Disclaimer: Nope, still not J.K. Rowling.
Warning: Murder, rape culture, human sacrifice.
She expected to emerge hacking and spitting from the bloody water he'd just drowned them in. When he pulled her out though, her lungs were dry as ever, her eyes clear, though her hands were shrivelled from sitting so long in the water, and her hair was wet. He stripped her casually of her sodden nightgown and bundled her into a thick, woolly robe, setting her delicately on the pile of cushions by the fire. Nagini coiled at her feet.
When the shock had worn off, she saw he was lovelier than ever—skin softly luminous, like the underbelly of a sloughed snake—and he smiled at the thought, touching the surface of the pool with his finger, stirring it.
"See yourself, girl."
She glanced over at the surface, become a mirror, and her breath caught.
She was beautiful—beautiful as she had never been. She'd never been exactly overweight, not like Daddy or her brother—but fried food didn't make you a model either. All the superfluous flesh had been stripped away, her features more angulated. Her mouth fell open, and her teeth flashed sharp and bright.
"What did you do to me?" she asked, wonderingly, her reservations silenced-for now-by the novelty of her appearance.
"What did I do? Oh no," he murmured stretching languidly before the fire. "You were an equal participant this time. And you know exactly what we did." He cast a significant glance towards the pool, and she crawled hesitantly to the edge.
Something bobbed on the surface, long and curving in at the edges. She pulled it loose. It was larger than she'd expected, and she brought it to the fire.
Snakeskin. Black, mottled with crimson and white. The Dark Lord's skin.
She couldn't smother the excitement she felt, but she could disguise it.
"We transformed. How? I have no animagus training."
The Dark Lord looked smug.
"Magic has momentum," he repeated, for the umpteenth time since she'd known him. "No one knows for certain how the first Parselmouths came about. Some say the Eastern sorcerers transformed so often into serpents, it changed them and their family indelibly. Others, that a serpent animagus slept with a snake and gave birth to an egg, and what hatched from that egg was the first Slytherin. In any case, we are not animagi. We can't hold our secondary form for any length of time at our age, and transformation requires sacrifice." He turned his hand. "But the snake symbolizes resurrection for a reason—this reason."
He looked ready to say something else, but at that time, she felt a very definite tug at the corners of her mind. The Dark Lord jerked at the sensation, his good humour extinguished.
"The Dark Mark," he hissed. "They're calling me—Alecto, I think. It had better be important, to disturb me when I specifically asked all difficulties to be taken to Lucius at this time—"
He apparated out of the room—as was his right, as Master of the House—leaving Heather alone.
Alecto.
Alecto was in the infirmary, alongside Thester, who was unmarked, and Dolohov—
It was possible, she reminded herself, heart jackhammering, that the Dark Lord wouldn't realize what she'd done. An overdose, the wrong mix of medications, it happened, and Dolohov's injuries were terrible to begin with. Any of the other young recruits helping in the Infirmary could have made a fatal mistake, there was no reason to suspect foul play…
Except, of course, if your mind wasn't entirely your own.
He couldn't really do anything to her, could he?
Staring at the patch of snakeskin in her hand, she wondered: Did she really want to find out?
Mind made up, she tumbled down the stairs to her room, pulling open the wardrobe and fetching out clothes. No damned trousers—curse Pureblood fashion—but heavy petticoats, their ease of movement increased by the few bindrunes Bella hadn't ripped out of her clothes on sight. A shift of dull grey cotton, heavy black canvas robes in the style favoured by Death Eaters. No gloves, and Bella's tight boots wouldn't fit over the silver shackles on her feet—she'd have to hide her hand in her pockets, and hope the hem of her robe concealed her footwear.
"What are you about?" demanded Sirius.
"We're leaving," she said, low and urgent. The walls had ears—she'd lopped off enough of them to know. She tugged a second Death Eater robe from the closet, eyed it dubiously. "Engorgio," she spat. The robe pulled itself out of shape half-heartedly. She tossed it at Sirius. It fit him like a fraying potato sack, but it fit, the cowl drooping to cover his face. She didn't dare risk her lack-lustre transfiguration to make him a mask.
They fled down the stairs. Thankfully, most people were abed this hour, otherwise, she was sure they'd have attracted attention. They fled out the front door, and through the frosty gardens, and before the Wall of Souls, and while she caught her breath, Sirius finally spoke.
