DISCLAIMERS: You know the routine. Do I really have to go over this?
(A/N) During the year between book four and my story, Voldemort has been attacking Muggle-borns, Muggles, and any witch or wizard who caused him problems back in the Seventies. Okey-day?
CHAPTER SEVEN: A NEW COMPANION
Harry had watched, amazed, as Lili's sword went flying out of her hand. One minute, she had been winning, Malfoy hadn't even been able to think about anything other than defense, and the next, her sword was gone. And, alarming him, she had accepted it without question, and simply told Malfoy where their camp was, and to be there in under forty-five minutes. The others were more than a little perturbed with her judgement.
"'Earth is the tie that will bind the others closer to create the light.'" Ron quoted the prophecy mockingly. "Well, at the moment I don't feel very close to you!"
"Why'd you do that?" Harry asked her angrily. "He could have killed you!"
"That was the point." Lili said quietly.
"Yeah, but- wait a minute, what d'you mean, that was the point?"
"It was a test," Lili explained herself. "He had the opportunity to kill me. If he had tried he wouldn't have succeeded anyway, and we would have known he wasn't sincere. He didn't try to kill me, and so we know he meant what he said. We can trust him."
"Trust him? Trust him?" Ron bellowed. "You can't trust a Slytherin, especially not Malfoy! He's- he's-" Ron seemed to be searching for a word nasty enough, but without luck.
Lili sat down in front of the campfire and began polishing the sword. It was a beautiful thing, a slim, silvery blade, etched with runes, broad enough to block something thrown at her, but slender enough that it wasn't bulky. The wooden hilt was inlaid with green jade and gold wire, in a simple, elegant pattern. The grip was bound in white dragon leather, which Lili inspected closely. "The hide of an Indian Ivory dragon. They're extinct, now. Have been for over five hundred years. Supposed to be one of two sentient dragon races. The other one's never been found."
"Stop trying to change the subject!" Ron yelled.
She turned on him. "You listen to me, Ronald Matthew Weasley. I know exactly what I am doing. If this whole thing was in your hands, we'd all be dead by now. Stop trying to run the damn thing, and let me do things my way!" Having finished screaming at him, she stormed off into the woods.
Ron watched her crash through the brush with an angry look on his face. A moment later, he asked, "How did she know my middle name?" Harry and Hermione groaned.
Draco managed to find their camp with five minutes to spare. He could tell already that this was not going to be a pleasant journey. Harry and Ron refused to even look at him, Hermione seemed nervous and did her best to avoid him, and Lili seemed to be in a bad mood, snapping at him. Draco began to question his decision to join them, and remained aloof and distant.
"So, which Temple are we headed for next?" Lili seemed to be working exceptionally hard to get around her bad mood, and was addressing the group in a cheerful, but obviously forced, tone. They were all sitting around the remains of the previous night's campfire, Lili on one side, Harry, Ron and Hermione on the other, and Draco being subtly excluded.
"I think we should head east, picking up Fire, Air, and Water in that order," Hermione suggested. "To get the Water shield now, we'd have to cross the Atlantic, which is not a good idea on broomsticks. If we stuck to the land route, we could pick up a better vehicle in Asia."
"Sounds good to me. Any objections?" When no comment was heard from the three boys (Harry and Ron were glaring at Malfoy), she continued. "Fine. So we're heading for the Fire Temple in Egypt. Ron, you're going to have to direct us. Let's go." Without looking backwards, she climbed onto her broom and flew into the sky. With dubious looks, the others picked up their brooms and scrambled after her.
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"A pity." Voldemort turned away from the crystal ball he had enchanted to show him Draco Malfoy's doings. "A stirring speech that girl gave, and it lost us one of our most promising young Death Eaters. Lucius!" He called out sharply, and a black-hooded man stepped forward from where he had been standing in the corner.
"Yes, my Master?"
"My friend, I have some bad news for you." Voldemort's tone was anything but friendly, and Lucius Malfoy began to shiver. "Your son, Draco, has turned to the Light. You know the punishment for that. Your son will not be allowed to live."
The man almost sighed with relief. He had thought that perhaps he had done something wrong, and was going to be punished. Apparently not.
