Disclaimer: All characters and situations associated with the Harry Potter series are the property of J. K. Rowling and the following companies, including but not limited to: Bloomsbury, Raincoast Books, Scholastic and Warner Bros. All original material is the property of the author. No money is being made from this story and no copyright infringements were intended in its creation.
Chapter Fifty-One: Thirty Pieces of Silver
'Just when the sky runs out of rainJust when the sun runs out of light
Just when the earth is ill with pain
Just when your body's out of fight
I will be there
I will be the smallest piece in everything
And I would give my life before I break this promise to you.
Melt into me
Don't you want to be the one that lasts forever?
I'll be your everlasting
And enemies may take your will
But they won't last forever
I'll be your sword and shield and…
I'll be your sword
I'll be your shield.'
'Sword and Shield,' Sister Hazel
The stone was ice against her cheek. Her mouth felt dry and her face flushed. With no other wish but to shut out the world and retreat once more into a blissful unconsciousness, something more wanted to be alert, to know what was happening around her. She fought the urge to open her eyes and to look around, but stubborn curiosity would not allow it. So she looked and saw…nothing. Blackness.
Her hair was plastered in short, ragged clumps to her forehead with a cold sweat. The shivering reminded her of the pain in every inch of her body, from a punishment she remembered well. The night before came back to her with startling clarity. And only then did she realize that she was alone. She raised her head to peer into the silent darkness around her, feeling something scratchy brush her hot cheek. Pulling herself up with not a little help from the wall next to her, she looked down. Wrapped around her shivering and shaking limbs was a gray woolen cloak. She did not recognize it but was grateful for its warmth nonetheless. She tugged it closer around her, wanting to cry out, wanting for someone to reassure her that she was not alone. She sucked in a deep breath but the pain was stifling.
Her head ached fiercely and her shoulders were stiff. Her arm throbbed with every beat of her heart but was no longer the sharp, debilitating pain that it had been. Realization dawned then that she may very well be able to use magic—the pain in her wrist was no longer so distracting. She pulled her left hand out from beneath the folds of the cloak, her heart racing with the prospect of a reversal of misfortune. But just as soon as the light of that hope was kindled, it was violently snuffed. She had not been shivering from the mere chill of the damp, stone dungeon. Encircling her wrist was the dull glinting metal that dashed her hopes for good. A bracelet of adamantine replaced her silver one. She heaved a great, disappointed sigh and slumped back against the wall, ignoring any pain.
She hugged the gray cloak tighter as she shivered in the darkness. Her brother was nowhere around. The sick feeling of dread made it difficult to swallow. She didn't want to guess as to the reason for his absence and tried in vain to block the bleak suppositions from her head. Still she could not fight the growing panic. She felt all the helplessness of the situation—she could protect no one from Him, not even herself.
The thought was as caustic as acid. Her frown turned fiercely determined and she reached out in the darkness. Her fingers felt the biting cold of the iron bars and she gripped them with all the strength she had left. She grabbed another bar with the numb fingers of her left hand. They did not obey her as they should have, but still she was able to pull herself up and steady her wobbling legs. Her head swam sickly as if she'd spent the night in the company of a friendly bottle of vodka. Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the cool metal, her forehead feverishly warm. Waiting for her head to stop spinning, she heard something that caused her weary, darkly circled eyes to fly open at once and search the darkness. She met the stare of shining black eyes that she recognized with a wave of relief.
"Where is he?" she asked despairingly, not heeding a word he said to her before.
"I do
not know," he replied truthfully. "They took him some time ago. I know not what
for." Professor Snape's answer was bland. "It is
reassuring, however, to see you on your feet so soon."
She ignored his curious
tone. "I have to find him. We have to get out of here."
"Why had you never told me?" His voice was laced with a bitter, accusing tone. "You never spoke of that night. Not to me. Why?"
"What are you talking about?" she asked, pretending not to know.
"You know very well, Miss Elliot." She stiffened at the marked and distanced civility. "October the Thirty-first, 1981, if you insist that I should be so precise."
She was silent.
"You were always stubborn. I wonder if you knew what the price of staying really meant," he said, almost as if to himself alone.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Jude demanded with as much force as exhaustion would allow. She sank back to the ground, leaning on the bars. She dragged the woolen cloak over her and closed her eyes to the hostile darkness. She wished she could shut out the words so easily.
"I mean that even if you knew the price of letting me go that night, you would have stayed. I see that now." He sounded matter-of-fact, unaffected. "Even though he could very well have killed you, you could not leave. It took his near destruction to lessen his hold over you."
"I know you could never understand, but it was impossible for me to leave Him that night…I had to stay. It was the smart thing to do, it was logical," she said with emphasis, as if trying to convince someone. "I'm no masochist, trust me. I would have left if I could have." She paused for a moment. "You said 'lessen His hold', didn't you?" She didn't wait for a reply. "You don't believe that I could possibly…" She could not breathe and her hands were shaking even as they clutched the bars that supported her. When she spoke again, her voice was just above a whisper. "Where has your faith in me gone?"
In the dark, beyond the pale of her vision, he ran a weary hand over his eyes, his shoulders bent under an invisible burden. "You need to prepare yourself for hard choices, Jude."
She lifted her head, startled a bit, but thankful, for the return to informality, the sharp coldness in his words softened slightly.
"Weakness is the key he seeks," he assured her. "And the moment he feels you falter, he's got you."
"I won't, don't you trust me?" she begged.
"I trust that you would do anything within your power to keep him safe," he said discerningly. "Your brother means a lot to you, does he not?"
She blinked, her eyelids seemingly sandpaper against her dry eyes. Gritting her teeth, she refused to answer with a childlike stubbornness.
"Why didn't you tell me?" His voice was no longer accusing. "About the scars, Jude."
Shaking her head, she answered numbly, "No reason to."
"I owe you much," was the reply.
She allowed her head to fall forward to rest on her knees. "That's why I chose not to speak of it. I know what it's like to be in debt to someone else." Slowly, she looked up, but not at him. With a resigned sigh, she abandoned any further explanation, turning her attention instead on the wall directly to her right. She pulled the shining clasp from the foreign cloak and went to work on the stone in which the rusty hinges of her prison's bars were attached. She worked silently and patiently at the aged stone. She bit her lip in concentration, frowning as she worked at her task.
"What are you doing?"
He did not think she would reply as she simply worked on in quiet. She muttered an impatient "ouch" and removed her glare only momentarily from the wall to look upon him. Sticking her injured thumb in her mouth, she glanced away quickly. "I'm doing what I came here to do." She set back to work with a more determined expression. In no time the soft metal of the pin was bent and nearly useless, her fingers now doing the chief of the work. Bloodied and scraped raw, more than one nail having been ripped down to the quick, her fingers still flew at the task and she seemed to no longer feel pain.
"It would be easier," he ventured to say, "I would think, to pick the lock on the door instead of trying to dig your way through solid rock."
Bending closer to the wall, she peered sharply through the dark, the want of light making her task that much more difficult. "Easier," she answered blandly, "Yes, if it were a simple padlock or a spring. I'd be out in two seconds. But this is archaic…It would take hours even if I knew what I was bloody up against, which I don't. But," she added with the barest thread of hope in her voice, "hinges, they're basically all the same. These happen to be just pins, but they've been recessed precisely so the prisoner can't do what I plan to do."
He merely shook his head and leaned back against his own prison wall, closing his eyes.
After the passing of some time, she had a considerable mound of rubble and dust covering the floor and her knees. Finally she had reached the first iron pin fixing the door to the wall and had created enough space to remove it. Dropping the mangled clasp, she attempted to pry the pin out of its hold, but her effort was in vain. "Damn it," she swore softly, her shoulders slumping forward. The hinge was well rusted and her bloody fingers could not extract it. It was as fixed in place as was she. For a little while longer, at least. Gritting her teeth with disdainful determination, she assured herself that she would get out. No prison had held her before—no prison of stone and iron, that is—and she did not think she could accustom herself to chains.
The very second that she raised her hand to her hopeless work again a noise was heard echoing from the far end of the corridor. Someone was coming.
She stopped her futile motions, her plan of escape having momentarily been abandoned. News of her brother was her only object and she was soon satisfied on that point. A new figure presented itself at her prison door. Trying hard to mask her work, she stood on shaky legs and moved to stand at the bars, hiding her bloody hands in the folds of the gray cloak, staining the wool crimson in spots that had not already been marked by her blood. Her head was spinning and she grasped the iron hard with her scraped and scratched fingers to keep her steady.
