I hope you enjoy reading this chapter almost as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Also, if there are few more typos in this chapter, forgive me: I was rather tired when I edited it.
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On Halloween morning the following year, his shara entered their classroom, stopped in front of the blackboard, and stared down at him thoughtfully. Revelin suppressed the urge to fidget under his shara's gaze and waited for him to speak, feeling anxious. He knew his shara well enough to know he was about to say something important.
After a moment of tense silence, Shara lifted his chin slightly and said, "I think we will go to England tonight."
Silence ensued. It took a moment for the words to sink in. When they did, shock and then excitement swept through Revelin, swelling in his chest like a warm balloon. "Really?" he squealed, his eyes shining.
He had been wanting to go to England ever since his shara had told him he couldn't go. And though Revelin knew why his shara forbade it—England was the center of everything, where his shara was the most powerful and had the most enemies—it still didn't prevent him from wanting to go there with a strange, desperate longing, one that made his eyes always wonder to the isle on the map and trace it with his finger on the globe. England was his shara's home, where his shara had been raised, where his and his shara's family was from. England was where his shara went by a name other than Cadmus Ellwood, one that Revelin wasn't supposed to tell anyone for anything.
"Really," Shara confirmed, his lips quirking up briefly at the side. "Tonight is All Hallows Eve. It also the 1000th anniversary, or so legend says, of the Founder's pact to build Hogwarts. There will be a celebration in Hogsmeade this evening."
It sounded like it could be as much fun as Holi had been, when they had celebrated it in India the past spring! Revelin rocked back and forth in excitement.
"And I have decided I would be remiss," Shara continued, seemingly deciding to ignore this excessive display of emotion, "If I made you miss it. Now"—his voice turned serious—"there are several precautions we have to take."
Revelin stopped his rocking and leaned forward to pay attention, suddenly serious. He had a funny feeling that if he didn't fulfill Shara's instructions exactly, Shara might change his mind. Shara already looked a little doubtful.
"I understand, Shara," said Revelin earnestly, his eyes big as he waited for his shara to speak. He hoped he was giving the impression that he could be trusted to travel to England.
"Good." Shara paused, an expression crossing his face as if he was having an internal debate. "Very well," he said after a moment, almost reluctantly. "Here's how the evening is going to go…"
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Richard Green had been having a hair-on-fire day. Everything, it seemed, that could have gone wrong, had gone wrong, and it had started early. The security wards they had put around Hogsmeade last night had begun inexplicably crumbling this morning, and there had been a full scale alert and an ensuing panicked stampede, with Aurors and Hit Wizards apparating in and buzzing around like flies, wands drawn, and villagers fleeing in terror till someone had realized that the Ward-Masters had gotten a rune wrong, and that was what had caused the wards to fall, not You-Know-Who. This mass panic had put all the organizers behind, resulting in time constraints, security lapses, and all sorts of clerical errors and questionably legal occurrences. In short, the Ministry's highly detailed, air-tight, security plan for setting up both the Celebration and Celebration security, which had taken some months to put together, had gone to pieces in a matter of minutes. It was a miracle anything had gotten done at all.
Now, however, that was all over. And though Richard was fairly sure there had been a few holes in security earlier, that situation had now been rectified. The wards were up, security guards lined the perimeter of Hogsmeade and the path to the castle, where the professors were conducting tours, and the party was in full swing. A lot of people had already arrived, and the high-security guests, namely, the Longbottoms and the Potters, had already been safely escorted inside the village.
Richard shifted from his overseeing post. It was six o'clock, and families were arriving in droves, passing through the rather intensive security checkpoints and then trudging down the hillside path to the village, which was lit by floating candles and orange, grinning jack-o-lanterns. Richard's eyes wondered briefly to the village, some hundred yards below in the valley, lit up by the warm orange glow of thousands of Halloween lights. Even from this far above it he could hear the distant sound of children's laughter.
His hand clenched at his side. It made him angry to know that such a joyous celebration was a prime target for You-Know-Who, that the man, if he could be even called that, would surely destroy the occasion if he ever managed to get to it. That was why security was so tight tonight: the Ministry had wanted to make sure the place was impregnable, so that You-Know-Who wouldn't even try to disrupt the party.