"Hey, so I don't mean to criticize this grand plan of escape, but how exactly do you plan on doing this? Isn't it keyed to Volde—"
She set her hand over his mouth.
"Does a taboo mean nothing to you?" she hissed. "And yes. It's keyed to the Dark Lord's magic, and the Dark Lord's flesh. Fortunately," she withdrew the scrap of snakeskin from her pocket, "I have both."
She clenched his fist about the snakeskin, and reached into the rosehedge, the thorns pricking her thirstily.
She remembered how it felt hours earlier, pulling in the magic though flesh and blood, and did it again, in reverse. She drained the Dark Lord's skin of every ounce of its essence, and fed it through her blood to the thorns, and the hedge blackened and withered, leaving behind bare branches and bones, the spirits quiescent. She flushed the same power through the Goblin Steel and Sirius' collar, and the damned shackles fell from them.
Was it her, or, did Sirius' profile waver ever so slightly, like a shadow on the water?
She pulled on Bella's boots. Sirius hesitated.
"Come on," she snapped, walking into the Wall. It was less a wall than a thick hedge, she understood now, several meters wide, pitted with holes lined with sharpened femurs, rose vines running like tripwires. The dead jaws chattered and rattled at her, one taking an uneasy snap at her fingers. She picked up on the damned thing and dashed it to the ground, and the rest fell silent.
They were nearly across when a brilliant bolt of crimson flew at her—from in front. With an instinct not wholly her own, she pulled at the hedge—
-and the Wall awoke.
"Fuck!" Granger swore at Ron.
"They're Death Eaters—"
She pushed him, and he didn't have the time to be angry. The sharp split of a tibia was embedded in the ground where he'd been, and the dirt was creeping up around it, Dennis Creevy's distorted face oozing along its length, his voice a bubbling, sick thing, but undeniably his.
"Tell my brother—tell my brother—release me, release me—"
It screamed awfully then, shambling against its will to stake Lupin's cloak in the ground as he dodged it awkwardly, the ground slick as quicksand now, they sank knee deep in the muck, while the bones kept rising, their slow whining and pleading belying the speed of their unwilling assault.
"Hungry," the muck gobbled and sucked at their feet, tearing the boots from their legs—
"Retreat," Granger snapped, dashing a skeleton to pieces, trampling across the bones to firmer ground, Remus' lupine speed enabling him to do the same.
"It's got me," screamed Ron. "My feet—oh, my feet—"
Granger whirled her wand to pull him loose even as the ground grew softer underfoot, looked around frantically for Neville.
Oh, fuck.
The strangling vines had wound him against a split rib cage, and were biting deep into his neck, he was too blue for breath. She summoned Lutra, and her game little otter sped away, to nip and worry at the vines, when the revenants rose, no longer playacting at life with their bodies of bone and mud, pure spirits that tore at him and consumed him. Lupin's patronus danced forward to distract them, was worse than useless. She felt her vision darkening at the psychic assault.
And then—
The Death Eater stepped forward, and hissed a word.
It stopped. Lutra raced away from the fight, and merged back into her animus to lick their wounds, the ground solidified, the bones fell and the vines loosened. Ron was still screaming, but that was to be expected.
She kept her wand ready, just in case.
The Death Eater pulled the vines away from Neville's neck with a care that would have surprised Granger—had she not any idea of the uses a dark wizard might have for live human sacrifices, or how tenderness was as useful as brutality in the breaking of a prisoner. The Death Eater glanced in their direction.
"You're not Death Eaters," came the voice from under the cowl, clearly female.
"No. Who are you?" Granger hardly dared to hope.
"Not Death Eaters either. Unless you plan to be new recruits, you'd better get running. The Dark Lord is coming, and he's in a foul mood."
"How should we know we can trust her," demanded Ron, pulling his feet free from the muck. His boots, socks, and trousers from the knee down were missing, his skin red and bleeding. He stifled a scream as he tried to walk forward on them.
"Because if I want to kill you, I only have to turn my back—" the woman snapped, only to be cut off by the man accompanying her.
"Remus?"
"Sirius?"
The cowled man raced forward and all but bowled over the werewolf in his excitement. Granger stared for a moment in bemusement, before noticing the woman pulling an unconscious Neville's arm over her shoulder.