As the figure came into view, she found to her surprise that she recognized the man. The frequent waxing and waning of the torchlight deepened the shadows on his pale face and gave more of a golden hint to the soft waves of his blond hair. A sorrowful yet stern Apollo.
"Who are you?" She couldn't help the impertinence of her question. It was said before she could reflect upon its prudence. She had the grace, however, to look slightly ashamed at such a misstep.
The man gave her the barest of smiles, more amused by the question than insulted. He studied her for sometime as he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. She had to release her hold on the bars as he pulled it open. Wavering a little, she stood in front of him, not daring to blink. He was one of them. He watched her with equaled veracity, but with no fear.
"Michael is my name." His words were so unexpected that she hardly marked their meaning. To her English ear the French accent was unmistakable. She regarded him with an even more wary eye. He was not of the dark haired Romanian race she had already learnt to avoid if possible. And something else about his expression was different. The haughty, disdainful air was gone. He seemed sad, worn and tired. "I have come to escort you to the Dark Lord." He stood aside from the open door and made a slight, formal bow. "If you please."
She frowned, supremely mistrustful. Placing one foot tentatively in front of the other, she did as she was told. With uneasy glances behind her she made her way with difficulty into the corridor, every step reminding her of barely forgotten, blinding pain. She hugged the cloak tighter around her and sucked in a determined breath. As she passed Professor Snape's cell, she paused. Her dull gray eyes turned involuntarily in his direction. Turning to the man behind her, she reached out to steady herself on the cold iron bars, glaring at him with such mistrust and hate that he paused as well, a strange curiosity marking his features.
"If I don't want to go to Him…what then?" she said, raising her chin in defiance. "What makes you think I won't run?" He stepped forward and she summarily backed out of his reach, glancing sideways, catching the cold glint of the professor's stare in the darkness. Michael took another step forward and smiled, still staring at her curiously.
"I know you will not," he stated, his glance following her own. "Because I trust that you are not as foolish as you are young, ma petite amie." His hand closed over the same bar she held on to, his fingers gripping it hard enough for the knuckles to whiten.
She swallowed and stumbled back a few more steps. But she forced herself to stand her ground, knowing that if she gave another inch, her courage would flag and her plan would fail. "Are you sure you can bet all on my allegiance to him?" She nodded provokingly in Snape's direction. He moodily shook his head, watching her from the darkness of his cell. He knew what she was doing, but doubted that it would work even in the least capacity. Michael only smiled.
"It is not I you must convince you care not for this man…or the other." His smile grew broader as he saw her flinch. The woolen cloak had slipped from her shoulders and she stood in front of him, frozen and stunned. Her hands, streaked red, hung by her side and she shivered with nothing more between her and the biting cold but a bloodstained t-shirt. "You must convince the Dark Lord that they mean nothing to you. And it would be in vain, ma petite amie, for it matters not." His look changed suddenly from bland interest in the strange creature before him, to a hopelessly resigned pallor. Jude noticed every line in his weary face, every worn fiber of his voice. "We all of us die…sooner or later." He walked toward her and beheld her with a mixture of pity and sternness before he bent to pick up the gray cloak. Replacing it on her shaking shoulders, careful not to cause any more pain, he attempted a smirk that was meant to hide any concern from her piercing stare. "You've gotten blood on my favorite cloak."
She frowned, still holding him under her scrutiny, noting that it began to upbraid him. She did not frighten him but she made him uneasy, that much was apparent. When he beckoned her to turn and to continue on their way, she obeyed without a word.
After the first flight of stone steps she found it necessary to accept the offer of his arm. Despite her protests, she was weak and could not have made it far on her own. And although she did not look forward to another parley with Him, she had to know about Remus. Moments of silent deliberation were broken by a strange observation from her stoic companion. She had not realized that he was staring intently at her hand, bloodied fingers clasping his sleeve.
"You should not attempt it," he said unblinkingly. "There is more keeping you and your friends here than bars and locks."
His words caught her and she glanced up quickly at his face, which was a strange mix of vicious desire and harsh restraint as he stared fixedly at her small hand. She withdrew it from his arm with a look of horror and disgust, stumbling with impatience to separate herself from such a recklessly violent creature. The wall against her back reminded her that there was nowhere else to go in this dark, deserted corridor. The blood pounding in her veins caused her head and her wrist to throb in painful unison.
"Stay back," she panted through ragged breaths. "You're sadly mistaken if you think I haven't got any fight left for you!"
The pained expression on his face surprised her. His shoulders fell with the weight of unspoken rebukes as he watched her fighting not to cower in front of him, summoning the last of her courage in the face of inexpressible evil. He looked unsure of what to say, but he no longer seemed threatening in her eyes. She recognized that look…and it tempted her to pity him. She would have had not her logic persuaded her to believe in no tricks. Her knees gave out and she felt the sharp pain of the impact with hard stone, but she did not take her eyes off of him.
He blinked, not wanting to remove his gaze from hers, but unsure as to how much longer he could bear it. With a deep breath he summoned his stoic self-possession, yet a hint of shame and revilement of the fear he inspired in her remained and refused to be chased away. After a moment he extended his hand to her, offering to help her to her feet, but she refused it, pulling herself up with trembling arms, staying as close to the wall as possible and never removing her eyes from his face.
Carefully his glare raked the corridor and, discerning that they were completely alone, he lowered his hand and his gaze. As if speaking to the floor, he addressed her in quiet tones and did not look up from the stone beneath his feet. "My sincerest apologies if I frightened you, Mademoiselle. My advice was kindly meant," said he, chancing a glance at her astonished expression. She frowned, clutching the cloak around her shoulders with one hand and supporting herself painfully with her injured arm on the wall, staring with complete and utter disbelief. "Forgive me, I should not have spoken at all. Come," he said with more self-command, "We are expected presently. To delay would be foolish." He raised his hand as if to offer her further assistance but thought better of it. Instead, he beckoned her to proceed on her own before him. It was only a few more steps to their destination.
At the great wooden doors that she had entered just the night before, she paused, dread chilling her more acutely than even the adamantine could. She felt equal to facing nothing that she would encounter there. He reached for the handle as she stared dumbly ahead, unable or unwilling to open it. He pulled the door open a fraction and then paused, for he felt her hand on his and, looking down, he saw that it was so. He looked to her with a questioning glance.
"What will I find behind these doors?" she asked in a feeble voice. "My brother…I know he's there." She swallowed hard. "Tell me."
His expression was determinedly unfeeling and stony, but it was an effort that showed. When he answered he tried to sound disaffected, but feared he failed. "You have difficult choices ahead of you, ma petite amie. Therefore," he said in his cold stoic's voice, "Be wise and do not allow sentiment to guide you. Remember," he placed a hand over hers as it grasped his wrist but he removed it quickly as if burned, "It is not I you have to convince." He pulled the heavy door open wide.
She entered the large hall with trembling steps and did not want to open her eyes. But she forced herself to look and when she saw, all restraint left her. To run to him was not in her power, but she moved with as steady a pace as she could, her limbs and mind numb with complete shock. Her breath caught in her chest as she fell to her knees before him. She did not hear snide laughter, she did not see the sinister faces, she saw only saw him lying on the ground, heard his shallow breathing. She put a hand to his face and found he was yet warm, not dead. She breathed a sigh of relief and ignored the pain it caused her.
Taking his hand in her own, she rested her chin upon their entwined fingers as she brushed away a lock of his sandy hair. There was blood on her fingers, and not her own. She forced herself to look from her fingers to his face once more. The golden light of the large hall belied the paleness of his skin, but she did not allow herself to be deceived. The weight of guilt burdened her, but little did she know how heavy it was to become. She grasped his hand tightly in hers, vainly trying to keep her chin from trembling and the hot tears from spilling down her cheeks. The touch of smooth metal attracted her notice and with a horror-stricken and terrified expression, recognition illuminated her wearied and confused features. It was her silver bracelet, clasped tightly around his arm, the skin around it red and raw, streaked in some places by the crimson stain of blood. She felt ill, angry and culpable all in one turn, her gray eyes, dark and volatile as the clouds that herald a storm, turned to his face once more for some sign…some absolution.
And like a child she reached down
and shook him by the shoulders, gently at first, but with every second of
silence, she grew more desperate to hear his voice, to be reassured. "Remus," she called to him, "wake
up! Please, wake up!" When he did not answer, she spoke again, her tone
miserably pitiful, but she did not care who heard. A relief, however, nearly as
dizzying as the panic itself was felt when he finally
heeded her pleas and opened his eyes. A smile that did not reach the rest of
her countenance, still clouded by despair, was all the thanks she was able to
give before a familiar voice demanded her notice.
