Let's see… Special thanks go to The Sinful, who created a TV Tropes page for this series; Obsessive Consumptive Reader, ShadowCub, skywiseskychan, The Sinful (again), and whitetigerwolf for serving as sounding boards for a future plot point; and bissek for coming up with this week's disclaimer.
Manic Dogma: I suppose I should have been clearer about the Black Curse. It primarily affects members of House Black, but it isn't a constant malady; it presents in fits and starts, so all the Blacks over a period of a couple of generations might die young, and then they'll go a century or two without it happening. Anyone with Black blood can "catch" the Curse, but since the magical bloodlines are so tightly entwined, that describes just about every member of nobility. And yes, Vesta's name is a reference to Game Theory, though it also fits with the other Classic mythology references I make a habit of tossing in.
azrael-rose, C. Nile De'Mencia, Guest: Why Luna thinks she can't get with Jen is a very good question, and the answer lies in the social structure of magical Britain. Recall that the Blacks are an Ancient and Most Noble House; they are not just nobility, but sit at the very top of the ladder, their only equals being the Houses of Bones and Longbottom. The Lovegoods are not a noble House. Outside Hogwarts (as well as in Slytherin), nobles and commoners rubbing elbows is rare, and while it isn't that strange for Hogwarts friends to keep in touch despite the social distance once they graduate, Luna knows that a relationship with Jen is nigh impossible for that reason. Add in that she is fully aware that Jen will eventually be in a political marriage to continue her line (along with her ignorance about Ladies being practically expected to have a paramour on the side), and she is sure that any romantic advances she makes will be rebuffed.
Oh, and she doesn't know that Jen's bisexual, which makes everything more complicated.
The last few chapters of this story have been fairly fun and light-hearted, haven't they? Time to fix that.
Disclaimer: Did Umbridge spend so much time looking for reasons in the present to discredit Dumbledore when his actions in book 1 alone would be sufficient to have him and half the faculty arrested? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.
Chapter 21
Unwitting and Unwilling Allies
Dolores tapped her quill impatiently as she perused her notes. For the past couple of weeks, ever since the the final course reviews – bar one – had been sent out, she had looked for other ways to undermine Dumbledore's authority. The inspections, which she thought would be the perfect strategy, had unfortunately proven less useful than expected.
Oh, she had made some progress in her secondary goal, ridding the castle of undesirables, but that had translated into little she could use against the man himself. Snape, for instance, was just as abhorrent an individual as she had been told, treating everyone as if they were something he would wipe off his boots. It was one thing for him to be rude to a bunch of mudbloods, but he forgot his own station when he directed his ire at the Purebloods in his class, Hufflepuffs though they may have been. The Halfblood treating his betters in such a callous manner had incensed her, and even had he not been on her list of targets for being one of Dumbledore's charity cases, she would have done what she could to throw him out then and there. The tenuousness of her own position meant she was unable to do as she would with him directly, but given his apparent temperament and the information she had charmed out of Burbage and Sinistra, probation would accomplish the same task, just over a longer time frame.
Her next target, of course, was Flitwick; half-breeds had no business teaching human children, and if she were in charge, that goblin wouldn't even be allowed to wield a wand as if he were a real wizard. Unfortunately, the creature was a decent teacher – better by far than either Potter, a known sycophant of Dumbledore's, or that fraud Trelawney – so while she would keep an eye on him, her current authority did not give her the reach to strike out at him. The same was true of McGonagall, the witch much too loyal to the headmaster to be worth keeping, especially in a position of importance like Deputy Headmistress.
Considering the backlash Cornelius was still facing after the Azkaban guards rebelled and stole away all the Dementors and high-security prisoners, likely in a misguided attempt to depose the rightful Minister of Magic, the lack of progress she was currently facing rankled.
Still, while she could not lash out at those oh-so-deserving targets yet, she still had a few options she could put into play in the meantime. A quick addendum to the original Educational Decree that made her the Curriculum Inspector submitted a few days earlier had expanded her oversight to include reviewing how the school was run during times of danger or turmoil; over the past month of keeping her eyes open, listening to the rumors of the staff, and reading the transcripts generated by a few enchanted quills linked to listening charms she had placed in the ladies' lavatories, she had been astonished at just how lax the Hogwarts faculty seemed to have taken internal security and had promptly forwarded the details to the DME and Cornelius. Some of the things she had heard made her wonder just how much was being hidden from the proper authorities.
