Chapter 73 - "My genisis. This is where it all begins."
Circe could hear screaming.
She stood as still as she could, clamping a hand over her mouth to stop the frightened breaths escaping from her mouth. The Vanishing Cabinet was utterly dark, and horribly claustrophobic, but the scene that played out just beyond its doors showed itself to her, in all of its horrific detail, in her mind's eye.
The screams seemed to turn her legs to quivering stilts. Each crescendo of Mr Ollivander's cries made her heart beat faster.
"Please! I'll do it… I'll do it… just don't hurt me anymore…" his feeble, strained voice came from out beyond the Vanishing Cabinet.
"Do you hear that, Wormtail? Ollivander has agreed to craft a new wand for you…" came the hissing, reedy voice of the Dark Lord. Circe felt all of the hairs on her arm stand to attention.
"My Lord…" came Peter Pettigrew's simpering little reply of thanks. Circe could practically see him bowing and scraping in front of his master.
"I told ya all the old man needed was a bit of pain to make him talk. People will say anything to make pain stop."
Oh God… Circe thought, clasping her hand over her mouth harder to stop herself from whimpering in fright. Fenrir. That's Fenrir…
"Fear warps a person's thoughts. Until it is all they can think about. And I'm afraid werewolves don't know when to stop the pain…What is too much pain... Like an animal in your jaws, you will continue to rip it apart on the thrill of blood frenzy. I needed Mister Ollivander lucid… Thinking clearly. So I would know when he was lying." Voldemort spat.
"I have not lied! I swear…"
"Not now. Not after I have bent you by the reforming light of my cruciatus. But you tried, didn't you Ollivander…"
Circe started to cry silently as she heard the pitiful whimpers of the old man. She could do nothing to help him from where she was. Trapped in the cabinet. Once again, her foolhardiness had landed her in a position of danger. Unable to knock on the door and ask to be freed from the heavy, awful darkness, as she had done last time she'd gone through a Vanishing Cabinet.
Why didn't I stop and think?! Of course I'd come out the other end in Malfoy Manor. Severus told me the other cupboard was there… Why didn't I just fucking think?!
Now, it was stay put, or risk being discovered by Voldemort, or the vicious werewolf.
"I say kill him, My Lord!" came a shrieking, sadistic voice that had stayed quiet until that moment. And unfortunately, Circe recognised it all too well…
Bellatrix.
"You have defeated so many foes. Give Wormtail one of their wands. What use is this twig-carver to you?"
"He has more secrets to spill to me." Voldemort replied quietly. "More knowledge to unburden himself with…"
"Please, I told you everything I know about the Phoenix-feather wands! I don't know why it happened…"
"After the Dark Lord tortured it out of you!" Screamed Bellatrix.
What…? Circe thought with a frown. She knew the Dark Lord himself was gifted a Phoenix core wand. But Ollivander said "wands". Plural. Who else has a Phoenix-feather wand?
But Circe's thoughts were halted when she heard a long and deliberate sniff from beyond her realm of darkness.
"I smell something." Growled Fenrir, his voice now sounding much closer to Circe than it had before. The werewolf sniffed again as Circe went rigid with fear. "Like spice and some sort of flowers."
Circe went cold, suddenly remembering a conversation she'd had long ago, with Remus, in the Three Broomsticks:
"So what do I smell like?"
"Well there's that underlying cinnamon, of course. A little of, well, something earthy like moss or soil… and something with lightness and joy. Peony perhaps."
Oh God, it's me… Circe realised, as her heart thundered in her ears. He can smell me!
Her breaths became rapid. Sweat pricked at her forehead. Terror gripped her by the guts. The cabinet seemed to shrink a little smaller around her. She finally understood how Severus must have felt, locked under the sink at Spinner's End by his father…
The werewolf's sniffs became longer and quicker, like a pig hunting for truffles in the ground. To Circe's panicking mind, she thought she could hear the sniffs in every direction, circling her, getting closer to her, breathing down her neck, brushing against her face…
I'm gonna die! He'll find me. He'll rip me into shreds once they figure out I'm not meant to be here…!
Her thoughts fell apart in a haze of panic. The only noise she could comprehend was the snuffle of the wolf. The only thing in her sights was the vast and oppressive black nothingness.
"It's this cupboard thing…" the wolf growled. His words ringing in Circe's ears like a death knell.
"Don't you dare touch that, dog!" Bellatrix cried out. "Cissy paid a hefty price for it, and she won't want your filthy paws on it."
"But I-"
"No! Don't lay a finger on it! She's trying to get it working for Draco… For his special task…"
"Then you'd better come to heel, Fenrir." The Dark Lord said with a cruel laugh. "Else you may never get to feast upon the necks of those students who await you within Hogwarts."