"How
charming." The silky tone spoke the words unconvincingly; obviously the
feelings were much the opposite. But the triumph was unmistakable. "I am
exceedingly gratified that my faith in your attachment was justified."
Jude's smile disappeared swiftly, returning to the angry, mistrusting mask she had worn since her arrival in that cold country. She gritted her teeth with suppressed rage as she beheld the man that inhabited the lowest ranks of her esteem. There were few, she supposed, that she disliked more than Lucius Malfoy. He sneered with pleasure at her open loathing and disdain, at her impotent rage. With a smooth, almost bored gesture, he motioned to someone posted behind her. A moment later two hands were clasped firmly around her arms, hauling her off of her knees and dragging her back several steps. She did not look back, but kept her eyes on Malfoy. His lips curled into a mocking smile, his glare leaving her and resting on the man at his feet. A sharp kick was delivered to his side, bringing on a violent coughing fit. "On your feet, beast!" he ordered, a look of supreme disgust on his face. He seemed preparing to deliver another blow when Remus staggered with difficulty to his feet and shakily stood his ground. His arms remained wrapped around his middle and the rise and fall of his shoulders alone seemed to attest to pain. His face, however, was a mask of stony resolve. He did not look to his sister even though her eyes were immovably fixed upon his, so like and yet so very different.
"Don't hurt him!" she yelled as she watched anxiously. "Please." The word tasted bitter—she was begging of a man she knew could not feel sympathy and she promised herself that she would never cower to. But like a child awaiting inevitable punishment, cower she did as he raised his wand to her brother, an amused grin overspreading his face. "He's nothing to you, Lucius!" she spat angrily. "Just let him go."
Lucius' grin slowly and sinisterly spread, illuminating his face with a hellish fascination. "True," he said, turning back to the subject with disdain, "he is nothing to me." His sharp eyes returned once more to his prey. "But he seems to be of some value to you."
Jude's grim, serious countenance did not change as she stared into such reckless hate. "Lay another hand on him and you will learn, Lucius Malfoy, that there is no limit to the lengths I will go to hunt you down." Her voice was flint, her expression steel, but Lucius could not take the small creature seriously when he placed so much faith in the very virtues she lacked. She was not a match for him, he knew it even if she still preferred to remain blind.
He chuckled softly, the mocking laughter growing in depth and resonance. "You have a lot of hate for one so young, little urchin." He seemed exceedingly diverted by her show of heroic blustering. "But you do not understand its power…" The grin disappeared like a wisp of smoke in a high gale. "There is too much of ridiculous love clouding your silly, young mind, girl! Hate would have been a valuable lesson for you to learn, but you were never the apt student."
She was grinding her teeth, biting back the hot rage, but just barely able to contain it. "I have learned to hate," she hissed, "but not from you. There is nothing I could learn from such a snake as you."
The iron grip around her arms increased and the voice, speaking quiet prudence in her ear told her that her captor was Michael. "Hold your tongue, Mademoiselle," was his whispered advice and it sounded like good sense. Jude, however, did not feel inclined to follow good sense at the moment. Her rage was not a quiet one and demanded a more reckless outlet. She ignored the man who would speak as a friend but act as an enemy.
Lucius was chuckling amusedly once more. "Hate me, despise me, but do not suppose yourself to be above arts." He gave her a look of significant penetration. "You forget what you once were…what you still are. A spy, a trickster, an artist, a master of deception." He turned away from her with an expression that mirrored his cunning thoughts. "If it came to it, you would do anything to save your neck."
Wishing to deny it was the strongest impulse she felt, even though her logical mind accorded it the recognition of truth. She had always used her innocent child's face to mask her base tactics—thievery, lying, cheating, deceiving—it was her element, like water to a fish, or the wind under a bird's wings. It was what she was good at, how she had gotten by on her own, how she had survived. The anger boiled within her, the mercury rising with every word of truth he spoke. "I would rather die than become a deceiver like you!" she at last spat vehemently.
He nodded judiciously. "I understand what little value you place on your own head. It is probably the only good sense you have thus demonstrated." His eyes, full of feline rapacity, slid sideways to his prey. Remus held his gaze evenly with a stony indifference, striving to be the model of courage. "But at what price do you value his?"
The wand in his hand was raised instantly to the man's chest and the curse was spoken before Jude even realized what was happening. The low, mocking laughter of the others in the room, the inhuman howls of the victim, and her own screams and pleading cries created a surreal din. Everything seemed to happen unnaturally slow, but incredibly fast at the same time.
"Stop it!" she heard herself screaming as she struggled beneath Michael's grip, but it sounded as if her voice came from far off, the pain the struggle caused her was dulled and foreign-feeling, as if she wasn't even present, but watching from some distance. She did not realize that she had put up such a fight that Andrei, who'd been standing nearby watching the scene with Antonia, had joined him in an effort to subdue the wild creature. They succeeded in their aim, however, bringing her to her knees. She had obviously reached the extreme limit of her strength, the fight having spent itself, but the spirit to struggle still burned low, like glowing embers.
She let her head fall forward, only now feeling the oppressive weight of two grown men violently suppressing any efforts of movement. Her small frame could take little more, and her will was just as exhausted.
"I'll do whatever you want," she heard herself give in with a tiny voice. "Just stop. Please, don't hurt him anymore." The sound of torture had ceased and she knew she must open her eyes to be fully satisfied that Remus was safe for the moment. But she did not want to look.
"Whatever I want?" Lucius spoke to her as if she was a naïve child. "No, no. It is not my command you must await." A sinister smile and a cunning light in his eye gave him such a triumphant aspect that despite her weakness and dejected spirit, Jude felt all of the familiar indignation rise once more to a fury. "Will you," he proposed in a supremely haughty manner, knowing she could not refuse, "declare loyalty unto the Dark Lord and do his bidding?"
Andrei wound his fingers through her short hair, drawing her head back with violent strength, forcing her to look up to Malfoy as he addressed her. Lucius cocked his head to the side in agitation as silence prevailed and her answer remained unspoken. He took one deliberate step backwards and then another until he stood over the unconscious form of her brother. The only movement he made was the rise and fall of his chest, which alone denoted life. Lucius tapped his chin with his wand. "What will it be? Your loyalty or his death?"
"I declare my loyalty," she said in a quiet monotone, unconscious of even the words she spoke. "I am His to command."
"Excellent," came the low hiss, the unmistakable tones of His voice as He stepped from behind the two that unnecessarily held her. She kept her eyes sternly forward, her face neutral as if she had heard nothing. The familiar dull hollow in her chest reminded her what it felt like to sell her soul.
Voldemort glided down the length of the hall as if He did not walk, but contrived some unearthly method of movement. He came to stand next to Lucius and surveyed His reconciled protégé with a lipless, snake-like smile. She beheld Him with none of the horror or terror that so filled her the night before, even those feelings would have been most natural at the moment. She was oddly calm, satisfied with the thought that, come what would, she had preserved her brother's life for the moment and was quietly constructing a plan to see this through. She knew she was lost, but what of that? She'd been beyond the hand of salvation before and had not flinched.
The Dark Lord gave a significant glance to His thugs. She was hauled roughly to her feet and spun around to face the door. Andrei shoved her forward and she stumbled, but recovered her footing and did not fall. Sharply glaring at his companion, Michael grabbed her arm with little of his former roughness and led her from the room.
"You should not have spoken so rashly in there," Michael said after a long pause and considerable distance had been put between them and the throng that remained in the great hall with Voldemort.
Jude narrowed her eyes suspiciously, yanking her arm out of his grip and giving him a scornful look. "Whose side are you on?" The words were angry and contemptuous. "It seems to me like you keep forgetting that you're my enemy."
With a sharp glare up and down the quiet corridor, he shoved her roughly through the first door on the left, slamming it closed behind them. "Watch what you say," he admonished her in a hissing whisper. "You never know who is listening!"
She opened her mouth to make a defensive reply, but the words never came out. What he said next surprised her.
"I am no one's enemy!" he hissed into the sepulchral silence of the room. Ghostly dust and spectral neglect haunted every surface. "But everyone has only ever seen me as theirs!"
"Perhaps that is because you stood up to be counted with the man that would love nothing more than to see the world bend under His sword!"
"Perhaps," he retorted bitterly, mocking her, "you should bend. It is wise that we should all bend!"
"No!" Jude shook her head adamantly, the palm of one hand pressed flat against a long table. "That I promised myself I would never do again!"
He smirked, crossing his arms against his chest. "No? Then what I have just witnessed was a trick of my imagination?"
She pressed her lips together into a thin line. "It is easy for a little sapling to bend," she said shrewdly, "but He forgets that I am not a child anymore."