"Don't you have a wand?" she demanded.
"Well, yeah."
Granger shook her head in disbelief, and drew her own. The woman froze and dodged, dropping Neville, the bones rattling menacingly at their feet. "Locomotor mortis." She floated Neville's body to her, tense at the renewed activity of the Wall. "Is there a problem?" she demanded, eying the woman up.
Surprisingly, it was Remus who set his hand on hers, lowering her wand. "Hermione," he said gently, "it's okay. She's the Dark Lord's prisoner. Like you were with Dolohov. We've been trying to get her out for months—"
"Months?" repeated the woman. "I've barely seen you, and only when you were kissing the Dark Lord's feet."
"Months," Remus said firmly.
"I've never seen a 'prisoner' with a wand, unless they'd sold out," Granger said dubiously, "let alone commanding the Wall."
"Look. Argue about it later," the woman said, shuddering, "but he's coming. He's coming now."
"We have to break into the House," Ron told her. "Our friend's life depends on it."
She sneered. "And your lives depend on doing as I say. Now."
"Listen, you haven't seen a pair of amputated legs—"
The woman massaged her temples in irritation, and Granger could almost guess what she was thinking. How I long for the days when this wasn't a normal question!
"I have, and she's already dead, fool. As you're going to be. Oh, and don't try apparating—he's already raised the wider wards, you'll splinch yourself. Run in the opposite direction to me—he'll be more interested in recovering me than he will be you."
She began wading through the snow into the forest.
"Who is she?" Granger demanded.
A grim look crossed Remus' scarred face. "Heather Potter." He cast his Patronus. "Albus, send back-up. James' daughter got out, but old Snake-face is coming, and we need back-up."
The silvery dog galloped off through the forest.
"And now?" Granger demanded.
"Get the boys out of here," Remus told her. "Sirius?"
"Moony? Think we can lead those Death Eaters on a merry chase?"
Remus shook his head. "Neither of you know the woods around here, and no offense, Heather, but it doesn't look like you know how to use a wand either. We need to get all of us out of here as quickly as possible."
"No arguing here."
Were they barely half a kilometre into the forest? It had been so long since Heather had walked any distance, though she had exercised daily in the Arena, pitting her simple wandwork against the younger Death Eaters.
Despite the runes she and Sirius bore, and other man being a werewolf, they struggled through the forest. Riddle House was on a high ground surrounded by boggy forest, and the frozen ground gave way unexpectedly to tree roots and pitfalls. Too, the wolf seemed to be taking them on a rather circuitous route.
"There are traps out here then," she concluded aloud.
The wolf nodded. "His unmarked allies approach via the forest and road, so he can't make it impassable, but the safe paths change on a regular basis. Bit like the stairs at Hogwarts."
"Your boarding school." She slipped on a root, and he steadied her. She took her arm back quickly. She'd dealt with enough wolves in the Dark Lord's cellar to be cautious of them, no matter what Sirius said.
"Yes," the wolf replied shortly.
There wasn't much to be said. All their energy and focus had to be on moving as quickly as possible.
Except when had Sirius ever been focused?
"You'll see it soon," Sirius told her, with determined excitement. "It's magnificent. You've never seen anything like it. It's a castle, with thousands of floating candles in the Great Hall, and the dormitories are in the tower—"
"I just want to go home," she told him.
And it was true. She wanted to be home, and safe, enfolded by her father's comforting bulk, her mother fussing in the background, the drone of her brother's television coming through the walls at night. She wanted to be warm in her bed, with its old 'My Little Pony' sheets from when she was five and the tangle of threads on the bedposts, and Lady coiled by the heat vent.
Unbidden, the image of the Dark Lord, brooding by the fire, Nagini slung over his lap, came to her.
She occluded it fiercely. Fuck Stockholm Syndrome, it's not like she didn't realize what he was up to, or why he was doing it. She was his ticket to immortality, and apparently some kind of symbol for the Light as well. She was useful to him, and if he did like her, well, she had no obligation to reciprocate that feeling.
Even if some part of her wanted to.
A great and terrible emptiness arose in her, followed by rage so bitter and absolute she couldn't breathe. She was in the forest, but she was also standing in the doorway, a thought later, and she was before the Wall that was even now closing itself. She found the Goblin Steel lying abandoned in the snow, and felt fear like she hadn't since childhood.