None of which would have ever happened, or at most would have only started before being shut down, had Hogwarts been under Ministerial control from the beginning as it should have. There was a upside to the information she had gathered: though she had her doubts that this by itself would give Dumbledore enough rope to hang himself, it should still be worth one or two more nails in his coffin. It also gave her a reason to call in some of the students for a series of one-on-one chats; not many, lest the senile Muggle-lover catch wind of it, but the intel she collected now would certainly serve her well in a later expansion of her and the Ministry's powers later.
She had obviously started with the Slytherins, knowing members of her old house would be the most liable to give her the gritty details as they knew them, and now she was working through the rest of the houses. Another glance at the notes she had jotted down upon the parchment in front of her made her frown. Kenneth Towler, it read, Gryffindor year 7. Prefect. Pureblood (common House). Distant from rest of house, grudge against Weasley children? Member of Black's entourage. No romance, no connections to undesirables. No noticed Dumbledore influence.
"Member of Black's entourage," she muttered, her eyes flicking to the lowest drawer of her filing cabinet. In that drawer, beneath the other files, was a locked false bottom with an Extension Charm in which she had placed the information she had gathered on 'special interests', including Potter the junior and his cronies, Dumbledore's biggest followers on the faculty, and Black, among others. The first two categories were obviously hurdles she needed to get rid of, but as for Black herself…
I'm not sure what to make of that girl, Dolores admitted to herself. On the one hand, she seems to have a right and proper mindset if what I heard from members of the Wizengamot is correct, and her family has always been a pillar of society. On the other, she is the spawn of the elder Potter, and the current Lord Black was once part of Dumbledore's camp, even if he has not made any obvious signs that they are still allied. There're also her followers to consider; they are mostly Pureblood excepting the Hufflepuff boy and the Davis girl, but while a Halfblood herself, that girl is still the heiress to a Dark house. The only other underling of hers who has a known political leaning is Bones's niece.
Is she going to be a hindrance, a help, or wholly unimportant?
There was a knock on the door, and she swept the parchment into her desk drawer and slid it closed. "Come in," she called sweetly.
Opening the door, Towler stuck his head inside. "You wanted to see me, Professor?"
Taking a mental note at his mildly distrustful tone – which, along with the rest of the information she had about him, suggested that he was likely suspicious of authority or perhaps just other people in general; not the best she could hope for, but better than some of the alternatives – she nodded congenially and indicated the seat on the other side of her desk. "Yes, Mr. Towler, I did. It's nothing bad; I invited you here today so I could speak with you in my capacity as the Hogwarts Curriculum Inspector." She smiled slightly, carefully making it polite but not necessarily friendly; such subtleties were often lost upon Gryffindors, but better she waste the effort than be careless against the rare Lion who could tell the difference. "Don't worry, everything you say in this room will be held in confidence, I assure you."
Mollified by her promise, he fully entered the room and sat in the proffered chair, his eyes roving across the room and staring in muted shock and horror at the numerous plates decorating the walls. She kept her displeasure to herself; she had never understood why so many people had trouble with kittens. They were cute.
"Tea?" she offered, indicating the silver tea service at her side. At his nod, she happily filled two cups; she had made sure to add a little Draught of Peace that she had ordered from a very discreet apothecary to the pitcher beforehand, a trick she had learned had a way of loosening the unwary's lips. It was no Veritaserum, but unlike the truth potion, it would also not make what she was doing quite so obvious. She had already drunk several cups of the brew today, but thanks to a neutralizing potion she received from the same source, she remained unaffected. "I know you have your studies to get back to, but I had some questions I wished to ask regarding various… incidents, shall we say?… that have occurred in this school over the past few years. You aren't the first student I've spoken to, and there are several others I will meet with later, but every perspective helps."
"Why me, then?" he asked cautiously. "I'm nobody special."
She shrugged lightly and lied, "Random selection." In truth, she had picked him specifically because of how he was potentially on the outs with the rest of his house and therefore would be less likely to give her the party line. "I'd like to start with something fairly recent, specifically the alleged vandalization by Sirius Black of the portrait guarding the Gryffindor dorms. The Fat Lady, I believe it's called."
