"So how bad is he really?" The words fell crisply from a chalky white, lipless mouth. The brilliant eyes of the self titled Dark Lord Voldemort were fixated on an ancient looking book in his hands.
The other person in the room was a woman, tall and pale with a shimmering sheet of icy blonde hair and a slim, lightly pointed face. She stood tall but her eyes, a light grey-blue colour, were directed respectfully at the floor. She wore a long, elegant silvery blue dress, accented with almost navy gems at the neck and a belt around her waist.
"I am unsure of exactly how you wish for me to answer that. Mr. Potter will live, I can assure you that, but he has numerous broken bones, among other things, and he was bleeding internally as well. How he lost that much blood and survived is beyond me, my Lord, and to be frank I am concerned about his mental state, should he awaken." Her voice was strong, though if you were to really look you could see her hand shaking the slightest bit.
"You think he will not, Narcissa?" Cinnabar eyes left the yellowed and spotted pages to gaze somewhat imploringly at his hostess.
"I will admit I have my doubts. There was some blunt force head trauma, a fair bit actually. Combines with all the broken bones and the blood loss, the damage to the poor boys organs, I wouldn't be surprised if his body placed itself into a coma. Even his magic was heavily drained, and that's the only reason I have to guess at why he's even still alive. He's been starved and beaten and it would not shock me in the least if he never regained consciousness." She stated all of this rather bluntly and unhappily.
"What were the worst of his wounds then? Only to give me a good picture, my dear, as to what was done to him." And the dark wizard returned to his book. He wasn't reading it at the moment, merely observing the age worn pages as he listened to the woman speak.
"A punctured and collapsed lung was probably the worst of the internal injuries. The other was bruised, as are his kidneys and his liver is in a bit of an appalling state. Externally I suppose would be his back, poor thing was lashed to the bone. The concussion could also be a tad problematic."
"You didn't mention a concussion earlier." Voldemort murmured quietly. He knew she would hear him.
"No, my Lord, I mentioned blunt force head trauma. It fractured his skull and gifted him a nasty concussion." Narcissa's response was not happy at all.
"That is… unfortunate. Do you recommend I bring in better healers, or do you think yourself capable?" It was a dangerous both knew it.
"I am capable of handling his care should you wish me to though with a job of such magnitude I would not be insulted if you brought in more practicing healers." It was always a political game, no matter who was speaking. "And with such a responsibility Sererus' talents would not be amiss."
"I am sure the old fool will send him along shortly." And the man said old fool had called Tom waved a hand dismissively. "What have you done for the boy so far?"
"Forced the few blood replenishers I had on hand down his throat and gave his body a good start on repairing some of the worst of the internal damage, I only made a real effort with the severely damaged lung as it was the most life threatening. The rest of his wounds are bound for now, broken bones stabilized. I've set the concussion on the mend but I have to wait for the blood replenishers to leave his system before I can give the boy a dose of Skelegro or Skelemend. I am debating which one would be better still." It wasn't said with any real formality, though there was a slight sense of finality in the elegant woman's tone.
"I see. Thank you Narcissa, you have been quite the asset here." He nodded to her faintly, dismissively.
Just before she reached the door of the room they were, it was only a small study but it was very cozy and tastefully decorated, he called her back. A little thrill of fear raced down her spine as she turned.
"My Lord?" Her strong voice sounded a bit strained.
"Would you mind sending your sister to me before you return to the boy. I am in need of her presence."
Narcissa nodded and fled the room the Dark Lord had chosen to spend his time in.
He returned to his book, carefully reading the passage. Though the book possessed no visible title any longer, the words long since peeled off and worn away, he knew it to be called The Booke of Olde. It's original title was long forgotten.
He'd worked hard to find the thing in the first place and eventually found it hidden on the outskirts of a little French town. It was a gold mine of information, depending on what you were looking for. He'd searched long and hard, after hearing of it. Full of old laws and rituals, long forgotten curses and ancient wards. It had become a bit of a personal favourite. He could turn the Ministry on it's head with the laws in this book alone, law's he knew had been forgotten and not abolished. He was certain if they had this book there would be more than three Unforgivable curses, though with some of what he knew that wasn't in the book there should still be a fair few more.
Voldemort did not have to wait too long for the woman he wished to see. He looked up when she entered the room and it pleased him to see Bellatrix stalking gracefully into the room less that ten minutes after he had asked for her. Her regularly present smile of insanity was splitting her face, heavy lidded eyes wide and alert.
"You called, my Lord?" She cooed. She pursed her lips a little and tilted her head almost mockingly, heavy black curls falling this way and that in their unstyled mess. Her tattered black dress swished lazily over the floor as she moved.
"I did. I must ask what you and Fenrir did with the muggles found at Harry Potter's place of residence." He didn't phrase it as a question, he did not even try.