But then he stiffened again. Draco? His heir? Damn that boy! All Draco's life, Lucius had fed him, clothed him, kept a roof over his head, and this was how the brat repaid him? By turning on his father, and in the meantime, getting one of the most powerful Dark Wizards in the world after his skin? Idiot boy, he deserved to die, but someone needed to carry on the Malfoy name. Too bad Lucius hadn't had any other children, then it wouldn't have mattered so much. But for now, he needed to try to talk his master out of it.
"Are you sure that he is not just pretending? Spying? Attempting to get on their good side?" Lucius volunteered tentatively.
Voldemort rose out of his chair and glared a Lucius, a terrifying thing. "Are you questioning me, Lucius?"
Lucius fell to his knees and attempted to kiss his master's robes. "No! No, my Lord, I was simply hoping- I thought I had trained my son better-"
"Silence." Voldemort sat back down, but not before kicking Lucius in the face. Lucius ignored the pain and blood spewing from his nose, and awaited his orders. "He is not acting. I will not tell you why he has turned, but I will tell you this. You are to be the one to kill him." Voldemort's face betrayed no emotion, assuming the half-human demon wizard even felt emotions anymore. "You are dismissed."
Lucius knew better than to argue. "Yes, my Lord." And again, he fell on his knees and backed out of he room.
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Draco had been flying at the very back of the group, further back even than Lili, who still turned rather green every time she looked down. But now he pulled ahead a bit, and theu flew side by side.
He spoke. "Who did he kill, that was close to you?"
"What?" She seemed confused, a rare thing for her.
"You-Know-Who." Lili found it amusing that even someone who had been a minion of Voldemort still refused to say his name. "Who did he kill that you knew?"
"Nobody. I just said what I had to to get you on our side," she answered smoothly.
"Bull. You had emotion in there, I could see it. Who?"
"Who are you to tell me what kind of emotion I have? He didn't kill anyone I knew."
"Do I have to put a truth spell on you? You're bullshitting me, and I can tell. You can't con
a con artist, they say."
She refused to look him in the eye. "Fine. But I swear to every god, goddess, and divine being known to humankind that if you tell anyone this, by the time I'm done with you, the odds of you fathering a child will be zero."
He didn't seem worried in the least by her threat. "Okay. Now tell me."
"All right. The short-and-sweet version." She sighed. "My best friend, Cassa. Her aunt and uncle are, I mean were, British, dont forget I lived in America, and she was visiting them. They were Muggles, and she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was sent word that they used the Cruciatus Curse, among other things, on her, before they killed her. I want revenge on Voldemort, like you, and Harry, and all those other people who were hurt by him. Cassa was like a sister to me."
Thankfully, Draco hadn't flinched at her use of Voldemort's proper name. She had never called him You-Know-Who, because Voldemort wasn't powerful in the United States in the first place, and then when Cassa died, she had become more angry than scared. Anger had always been her substitute for fear, sorrow, and most other emotions. **Emotions are weak,** she reminded herself. **Don't let emotions get in the way of revenge, or duty. Let them inspire you, but don't let them control you. Keep your emotions at bay.** She had repeated this to herself many, many times in the year since Cassa died. She wondered vaguely what her friend would have thought of the change in her personality. Lili had become colder, and much more closed, than she used to be. She was still warm, and caring, and the basic Lili was still there. But her core, her soul, had been changed by Cassa's death. Now, she almost lived for that tiny hope of revenge.
Draco interrupted her confusing soul-searching. "So you're in this for revenge, too, it that it?"
She almost laughed, but not quite. The mere thought of Cassa's death was enough to drown any hint of mirth in her. "No. I'm doing this for everybody. For the people who have died, for the people who are dying, for the people who will die if Voldemort isn't stopped. The revenge bit is just a side benefit."
"I see. Now, will you tell me the rest of what's bothering you?"
This time she did laugh, but it was harsh and cold, a laugh much more befitting a killer than a fifteen year old girl. **You can't con a con artist,** she thought wryly, remembering Draco's words. "Cassa and I, when we first started school, found a spell in the library. SAM had a pretty pathetic library, you know, nothing like Hogwarts. But anyway, we found this spell. Two people who care about each other as much as possible. Husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend. Doesn't matter what the relationship is. The bond just has to be there. The spell would link these two people together, and they would be linked forever. It would help you to protect your friend, or whoever, when there was danger around, and other things too, but that's what I remember. Cassa and I used it, and for something really silly, too. I can't even remember anymore. But anyway, we used the spell.
