Direct speech will be like this: "blah"
Inner monologues like this: "blah"
Ebony Riddle and the truth about the boy-who-died
Chapter four: Meeting your enemy's mother
Ebony awoke to feel very uncomfortable. It was still dark outside, but as soon as she sat up the room was lit up. It took her eyes a few moments to adjust to the sudden brightness.
"Should I call for Bobby to ask him where the bathroom is? How am I supposed to call him anyway?..... Scream his name at the top of my lungs would hardly be appropriate. It's too late... or early? Anyway, I don't want to wake him up..." She scanned the room once more, noticing, that all six portraits in her room except one, that was occupied by a very grumpy-looking lady, were empty. "Oh boy! She is definitely not a morning-person!" "I'm sorry, Madame." Ebony decided to leave thewomanalone after receiving a very cold glare in reply, so she continued her search for a bathroom, but there was just the door to her right.
"I wonder..." She got off her bed and opened the door and was too relieved to discover aside from a pool-sized bathtub, a sink, and a mirror, which she swore was snoring, a toilet, to be disappointed, that it didn't hide a possible chance to escape.
It took all of Ebonys Gryffindor-bravery, but when she left the bathroom she felt considerably better.
By then she was too widely awake to go back to bed. She approached the female, who seemed to have calmed down a little, to talk to her, because she was sure she had seen the woman before.
The witch was very beautiful; she had an aristocratic face, red hair and wore a flowing red robe, but she had a very hard face, that seemed to scream evil.
"Good morning, Madame, my name is-" Ebony started, but she was interrupted by the impatient woman.
"I know who you are! You are Ebony, Layla Riddle, Salazar's heiress." "I still have my doubts..."
The woman sneered at her and hissed: "Are you daft or why are you denying the most obvious truth?"
Ebony blinked and then gulped. "Can she read minds?!"
The short-tempered woman rolled her eyes. "No, stupid child, I can use Legilimency !"
"What is Legilimency?", the younger witch asked curiously still wide-eyed.
The women sneered again, lecturing her: "Legilimency is Latin. It can be roughly translated mind-reading," she said the word as though it left a disgusting taste on her tongue, "but every Legilimens, who are obviously the people using Legilimency, knows that it is much more than that. It is a delicate art! Legilimency is easier, when the spell-caster is physically near the victim and the target is vulnerable. Eye-contact is very important, so Legilimens often try to manipulate their targets into making eye-contact with them. The target sometimes reveals associated memories to the Legilimens."
"...Oh...", Ebony said, very confused by this overload of information and she was suspecting that certain people have used Legilimency many times on her already.
As though she suddenly remembered her manners, the female suddenly told her in an arrogant tone: "My name is Morgan le Fey, queen of Avalon."
Ebony's jaw dropped. This portrait was over a thousand years old and belonged to one of the most powerful witches and one of the darkest witches of all time. It was invaluable!
"Of course! That's why she looked familiar! She had been on one of my first chocolate frog cards I have ever had, though the Morgana on that card had been much older."
The woman, who had been looking her intently in the eye, shook her head in disgust. "You are weak," she said, her mouth curling in distaste, while Ebony took a step back startled at the out of context statement.
"Excuse me?"
When the meaning of the sentence finally sank in, the girl turned bright red in anger, but before she could make a scathing remark in reply, the older woman interrupted her: "That's exactly, what I'm talking about," the disgust was still plain in her voice, "I don't even need to use Legimency to read you like an open book. A completely unguarded mind. You are a pitiful excuse of a Slytherin."
Enough was enough Ebony yelled at the portrait: "Well, I am proud to say, that I am no Slytherin. I am a Gryffin-" "Though the hat did want to place me in Slytherin."
Le Fay silenced her annoyedly, before she spoke: "Fool! I'm talking about your family's name, not your house!" Ebony blushed furiously, but if it was of anger or embarrassment, she didn't know, but Morgana continued enjoying to hit every easily-found nerve: "Oh, but maybe the hat was right after all and you would have been stronger, if you had allowed him to sort you into Slytherin."
"Power isn't the most important thing," Ebony said confidently.
"Oh, it isn't?" the dark witch asked in mock-surprise."Then what is? What did you gain in Gryffindor?"
Ebony hesitated just a moment before answering, carefully avoiding eye-contact with the Legilimens: "Friends! Friends, who don't use me and are not only around me, because they think they can gain something by being friends with me!"