"The woman and piggy scum boy are relatively unharmed. The fat man is still bleeding and I know Greyback took a lot of pleasure in that!" She tittered faintly.
"Was he bitten?" And Bellatrix's curls flew every which way as she shook her head."Where have you placed them, then? I need them alive for now, I doubt the great Harry Potter would want to hear we slaughtered his family just yet. In the future we might, but for now they are our bargaining chip with the boy."
"In the dungeons, they are. Shall we visit them?" She smiled a cruel, playful smile. Voldemort spared a thought that, were she not so crazy, she would be a very beautiful witch. Even after her stay in Azkaban you could see she was quite attractive or she had the ability to be. Her gaunt, stretched out looking features could easily be softened, and they were much better now than immediately after regaining her freedom. She had looked like a skeleton with hair and eyes, and even for some such as the DarkLord it had been a little off putting.
"Let us do just that. I am sure he would love to see you my dear." His tongue curled over the words with an odd grace. With the insane woman cackling and giggling at his side he let her leave the room before himself. She quite literally skipped down the halls, bright eyed and eager.
On the main floor they found Severus, unhappy looking and dour as usual. He was sent off to Narcissa almost wordlessly, rather harshly dismissed in the desire to visit the muggles. Voldemort could have left them to stew there longer, but he was sure Bella would run ahead and he wanted them sane and able to answer his questions.
He was able to admire the perfection of the dungeons as they strolled down. At a first glance they appeared to be nothing more than a cellar, not unusual in a manor such as this. If one knew where to look however it would become quite obvious this was a place of torture and great torment, of many wasted souls.
Filthy and dank, it was a damp space, and where there should have been silence there was a great bellowing. Demands.
When the dark magic users stood before them, silent and oppressive, the fat, shouting man rattled the bars he was trapped behind. In a corner his wife and son huddled in terror. The boys pink skin looked unnaturally grey and the woman, too bony and narrow with a long, long face and her skinny arms squeezing the boy was white as a sheet. The man however was an alarming shade of ugly, blotchy pink under the incarnadine colour that coated the rest of his fat flesh.
"Why don't you give him a reason to scream?" And in seconds the man was on the floor, thrashing and wailing like an angry toddler.
"Dad!" The fat boy cried out, reaching out a hand towards his father before flinching back and huddling against his mother. The woman said nothing, holding her son a little bit tighter and sobbing roughly into the child's shoulder.
"Enough." and Bellatrix held it only a few malicious seconds longer. He decided to allow it this time.
"We have some questions and you will answer them." The Dark Lord said in an alarmingly arctic voice. The fat man grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "go to Hell".
"What is your name, muggle scum." It was not a question. However the man made no move to answer.
"Bella." And the man was thrashing and screaming again. He looked like someone having a nasty fit, though he sounded like he was being tortured, which of course he was. She stopped the spell on her own this time.
"What. Is. Your. Name. Scum." He stressed each word this time, happy to see the tortured creature shudder.
"H-his name is V-Vernon." The woman in the corner sobbed. She seemed less shaky now. The man made a small sound of outrage.
"Petunia," the red eyed man drawled slowly. "Why don't you come here?"
"Don't you do it, th-these people are savages! Fr-freaks!" The mad half bellowed from the ground.
"Crucio!" He snarled the spell on his own this time, enjoying the man's thrashing before cutting the spell after only a few seconds.
"Do not fret, you seem more cooperative is all. Continue to do so and we may go easy on you." Bellatrix gave him a bit of a look but did not question it. "Bring your son too if you will."
The shaking pair of bleached pale muggles approached the bars, a fair bit away from Vernon.
"Yes, that's it. Why don't you come out of that cell for me, yes, that's it." The reptilian being purred. He turned from them towards his faithful servant.
"Bella my dear, won't you be ever so kind to bring these two to a nicer cell, perhaps far down the hall. We'll spare them the sight what shall happen, for now, they have been good." The woman grumbled a little but drew them away none the less. Her curved want was spinning in her fingers and heels clicking sharply as she walked. The sound faded a little and a little distantly the slamming of bars could be heard.
Her heels clicked their way back along the stone until she was again at his side.
"Why? If you do not mind my asking that is, m'lord." She muttered furiously.
"So you do not have as much temptation to introduce them to your special brand of hospitality. Leave him alive, and sane, but do have your fun. Tell me what knowledge you gain at the end, I think you know what I'm looking for." And he stalked away from the barking laugh of the overjoyed woman. The fat man's screams followed him until he tooke his exit of the cellar-like area and slammed the door behind him.
"How tiresome." He murmured irritably to the closed door, offering it a slight glare of displeasure. He did hope Bellatrix got the information he was looking for. And hopefully before she drove the man mad. Insane, she may be, but she was by far one of his most loyal.