"It worked very well, since Cassa and I had known each other even before we were born. Our mothers had met at the doctors office, and as soon as we could leave the hospital, and even before that, we were together. Closer to her than I am to my sister. So, the spell worked, and we forgot about it until last year. That was when Cassa went to visit her aunt and uncle, over spring break.
"I was in my dorm when it happened. An effect of the spell was that right before something happend to Cassa, or right before she needed me, the edges of my vision would turn purple, like I was wearing purple contacts or something. So, I was sitting in my room when it happened. My vision went blurry purple, and then the entire room faded out, and Cassa's aunt's living room faded in. She was sitting in a big plush armchair, reading her favorite book, Little Women. I have no idea why she liked it, I always thought it was boring. She was just sitting there, and the doorbell rang. I remember her calling upstairs, 'it's okay, Aunt Laura, I'll get it,' and then she opened the door, and she was knocked over by a herd of Death Eaters. One of them grabbed her, and pulled her wand out of her pocket, and she started yelling, and her aunt and uncle came downstairs. Then the Death Eaters started torturing them, and I remember Cassa crying, and yelling for them to stop, to leave them alone. And then they did, and then turned on Cassa." Lili wasn't crying, but she looked close to it. Her voice cracked as she continued speaking. "They tortured her for a little while, and then they stopped, just long enough that she saw them kill her aunt and uncle. Oh, god, I remember that the most. Our emotions were linked, I felt what she felt and the other way around. And then they tortured her some more, and they were laughing and joking around the whole time, while Cassa was on the ground, screaming. And then they got tired of it, and then-" she gulped, like she was trying to keep tears inside. "I had to watch my best friend die."
Draco said nothing, and that was really what Lili needed most. Not empty words of comfort, but a simple ear, that would listen, with nothing else. "Thank you," she said, and then pushed her broom forward and flew up ahead.
(A/N) Whoa, I really do not know where that came from. I didn't mean for it to turn into some big thing, but it did. Guess I have my good old muse to blame for that. Doctor Grapefruit Digital Bojangles is back in the muse business! Woooo!! R&R!
(A/N) During the year between book four and my story, Voldemort has been attacking Muggle-borns, Muggles, and any witch or wizard who caused him problems back in the Seventies. Okey-day?
CHAPTER SEVEN: A NEW COMPANION
Harry had watched, amazed, as Lili's sword went flying out of her hand. One minute, she had been winning, Malfoy hadn't even been able to think about anything other than defense, and the next, her sword was gone. And, alarming him, she had accepted it without question, and simply told Malfoy where their camp was, and to be there in under forty-five minutes. The others were more than a little perturbed with her judgement.
"'Earth is the tie that will bind the others closer to create the light.'" Ron quoted the prophecy mockingly. "Well, at the moment I don't feel very close to you!"
"Why'd you do that?" Harry asked her angrily. "He could have killed you!"
"That was the point." Lili said quietly.
"Yeah, but- wait a minute, what d'you mean, that was the point?"
"It was a test," Lili explained herself. "He had the opportunity to kill me. If he had tried he wouldn't have succeeded anyway, and we would have known he wasn't sincere. He didn't try to kill me, and so we know he meant what he said. We can trust him."
"Trust him? Trust him?" Ron bellowed. "You can't trust a Slytherin, especially not Malfoy! He's- he's-" Ron seemed to be searching for a word nasty enough, but without luck.
Lili sat down in front of the campfire and began polishing the sword. It was a beautiful thing, a slim, silvery blade, etched with runes, broad enough to block something thrown at her, but slender enough that it wasn't bulky. The wooden hilt was inlaid with green jade and gold wire, in a simple, elegant pattern. The grip was bound in white dragon leather, which Lili inspected closely. "The hide of an Indian Ivory dragon. They're extinct, now. Have been for over five hundred years. Supposed to be one of two sentient dragon races. The other one's never been found."
"Stop trying to change the subject!" Ron yelled.
She turned on him. "You listen to me, Ronald Matthew Weasley. I know exactly what I am doing. If this whole thing was in your hands, we'd all be dead by now. Stop trying to run the damn thing, and let me do things my way!" Having finished screaming at him, she stormed off into the woods.