The boy's eyebrows shot up. "'Alleged'?"
"The Lord Black did not admit to causing the damage during his trial, and as you know, portrait testimony is not considered evidence in a court of law." He shook his head in confusion. "You didn't know that?"
"No, I didn't. Why isn't what the Fat Lady said good enough for evidence?"
"Portraits are not people, Mr. Towler, just ink moved by magic. As such, it is exceedingly easy to deceive them, either by directly interfering with their animation charms or using simple spells to disguise oneself. Because of this, any damage inflicted upon it is incapable of being proven to be the work of Sirius Black. Returning to our original topic," she said, looking at his cup long enough for him to become uncomfortable and take a sip of the doctored beverage, "what do you know about the circumstances of either the act itself or the staff's response to it?"
"Not much," he admitted. "They said they'd be on the lookout for anything else, but nothing ever came of it to my knowledge."
"And you were already a prefect at that time, correct?" He nodded. "Strange; I would think they would keep their representatives to the students better informed." She almost smiled at that; with those simple words, a tiny seed had been planted. "Very well, then. What about the year before, with the opening of the Chamber of Secrets? Was the perpetrator ever discovered? What the 'monster' was that caused the attacks?"
"You know, I've asked around about that very thing a few times," Towler mentioned after drinking some more of the tea and relaxing a bit as the potion took further effect. "No one has any ideas, aside from the expected stupidity, of course. Rumor is that Potter had a hand in stopping whoever and whatever it was, but beyond that? Nothing. The next year, several of the prefects wrote a letter requesting Professor Dumbledore at least tell us what had happened, but all he did was repeat Professor McGonagall's announcement that the matter had been resolved. I would have expected the Weasley twins to talk more about it, but that entire family closed ranks tight."
"Oh? Why is that, do you think?" This was news to her; had the Weasleys had a part to play in that particular debacle?
He shrugged. "All I have is hearsay, but supposedly their little sister was kidnapped and taken into the Chamber. They denied it all, but no one saw her when we were ordered back to the Tower, and they were a little too quick to say it had nothing to do with her, you know? That's just my personal opinion."
"Of course. Moving on, I remember how most of the Gryffindors I knew while I was in school acted, and if they had been presented with a forbidden corridor and a vague warning of painful death, few of them would have been able to resist taking a peek," she trailed off with a knowing smirk.
"Professor, I'm many things," he replied, the faint sheen in his eyes the sole evidence of the potion's effect. "Brave, hard-working, charming even. But I'm not an idiot. If I'm told that someplace is deadly, I'm staying far, far away from it."
"A smart decision. Did anyone find out what was so terrible about it, or did that mystery go unsolved like the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Oh, plenty of people found a giant three-headed dog inside, and that was good enough for them," the boy answered.
Three… headed… dog? She took another sip to hide her shock. What in Merlin's name was a cerberus doing inside a school?
"You said you went to school here?"
She turned her thoughts from the confused anticipation in her mind. If that was true, Dumbledore would soon have some very uncomfortable questions to answer. "Yes. Slytherin, class of '51. I hope you won't hold that against me, especially considering our next topic."
"Oh," he muttered, his face falling. "That."
"Yes, that. I see what I heard about an outright war breaking out between Slytherin and Gryffindor in 1990 wasn't an exaggeration," Dolores said, taking no pains to hide her disapproval.
"It… might have been? A little?" She kept her stare on Towler, and he looked down. "But probably not."
"Care to explain how that came about?"
"I'd honestly rather not," he answered with a sigh, "but I suppose that isn't an option. What do you want to know?"
"Give me an overview. Who and what started it, what made it worse, how it was finally resolved, how long it lasted. Basics like that."
The boy sighed. "It was our fault. Well, I say ours; more like the Weasley twins'. All the previous year, they had played a bunch of pranks on the first-year Slytherins, and once we moved to second year, they had the bright idea of taking it up a notch. They went after a third-year and hit her with a balloon filled with a powder that made her sneeze uncontrollably. Unfortunately, they didn't realize she had asthma."
"Oh, dear."