He wandered the halls a little, passing dead Malfoy ancestors and precious heirlooms, priceless art and what sometimes felt like a ridiculous amount of doors. As pleased as he was to have this much space at his disposal sometimes it just felt ridiculous. Especially with the only normal residents of the place staying mostly in a select few rooms. They were afraid of him, with good reason he liked to think, but so far as that went for socializing purposes he would only ever admit to himself that it was sometimes a bit lonesome. The few that regularly sought him out always wanted something, were reporting, or for the most part were Bellatrix and the cackling madwoman wasn't always the best conversationalist. Azkaban certainly hadn't helped that though even with her crimes he was never really certain why they'd tossed her in there instead of locking her in the Janus Thickey ward in St. Mungos.
'Though with that being said she did torture two of their permanent residents into insanity.' He thought. 'Mad, she may be, but it isn't entirely her fault, the poor inbred thing.'
Sure it was a bit nasty to think that about someone so loyal to him, and clearly loved him in her own, very strange way, but she was still a little more inbred than most purebloods, whether they were among his Death Eaters or not.
Finally he decided to seek out Severus Snape, who of course he found in Narcissa's makeshift hospice room. The woman was beginning to look a bit worn out at this point, and she gave him a low curtsey when he entered. She didn't spare him a second glance after that, looking over charts and floating pages, a few texts here and there surrounded her. The man he had come for did not turn at all, black eyes focused on the limp, bruised, black haired body of the boy on the bed. What wasn't shades of blue and purple on his skin was blown and green and if it somehow missed both of those it was pale as an inferi or angry and red. Eyes that they knew to be brilliantly Avada Kedavra green were swollen and bruised black. He looked as he had when they'd found him, though significantly less bloody and a lot more colourful; he looked to have already passed on. And just as he felt when he say the child lying on the floor all broken and bloody, he felt cheated. He felt so cheated and reproachful, and while he wasn't exactly mad or anything for the boy he was furious that it had been muggles to make him feel this way.
"Severus?" He intoned lightly. The potions master had been good to him, seeking him out more than others had even when he had not had something to ask, or report. The man had been an even greater asset to him than Bellatrix or her healer sister, or his many people in the ministry.
"Why?" The dour man asked after a long, unpleasantly chill silence. "Just what, and why?"
"His muggle relatives. Shockingly it was Bellatrix who suggested we save him, try and turn him to our side or gain his neutrality at least. It would be funny to see the reactions of the light, if he wakes. I suppose Narcissa told you of his injuries?" This child, limp and still, had been the bane of his existence, his enemy and the very thing most of his plots and plans revolved around, and here the boy lay still and it was not by his own skeletal hand. In Voldemort's head everything was changing, new plots and plans, old ones being altered and altogether abolished. His mind raced as he wondered how this would all fit into his goals now.
"She did. He will wake. Potter has a knack for the impossible." Though it was said with no small amount of angered irritability there was the slightest hint of fondness in his voice too.
"I can hear the affection in your voice. If you care for the brat why lead us to him?" Voldemort asked lightly. This is one answer he could care not to know, though he'd like the answer he would not be upset at all to not have it.
"This is the son of a woman I loved once, my best friends child. I've spent so long keeping him alive, the typical Gryffindor fool, but I tire of this war my Lord. She may have never forgiven me for his death but she has been dead a long time. This was simply the easiest way I saw to end it, and the old fool of a headmaster… well some things are more appropriately left unsaid in the presence of a lady and a child." The Dark Lord gave a little hmm of affirmation and turned to the woman, still absorbed in her charts and readings.
"Narcissa, if you can spare a moment?" Her blueish eyes met his for the briefest second. "How is the boy now?"
"He's more stable than he was. Not out of danger by any means, but he is better. The blood replenishers did their job, and those tricky ribs floating around in there haven't wound up back in his lung." There was ice in her voice, but also warmth; a very odd combination. "He's still not breathing right at all, but no longer asphyxiating entirely and the worse of his lungs is on the mend. Still waiting to dose him with the Skelemend, but I cannot do that for several hours."
"How long are we looking at until he should be in good enough condition to regain consciousness?" It was a pretty loaded question and the eerie melanic eyes of the potions master flickered in her direction as well.
"Should he wake at all, maybe a week? If more than two months passes he is not waking up at all, but within that time frame there is still some small amount of hope if that is what you are looking for." She never looked away from her papers.
"Why a week? Could we force him awake?" And this time the woman scoffed before remembering to whom she was speaking to and promptly apologizing profusely.
