Twenty-Twenty Hindsight

Chapter Eight

As I said, I don't know what happened. Something must have gone wrong with his father, because I could think of nothing I had done to bring his anger back in such force.

It was either that, or he had finally gone totally mental.

The reason I say that is because the night before my first OWL was the first time he ever beat me without explanation.

It happened when we were taking a late walk through the grounds. We had met at eight thirty in the entrance hall, and gone out for our usual walk around the lake. We didn't speak, which I found odd, but I thought maybe he was planning something and might have been nervous about it. I don't know if he planned it or not, but I know for a fact that he was not nervous.

We were about a quarter of the way around when it happened. He just rounded on me at light speed, it seemed. I didn't see it coming; there were none of the warning signs, such as yelling or an angry air around him. He just whipped around at me and punched me square in the nose. It came so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I completely forgot myself and screamed in pain. Tears started to stream out of my eyes without my consent; I had become pampered; I was no longer accustomed to physical injuries.

I could tell, through all the blinding pain and unbidden tears, that he grew more angry with my outburst. He punched me again and again, all over my torso and a few times in the face. When he punched me a few times in the stomach, he knocked the breath out of me and I stopped screaming. I continued to cry; I tried to beg for him to stop, but he would have none of it. After I was thoroughly beaten and I had fallen to the ground, he straddled me and put his hands to my throat. That was what I had been waiting for - fearing - since February. It was just a matter of time before he tried to kill me.

I tried to fight back - for the first time, I really put in an effort. I tried to kick him, but I wasn't flexible enough to bend my legs that way, since he was straddling me. I tried to lift myself up and throw him off, but I was so weak with pain that it was next to impossible. He was thin, but muscle weighs more than fat and I know now, for a fact, that he was one hundred percent muscle. When I finally tried hitting him, I was so weak from lack of oxygen that it was all I could do to lift my arms, let alone put any kind of strength into a punch.

That was how I used my last bit of energy. I blacked out after trying to hit him, and I never woke up.