A/N: Hello all! Before you read this, please go back and read chapter 27 again. It has been extended, and contains some important little tidbits of information, not to mention a little more about Snape for Kwinelf. Snowlily and eclecticmum, I'm working on that happy ending, but things look pretty grim right now I'm afraid. And Xaviera, Chalice, Sabre gurl, Tessie, and Lady Lupin – thank you for saying lovely things and for having patience. Rugi and Gwena, I stumbled across your 'Guide to Harry Potter Fan Fiction' the other day and was very entertained by your perceptiveness. I'm waiting apprehensively for the letter 'R' for 'Remus stories' and 'Remus/OC romances'. I think I'm afraid to read it. Anyway, the chapter after this is going to be a bit of a challenge to write, but I'll do my best and the next installment hopefully won't be more than a week away. Ciao!
Chapter 28.
Elena hurtled helplessly through the nameless darkness for what might have been seconds but what felt like minutes. When her feet suddenly struck solid ground, she was unprepared and stumbled forward a few steps before finding her balance.
She glanced around, disbelieving and frightened.
Was this some kind of trick? Some kind of illusion?
The gardens at Hogwarts were gone. The gates were gone. Gerald was gone.
Instead, she now seemed to be alone in a large, dimly lit room she had never seen before. It looked like it had once belonged to someone with a taste for affluent living, but it had seen better days. The over-stuffed, finely upholstered couch that had been pushed up against the battered, paneled wood wall to her right was grubby with dust and fraying at some of the seams. The wide bay window to her left was half-obscured by semi-drawn, heavy, moth-eaten velvet curtains, and the glass was so dirty that the scant light that struggled though it had an unhealthy grey tinge.
In front of her was an enormous stone fireplace, and in the hearth a few sad coals still smoked. She noticed for the first time that the room was chilled. In front of the fireplace was a massive armchair, but instead of being placed so that it faced the warmth of hypothetical flames, it had been turned around to face down the mostly empty room.
The middle of the room had been cleared completely, as though in preparation for something. Elena felt very exposed, standing alone in the large open space.
She looked down at the dark gemstone she still clutched in her fist.
Gerald had given it to her, and she had been whisked away to this strange and sinister place. Against her will.
How could it have been Gerald, though? Gerald was dead...
Confused and frightened, she threw the object away.
It bounced up against the couch with a strangely hollow clunking sound.
"Thank you," came a voice from behind her. Elena jumped, and turned.
A tall, thin man with sparse gingery hair and a long face strolled into her field of vision and picked up the black stone using a thick piece of cloth. He straightened up, saw her staring, and gave a smug smile, revealing crooked teeth.
"Portkey," he explained, oozing self-satisfaction. "Clever, don't you think? I was wondering how to get it off you before you realized that dropping it and picking it up again would take you straight back to Hogwarts again."
Elena stared at the stranger in distaste, feeling instant repulsion. Coupled with her fear, it left her feeling distinctly ill.
"Who are you?" she demanded coldly, her voice surprisingly steady.
"Skarns is my name," he bowed extravagantly and without grace. "And I believe you've already been introduced to my good friend Trav – "
Skarns paused, as though suddenly realizing something. His eyes narrowed. "Where is Travim?"
Elena stared at him without comprehension. Her mind searched frantically for answers, struggling to put the scrambled pieces of what had happened together in some semblance of order.
Two coherent thoughts managed to pull clear of the mayhem. One was the realization that the man who had stood at the gates and opened his arms to her had not been – could not possibly have been – her brother Gerald. The second was linked to a wisp of a memory… A shouting voice…
… Elena, no! …
Someone had called her name. Just as she crossed the boundary of the school to cast herself into the hands of her enemies, someone had called out…
Remus. Of course it had been Remus.
So the other man, the one who had pretended to be Gerald to lure her off Hogwarts grounds… That had to be Travim, the one in league with Skarns. And Skarns had expected Travim back by now. So something had happened to Travim before he could Disapparate away from the school.
…And Remus had been behind her. Remus had seen her disappear.
Remus was what had happened to Travim, she was sure of it. He had gone into danger for her, he had tried to save her. It didn't matter that he had failed. A sudden flood of warmth caught her low in the stomach, and for a fleeting moment her features softened and she forgot her present danger as she thought of just how much she loved that man.
"Travim will not come," she said softly, but with absolute confidence.
Skarns looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?" He snapped, his self-assurance slipping slightly as the possibility of having to face an unanticipated problem was raised. "What's happened to Travim?"
Elena half-shrugged. "I don't know," she replied truthfully, then added bitterly - "Was Travim the one you magicked to look like my brother?"
"How do you know the man at the gates wasn't your brother?"
"I didn't at first. But if he had been, I would be with him now and not here with you. Besides, it was a moment of extreme foolishness on my part. I know my brother is dead."
Despite the lines of worry etched in his forehead, Skarns could not pass up a chance to patronise and gloat. "Ah, yes, your brother," he agreed, "Your brother who is not in fact your brother at all, but an orphaned no body without a drop of Dumbledore blood in his veins. How close we came to writing him off as useless and killing him then and there that night."
Elena felt her heart skip dangerously. She stared at Skarns for a moment, trying to understand. Her stunned consciousness was capable of adhering to one thought only: He said 'is'. Not 'was'. My brother is.