Le Fey smirked cruelly, as she coldly said: "Yes. Great friends, your are, indeed! Friends, who don't trust, envy each other and use each other." Ebony winced. This remark hurt deeply. This woman had the sympathy of a stone, so she tried to change the subject, with the first question that came to her mind, which ended up to be: "How do you know that, if you couldn't use Legilimency?"
Morgan just rolled her eyes, but she answered anyway: "It doesn't need my extraordinary skills as a Legilimens to listen to you, when you babble your life-story out to that little slave of yours."
Mismatched eyes widened in horror. Six portraits had been eavesdropping on her, while she was telling someone all of her secrets! Worse yet: The occupants of those portraits were gone; probably spreading what they had heard. "I guess this is payback for all those times I've listened in on other people's conversations. I hope the other people are more trustworthy than Morgana." "Who do the other portraits around the room belong to?"
Le Fay pointed to her left, where a picture of an empty study hung. "Herpo the Foul, a dark wizard from ancient Greece. He was the first to create a basilisk and was a parselmouth like yourself." Ebony looked at the picture in dislike. This man sounded like a second Voldemort, but continued to pay attention as the woman explained: "The picture to my right belongs to Grindelwald. A formidable Dark Lord, who was defeated by Albus Dumbledore, your dear Headmaster, in 1945." "Great..." The dark wizard's picture was a little less empty than the others she noted, shuddering. It showed a dark dungeon. A few prisoners were hanging from the ceiling and Ebony wasn't sure, whether they were alive or not until one moaned and lifted his head painfully slowly to look into her eyes, having felt someone's gaze on him. There was a silent plea in his eyes for her to kill him and put an end to his eternal torture. She felt terrible, knowing she couldn't do a thing to help him. She broke eye-contact to stare at the floor in sorrow. She brought her attention back to the heartless woman in front of her, who was staring at her with disgust. "Pity is for the weak, Riddle." The woman continued with the two identical pictures on the wall to her left, seven feet to the right of the bathroom door. Ebony gasped, when she recognised the dark, gloomy hall as the chamber of secrets. "I see you know this place. The left one is your father's, when he was still a teen and the right one Salazar Slytherin's. They are probably off to plot with Grindelwald, what to do about their far too light heiress."
The girl was beginning to feel faint. She shared this room with the most evil wizards of all time! Though she was dreading to be told, she was still curious, who the last picture, which hung on the wall opposite to the twin pictures and showed a perfectly normal chair and a black background, belonged to, but she soon realised that the woman wasn't about to continue soon, so pointing at the picture, she asked: "Whose picture is this?"
Le Fay's lips curled in disgust, as she said: "That portrait is Sabrina Riddle-Slytherin's, your father's mother's." Ebony's eyes widened, staring at the picture. "I wonder what the face of Voldemort's mother... and my grandmother's face looks like?" "The stupid girl," Ebony felt a pang of fury, "gave up her family's history for a stupid muggle. What a muggle-loving fool! She was left by her muggle-husband, when he found out she was a witch and she still loved" The cold-hearted woman spat the word out as though it left a foul taste on her tongue. "him so much, she named her son after him with her dying breath! Pathetic!"
"No", the girl stated calmly, although her insides were burning with fury.
The older witch looked startled at being contradicted, obviously not used to it, because she asked rather angrily: "What?"
The teen continued with more force, looking the woman directly in the eye allowing the Legilimens to feel all the disgust and hate she felt for her: "You heard me, quite well! I said: No. She wasn't pathetic! Not at All!" She took a deep breath. "To be frank, you are the only pathetic, stupid and weak person here." It was Ebony's turn to smirk, as the insufferable woman spluttered, prompting the girl to continue: "Honestly, even you should know by now that the same love, you so foolishly discarded, can be a power beyond anything else. I'm the living proof of that." She nodded thoughtfully to herself. "A person, who shields himself from everyone around him can't ever use this ultimate power." The furious teen's eyes turned cold, as a matching smile graced her lips. She was well aware that she most likely looked insane with her expression combined with her so called hairstyle. After a moment of thinking the girl came up with the finishing touch, continuing coldly, before the woman had time to regain her composure: "Truly pathetic! Even my mudblood mother could use it and you, the famous Morgan Le Fay can't even catch glimpse of it. What a disappointment! No wonder Merlin was always stronger than you." At the mention of her arch nemesis' name the woman's face first paled than turned a nice shade of red, before she ran from her picture. "The only thing she desires is power even now as a shadow of her true self." Ebony felt very small pang of pity, but it was gone as suddenly, as it had come. She could already stand the woman less than Malfoy. "I hope I'll never meet her again!"