A growl of protest emanated from Fenrir, and Circe bit down hard on her hand to fight her rising scream. Her teeth but so hard into her palm that the taste of blood filled her mouth. Hot and rusty. But a cracking sound, like a whip, echoed in the place beyond her realm of darkness and the whimpering noises from Fenrir got further and further away from her.
"Wormtail, take the dog out to the garden." Voldemort added cruelly.
"Yes, My Lord."
"Don't touch me, scum!" Roared Fenrir.
But nevertheless, a small measure of relief made Circe release her hard bite on her hand as she realised the werewolf had been dismissed.
Oh God… Thankfully God…
She heard Fenrir's angry footsteps recede away, followed by the quick shuffling of Peter, close at his heels.
Two gone. Now all I need to wait for is Bellatrix and Voldemort to leave before I can try and figure out how to get out of here… Circe thought, trying to think optimistically.
"What news from your other family, Bellatrix?" Voldemort asked expectantly.
"My defector, blood-traitor sister-in-law still evades us, Master." Bellatrix answered quietly. Circe could practically hear the embarrassment in her voice.
"I am rather disappointed that you have not yet managed to locate her, Lieutenant. You informed me that you had strong suspicions of where she might have been hiding…"
"Odette had very few friends outside of the noble House which she deserted. I… I thought she'd be hiding with that Smith girl…"
"But you were wrong."
"My Lord, I know you trust Circe Smith and her snake of a partner, Severus Snape, but I … I believe she is hiding something…"
"And you believe that something is, namely, Odette?"
"Perhaps not now her and the Snake are back at Dumbledore's Day-Care Center… But I believe she was."
"These are bold words, Bellatrix. Ones that I would reprimand you for would they have been spoken infront of other Death Eaters."
"My Lord, all I say… all I do is in service of you and your great purpose."
Voldemort sighed heavily, saying something in parselmouth to, Circe assumed, Nagini nearby.
"I highlight to you, Bellatrix, that it is your family who has birthed a traitor to the cause, it is your family who continue to disappoint me with the incompletion of the tasks I have laid at your feet. Not Circe's. She has done everything I have asked of her, with great success. She has proved she can be trusted. Severus too. How I hoped that you, my Special Lieutenant, would also live up to the standards she has set, but at each turn you and your family have let me down."
"Draco will fulfil his mission, my Lord. I promise you… And I will find my turncoat sister-in-law. Even if I have to use her "angels" to draw her out of the shadows."
Circe gasped. Her chest went tight as she digested what Bellatrix had just said.
She's going to use Gabriel and Raphael to get to Odette… Just like she tried to do with Dad and me. Oh God… Her kids are in danger...
"I hope you are right, Bellatrix." Voldemort stated, his voice as icy as a hissing cold tap. "Come, let us see what trouble the wolves are causing."
Circe remained still as a statue, long after she heard the steps of Bellatrix and the Dark Lord recede out of the room. So too did the sickly slither of Nagini. But still she stood in a shocked, terrified silence.
A meek voice began to weep in the realm beyond her dark cupboard.
Circe's eyes widened. Ollivander!
"Mister Ollivander…" she whispered, her voice a hoarse, unsteady croak.
She heard a deep gasp.
"Is someone there…?" the old man called out.
"I'm in the cupboard. I'm a friend." she said, steadily, trying to sound as un-threatening as possible. "Please, could you let me out? There's no handle in here."
She heard a few laboured groans and thudding steps, and then suddenly, a bright light struck her eyes. When she lowered her arm from her face, the confused, worn visage of Ollivander stared back at her.
"Circe Smith." he muttered in his strangely unique voice. "Twelve and a half inches, Cypress, dragon heartstring."
"That's me…"
Circe lay a hand on his shoulders and gently pushed him aside, wishing desperately to be out of the darkness and out of the cupboard. She breathed in a long and level gulp of fresh air when she finally stood in the midst of the drawing room she had trespassed upon in Malfoy Manor.
"How, perchance, did you come to be inside a cupboard?" Ollivander asked, limping back over to Circe's side.
She looked up at him, still shaking and frightened, even though she was now out of the claustrophobic interior of the Vanishing Cabinet. Seeing the old man up close, however, made her lingering jitters stop…Ollivander looked even thinner and gaunt than Circe remembered him being. He had always, in her memories, been slightly wild-looking, with his stark white hair and wiry frame. But now he looked haggard. His skin, which had previously been the same colour as warm leather, now looked ashen and grey. The lines on his forehead and around his light eyes now cut as deep as canyons across his face. His unruly white hair was matted and filthy. Circe instinctively held out a hand for him to lean upon, so frail and weak did he look. And Ollivander took it gratefully, bearing his weight upon her.
