Shadowed Souls

Chapter Nine

Thanks again to everyone who reviews. I cannot describe how wonderful you are *sniffles*
Lady of Imladris: another Hugo fan! I spent this morning watching the Matrix Revisited while writing this fic.
Farewell: Oh dear. Reading your fic has made me want to read end-to-end LOTR slash. I've just gone and set up a group. I don't have time. I have to write a 15,000 word dissertation for which they definitely won't accept Haldir/Elrohir. Oh well, cute Elves, cute Animagi, cute werewolves. I can deal.

A/N: The key chapter. Woo hoo, it's done. Enjoy.

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Remus crashed to the ground, mud spattering his face, brambles catching in his disordered hair and ragged clothes. Pain ripped through him as his already bruised body hit the hard earth. Although his muscles protested, he pulled himself up and cannoned onwards, his weary mind fixed on the single thought that the pain which awaited him if he faltered far outweighed the dull ache of scrapes and bruises.

A tree loomed before him, and he swerved, the tangled branches clawing at the raw skin on the side of his face.

The ground was slippery before him, saturated by days of unceasing, dreary rain, transformed into thick, foul-smelling slime which clung to his boots and legs.

Remus slithered down a slick slope, and once again lost his footing. Somewhere amid the blur of pain, he was perversely glad that he was saved the effort of running down the slope.

At the bottom, he lay huddled, his knees drawn up against his chest, overcome with exhaustion, quite happy to surrender to oblivion. Slowly, duty and desperation reasserted themselves and he hauled himself to his feet, feeling fresh blood trickle into his right eye.

He stumbled onwards, his legs like lead, his throat burning with every breath. His world narrowed to the terror-struck pounding of heart, the hurried pace of his feet, and the deadly chanting of his pulse in the back of his head.

Dimly, he knew that his actions were futile, that with his wand crushed by a hulking foot he could never run fast enough to escape from his pursuers, yet he continued his headlong dash though the blind darkness. All that he wanted was to escape from this hell, this accursed land, this charnel house. The private forests of the Malfoy family towered around him, the bare branches menacing, and he only wished to leave them behind.

"If I must die, let it not be here," he whispered to himself in a cracked voice.

He cursed his bad luck in accepting this mission from Dumbledore, and the missteps which had led him to this.

Above all, Remus wished that Sirius were by his side, as he once had been, to give him the strength which he felt ebbing within him. Briefly, he conjured an image of Sirius, his blue eyes wide and smiling, black hair falling across his handsome face, but a wave of nausea overwhelmed him. He remembered that Sirius was no longer his to draw comfort from. He pushed the enticing image from his mind, fighting against stabbing despair.

Swaying, he caught himself against the rough bark of an oak, and fixed his eyes ahead, only to find vicious fingers clamping into the flesh of his arms from either side.

A solid fist connected with Remus' skull, and livid patterns of green and red swam before his eyes. Consciousness faded into mist, and although he was still vaguely aware, he did not know what of, except for the unearthly sensation of Apparition.

Sight returned slowly, and once it had done so, Remus rather wished that the encircling darkness had claimed him.

He found himself slumped on the ground, his legs bound at the ankle and his arms at the wrist. Dragging himself upright until he was kneeling, he realised that in a circle around him stood perhaps ten eerie figures, masked, with cowls shadowing their faces. Somehow, Remus could feel the expressions of malicious joy on their faces. The hair on the back of his neck rose in response.

Silence fell, deep and thick, punctuated only by the melancholy drip of the rain. The atmosphere was tense with foreboding, and the uneasy air of doom about to be fulfilled.

Soft footsteps, and the snake-like swishing of heavy robes were all the warning Remus got. A wrathful hand twisted itself into the thin fabric at his neck, hauling him to his feet. His heart pounding, the exhausted werewolf found himself gazing up into blazing red eyes which seemed to scour his very soul.

With a contemptuous flick of one wrist, Voldemort hurled him to the ground. Labouriously, Remus sat upright. Bracing his hands on his knees, he looked around stonily, his grey eyes glittering.

Voldemort approached him, a smile like the rictus of death playing around his lips and in the crimson eyes.

Holding Remus' chin between skeletal fingers and leaning so close that the werewolf would feel the Dark Lord's icy breath on his skin, Voldemort hissed, "I could offer you the choice between death and the glory of numbering yourself among my followers, but you would see an attempt to do so as an insult to your … ah … intelligence, would you not, child of the darkness?"

He laughed, cold and high, as Remus winced at the epithet.

"Yes, it is a pity that you did not choose to join me. I would have given you a role to which you would have been admirably suited." Voldemort paused, and his voice, which had been lit by foul levity, became hard. "But Lord Voldemort does not give second chances. Now you will die in such torment that you will cry out and beg even for the pains which your precious friends underwent."