Still, Richard worried. That security lapse earlier today…
No, he was being ridiculous. The security lapse hadn't been some planned disruption. It had been completely accidental. There was no way You-Know-Who could have learned about it in time to take advantage of it. Richard turned his attention back to the families arriving.
He knew a lot of them, worked with them. There was Mafalda Hopkirk with her two adorable nieces, Arnold Peasegood with his wife and children, Hamish MacFarlan, the Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, with his wife, children, and grandchildren. So many good people.
His eyes flicked down the security queue, searching for others he knew, when they landed on two he didn't. They were obviously father and son, these two. The man was probably Richard's age, fit, with the tiniest hint of silver in his hair. A handsome man. Of the son, Richard could see little, except that he was small and had dark hair. He was standing next to his father, clutching his hand as they waited. The others in line prevented Richard from getting a good look at the child.
A little curious, for he had never seen the man before, Richard wandered down to the security lines. He made a show of checking up on the other security guards, greeting a few familiar faces and patting the Minister's young nephew on the head before making his way to the man's line.
He got there just as the man and his son reached the security point.
"Names?" asked Stan, the hit wizard assigned to that checkpoint. He cast a Lumos to get a good look at both the man and the child.
"Cadmus Ellwood," said the man. "And my son, Revelin."
Ellwood. Richard had never heard that surname before—though, being a half-blood, and his mother not caring much about blood status—it wasn't entirely surprising. The man could have been muggleborn, but Richard somehow doubted it. Cadmus Ellwood sounded like a very pureblood name, and something about the way the man carried himself, more formally than those around him, seemed like something only someone from an old line would do.
The man, Cadmus Ellwood, presented his papers to the security official, and after inspecting them for a minute and casting a few detective spells over Mr. Ellwood and his son, Stan waved them on.
The detection spells were mandatory for all party-goers, even children. The Ministry hadn't put it past You-Know-Who to send his Death Eaters in disguised as parents with young children. All children were tested to affirm their age. But this man, with his young son, didn't strike Richard as a Death Eater. He was much too quiet, too polite. He didn't hand his papers to Stan with a sneer on his face, the way pureblood supremacists like the Malfoys, Blacks, or Lestranges were bound to do. No…there had been a sort of arrogance and obnoxiousness in all the Death Eaters Richard had caught. This man had none of that. Though Richard had never heard of him, never met him, he was sure this man, this Cadmus Ellwood, was no Death Eater.
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Revelin seemed practically overwhelmed with excitement, and for once Voldemort didn't chastise him about jumping up and down on the balls of his feet—not because he suddenly approved of such behavior, but because it was necessary for Revelin to act as much like a normal child as possible.
As they entered the stream of festive witches and wizards pouring down the hillside path into Hogsmeade, Revelin could barely keep still. All around them people were chattering excitedly, waving their hands animatedly. Two families ahead, a boy a bit older than Revelin was tugging on his mother's arm and screaming demandingly, "Mummy, I want to see the Shrieking Shack!"
It was even louder and more festive inside Hogsmeade. Voldemort actually had to pause for a moment to appreciate the full effect.
Orange and black coated everything. All the wooden panels of the buildings had been spelled pumpkin-orange and all the roofs a deep black. Banners and ribbons with grinning skulls and jack-o-lanterns hung everywhere. Along the main boulevard, games and stalls had been set up for both adults and children. In a corner stall, several grinning young witches were painting faces. A boy who had just had his done wandered away from them, the tiger stripes on his face shifting and curling in the candlelight. In the middle of the street, a long narrow pool had mysteriously appeared, where children, with their hands tied behind their back with candy-strings, were bobbing for golden apples, trying to snag them before the domesticated grindylows could eat them all. At the entrance to an alleyway, four wizards and witches stood on a small stage, gesturing wildly, telling some ghost story rather dramatically to a large group of spooked children. Voldemort noted that Salazar Slytherin seemed to be the villain of this particular tale.
