Right, we last saw Lena in the Hogwarts hospital wing, horrifically injured. Now, let us travel back three months prior to that...
Saturday 13 July, 1996:
Lena was lying on the bed, her eyes closed. She wasn't trying to sleep, but had retreated into her mind, replaying old memories in her head. She was remembering all the incredible places Valeriya had taken her as a child, becoming friends with Maggie and Rolf, gradually gaining Harry's trust during her Sixth Year, meeting and falling in love with Remus in her Seventh, and listening to Muggle music with Sirius in 12 Grimmauld Place. Good memories, some of which she had not fully appreciated at the time.
What she was studiously avoiding thinking about was her early childhood in the Lestrange house, and particularly her Friday afternoon lessons. She didn't want to remember the affection she'd had for Voldemort back then, because at present, she was very pissed off with him. And that was because four weeks ago, following the battle in the Atrium where she had been knocked unconscious, he had kidnapped her.
Lena's eyes slowly opened. She was not in darkness, but the light was dim. She was looking at a pale grey ceiling that was unfamiliar.
The feeling of being watched slowly crept over her, and she turned her head to the left.
Sitting a few feet away on a wooden chair was Voldemort.
Lena shot up as her memories came flooding back. But the sudden action made her dizzy and she slumped back onto the bed. She felt her forehead, vaguely remembering something hitting it before blacking out.
"I healed the wound on your head as soon as I brought you here last night."
Much more slowly this time, Lena sat up and looked at Voldemort, who was gazing at her expressionlessly.
There were thousands of things she could have said to him, but she knew that establishing the facts was the most important right now. She glanced around. "And where is here?"
She was in some kind of bedroom, about half the size of her childhood one in the Lestrange house. Apart from the single bed and the chair on which Voldemort was sitting, the only other furniture in the room was a small, wooden, round table with an identical chair tucked underneath. In the corner, there was also a doorless entrance to a tiny bathroom with a toilet, sink and small bath. Like the ceiling, the walls were blank and light grey. At the top of the wall the bed's headboard was pressed against, there was a small window in the centre through which the light came. There was a wooden door in the opposite wall. Upon the table was an unlit lamp, a metal pitcher of water and a silver goblet.
"Home."
Lena stared at him. So, this was it – the place where Voldemort came when he wasn't out torturing and murdering people.
"I'm surprised you have a spare bedroom," she said.
"I only created it last summer," he replied. "If I had a chance to bring you here–"
"You mean abduct me," interjected Lena calmly. Something about the air in the room was making her slightly woozy, and it stopped her from raising her voice. "That is what's happened here, isn't it?"
A flicker of annoyance passed over Voldemort's face. "I was presented with an opportunity," he said tersely. "I took it."
"And what about Bellatrix?" asked Lena, her voice still even as she tried to figure out what was wrong with the atmosphere. "Did she get out too? I am, of course, assuming that Dumbledore delayed you long enough with that duel for the Aurors to arrive and get a good look at you before you absconded."
"How very clever of you," said Voldemort drily. "Yes, the Aurors arrived and the rest of the Wizarding world is finally aware that I have returned. And no, Bellatrix did not make it out. I left her there." He added in a soft voice, "I chose you, not her."
Lena snorted. "I'm touched. So, what – she's back in Azkaban, along with all the other Death Eaters who were at the Ministry?"
Voldemort sighed. He shifted in his seat, stretching his back as he responded, "Yes. Irritating as it is, I suppose it does save me from coming up with a creative way to punish them all for their failure – although I might do something extra for Lucius, as I did put him in charge." He finished stretching all his limbs, then tilted his head to the side, looking at Lena appraisingly. "You seem to be taking this situation much better than I anticipated."
"Oh, I'm very fucking angry," Lena assured him, finally understanding what felt so wrong. "But I'm a little preoccupied at the moment by the fact there is a complete absence of magic in this room – including yours and mine."
"Ah. Yes, I wondered how long it would take you to notice." He smiled slightly. "A necessary precaution, I'm afraid."
"To prevent me from leaving?" She scanned the bedroom, trying to figure out how he was doing it. "Is it an Antiheka Enchantment?" That was a protective enchantment used in ancient Egyptian magic, usually for small containers like chests and urns that held dangerous magical objects or small creatures. It required both an uninterrupted circuit of runes drawn around whatever was the desired prison, and a significant quantity of Sphinx blood. To use it on something as big as the bedroom would be enormously complicated and practically unheard of, but this was Voldemort she was dealing with.
His smile broadened. "Correct. Obviously, being wandless does very little to restrict you from using magic, so I had to be a bit more creative. So, while we are in this room, neither you nor I can use any magic."
"And I don't suppose you're intending on letting me out of this room anytime soon?" inquired Lena, folding her arms.
