A.N.: Okay, so I haven't updated this in forevvvvver....sorry. *grins sheeplishly* I should have written this part during my three weeks at CTY but I just was too lazy and couldn't be moved to do it. Anyway, I have big major writer's block here...not really writer's block because I know basically what's going to happen, it's just that I'm having trouble writing it. Oh well, let's just get a move on.
Disclaimer: Stuff I don't own doesn't belong to me. What a revelation that was.
Padma felt a familiar burning sensation in her left arm and began to disapparate from the camp, hoping she wouldn't splinch again, considering her...bad luck she'd been having.
Half-intuitively and half by deduction, Parvati realized where her sister was going and managed to hold on to her so that they would disapparate together, hardly knowing why she wanted to witness Voldemort try to kill her father and what she would even do about it.
He screamed, a piercing, heart-stopping, blood-curdling scream.
"Timothy," the words came out of Voldemort's mouth in an erie way, as though he were lazy. "So we meet again, but this time with the knowledge that you are possibly Dumbledore's most trusted spy.
"I always knew you were on the good side, but never that you--"
He was cut short by a voice all too familiar to Timothy. "I thought this was my job, Lord," she said, and perhaps his ears were deceiving him, but he thought that he could detect a whining note in her voice.
"Oh...of course, you would want to do the honors, wouldn't you, Mrs. Patil...oh, and of course Misssss Patil," Voldemort said with a slightly sarcastic laugh, stretching the Miss out just long enough for the shock of his own daughter's betrayal. "Parvati!" he screamed and Dumbledore's words wafted through his mind: 'Are you sure it's not Padma?'
He gave them momentary consideration and gave himself a momentary shard of tentative hope, tentative hope which was soon to end with the site before him: both of his daughters, the one whom he had disowned and the one whom he was just about to disown, standing before him, leaving absolutely no doubt in his mind that Parvati was, indeed, a cursed betrayer.
In spite of the fear that drove him to near madness, in spite of the hopelessness that left him in chasms of despair, in spite of all of it -- or perhaps because of all of it -- Timothy had no hesitance in crying to Parvati's shocked form, "How could you, Parvati? How could you betray?"
"But father..." she began to protest but then saw that her father would pay no heed to her words, and simply said, "I love you. I want to protect you, I want to save you, Daddy."
"Ha!" Timothy said, with an unusually sarcasm and bitterness in his voice. "Don't even try that one on me, making me trust you when really you'll be telling Voldemort every blasted thing about me. You've obviously taken special care to apparate here from Albringer's."
Beginning to sob, Parvati choked out the words, "Yes, special care so that I could help you, Daddy, so I could protect you, Daddy, so I could save you, and maybe at least make you see some sense."
"I've already seen sense, don't try to deceive me with your stupid lies," Timothy almost growled the words.
"Enough, enough, children," Valerie (Padma's mother) said sarcastically. "It looks like early bedtime for Timothy -- a very early, endless bed-time...and perhaps for you, too, Parvati, if we deign to do so..." She laughed. "How kind it is to be given such power.
"Power over everything from whether the violets in Timothy's garden lives or dies up to whether Timothy himself lives or dies...how pleasant it is..." she smiled lazily, showing off perfect white teeth.
"That's all you ever wanted, isn't it?" Timothy snarled at her. "Power. Power over my life, power over my daughters' lives, power over everyone's lives...and everyone's death too."
"Of course, did it take you that long to realize it?" Valerie said, in an almost pleasant tone. "Now I think I'll just...excercise a little of that wondrous power."
And just as Valerie spoke the simple words, "Avada Kedavra," Timothy spoke his last words: "Parvati, you God-cursed betrayer..."
Voldemort ascended from the background into the foreground. "Well done, Valerie, well done, if I do say so myself."
Valerie couldn't help but smile slightly. "Why thank you...I'd best be going now, with my two daughters," she took much care to emphasize the word two.