Even the stores were in on the festivities. Honeydukes was advertising edible pumpkins and candied skulls. Zonko's was selling some product that momentarily turned heads into flaming skulls; a few feet away from Voldemort a group of Hogwarts students burst into laughter as one of their friends started burning. A sign outside of Dogweed and Deathcap promoted an exhibit of "The World's Most Poisonous Plants (Please Charm Your Children's Hands to their Sides)." In the Three Broomsticks, tables and tables of fortune tellers were reading fortunes. Inside Voldemort could see that pest Sybil Trelawney, her bangles jangling on her wrists as she shuffled a set of Tarot cards. From the horrified expressions of the children in front of her and the outraged expressions of the parents behind them, it was clear she had just predicted the children's deaths.
The atmosphere was fun, festive, cheerful, and joyful. In other words, it made Voldemort cringe. The Ministry had been advertising how wonderful this celebration was going to be for months, and this commonplace affair was what they had been bragging about? Voldemort had to work very, very hard not to appear outwardly disdainful. His Death Eaters didn't seem to be quite as successful. About thirty yards away, the Malfoys stood rigidly on the side of the street, looking supremely uncomfortable. Voldemort knew as well as Lucius that to leave early would be unpopular and cast suspicion. Still, there was some enjoyment to be had in seeing a tiger-striped clown prance up to the Malfoys and, with a great flourishing bow, present a balloon flower to Narcissa. Lucius gave the clown a death glare as Narcissa stiffly accepted the flower. The clown danced away, and Voldemort had to grin wickedly at how absurd the Malfoy matriarch looked standing there stiffly on the street corner, holding a ridiculously large, flesh-colored balloon flower like it was something nasty.
As amusing as watching the Malfoys was, Voldemort didn't want to linger. He didn't want Cadmus Ellwood to attract the attention of any Death Eaters. "Come along," Voldemort said to Revelin, tugging him down the street. "You don't need to go bobbing for apples," he added, seeing the way Revelin's eyes were straying towards the treats. Bobbing for apples—how undignified.
"But they look so—"
At that moment a redheaded wizard stood up on a table and started yelling, "Tours of the Shrieking Shack starting in FIVE MINUTES! See Britain's most haunted dwelling! Tickets on sale now!" On cue, the child Voldemort had seen earlier started whining to his mother, "I want to go, Mummy!"
Revelin waited till they were past the sudden throng of people seeking tickets to say again, "But they look so good, Sh—Father!"
"You're hungry already?" Voldemort asked incredulously, stopping and staring down at him. "You ate dinner before coming here."
Revelin's cheeks tinged pink, and he didn't answer.
Voldemort shuffled through the child's mind, and he exhaled in exasperation. Sometimes, with Revelin being as brilliant and as studious as he was, Voldemort forgot that he was still just a child, only five years old. It was only to be expected that he occasionally have the wants of a five year old.
Revelin wanted candy. The child so rarely had the opportunity to have any, since Voldemort kept none in the riad. Voldemort was greatly tempted to deny it to him now, but eventually relented. One, Revelin would better blend in if he was munching on a sweet. Two, it was a special occasion: despite the horribly plebian celebration, Voldemort agreed with everyone else that the night was significant. The millennial birthday of Hogwarts, his future residence, was a date to mark.
"I suppose we can compromise," said Voldemort at last. "No bobbing for apples, but you can buy something from Honeydukes. Is that agreeable?"
A broad smile spread across Revelin's face, and he nodded eagerly. He grabbed his shara's hand, and Voldemort followed the child as he weaved a path back through the loud, crowded streets to Honeydukes, from which issued the laughter and screams of children and the chattering of parents.
Voldemort eyed the entrance to the store distastefully. It made him want to vomit. He might become homicidal if he entered it. He fished in his pockets for a galleon, handed it to Revelin, and opened his mouth to tell the child to meet him back outside when he had made his purchase, when he caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man inside the store. His mouth snapped shut. It had been only a glimpse, but Voldemort had recognized that man. Arthur Griffiths. Voldemort had come across him, an associate of associates, in some of his more illegal transactions.