Considering her words, he watched her closely. "Was it really that terrible? You could have everything you've ever wanted." He lowered his voice, piercing but quiet. "You would not have been such an exile as you are now."
"Who says I am such an exile?" she asked wearily, tiring quickly of the volley of words, but unwilling to give in.
He returned her shrewd glance. "People who should know." His answer was vague but she believed him, as something in his voice urged her to take him at his word. "Yes, I know your story, ma petite amie."
"Well," she said blandly, "exile or not, I would rather have nothing than anything He could offer me."
Eyebrows arched with intrigue, he gave her a piercing stare. "Not even freedom?" Sitting carelessly upon the table that held her up, he seemed content to wait her out. Call her bluff. As two reasonable people, he had no doubt that she would soon see reason.
"Freedom from guilt," he clarified with an easy disregard at her clouded expression. "From accusation…you could do anything you want, or that is what I understand from it. Revenge, retribution, whatever it is you want, it could be yours."
She sniffed, her countenance marked by distrust. "And at what price? At what price would you buy such freedom, Michael?" Her cold, gray eyes held his steadily, stabbing his indifference as easily as a knife could pierce flesh. "The price of your soul?" Her words were flint, her voice steel. "I have bartered mine before. Its value is not what it used to be. But something tells me that you have not parted with yours yet…"
Knees trembling under her weight, she gave up her charade, placing both hands on the table before she completely collapsed. "Why," she continued, less sure than she had sounded before, "do I get the feeling that you want something more? Why do you help me?"
He looked away from her, and she could see his jaw muscles working tensely, his face impressively pensive. "Who says I want to help you?"
Shoulders rising and falling with every uneasy breath, she continued to examine the strange creature across from her. "You struggle, I can see it. Conscience is a tough thing to kill…and I see yours has not yet been defeated."
Springing off of the table, he stood rigidly in front of her, glaring down with his frigid, blue eyes, appearing all the more like the cold marble Apollo, come to life to deliver judgment. "You speak frankly for one at such a disadvantage. I would remember to whom I speak if I were you."
Jude had enough of cowering to those who were bigger and stronger than herself; she stood up straighter. "You may intimidate me all you wish, I have nothing left to lose; nothing left for you to take!" With another ragged gasp, she winced at a pain in her side. She turned back to the table, her support. "Tomorrow," she added in a small voice, as if speaking to herself alone, "I will openly betray the people who've put their trust in me. Believe me, Monsieur, you could not possibly strike a harder blow." With a grim expression, she stared off, her eyes fixed on a point beyond that room and that dreary castle. "Exposing myself for the monster that I am will be more than enough."
"It is that very look," Michael said hollowly after several moments of stoic silence, "the look I have seen on your face, the look on the faces of those whom you will betray." He closed his eyes and turned away from her. She imagined that she saw him shudder. "I cannot bear it," he confessed with some difficulty. Momentarily, he glanced up and caught her curious stare. "And I believe you know what I mean."
Quietly, she answered him truthfully. "I do."
"It is in the eyes, Mademoiselle." His face looked pained, tortured. "The terror of their souls, I could see it…I can still see it."
Jude blinked back the dizzying sensation of déjà vu, transported by his words to another time and another place. She could see the terrified astonishment on his face as she pronounced the words that killed him. She shook her head violently, vainly attempting to dislodge the intruding memories. "I see it, too," she whispered in the terrified voice of a child. She wanted nothing more than to make it go away. But it would not. It was not long, however, before she diverted the flood of her terror and shame into the canals of anger and hatred, fueling the rapids of her rage. "He made me into that person!" she yelled, slamming both hands onto the flat surface of the table. Michael's eyes darted to her face apprehensively, yet curious, intrigued. "I despised her these past fifteen years! Now," she continued to bellow like a thing possessed, "I must become her again to save my brother…to save my friend!"
"It is a bitter choice, for certain," he said evenly, still watching her face carefully.
"A bitter choice?" she asked in a rage, bending all her anger upon him. He did not flinch this time as her sharp glare was leveled on his. "I have no choice! What's your excuse?"
"You have a choice," he reasoned. "An unhappy one, yes. Your decision buys you time alone, but not clemency."
"And you?" she asked harshly. "Do you buy clemency?"
He gritted his teeth, she could see it in the tense set of his jaw. "What will you do with your time then, little one? Will you waste it by slinging insults at me?"
An apprehensive glance from the young woman told him that a fierce debate raged in her mind. The shrewd glare told him all he needed to know: she was calculating his character, if he would be a worthy ally or a sly double-dealer. "I have a plan," she confessed, deciding that she might as well trust him, "that may prove salvation, for my companions, at least."
"You will defy Him even now?" he asked, relaxing a little, but remaining rigidly detached from her.
"Yes," was her reply, as inflexible as iron.
"It is madness." He shook his head at the idea of defying the inevitable. "You know this."
She looked resolved, not desperate, but resolute. "Don't you see? I have to try to make it right. I could not bear to see my brother look at me like that, as the man I murdered did."
An unexpected confession. He straightened, a penetrating look betraying his surprise at her words melting into an unspoken understanding. He nodded in agreement.
"Will you help me?" she asked, half-expecting a solemn no.
"I risk much," he sighed resignedly. "For the mere principle, though, I must. I understand you, ma petite amie, as I doubt you even realize." He rubbed his eyes wearily with one hand. "What is it you ask?"
"I came here with a ring…"
The sound of the door opening had them both on their feet and at attention, Jude looking startled and Michael even more so, with a twinge of guilt and suspicion added to his features. Antonia slinked through the door, unruffled and cool. In her arms she carried a round, smooth stone basin and soft white cloths. Her supremely haughty look was not altered from when they saw her last, so Michael's anxiety that his treachery had been overheard melted into unconcern. He eyed the dark woman blandly as she laid the objects upon the table and turned her black eyes to Jude. Beholding her with marked distaste, Antonia was a striking contrast to the girl in front of her.
She curled her lip in disdain, gleefully watching as Jude bristled with barely contained hatred. "The Dark Lord wishes His emissary to make herself…presentable," she said, gesturing to the basin beside her. "If that is at all possible," she added with sarcasm.
Jude glanced from the sinisterly seductive woman to the clean water and towels next to her. A clean robe lay next to the other objects. Her expression hardened, sharpening her glare into a narrower, more pointed look of hatred and disgust. "I am no emissary of His!" She drew the borrowed cloak of Michael's around her shoulders tighter as if it would protect her from the woman's demonic glare. "I will deliver His message, but," she continued with stony disdain, "as to my appearance, why shouldn't His enemies see how He treats His subjects!"
"Because," she spoke in a voice that barely contained her rage, "it is His will, follow it or I shall be forced to see to its completion." Incensed, Antoina took a threatening step forward, prepared to punish the insolent girl for her impudence.
"Come closer, please do," Jude growled, standing her ground. "You'll see that this bitch too can bite!"
In a flash, Antonia raised one hand studded with beautifully laminated, but piercingly sharp nails. She made to strike at the girl's face, to leave her mark—to remind her who was in charge here.
"Antonia!" Michael called to her harshly, no longer watching with bland amusement. His eyes flashed angrily, but his temper remained serene, betraying nothing to Antonia except a prudent and wise observer. "Do you think that would be wise?" he added in a more subdued tone.
"Wise?" Antonia hissed. "No, but satisfying? Yes. It is a lesson that would do our sharp-tongued little friend a bit of good!" She appeared to be weighing the option in her head. Prudence won, however, and she backed slowly away from her.
"It is keen foresight then, on the Master's side," Michael chuckled, "that He has placed Andrei on her watch tomorrow and not you." Antonia pouted but her frown soon enough turned into a sly grin. "The two of you," Michael continued with good humor, looking pointedly at Antonia and Jude, "would not make it as far as Amsterdam before you have torn each other to ribbons."
"Hardly!" Antonia exclaimed, any traces of a grin vanishing. "That hellcat," Antonia noted Jude with an arrogant raise of her pale chin, "is just a kitten, and although she may hiss like a tiger, she has not claws enough to finish the job!" With a venomous glare, the vampire looked as if she truly would strike her.
"And you have not prudence enough, dear Antonia, to see the task completed," Michael said in triumph at Antonia's actions which proved him true. He rose to his feet casually and came to stand next to Jude, who watched the two cautiously. A thin, pale finger touched her cold cheek. "It is such a temptation, is it not?" Michael raised an eyebrow, glancing to Antonia for confirmation.
Jude stood still as a statue and did not dare move. She tried to find confidence in the fact that this was all a ruse, but then again the man at her side may just be that good. No, not good, she thought, but the best. This could all be a trick. Yet she did not move.