She had fallen down in the snow, and Sirius was at her side, brushing her hair back. She clamped her eyes shut, dizzy from the double vision that came from seeing through two minds, and laughed sickly.
"He knows," she hiccupped, trying to right herself with this body, disentangle her perceptions from the Dark Lord's. "I killed Dolohov—" she ignored Sirius' pleased exclamation, as did the wolf. "He can track me, through my thoughts. He's coming." She felt an intense and overwhelming pressure against her mind, a tidal wave occlusion did nothing to hold back.
"Run," she warned. It was the last thing she could do for them.
She felt the pulse of the Dark Mark, and then, he came.
She was gone.
Severus felt almost giddy with the relief of it, steeled himself against the joy of it. The Dark Lord was furious. Severus had been retreating to his room after a long night of attending to the wounded when the man had descended the stairs like a dark angel, his rage manifest. The torches sputtered and the floors whined, and the girl's door opened for him before he could touch it. Curiosity overcoming his caution, he moved to watch, Carrow and Malfoy peering over his shoulder. The Dark Lord was aware of them, of course. How couldn't he be, with the House awakened to his anger?
He stormed about the girl's chamber—briefly. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn't here.
"Mulciber, Carrow, gather half our able bodied men beyond the wall. Drag her back." His handsome face sneered. "You have my permission to chastise her—if you can manage such a thing."
Severus glanced back. Lucius gave a curt nod—regardless of where the man took his pleasures, he supposed he had some small respect for the Black Family's claim on the girl.
Amycus Carrow smiled nastily.
He swore inwardly.
"Severus—follow me. If you dare." The man's crimson eyes glinted maliciously at the challenge, and Severus froze in fear.
The Master apparated.
Carrow and Mulciber were already running down the stairs, and he felt the phantom pain behind his Mark of his brethren being summoned. Too slow, the stairs, the long walk across the long lawn to the Wall. He opened her window, walked back to the doorway for a running start, and launched himself from the lintel.
The vertigo almost made him lose his stomach.
He couldn't apparate on the grounds, excepting the Arena—the Lord had made sure to make the House proof against the magics of even the most obscure creatures. So he tried to follow the quickest way he could hope to follow, using one of the many powers he'd refused to tap yet, conscious of the cost.
He was spinning towards the ground, he'd hit, he was going to break all his bones and lie there, a skin-sack of crushed organs and dead meat, until they tossed him over their shoulders and threw him to the Wall—
To be or not to be. He, not to be, the crash, not to be.
But not completely nothing, no.
He disintegrated.
Half here, half elsewhere, his body visible as a bloody mist roiling and driving across the ground. He was conscious of a loss, part of himself evaporating away, his essence lingering on the snow and cold trees. He was abruptly forced corporeal by the Wall of Souls, the thorns drinking his essence even as he fought to overshadow them.
He couldn't apparate around them, couldn't float through them, but fully corporeal, they knew him, let him pass with a few plaintive scratches, the bog gurgling in discontent.
He reminded himself unhappily that it was time to feed it.
Of course, its appetite grew more ravenous with every soul added, but then, they were at war, and the Dark Lord saw its hunger as no great nuisance. It couldn't harm him, or those who bore his Mark, after all.
Severus cleared it, and dispersed himself once more.
In some part of himself, more conscious of will and the impress it made on the universe than anything else, he heard the voices, and he turned himself towards them, and willed himself back into being, almost falling over with weakness as he did so. Everything hurt, and he was thirsty—dying of thirst, he realized.
Could he even die of thirst?
He ignored the inane question, but barely. He swayed, looking into the grove.
"Remus, get help," snarled Black.
"Yes, wolf," the Dark Lord said pleasantly. "Get help. I would be greatly interested to know which of your dogs would dare rebel against the Dark Lord."
Remus didn't respond, and the Dark Lord didn't shoot at him. He seemed more interested in Heather, and Sirius.
"Why?" he asked her.
Sirius' edges began to dissolve in the twilight, his eyes gleaming like cuts of blue sky, his teeth the sharp smile of a new moon.
"You need to ask the question, bastard—"
The girl gasped abruptly, perhaps in foresight of the Dark Lord's next action, turned aside to knock her godfather to the ground.
