Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. If I were, why would I be posting on this website ?
She laid waiting, still as sleeping on the pallet, until the man left and the gas lamp burned low. Closed her eyes, mindlessly traced the shape of Sound with her fingers like a pianist practising the scales, or a penitent's practised hands over a rosary. Her hands worked the figure into the air until she felt the magic catch like the bobbin thread to the descending needle of her sewing machine, and still continued, until she could hear the surrounding rooms as clearly as were she there.
And then, she still waited, her hands keeping their familiar rhythm to maintain the spell. She had hoped Narcissa would finally offer her a real wand instead of the birch switch she'd used to practise the motions of the spell-a real wand, that acted like a loom for the threads of the world, binding them in place once caught by her will. None of this constant fixingfixingfixing to keep the Sound and the magic from slipping her fingers and settling back down into the floorboards.
She waited until the noise was less crowded, and again, until she could hear distinct voices laughing on nothings, and again, until the voices became drowsy murmurs, and the murmurs became silence.
And only then, did she sit upright, the bare friction of her burnt skin against itself almost tearing a scream from her raw red lips.
Paused again. And, defiant, stood upright.
There, that was fine.
The lamp had guttered to nothing, and she squinted by the pale light issuing from a narrow window to find clothing. There was a stack of short smocks that might have passed for hospital gowns in this backwater society. It was beyond hope that they would have sterilized them properly between patients. She unfolded several before choosing the largest one and gingerly let it settle on her shoulders.
It was agony.
It was fine. She was a bloody Dursley. She could handle it.
She picked up a scalpel on the counter as well-honestly, had none of these wizards any sense?-and stopped her hand motions to hastily cut the figure for open on the door knob when the lock didn't turn. She tried it again.
Still no use. Perhaps the tall and dark one was not as stupid as his peers then.
Nothing for it then.
Reluctantly, she nicked the crease of her elbow, collecting a few beads of ruby-bright blood, before carving the sign again, this time fixing its image in her mind.
"OPEN," she hissed.
The rune burned white as a magnesium flare in her mind's eye, and she was blind. When her vision cleared, the rune was smoking in the door, and the door was ajar.
Breathing a silent prayer to whatever gods might be watching, she stepped out, only to be stopped short. She sprawled face-first and landed on her burned and bleeding palms, biting her lips so as not to cry out, and kicked out at whatever had tripped her.
There was nothing there. Only an unfamiliar coolness about her ankle. She glanced back and saw the blasted chain had settled itself there, the tiny links nestling tight to her skin like a sleeping snake.
She cursed silently. As uncivilized and ignorant as these people were, they still had powers and artifacts she couldn't comprehend. The least she wanted was to go home with one as a souvenir. Given the speed with which the thing had found her the last time, it was the next best thing to a GPS chip. She hadn't-didn't-dare burn Lost on her skin to confound such devices. Flesh was too permanent, and Lost too capricious a sign, to risk her skin for. It might confound her as much as these wizards, make it impossible for her both to find or be found. It was enough to activate the sewn mark when the Malfoys discovered her, to get far enough away before nulling it and trying to find a way out again.
No. All she had now were the protection rune on her forehead, and the crude brands-Memory, on her inner arm, and Swift and Agile, to the inside of each her ankles. She'd practised those often enough to be sure she could fix them to serve her purposes.
They'd have to be sufficient.
She tugged at the chain, but it held fast. She gave up, and peered out the doorway. It opened onto a long room with two rows of beds, barely visible in the moonlight slanting through the high and narrow windows. The infirmary. Of course.
Surprisingly, only three of the beds were occupied-two by men, one by the squat and ugly youth who had attacked her with his friends when she'd made a break for it. Vincent. She wrinkled her nose. Men, attacking girls! In Britain! Her father would have had something to say about it-bloody freaks, going after helpless young women-
Her gut collapsed suddenly, and she gasped in a dry sob, clutching her stomach as she tried not to cry out-not at the pain of the abrasive cotton against her raw hands, or the suddenty of remembrance.
Father.
She straightened up, her features contorting and settling on a grimace as she tried not to cry. He was dead. So was her mother, and her brother, for that matter. They'd destroyed her home. Aunt Marge might be alive, but she couldn't go to her-not until she knew whether or not she'd be safe from these people.
She had to get away, and then, then she'd decide where to go. These magical freaks weren't even accepted among their own kind, were they? They had police, Aurors, she'd learnt, from Narcissa's enquiries after her sister's health following raids. She could find them, maybe.
