Chapter 37: The Tree and Its Fruit

She was nearly dead on her feet by the time they got back to Hogwarts, but she wasn't about to raise suspicions by begging off her sorting duties with Snape. He, fortunately, wasn't in any humor for clever conversation, and she, just as fortunately, had been doing this sort of work on automatic for years. She stayed just awake enough to pass for alert then, as soon as Snape dismissed her, slinked away to her rooms.

Kwippy brought an early dinner, along with a pot of chamomile, and left her in peace. Dumbledore popped in long enough for her to put on a brave face and send him packing with two of the biscuits.

And then she could finally lower her guard enough to drop, like a cut marionette, straight onto the bed.

ooo

Even when sleep came readily, she didn't trust it; it had never been Meli's friend. When it didn't first elude her, it held her down, forcing her to watch things she'd rather not know or remember. For too long, it had been a way to pass the time between seizures, or to offer insight (real or perceived) about the link that caused those seizures. It was many things, but it was never kind.

This time when she fell, sleep was waiting to pull her under like a thick, smothering black velvet pall that dragged her to the inky bottom of a world where there was no breath to draw.

She opened her eyes to find herself standing in a fire lit stone room with no windows. It was Zarekael's sitting room in the Hogwarts dungeon, where she'd gone on only a handful of occasions in the entire time she'd known him. She stood with her back to his worktable, facing the door, with a chair as a barrier between her and a much younger Zarekael, who was pale and weary.

She looked to her right and saw the fireplace, with Zarekael's battle axe and longsword displayed above the mantle and his javelin in a stand to one side. She instinctively edged around the chair on the fireplace side, and he, too, circled opposite her—away from the weapons and closer to his worktable, where she knew from memory, though not in this moment, his knife harness lay.

She looked over at the javelin again with a sinking heart. She knew this scene—they'd been here before.

Zarekael was watching her carefully. "Would you like to sit?" he asked.

Meli crossed her arms, as she had done then. "No, thank you." He wilted a little, but she lifted her chin and pressed forward. "Are you a Death Eater? And if so, are you a spy?"

"Neshdiana… what would you have me say?" His eyes had widened slightly at the question, but he seemed more grieved than surprised. "Either way, I've destroyed your trust in me. If I say I'm not a Death Eater, you will not believe me. If I say I am, you have every reason not to trust me."

She stiffened. Last time he'd used her formal name, too, but not that one. She'd been Ebony then, and he wouldn't give her the nickname Neshdiana for another six months or so. She'd flinched a little then; she felt it more keenly now. Even in what was beginning to head in the direction of a proper nightmare, her brother maintained that awful, empty distance between them.

He'd done it at the time to spare himself some pain, and she felt duty-bound to honor the script, doing her part to spare him, as well. She met his eye. "Whether or not you trust me, Zarekael," she said, with forced calm, "at least believe me when I say that, whatever you say, I will believe you."

He looked measuringly at her for a long moment then sighed. "Neshdiana, we've been here before."

"Then why have we come back?"

Zarekael gave something like a shrug then winced in pain. "Surely you trust me by now."

She glared accusingly at him. "You're the one who told me not to. For that matter, why should you trust me? You know what I am."

He looked doubtful. "In what way?"

"I'm Voldemort's offspring and ward—I was raised by him to be ruthless, to enjoy others' pain and punishment. I'm heartless and awful. You know the things I've done, and the things I've caused."

"You never killed for pleasure, Neshdiana, and you never tortured."

"But I did kill—and I caused others to be tortured and killed." She looked down on impulse and found that she was wearing Andrew's ring again. She would never have married him, but she'd kept it after his death, as a reminder of the very thing she'd just said. "How many deaths are there on my head?"

Zarekael's only reply was a groan as he slumped forward over the back of the chair in front of him.

"Adrikbradwr!" She ran to his side, belatedly remembering what else had happened that night. The back of his shirt was soaked through with blood from still-open wounds that would one day heal into some of the scars the coalition had seen earlier.

As she had done then, she helped him remove the shirt, wincing as each motion seemed to tear open another wound. The cloth at last came free, and she saw what she'd managed to forget.

Something in Zarekael's chemistry made healing magic harmful to him. He'd spent a fortnight in hospital to come this far along in healing, and it was still horrifying to see. He'd been flogged to within an inch of his life, and some of the remaining skin was still in torn ribbons. Most of his back had no skin at all—it was a mass of red, with the plasma separating from the rest of his blood to create an oozing gelled mass, punctuated sporadically by darker red contusions where the whip had struck a deeper blow.

"This is what Voldemort wanted me to learn," she said, as tears pricked at her eyes. "He wanted me to do things like this—gave me sweets so I would learn to enjoy it."

"But you didn't," Zarekael replied through his teeth as his back spasmed from exposure to the cold damp of the dungeons. "And you didn't do this to me."

That was true, anyway. She wasn't indirectly responsible, either—if there was an unintentional catalyst here, it was Harry Potter, and only because Zarekael's punishment had been for failing to kidnap him.

"But there were others I did cause."

