The changeroom was dark when I arrived back to it. I lit candles as I prepared for what would possibly be the most terrifying moment of my life, trembling slightly in nervous anticipation. I had come to view the small space as a tomb to hold my broken heart. It had allowed me to hide away in the darkness at any point in the day to find peace and cry in private.

As I dressed into a black Victorian style gown I was sure would fit the bill for my attempt at convincing the Death Eater's to take me as one of their own, Draco's words from a month prior echoed hatefully in my mind.

You'll never be good enough to be a Malfoy anyways. You've always been weak, sniveling at the smallest of things. Pathetic.

You and I shouldn't be together. I'm a Death Eater, and you aren't. It will always be uneven.

Not for long, I thought with sincere dread. What would Draco think when he found out that I had taken the dark mark? In France he had made me promise never to allow it unless I was absolutely threatened. But then again, was the Order not absolutely threatened by that point? And it was no longer his concern whether or not I joined their ranks, considering he had walked away from me and shattered my heart into a million dysfunctional pieces.

I looked at myself in the mirror, dressed like a widow from the 1800's in the vividly black dress. My bright hair shone against the fabric and I could have possibly passed for deceased from how pale I had become.

A knock on my door caused me to jump slightly. I turned and unlocked it to find Harry in the hallway. He held out a piece of parchment with messy scribbles and diagrams all over it, "Here; in case you didn't know how to locate the Black residence. I've been there before. Everyone else is preparing to move to the meeting points as we speak."

I took it slowly and read the words that were written there, hinting at a passcode to get into the building. Harry ranted on, "I doubt Bellatrix will be there, but you can ask the house elf to fetch her. Just a warning; even if it seems abandoned there are loads of dangerous traps set. Be careful - it was one of the first safe houses to get raided, and now the Death Eaters watch it quite dramatically."

I gave him a faint smile, "Dis is good 'arry, thank you."

He pouted slightly, looking down between us, "You know, it's really been bothering me...what happened in the woods. That's not how I would've wanted things to go between us."

He was avoiding my eyes and I suddenly felt sick and nervous. It was like he would never take a hint. His persistent fondness of me seemed to be indestructible, and just when I thought it was gone it came back again in full force.

I frowned, feigning sympathy. If I could have truly sympathized with him I would have, but the event had destroyed my own happiness much more than it could have his. I'd lost the love of my life whereas he had actually gotten to experience physical affection with his crush. "It is okay, 'arry," I offered what little I could provide given how I felt.

Harry's mouth twitched into a sad half smile. He looked up at me, reaching from around his back to press a velvety black sack into my hands, "I have this for you. It's from Dumbledore, it won't open for anyone else. He told me I would know when the right time was to give it to you. This feels like that moment."

I blanked, and he laughed gently at my quizzical expression, "You met him once, but you wouldn't remember that." I was shocked that I had met the headmaster of Hogwarts in person. He had been famously detached, only spotted on rare occasions out of his office for anything other than important meals in the great hall or high up in the stands at Quidditch games.

Both of us watched in awe as I pulled open the drawstrings on the expensive bag and reached inside. My hand brushed against something cold and glassy as I pulled out a note written in gorgeous handwriting that read simply:

Sometimes, the only way to navigate the darkness is to blend in with it.

I looked up at Harry with my eyebrows pushed together to see that his eyes had widened knowingly. His mouth was parted as he watched me pull out a glass orb with dark clouds swirling within. "Of course, I'm so stupid," he remarked, "How could I have forgotten. This was meant to happen all along."

He reacted like lightning but he wasn't fast enough in his attempt to snatch it from me. I backed away into the changing room aghast at his robbery attack, holding the sphere tightly against my chest with both arms. The faint sound of a girl shrieking with rage had begun to radiate from the glass as it changed beneath my fingers to expose it's premonition.

His voice was tense and authoritative as he drilled his eyes into me, "Madeleine, give me the oracle." His palm was outstretched as he pinned me against the makeup counter behind.

"Why?" I asked with both indignation and confusion.

He was breathing rapidly before me with a look of trepidation seeping across his handsome features. His eyes flitted to the orb which was now producing a horrible shrill wailing, "Because, it's not something that you need to see right now. It will only upset you."

I moved it behind my back and he darted forward again ferociously. By that point I was entirely outraged by his advances, "I will watch dis right now, whether or not you want me to." I stomped my foot and my blond waves bounced, making me look like an angry little doll. Dumbledore had specifically left it for me, and it was already offensive enough that he'd held onto it for so long. He backed up a step.

Harry's face fell with defeat and he suddenly appeared ill, "So be it. Just don't let this stop you from going today. We are depending on you. You're our last hope." He turned away from me, running his hands through his hair unnecessarily, causing it to spike up at random angles.