Antonia shrugged her shoulders with affected carelessness. "I see your point," she said with a sly look. "Besides, Andrei has less forbearance than I." She glared pointedly at Jude. "Any false step and she will pay."
A smirk overspread her features at a thought. "Or should I say your dear brother will pay."
Jude flinched, the anger draining from her hard features for the slightest second. Antonia twisted her red lips into a smile, having missed nothing.
"Pray," she instructed the girl, "make a good show of it tomorrow, darling." She inclined her head in the direction of the hall where her brother remained. "He depends on it." She turned on her black heels and glided swiftly to the door. "The night grows short," she spoke wistfully to her compatriot, "and I am hungry. May I leave it to you?"
Michael nodded his head in acquiescence. "Certainly." And she was gone in a swirl of black satin. He stared after her for what seemed like minutes. His wavering loyalty, he feared, could cause him much unnecessary trouble—indeed, it almost had, had Antonia overheard what had been spoken just minutes before—and all his sense and logic railed against his unwise actions. It seemed like madness to risk everything for conviction, if he even could feel such a thing.
When he turned again, he saw Jude frowning into the basin of clear, warm water, intently studying her worn and pale face, streaked with dirt and blood, and what may have been tears. One hand gripped the clean cloths tightly, but her face showed no rage, no feeling at all and he wondered what she was thinking.
Staring at her reflection, unsure and unsteady in the water, she wondered when she had changed so much. She wondered when she'd begun caring more for others than she did for herself. Not that she ever really cared for herself, but survival had always been her first aim. Preserving some innate sense of pride had been second on the list, but was always negotiable, she supposed. Now there was no space left for her on that list of priorities, and no time for pride…or honor. This was not a hero's choice.
She picked up the cloth and
dropped it into the basin, scattering the reflection of the girl that had no
soul left to be wounded. Letting the cloth soak up the warm water, she watched
as the warm liquid dissolved away the dried blood on her fingers. The first
task of the deceiver is to fool the eye—become what it is they expect to see. A turncoat who would do anything to keep out of harm's way—clean
and unscathed.
She picked up the cloth,
heavy with the weight of water, watching as the clear streams ran from her hand
to the basin before she looked up. Feeling eyes intent upon her back, she spoke
hollowly without looking back. "Well? Are you going to stand here and watch me?
It's not like I can escape or anything."
"Orders," he said quietly, a hint of apology in his voice.
Wearily she rolled her neck from side to side. "You can't even wait outside? Not even if I promise to behave myself?"
Shaking his head, a gesture she did not see, he conceded minimally to her wishes. "I will turn away," he said, the aloof amusement returning, "but that is all I can do."
Glancing over her shoulder with a little difficulty, and not a little pain, she was assured that he was as good as his word. Turning back to the task, she touched the cloth to her face, feeling the warmth, the softness of it. She closed her eyes, realizing just how tired she was. The cloth was no longer white when she finally brought it away from her face, when all of its warmth was gone. Comfort was not lasting in a place like this, and the price of such luxury was steep.
She turned her attention to both hands, her left one swollen and sore from her fractured wrist. The adamantine band had numbed it sufficiently, but she still felt the pain of a broken bone and the band was the source of her infinite exhaustion. Her arms were scratched and bloodied, but after all the rust colored blood and dirt was sponged away, she saw that only small gashes remained, nothing big. Still worrying was the arrow wound, which had not started bleeding again, but remained open and deeper than she had previously thought it was.
Taking a deep breath, she shrugged off the borrowed cloak and laid it on the table next to the clean robe. Her shoulders ached with the effort and she shook with the idea of what lay ahead. She released the breath, eyes closed and willing herself silently to be calm, that pain was only in the mind. But as she moved her shoulders, she knew that the red blood from the series of slashes across her back had dried, rust colored into her t-shirt, pasting the cotton in place like a second skin. With her face screwed up, she made a decisive effort to remove it, and that it would only get worse if she left it alone. Still, it was too much for her to overcome the pain silently. A shuddering breath and a whimper of pain caused Michael to turn.
"Ma amie," he said with concern, "let me help you." He came to stand behind her, his expression a mix of apprehension and grim determination. Reluctantly, she allowed him to take the soaked cloth from her hand. She did not look back, but did not need to see his face to understand the torment.
As he gently wiped the blood away, she bit her lip and frowned in deep thought. A rude question, though it was, she had to know. Her voice wavered as she silently asked it. "Is it strong?" She paused, feeling foolish and unforgivably prying. "Your desire for blood, is it strong?"
He did not answer but remained focused on his task. If only she could feel what he felt—it was like claws ripping at him from the inside, trying to get free. He answered a simple yes.
"And," she began again despite the sick feeling it gave her, "what…what happens to them? Your victims?"
A great, wearied sigh escaped him. "Your curious this evening, ma amie," he said with ill humor, a sharp, flinty hardness to his usually placid tones. After a moment's pause, after an awkward moment of silence, he answered her quietly. "Generally they die. But if you cannot kill your prey…then they become one of us."
She turned and looked at him. His expression reminded her so much of her brother. "I know what it's like," she confessed, "to have killed, Michael." Unsure of what to do or how to act when such weighty topics were pressing on her, she shifted from foot to foot, shoving her uninjured hand deep into the pocket of her worn jeans. The crunch and crinkle of a worried and worn piece of paper reminded her that she still carried Rhys' letter. It felt comforting to her fingers, but condemning to her heart. She did understand him, but how he could not know.
"You know nothing of it!" he snapped, backing away from her as if her stare had given him a shock. His eyes glinted angrily, but the anger soon faded as he saw her unafraid, solemn expression soften with something that told him she did understand. He rubbed a hand across his eyes and gave her an even look. "I have not killed these past three years," he unfolded to her. "Not humans, anyway." Gently resting a hand on her shoulder, he convinced her to turn away and let him finish. "Pigs, goats, rabbits, birds…anything. We can live off of practically every living beast. But we lust after our own kind. And nothing can satisfy it." The harshness remained, but anger no longer caused it. Guilt, worn and tired self-restraint, it was something else. "You will not convince me, little one, that you understand that."
She listened without fear. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I do know that if you become one of His, He will make you a murderer anyway, regardless of how you feel about it."
"So either way I am damned," he answered her with defeated amusement. He held the clean robe as she slipped her arms into it, wincing a little at the pain.
"But it is still your choice." She turned to him, fixing her piercing, steel gaze on him.
He rubbed his temples with both hands, slumping back against a table. He looked up at her wearily, but resolved. "Tell me about this ring."
"It's gold with a ruby…"
"Magic?" he asked cautiously.
She shook her head. "No. An ordinary ring. A friend gave it to me. He told me to send it to him if I needed his help. Peter has it now…"
He held her hopeful stare evenly. "You are willing to bring another friend into this?" He stood where he was and seemed to think on this for some time, frowning. "To put another under the sword? I do not understand this, ma petite amie."
"This friend," she clarified with a sly look, "has powerful allies…and a weapon."
Michael held up a pale, thin-fingered hand to silence her. "I think it is wise if you speak no more of this." He gave her a stern look. "You will follow your instructions tomorrow, to the letter. If not, your brother will die."
She despaired at this, fearing that he had rejected her plea and was about to protest, to beg, when he held up his hand again.
"About this ring," he said in his increasingly familiar, wearied stoic's tones, "I will see what I can do." He beckoned her toward him and she came, the black robe she now wore over her jeans and bare feet bellowing behind her. "But do not let hope blind you, little one." He opened the door and led her out into the silence of the bleak corridor.
***
The morning was coming with a cold pale light, no rosy color or comforting warmth to waste on the daybreak. Jude opened her eyes and lifted her cheek from the stone floor with no notion that it was nearly morning. The dark and small and freezing world she knew was underground, in the torch-lit and dim dungeon in a castle-fortress in the bleak middle-of-nowhere. And although she would not see the sun, she could feel that a point of no return was approaching with its light. Soon it would be the hour that would determine how the drama played out. The night had not been spent in sleep. No, her mind was too full of the 'what ifs' and anxieties that accompanied a twist…and a time where it would be impossible to look back.
She crouched in a corner of her little stone and iron cage, as she had for the whole of the night, surrounded by her black robes and black silence. Staring straight ahead, she rarely dared to blink and often began to wonder if she were going mad. But she had heard nothing since she'd first returned. After a few short, angry words with Snape, who now sat as still and quiet in the cell across from hers, she'd ceased to answer his questions or to speak again to him. Remus lay silent in the cell with him and had not woken during the night.