After a while the teen got bored sitting in one of the chairs, waiting for the sun to rise, so although she knew fully well it was probably a bad idea, she walked over to the bookshelves and picked a random tome. She was a little relieved to find it hadn't bit her fingers off or screamd, like some other books she tried before and it didn't seem to have cursed her either. It happened to be a thin white one. She skimmed through the summary and to her surprise it was solely on "white" magic. Following her instincts, she replaced the white book and she snatched the black book off the shelf. "OK. That's cliché. Sorting the books into "white" and "black" magic..., but I'm surprised a Dark Lord has books on the Light Arts."
Ebony stiffened suddenly, feeling eyes on herself. She whirled around to face the direction, she was stared at from, but whatever she had feared it to be, it hadn't been a slightly older-looking version of the foreign face, Ebony saw, when she looked into the mirror only with a different eye-colour, well-kept brown hair and a more healthy taint. Sabrina Riddle's portrait wasn't empty anymore.
The eyes that Ebony felt looking at her, were a pair crystal blue eyes, that were currently teared up, but it seemed to be of happiness as the woman was smiling brightly at her. Her voice broke, when she whispered: "My Ebony... My grandchild..."
Ebony's throat tightened and she approached the beautiful woman, who looked as though she wanted nothing more than to be able to hug her. The blonde-haired woman placed a hand on the invisible wall between her and reality, as though she tried to test, if she could break through. Ebony hesitated a moment before placing her hand against the other's. There was hard oil colour beneath her fingers, but she could almost feel a soft, warm hand caressing her's. They remained like that for a moment longer, smiling at each other.
Ebony wondered, why she accepted this stranger as her grandmother this easily, while she wasn't sure yet, whether she accepted her own new identity, yet or not."Is it the uncanny resemblance?Is it her happiness to see me?... Or maybe that she seems willing to be my grandmother? Ever since I've looked into the Mirror of Erised I- Hey! Wait!"
Ebony removed her hand from the picture hastily and took a step back, trying to ignore the confused, hurt look Sabrina was giving her.
"She wasn't in it! With her blonde-hair I would have remembered her for sure, among all those Potters! I'm positive that there was no red- and green-eyed girl either! And there sure as hell wasn't a red-eyed Dark Lord in there!"
Ebony was broken from her thoughts by Sabrina's calm, soothing voice, that was filled with sympathy: "Maybe your wish was not to have your family with you..." Sabrina broke off, but seemed to force herself to continue regretful: "Maybe your greatest desire was for Tom to never have existed..."
"...Sounds plausible... Damn it! I should have known I'm not that lucky..." "Is everybody here a Legilimens?" she tried lamely to change the topic and lighten the mood.
Sabrina smiled. "Actually, yes all the portraits in this room can use Legilimency." Sabrina laughed lightly, when Ebony groaned softly. "Le Fey and Salazar are the only ones, who are masters of the art, though. I can only enter a person's mind, who doesn't know how to use Occlumency at all." At her granddaughter's confused look, she explained: "It's a technique to guard one's mind. It's used as the counter method to Legilimency. A very good Occlumens can make a Legilimens believe almost everything.""Voldemort is most likely a Legilimens. I should learn Occlum-" Her thinking was interrupted by her grandmother's worried voice: "You should eat your breakfast. You are too thin." By the end Sabrina was looking quite sternly.
"huh? What breakfast?" turning around she saw her breakfast on the table to her left. "But isn't it too-" "Nope, it is not too early..." She could see the sun shining brightly outside. It would be a warm day; there were no clouds up in the sky.
She of course didn't manage to eat all the food, Bobby had made for her, which Sabrina noted with a disapproving frown. "Can't someone not comment on my eating habits?! OK, so I'm thin, it's not like I'm anywhere close to starving!"
There was a pop and Ebony was about to happily greet Bobby, when she remembered, that a houself announces its arrival with a cracking sound, so she turned around cautiously ready to evade an attacker's spell.
A woman, wearing light blue dress robes, was now standing in the middle of the room, but it wasn't just any woman. Narcissa Malfoy, Daco Malfoy's, mother and wife to Lucius Malfoy, a high-ranking deatheater, was looking her up and down with a calculating eye.