So she held herself silent. The men were snoring, and Vince, whether he was awake or not, couldn't see her, not with the bandages around his head. Dad would be proud, he'd always told her about his father's work with the infantry during the second war. Dudley would finish smashing in the hoodlum's head, the way he'd done with every other man who'd looked the wrong way at his baby sister.
She slid over the planks, hands shaking with her heartbeat, and barely heard the creaking of the floorboards. A look behind, all quiet, and still, the men undisturbed, in their drugged, Dreamless sleeps. Let out a breath: thank God for opiates. Now, before her-the corridor, dark, lined with doors. And there-that was a banister, wasn't it?
She descended the stairs rapidly-too rapidly. Her vision blackened, she swayed drunkenly for a moment and grabbed for the handrail, almost screaming when, again, she'd forgotten the burns. She peeled her hand off the railing, left a layer of skin behind, suppressed the urge to wipe her bloody palm on her gown, and pressed forward.
Almost there-
The stairs went no further. She stepped out the door.
The hallway here was completely dark, and felt like it was smooth slate underfoot. She traced the ridges and moved forward blindly in the dark, painfully tracing the sign for Sight. Before she could catch hold of the magic though, her toes brushed against something that was neither slate nor wood-something smooth, and soft, and almost too familiar for fear. She heard the vague rustling of the person against the stone before she heard her voice.
"Clumsy idiot!" A pause, as the individual stretched herself out, sluggish with the cold. "Stupid, barging into people who just want to sleep." And, considering, "I smell blood. Perhaps you can be useful to me."
Heather could have laughed-hysterically, incautiously- but didn't. She had to be at least as wise as this stranger if she wanted to survive their encounter. So, instead, she lowered herself, belly-flat to the ground, doing her best not to put the least pressure possible on her burnt arms, and accepted the greedy, assessing touch of the person insinuating herself next to her. She felt the stranger's tongue flicker over her wound, and spoke before she could be tempted to bite.
"I'm so sorry for waking you," she slurred, hoping she wasn't botching this as much as her old friend, now dead, had always complained. "I can't see in the dark nearly as well as you can, I'm afraid."
An intake of breath, a rustling.
"Well, why not make a light, idiot? Isn't that what you freakish apes do all the time?"
Oh. Well. "That's actually a good idea," Heather admitted.
"Most of my ideas are good ones," said the voice smugly. "Even Master thinks so."
"Who is Master?" Heather asked, considering her bloody palm, and wincing, awkwardly tracing the rune for Light in her blood on the flagstone.
"He is a warm thing. Not as warm as sunlight, but adequate. He brings with him fires and mice and rabbits and other stupid apes that are not wise enough to give me what I deserve, and I take from them their flesh. His name is Master or Lord. It is a strange name, but apes are stupid in that way."
The Light took, and Heather held her breath.
She laid nose to nose with the most awe-inspiring personage she'd seen in ages.
The individual before her had a massive, triangular head that, along with the long slender teeth half visible over her lipless mouth, suggested poison-though the length and bulk of her, from what Heather could see, was that of a constrictor. She had to be at least 15 feet long, tip to tail. Her skin was smooth and plush as polished leather, diamond-patterned like an adder's, and the vague lumps along her length suggested recent feedings. The stranger considered her through her amber-hued eyes-an oddly human thing to do-and smelt her experimentally, tongue flickering out to taste her blood on the stone.
"You are also a freakish ape."
"Yes," Heather said, not sure whether she was trembling in awe, or fear, or from simple exhaustion. She had to run, she had to go, NOW.
And yet-presentations could not be rushed. Not with an individual of this size and strength. Courtesy was ill-met with speed.
"But not as stupid as most apes," the snake considered. "At least you can speak normally. None of the squeaking and squabbling most of you furred things make."
"Yes."
"Yes?" mocked the snake. "Is that the only word you know? Pity," she coiled herself out, unlocking her jaw.
Heather startled both of them when she finally gave up and suddenly laughed.
The jaw hooked back, and the amber eyes blinked strangely at her.
"What?"
"Forgive me again," Heather sibilated. "I am being terribly rude. It is just, you are so beautiful, I don't know what to say. And it has been so long since I spoke to a snake."
The snake reared back. "That is unfortunate. Every ape should have the privilege of doing so at length before they are eaten," she said.
"Indeed," Heather agreed easily. "I was once to a snake as your Master was to you-a warm rock, and bringer of juicy small furred things, plump with blood and stinking of fear."
"I do not like my things small, but blood is good," the lovely, long stranger concurred. "And... was this snake anything like me?"