Not quickly enough.
"Lumos maxima."
Black screamed, high and piercing, the sound of an injured dog. His hands were scalded where the light had burnt him, his eyes white as a blind man's.
"Such a simple spell to deal so much damage. I'll thank you for showing it to me, darling."
Heather's lips were white as Black's eyes.
"I'm not your darling" she said lowly.
"No?" his red eyes flashed, he moved a step closer.
"Stupefy," she snapped. The Dark Lord deflected it with mocking ease.
"You see," the Dark Lord continued casually, knocking aside her attacks, "when I first took you, girl, you were a victim. You screamed and railed and whined, like any other of the hundreds of bovine Muggles I've slaughtered, and it was quite dull."
She tore a pin from her hair, and slung it. It ran true, stabbing through his charmed robes, cleaving a bloody line across his arm, and he smiled at it, smiled as she furiously sent a combination of spells skittering against his defenses that he countered easily.
She snarled, driving the second pin at his eye. He raised a shield that barely changed its momentum, took it in the cheek instead. She raced forward, damn the risk, her eyes on the Dark Lord's. They dodged each other's attacks as though they knew one another's minds.
Of course they did.
"And now," he panted as she somersaulted to retrieve her pin, threw it past his head, and he didn't stop her, "now you are a predator."
"Is that your idea of psychological damage?"
"Are you damaged?"
Nott, who'd come searching, stood just beyond the Dark Lord, clamping his hand to his eye where the pin protruded.
She sneered at him. "Not as much as your lot will be if you don't sod off!"
There was the rushing sound of a furnace, and Severus felt abject relief.
Albus Dumbledore stood in the clearing to the side, Fawkes on his shoulder. He, the Dark Lord, and the girl formed a triangle.
The Dark Lord froze, Heather taking the advantage to slip a diffindo through his defences. He snarled as it slashed open his stomach, turning.
He didn't show it in his face. It was all over Heather's, and in his voice.
Utter and complete fear.
"Run, girl!"
And the white wizard flung a curse.
Not at the Dark Lord, not at the Death Eaters standing a respectful distance back from the girl and their Master, but at the girl herself. Even if he could dissipate once more into the bloody mist, he couldn't get there in the eyeblink it would take to catch the curse, no one could—
no one but the Dark Lord.
It caught him up off his feet, and burnt through his chest, his arms and legs and head, and there was an awful screaming that seemed to echo deep as his bones and the bones of the hills, low as heartbeats, high and keening as a wind in the door.
Albus Dumbledore didn't stop. The phoenix launched itself from his shoulder—
and the Grim struck.
It was impossible and stupid as Black himself. The phoenix lashed out with its golden claws, white-hot as smelted steel, beating terribly with its bright wings against the cloud of darkness hurtling against it. It formed and dissipated against the onslaught, so the raptor's hooked beak closed on shadows and its talons combed through the night, and the teeth tore loose mouthful of bright feathers that smoked in the air, and he smelt burning meat from the dog's scalded jaws.
But for every blow Black landed, the phoenix scored two, the light burning away his shape. He'd have to coalesce soon, or he'd be lucky to come back emaciated as Severus.
He couldn't care what Black was doing though. His focus was Dumbledore.
And the girl.
He hadn't paused after the Dark Lord had taken the curse meant for Heather. He'd continued. He wasn't playing.
He cursed the Dark Lord, for being so confident the girl would never get the Steel off. For not letting her play at her own ward-work as she pleased. He cursed Dumbledore. He cursed the war.
She dodged behind trees, ran for her life. Most of Death Eaters hung back indecisively—they'd seen Jugson take her pin in his eye, and with the Dark Lord gone—for now—they had no great desire to pursue her. But Lucius ran forward. He, at least, had an idea that the girl must be significant for the Dark Lord to sacrifice himself—even if he didn't know how.
Dumbledore chased her, chased her right off the boundary of the Dark Wood and Apparition Wards—and into a group of Aurors.
"Why?" he heard her scream. "Why are you doing this? I don't even fucking well know you people—no, keep away—"
There was fire, and the land was rumbling in discontent.
"I'm sorry," he heard Dumbledore say, in terrifying grief. "I'm so sorry."
Snape flung himself at the girl.
There was a flash of green light.
RIP, Alan Rickman.
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