"I… uhh… I was a bit of an idiot…" she stammered, leading him over to sit down upon a nearby chair.
"So, you have not come to rescue me…" he muttered sadly.
"I'm sorry, Mister Ollivander." she replied weakly.
"May I assume that you will, at least, take word of my imprisonment back to Dumbledore?"
"How…? How do you know I work for Dumbledore?" she asked in a fluster.
"My dear, you were hiding in a cupboard." Ollivander replied simply, a tiny smile pulling at his mouth, adding a touch of his old playful wildness to his otherwise drawn face. "Despite the rather exalting way Voldemort spoke of you infront of his "Special Lieutenant". You waited for them to be gone before you called out for help. I am old, and frail, and rather badly beaten, but I can still put two and two together. You're Dumbledore's spy, aren't you."
Circe looked at the old man long and hard, feeling a lump rising in her throat.
"He's used legilimency on you, hasn't He… Voldemort." she whispered.
Ollivander flinched at the use of the name, but his eyes turned morose as he realized that there was much more to fear of The Dark Lord now than just merely hearing his name…
"He has. He cracked open my mind like an egg to fish out the answers he wanted."
"And now, if he does it again, he'll know about me…" Circe uttered, her blood running cold.
Circe rose from her chair and paced about the room nervously. She turned to the old man with a sharp spin, her thoughts racing.
"I need to get back... " she muttered, rushing over to the cabinet.
She started toying with the same tiles of stars that were on the outside of this Vanishing Cabinet. The same set of constellations as the one in the Room of Hidden Things. Circe's mind ticked over a whole load of worrying thoughts as she placed the stars in the same positions she'd put them on the other cabinet:
He knows… he knows I'm a spy…
If the Dark Lord reads his mind again, I'll be outed.
And now…
What am I doing now…?!
Giving Narcissa and Draco the key to unlock the cabinet here…
I could… I could just make him forget I was here…
Ollivander startled her as he lay a hand on her shoulder.
"Please, don't take my memories." he whispered. "I need to know someone's coming for me…"
"Mister Ollivander, I may have to…" she said, standing up to face him. "Voldemort can't know about me. If he knew about my real allegiances… it will then call Severus into doubt too. He'd kill us both. It would turn the tide of the War… In His favour."
"Then I shall no longer give him reason to go looking inside me… I'll tell him what he wants to know."
Circe slotted the last of the tiles into place and the door to the cabinet lit up, as it had done before. She sighed deeply, looking from the cupboard to Ollivander, her face set into a deep frown.
"I can't take you with me…" Circe said, thinking aloud to herself. "Bellatrix would figure out that the only way you could have got out of here was through the Vanishing Cabinet. And then she'd be able to step through the cupboard herself and follow me into Hogwarts. I've basically done all the hard work for her!" Circe exclaimed, pointing at the correctly placed tiles on the front of the cabinet. "And then the Hounds of Hell would be let loose… before we're ready." She muttered sadly.
Ollivander reached forwards and plucked a constellation off the front of the door. The lights died and Circe stared at him wordlessly.
"Then let me be of use to you in another way." he whispered. "If I am to remain here, I can ensure that the Malfoys and the Lestranges don't have all of the…"hard work" done for them. If you understand my meaning…"
"Hide a tile?" Circe whispered back.
"That is how this contraption works, is it not?"
Circe took a tile at random from the door and held it in her hands, glancing at the dots that were scattered across its surface. The lights that had once illuminated the stars died as she searched internally for answers.
He's right. The cabinet won't work if one of the constellations is missing. It would probably be a good idea for Severus or I to take one of the tiles from the other cabinet at Hogwarts too… Just incase Draco comes to the same realisation I did. But Ollivander has more to lose if Bellatrix finds out he sabotaged it...
"If they catch you with this, you'll be tortured again." Circe said gravely, waving the tile at him.
"My dear, I strongly suspect that I will be tortured again regardless. That is why I implore you to leave me with a thought that might sustain me in those dark times." Ollivander said, his wide, pale eyes shining with a pearlescent gleam as they filled with tears.
Circe was silent for a moment. And then she handed the tile into Ollivande's waiting hands.
"Where will you hide it?" she asked.
"They keep me in the wine cellar. There are hundreds of little holes and shelves that I could hide this in. I would not be such a fool as to stash it in the mass of dirty blankets they have given me and called a "bed"."