"I believe that would prove counter-productive to the whole purpose of bringing you here."
"Which is?"
"To remove you as an obstacle to my plans, in the short-term. In the long-term..." He trailed off.
Lena arched an eyebrow. She said mockingly, "Let me guess – to re-educate me of the wonders of Blood purism and the evils of Muggle-borns? Because if so, here's the thing: I never signed up for that." She swung her legs over the side of the bed to face him properly. "You told me we were going to work together to break the known boundaries of magic, to discover and experiment, and make dreams a reality. The only person I ever wanted to hurt was my mother. I never had any interest in fighting your false crusade."
"And I have never asked you to be a Death Eater!" snapped Voldemort, finally raising his voice. "When I sent that message to you last year, I was not trying to recruit you, I was simply asking to see you!"
"You had that chance!" retorted Lena. "You were at Hogwarts for an entire year, and you never made the slightest effort to reach out to me!"
"I was a parasite!" shouted Voldemort, standing up. "A mere shadow of a man–"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," said Lena derisively, also getting to her feet. She stalked over to the table, muttering, "Spare me from the fragile egos of so-called 'powerful' men." She poured some water into the goblet and downed it in one go.
Voldemort was glaring at her, his red eyes almost slits.
Pouring more water into the goblet, Lena glanced up at him. "You look foul, by the way. Didn't get a chance to mention it at the Ministry, but I thought I should let you know."
His thin lips twitched in annoyance. "I never thought you would be one to fixate on aesthetics," he said coldly.
"I'm not fixating," replied Lena, taking another sip of water, "just making a casual observation." She lowered the goblet. "You didn't actually choose to look this repulsive, did you?"
"I am whole again," he said through gritted teeth. "That is all that matters."
Placing the goblet back down on the table and pulling out the chair, Lena took a seat. She looked at Voldemort shrewdly. The indignity – not to mention the inconvenience – of being kidnapped was making her feel particularly aggressive. She might not have been able to attack him with magic, but she still had her words, and they were getting under his skin.
"What," she persisted, "a man such as yourself who possesses such great, awe-inspiring, powerful magic, can't fix his–" she made a vague gesture, "–snake-face?"
"I do not need to gratify the whims of human vanity," he replied curtly.
"So it is beyond you, then."
Anger flickered across his face, but then it was gone. He walked forward to the table, placing his hands on it and leaning down slightly so his eyes were looking directly into hers.
"Is that all you want, Lena?" he asked softly. "For me to look as I once did, before everything changed?" The corners of his lips curved up in a smirk. "We did used to look rather alike, you and I. If one didn't know better, we might have been mistaken for blood relations – even father and daughter."
Lena nearly laughed. He'd walked right into this one.
"Ah," she said quietly, "but it's what inside that counts, isn't it? And if you were my father–" she gave him a twisted smile, "–then I wouldn't be a Pureblood."
Voldemort recoiled. Lena watched with interest as numerous emotions clashed across his face until it finally settled on a mixture of aggravation and resentment.
"Well," he said, "I killed my father, and now you have killed yours. I suppose that similarity can take the place of a physical resemblance."
Lena just managed to keep her expression neutral. She had almost forgotten about murdering her father. She pushed away any related emotions that threatened to surface, and focused on the ammunition he had given her.
She leant back in her chair. "Yeah," she said simply, "I killed Rodolphus. But you know what I'm not going to do? Spend the rest of my life waging war on people like him because I can't sort out my daddy issues."
Voldemort violently slammed his hands on the table, his expression now furious.
Lena didn't flinch, calmly meeting his enraged eyes with her own. "What's the matter? Did you forget I'm not like all your Death Eaters, deferential to a fault and afraid of telling you the truth? Maybe you should have thought about that before you took me, Tom."
"You–" His right hand jerked, as if he had almost lost control of it for a second.
Lena immediately stood, her eyes still not leaving his as she brought her face closer. "Are you going to hit me?" she whispered. "No magic in here, remember? If you want to silence me, you have to do it with your own hands. You know – the Muggle way."
Voldemort recoiled. "I would never," he hissed.
She smirked. "Never say never."
He glared at her for a few more seconds, then spun around. "I will bring you some food later tonight," he said, striding to the door. "In the meantime, I suggest you start getting used to captivity."
"As long as you cage me," Lena called out to him as his hand grasped the doorknob, "you're going to find out just how unpleasant I can be – even without magic."
Voldemort didn't answer as he yanked open the door and slammed it shut after him, leaving Lena alone in her new prison.