Ron watched her crash through the brush with an angry look on his face. A moment later, he asked, "How did she know my middle name?" Harry and Hermione groaned.
Draco managed to find their camp with five minutes to spare. He could tell already that this was not going to be a pleasant journey. Harry and Ron refused to even look at him, Hermione seemed nervous and did her best to avoid him, and Lili seemed to be in a bad mood, snapping at him. Draco began to question his decision to join them, and remained aloof and distant.
"So, which Temple are we headed for next?" Lili seemed to be working exceptionally hard to get around her bad mood, and was addressing the group in a cheerful, but obviously forced, tone. They were all sitting around the remains of the previous night's campfire, Lili on one side, Harry, Ron and Hermione on the other, and Draco being subtly excluded.
"I think we should head east, picking up Fire, Air, and Water in that order," Hermione suggested. "To get the Water shield now, we'd have to cross the Atlantic, which is not a good idea on broomsticks. If we stuck to the land route, we could pick up a better vehicle in Asia."
"Sounds good to me. Any objections?" When no comment was heard from the three boys (Harry and Ron were glaring at Malfoy), she continued. "Fine. So we're heading for the Fire Temple in Egypt. Ron, you're going to have to direct us. Let's go." Without looking backwards, she climbed onto her broom and flew into the sky. With dubious looks, the others picked up their brooms and scrambled after her.
*************************************************************************************
"A pity." Voldemort turned away from the crystal ball he had enchanted to show him Draco Malfoy's doings. "A stirring speech that girl gave, and it lost us one of our most promising young Death Eaters. Lucius!" He called out sharply, and a black-hooded man stepped forward from where he had been standing in the corner.
"Yes, my Master?"
"My friend, I have some bad news for you." Voldemort's tone was anything but friendly, and Lucius Malfoy began to shiver. "Your son, Draco, has turned to the Light. You know the punishment for that. Your son will not be allowed to live."
The man almost sighed with relief. He had thought that perhaps he had done something wrong, and was going to be punished. Apparently not.
But then he stiffened again. Draco? His heir? Damn that boy! All Draco's life, Lucius had fed him, clothed him, kept a roof over his head, and this was how the brat repaid him? By turning on his father, and in the meantime, getting one of the most powerful Dark Wizards in the world after his skin? Idiot boy, he deserved to die, but someone needed to carry on the Malfoy name. Too bad Lucius hadn't had any other children, then it wouldn't have mattered so much. But for now, he needed to try to talk his master out of it.
"Are you sure that he is not just pretending? Spying? Attempting to get on their good side?" Lucius volunteered tentatively.
Voldemort rose out of his chair and glared a Lucius, a terrifying thing. "Are you questioning me, Lucius?"
Lucius fell to his knees and attempted to kiss his master's robes. "No! No, my Lord, I was simply hoping- I thought I had trained my son better-"
"Silence." Voldemort sat back down, but not before kicking Lucius in the face. Lucius ignored the pain and blood spewing from his nose, and awaited his orders. "He is not acting. I will not tell you why he has turned, but I will tell you this. You are to be the one to kill him." Voldemort's face betrayed no emotion, assuming the half-human demon wizard even felt emotions anymore. "You are dismissed."
Lucius knew better than to argue. "Yes, my Lord." And again, he fell on his knees and backed out of he room.
******************************************************************************
Draco had been flying at the very back of the group, further back even than Lili, who still turned rather green every time she looked down. But now he pulled ahead a bit, and theu flew side by side.
He spoke. "Who did he kill, that was close to you?"
"What?" She seemed confused, a rare thing for her.
"You-Know-Who." Lili found it amusing that even someone who had been a minion of Voldemort still refused to say his name. "Who did he kill that you knew?"
"Nobody. I just said what I had to to get you on our side," she answered smoothly.
"Bull. You had emotion in there, I could see it. Who?"
"Who are you to tell me what kind of emotion I have? He didn't kill anyone I knew."
"Do I have to put a truth spell on you? You're bullshitting me, and I can tell. You can't con
a con artist, they say."
She refused to look him in the eye. "Fine. But I swear to every god, goddess, and divine being known to humankind that if you tell anyone this, by the time I'm done with you, the odds of you fathering a child will be zero."
He didn't seem worried in the least by her threat. "Okay. Now tell me."