Circe felt a lump rise in her throat, her empathy piqued upon hearing the dire conditions the old man was being kept in. No wonder he appeared so thin and haggard…
"I'm sorry, Mister Ollivander…" she muttered, her throat becoming thick with emotion. "I'm sorry I couldn't rescue you. I wish I could… I just… I'm so sorry." Circe whispered, close to tears. She wanted to promise the old man that she'd send someone who could come for him, but she couldn't even ensure that. She really could do nothing but turn her tail and run. Leaving Ollivander behind to his grim fate. She felt wretched.
"What you are doing for Dumbledore may, one day, rescue us all, my dear. In the meantime, I must wait." Ollivander replied, the lines on his face deepening as he summoned up a small consolationary smile. "Now go."
Circe turned to the Vanishing Cabinet, her heart beginning to pound again as she swung open the black ebony doors. She hesitated for a second before stepping inside the oppressive darkness once more. But she swallowed down her fear and summoned up her courage. If Ollivander could find the courage to remain here, then she could face the claustrophobic crush of the Vanishing Cabinet again. She willed her shaking legs forward, and stepped inside the cupboard, turning slowly around to face the outside world. Ollivander gave her a final nod as he closed the doors on her. And Circe, once again, felt the rising tide of fear in her belly as utter blackness filled her vision.
She listened closely, hearing Ollivander's weak, old fingers placing the last of the tiles in it's correct location. Circe closed her eyes, praying that the old man kept to his word, and hid it once she had fled from Malfoy Manor. And, slowly at first, and then all at once, she felt herself leaving Malfoy Manor behind…
She opened her eyes as she heard the slow rise of voices coming through the ether as she was transported back to Hogwarts. Concerned, shouting voices, arguing back and forth with one another.
"You can't go after her, Severus! You endanger your mission!"
"Let go of me, you bastard!" Snape cried, his voice incandescent with rage and panic. "She's not come back! She's in trouble!"
"Severus, calm yourself!" retaliated Dumbledore's unmistakable voice.
"Uhh… hello?" Circe called out into the darkness.
The two voices halted in their shouting match instantly.
"Sev, it's me." she said, a little louder. "Please, for the love of God, let me out…"
There was a rustle of footsteps and another shout went up:
"No, Severus! You don't know if it is Madame Lestrange or another Death Eater, trying to lure you into a honeytrap." said Dumbledore.
"Where did… where did you and I go to celebrate my birthday two years ago?" Severus asked, his voice low and cautious.
"Camden." Circe stated. No hesitation in her voice.
The door to the Vanishing Cabinet swung open, and this time the face that greeted her was Severus. He let out a small moan of utter relief and the two of them threw their arms around one another. Circe scrunched her eyes up tight as a few tears pricked at her eyes. She could feel Severus's wild heart beating against her own chest as he held her tight.
"I could kill you, you bloody fool!" he hissed viciously into her ear, but still refusing to let go of her.
"I know… I'm sorry. I just... didn't think." Circe sobbed out.
"Are you alright?" he asked, finally releasing his iron-tight grip on her and ardently gazing into her face.
She nodded.
"Were you seen?!" Dumbledore asked, pushing forwards and almost tearing Severus off Circe to ask her his questions. "Are they aware of how the Vanishing Cabinet works?"
"No to both." Circe said, her whole being suddenly becoming very weary. "No one saw me or saw how the cabinet works. But I did overhear some pretty interesting stuff…"
"Do you know what would have been really useful, Headmaster…?" Circe grumbled as she passed a hand over his delicate glass cabinet. "To have known that you had a bank of memories pertaining specifically to the Dark Lord's life about six months ago..."
"Was Origins of a Riddle too advanced for you, Professor?" Dumbledore asked, raising his white, bushy brow sarcastically at her.
"You could have saved me… so much time." She sighed, pushing her glasses up and rubbing exasperatedly at the bridge of her nose.
"Well, Professor, is there anything truly that you would have wished to see with your own eyes? Would you truly have wanted to witness the evidence of Merope's abuse yourself?"
Circe thought about this for a moment, and a shiver went up her spine.
"No. No I don't think I would." She muttered. For all of her damning of those who had seen Merope's limps and bruises and had done nothing, Circe herself couldn't quite bring herself to bear witness to her suffering herself.
"Where were you this time?" Asked Dumbledore.
"Little Hangleton, 1926. When Tom Riddle Senior left her…"
Circe had, just about, forced herself to see Merope's heartbreaking abandonment. With her head bent in Dumbledore's Pensieve, Circe had watched from behind the counter of the Little Hangleton Post Office as the terrible memory played out for her:
The memory's donator, Cecilia Jones, had watched from the Post Office window as Tom Riddle Senior had raged and stormed through the hamlet's streets, with Merope clinging desperately to his sleeve, wailing in sheer emotional agony.