That was all he had done since then: bring in her meals – which were either pre-cut or not solid, removing the necessity of a knife and fork – and a new set of clothes, taking out her laundry as he left. He didn't say anything to Lena, other than telling her, when she first left her old clothes strewn across the floor, that she wouldn't get clean ones unless she put them in the basket he had brought in for them. She had grudgingly obliged, but still made every effort she could to get a rise out of him. And at least there was a small sense of gratification derived from knowing that Voldemort was doing something as mundane and domestic as laundry.
There would be little point in trying to escape yet. She suspected that when she'd dropped her wand back at the Ministry, Voldemort hadn't grabbed it too when he'd taken her, so she wouldn't be able to Disapparate away. She also had no idea where his home was located – her small window didn't give a clear view outside – so running on foot wasn't the smartest idea at present. And Voldemort would be much more alert for an escape attempt in this first month of imprisonment then he would after a while.
Of course, she was still on a timer. By mid-October, her last Moramortis injection would run out, and Lena had absolutely no intention of letting Voldemort know her history with Hecate's Orb and her illness. But for at least the next couple of months, she had to bide her time and gather as much information as she could – although Voldemort's reluctance to speak with her made that more difficult.
No, she was less concerned with her own current situation than with how her friends were coping, especially Remus. She knew he would have been distraught when he'd learned that Voldemort had taken her, compounded by his grief for Sirius. No doubt the full moon a week ago would have been his roughest in years. She just hoped that Dumbledore was making sure he didn't do anything stupid, because if he'd gotten himself killed by the time she finally escaped, there would be hell to pay.
There came a clicking sound from the door, signifying Voldemort was unlocking it to bring in her dinner. As the door opened, Lena didn't move, not even opening her eyes. She had been making jibes and acerbic comments, but he had barely reacted to any of them since that first conversation, so she wanted to see if a silent treatment made him any more inclined to talk.
She listened to him walk over to the table and put down the tray of food. There was a pause, and she knew he was looking over at her. But he didn't say anything, and after ten or so seconds, she heard him starting to exit. So she tried a different tactic.
"You do realise if you were my real father, you wouldn't love me," she said, eyes still shut.
She heard Voldemort halt. There was silence, before he finally spoke. "What makes you think that?"
The corners of Lena's lips slightly turned up. She'd broken through.
"The only reason you first took interest in me as a child was that I was angry and unloved," she answered. "Like you were. If I didn't have parents who hated me – and I didn't hate them – we wouldn't have been alike, and you wouldn't have cared. You couldn't love any child of yours, because the simple act of them being a recipient of parental love would make you despise them."
There was another long pause, until Voldemort finally replied, "I suppose I cannot argue with that logic. Nevertheless, that does not render what I said to you all those years ago as false."
"You mean when you told me you'd be proud to be my father?" Opening her eyes, Lena turned to the side to face him, propping herself up on her elbow. "I never doubted your sincerity. Hell, for the longest time, it was my happiest memory."
"But it has now been supplanted," said Voldemort resentfully.
She shrugged. "Maybe. But it was my first happy memory, and that means something." She hesitated, then amended, "It means a lot."
Voldemort took a step back and leant against the wall opposite to her bed, looking at her intently. "I thought it didn't matter how you felt about me."
Lena rolled onto her back again. "It doesn't. I'm just really bored. You've locked me in here with literally nothing to do." She glanced over at him. "Unlike when you used to visit me."
His expression changed, almost as though it was softening. "I wish I could trust you with magic," he said, his voice quiet and slightly wistful.
"And I wish you weren't a mass-murdering bigot," replied Lena, not missing a beat. "Guess that puts us at something of an impasse." Not wanting Voldemort to leave just yet, because she had been starved of conversation, she admitted, "In any case, I'm glad you're not my biological father. Because if you were, that would mean you had slept with my mother, and words cannot describe how much that would disgust me."
A smirk played on Voldemort's lips. "Then it is a good thing that I rejected such companionship from her on the many occasions she offered it."
Lena's stomach curdled. "Wow," she muttered sarcastically, "thanks for putting that revolting image in my mind."
"Revolting?" repeated Voldemort. He didn't sound offended, but bitterness leaked into his voice. "Now, what's that expression? Ah, yes – 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'."
Lena immediately sat up, her eyes flashing dangerously. "I really hope," she hissed, "that isn't an oblique reference to my relationship with Remus Lupin."
Voldemort pushed himself off the wall, stepping forward, disgust written across his face. "A werewolf, Lena!" He shook his head, as if still struggling to believe it. "When I first found out you were, were–"
"What, screwing him?" she snapped.
He barely suppressed a shudder. "The idea that you would soil yourself with a filthy mongrel–"
Voldemort was fortunate Lena could not currently use magic, otherwise he might have found himself being smashed into the wall like Rodolphus. As it was, Lena stood up, her fists clenched by her sides.