"Yeah," he drawled uncomfortably. "Not only did the powder trigger an attack and keep her from breathing, the sneezing also made it impossible for her to swallow her potion to stop it. They only knew they had a problem on their hands when she turned blue and fell to the ground. Needless to say, the other Slytherins… didn't take that well."
He looked at his now-empty teacup with a faint frown, and a wave of her wand had it refilled. "Thank you. I have to admit, I don't blame them in any way for it; if a prank gone wrong caused one of my housemates to have her life actually be in danger, I'd be howling for blood, too, and in hindsight, McGonagall letting the twins off with only a month of detention didn't help matters any. After a week or so – and I think the Slytherins tried and failed multiple times to return the favor to the twins directly, though I don't have any proof of that – someone decided that any Lion was a fair target. Because of the delay, the rest of my house saw their prank, a particularly vicious one that involved setting conjured hornets on a lone third-year, as a new attack instead of a retaliation. I'm ashamed to admit it now, but at the time I thought about it the same way. Both sides believed they held the moral high ground, so nobody gave an inch, and things just… escalated."
"How long did the conflict last?" She asked, curiosity running rampant. None of the Slytherins she had interviewed had been willing to discuss much about the happenings that particular school year, even when affected by Draught of Peace, and the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had known about it only peripherally.
"Until… March? Early April? Considering it started right after Halloween, a long time. The professors finally put a stop to it after several of us got in a brawl in the halls and we all had to go to the hospital wing to have everything straightened out. Forty people got detention for the rest of the year, and both our houses had their points dropped to zero." He shook his head. "Hufflepuff won the House Cup. It was humiliating."
"You were one of those involved?" she asked, getting a nod in reply. Dolores shared a small, sympathetic grin. "How did your parents take that?"
"With how protective my mum is?" he laughed. "It was terrible; she…"
She watched in confusion as he suddenly stopped and his eyebrows furrowed together. "Mr. Towler?"
"I didn't tell them," he whispered. "I was going to, but for some reason, I didn't."
Now that is an interesting titbit. A suspicion suddenly forming, she leaned forward to look him in the eye. "What about the other unusual events that occurred in this school? Did you write to them about those?"
"…Now that I think about it, I never did. How in Merlin's name could I have forgotten to tell them about a monster attacking students in the corridors?"
How, indeed? A monster loose in Hogwarts – one besides a cerberus, at least – would have been front-page news. Yet somehow, not one student leaked the story? Such a set of circumstances beggared belief, but that was what had come to pass. If something happened when by all rights it should not…
Someone used magic on them to keep the information suppressed. Someone who had something to lose if it got out? Whomever could that describe?
Dolores set her thoughts aside and stood from her chair, causing the boy to jump. "Well, thank you very much for telling me all of this, Mr. Towler. It was quite helpful. I don't want to take up any more of your time." He nodded half-heartedly, his mind still elsewhere, and moved to leave. "Oh, but one more thing? Would you mind terribly keeping the fact that I'm conducting these interviews to yourself? I don't want anyone to be unduly stressed by worrying that they will be called in."
In reality, she just did not want Dumbledore and his errand boys to find out that she was asking questions like this. While she was allowed, that alone would not prevent the old goat from interfering.
"Yes, of course."
She waited for Towler to shut the door behind him before loosening her hold on her contemplative frown. How could Dumbledore stop the entire student body from letting the world know what was going on, either at the time or later on? Compulsion charms would take too long to put on everyone; perhaps a potion in the food? A ward, though that one would have to be specific to the children, else I wouldn't have been able to inform Cornelius or the DME of my findings. Something else entirely?
This bears further investigation.
The owner of the little apothecary glanced over the assorted ingredients and banged out the prices on the till beside him, the machine appearing old enough that it could easily have been taken from a Muggle shop at the turn of the century. "Galleon and eight sickles, miss."
"Galleon and eight? That's highway robbery, that is," the young woman muttered, pushing her red hair out of her face and digging around in her little purse. "If this stuff was worth a whole galleon together, I'd be shocked."
"Well, you can always put that snakeskin back; that's fourteen silver right there. If you grabbed one of the dried ones, it'd be half that price."
She shook her head and counted out the coins. "No, I need it fresh, or the whole thing's ruined. It's finicky like that."