Parvati, however, was to overcome -- with grief for the loss of her father, remorse for not doing anything, anger for her father not believing her, and too many other things, far too many -- to even register what her mother was saying. She did not realize until they were already at Valerie's house in France what had just happened, and then she sobbed, letting out not only the emotions of her having to move in with her mother -- a Death Eater -- but also all the ones she had been holding inside for so long.
"Stupid girl," Voldemort muttered as he watched Valerie disapparate. "She thinks she has enough power to just come and go at will without even asking me. Well, I'll show her..." he quickly apparated to France, and somewhere inside him he was glad; France was, after all, a safe haven for him, far more safe than England.
Arriving at Valerie's house, he entered. "Valerie!" he commanded her to come.
"What is it, my lord?" Valerie responded, hastily coming into the living room.
"You know you mustn't do anything -- even disapparate -- without my permission, Valerie. How could you have forgotten?"
Trembling slightly, Valerie responded, "I'm -- I'm sorry, my lord, really, I am, please..."
But in spite of it all, Voldemort's only response was, "Crucio," and he watched with slight pleasure at a scene which Padma and even Parvati were watching with pain: a woman being tortured, wishing for help, cursing her own life.
He slowly released the curse. "I must speak to Padma," he said, "Be glad, for if I didn't it would be more."
"Yes, my lord," replied Valerie, voice trembling.
"So...you have some information that might interest me about this Andrew Morrison?" Voldemort leered as he looked into the face of his future Death Eater.
"Yes, my lord," Padma tried to imitate her mother's reverence but failed miserably. "I have learned that he holds something which keeps all people -- even you -- from knowing Severus Snape's thoughts. I think you can see the implications of this, my lord..."
"Yes, I certainly do see the implications..." a grin began to sweep across Voldemort's face and Parvati, watching from a small distance, felt sickened as she stared at the excuse for a man that was in front of her, watching half in fascination that a man could be so cruel, another human could do such things.
"You couldn't tell me...where this substance is being kept, could you?" Voldemort asked, boring his eyes into Padma as he would see the words she was about to speak by doing so.
"No, my lord, I cannot, but perhaps Parvati..." Padma's voice trailed off.
"Parvati," Voldemort let the word roll around on his tongue, "Your twin sister, of course," and he approached a frightened Parvati.
"Really, Parvati, in the end you have no choice, why don't you just make it easier for both of us and tell me now?"
"I could refuse," Parvati struggled to mantain her brave facade and her brave act, "I still have a choice."
"Yes...but in the end you'll make the choice to tell me," Voldemort told her, laughing inwardly at the girl's idealism. "Even if it takes a little...something to make you."
"V-Veritaserum?" Numb with shock, Parvati looked around in fear as though seeking an escape.
"Oh, I doubt it will come with that," Voldemort laughed slightly, and inwardly he knew that he wouldn't let it come to that, knowing that some could resist it if they had a strong enough will, and something told him that Parvati did. "I think all you really need is a simple little torture. Crucio." And Parvati writhed, feeling senseless pain, feeling so much pain that she could not voice the cries for help that ran rampant within her mind.
After a time that seemed an eternity, Voldemort released the curse, and Parvati, week and trembling, tried to know what to say. Cause a man's death -- nay, two men's deaths -- or have Voldemort torture her again? War between the two sides raged in her mind, and finally they came to what seemed a peace treaty: she simply lie to Voldemort about it all.
"It's -- it's in the second cupboard to the right on the middle shelf," she hastily made up a place.
"You think you can lie to me that easily?" Voldemort laughed as he saw the visage of horror Parvati wore as she said, "You -- you know," before she could stop herself.
"Of course I know. Why else do you think that filthy spy Severus would need something to guard his thoughts?"
Parvati groaned and, in hopelessness and despair, told him all: where it was, that Andrew had discovered it, and too many things, and the words once again passed her in the winds of her mind: only innocent lives...only innocent lives.
A.N.2.:That was really short, but what can I say? I had a lot of trouble writing this, so please review. After all, it is kinda pointless to get this far and not even review, isn't it?