Voldemort stepped back, releasing Remus' face. The younger man struggled to his feet, fighting the revulsion which welled up inside him at Voldemort and at himself for Voldemort's reminder of what lurked within him.

"I resisted him, I resisted him, I always shall," he muttered to himself, clenching his hands into fists, his nails cutting into the palms of his hands. Warily, he watched the figures around him.

"But," Voldemort continued, and twelve pairs of eyes glinted hungrily behind their masks, "you will bend before me anyway. Imperio."

Everything was quiet and far away. Nothing mattered enough to do anything.

"Perhaps I misunderstood," thought Remus muzzily. "Perhaps he cast Avada Kedavra, and this is death."

But even in the midst of the gentle fog, a doubt worried at his mind. He began to concentrate on the insidious voice, whispering on the edge of hearing.

"Bow to me. Bow to your master."

"No." The word appeared in Remus' mind as if from nowhere. Remembering the long years when he had learnt to fight this curse, he struggled fiercely.

"No," he yelled hoarsely. "Why should I bow to you?"

The world rolled back in, and Remus was once again aware of the dried blood on his temple and the piercing thrill of terror. Briefly, he wondered what this must have been like for Harry. Sirius had wept into his shoulder as he told the full story, and now Remus' already smoldering rage was fanned into full flame by absolute contempt for anyone who would make a child suffer this ordeal.

He stared at Voldemort with his gentle eyes almost black with fury. Remus knew that there was no hope that he would survive this day. There would be no happy ending for him. With detached bemusement, he thought that his entire life had led up to this moment, this calamity, this fate. It seemed so natural. He only hoped that he would not beg before the end.

Lifting his chin, he addressed Voldemort directly, his voice dripping with scorn.

"You," he proclaimed, "are worthless. You are nothing. You are lower than your unpleasant little pack of cronies. True greatness does not exist in this: in blood, in the dying screams of the innocent, in foolish grandeur that only destroys. You can be no more than the pathetic creature you are."

One of the Death Eaters, whom Remus thought was Lucius Malfoy himself, hissed angrily through his teeth.

"Are you so deluded by the words of that hapless wreck Dumbledore as to believe that the mightiest wizard ever is doomed to failure, wolf?" Voldemort asked.

"You will not win the war," Remus replied, surprising even himself with the unshakable confidence and calm of his voice. "Even if you did, you cannot create; it is not the nature of evil to do so, and so all your accomplishments will crumble into nothing, and be forgotten. One day even your name will not frighten children anymore."

He was silent for a heartbeat, contemplating the forest floor. Then he lifted his head and spoke in a clear voice which carried to all those present.

"And you will always remain Tom Riddle."

The expression which crossed Voldemort's face made even the Death Eaters shrink away.

"I am Lord Voldemort," he howled. He beckoned to one Death Eater who slipped from the ring and took off his mask. Remus' eyes widened as he recognised the pallid puffy features of his former friend.

"Hello … rat," he murmured quietly.

Wormtail raised his wand in one trembling hand as his face contorted with hatred. A sly smile twisted his mouth.

"Crucio."

And it was as if the stars had gone out. Golden fire lanced across his skin. Liquid pain coursed though him, dissolving his bones and destroying his mind. He screamed and could not even hear his own voice. There was nothing but the pain and the void until Wormtail averted his wand.

Remus gazed up with pain-bleared eyes at the laughing figures surrounding him. At one sign from Voldemort, they began to close in on his hunched body. As one, they pointed their wands at him, and the steady stream of curses began.

Not all of them used the Cruciatus, and blood began to pour from the myriad wounds on Remus' broken body, staining the ground around him.

The tide retreated once more and Remus heard a voice.

"Shall I kill him now, my Lord? I beg for this honour."

Mute and weary, Remus waited for the command which would end his life.

"No," Voldemort said. "I believe that there is a far more interesting possibility."

He stepped forward, pointing his wand at the werewolf, and muttered words which Remus, caught in the tangled skein of pain, could not understand.

A glittering cloud shot from his wand and engulfed the prone figure. Immediately, it was as if thousands of needles were pricking at Remus' skin. He shifted at the discomfort, but, suddenly, felt searing agony begin to spread through him. Ugly red welts appeared on his fair skin, and his joints began to swell.

Forcing himself to scrutinise the hideous pattern, Remus finally understood.

"Silver," he whispered, and fainted, carried far away from the pain and the shadows.

Lucius Malfoy casually kicked the body.

"What shall we do with this … thing now, my master?" he asked.

Voldemort's face creased in a horrible mockery of a smile.

"Leave him at the gates of Hogwarts. Let him die at the feet of that fool Dumbledore. One might call it a warning shot from Lord Voldemort."

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