The wizard nodded absently, her words blending in with the rest of the pointless chatter he undoubtedly heard throughout the day; the witch took the bag filled with her purchases and walked out the door and into the crowd. I suppose there is a benefit to waiting so long to get what I need, she thought as she slipped over to a small alcove and threw a conjured cloak around her shoulders, the hood hiding her face as she rounded the corner to leave Diagon Alley for the shadows of Knockturn. Between it being a magical day all on its own and more recently the day Voldemort 'fell', Halloween is a serious business around here, as big or bigger than Christmas. Lots of people going about preparing for it without a care about anyone around them, lots of people somebody can hide amongst if she doesn't want to be seen.
Spotting the door of her destination, she stepped into Borgin and Burke's; she then ended the transfiguration while pulling her hood down, and black shot through her hair while her eyes faded from brown to their almost-natural purple. The transformed girl looked around the empty room for a moment before she smiled a little and smacked her hand on the bell sitting on the front desk. "Customer up!"
"I heard the bell just fine! You don't have to shout, you little—" A stooped man with short, oily hair charged out of the back office, and his diatribe cut off as he stared at her in surprise. A moment later, Borgin's scowl morphed into a grin. "Well, well, well; look what the kneazle dragged in! It's little Jen, or should I say, Miss Black?" He shook his head with a chuckle. "I can't believe I didn't figure it out all those years ago. Just like your mother, your heart is as dark as your name."
"No need for flattery, Donald," she answered, stepping forward so he could pull her in a short embrace. "Besides, the reason you didn't know is that we kept it a secret."
He barked out a sharp laugh. "Oh, of course you did. Don't take me for a fool just because you have a fancy title now, girlie. I still remember that little lost lamb who held onto Elsie's skirts for dear life the first time she brought you in here. No way you knew you were a rich brat then."
"And if anyone else hears you say that, I'll tell them I have no idea what you're talking about," she answered coolly. Eyeing his insufferable smirk for a moment, she sighed and shook her head. "So how's business? Are… certain members of society, shall we say, coming in to examine your wares more often, perchance?"
"You heard about that, then?" the old shopkeeper asked suspiciously.
"Does it surprise you? You know I have most excellent hearing." Donald nodded at that, no doubt recalling that her listening skills had been sharpened over the years by both blindness and practice. She continued in a serious voice, "Better be careful, though. I wouldn't throw too much of your weight behind the Dark Lord just yet if I were you."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Let's just say that Voldemort managed to brass me off something fierce." He shuddered, though whether it was at her using the black wizard's name or her bared teeth, she had no idea. "And how's the rest of the Alley been doing?"
He brightened now that she had changed the subject and laughed a little. "Most of us are all right, but you better make sure Christiansen doesn't see you. He refused to believe that Elsie's Jen and Jen Black could be the same person until the Prophet ran that interview with your picture. If he spots you, he just might try to snatch you up anyway."
"Well, he always was an idiot; that he would believe the Prophet in the first place is proof enough of that. And if he wants to kidnap me… Well, Knockturn could use one fewer pimp, don't you think?" A low-class Pureblood, Stefan Christiansen was a rarity for the way he kept an eye on the Muggle side of the flesh-trade for new talent, and numerous times in the past he had made it clear that he was planning to hire her the minute she looked old enough to pass for seventeen. It was a good thing for him that Sirius had found her when he did; she liked sex, no mistake about that, but she was done turning tricks for every Tom, Dick, and Harry who could rub two pence together.
More likely than not, she would have just killed him and taken his business as her own.
"So why are you really here?" Donald asked, pulling her from her momentary reverie. "A neat and proper schoolgirl wouldn't be caught dead in this part of town. I doubt you just want to catch up."
"Well, you're in luck; I'm in a buying mood." She flicked her eyes to the blank stretch of wall to her left and behind the desk. "And I have recently found myself in need of some… particular items."
Quickly catching on, he nodded ever so slightly and fished a blank silver pendant out from under his shirt, his eyes on the street outside. He touched the bit of jewelry to the till, and immediately the windows darkened to total opacity and the door clicked as three different locks slid home. "Should have known you'd be here for that," he muttered as he walked over to the wall they both knew was not a real wall. A quick muffling charm sprang up around him when he got close enough, and his hand rose to cover his mouth and hide the whispered password. That complete, the spell faded, and the wooden panel pulled up and away to reveal a dimly lit staircase. "This way, my lady."