"Nothing as beautiful or strong. You could have swallowed a dozen of her," Heather spoke honestly, and the snake settled back in reassurance.
"Yes. I am strong, and deadly, and no other snake will ever approach me unless to barb himself along my length. My children will flee at the smell of me, the weight of my ponderous girth ripples through the ground like an alarm. I have eaten dozens of lesser snakes. Master is powerful too," she considered. "Though wasteful. He does not eat his kills. Though I am grateful for his stupidity. I am grown fatter and longer for it. And he does not seem inclined to eat me. Freakish ape. Have you eaten anyone?"
Heather considered. "I sometimes eat other furred things-things with four hooves that trample people, and small tasty birds. But I haven't eaten anyone yet, though I may kill someone soon."
"Pah," hissed the snake, flickering out her tongue. "Surely you have been hungry enough to want to kill before? Not a sibling, a mate?"
She remembered sparring with dinner forks with Dudley over the last pancake, and almost giggled. "Of course. But apes are warm things, and tend to give one another food, and better food comes to those who do not eat each other."
The snake looked perturbed. "So I am told, and you apes are truly freakish. But," the snake considered, sidling against her, "you are warm."
"I am. Please mind the tails at my sides, they are healing."
"Fine," the snake grumbled, careful not to brush her arms. "So, ape, if I am not to eat you right away, do you have a name, and is it sensible?"
Heather translated passably as Soft-Thing-Under-The-Belly, which pleased the snake more than the name of Master, which, really, was closer to He-Who-Can-Kill-All-Others-But-Is-Warm-Place. If she hadn't heard Lady describe her by a similar word, she would not have guessed what it meant.
"And what do the apes call you, beautiful one?" she asked drowsily.
"Snake-In-A-Strange-Voice," the snake said in disgust-though, to be fair, that seemed to be this lady's reaction to everything.
"Callings are an ape thing."
"Of course," the snake told her. "You are almost sensible. Not quite as sensible as a snake, but for a stupid ape, you might almost be as sensible as Master." She laid a coil closer to her. "And warmer. Mmm. Perhaps he can make you as an extra rock for while he's away. The other apes are too dumb to talk."
"Not an unwise idea," came a voice from behind her, and Heather hissed quickly in startlement, jerking upright, the snake mirroring her as it reared back. She felt the tension leave its coils against her hip a moment later though, as they realized who it was.
"My Lord," she whispered, squirming away from him awkwardly, sprawled out on the flagstones as she was. She crawled backwards into the snake, who sniffed in boredom or annoyance but settled herself against Heather's shoulders-whether to prevent further retreat or a means of comfort or simply because she was warm, and the snake was too lazy to move, Heather didn't want to guess. She suspected the latter.
"Miss. Potter," susurrused the man, folding himself onto his knees as though to examine her better, and adjusting his silver-framed spectacles as he did so. His right hand caressed the lady's trailing tail absent-mindedly as he cornered her against its coils. "Why on earth are you out of bed at this hour?"
Gentle. Reasonable. You couldn't tell from his tone that this was the same voice that had ordered her family slaughtered, their bodies desecrated, torn to bits and the bits spattered on the walls like spatter-art, a macabre collage of blood and bone and the shredded remnants of Mother's interior decorating.
"I was looking for the restroom," she answered coolly, avoiding his eyes.
"And there were none in the infirmary," he suggested, teasing her with the possibility of an excuse.
"There was a very serviceable chamberpot, my Lord, however, I find it difficult to shit without my modern conveniences."
It didn't translate exactly, of course, but the snake's tongue carried scorn very reliably. He hissed irritably.
"It is unbecoming for a lady of your station to speak so frankly," he reprimanded her.
"Station? If I had any, I would be able to do as I pleased," she snarked back, leaning against the snake more heavily as her vision blurred and blackened again, a migraine throbbing through her temples."
"No rational human being would ever do just as he pleased," he murmured, red eyes closer now. "Rash choices have unpleasant consequences. Like the ones you're experiencing now, Miss. Potter."
She gave a bewildered hiss.
"Bleeding, dizziness, fatigue-did those Muggles teach you nothing?" he sneered. "You are going into shock from fluid loss. Potions and charms can only do so much. You will die, and I will not have the pleasure of killing you."
She blinked dumbly. "Oh." She closed her eyes and settled back against the lady's scales. It seemed wise.
"Stupid girl," he hissed, and she heard Snake-In-A-Strange-Tongue's emphatic agreement. "Severus!" he snapped. The vibration then, a pulse of sympathetic magic that resonated in her bones, was the last thing she felt before losing consciousness.