"Please…! Please, Tom! I love you." Circe remembered Merope crying, tugging on her husband's arm, her voice as pained as a wounded animal. "Don't leave me! Please… I love you!"
"You harpy! Get off me!" Tom had roared back. Riddle Senior snatched his arm from Merope and struck her hard across her head.
Cecilia Jones had merely tutted from her watching spot as she pulled her net curtains back to get a better view to ogle.
"You… you poisoned me to love you! With your evil magic!"
"But I stopped! I stopped because I love you!" Poor Merope had sobbed, her dark, limp hair hanging over her face as she bent her head to Tom's feet. "You must love me… somewhere inside. What you said to me… what you did for me-"
"Was all your evil tonic!" Tom had sneered. "I could never love a filthy tramp's daughter such as you! You and your kind are degenerates. Evil. Wrong. Cross-eyed. Mad…. And I will never forgive you for what you did to me. What you forced me to do."
"I stopped! I stopped forcing you. I thought you'd come to love me naturally..." Merope sobbed. "If not for me, then for our son."
Cecilia Jones had exclaimed scandalously, making Circe, who stood beside her, glare daggers at the Post Office owner.
"It's like Demdyke and Chattox said." Circe said to Dumbledore miserably. "Tom Riddle Senior paid for his kindness by being… well, I guess the only word for it is raped… by Merope. And Merope… she believed she was so unworthy of love and kindness that she resorted to using love potions to force affection out of someone. And Voldemort… was the result of all that."
"The origin of the Riddle, indeed." The Headmaster stated sagely. "You're seeing things out of order, you know?" He added with a raise of his grey eyebrow.
"I can keep track of the timeline." Circe responded a little sharply, a tad offended that the Headmaster assumed she wouldn't be able to understand the story out of chronological order. "I have Origins of a Riddle to help me with that. And it would help if you labelled these memories, Headmaster. I still haven't found any memories in between Merope's abandonment and Voldemort's childhood…"
"Apologies, until now I have had no need to share them with anyone other than yourself. I of course know which one is which, but for you it must be trial and error."
"Well, I've started writing a few labels. Just in case you want to show anyone else." Circe stated, pointing at a few bottles she'd placed at the table by the Pensieve.
"Ah, wonderful. That should come in useful when Harry needs to be shown them." The Headmaster said, inspecting the black ink tag now dangling off each bottle Circe had so far used.
"Harry? You're showing these to Harry? Why?"
"One of my many chores to complete before the end of the year..." Dumbledore said monotonously, waving his black hand at Circe.
Circe gulped and fought down the rise of panic in her gut.
"What is this one you have unstoppered? You haven't labelled it yet." Dumbledore asked, before Circe could press on for answers to his enigmatic statement.
"Oh, that's one of yours. The day you met him at Wool's Orphanage. He told me about the Orphanage where he grew up…" Circe muttered. "But I still wanted to see it for myself. He said that the Matrons beat him. He started fires, and they beat him for it… And all of that was his childhood. All of that was his genesis... God, no wonder his magic manifested in pyromancy. All that sadness and rage that he must have felt… "
"Towards a father who wanted nought to do with him, and a mother who chose to die of her heartbreak rather than continue living for her son."
"It's so sad…"
"You aren't feeling sympathy for the Dark Lord are you?" Dumbledore asked with a raise of his brow.
"How can you not?" Circe answered, fixing the old man with a reproachful look.
"Voldemort's past may explain some of his actions, but it does not excuse, Professor."
"No, of course not. But have we really been so numbed by this war that we can't feel empathy for a boy who grew up with the shadow of these events in his past?"
Dumbledore was silent for a moment, his eyes glazing over as he thought back to a distant and long-gone memory.
"You did not know Tom when he was a boy... " he said in a low voice. "Even when I met him in the Orphanage, there was a darkness around him. Some of the stories his Matron told me… How he treated the other children there..."
"Yes, I know. I saw it too, remember?" Circe said solemnly, her mind also returning to another memory in Dumbledore's collection that he had shared with her.
Wool's Orphanage was somewhere straight out of a Victorian horror novel. An old, crumbling building with a wrought iron gate and miserable-looking children in the dilapidated rooms. The little, black-haired boy that had sat demurely on his bed, staring at the strange intruder, had made Circe gasp; In his youth, the Dark Lord had been so… innocent. A boy, not unlike her step-brothers, Tom and Alec. Knobbly-kneed, high-voiced, shy… but Dumbledore was right; his dark eyes held something of a hint towards his awful and violent future. The way he held his head high indicated something of the pureblood beliefs he would grow to aspire. The calm and collected way he spoke, not unlike the cold and measured way The Dark Lord spoke now.