"I am only going to tell you this once," warned Lena, her voice barely above a whisper, "so I suggest you listen well. If you ever harm Remus, if any of your stupid Death Eaters harm him, I will not rest until you all are wiped off the face of this Earth. The remaining affection I have for you will not save you from that."
He stared at her, both stunned and outraged. "I don't believe you," he said at last. "I cannot believe you. This is merely lust–" he spat the word, "–talking, not love."
"You know nothing of love."
"I know that you are mine," snarled Voldemort, moving closer to her, "and not his."
The little restraint that had stopped Lena from yelling snapped. "I AM NOT A THING!" she shouted at him. "I have a mind, I have a voice, I have–" she thumped her chest with a fist, "–a heart!" Breathing heavily, she finished, "And you do not own them – you never have, and you never will."
Her outburst had brought forth a distinctly unsettled look in Voldemort's eyes. He seemed uncertain how to respond, so as Lena sat back down on the bed, she took the chance to add, "And now, I say to you, and I mean this with all the disrespect in the world: go fuck yourself."
She thought this blatant insolence would infuriate him, but Voldemort simply continued to stare at her, as if a realisation was dawning upon him. Then he turned around and left, leaving Lena alone in her prison once again.
Thursday 22 August, 1996:
Lord Voldemort stared at the wooden door. He wished the runes he had drawn on it weren't invisible, to give him some peace of mind that the enchantment was definitely working, and that his prisoner could not escape.
Prisoner. The word disquieted him. The idea that he was holding Lena against her will was an unpleasant one, even if it was entirely true.
'It is for her own good,' he reminded himself for the thousandth time. 'This is an act of kindness, not cruelty.'
In fact, he had far more to complain about than her. At least he was making an effort to remain civil, while she was being deliberately malicious and uncooperative – and, loathe as he was to admit it, hurtful.
He still felt a sharp jab of pain somewhere in his chest when he thought about what she'd said at the Ministry; although, it was less the words she had used, but the way she said them. The initial anger had been forgivable. It was the simple conviction – with the slightest air of relief – in her voice when she had told him her feelings towards him didn't matter, and that she would never join him, which felt like a knife through his heart. It had opened his eyes to the one thing he had never even considered.
Lena simply no longer needed him. At least, not in the way she once had. She was not a child in need of protection. She didn't require from him advice on how to wield her magic, or words of encouragement to remind her that despite everything her parents said and did, she was special. There was no deficit of affection towards her that he could fill. Her lingering love for him was purely out of obligation, and she despised herself for it.
If he was an ordinary man, he would have been heartbroken. But Voldemort refused to allow himself to feel something so... human. Instead, he approached the situation as a problem he had to solve.
The first step was accepting that the whole thing was his fault. Lena had been right when she'd said to him that first morning that it was only his pride which had stopped him from going back to her after that night at Godric's Hollow. If he'd been with her throughout her childhood, she would never have been led so astray. And she would have continued to love him the way that clever, devoted, frighteningly wonderful little girl had.
The next step of fixing his mistake was more difficult. Lena would not be persuaded by arguments that worked on lesser minds. She saw straight through empty rhetoric and fear mongering. She needed evidence to be convinced, and there was nothing he could give her to justify why she should forgive him. Even leaving Bellatrix to the Aurors was not enough to move her.
So that meant he had to forge evidence. Again, if Lena was less exceptional, there might have been an easy solution – implanting false memories, and removing a few too. Taking away those pivotal moments of her relationship with Potter, and making her believe that he had been present throughout her childhood, would surely help repair their bond. A talented Legilimens like himself could have done it.
The trouble was that Lena was an even more skilled Occlumens. When he had first brought her to his home and she was still unconscious, he'd attempted to probe her mind, and was met with a resistance the likes of which he'd never encountered. It was a bittersweet feeling – his student had learnt so well that the very thing he had taught her was now what stopped him from giving her the help she needed.
According to the deceased Black's house-elf, Lena's Occlumency shield was so powerful it had destroyed a Boggart. Voldemort had never heard of such a thing, and it made him incredibly wary of attempting another venture into her mind – particularly if she sensed him doing it. He suspected he wouldn't get out unscathed.
That left him stuck with a theoretical solution he was unable to put into practice, and brought him no closer to fixing the problem of Lena's decisive unwillingness to reforge their relationship. At the moment, she seemed almost content to lie in her room, her only words to him barbed comments. And she'd been even quieter ever since their argument over the werewolf.
In that regard, he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He desperately wanted to kill Remus Lupin, for having the temerity to be loved by Lena. He had rarely ever felt such an intense loathing in his life than he did for the beast. On the other hand, he couldn't forget the deadly serious look on Lena's face when she had said – nay, promised – that she would 'wipe him off the face of this Earth' if her lover was hurt or killed. Something in her eyes had told him this was not a matter on which he should test her, and it was deeply unsettling.