She rolled her eyes and followed him down to the hidden portion of his shop. Stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling were several sets of shelves, each one in slight disarray but still filled with any number of rare, valuable, and exceedingly illegal products. Jen strolled along the aisles, Donald waiting at the entrance to the room, and she called out, "How much business have you done in this side of your work?"
"None of your concern, brat!"
Not much, then. A pity, but not a surprise. The average dark witch would have no need for any of these; they're for a very specialized subset of the population. She found the first item on her mental list and winced; phoenix ash was hard to come by, especially since they only bound themselves to light wizards, but for it to sell for five galleons an ounce? It was a very good thing that she had only a few things to pick up because while the Black vault could easily pay for all this, she wanted to be certain Sirius wouldn't discover any hints of her shopping spree. That meant paying out of the vault she had inherited from Elsie, which was not nearly as full.
She dumped three spoonfuls of ash into a convenient pouch and continued on, spotting what might be her next quarry in the adjacent row. "What animal are these made from?" she asked the wizard, leaving the shelves to lay six candles on the counter. "The label just says 'tallow'."
"Not cow, that's for sure."
A faint smile growing on her face at their old game, she laid a finger on her lips as if thinking. "Pig?"
"Getting warmer."
"Ape?" she guessed again.
"So, so close."
Her expression now a wicked grin, she leaned over the stout candles and purred, "Muggle?"
He smirked at her. "You caught me."
Her eyes glittered with amusement as she tossed the bag of ash and a flask filled with Abraxan heartblood she had picked up on her way back onto the counter. She hoped not to need the blood – she had a bottle already in the cellar of Elsie's cottage just outside Cardiff – but incubi provided far less of the resource than did the winged horses, so she might need something to supplement it. "How much are you going to gouge me for this?"
"'Gouge you'? My dear, you wound me; you know I only ever charge a fair price." They both snorted at that; Donald would have sold Mother Borgin without shedding a tear if he thought the price was good, and if she remembered correctly, he actually had done that to his younger brother. "Let's see… Eh, I'll give you a bit of a break for old time's sake. Only thirty-one galleons for the lot."
"That's a break?" she muttered, fishing in her purse for the money.
"Absolutely. I'm not charging you for the bag you put the ash in." He grinned at her snarl. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but what do you even need all this for?"
"Trust me, you don't want to know. You'll live longer that way," she hinted darkly, a sharp, mirthless smile adorning her visage.
The wizard paid no heed to her less-than-subtle threat, perhaps knowing that she could not afford to murder him if she wanted to have a convenient location the next time she needed to buy something off the magical black market. "Of course. Plausible deniability, got it."
"One of these days, you're going to cross the wrong person, Donald, and I can only hope I'm there to see it."
"Perhaps," he agreed casually. "But I've been in this business a long time; many have tried, and all have failed. I think I'll take my chances a while longer."
Standing from her crouch, a piece of chalk dangling loosely from her fingers, Jen glanced out the window of the living room at the setting sun. What she had planned for tonight would work best if begun at the exact moment the sun disappeared below the horizon, and by her estimation, that meant she had only a couple of minutes to finish her setup, and from then less than an hour until she was expected back at Hogwarts. She tossed the chalk onto the kitchen counter and grabbed the platter containing the rest of her tools.
First is the blood, she thought, sticking a square of snake skin onto the point of a sharpened yew twig and dipping it into the bowl she had filled with a mixture of phoenix ash and the blood she had drained out of Blaise Zabini's fresh corpse the previous year. Ash and snakeskin for the symbolism of death and rebirth, yew for its connection to graveyards and the permanently dead. Yew also pairs well with heartblood from an incubus, as extended exposure to either is toxic.
Next is the symbols. Arithmantically, the number two represents separation while six means transference. The snakeskin slid across the wood floor as she traced the pair of circles she had drawn on the floor, the edges overlapped at a single point. She then started on the hexagon circumscribing them; each time the 'brush' she was using ran dry, she discarded it and reddened another. She did not want to mess this up by contaminating her blood mixture with chalk.