And the way those eyes lit up when Dumbledore set his cupboard ablaze. Just like he could…
"Do you think there could be a Horcrux-"
"Wool's Orphanage was burnt to the ground by young Tom." Dumbledore interrupted swiftly. "And it has since been levelled and used for the site of a set of office blocks."
"Ah. If there was anything there, it would have been found long ago…" Circe mumbled.
"Precisely."
"But… I don't know. If I were the Dark Lord… so much of my childhood is tied to that place. Good or bad, it still provides the significant tie needed to bind a Horcrux to it."
"Well I do not know what to tell you, Professor Smith. If there is more to Wool's Orphanage, then there will be little avenues of investigation we can take. All of the other children who lived there are long dead or wished not to speak to me. When I myself was amassing my collection of memories, anyone who would speak to me all told me the same thing: Tom Marvolo Riddle kept to himself, despite the rather troublesome occurrences that seemed to manifest around him. He scared the smaller children with his "strangeness" and thus he was left alone in those shabby but spotlessly clean rooms. The only two children who even came close to something like friendship with him were scared into silence after a seaside trip-"
"No, they spoke to Demdyke and Chattox." Circe said quickly, walking to her satchel bag and delving within it for Origins of a Riddle. She thumbed through the pages and came to the passage she had marked.
"Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop, two children who lived at Wool's Orphanage during Voldemort's childhood years, remember their years in care:
"Tom was always a strange kid. He'd never really socialise with us. Looked down on the rest of us like he was better than us all. And I remember thinking: "You're in this shite-hole same as us, mate.", don't know why he acted so above the rest of us." said Amy, in conversation with us."
"She managed to convince Benson and Bishop to talk to them?!" Dumbledore exclaimed aloud. "When I approached the two of them for their memories, I could hardly get anything out of them. They'd both been tortured into insanity by the time I'd located them. The Death Eaters found them first…"
"Wait, Dumbledore… Tell me you actually read the book you recommended to me…" Circe said incredulously.
"You are aware of the scarcity of Origins of a Riddle, Professor? When Flourish and Blotts contacted me to say they had located a copy in Europe, I was rather surprised to hear the news, given I asked Mister McInally to source me one over fifteen years ago… You see, during the first War, Voldemort's vehement pursual of every print of the book out there meant that I never managed to keep one for long enough before a band of Death Eaters torched where I was hiding. It is the reason why I began amassing memories of The Dark Lord. Because memories, unlike books, cannot be burnt…"
"I can't believe it. You don't even know what this book has in it?" Circe asked again, waving the tome at him.
"I rather think that the author would have wanted you to have it, and read it, rather than me." Dumbledore stated in a hush.
"What? Why do you say that?" Circe asked, frowning hard at the Headmaster.
"Read on, Professor! I am keen to hear this gap in my Riddle knowledge!" Dumbledore prompted, waving an impatient, purple sleeve at Origins of a Riddle.
Circe blinked and sighed with frustration, repositioning the book on her lap. She begrudgingly continued the interview Demdyke and Chattox had held with Voldemort's fellow orphans:
"Not that the kids wanted much to do with Tom anyway." continued Amy. "He used to talk to himself a lot, in this made-up, sort of hissy talk. And the animals that would wander on to the playground would turn up dead or maimed with their necks broken and their eyes popped out on the concrete, Tom standing over them.
"It was something that the local Council would fundraise for us each year, the trip to the seaside.", said Dennis, in interview with us. "Scrape together enough money in the community to send "the orphans" to Swanage for the August bank holiday.
Well, Tom was never one to socialise with us normies. But that day at the seaside, everyone was equal. We all got lathered with the same thick sunscreen, we all got given the same tuppence to buy an ice-cream, we all got back onto the bus with soaking-wet and salty clothes. Which is why when Tom approached me and Amy to go "exploring" along the rock pools, we were surprised, but I guess… intrigued."
Other witnesses present that day by the sea reported to us that Amy, Dennis and Tom did indeed disappear over the rockpools at around midday. The children went exploring in the direction of "the caves". A rocky outcrop, separated from the beach by a vast swath of jutting stone and pendulously rising and falling swells that would have been otherwise inaccessible to the children, had Tom not used his magic.
"I don't know how he did it." Amy continued in her account. "But Dennis was telling us all a story about some supposed cannibal that used to live in this cave that we could see across the water. Apparently he used to start bonfires in the cave and the ships, thinking it was the lighthouse, would run aground and the cannibal would kill and eat anyone who managed to crawl into his cave. But Tom was listening to the story with this… odd look on his face. And suddenly… we were all just there… In the cave."