Voldemort sighed, shifting the tray of food to just one hand so he could unlock the door. It was time for Lena's dinner. When he entered, she was lying on the bed, as per usual. He could feel her watching him as he walked over to the table, but she said nothing.
He left the tray on the table, then crossed over to the corner of the room where the laundry basket was kept. He paused in front of it, glancing over at her. She hadn't moved.
Taking a deep breath, he said, "I suggest you eat it while it is hot – unless you are happy stomaching cold soup."
"It's prison food," was her sour response. "I couldn't really give less of a fuck how it tastes."
He pursed his lips. "Tell me – did you pick up your charming vocabulary from Valeriya Dolohov, or did it just develop naturally?"
At last, she slowly sat up, eyeing him coldly. "Really?" she asked sardonically. "You haven't got a problem with torture and murder, but profanity is just a step too far?"
"I was not criticising you," he replied stiffly. "I was merely curious."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure you meant it critically," countered Lena. "After all, you must be above such common vulgarity."
Holding back a sigh, Voldemort folded his arms. "What exactly are you trying to accomplish here, Lena?" he inquired. "Do you think you are somehow going to irritate me into letting you go?"
"You know, that almost makes it sound like I'm your prisoner, and that I don't actually want to be here." She had tucked one leg underneath her while the other dangled over the side of the bed. Her head was tilted to the right, making the hair piled on top in a messy bun flop to the side with it. She was wearing a simple, long-sleeved, slightly-too-big, black dress that he had Transfigured out of a curtain, and her feet were bare.
He glared at her. "Believe me, I would rather this wasn't our current situation," he said.
"No," she said scathingly, "you would rather I was a mindless acolyte."
"No, I would not."
She rolled her eyes. "Sorry, that's right – you wish I was still a five-year-old who desperately wants to impress you. Forgive me if I confuse the two things."
Voldemort took a deep breath, trying to control himself. Then he walked over to her bed and sat down beside her. She didn't move, but watched him warily.
"I know it is difficult for you to accept this, Lena," he began, "but I only want what is best for you." She gave him a look of such contemptuous disbelief, but he didn't allow her to interrupt, continuing, "I understand there are matters on which we disagree, and as frustrating as that can be, it is what it is. As I have said before, I never intended for you to be an underling, subordinate to me. A pupil, yes. But you know you became far more than a simple protégée to me. By the time of our last lesson, you meant more to me than anybody ever has. I..." he hesitated, unsure for a moment if he could actually say the word, "... loved you." Slowly, he reached his hand out to her face. When she didn't recoil, he gently pressed his fingertips to her cheek. "So you can throw as many insults as you like at me, speak to me with nothing but fury and disgust, swear you will fight me with all your strength – but I will not give up on you." He stroked her jaw with a thumb. "I cannot."
Lena closed her eyes. "Why?" she whispered, a slight tremble to her voice. Then she opened her eyes again and put her hand over the one he was resting on her cheek. "Why couldn't it just be about loving magic?" she implored him. "Why do you have to bring your hatred of your father into it?"
He snatched his hand back, glaring at her. "Do not mention–"
"But I have to," she insisted. There was a pleading in her eyes that reminded him of when she was little and didn't want him to end their lesson. "Wasn't killing him enough? Why do you have to cling to the ideologies of an ancestor who died nearly a thousand years ago?"
"Because it is my legacy!" he hissed. "Just because my blood has been tainted with the filth of a Muggle–"
"Tainted?" repeated Lena, and shook her head incredulously. "That Muggle blood is what saved you! Don't you understand? Your mother's family, the Gaunts – they destroyed themselves by inbreeding because of their obsession with blood purity. They were deformed, their magic stunted. If your father had been anything but a Muggle, your mother would have passed on her frailty to you!"
It was the inarguable logic behind her words that made them sting so much. Voldemort stood, his fists clenched by his sides. He wanted to yell at her for daring to say something so vilely true, but instead he asked her a question.
"And how do you know so much about my mother's family?" he snapped. "I never spoke of them to you."
Lena hesitated, biting her lip. "Dumbledore told me," she eventually admitted.
Voldemort seethed with rage. The idea that she had discussed such intimate details of his life with the wizard he hated above all others was not only sickening, but a violation.
"How dare you?" he snarled. "How dare you speak of me with that, that–"
"With the person who understands me better than anyone else?" said Lena suddenly, also standing. "The man who comforted when I found out you had freed my mother – the women who literally tortured me– from Azkaban?"
"And where was he when you were being tortured?"
"I expect he was trying to save the lives of thousands of innocent people by fighting a war against you, Lord Voldemort."
It was the first time he had ever heard her use his name – his chosen name – and the shock of it made his anger evaporate, leaving behind something he couldn't quite describe.