With little else to do, she sat quietly and waited, watching the door, daring to hope that any second would bring sight of Michael. When the heavy door to the dungeon opened with loud creaking in the old wood and the rusted hinges, she scrambled to her feet.
At the bars, she pressed her face against the cold metal and tried to look down the long corridors between the cells. This met with some success and she was relieved to see Michael making his way down the passage. Her heart fell, however—Michael wore the grimmest expression she'd ever seen…and he was not alone. At his side strode Andrei, taller than Michael and sleeker. Next to Andrei was Peter. Farther from appearance and manner than Andrei and Michael, Peter could not have been even if he wanted to. He was the south to their north, water to fire. And she was counting on the fact that he was as stupid as Michael was clever.
A few hushed words were spoken in the cell across from Jude and moments later, Snape was also at the bars, watching the advancing three with a coldly interested stare. Jude's anxious stare never left Michael though his eyes seemed determined not to meet hers.
"Well, little Râde," Andrei said with a smirk, "Îndoaic-te ca trestia si vântul nu te va rupe." With a loud click, the lock on her door snapped open and Andrei pulled the door ajar. "Better to bend than to break, correct? I expect we will have no problems from you." He let the old cell door groan loudly as it swung its full axis, allowing her room to step through as her warden beckoned her to do.
Andrei's pointed look into the cell behind him made her shiver. The meaning was understood. Subduing her fears, she gave Michael another tentative glance, desperate but not wanting to draw attention to him. He met her eyes this time and comprehended all that the look was intended to convey. The dull feeling of despair and bitter disappointment felt like a dread weight in her chest, an uneasy sinking feeling that made her ill. He glanced at her with much pity and shook his head slowly. The shock of the profound disappointment made her halt, stopping dead in her tracks just outside of the door. Trying to catch her breath, to think hard of another plan, she felt that thinking on her feet seemed a foreign task, no longer like breathing in and out to her. But she remembered she was good at filching…and if Peter still had the ring…
Peter watched from a safe distance as the prisoner and reluctant servant was escorted from her cell. He blanched as her calculating, shrewd glare was leveled on him, and he was glad and immensely frightened in equal measure. So it was true—she needed the ring for some sort of signal to her comrades. And she thought he still had it. Unconsciously, he took a step backward, glancing to the dark, barred space to her right.
The movement caught her eye as well.
"Mult zgomot pentru nimic," Andrei spoke impatiently, interrupting her absent, detached moment. "Much ado about nothing, fatâ. Nothing to be afraid of—it is just a message that He wants you to deliver. You will be safe, I assure you. And," he said with lighter humor, "so will they as long as you do not make a false step." He inclined his head, indicating the dark-haired man who'd been gripping the bars with silent anger just below his emotionless expression. Snape never took his eyes from Andrei, not even when every other eye in the room turned toward his companion, who was now on his feet, supporting himself shakily with the bars.
Jude ignored Andrei and brushed past the tall, dark man impatiently, hurrying to Remus, who gave her a small, reassuring smile for her effort. She was determined to keep her head, but at the sight of him, of what she had done to him, her resolve almost failed. Reaching her hands through the bars to hold his, to convince herself that he was still there, still holding on and waiting for her to save him, she almost did not realize that he had pushed something into her palm while no one else was looking.
"I heard," he said with effort, "that you needed this." Another wearied smile etched his worn face.
She took a deep breath and opened her hand. In it was her ring and another object. She wanted to ask how he had gotten it, but as she stared at the other item, the question that she couldn't ask anyway escaped her. "The bracelet you gave me," was what she found she had whispered.
He nodded, his smile not having yet faded. "You keep losing this," he said with a wry, but pained expression. "If I didn't know better…I'd start to take it personally."
Jude looked from his face to the two objects, her hope having been restored to her along with them. Closing her fingers around them, she didn't notice Snape's dark, displeased expression as he observed what passed. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his long fingers.
"A cheap trinket," Andrei shrugged as he glanced over her shoulder to make sure all was right. He had not seen Jude palm the ring and place it securely on a finger of her other hand, keeping only the worthless bracelet visible to account for what passed. "Gustul disputâ n-are. There is no accounting for taste, I suppose," he stated blandly as he motioned to the bent, crooked goblin that stood guard at the far end of the dungeon corridor and it pushed the heavy door open as Michael and Peter turned up the passage toward it. "Come," he ordered, waiting for her to obey and precede him up the corridor, "we waste time."
She grasped her brother's hand one last time before Andrei ushered her away. "It's only a message. I'll be back, I promise."
A cynical, almost maniacal laughter came from within the dark. The professor was shaking his head and glaring at her like a foolish child. "I guess I always gave you more credit than you deserved, Miss Elliot!" Harsh formality. He was displeased with her. Andrei turned his attention to the distraction with amused interest. Jude did not turn to face him.
"Only a fool or a child tells the truth, you know that," he spat angrily. "They've been lying to you. My bet is that this is more than some message. He's hiding something, something big. And it takes less than a fool to believe in that truth."
She spun on her heels to face him, her cold, hard glare as sharp and strong as Damascus steel. "I have to believe it!" she hissed. "If I don't, he's dead," she raised her chin to Remus, "and so are you! Save your clever lectures, Professor. I don't want to hear them!"
In a flash of black, she'd turned her back to him and was stalking up the corridor to join Peter and Michael, without a parting look at her friend. Andrei raised his pale hands and clapped slowly, amused by the performance. His thin red lips were curved into a smile. "Bravo," he said in a silky voice, gliding past him to follow the others.
"This is a mistake!" he bellowed after her, but either she could not hear him or she would not. She was gone.
***
The heavy wooden door closed behind her with an ominous sound. Michael gave a short bow and was gone, Peter following less elegantly the tall man's quick steps. And she was alone. There was no looking back.
She turned to Andrei, clutching the bracelet in her hand, feeling its reassuring weight. "So," she said without ceremony, "when are you going to give me the message I'm supposed to deliver?"
"In time, little Râde," he said with a hint of a smile, "in time. But we must hurry now before daylight." He walked swiftly, taking each step lightly. She could barely keep up as they climbed from the depths of the castle to the ground level. When they reached the small, hidden door through which she had first entered this place, he held out a hand for her to stop. He looked tentatively outside, more cautious in his actions than she had ever seen this man before. It was still dark, the light of a bright moon glinting off of the pure snow.
As if he could hear her very thoughts, he turned to her with a knowing grin. "Let that thought pass, fatâ. We will be moving fast, and the sun is an hour behind us. London will not see dawn before we have left that isle."
"I wasn't," she tried feebly to deny the charge.
He looked out over the snow with a serene calm. "You were," he said matter-of-factly. "And I must advise you not to entertain it. Your life is not the only one that depends on your good conduct." He turned to her and seized her left hand. She froze, remembering the ring. Balling her fingers into a fist, she willed herself to calm down. A case of shaky nerves was not enough to blow her only hope on. Holding her hand in his, he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a small metal key of a curious color. Jude recognized it immediately for adamantine. The milky green metal key was placed into the tiny lock on the bracelet. He removed it quickly, paining her a little, but that was nothing to the relief of being rid of it. The first surge of warmth that she had felt in days returning to her hand made her head swim. Placing the adamantine bond in his pocket, he instructed her further.
"Because I have removed your restraint, it does not follow that you will be permitted to use magic beyond Apperating."
"Apperating?" she said quizzically.
"Yes, that is how you will get to your destination," he answered her frankly.
"But you can't Apperate onto Hogwarts grounds," she said smugly.
With an impatient sigh, he glared at her with growing anger. "You will not be Apperating onto the grounds, but just outside of the gates. You are a friend, as far as they are concerned," he added with a smirk. "You will not have to make a clandestine entry."
With a shrewd look at the girl, he continued. "Do not count on escape. I will be observing you, unseen of course, the entire time. Any suspicious act, any curious turn of phrase that may alert your friends, and I will return word to this castle, where one or both of your friends will be executed." He placed a heavy hand on her sore shoulder. "Be wise, little Râde. It is a simple assignment and not worth the price of getting it wrong." He withdrew his hand in a moment and stepped back. "Go," he commanded, "and do not forget that you are always being watched.
She studied his face for a second before deciding that further words and delay would not be wise. With a pop she was gone.
With a colossal sigh of relief, she glanced around with a small smile. She had no idea that Apperating such a distance was even in her power. It only proved that, despite the adamantine she'd been wearing for the last twenty-four hours, she still had power. Her confidence rose, even though her spirits seemed lower than they had ever been. As she looked around the steep foothills that sprawled just outside of the school grounds, breathed in the good Scottish air, she felt an overwhelming sense of hostility, like she no longer belonged here. The very trees, the grass and the gargoyles that sat upon the stone wall watched her warily.