Dennis went on to tell us this: "Amy started screaming. And at first I just thought she was panicking when she realised we were in the "cannibal cave". But Tom and I saw what had frightened her so much. A body. A real bloated, blue, half-rotted thing. It was at the mouth of the cave, twisted into an unnatural position, arms at odd angles over its face, skin marbled and bruised with decay. Even the clothes it wore were torn to shreds by the elements. Now, I realise that it must have been some local tramp or some poor soul who'd jumped from the cliffs above, washed up into the cave. But back then, it was a nightmare.
Amy and I were both terrified. We wanted to leave, we begged Tom to take us back. Amy screamed. I shouted.
But Tom looked at the body with a sick fascination. His eyes were… I dunno…. Evil. Hungry. Dark. And he just kept walking towards the body, speaking in his stupid hissy speech.
"Then all of these eels, I think they were, started crawling out of the water." Amy said in her interview, weeping as she had done on that day in the cave. "And Tom…. Tom was controlling them! I swear it. They were flopping around his feet, their horrid toothy mouths hanging open as they gasped in the air. I can hear that horrible, slapping, wet noise still sometimes… when I have nightmares about it.
But I remember the crunching noise more.
I remember what it sounded like when the eels started eating their way inside the dead body. The horrible, shining, wet things wriggled inside him, through every orifice they could. Through his mouth, through his eyeballs, through his ears.
And… you must believe me. You must believe what I tell you. The dead man… He sat up. And Tom made them do it!"
"It was a bloke. I remember his soaking wet beard. I could see the patches of hair missing on his face, and the green tinge to his skin. He'd been dead a long time..." Dennis stated, stone-faced and clearly traumatised all these years later. "But the eels, they were… they were wriggling just under his skin. His… his whole face looked like…. porridge boiling on the hob. And when he opened his eyes…
I could see the eels moving inside his skull.
Tom was laughing. The noise he made echoed off the stone cave. He relished in it. He loved the terror that he was making me and Amy feel. He fed off it.
He could make Amy scream louder each time he made the body move. Each time it made a jittering lurch forwards, crawling over the rocks on its hands and knees. Looking up at us with those eyeless eyes, crawling with black, slithering eels…"
At this point in the interview, Dennis had to pause to vomit.
"I think... I must have fainted. Because the next thing I remember is being on the beach again, gone nightfall, Matron had been looking for us for hours..." Amy concluded the story for us, eyes swimming with the memory of that nightmarish day.. "I… haven't told anyone what happened in that cave. Not even my husband. Who'd believe us? Me or Dennis? Tom Riddle made a body come back to life and he moved it by summoning a legion of eels. They'd put me in a loony bin if I ever said that. Where they sent all the really troubled children..."
Circe stopped reading aloud, feeling her own guts wriggling as she read the tale of that awful day. She felt sick herself, unable to shake the intrusive thought that there were eels inside of her…
"I know I've read it before, but it… it doesn't make it any easier to hear." she muttered.
"That certainly is… a harrowing tale." Dumbledore agreed.
"I just thought… something like that isn't going to be an event that you forget. Not just for Amy and Dennis… but for Tom Marvolo Riddle too."
"Professor…" Dumbledore began slowly, looking at her with a strange intensity. "You don't think-"
The door to Dumbledore's office burst open, and in strode a very flustered and ashen-faced Minerva. Circe and the Headmaster both rose to their feet as Mcgonagall cried out to them both:
"Headmaster, your attention is required immediately. There is.. There is someone here to see you..."
"Min? Are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost." Circe said, clocking just how pale and perturbed her friend appeared.
"Minerva, I am currently very busy… Could my visitor not wait to bei-"
"No! I had to smuggle them inside the castle as it is!" Minerva exclaimed. "I'm afraid the disguise they've chosen is upsetting at best and distasteful at worst."
"Huh?" Circe exclaimed, looking at her friend with a confused frown.
"If poor Potter sees it, the boy will faint…" Minerva muttered, fanning herself with a wad of papers she held in her hands.
"Where are they now?" asked Dumbledore.
"Right here…" called out a voice, hidden behind the great statue of the hippogriff that guarded the Headmaster's office.
Circe squinted her eyes into the shadows and felt all of the hairs on her arms stand to attention.
"I'm sorry I could not find a more appropriate disguise, but it was either this or Mundungus Fletcher." said the figure as they stepped into the light of the office. "And I would not debase myself that far…"
Circe almost felt her legs give out beneath her. "Sirius…?"
The face that looked back at her was staring at her with those dark and wolfish eyes that Circe remembered well. But there was a certain lacking something in the swagger of his step and the slight curl that usually touched his mouth corner.
"No…" Minerva said, looking them up and down with a distasteful look. "It is not Sirius."
