Chapter 4: Something wicked this way comes
Disclaimer and Explanations please see chapter 1.
~oOo~
Last time in Shattered Illusions of Safety, Counting Inferi:
Voldemort waved his wand over them, doing a quick headcount with, "Duco caput capitis". The spell displayed glowing red roman numbers in the air in front of him, 'CCCLXXXVII.'
Cold dread settled in his gut, exploding into anger a moment later. He was sure the last count had been three hundred and eighty-six. Therefore, there was one more body in the lake indeed, a new Inferius. A thief had found the cave and attempted or perhaps even managed to steal his Horcrux!
The Dark Lord´s worst fear had come true. Panic and fury threatened to cloud his judgment.
That should have been impossible!
Had Dumbledore found the cave?
How in Salazar´s name?
But ... if Dumbledore alone had tried to steal the Horcrux, he would be dead, however he was alive, so what had happened?
Voldemort´s frenzied thoughts churned to a stop. He took a few deep breaths and forced himself to calm down, to push his violent emotions behind his Occlumency barriers (Harry was most likely suffering a severe headache right now) and to analyze this situation and the facts logically.
There was a new corpse, a new Inferius, so this person either had touched the water before he reached the island, or after.
Both possibilities were equally probable.
There was a trace of old blood on the entrance archway.
This blood could be of the corpse in the water, or from somebody else who had accompanied him or her.
The chance that a random muggle had swum into the entrance cave through the dark, narrow tunnel, and then had accidentally splattered blood from an fresh injury exactly on the right spot on the wall, thereby opening the archway, stumbling into the cave, falling into the lake... this was extremely unlikely.
Therefore, the blood was from a wizard; a wizard had been here, many years ago.
Dumbledore was alive, well he was half an hour ago, if the Devils Snare and the Cobra had not killed him. Now if Dumbledore was alive, someone else had died here. Who? He had found no evidence so far that revealed the identity of the intruder.
Had the headmaster entered the cave with a companion? Did this somebody die, while Dumbledore escaped? Maybe. Not impossible. Probable.
Would Dumbledore sacrifice the life of an Order member for the 'Greater Good?'
Yes, he would; Voldemort knew Dumbledore only too well. Behind his grandfatherly facade, he was the determined leader of the Light, a competitive chess player and the wizard who had defeated Grindelwald, the former Dark Lord.
A man that did to Harry and Neville what he did and that condemned an innocent man to a life sentence in Azkaban like Harry´s godfather, was ruthless enough.
Of course, Dumbledore never would admit that ... or outright tell his followers that they were merely pawns on this large as life chessboard in his personal little war with the current Dark Lord.
Did the thief or thieves reach the island with the pedestal? Where was the boat?
Voldemort dismissed the army of Inferi by commanding them, "#Rest, keep vigil, my guardians.#"
The grotesque bodies turned as one and staggered back into the lake, soon floating peacefully under the surface.
The dark wizard walked further along the edge of the lake, until the island in the middle of the lake was exactly opposite. With a tap of his wand, a glowing chain rose up from the water, soon pulling up a tiny, ghostly green boat. The boat was whole, not damaged and bobbed at the edge of the lake, ready to take off.
Pacing back and forth, he pondering the possibilities. If somebody had managed to cross the water in the boat and drink the poison in the basin on the island, he could have taken the locket out, or he stopped drinking, while there was still some potion in the basin. In any case, the burning poison should have overwhelmed him, so that he tried to drink water from the lake to quench his desperate thirst. Then the Inferi would have pulled the person down into the lake to drown him.
Either the locket was still inside the basin, it could have fallen into the lake or it was still laying on the ground of the island where the thief had dropped it.
Or, another possibility, a second thief had picked it up, somehow escaped the Inferi and had taken the locket out of the cave...
With 'Accio Slyterin´s Locket' Voldemort attempted to summon his Horcrux.
An instant later, an Inferius sprang dramatically out of the water, but no locket appeared.
"#Its alright, rest, keep vigil,#" he controlled the Inferius, who slid back into the black lake with a loud splash.