What she was doing was dark magic, not black, but it was a near thing. If that weren't bad enough, it was closer to the demesne of Nyarlathotep or the Leader of the Wild Hunt than the Baron's, which meant she had to be exceedingly careful in how she did this. Her ritual failing would be one thing; having it rebound on her…
Her last brush completed the perimeter of the hexagon just as she ran out of blood. Third is the donor. Levitating it rather than using her hands, she set the golden goblet Voldemort had turned into a soul jar in the middle of one of the circles. Another look out the window at the Welsh landscape, and she picked up the next element. Fourth is the anchors. The candles went to each of the six corners of the hexagon, and a wave of her hand lit them.
And last… She gently placed Blaise Zabini's skinned and washed skull in the other circle, the sheen of the bone marred by the runes she had etched on every available inch. Stepping away, she touched her bare foot to a third circle, the shape made from sea salt she had poured earlier; it was not as effective as if she had traced the design with her bone dagger, but it was easier to get rid of when she was finished. The space inside the circle suddenly faded from her sonar as it was magically cut off from the rest of the planet. …is the vessel.
The sun vanished, and shadows engulfed the sky.
"Miserable soul, you are bound to a form that ill-suits you," she declared, staring at the chalice, the metal glimmering in the firelight. "Trapped in gold that cannot move, that cannot breathe. You remember your flesh, your lively form, and you despair."
Was it just her imagination, or did the shapes on the floor glow with a dull blue light?
"Ripped from your body, torn in twain, you seek bone and blood to dwell in once again. You crave to run, to eat, to mate, to live. Your shell is pretty, but it pales in comparison to the beauty of flesh."
The candlelight took on a sickly red cast.
"You thought precious metal would be a suitable vessel for you, but now you realize the folly of your actions. You are locked away in a trap of your own making, a lie you never considered could be false. Bondage, pain, destruction; these are the consequences of your mistake, and you do not have the power to avoid them."
The flames surged, reaching a full foot in the air, and the goblet visibly shivered.
"Thrown into a pile of similar treasures, you were forgotten. You have no choice but to rely on others, yet no one gives you a second glance. You are less than a memory; once surrounded by followers, you are alone and helpless. Nothing and no one will ever help you. Your fate is sealed."
The goblet fell over to shake and clang against the floor as though suffering a seizure.
She shouted to be heard over the din. "One opportunity do you have to flee the swift wings of oncoming Death! Return to flesh; live in truth and not false seeming! Seek bone to shelter you from the sharp eyes of the carrion birds! Run, run fast, or your achievements will be forgotten! Run, lest your hope of life be shattered forever! Run or die, now and for all time!"
The goblet suddenly stilled; the candles all winked out. The only source of illumination was the actinic glow emanating from the bloody designs on the ground, but that was sufficient. Dark mist rose from the cup, coalescing into a black cloud that twisted in the air as if seeking some means of escape. After a moment it sank back to the floorboards, spreading across the space it was trapped in until it met the gleaming circle. The smoke soaked into the shape, smothering the light, and it flowed over the lit path to surround the skull. Rising and gathering again into a single mass, vaporous fingers caressed the smooth bone, and then it seeped into the othala rune carved deep in the skull's forehead.
The blue glow was gone, and in its place were baleful red flames glaring from empty sockets.
"For the Baron's sake, you're an idiot," Jen laughed, snapping her fingers to reignite the house's lamps and scuffing her toes through the salt circle; through the window she could see the sky had brightened, now resembling the early evening it was rather than a moonless midnight. "Then again, you did shear your soul into pieces, so I suppose that's only to be expected."
The skull shifted on its own, and then a hoarse voice came out of its mouth. "Who… are you?"
"I? I am Jennifer Black. Who do you claim to be?"
"I am… Tom Riddle," it answered, its voice growing stronger, "but… the world will… know me by… a different… name. I am—"
"The Dark Lord Voldemort, killer of fools and terror to small woodland creatures." The bony jaw clacked shut. "I'm guessing he snipped you off before he got started on his supposed 'glorious revolution'."
"What? How…?"
She shrugged and seated herself in front of the talking head, a flick of her finger vanishing the salt and blood and sending the chalice into the open cabinet nearby. "Let's make things easy. Tell me the last date you can remember."
