooping around at Malfoy's."
"What did you think you could find?" Sirius asked her in a tone of desperation.
"I don't know." She whispered. "I don't know what I went looking for; it just seemed like a good idea at the time."
"How did you get in?" Lupin asked her curiously. "I doubt that there were no enchantments protecting it."
"I hoped that he was arrogant to think that people would never try and get in without using magic. I just climbed over the fence. There was a light on upstairs so I climbed up the wall to see what it was. It was all going fine until my foothold gave way."
"You fell?" Sirius asked her, hating the idea of her being injured and at the mercy of Lucius Malfoy.
"No, just lost my footing. He saw me for a split second through the window and then disappeared." Hermione gasped. "I ran, only I should have gone the other way because I ran straight into him." They were proving to be a good audience, keeping quiet and letting her talk.
"What happened then?" Hermione asked softly.
"I spent the next few hours chained up in the cellars thinking that I was going to die." Harry and Sirius blanched. "He took my coat and shirt because I'd stitched maps into the sides. He took my wand too so there was no chance of escape." Mrs Weasley had now gone that same white of Harry and Sirius. They were all beginning to appreciate how scared she must have been. "He talked about giving me to the other Death Eaters," Mrs Weasley did actually scream at this thought and it took her several moments to calm down, "but then he decided that he didn't want to share." She shuddered at the thought of what happened next, not wanting to re live it again. "He didn't want to share something that had so willingly wandered into his grasp."
"I think we can imagine what happened next," Lupin said calmly, "you need not say if it is too painful."
"But it wasn't just once," her voice shook slightly, "it was an entire week." She buried her face in her hands and silently sobbed. Sirius now understood why she had seemed distant when she had been sitting in the kitchen that morning two years ago.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Harry demanded, not understanding how she could have been so stupid.
"Do you even understand how afraid I was? Or what that even feels like, when someone takes that from you?" she asked, her temper rising slightly. "He threatened to hurt me even more than he had done. And my friends if I even dared breathe a word to anyone. When you're terrified already you aren't one to refuse."
"It's alright dear." Mrs Weasley enveloped her in a hug. "No one here blames you."
"But it didn't end there. He kept on pressing me for information; cornering me every time he came up to school or when we went to Hogsmeade. He would admonish me for being noble and sacrificing myself for my friends. Then he'd have his fun." She shuddered again at the thought.
"But that could have only been a few times, I mean, that was only Slytherin matches and a few Hogsmeade visits." Ron counted them off on his fingers.
"Can you add Ron?" Ginny scolded her brother. "That's up to three visits to Hogsmeade and four Quidditch matches."
"He organised the work experience at the Ministry." She confessed, hanging her head. "And he took me to Dubai, not the Department for Magical Games and Sports." She wrung her hands together. "He found me in Paris, I didn't spend a week at Queerditch Marsh, I wasn't in the shower or the library after Quidditch matches." She said this all very fast, although omitting the fact that she was going willingly to him by that time.
"So you mean that every time you went away, you were with him." Harry said quietly. She nodded, hugging her arms around her chest.
"I wasn't in France when I found out my foster parents died and I didn't go to the Quidditch World Cup Final as a guest of the Minister either." Tears had begun to prick at the corner of her eyes.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Sirius asked; his head in his hands.
"Because I wasn't going to risk putting you in danger." She told them in a hollow voice.
"We were already in danger." Lupin sighed.
"Well, when you've just been…" she trailed off, "well, had a Death Eater do that to you, you're not likely to think very rationally are you?" she finished in a shaky voice. They were amazed at how calm and collected she was being. Harry noticed that she continually toyed with the ring, set with a large red stone, which she wore almost continuously. He did not understand why she was so obsessed with a piece of cheap, costume jewellery that she bought in Diagon Alley months ago.
"True." Sirius agreed, taking her hand. "None of us blame you," he reassured her, "it's just something we wish we didn't have to deal with. It has also put you in a rather difficult situation. You have been reading the Prophet, haven't you?" she nodded. "Then you'll have seen what Fudge has been saying about you."
"I did notice some of his more cutting comments, yes."
"He is calling for you to stand trial for conspiracy and passing information." Sirius told her. "He sent Dumbledore a letter yesterday."
"I didn't tell him anything. I couldn't. That's why he kept coming for me."
"We know, but," she didn't let Sirius finish.
"Give me Veritaserum if you like!" she raised her voice in anger. "He said that he would let me go if I told him and that the longer I kept my silence, the longer I would suffer at his hands. Only I knew that if I had told him something he would have exploited me even more."
"The thing is; you're going to have to stand up and explain everything." Lupin explained gently. "Can you do that?"
"I don't know." She shook her head. She had not even told them the full truth and, under oath in front of the Wizengamot, truth was not something she could omit