"Did retrieving your mother really upset you so much?" he asked carefully.
Lena sat back down, pointedly looking away from him. "I had a complete breakdown," she said quietly, gazing in the direction of the small window. "It wasn't pretty."
Voldemort stared at her intently, an idea forming in his mind – an idea that was somehow both frightening and beautiful. Slowly, he knelt down in front of her and took her hands in his, which made Lena turn her face back to him, looking surprised.
Softly, he said, "Answer me this: if I agreed to give up this war against Dumbledore, Potter, the Mud– the Muggle-borns," he corrected himself, "this very minute, on the condition that you and I leave this country together, never to see Lupin nor any of the others whom you've grown to care for again, and find somewhere new to do as we once dreamed, to continue pushing the boundaries of magic further than ever before – would you accept those terms?"
Lena's mouth parted slightly, as if in a silent gasp. But it was her eyes that Voldemort focused on.
There is a well-worn expression that 'the eyes are the window to the soul'. Lena, like himself, could often board up these windows to stop people from peering in and seeing something she didn't want them to. But at this moment, Lena's window was flung wide open, and he could see her answer as though it was woven into the fabric of her soul.
She would go with him. She would leave behind the man she loved above all else to protect everyone else. She would do it – and it would break her heart beyond all repair. And if he forced her to make that decision, he would be the one who had destroyed her.
"Never mind," he murmured, letting go of her hands and standing up before she could respond aloud. "Just a hypothetical question." He went back over to the laundry basket, aware her eyes were following him, and picked it up. "Your soup's getting cold," he muttered, refusing to look in her direction as he walked to the door and opened it.
"Voldemort–"
He didn't let her finish, frightened of what she might say, and went out, hastily shutting the door behind him. Dropping the laundry basket, he quickly locked the door. Turning away, he covered his face with his hands, his whole body trembling like it never had before.
He had been right, he'd always been right, and Dumbledore was wrong – love was a weakness. It was a self-inflicted suffering, and he, like a common, foolish man, had fallen prey to it. All sense, all reason, told him he had to eradicate such sickness from his heart, and that the only way to do that was to kill her. But the very thought of it was even more painful than the damned emotion.
He couldn't let her go. He couldn't give up on her, because that would be admitting defeat. And no matter how long it took, no matter what pain had to be endured, Lord Voldemort always won.
So, until he won this battle, he would keep her. Like a bird in a cage.
After Voldemort's momentary offer of ending the war if she left Britain with him, never to see her loved ones again, Lena had nightmares.
She saw herself leaving, not even allowed to say goodbye. The war ended, but Remus still didn't know where she was. And he would keep searching for her, until the day he died, and even then he wouldn't know what had happened to her...
She had to get back to him, to free herself from Voldemort's prison. Get away from the pale grey walls, the days spent by merely thinking, from her captor's soft but determined promises that one day she would be his again.
Her chance finally came near the middle of October – at least, Lena thought it was then; it was difficult keeping track of the date when there was no calendar around.
When Voldemort brought in her dinner, Lena immediately realised something was happening, because there was twice as much food on the tray as usual. He didn't say anything about it, but she knew what it meant: he was going away, and probably wouldn't be back any earlier than the morning after tomorrow.
She had less than a week left before the effect of her last Moramortis injection came to an end. If she was going to escape, it had to be now.
Lena waited until an hour after her dinner before she acted, pressing her ear against the door and straining to hear if there was any sound outside. All was silent, so she stepped back and inspected the rest of the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all stone. Even if she had some kind of tool, chipping away at any of them to break past the Antiheka runes would have taken at least six months, maybe even closer to a year – time she didn't have, even if she had started at the beginning of her imprisonment.
That left the window and the door. Lena moved one of the chairs to underneath the window and stood on it. The bottom of the window pane was just in line with her eyebrows. She ran her hand across the blurry window. Light was the only thing she could usually make out through it, and at the moment, there didn't seem to be much of it. The only source of illumination currently for the room was the lamp on the table.
The window was not big enough for Lena to escape through, but if she could just stick her hand outside, the enchantment would be broken, and she would get her magic back.
'But it's too easy,' thought Lena. Surely Voldemort wouldn't have overlooked such a simple method of escape. There had to be something else on the other side of that glass that would prevent her leaving.
'At least I would probably be able to look outside,' she rationalised, 'and maybe get some idea of where I am – even just how far from the ground I am.' For all she knew, her room was at the top of a tower.
Getting off the chair, she went to the table and picked up the silver goblet, tipping its contents out. She hopped up again on the chair, holding the goblet above her head, so the base was facing the window. With the other hand, she braced herself against the wall. Then she slammed the goblet into the window with all her might.