If the locket still was where it was supposed to be, he would need a victim to drink the poison in the basin to check. The special proprieties of the potion blocked the summoning or vanishing spell.
Two persons could cross the lake in the small boat – but not two grown, adult wizards at the same time:
only one grown wizard and a muggle, or a wizard child, or a wizard and a house elf. Like he himself had sailed across the lake seventeen years ago, with that house elf from the Black family, which he had left to die on the island after testing the potion on it.
Now that he had reached this point in his contemplations, Voldemort felt a profound unease.
Whoever had come into the cavern could not have known beforehand how the Horcrux was protected exactly, could he? Then how did they do that? Was it possible that one of his Death Eaters had betrayed him?
He had told none of them that he had made Horcruxes or that his heirlooms were of such immense value. Perhaps that had been a mistake, as the whole fiasco with Lucius and the diary had brought to light. Voldemort remembered that he had alluded to have taken means against death. That he had gone farther than any man before him. Well, all the old Dark pureblood families did have a library with Dark arts tomes; so it was possible that one of his Death Eaters had done some research, just the same as he did as a student. But who? And even if one of his followers suspected that he had dallied with Horcruxes, they still didn´t know anything about this cave. He had never disclosed where he kept his Inferi army hidden. The Inferi groups that he had used in the last war were always transported with a portkey to the intended target area.
Severus as his young potions master had brewed the poison, yes that was true. Nevertheless, Severus could not have betrayed him like this, because he had never told him how and where he would use the poison, to protect something valuable in a special hiding place.
He had told the potions master the proprieties for a new poisonous potion that he should develop.
The potion should be impossible to vanish by normal charms like Scourgify or Evanesco,
or to be transfigured into other fluids like water or wine;
it should cause physical pain, a burning sensation in the stomach.
It must cause a feeling of desperate thirst.
It was designed to force the subject to relive their most painful memories, similar to a Dementor;
an effect that was truly difficult to achieve, this was much more than causing a simple hallucination.
In the end, the poison should slowly and most painfully kill the subject, if no antidote was administered on time.
Severus had shown his remarkable talent and excelled in creating this new potion; he had assumed his Lord wanted this poison for torture and interrogation; they had talked about that while Severus was researching in his Lord´s library on fine-tuning the potion.
Who else had known anything about this cave or the locket in the past decades?
He had never talked to one of his Death Eaters about this cave. Very few had seen him wearing the locket after he had acquired it. Maybe he had once mentioned something about it being Slytherin´s Locket, to impress them.
He had killed the old Miss Smith who had owned the locket (and the Hufflepuff cup) for a while. Her relatives maybe had seen the locket and the cup once, that was possible, but Miss Smith had guarded them so possessively.
Voldemort had thought that nobody else had a reason to connect these items to him, the young clerk working for Borgin and Burkes.
Was it possible that a Smith relative noticed exactly what was missing after her death?
And that this relative was – Voldemort sucked in a shocked breath at this idea – questioned by Dumbledore many years later? Did Dumbledore interrogate his former employer, old Mr. Burkes and connect the dots?
That would mean that Dumbledore was searching and digging around in Tom Riddles past for years.
Voldemort seethed with fury, again. He had been sure that he had been careful, covering all of his tracks. Now this! Of course, this was all just wild speculation, but now that he thought about it... he could not banish these fears from his mind again.
When talking to Nagini earlier, he had already contemplated that Dumbledore might have spoken or would attempt to speak to Horace Slughorn, his former head of house – but this would be on an altogether different scale, if Dumbledore was ingenious and relentlessly enough to discover such information about him.
What about those two kids he had forced down into this cave as a child? Well they didn´t talk anymore, they were completely traumatized. Now they would be old people, they were only filthy, disgusting muggles after all. How would anybody connect these nameless, faceless muggles to him, Lord Voldemort?
Could Dumbledore have found them, questioned them or used Legilimency and thereby unearthed information about this cave from their childhood memories? What an utterly improbable suggestion!
