Resurrecting Jezebel
who's seen jezebel?/ she was certainly the spark for all I've donethe window was wide/she could see the dogs come running
saying 'wait, we swear/ we'll love you more and wholly
jezebel, it's we that you are for/ only'
If life were a movie, the camera would pan in on a cemetery in Godric's Hollow, England. It is nightfall and the last vestiges of light flee the sky as if sensing magic of the darkest sort about to be performed. Now the close-up on a disturbed grave. Dark figures in hoods circle the ground, a warped and inhuman face full of malice stands in its center and sneers, relishing his return to power.
"Open the coffin," the Dark Lord commands. "Bring me her bones." He invokes the darkest of spirits- the more superstitious among his followers might be inclined to call them demons, but to Voldemort, they are business associates; beside him, an unfinished portrait of a woman is unveiled. Her husband had commissioned it, but both he and she died before it was ever finished, leaving both the face in the painting and the artist's attempts at capturing personality incomplete. The Dark Lord spills the blood of each of his minions into the cauldron (save one, who is currently about his bidding spying on the Order of the Phoenix, has been for months, and knows nothing of his master's brilliant stroke of inspiration). His own will be needed before this is over to appease the dark spirits with whom he is dealing. With his wand, he mutters a complex incantation at the portrait; a sort of silver liquid pours forth. He inspects it before mixing it with the other ingredients.
"It remains unfinished. Good. Her will is not yet solidified. I can make it mine." He slashes his own wrist, grimacing in distaste at the act, and the mixture in the cauldron roils and bubbles and smokes. A gathering darkness crowds about his blood, darker even than the black robes his Deatheaters wear or the night falling heavily about him. It is an oppressive and suffocating sentient sort of darkness, and it craves blood. "Now," he says, and two hooded figures dump the whole cauldron over the skeleton lying in the opened coffin. He watches dispassionately as muscles knit themselves to bone, organs and tendons connecting; the rot of years reverses itself, and skin stretches over the rebuilt body. Fingernails and toenails regrow, long red hair quickly spills down past the woman's shoulders. The last details to fall in place are her eyelashes and freckles. She looks to be no more than thirty, possibly younger. She is still pale as death, now naked perfection, but soulless. A dead thing. Voldemort frowns.
"We could make her an Infe-" someone hazards. Voldemort backhands the unfortunate minion.
"No. Not an Inferi. We need her soul." He ponders this for a moment. "Shall we trade?" He asks the sentient darkness, his lips twisting in amusement at the idea. He turns to his minions. "One of your souls for hers?" He seems to receive an answer, for he nods once to the looming blackness and motions for the ritual to begin. The hooded figures start chanting in Latin. An unfortunate victim's throat is slit with a knife as the chanting reaches its crescendo; observers could swear they see the soul leaving the body and being sucked into nothingness. At that moment a portal, a sort of swirling black vortex made of the sentient darkness, appears before Voldemort. Wormtail reaches into it with his silvery hand and, as the Deatheaters chant the name of the woman they wish to bring back to the living, Wormtail grabs a struggling amorphous figure and pulls violently. Both hand and spirit come flying out of the portal, which snaps shut and disappears. Wormtail shoves the soul back into the dead body by sheer force. The magic holding his silver hand together shrivels and dies, and the stump of his wrist becomes visible once more. At that moment, the woman takes her first breath. She sits up, confusion and fear marring her delicate features.
"Where am I?" She frowns. "For that matter, who am I? What year is this?"
"You are in Godric's Hollow. Who you were is unimportant. You will answer to any name I choose to give you. All that need concern you is that you are about to become my most valued weapon. I have brought you back from the grave to serve me. The year is 1997." A robe is given to her to clothe herself.
"How long have I been dead?"
"Fifteen years." The woman without a name asks, calmly for one who has just risen from the dead,
"What must I do?" Voldemort ponders the question. He is in need of his Potions prodigy now more than ever, for a simple Imperio is far too crude for the betrayal he has in mind. To brainwash her completely he will need complex magic, magic that Snape would be able to perform. He beckons to Lucius Malfoy. "Find Snape. Tell him I have a new recruit I need him to train. Someone he'll be particularly interested in meeting." Malfoy turns smartly on his heel and disappears. The woman frowns. Snape. That name should be very important to her, she can tell. She cannot remember her own name, but she remembers there was something about a man called Snape.
Lucius Malfoy finds Severus Snape and delivers the message matter-of-factly.
"Our Lord wishes to see you. He desires your help with a very delicate situation." Lucius pauses, searching for the right words, then shrugs and laughs it off. "He's resurrected Lily Evans," he says, and watches Snape drop his china teacup onto the floor and spill scalding tea all over himself. Snape doesn't even seem to notice, nor does he appear to be breathing.
"Alive?" He whispers. All the color has drained out of his face.
"You've missed a lot these last few months," Lucius says calmly and steers Snape away by the elbow. Snape feels like putting his head in his hands and moaning for sheer despair of a hopeless situation. Whatever the Dark Lord has planned for Lily, it cannot be good, and he is not sure he can stand to see her alive again without throwing himself at her feet and giving the whole game away. But this is the path he has chosen, and this is the path he will walk. Even if his blood is screaming Lily, Lily, Lily.