The glass stayed intact, except for the tiniest crack that was barely visible. Lena lined up the goblet with the crack, and hit the window again. The crack grew. She took a deep breath, and once more bashed the window as hard as she could. The glass around the crack shattered, creating a hole in the centre of the window, and the momentum from the blow meant the goblet and Lena's hand went through the hole.
A fiery pain erupted in her hand. She shrieked, dropping the goblet which had started to glow red, and snatched her hand back inside, scraping it on a broken piece of glass as she did. The sudden moved caused the chair to topple, and she fell back, landing on her uninjured wrist and rear, and pain at once shot through both of them too. Wincing, she cradled both her hands; one was red and blistered with a bleeding cut running down the side, the other felt as though she had sprained it.
Moving first onto her knees, she gradually got to her feet, glaring up at the window. Evidently, Voldemort had put an Invisignis Curse directly outside the window, probably mere millimetres away from the Antiheka Enchantment – far enough away so that it could work, but close enough to prevent Lena putting her hand outside.
It hurt, but she righted the chair and gingerly climbed on again to look out the window, but it was too high to properly see through. It was also dark; at a guess, twilight had only just ended, although the cloudy sky made it difficult to tell. She wasn't any closer to figuring out where she was.
The window had run out of any potential usefulness. Lena carefully stepped down off the chair, staring at the wooden door on the other side of the room. It was her last hope.
She crossed over to it, and began to study the hinges, looking for a weak point. But it soon became apparent that the only way she could get the door off the hinges was with specific tools, and she had none. The lock was equally immovable.
She gave the door a light kick with the heel of her bare foot. Perhaps if she was wearing her boots she could have properly attempted to kick it down, but Voldemort had taken the shoes months ago, along with the clothes she had been wearing when he'd taken her. Without their protection, the bones in her feet would break, and she'd be stuck, unable to walk or run.
Lena looked around the room for anything she might use as a battering ram, but there was nothing sturdy or manoeuvrable enough with which she could repeatedly hit the door with force without the object breaking.
'I don't actually need to break the whole door down,' she reminded herself. 'Just get a hand through...'
She was fairly certain that there was no Invisignis Curse just outside the doorway. All she ever heard Voldemort do when he closed the door behind him was lock it.
But that still left her with the problem of what she could use to make that hole in the door, which was a lot more difficult than breaking the glass of the window. She spared another glance around the room, but everything seemed too fragile. The tray upon which the food had been brought would simply break after several hits, and the chairs were made of a much less sturdy wood – they would be splinters before any real impact was made on the door.
She looked down at her still-throbbing hands. The left, with the sprained wrist, was probably out of the question, but while the skin on the right hand was hurting like hell, the bones were fine. And although she was not someone with great physical strength, she wasn't completely feeble.
She rolled her right shoulder back a few times, loosening the muscle. Then, ignoring the pain, she made a fist, drew back her arm, and punched the door.
There was a small splintering in her knuckle, and her entire arm jarred. But Lena didn't allow herself the time to acknowledge the agony, throwing another punch straight away. It grazed the skin off the knuckle, causing more blood to join the cut from the broken glass. Yet she punched again, careful to make sure she hit the exact same spot as the previous two times.
She could feel the bones in her hand breaking, but she punched again. And again. And again.
It was getting easier to see the spot in the door she had to aim for – not because it had been significantly dented, but because it was coated with blood. However, by the tenth punch, Lena knew it was starting to work by the amount of splinters imbedded in her knuckle.
The door must have been two inches thick, but after ten minutes of continuously smashing her fist against it, she was little more than a centimetre deep. Nearly every single bone in her hand was broken by this point, but her shoulder, although it ached, still worked. So, Lena kept going.
After twenty minutes, she was halfway through. She was forced, however, to pause when her wrist broke, and she could no longer make a fist.
The intense concentration and repetition had been holding the dizziness from the pain at bay, but now it had stopped, Lena was starting to see white spots. But she couldn't pass out now – if she slipped into unconsciousness, there was a possibility she might not wake up before Voldemort returned. And then this chance of escape would be over.
She pushed away the agony from her left sprained wrist, and it took over the right's work, hitting the two-and-a-half inch wide dent in the door. It might have made her whimper, but Lena didn't know for sure. All her senses were oblivious to anything that wasn't the repeated punching.
It had been almost an entire hour since she'd thrown the first punch when a strange sensation shot through Lena's arm, which had grown numb. It was what she imagined an electric shock felt like. She blinked, staring at the dent in the door – only it was now not a dent, but a hole. And the shock had been because for half a second, her hand had been outside the parameters of the Antiheka Enchantment.
She quickly thrust her hand through the hole again, and gasped as her magic, suppressed for four months, sprang back to life. Then she yelped as she felt the Nekrosía, although still dormant, stir slightly.