Voldemort wouldn't trust Arthur Griffiths near a child if his life depended on it. He knew what that man was. And those parents in there were letting their children run right past him, heedless of the danger! It served as just another example of the stupidity and hypocrisy of the Light. Light parents prided themselves at being so good at parenting, when in reality they were terrible at it—one only had to look at how their children turned out to see that—and not nearly suspicious enough of strangers, even ones who stood alone among a bunch of children with creepy smiles on their faces.
Voldemort turned to look down at Revelin. "I'm going inside with you."
Revelin's expression was one of complete and utter surprise, but Voldemort didn't feel compelled to explain. He tilted his head toward the door. "After you, child."
Still looking a bit stunned, Revelin entered the store, Voldemort following.
It was as bad as Voldemort had imagined it being. Somehow the decibel level had quintupled inside, with children's excited chattering echoing off the walls and floors. In the corner some Hogwarts' students, Gryffindors from their robes, were guffawing stupidly at something. It was so incredibly crowded that it was standing room only, with people shoving and elbowing each other to get anywhere. It made Voldemort's skin crawl. He resisted the urge to take out his wand and blast the people around him, then drag Revelin forcefully from the store. Mudbloods and blood traitors, idiots and imbeciles…
Revelin's hand slipped form his, and Voldemort's head snapped down. Revelin, little child that he was, had wriggled through a tiny gap in the crowd. Voldemort craned his head, but the child had disappeared completely from view. Growling in frustration, Voldemort shoved his way through the gap, peering around once he had made it through. The child was nowhere to be found. Voldemort felt as if something cold had washed over him.
"Revelin!" he called out, but his voice was lost in the chatter. It was not an experience Voldemort was used to. He pushed his way through a gaggle of young parents with their children, loathing having to touch any of them—never again was the child entering a crowded store!—but when he was past them, Revelin was still nowhere to be found.
A strange emotion gripped Voldemort when he realized he couldn't see the boy anywhere. Had he not been a Dark Lord, he would have labeled it as the first stirrings of panic—except Dark Lords, even when pretending to be parents, did not panic. "Revelin!" he called, a little louder. No answer. The strange, panic-like feeling grew stronger. Damn that child!
"Revelin!" he called again, shoving through the crowd, rather rudely through a gaggle of Hufflepuffs, who protested until Voldemort shot them a death glare. They flinched back. Voldemort fought his way to the back of the shop, his skin crawling from having to touch so many mudbloods—the child was going to be in so much trouble when Voldemort finally found him—till at last he burst free of the crowd near the door to the stockroom.
His eyes searched the teeming mass, flicking from the teetering towers of Chocolate frogs to the trees of ice mice, and an inexplicable wave of relief swept through him when he spied Revelin near the far back corner of the store, studying the chocolate wands with interest.
He should have known. Revelin couldn't wait to get his wand.
Voldemort's relief at seeing the child evaporated when he saw who was standing not a few feet away from him, eyeing him with interest. Fury so strong Voldemort had to close his eyes, sure they were turning red, rushed through him, and Voldemort forced it down so he could control his appearance. When he was able to open his eyes once more, Griffiths had taken a step closer to Revelin. The boy was just too easy of a target for a slimeball like Griffiths to pass up—an attractive, quiet child, standing apart from other children, with no apparent guardian in sight.
Little did Griffiths know that that child's guardian was the Darkest wizard who had ever lived. His mistake.
As Voldemort shoved his way through the crowd, he started planning Arthur Griffiths' demise. It was difficult, because he couldn't decide which castration technique would be the most painful. Maybe he could try them all. Technique #1, Reattachment Charm, Technique #2, Reattachment Charm, Technique #3…
Voldemort made it to Revelin's side just as Griffiths' hand was descending towards the child's shoulder. He caught the man's wrist before he was able to make contact, digging his fingers so deeply into his arm that the wizard gasped in pain. His eyes were alarmed and shocked when they flew up to see Voldemort standing there, a cold, terrible expression on his face. Next to them, Revelin looked up in surprise. It was obvious that the boy had had no idea what was going on around him.