I produced the orb and turned away from him as well with blossoming mistrust. I faced the mirror so I would be able to catch him if he tried a third time, and held it out with one hand. It seemed to register an onlooker and spun in my palm slowly and assuredly in a gyroscopic manner. The mist within darkened to a filthy grey, and I was sure I had caught a blurry glimpse of a large skull soaring with opened jaws towards me in the glass before it hit the wall and dissipated. Between the teeth emerged an image of myself completely engulfed by black flames, screaming at the top of my lungs. "Oh mon dieu," I exclaimed in shock, noticing that the image of myself was disfigured. I had jet black eyes, and my normally sandy blond hair had bleached into a sheet of pure ivory, floating from my body electrically. The girl in the orb felt maleficent and lethal.

I put the orb down on the counter where it continued to spin with a warbling glass noise, and the horrible, maddening howling continued in it's high pitch. Harry looked up with his hand on his cheek, concerned. I started to sweat profusely.

It's not that small a price, you understand that right? It will change you.

Sometimes, the only way to navigate the darkness is to blend in with it.

I was hit with the sudden realization that Dumbledore had intended for me to receive that package at precisely the moment Harry had relinquished it to me. With trembling fingers I lifted my left arm and stared at the location that the dark mark would soon inhabit. The oracle had been meant to provide me with the knowledge that what I was doing would not be easy. I would have to absorb the evil in order to destroy it. I would have to become the evil, and simply taking the dark mark was not as pedestrian as a temporary tattoo. My role was about to change dramatically in a new and very sinister way, more similar to Draco's. For the Order to win the war, I feared that I would have to do unspeakable things.

Harry hovered behind me and slowly reached forward two fingers to stop the orb's rotation. I stared at him in the reflection like a shaky shelter dog begging to be adopted. "I'm sorry Madeleine. That can't have been easy to see. But that's exactly it - you were always meant to make this decision. Dumbledore wanted you to be sure that it was the right one. Believe me, I tried once to convince both of you that this oracle was cursed and should be prevented. I was wrong."

The knot in my stomach was relentless as I tried to calm myself down from the hot and cold flashes. Harry was right - I had to push on. I was especially certain that he was correct considering Dumbledore himself had written such telling words. I exhaled, "I will still go. In fact, I should go now before I change my mind."

As I turned he once again invaded my personal space by drawing me into a hug, and I reluctantly hugged him back. "I'll see you soon, then," he said quietly into my hair, but the strain in his voice gave away how he truly felt.

When Harry released me, making sure to trail his fingers along my waist longingly, I stepped back and raised my wand to my nose and closed my eyes. I willed myself to disapparate to the Borough of Islington in London, as the shoddy map Harry had drawn indicated. I reappeared in a thin roadway in the middle of a rain storm and the sound of an electronic horn honking profanely to my right. A tiny Fiat had nearly flattened me from where I had landed in the street. I stumbled backwards onto the sidewalk as the driver glared and shouted at me.

I straightened myself out wishing suddenly that I'd had the obvious foresight to wear a cloak. The rain had already drenched my hair and dress by the time I made to the front of the address where the continuous townhouse buildings were said to part and reveal the hidden home of twelve Grimmauld Place, charmed to fit snuggly and invisibly between eleven and thirteen.

I dragged in my breath, less than gracefully, with fear stabbing my heart as though a tiny gold miner had somehow gotten trapped in my rib cage with a pointy pick axe. I repeated my family motto under my breath to draw upon whatever bravery I had left, using the same method to calm down I had used in the gateway to Quidditch games, "Singulare Aude, Singulare Aude..." The parchment in my hand began to run in the watery environment, and I looked down to mutter the password before it completely vanished from existence. The buildings unenthusiastically groaned and shifted apart like a reverse garbage compactor, divulging the missing brick townhouse in the numerical lineup.

With a thunderous boom the aged architecture finalized it's dividing movement. I forced my feet forward down the neglected pathway, suddenly feeling like a floating head from the wrenching terror consuming the rest of my body. I opened the front door and nearly fainted when a man with a long beard floated directly towards my face looking exceptionally realistic and moaning ominously. I shouted loudly and brought my arms up to defend myself from the impending collision only to find that the smoke of the illusion glittered away like dust around my clothing. It had been a ghost, and a very convincing one as well. The only reason that I had not run for my life was due to my debilitating paralysis when scared.

Though I wasn't sure I could continue I knew that I had to. I lit the tip of my wand and darted my arm back and forth across the cold, moldy hallway as I crept forward, shivering with wide eyes and soaked hair.

I had left the door open and the icy rain pattered with a grainy audio behind me. "H-h-hello?" I managed to squeak out, trying to ignore the foreboding creaking of the wooden floorboards everywhere. The house gusted with frigid air even though we were moving into central July.