The wandless girl backed away, unconsciously searching the protection of a friend, so she soon ended up with her back pressed against Sabrina. She looked for a possible escape, but the only door was across the room and it led to a bathroom – a blind end.
Suddenly Mrs. Malfoy surprised Ebony by curtseying and saying respectfully: "My Lady, the Dark Lord, your father, assigned me to help you get used to your new body."
Ebony blinked, then muttered: "Oh, shit..." It seemed a bit too loudly, because she could hear Sabrina chuckling behind her.
As Mrs. Malfoy moved to take something out of her robes, the younger witch readied herself to jump out of the way of any curse, that the woman might throw at her, but she didn't take her wand out. In her hands she held two small viles. She looked at them for a second then put the blue one back into her pocket.
The pretty woman, who didn't look at her with the same disgusted look on her face she had during the Quidditch World Cup, walked towards her slowly. Ebony was debating whether to try to run to the bathroom and lock herself inside it or not. It was very tempting to shove the advancing woman aside and hide behind the questionable safety of a closed door, but Ebony knew that a first year charm could open a door, that had been locked by a simple key. "If this door has a key at all..."
Mrs. Malfoy stopped three feet from her and held out the potion for her to take. Ebony took it reflexively, because the sudden gesture had startled her. "Please drink this potion, my Lady. It will repair you skin."
Ebony looked at the vile closely and uncorked it, taking a sniff. She had never made potions with this effect, but she had learned how to recognise a few poisons already, so she could only hope, if it was one it was among those few, because she wasn't very good at Potions.
She didn't recognise it. "Is this a good thing or not? What should I..?Hm... Dark Lady, huh? Well, I can't expect too much, but I can make sure..." "No," she told the woman waiting patiently for her to swallow the potion. She didn't look too surprised with Ebony's protest and only raised an eyebrow, silently asking her to continue: "You will take a sip first!"
The older witch looked at her with new-found respect, taking a sip of the potion and gave her the potion back. Nothing seemed to happen. Ebony waited a minute to make sure there wasn't going to be a nasty effect later on, before drinking the rest herself very slowly. Her skin tingled slightly as it lost its transparency, but it stayed chalk-white."I probably got that from my daddy." She was relieved that it really did not seem to be poison.
The older witch guided her to the bathroom. She left her standing by the door, turning one of the various tabs. The bathroom was soon filled with the scent of lavender. "Escape. Now!"
She turned to the doorway and was about to run for her life, when the door was slammed shut and locked by a spell. "I beg for your forgiveness, my Lady, but your first lesson is a bath. Now please take those muggle-rags off."
The next hour felt like an eternity to Ebony, who hadn't known until then that taking a bath could take this long, but the pureblood seemed to think she was contaminated with muggle-germs and the blue potion, which turned out to be some kind magical shampoo needed a long time to take effect. She was surprised, but the mass of knots that used to be her hair was suddenly soft and looked beautiful. Narcissa, as the older woman had asked her to call her, taught her what she thought Ebony needed to know about the female body.
When it was finally over, Ebony did feel more...right in her new body though. After Narcissa had given her a towel and she had wrapped it around herself, she climbed out of the pool-sized bathtub. She was about to grab her clothes, when Narcissa sent an incendio at it. The girl stared open-mouthed at the pleased-looking woman. "I bet she's been itching to do that ever since she saw them..." "I think this is a good time for you to get used to woman's clothes."
Narcissa went into the adjoining room and came back a few minutes later with a pile of clothes in her arms.
They weren't too bad. Emerald green dress robes, with red embroidery of a dragon, that were cool even in her boyish mind, since dress robes were always cut a little feminine, it wasn't too different from the dress robe, she had worn last year.
Before Narcissa allowed her to take a look in the mirror, the older witch took out her wand. Ebony didn't back away. She was beginning to trust the other witch and Narcissa didn't betray that trust; she simple cut Ebony's hair with her wand. Nodding in satisfaction, Narcissa took her hand leading her towards the mirror.
She didn't look as sickly anymore, as her skin had lost its translucent appearance and was now an even shade white. Her soft black hair now fell to the just above the floor, while the foremost strands, that she must have unconsciously tucked behind her ear, were shoulder-length. She grinned. "I will have so much fun scaring Seamus. The floor-leingth, black hair and pale complexion make me look like a banshee!...I hope I am not one... I'm beginning to believe nothing would surprise me anymore..."