Voldemort stared straight into the man's terrified eyes. He could see his own reflection in them. His eyes briefly flashed red. "I know what you are," Voldemort hissed so lowly only Griffiths could hear. He jerked the man's wrist, and it cracked. Griffiths moaned in pain. A tear slid down his face. It was so crowded and loud, no one noticed. "And when I leave Hogsmeade tonight," Voldemort continued, his eyes boring into Griffiths', "I am going to hunt you down," he stepped closer, and his voice dropped to a venomous whisper, "torture you, and kill you."
Griffiths looked ready to faint from terror. Voldemort stepped back, releasing the man's wrist. "I am going to give you a head start," he said coldly. His mouth twisted. "For my own amusement." For someone as pathetic as Griffiths', there was nowhere he could run that Voldemort couldn't find him. He jerked his head toward the door. "Leave. Now."
Whimpering in terror—Voldemort could practically smell the man's fear—Griffiths shoved his way frantically through the crowd, eliciting cries of outrage from parents as he stumbled over their children. Voldemort watched him as he left with cold satisfaction, anger like ice coating his insides.
When Griffiths had finally left, Voldemort turned and stared down at Revelin.
An ominous silence ensued. Revelin shuffled on his feet, twisting the chocolate wand in his hands nervously.
"You are angry with me?" he asked finally, in a small voice.
A storm of emotions erupted in Voldemort, raging through him. Fury was predominant among them. His hands clenched at his sides. "Yes!" he hissed out in Arabic, his eyes practically glowing . "You left my side! In England!" His voice shook with rage. "You could have been hurt—or taken—or—!"
The child let out a pathetic little sound, almost like a sob, and Voldemort cut off as though silenced. Revelin's face had twisted up. His bottom lip trembled. His eyes shone with the promise of tears. He looked absolutely miserable and pathetic, like a kicked puppy.
It was as if the raging storm of Voldemort's fury had been put abruptly on hold. Another emotion filtered through him, sliding like a trickle of icy water from his head down his spine to his toes: shock.
He had never made Revelin cry before. It horrified him to know that his first instinct was to kneel down and give the child a hug.
Instead, he stood there frozen for a long while, the shock slowly filtering out of his system. It drained with it the feeling of utter rage that had been there earlier. His fists unclenched. Suddenly he felt exhausted.
He exhaled heavily. Children. He closed his eyes briefly and opened them again. "Just don't do it again, Revelin."
The child wiped his eyes, sniffling, and nodded quickly. He glanced down at the chocolate wand in his hand with a longing expression on his face. He peeked up at Voldemort through wet eyelashes. "Can I still get the chocolate wand?" he asked in a small voice.
Merlin forbid this torturous experience be for nothing!
"Yes," said Voldemort wearily. He extended his hand, and Revelin clasped it tightly as they weaved their way to the back of the line. Of course the line practically wrapped around the entire perimeter of the store. As they settled in the back of it, and Voldemort got a good look at how long it was, his free hand curled at his side. The thought crossed his mind: This had better be the best damn chocolate wand in the world.
As they waited in line, Revelin clutching Voldemort's hand tightly, Voldemort thought also, as the line inched forward, This is why I did not raise Revelin's mother.
The line moved impossibly slowly. Voldemort couldn't begin to imagine why the imbecilic cashier couldn't move a little faster. He started gritting his teeth after a few minutes, especially as the store became more and more crowded. Much-despised faces browsed for candy. Sirius Black entered the store, roughhousing with James Potter. A few minutes later Rubeus Hagrid squeezed his bulk in. Voldemort loathed them all. It took all his concentration to prevent himself from glaring at them the way the rest of his Death Eaters would have.
Must not draw attention…
It was perhaps because he was so focused on not glaring death at the Order of the Phoenix members, or perhaps because it was just so impossibly loud in the damn store that nothing else could be heard, but Voldemort, at first, did not hear the screams. And when he did, he didn't believe what they were saying—because there was no way what the people were screaming could possibly be true, because Voldemort hadn't authorized it, because his servants weren't that stupid, because this evening couldn't possibly be going that badly—
But no, the screams were quite clear now.
The people outside were screaming, "Death Eaters!"
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