"Gerald is alive…" she whispered, a mantra of impossible hope and disbelieving joy, "Gerald is alive…"
Skarns shrugged negligently. "Of course he's alive! You must know how a Polyjuice potion works, surely. A brew is no good unless it's reasonably fresh, and it requires a piece of the subject, which is hard to come by if you've killed him off. We used him for information about you, too, but it didn't help us much. In the end it came down to using our own wiles, and – "
"Where is he?" Elena interrupted desperately, unable to care less about Skarns's disproportionately high opinion of himself and burning for more news of the brother she thought she had lost.
Skarns frowned, cross at having been cut off just as he got the part about himself. "He's asleep," he said, a little petulantly, "He's been having a very long sleep. But now that we have you we have no further use for him."
Elena paled, and a sly glint sparked to life into Skarns's eyes. "I would be happiest just to kill him out of hand," he said carelessly, and something in his voice left Elena with numb the certainty that this was true.
"But you may be interested to know," he continued, lowering his voice confidentially, "That there are other forces at work now. And apparently, his fate is to be placed in your hands."
Elena swallowed hard. She had to ask, although she already knew she would not like the answer. "What would I have to do," she said, fixing her gaze steadily on his face, "For you to let him go free?"
The corner of Skarns's mouth quirked. "Say a few words, a few harmless little words…"
Elena refused to lose her patience. "What words?"
"The words of sworn allegiance to the Dark Lord."
Elena stared at him for a long moment. "Voldemort," she said flatly.
Skarns winced, and his gaze skittered nervously from left to right, as if he expected the Dark wizard to show up behind him at any moment.
"Don't say his name like that," he hissed, stalking over to the grubby window and peering uneasily out, keeping his body behind the curtains as though afraid of being seen. "He could be here at any moment." He checked his watch compulsively. "He is supposed to be here now," he added nervously, and then in an undertone: "Damn, I wish Travim were here. How am I going to explain what went wrong? Never thought I'd have to face the Dark Lord alone…"
He threw a fretful glance over his shoulder at Elena, who was watching in bemusement as his personality pendulumed from gloating villain to nervous wreck. He was a man on the edge of his sanity, she thought, but he had been there so long he was not even aware of the contradictions in his behaviour.
"Why is Voldemort," she relished his flinch when she spoke the name, "Why is Voldemort coming here?"
Skarns gave a snort of exasperation at her stupidity, but did not turn away from his vigil at the window. "To turn you, of course," he said, as though it should have been obvious. "He wants you on his side, working for him." Then he added, with a touch of bitterness, "You should be honoured. I've been waiting fifteen years for such an invitation."
Elena chose to ignore that for now. "But why," she asked carefully, "Does he want me? Because I am an Heir of Dumbledore? My whole family were Heirs of Dumbledore, yet you…" she swallowed, struggling not to let emotions cripple her now, "You killed them without qualms or hesitation."
At this, Skarns looked slightly uncomfortable, but apparently not from guilt. "Well, Voldemort wasn't back in power then. But we knew he would return, and we wanted something to offer him, you see. Some proof of our loyalty, some achievement he would appreciate and see fit to reward. We were going to wipe out the last line of Dumbledores. We would have succeeded that night if it hadn't been for you and your damned irritating escape. We were still searching for you, still on your tail, when we heard that Voldemort was returned to power and that he knew of our mission. We were … " Skarns swallowed, as though just the memory brought the fear rushing back, but continued nonetheless, "We were brought before him, and he … commended us for our loyalty but … condemned us for our rashness. We had been presumptuous, he said, to take on his enemies without his knowledge or permission. We were charged with a new mission – to find you, but bring you to him alive. Because, like I said, he likes the idea of having the last of the great white witches and Dumbledore's only living family, in thrall to him."
Elena shook her head. "Never," she said simply, her gaze defying him to contradict her. "I will never turn."
But Skarns only smiled.
"Never is a very long time," he said, almost conversationally. His pale blue gaze met hers. "I'm not a terribly persuasive man, Miss Greenstone. The Dark Lord, on the other hand, is generally found to be very persuasive indeed. You probably think you would rather die than join him, but that is only because you don't realise yet that there are many things worse than death. And if you defy him, the Dark Lord will make very certain that you experience them all."
A strange, cold light lit his eyes as he looked her up and down. "It's not a matter of whether or not you will obey him ultimately," his tone all the more terrifying for its neutrality, "It's a matter of how much pain you choose to endure first."
Elena took an involuntary step back on unsteady legs. Cold fear was creeping over her skin like a clammy fever, while her stomach felt totally hollowed out.
She was acutely aware of her own weakness. She was only human. She had no idea how long she would be able to withstand the refined torture of a master of evil before her body betrayed her to the darkness. She was not that strong.
But then… if she turned… She would never see Remus again. Never be able to take his hand, never have the right to look into his eyes, never be worthy to love him, let alone retain his love. She would he his enemy. Dumbledore's enemy. Light's enemy. And she could not do it. She could never do that.
"I will not turn," she said aloud, and nearly dissolved with relief at the certainty she heard in her own voice. Her spine straightened, and she met his gaze directly. "I will never turn."
For a moment, Skarns returned her stare. Then he seemed to shrug as though he felt she had been duly warned and that what she chose to do next was not his problem.
"The Dark Lord will be here soon," he said shortly, "Take it up with him."
He turned his attention back to the window, checked his watch again, and resumed his vigil.
Elena had no choice but to wait with him.