"May eighth… 1956."
"You split your soul while the Light Powers were still ascendant?" Jen asked in surprise. "I don't know if that was brave or foolhardy. And just to let you know, today is October thirty-first, 1995."
"Almost forty years. How did you… discover my Horcrux?"
Horcrux? Must be what he calls his soul jars. "Bought it in a car boot sale. Thought it would make a nice centerpiece, but then I realized what was stuck inside it." She smirked. "If I had known you were there, I could have knocked another quid or two off the price."
The skull sneered at her lie, and she was momentarily distracted as she wondered how the skull could move like that. She certainly had not enchanted it with the runes needed to allow him facial expressions. "You will give me the respect I'm due, mudblood."
"Mudblood?" she repeated with a laugh. "Look who's talking. I bear the name of an Ancient and Most Noble House; you're a nobody. Tom Riddle? If anyone's of Muggle stock, it'd be you."
"You dare—"
"Stop talking." The skull immediately became silent, and she picked him up to carry him out of the room. "Allow me to clear up a misconception you seem to have. I give the orders, you obey; I demand respect, you grant it. I spent the past five weeks carving runes all over your new vessel, and with you now inhabiting it, they might as well be written on your very essence." Tom worked his jaw fruitlessly, and she said, "You may speak."
"What have you done to me?!"
"You are now forced to obey any order I give you, and you may not lie at any time. On the other hand, you can communicate but don't need to eat or sleep, so I suppose things are still looking better for you after a fashion."
Tom tried to buck out of her hand, but since he was just a skull, all he could do was vibrate angrily. "You transferred my Horcrux out of the Chalice! How did you do it?!"
"I guess I'm just a better dark witch than you are a Dark Lord," she said with a nonchalant shrug. Setting him on the desk in the basement, she prepared another purchase she had made the previous Saturday before she had headed to the apothecary. "Not to mention, it's Halloween, the best day of the year to work rituals that deal with souls. Now, answer this question of mine: how much do you know about dark magic?"
"I spent ten years traveling all over Europe and Asia," he ground out. "I know spells and rituals that would turn even your hair white. Put me in a normal human body, and maybe I won't demonstrate them on you."
She laughed at his impotent threat. "You do realize saying that only makes me less likely to set you loose on the world, right?" Unrolling the scroll she had bought, one enchanted to never run out of space, she set a DictaQuill on the unblemished surface. "I'm very glad you're so knowledgable, though; that information will serve me well in the future. Recite to this quill the location and protections around all your soul jars, what you called a 'Horcrux'. When you are finished with that, tell me everything you know about those rituals you learned, and then move on to the dark spells. Incantations, wand movements, histories, arithmantic analyses, the works. After that…" She thought for a moment and concluded, "After that, recite all the blackmail you have on all the Noble Houses. Throughout this period, you will be complete and concise; no tangents, no interjections, and definitely no lies. When you have completed those tasks, you will be silent until I order you otherwise. Begin."
For a moment she worried that the instructions were too complicated to properly bind him, but eventually Tom growled, "My first Horcrux I made from a journal I found after the Blitz…"
Jen smiled and left the house, the wards giving her an arctic embrace as she crossed the boundary. That was less troublesome than I feared, she thought while looking at the darkening sky. And what luck; I still have plenty of time to make it to the feast.
That the parents of Hogwarts students didn't pull their kids out over the winter holidays after the basilisk started roaming the halls is something I've always had trouble understanding, especially considering how jumpy wizarding Britain as a whole was at the mere suggestion that Voldemort might be back on the scene despite the Ministry's best efforts to bury the information. As for how the Minister knew about the attacks in the midst of this "media blackout" of sorts, my guess is that he was told about it by the perpetrator of the plot, Lucius.
"Tom the Skull" is a very obvious reference to The Dresden Files. And you thought I had Jen butcher Zabini just for the squick factor…
I do my best not to be a review whore, but I really need input on what everyone thought about the ritual, especially compared to the one in chapter 22 of Princess of the Blacks. I have two more rituals coming up in this story and at least one in the next, and I want to know if you'd prefer the clinical tone of last book or the more mystical portrayal I used here.
Silently Watches out.