I decided this was probably too long as it was (as I wasn't getting reviews and all the little parts seemed a bit squashed together), so I decided to re-post each segment of this story as a separate chapter; I'll probably post a new one every few days until I've got all seven. I hope this isn't too confusing and that it works just as well -- thanks!

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Seven Days to Remember, Seven Years to Forget

A Merope reflection, on seven years, seven days, and the spaces of time in between.

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Merope is four.

She lives in a house, a big one, on the corner of a winding road, with three balconies and a wide-sloping roof and too many stairs for Merope to climb on her own. Her house has a shrunken head on the mantelpiece and rows of portraits that shout things at her and long, heavy curtains that she's not allowed to hide behind, because once she ripped them down, when Papa was angry.

There are plants in the garden that try to eat her hands, and an old, scary house-elf who yells and never lets her take one step near the kitchen -- and sometimes, on days when Merope is brave and answers the door when it rings, there are mean frowny people who glare at her and ask her for gold. They look at her expectantly, as if she carries it around with her like her favorite doll, Cecilia, or keeps it in her pockets like breadcrumbs.

Merope can't figure out where these people come from -- maybe they live in her closet, or under her bed -- so she begins to take to sitting on the windowsill in the afternoons, behind some of the more versatile drapery. She watches for them, waiting, to make sure they don't slip away from under her gaze and steal into her bedroom. They haven't -- not yet -- but she's sure it's only a matter of time.

When they do come, Merope always calls for Mama, because Mama is the only person Merope knows who has anything to do with gold. She wears it around her neck, in a big, shiny locket engraved with an S that Merope used to pull on, when she was younger and didn't know better. Papa is large, grim and terrifying, so Merope never calls him. And if she called for Morfin, who is six and bigger than she is, he'd probably hit her, because Morfin likes to hit most everything, and Merope is his favorite. She can understand why -- she is small, scared, doesn't fight back, and though she likes to disappear as often as possible, there are beginning to be less places to hide.

Merope is sure that only a few months ago, there were four couches in the parlor -- one at each end -- but now three of them are gone, and the one that is left is much too short to fit herself under. And once upon a time, Merope remembers there being a whole cabinet of crystal vases, hidden in one corner of the dining room, where she would lie on the floor and touch the rainbows they made -- but now there is only one, and the cabinet is gone as well.

Even the foul-mouthed portraits are vanishing from the walls, and although Merope is mostly glad of this, she misses the one in the upstairs hallway, because he used to keep the monsters away at night -- Merope knows full well that monsters only like polite little girls, not rude old portraits like him. So now Merope cries before bedtime, and when her father smacks her across her quivering mouth and forces her into bed anyway, Merope doesn't sleep, because she can feel the monsters there -- waiting for her...

Time passes, and one morning, when it's still dark outside, Merope slips out from under the covers, puts on her softest pair of socks, and tiptoes downstairs. In the night there were people in the house -- she heard them -- and she knows, somehow, that things are different now.

And sure enough, she discovers, eyes wide with shock -- the dining room table is gone. She turns into the parlor and there, too, there is nothing. The wallpaper has been torn off the walls. The single couch is gone. The carpet. Merope decides to check the kitchen, although she's terrified the house elf will find her and eat her as an early morning snack, but surprisingly she gets in quite easily, because the house elf is gone too. There is nothing in the silverware drawer. Not a single knife or fork. Not even a tea spoon.

Someone came and took everything. Maybe it's Merope's fault. Maybe if she hadn't let the mean people inside, if she hadn't called for Mama, these things wouldn't be happening. Maybe that's why her father hates her. Why the monsters are coming to get her...

Merope runs back upstairs and hides, her body curled tight beneath her quilt. She can't help herself. She sobs.

And for the first time in days, she sleeps, though monsters are sitting on her pillow and she can feel them there, nibbling at her cheeks. But she sleeps so deeply that she doesn't wake when the heavy gold locket is hung around her neck, or when her mother kisses her on the cheek and slips away through the back door. She doesn't wake when her father grabs her roughly by the arm and Apparates to a place much smaller and darker, where the monsters are waiting for them on the doorstep.

Merope only wakes after she remembers that there is nowhere left to hide. That everything is gone.

By then her eyes have already begun to wander.

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