Ebony noticed that Narcissa was searching her pockets for something. Ebony watched curiously and smiled in joy, when the older witch handed her wand back to her. "I'm going to come once a day to teach you everything you need to know as the Dark Lord's daughter," she promised."Thanks, but no thanks." To Ebony's confusion, Narcissa took out a ring and put it on her finger. After a few moments Narcissa vanished."A portkey! Well, it's safe to assume that Narcissa can apparate, so why would she use a portkey...? Wards. Probably the same ones like those around Hogwarts."
The next few days she spent bonding with Bobby, Sabrina and Narcissa, while she avoided Herpo, Slytherin, Riddle and Grindelwald, who always seemed to be watching her with calculating eyes. When they were away she searched for the portkey-spell, but was having little success so far or... she brushed her impossibly long hair; not to keep it free of knots of course, she could have cared less if her hair was a mess again and the potion Narcissa had given her seemed to do that anyway. No, she did this to learn to clear her mind, so she could start her Occlumency lessons with Sabrina.
The woman had told her that she had come up with it, because, although her teacher had been a master in both Occlumency and Legilimency, he had been an incompetent teacher. He had only told her to clear her mind and used Legilimency on her. Sabrina had been furious every time she came back from a lesson. It was then that she had realized that brushing her hair helped her to calm down. After a while of practising this calming technique, as she had called it, she had been able to do the first step to clearing her mind, whenever she wanted to without the stupid brush: She had learned to control her emotions.
Ebony had of course been very sceptical at first, but she soon realized that it was a very calming thing to do, because it was a monotonous and pleasant task, though she doubted it would feel as good if she had knots in her hair. She was starting to get rid of her emotions quite fast, but she still needed the brush to concentrate on, so she knew she wasn't ready to ask Sabrina to teach her about the next step, yet.
Brushing her hair was what she did at the moment, but she had little success in clearing her mind. She was too confused and worried. "Why doesn't Voldemort show any interest in me? I've been here for five days now and haven't seen him at all. Not that I'm very keen on seeing him, but the waiting is driving me crazy," Ebony sighed, then allowed a forced-sounding laugh to escape her lips. "Maybe he does do this, so I go insane and join him," She sobered."or he is planing something big... He must be pretty confidant that I'm going to join him, otherwise he wouldn't have given me Bobby and told Narcissa to teach me. I need to find out how to make a portkey!" she thought, putting the brush away and making her way over to the bookshelves.
The eighth day in the snake pit Bobby and Ebony had to themselves, as the four wizards were out, Sabrina was visiting somebody, who Ebony was suspecting to be her son, not that the teen blamed her, as she was his mother, Morgana hadn't ever returned since there first meeting and Narcissa had left a while ago.
She was worried about the elf. He had been acting strangely since yesterday. Almost like he had done something punishable and wanted to hurt himself, but she had made him promise her to never punish himself again.
It was worse than the day before though. He was close to tears the entire day and when he gave her her dinner he said: "Goodbye, my friend and Mistress Ebony." He hugged her and vanished from the room with a sob, that drowned out his usual crack.
Ebony let the tray fall to the ground with a clatter as she made the conclusion. „Voldemort wants to get rid of me. I have to search the books! There has to be one on how to make portkeys!!"
She searched for hours and was getting desperate, when she finally found, what she had been looking for. She smiled exhaustedly, memorising every word, but when she came to the passage describing how the spell worked, her smile froze.
It said: A portkey brings you to the place it was activated at."No", it echoed in Ebony's head. "No! No !No !No!! I have not spent my last hours searching for a spell that won't be of any use to me!" Ebony realized she was panicking and it wouldn't help her at all, so she tried to calm down, but she could only think of the many ways, she could die. "Or maybe I will end like the Longbottoms; tortured until it breaks my mind... No! No! No!! I'm not going to end like this! I'm going to live and be sane! I'm going to survive! Now calm down and think! Think! There's got to be something, you can do!"
A few minutes later she realized that she wasn't going to calm down any time soon. „I'm wasting precious time! I need a clear mind to think! That's it!"
"Once I can think clearly again I'm going to come up with something!" Ebony ran to the bathroom to grab her brush."It's ironic, how something as useless as a brush, might be the key to your survival." Ebony spotted a piece of parchment where her brush used to be. Written on it was written in big, bright red bolt letters: The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve Grimmauld Place, London.
"Strange." Then she noticed that her brush had been under the parchment. She picked it up and felt herself be pulled forward by a hook behind her navel.