Her eyes darted this way and that, wondering if Andrei were nearby, if he could see her at all…or if it was just all a damn good bluff. Her expression turned defiant, but she remembered the stakes. This was not a game. Dutifully, she reached up to the weathered iron and pushed the gate open, making her way with steady and unhurried steps to the castle.
Before the thick, wooden doors she paused, doubtful that she could pull this off. Reliance on subtle nuance and faith in her friends is all it hinged on and now she wondered if she had put too much confidence in things she could not master, things she could not count on. Standing on the frozen steps before the castle, she shivered. The wind howled at the intruder, but she would not turn away. And all that remained was to take the leap and trust herself if she could trust no one else. She went in.
The Hall was warm with golden light from torches high on the walls, just as she left it. The air felt welcoming within, a sharp contrast with the bitter cold and frosty starlit outdoors. She stopped shivering but she did not relax. The tenseness in her shoulders seemed so permanent and familiar that she didn't think she could ever relax again. But what comfort this place offered, she breathed it in, marveling at the place's quiet charm that seemed to lull her…like warm honey in tea, cozy socks and a cheery fire.
"Excuse me."
Jude jumped at the sound of a small, tinny voice and spun to face a timid little house elf that she did not recognize, snapping back to reality.
"May I," it asked in a quivering voice, bowing low before her, its floppy ears dangling beside its head nearly touching the ground, "inquire as to you business here, Madam?"
"I wish," she began shakily, but gained confidence quickly, dictating in an authoritarian voice to the small, well-meaning creature, "to speak to the Headmaster. But my business stays with me." Her features were harsh and left absolutely no room for argument. The little creature scampered off as quickly as its spindly legs could carry it. Jude was left in the corridor to pace up and down by herself. The windows were dark and the flames from the torches gave off vibrant yellows that played chase across the window pains. But the darkness remained. Her solemn face turned from the window to the floor in deep thought, watching her bare feet traverse the well-worn marble of the corridor under robes of darkest black when the faint tinkling of conversation pricked her ears.
A female voice was speaking in a careful manner. Jude knew the speaker instantly. Her feet moved agilely to the first bend in the length of the corridor and found that, as suspected, there came a golden light spilling through the door of the teacher's workroom. The door had been closed only halfway. Resting her hand against the smooth wooden surface, Jude pushed it open fully. With a blank expression, she saw her guess was correct. Indira stood with her arms folded neatly over her chest, resplendent in scarlet robes, silver stars cascading down her front as if spilled on the fabric. Indira raised a perfect, flawless hand to stop her companion's words, shaking her head imperiously, disbelievingly at something said. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders and Jude was reminded instantly just how beautiful she was when the woman's dark eyes fixed on her standing silent in the doorway. A smile of the purest joy lit her face, the picture of angelic.
Jude felt as if her heart would be heard, as if she would be found out. The cold wash of familiar dread replaced any joy or relief on her part to be reunited with her friend. Indira ran to her, mumbling incoherent Arabic, tears adding sparkle to her enchanting eyes. Her fear and panic mounted and she didn't know what to do, what to say, but knew not only her life depended on it. Summoning up her courage to meet her with cold formality, if not hatred, however false and fabricated, she was spared this task by one even more daunting.
Her arm was seized in a tight grip and she was spun around into a fierce embrace. She remembered this, remembered how he felt, but did not understand such an urgent desperate need to touch or to hold someone, or to be held in such a safe, secure manner. The voice would have clued her in, had not his feel already told her who it was, but she did not hear anything beyond her own cry, felt little more beyond her own pain.
A sharp intake of breath and the fierce grinding of teeth allowed her to conceal it, but it would have taken much more control than she possessed to pretend that his hands on her battered and bloodied skin did not hurt. Angrily, she shoved him away, daring to glare at him in challenge to test her will again. Bill's clever but good-natured features displayed all the honest confusion he felt as he beheld her, living and breathing, mad enough to spit nails, right before his very eyes. He was supremely baffled.
"Jude," he began warily, "are you all right?" He held out a hand to her. "What happ—"
She backed away, keeping her eyes
fixed mistrustfully on him. "I'm fine," she lied with a brittle sharpness.
"Okay," Bill said slowly,
letting his hand drop to his side dejectedly. "You could tell us how you got
here," he opined, looking to Indira for a supportive
nod or something of the kind, but she was staring, mouth open, gaping at Jude
like a mental patient, utterly stunned. "For starters."
"Apperated," she said icily.
"And…" he prompted, as if talking to a five-year-old. "How did you escape?"
She made a derisive noise, glaring at him archly. "Who said anything about escape?"
The meaning was taken and she was somehow pleased as she saw Indira take an unsure step away from her, horror-stricken.
Jude shook her head. "Oh, come off it! You two should have known better than the rest…well, better than any of the other lot left here. Somewhere inside you knew this day would come…"
Bill seemed to be making a supreme effort to keep his head. Indira was speechless.
"And…what day would that be, Jude?" he asked quietly, disbelievingly.
"The day I made my choice," she announced with confidence. "Once and for all."
"What has happened to you, darling?" Jude turned to Indira with a cold indifference. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Why do you act so hurtful, so…so cold? We are your friends," she pleaded, still not able to understand, or unwilling to. "We love you."
Jude bristled at this, her expression darkening considerably. "If you ever loved me…that was your mistake." She stared blankly at them. "It was not mine."
Bill walked toward her but she did not move, she only watched him with a detached sort of curiosity. Slowly he reached for her hand, suspecting that she would pull back at any moment. But she allowed him to take her icy hand in his. The feel of his warm fingers over hers was more painful, more searing than any pain she had experienced until now and she fought not to recoil. Through some unknown source of strength she was able to remain calm, determined.
He searched her eyes for any indication that she was not herself, a curse perhaps or some other alteration that would cause such a turn. He saw only Jude looking back from the very same clear, gray eyes. It was his friend for sure, but she had changed.
Blandly, she looked down at the warm hands that covered hers. She had to make her move or it would be over and she would lose for certain. Sharply she pulled her hand out of his grip, staring with frigid eyes. "Do not waste your touch on me, Bill," she warned him dispassionately. "I no longer feel." With one smooth movement, she'd taken the gold and ruby ring stolen from the Egyptian tomb, a time that seemed ages apart from this, and pushed it into his hand. "I think you know what this means," she said harshly, her features stony. Had he looked from the ring, to her eyes, he would have seen that she was silently searching him for any sign, any hope that he understood. But he could only stare at the ring as it lay cold and inert in his hand.
She watched him with the most intent concentration she had ever possessed. But he never looked up, never gave her any sign that he understood. She felt paralyzed and didn't know what to do. The only thing left for her to do, she reasoned, was simply to follow through with the charade. Remus' life depended on that.
Bill slumped into a chair, eyes still on the ring he had given her months before. Indira was sniffling loudly, staring at Jude and shaking her head. Jude bit back any feelings that threatened to expose her, steeling herself up for the best performance of her life. Dumbledore would be here any moment and she hoped he was an easier dupe than Bill. Her heart could not take much more.
"You won't be able to find it on any map, but couldn't hurt to try, huh?" said someone entirely new to the scene in a gruff, urgent tone. Jude turned instantly to face the man, utterly surprised, terror mounting beneath her stunned but calm exterior. "Doesn't matter much," Sirius said, striding into the room, his attention consumed by several worn maps, "I'll be able to find it again without even trying." He frowned, looking up to see Bill and Indira staring strangely at a fixed point. Following their gaze, his expression changed rapidly from confusion, to hopeful relief, to suspicion. Jude stood before him like a specter, without a scratch, and what worried him more, completely alone.
"What…how?" he choked out as he studied her. Dropping the armful of rolled parchments onto the table in front of Bill, still stunned and staring blankly a the ring, he sprang on her like a hound on a fox. "Where is he?" he questioned urgently.
"Your friend?" she asked with practiced and perfect aloofness.
"Your brother!" he snapped angrily, bristling at her blasé tone. "What have you done?"
"I," she answered honestly, but frigidly, "have done nothing. You, on the other hand, abandoned him."
"Abandon him?" he spat viciously. "I was chasing Peter!"
"You promised!" she raged, matching his anger. Holding out her hand, palm up, she showed him the little wound made by a knife's point made only a few days earlier, an act that was supposed to bind him to his word. "What are you doing here? Why didn't you try to…" She fell silent, angry with herself that she had allowed him to draw her out. Right hand buried in the pocket of her robes, she clutched the bracelet her brother had given her. It was warm and reassuring. Her façade had begun to crumble. The stony silence may have been an over-compensation, but the sound of the creaky hinges in the door drew all attention away from her. Dumbledore stood in the doorway, his face grim as the grave.