"If it is a proper coma, a simple enervate would do nothing, and more complex waking charms or rituals could be dangerous. At the two month mark I may allow it as a last ditch effort, but not a second sooner, do you hear me? Not to be rude, but you are not the healer my Lord. As for a week, he's suffered severe head trauma, so who's to say if he wakes he'll even know who we are, or if he'll have forgotten some things? His brain and body need time to heal. Magic can do amazing things, miraculous things when you think on it, but it is not infallible as I am sure you know. He has a concussion, a bad one, and by all means he should be dead." Passionately would be the only way to describe her words. Calm and clear as a crystal phial her sweet voice was as strong and proud as ever. The woman's eyes were stormy, almost furiously so, and her hands were clenched and white knuckled at her sides. The silvery blue robes fluttered around her as if caught in a slight breeze and the long sleeved flapped lightly at at her wrists, where they loosened.
The two men in the room simply nodded, accepting her wisdom and knowledge without question. Even the Dark Lord Voldemort knew not to further piss off an angry woman, especially a mother. He'd learned that lesson with a light loving mudblooded witch, he did not care for a repeat lesson with a dark witch of any caliber or pedigree.
He fled the room pretty quickly afterwards. It's not as though he had a reason to be there any more, so he returned to his chosen study. The room had a lot of white gold coloured accents, and the walls were charmed a pleasant shade of blue. It felt like being at a beach almost, with silvery birchwood shelves lined with books and a matching desk and comfortable chairs.
The Booke of Olde was still sitting on the desk, dark and as old as it's known name, but he no longer felt like reading its contents. He selected another from the many shelves and and opened it to a random page. It looked like one of his parsel texts, a journal of someone's, they hadn't named themselves. It looked like it was one the cover once, but the cover was so ratty it was hard to tell it was even a book sometimes. Only the spine of the book was in remotely good condition. The words dragged weirdly and he understood them, though if someone asked him to write the words in English he would probably look at them funny. First the person who'd asked, then the English translation if he actually wrote it. Parseltongue was a funny language.
He didn't know how long he was absorbed in the text, though he's read it's entries before. A knock broke him from his text, and a very happy looking Bellatrix entered the room. Her hands were red and her cheeks an oddly splotchy pink. Her smile was very toothy and a tad alarming.
"My Lord." She was very breathless.
"Did you learn anything?" And she nodded. Voldemort nodded his bald white head towards one of the additional chairs in the room, which she took happily before she began to delve into the tales of her fun.
"Oh you wouldn't believe how much he screamed! He seems to like the word 'freak' quite a bit." She basically purred the words. "The slimy blue old man had them being paid. Said something about blood wards."
"Excellent. We can use that." And Bellatrix giggled lightly into her claw tipped, bloody fingers. Really her nails were quite alarming, in their long, sharply pointed and slightly dirty glory. He always figured she spelled them to be harder, as he never saw her with a broken one ever. The only time he'd seen her nails short was just after Azkaban, where they were bitten to the quick and bloody.
"Was there anything else?" And once again she nodded a little. She was still panting pretty hard.
"He said his son used to help him beat the boy, before he went to Hogwarts mostly. I spoke to the muggle woman before I came up, just a little, and she said she's glad her boy smartened up. 'Vernon' was the really bad, bad one." This was followed by another little giggle. "I wish I knew what she sang like, but you haven't told me I can play with her yet."
Voldemort made a little humming sound somewhere in his throat.
"We can use this to our advantage with the boy if he wakes up. If not you may have all the fun you like." Bellatrix's smile dropped then.
"If, my Lord?" Her words tilted.
"If. Narcissa doesn't think he'll wake up, she's given us a two month time frame for him to wake up on his own and after that we have essentially one chance to try and wake him. If he doesn't wake and he still breathes I will end it. Severus, unlike your sister, is certain he will wake up, just because it's Harry Potter we're talking about here. Personally I'm just hoping so I don't actively have to do anything yet." She seemed a little shocked.
"Does that men you're being-"
"Lazy? Not really. More like reconfiguring all of my plans, or most at least, to fit the boy on our side, preaching neutrality or dead. I never really counted on him being dead."
"Well…" Bellatrix seemed at a loss for words. Her lips were pursed and eyebrows drawn, hands folded lightly in her lap. The Dark Lord sighed.
"It doesn't matter. If he wakes, he wakes. If not, we can still take over this world and reshape it as we wish."
"Yes my Lord. Do you think I could visit 'Cissa, and the boy. I want to know how I should treat the muggle next time I see him. He claimed to have tired of his nephew, the Potter boy, and his freakishness at all hours of the day." She had sobered greatly.
"Of course. Trust me, you will be having a lot of fun with him in the future so you may wish to leave him with most of his mind for now." Bellatrix left with a nod and too drained now for more reading or planning the Dark lord retreated from the study to the quarters he had been gifted by the Malfoy's in the hopes of a good nights sleep.