Nevertheless – the fact remained, somebody had entered this cave, died and become a new Inferius. Just how had Dumbledore discovered the Gaunt cottage today? There had to be an explanation, however strange or farfetched.
Voldemort paced restlessly around the ledge besides the lake and growled in profound frustration. This was an enigma, a mystery if there ever was one. He could not solve it with this limited information.
Logic dictated that Dumbledore was searching in earnest, and somehow he had found information about the young Tom Riddle. Dumbledore knew about the diary since three years, a long time. The danger to lose his precious safeguards was to close, to real.
He needed to verify if the locket was still in the basin or not. Casting a 'Tempus' he checked the time, it was afternoon by now.
The Dark Lord turned around and strode out of the cavern. From the entrance cave he Apparated first back to the top of the cliff. After verifying that nobody was in the vicinity and concealing himself again, he Apparated to a sheltered spot on the other side of the little seaside village nearby. The rain and fog had cleared somewhat while he was in the cave, the sun struggling through the clouds had warmed the air, compared to an hour before.
There were a few Muggles around the harbour and on the gravel beach, obviously 'enjoying the fresh air'; Voldemort snorted quietly. Four men were standing or sitting right at the shore with long fishing rods; not very far away in the opposite direction, five smaller children and a group of teenagers were bathing, jumping around laughing and screeching loudly in the surf, despite the relatively chilly air and the fresh wind.
A few more teenagers were not in the water, but sitting together above the water´s edge. They looked out at the rough waters of the sea, white caps dancing across the tops of waves as they crashed against the shoreline.
Some more Muggles, the elder people most likely the parents or grandparents of the children, were sitting either on the mole or on the terrace of the nearby pub; next to this house was a small fish and chips place , he would not call that a restaurant.
Voldemort watched the tourists dispassionately. He preferred a victim that was alone; he did not want to cause a scene just now... maybe later, depending on what he would find on the island. He vibrated with nervous energy, if it turned out that the locket was gone...
The teenagers were shoving each other and splashing around; they made quite a lot of racket. This seemed to disturb another teenager, a young brunette haired woman, who made a gesture at them and said something in an angry voice; Voldemort was too far away to understand the words. The girl turned, picked up her towel, a book and her backpack and left the group.
She walked along the gravel shore past the anglers, and then veered off to climb up to the coastal patch that led along the cliff top to the sheltered, secluded cove about three quarters of a mile away. The Dark Lord perked up, this was fortunate; an evil smile stretched his lips.
He slowly glided after the girl, keeping a safe distance for now, waiting until she had turned the bend in the path that would block the view to the village and beach behind them. He was nearly invisible, still disillusioned; the lighting was changing rapidly due to the fast moving tumbling clouds in front of the sun. Before he attacked the girl he would check that there were no Muggles coming up the path from the other side .
They had rounded the bend, the coastal path ahead was clear. Nobody else in sight, only a breathtakingly beautiful view of the rolling hills ahead and the sea glimmering in the light coming down in bright shafts through the gray clouds. The wind blew in crisp gusts from the sea, stronger on the cliff top than below.
Lengthening his stride, he felt the anticipation of the hunt, even if his prey was only a defenseless girl; and this walk along the cliff was a good way to release his stress. Now that he was closing in on her he could observe her better; she was about five feet five inches tall, very slender, slight curves, with tousled shoulder length brown hair, wearing dark blue jeans shorts, a silver belt and a sleeveless, green top; that was very fitting clothing for this occasion, almost Slytherin colours, he thought amused. Voldemort pulled out his wand and took aim, 'Stupefy.'
The young brown-haired woman must have sensed something in that moment, perhaps her instincts warned her, because she turned to look over her shoulder. A bright red light streaked towards her at an incredible speed like a laser pointer, then something hit her hard, knocking the breath out of her. Blessed darkness clouded her senses in an instant.
~ TBC ~
A/N Thank you for the reviews and adding my story to your Alerts or Favorites.
The title, Something wicked this way comes, is - as I´m sure most of you recognize - a line from Act IV scene 1 of Shakespeare´s play Macbeth.