I had made it almost to the first doorway painstakingly slowly, when a gargled grumble erupted from the darkness at the end of the hallway I was standing in. I squinted mightily, but the foot candle of my wand did not reach that distance. In the darkness ahead there was a shuffling and I gasped, taking a few steps back. The noise repeated itself and now the sound of soft footsteps approaching down the staircase caused my heart to lurch in my throat.

"S-show yourself," I demanded, stammering barely audibly. The wand in my hand shook violently and there was a very small chance that I would even be able to hit a target if I wanted to cast anything.

A snap of fingers and several orbs of light drifted listlessly from a tiny, huddled form before me at the base of the stairs it had just descended. A malicious, beaten looking elf with an enormous, bent nose had his arm raised and his beady eyes glued to me. "Kreacher obeys Mistress Malfoy, Kreacher shows himself," the elf complained in a half-hearted tone.

I swallowed hard and didn't lower my wand. I had seen this elf at the Malfoy manor a handful of times and we had never had friendly interactions. But, if he felt loyal to the Malfoy name, then I would have quite a lot of power over him. "K-Kreacher c-could you p-please..." I lost my voice and only air wheezed out of my lungs. He was frozen like a menacing little statue, judgement and disgust burning in his eyes as I panted in fear. I tried again, "K-Kreacher, could you summon Bellatrix Les-Les-Lestrange?" I managed to somehow complete the sentence but my vision was swimming with a familiar sense of weakness. If I didn't faint it would be a miracle.

Kreacher growled darkly and then there was a faint popping noise with his disappearance. I stood petrified in place, pointing my wand at nothing in particular. She was coming. It was only a matter of minutes before the evil woman would have me at her will and mercy. My eyes drifted upwards to the staircases that wound switchback several stories high.

It was indeed only moments before several lightning strikes hit at once on either side of me; two in the front and one in the back. A man with hair as yellow as French fries tied into a pony tail appeared behind me. Before me another Death Eater with dark hair I didn't recognize. Between us, with her body mere feet from me, stood Bellatrix herself. She immediately cackled and raised her warped black wand to my throat, "Come to catch up have we?" She mocked with her signature wide eyes, cocking her head to the side. "Heard baby Draco had grown bored of you. Pity. Now he's not here to protect you, is he?" The words danced melodically and breathily from her lips, making her sound completely insane as she spoke. Both of the other Death Eaters laughed short, dark grunts.

She popped her eyebrows and dug the wand far into my jaw, "Let's take it nice and slow with this one, boys. I want her alive as long as possible and in as many pieces as possible." She grinned sadistically, baring her wretched black teeth. Her dirty ringlets of black hair bounced with injurious delight.

Just as I had suspected, she had already planned a means to torture me. She must've felt akin to a sleeping lion, waking to a moronic lamb wondering into it's den and yelping for attention. It took every ounce of my remaining power to wheeze out any words at all, "I... I want to be a Death Eater."

She stopped moving altogether, as though someone had hit the pause button on a remote control that was assigned to her. She stared at me like a statue and I blinked rapidly. For a moment I actually wondered if time had frozen from how eerie the interaction was. Then she burst out laughing once more, this time it was very low in tone and drawn out.

"Sheeeee wants to be a Death Eater!" She exclaimed in what could only be described as an outdoor voice. I panted and grimaced as the two other men belted along with her. She stopped laughing once again in an abruptly unnatural way, as if someone had hit the remote to switch channels. She began circling me like a predator, lifting my golden hair off of my shoulders, drawing her wand across my back and down my spine, "Well, well, isn't it your lucky day? The dark lord has already made his interest clear in claiming you for his army." My nervous system tingled electrically with the rough jabs of her wand, causing chills to sweep across my body.

She faced me again, swiveling on the spot robotically, and tapped her wand against her cheek dramatically, "What to do, what to do..." She whispered harassingly. "Hold out your arm, girl!" She requested point blank.

I lifted my arm with blurry eyes filled with tears. She reached across and ripped my sleeve straight down the middle, exposing my arm. She bit her tongue and her eyes lasered in on my milky skin as she pressed her wand harshly into my veins, muttering some kind of pagan scripture under her breath.

Immediately, my skin burned horrifically. It was beyond anything that the Bequeathment mark had ever put me through. The experience felt exactly like sulphuric acid being poured across my arm. When I looked down I half expected my flesh to be melted away down to the bone. I cried out loudly in a high-pitch as the imagery of a black skull and a snake crawled from the tip of her wand and into my flesh.

My arm instinctually tried to pull away but she gripped me steady in her blackened finger nails until it concluded. I turned my head upwards, unable to watch, as the excruciating pain scalded my arm and I screamed at the top of my lungs. My heart began to ache and contract as it was poisoned, and I breathed out raggedly as the evil ripped through my circulatory system and into every cell of my body. My vision darkened with an unexpected level of malice. Underneath my agonized wailing, I could hear her maniacal laughter the entire time.he entire time./p