"I had to scour through quite a number of pillows and old clothes before I found a hair that I could use for my polyjuice potion." the not-Sirius answered back, in a hauntingly uncanny voice. "But I had to come here after the letter you sent me,... ma cherie."
"Oh fucking hell… Odette?!" Circe exclaimed.
"Madame Lestrange, please explain to me why donning the disguise of a dead man was a better option than simply venturing out of Grimmauld Place as yourself?" Dumbledore asked with a disbelieving shake of his head.
"Because Voldemort's Death Eaters are looking for me, they are not looking for a man they know to be dead." Odette replied, taking a seat beside Circe.
Circe, meanwhile, couldn't take her eyes off the disguise she wore; it was Sirius. No wonder Minerva had taken such precautions to smuggle Odette up to the Headmaster's office, because Harry would have collapsed if he'd seen her. Every tiny detail and hair on his face, Odette's face, was exactly as she remembered Sirius being. Even the clothes she had donned had obviously come from Sirius's wardrobe.
"The polyjuice potion you were brewing at Spinner's End…" Circe muttered. "That's what you used."
"Yes. Do you still have the vials I gifted you and Severus, ma cherie?" Odette asked, with a dead man's mouth…
"Uhh… yes. No need for us to have used them yet though."
"And why have you left the sanctum of your safe-house to see me, Madame Lestrange?" asked Dumbledore.
"Because, Dumbledore, Circe told me what she overheard in Malfoy Manor. And… I have not slept since I was told what my sister-in-law said." Odette said, the hint of fear in her voice.
"Madame Lestrange, I believe I also instructed Circe to inform you that your children are quite safe, according to the Headmaster of Hommehoughair. He sent me a rather succinct note informing me that your boys are safe and sound in his school, as they have been all summer." Dumbledore stated a little coldly.
Circe flinched a little, surprised at how dismissive the Headmaster was over matters outside of his remit. Gabriel and Raphael may not have been his own students, but they were children nonetheless, children who were in possible danger.
"And how do you know this for certain? Bellatrix may have Directeur Fontainbleu under the imperius curse… or torturing him to write whatever she tells him to-"
"Which is highly unlikely, given she's been traipsing through the Dorset countryside, giving some of my Order members a run for their money, these last few days." Dumbledore interrupted swiftly.
"It's true, Odette." Circe added quietly. "Tonks and Remus have told me about all of the raids her and the werewolves have been eating on the Auror barracks near the white cliffs of Dover. She's not left Britain."
"And when she does?" asked Odette. "What am I expected to do then? Wait in Grimmauld Place with that living testicle, Kreacher?"
"You cannot venture out as Sirius Black again!" Minerva butt in. "I won't allow it. The disrespect!"
"Alright, Minerva… calm down. Odette said she didn't have many other options with whose hairs were left lying around at Grimmauld Place. We'll find some unknowns whose hair you can have, just incase the need arises again."
"And you'll be waiting in here until the potion wears off and you're back to yourself. Then we'll arrange a more appropriate disguise for you to leave the castle with...It was difficult enough to smuggle you up to the Headmaster's office looking like that when half the Gryffindor cohort would have recognised you on sight!" Minerva explained, pursing her lips together tightly.
Odette rolled her eyes, Sirius's eyes, and slumped back in her chair.
"You cannot seriously expect me to just stay in hiding if I hear of news pertaining to my children?!" Odette said, her teeth gritted.
"Madame Lestrange, the answer to that question is yes. I do expect you to stay put. Drawing you out of hiding is exactly what Bellatrix Lestrange wants to happen. She wants you to rush to their side or out yourself. She wants to exploit the matriarchal bond between you and your children. Don't give her the satisfaction of giving in to it…" Dumbledore added, fixing Odette with a stern but not wholly unkind look in his eyes. "We will do all that we can to ensure your children are safe."
""All that we can" does not fill me with confidence, Headmaster." Odette mumbled, but nevertheless the tension in her shoulders dropped a little as she reluctantly accepted Dumbledore's words. "At least give me work. My mind rebels at stagnation! Anything to take my mind off mes anges and the imminent danger they may be in…"
Circe looked to the Headmaster and then back to her copy of Origins of a Riddle in her lap. The tale of the cave was still open before her and her stomach lurched again as her eyes fell on the word "eel". When she raised her head again to meet Dumbledore's gaze, she found him already staring back at her, his hands folded neatly in front of him. As he nodded slowly to her, his gold glasses winked off the soft candlelight.
Circe stared into the face of Odette. The face of Sirius Black. And another uncomfortable lurch spiked through her as she recalled that tenacious and fierce gaze Sirius had worn in life, now reflected in perfect mimicry on the face of her old French flame.
"We may have a small scouting mission for you." Circe said in a low voice. "To find a cave…"