Lena screwed her eyes shut, focusing on her own magic rather than the black poison. She flexed her completely shattered left hand the tiniest amount, and cracks around the hole began to form. Ideally, she would have unlocked the door, but apparently in her current state, that was beyond her.
The cracks deepened and spread, but stopped short of properly breaking the door. So Lena pulled her hand back through the hole, took a step back, then slammed into the door with her whole body. It split into pieces, and she fell through, splinters of wood piercing her as she did.
She lay among the fragments of the door for a little while, unable to move. It was not so much the excruciating pain that paralysed her, but the fact that it was taking all her willpower to not call upon the Nekrosía to heal her. She could hear the heartbeat in her head, like a far off drumming...
'No,' she told herself. 'Use your own magic to do what you can, and then get moving. For all you know, you've already set off some kind of alarm, and he could be on his way back.'
If she'd had her wand, she could have mended her broken bones, even the intricate system in her hands. Wandlessly, the most she could do was heal the shallower cuts, remove the splinters, and slightly dull the rest of the pain – and unable to do the hand movements usually required for wandless magic, it was all going to take much longer.
With time not being on her side, Lena focused her attention on removing the larger splinters and dulling the nerves in her hands and wrists so the pain was less present in her mind. When she had done this, she staggered to her feet and looked around.
She was in a short hallway. Her room had been at one end, and a staircase was at the other. As useful as it would be to properly search Voldemort's home, Lena's primary focus was getting out, so she moved as quickly as she could to the staircase and began to descend. It was fortunate it was only one flight down to the ground floor; she was so unsteady on her feet that she nearly tripped three times. She emerged from the stairs into some kind of entrance hall, and made a beeline for what looked like the front door. Not bothering to even check if it was unlocked, Lena waved a limp hand and the door creaked open a few inches. She pushed through with the side of her body and stumbled outside.
The first thing she saw was the sea. It was almost black in the darkness, and its waves were crashing onto the shore about fifty yards ahead of where she stood.
Lena tried to make sense of her surroundings. She was standing in front of a two-storey house, although it was really more of a very small castle, in terms of its architecture. It was the only building on what appeared to be a small, perfectly round island. Even in the dark, Lena could tell the place was not the product of nature, but magically made.
She walked out to the shore, barely noticing the sharp pebbles under her feet as she squinted out at the sea. If there was land on the horizon, she couldn't see it. She could only assume that Voldemort used Apparition to come and go from the island – which meant that was her only way off too.
But Lena had never Apparated without a wand. She knew both Dumbledore and Voldemort could manage it, but only after many, many years of practise, and not over distances as great as they could travel with a wand. Lena didn't even know how far it was from here to the mainland of Britain.
"I still have to try," she whispered. She couldn't stay here any longer. She had to leave, to get back to Remus and everyone else.
She breathed in and out deeply, preparing herself. Determination, destination, deliberation.
Picturing the main gates of Hogwarts, she spun around, and there came the feeling of being squeezed into a very tight tube. But at the same, she felt something else. Something wrong. There was an explosion of light behind her eyes, and for a split-second, she didn't feel like she was in her own body.
Then the imagined tube burst open, and her feet hit the ground. Vaguely aware she was standing in mud, Lena stared at the gates in front of her. She was right outside Hogwarts.
'Excellent,' she thought hazily. The wandless Apparition had been successful. Although it was rather disconcerting how everything seemed to be wobbling from side-to-side. Suddenly, there was a burst of light from behind her, and she turned around to see what was making it.
It was Tonks. Lena was going to speak to her, but she could feel something was still very wrong, and the source of this feeling seemed to have its origin somewhere in her middle. So she looked down to see what it might be.
A significant quantity of flesh was missing from her stomach, and blood was leaking out. A lot of blood, enough to coat her already-wounded hands in red when she tried to cover the large gash.
"Ah," said Lena to herself, her vision blurry and extremely light-headed, "that's not good."
And with that remarkable piece of insight, her eyes rolled back, and Lena literally fell into unconsciousness.
So, this is a chapter I could have kept rewriting again and again, month after month, because I would probably never be 100% happy with it. Well, I'm basically never 100% happy with the chapters I publish, but I particularly felt it with this one. Nevertheless, hopefully you didn't find it too rubbish. As always, I'd love to hear what you thought :)
Thank you to the reviewers of the last chapter! A quick response to Littlecosma001: Actually, no, Dumbledore didn't know what was going on (that's not a spoiler :D). Other than the fact there is a relationship between Lena and himself, Voldemort tries to keep that part of himself hidden from the Death Eaters. For instance, Lena is the first person other than Voldemort to set foot on his island. So Snape genuinely had no idea where Lena was, or what might have been happening to her. But it was an interesting theory :)