There was movement to the side, and she turned to see Pierce and Collum collapsed on the floor, crying out in pain as red blots and lines erupted over their faces, necks and hands. Loud sounds of choking turned her further to face Crim, doubled over with her arms around her abdomen, as blood poured out of her mouth. And behind her, Snape writhed on the floor, screaming in the throes of the Cruciatus.

"This was me, Zarekael!" Was she screaming, or did she only want to? "Don't you see? All of it happened because of me—and who's to say it can't happen again?"

"Oh, Phamelia, how slowly you've learned."

She turned once more, coming face to face with Narcissa Malfoy. "That's not my name."

Narcissa smiled sweetly and drew her wand. "It's the name your grandfather gave you."

Meli set her jaw. "I left my grandfather behind." Well… She'd believed that once.

"Oh, good. Then this should still make an impression." Narcissa flicked her wand. There was a horribly familiar green flash of light, and Meli whirled as a man fell to the floor behind her. She dropped to his side and rolled him over to check for the pulse she knew she wouldn't find—and froze as cold horror washed over her.

It wasn't Andrew Cameron.

The empty blue eyes staring lifelessly up at her belonged to David Kalimac.

ooo

She shot out of bed, her throat raw from screaming, and put her fist through the bedside table. The pain of that impact brought her fully awake and into the moment, though not into her right mind. That was a slower transition, and it involved a lot of things being punched, kicked, and bled on.

Somewhere in there she realized she was wearing the onyx ring. She didn't even have the engagement ring anymore—it had been given back to Andrew's family more than two years ago. She'd worn it until sometime before that, not because she carried a torch for Andrew (who was a controlling asshole at the best of times) but because he'd died under the terms of her bane. He'd come too close, Narcissa Malfoy had murdered him, and Meli had kept a tangible reminder that having friends meant sentencing them to death.

Severus had deliberately given her a ring as opposite as possible to it—onyx in place of diamond, twisted silver instead of smooth gold—in a not-very-subtle effort to make a contrasting point: There were those who would gladly take the risk, if she would only let them.

That was right after Crim died—and before she, Pierce, and Collum had essentially killed each other. Her reported death made the bane a moot point, really; no one cared about the friends of a nameless shadow agent. Only half a dozen people even knew she was alive, and they were all well protected at Hogwarts.

But she'd kept the onyx ring, and she still wore it, as if she really believed it. Sure, the bane was gone, but after three years of bloody war, and now with insomnia taking its toll, there were probably worse things to fear.

Voldemort wasn't just a dream bogeyman. He was her grandfather by blood, and he had raised her. No matter where she fell on the dichotomy of nature versus nurture, she was pretty much screwed. So she hadn't developed a morbid sweet tooth—quite the opposite, in fact—and she could be moved to pity and compassion. Those developments were all at odds with his attempted conditioning of her. But she wasn't innocent, and she wasn't even nice. She'd been able to rationalize away every murder she committed, and at no point had she felt even the slightest guilt about her pivotal role in killing Voldemort.

On the one hand, the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one; that was Precept One of basic utilitarianism. Killing Voldemort ended the war and prevented countless more deaths. She'd done it to spare those innumerable others, but surely a normal person should have felt some guilt over it. After all, she wasn't just killing someone, she was killing the old man who had raised her, spoiled her, and (she sometimes thought) loved her. At the very least she should have been sensible of her own ingratitude.

But there had been nothing. No twinge of guilt, and actually, not pleasure in revenge. He'd ruined her life, too, after all, and if he'd raised her once she existed, he'd also made sure that she existed in the first place. Two women had been raped and tormented so that she could exist, so that he could raise her, so that she could be his heir. And yet, she'd gone about killing him with a cold calculation that accounted for neither of those women; she hadn't been avenging them, or even remembering that they existed. That couldn't be normal, either.

She hadn't felt, or been convicted of, anything, and she couldn't help but think that Voldemort had known that. I die happy, he'd said. She had been the death of him, as he'd been the death of his own father. Dumbledore wasn't the only one who thought the fruit may not have gone far from the tree; Voldemort himself had died believing it.

She'd never ordered anyone killed, but she'd brought about their deaths—her biological parents, her adoptive parents, her fiancé, his sister and her family, Crim, Collum, Sharpie, countless Death Eaters, even Draco Malfoy…

And she'd been able to sit, calmly sipping tea, while she and Zarekael chatted almost idly about whether the Black and Dumbledore of this world deserved to live.

Even apart from the bane, she got people killed; Draco, for instance, had made one stupid mistake and died for it. Moreover, she clearly had a warped idea about the innate value of human life, one sharply at odds with the religious and cultural teaching passed on by both her adoptive parents and the Fells, who had taken her in after her parents' deaths.

She had rejected Voldemort—but why? She'd said that what he stood for was wrong, but where had she got that idea? She couldn't remember and had never been able to account for it. Maybe she'd just found a way to rebel; that didn't fit her memories, either, but what did, anymore?

There was one thing clear, at least: People who came too close to her might not end up dead, but they would certainly be hurt. She wasn't normal, and she most certainly wasn't innocent.