He moved quietly and deliberately across the room, all eyes following him as he made his way to a cushy chair near Bill. Jude noted that he looked older somehow, weaker, tired, stretched too thin. When he'd settled, he turned his enigmatic blue eyes, curious behind half-moon spectacles, upon her.
"I understand," he spoke to her, "that you have some important business to discuss, Miss Elliot."
She nodded minutely, willing herself not to tremble as every eye turned on her. A lump lodged in her throat and she struggled to gain control of her feelings before they compromised her. Still she could not say what she was about to say without feeling that icy, sinking feeling that she'd plunged head-first into a torrent that she would never be able to pull herself out of. This was not new to her, however; she'd done this before.
"I have come bringing a message," she said steadily, without pretension, but without apology, "from my Master, Lord Voldemort."
Several things happened at once. Indira's sobs became an anguished cry, as she backed away in horror; Sirius, eyes wild and murderous made a lunge for her; Bill shot out of his chair, still intent on playing hero; in a flash, Jude raised her hand, the adamantine having only weakened her, and Sirius was thrown off his feet. Bill stopped in his tracks, staring as if he didn't trust a thing he was seeing. She looked at him with anger flashing in her eyes like lightning. "I don't want your hand this time, Bill. I'll save myself, if you don't mind." Immediately she turned to Sirius, who glared at her as he got to his feet again. "Don't be a fool," she spat contemptuously. "If you kill me, you kill Remus."
"How do we know you haven't killed him already?" he snapped back, turning to Dumbledore as if to a judge.
"You don't," she answered calmly. "But is that a chance you're willing to take?" A sly grin played at her lips and only made him angrier.
"Sirius," Dumbledore spoke with authority, "calm yourself. She shall not be harmed under this roof as long as she extends us the same courtesy."
Jude marveled. It sounded like war talk gibberish. White flags and truces and all that nonsense. "Will you hear my message then, or shall I leave? So far, I have not conducted myself like an enemy…"
"But you have declared yourself to be so," Dumbledore retorted archly.
His words hit her more forcefully than a physical blow. So it is done. She was counted with her enemies, with her friend's enemies. With all that she once hated. She could only nod in assent.
"Say what you must, then and be gone."
"The Dark Lord," she began officiously as if reciting bits of a school lecture, "wishes to make it known that you cannot match Him. It is foolish to try. The time draws near. Your government that refuses to stand with you will fall. Your allies will abandon you. Castles will fall…and you will be left standing alone." She watched him steadily as he returned the gesture and it seemed to be more than just a war of words. "Wisdom understands the value of wisdom. Do not let yourself be blinded by pretended righteousness, Headmaster. Bend or you will be crushed."
"The wind may howl," Dumbledore said, a twinkle in his piercing blue eyes that belied his age, "but the mountain will never bow to it."
Jude narrowed her eyes. "Even mountains can't last forever." She continued to glare angrily. "So you will remain obstinately behind these walls while war rages outside?"
"My dear," he said with amusement, "I have never hidden myself away behind these walls when there is trouble. And never have I bent to the will of evil. I intend to do neither anytime soon." He raised his white eyebrows archly.
She grew angrier, the insult stinging. "Sometimes it is better to bend than to break." Her already withered soul shriveled and died as she realized this pronouncement was true. She had bent and was now the enemy. As she turned, she blinked away bitter little tears that threatened to spill down her cold, pale cheeks. "Your faith was a cheap trinket, easily given, easily taken back. Well, it is yours now. I wish you better luck with it." She spun on her heels and stalked out of the room, brushing angrily past Sirius, glaring bitterly at Indira. She did not see the Headmaster's curious stare slide from her indignant, tormented expression to Bill, still holding the ring as if it were a relic of a lost love. The old man smiled.
Outside in the frosted air, she could not breath. She rested her hand against the wide stone railing along the steps leading up to the front door, fighting the dizzy confusion in her head. She took her other hand from her pocket. The warm little trinket—cheap but dear to her—winked back in the pale light before dawn's arrival. Closing her fingers around it, she reminded herself why she'd done it. Someone still had faith in her and that had to be enough. Sucking in a deep breath, her chest aching from the bitter cold of it, she left the doorstep behind her for what was likely to be the last time.
When she'd nearly reached the gate, she heard her name and turned. Standing barefoot in the freezing, deep snow of late December, she shivered. Behind her stood Sirius.
"What do you want?" she asked ungraciously.
His shaggy black hair gave him a sinister look that Jude was sure no one else noticed save herself. "It was a mistake to trust you," he said scathingly. "But what I want to know is why?"
"Win-win situation, Black," she said blandly. "This way I stay alive, Remus stays alive…at least for a while. And the Dark Lord gets free messenger service."
Sirius narrowed his eyes with a palpable feeling of hate. "Then you kill him anyway. Remus would rather die than betray his friends like you've done."
A metallic clink pulled her attention from Sirius to the snow-covered ground. A dark, leather bag lay at her feet, a few sickles in front of that, having spilled out onto the snow. They glinted accusingly against the pure white of the frosted ground.
"Thirty. You can count it if you like," he stated calmly, but the undercurrent of hate was unmistakable. "Judas' price should be good enough for the likes of you."
He turned away from her and was about to trudge back up to the castle, but stopped to hear her last words.
"Keep it," she told him in a small voice. "You betrayed me first."
She wrenched the gate open and let it slam behind her. When he turned around, she was gone.
Outside of the walls, the frosty air swirling angrily around her, she glanced around the frozen landscape for a sign of him. When she turned to face the way she'd come, he was standing directly in front of her, as if some illusion. She jumped involuntarily, startled.
"You did well, little Râde," Andrei said, smiling. His black cloak whipped around him in the wind, giving him even more of a sinister, bat-like appearance.
She breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as if she'd been holding her breath the entire time. "Really," she said, disgruntled, "what was the point of that? All I told him was that Voldemort held all the cards. But Dumbledore won't give in because of words. Not from me…not from any one."
Quickly his hand darted out from
under his dark robes, catching her completely by surprise. He grabbed her wrist
and held her hand in front of her. The small bracelet was entwined in her fingers.
He smiled with smug triumph.
"This," he said slowly as
he pulled the little trinket from her fingers, "was the point, my dear."
Dangling it in front of her face, his smile broadened as her confusion
deepened. "The Dark Lord now has in His possession a Portkey,
the only one in existence, fixed to this place." He gestured with a sweeping
motion to the castle behind her. "The location alone remained unfixed, Hogwarts
being so fiercely protected. He will be most pleased with this."
She was paralyzed with terror. Voldemort now possessed a Portkey into the school. Hogwarts could soon be defenseless against the most ruthless murderer she had ever known. And she knew many.
He had not released her wrist. Turning to the east, he frowned. "Dawn approaches swiftly." He made to leave, but she stood still like an obstinate child.
With a trembling voice she cried, "You tricked me!"
He grinned wickedly. "Om sfant nu se poate." Viciously, he tugged her forward. "Men are not angels, Râde. The sooner you realize that, the better off you will be. Come," he commanded, "we go north."
"North?" she asked, still stunned and sick with guilt and terror.
"To Azkaban," he informed her unceremoniously. "The Dark Lord awaits us there."
Her blood turned to ice and she could not breathe. She would have fought but she could not move. Fear had swallowed every thought that remained and in the next instant, they had vanished, leaving only footprints in the gathering snow.
Roll Call!: Hello, my friends! It has been a while, hasn't it? Emjay (Thanks so much for your last review. I find I had pretty much the same reaction to Order, but I loved all of the new places she's created for us! Was glad to see that I pegged the start of Snape's career at Hogwarts pretty dead on. Hurrah! But that was about it. Prisoner remains my fave, though), Hermionedastar (Thanks! Always glad to have a new reviewer! And a fan of AU! I will definitely get around to checking yours—I miss reading fanfic so much it has become a crisis), Kalor (More of the main characters? As you wish, but you can't blame me for what happens next…), Mags (Yay! You're back! Why the change of name…and when are we going to get a new chapter of A World Unknown?), Minerva of Tortall (Murphy's Law? Yeah, guess I am a little too fond of catastrophe. Things have to go right sometime? Who says? Just kidding, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel…just happens to be a very long tunnel), Torifire 126 (Thank you so much for your review—my regular readers and reviewers are honestly the fuel that is making me finish this project at the moment…not much else is inspiring me lately). Thank you to everyone who reads this!