"All right. The short-and-sweet version." She sighed. "My best friend, Cassa. Her aunt and uncle are, I mean were, British, dont forget I lived in America, and she was visiting them. They were Muggles, and she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was sent word that they used the Cruciatus Curse, among other things, on her, before they killed her. I want revenge on Voldemort, like you, and Harry, and all those other people who were hurt by him. Cassa was like a sister to me."
Thankfully, Draco hadn't flinched at her use of Voldemort's proper name. She had never called him You-Know-Who, because Voldemort wasn't powerful in the United States in the first place, and then when Cassa died, she had become more angry than scared. Anger had always been her substitute for fear, sorrow, and most other emotions. **Emotions are weak,** she reminded herself. **Don't let emotions get in the way of revenge, or duty. Let them inspire you, but don't let them control you. Keep your emotions at bay.** She had repeated this to herself many, many times in the year since Cassa died. She wondered vaguely what her friend would have thought of the change in her personality. Lili had become colder, and much more closed, than she used to be. She was still warm, and caring, and the basic Lili was still there. But her core, her soul, had been changed by Cassa's death. Now, she almost lived for that tiny hope of revenge.
Draco interrupted her confusing soul-searching. "So you're in this for revenge, too, it that it?"
She almost laughed, but not quite. The mere thought of Cassa's death was enough to drown any hint of mirth in her. "No. I'm doing this for everybody. For the people who have died, for the people who are dying, for the people who will die if Voldemort isn't stopped. The revenge bit is just a side benefit."
"I see. Now, will you tell me the rest of what's bothering you?"
This time she did laugh, but it was harsh and cold, a laugh much more befitting a killer than a fifteen year old girl. **You can't con a con artist,** she thought wryly, remembering Draco's words. "Cassa and I, when we first started school, found a spell in the library. SAM had a pretty pathetic library, you know, nothing like Hogwarts. But anyway, we found this spell. Two people who care about each other as much as possible. Husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend. Doesn't matter what the relationship is. The bond just has to be there. The spell would link these two people together, and they would be linked forever. It would help you to protect your friend, or whoever, when there was danger around, and other things too, but that's what I remember. Cassa and I used it, and for something really silly, too. I can't even remember anymore. But anyway, we used the spell.
"It worked very well, since Cassa and I had known each other even before we were born. Our mothers had met at the doctors office, and as soon as we could leave the hospital, and even before that, we were together. Closer to her than I am to my sister. So, the spell worked, and we forgot about it until last year. That was when Cassa went to visit her aunt and uncle, over spring break.
"I was in my dorm when it happened. An effect of the spell was that right before something happend to Cassa, or right before she needed me, the edges of my vision would turn purple, like I was wearing purple contacts or something. So, I was sitting in my room when it happened. My vision went blurry purple, and then the entire room faded out, and Cassa's aunt's living room faded in. She was sitting in a big plush armchair, reading her favorite book, Little Women. I have no idea why she liked it, I always thought it was boring. She was just sitting there, and the doorbell rang. I remember her calling upstairs, 'it's okay, Aunt Laura, I'll get it,' and then she opened the door, and she was knocked over by a herd of Death Eaters. One of them grabbed her, and pulled her wand out of her pocket, and she started yelling, and her aunt and uncle came downstairs. Then the Death Eaters started torturing them, and I remember Cassa crying, and yelling for them to stop, to leave them alone. And then they did, and then turned on Cassa." Lili wasn't crying, but she looked close to it. Her voice cracked as she continued speaking. "They tortured her for a little while, and then they stopped, just long enough that she saw them kill her aunt and uncle. Oh, god, I remember that the most. Our emotions were linked, I felt what she felt and the other way around. And then they tortured her some more, and they were laughing and joking around the whole time, while Cassa was on the ground, screaming. And then they got tired of it, and then-" she gulped, like she was trying to keep tears inside. "I had to watch my best friend die."
Draco said nothing, and that was really what Lili needed most. Not empty words of comfort, but a simple ear, that would listen, with nothing else. "Thank you," she said, and then pushed her broom forward and flew up ahead.
(A/N) Whoa, I really do not know where that came from. I didn't mean for it to turn into some big thing, but it did. Guess I have my good old muse to blame for that. Doctor Grapefruit Digital Bojangles is back in the muse business! Woooo!! R&R!