((A/N: Oi all! I am so so so so sorry for not updating in forever! Busy-
ness + Writer's block = No chapter. ;_; But now I'm back! W00t. And I have
another wunnyderful chapter for y'all from Rhiannon's POV. Hopefully, it'll
explain a few things that A-Tall-Tree asked me to clear up. So here you
are))
I sat in the library by myself the evening after my first visit to the library. This time, I was alone, Hermione having finally convinced her study-disinclined friends (see: Harry and Ron) to study for the many tests the students were plied with. I had found a distant corner of the library with a comfortable armchair and enough light to read by, and I was happy. Just a few minutes prior, I had found a terribly interesting book on the history of the Dark Arts. I was reading it to check over the author's facts, and so far, it seemed pretty accurate.
Around me, but at a polite distance, other Hogwarts students went about their business, studying, talking quietly (thanks to Madam Pince's watchful eyes), or reading. None of them even thought to go near me, I was an oddity that they preferred to inspect from a distance. I was not something to be worried about, or avoided, like some of the more troublesome students, since I was obviously favored by Harry Potter. But I was too detached from their every-day lives to be befriended; they were all convinced we had nothing in common. I supposed my first impression might have had something to do with that-most of the students had seen me being carried to the hospital wing, or that's what I remembered, being only slightly conscious at the time. Considering the way I'd looked patched up, I must have been a sight at the beginning. But now, the scars on my arms, legs, and back were healing, and yet no one would approach me. I must admit, even during my times of isolation when I'd lived in foster homes, I had never felt this lonely. To be around so many witches and wizards, like myself, and to have none of them want anything to do with me; it hurt. All except Harry Potter, of course.
I had hoped to be friends with Harry's almost-constant companions, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. But, after taking one look at me and then at Harry, Ron had set his jaw and stubbornly refused to give me another glance. Hermione had tried to be friendly, but the three of them were obviously very close and had a penchant for finishing each other's sentences, and she soon gave up on me when she realized that I didn't really belong with them. Harry seemed quit oblivious to his friends' dislike for me-both covert and overt, and he was perfectly content to spend time with either faction.
As I pondered their friendship, and the obvious strength the ties gave Harry, I began to compare it to my life before Hogwarts and Voldemort.
I had gone through too many foster homes to count. Many of the first had been rich couples with too much money and too few children to spend it on. I hadn't been.spoiled, exactly-I stayed for too short a time for that-but I had been treated well. It soon was discovered, however, that despite my faerie-like appearance that was so endearing, I was quite different from other children. It began simply, with little things, like preferring to be alone. I taught myself to read before I could even speak, and would spend hours alone in the huge libraries of my foster parents, poring over huge tomes that I somehow managed to drag to the floor. My guardians, worried by my unnatural behaviour, had tried to invite over other rich little children for me to associate with, but I would always hide behind my mother's skirts and then, as soon as the adults went off to talk alone, I would scamper off to the library to continue reading some book or other.
Eventually, each home decided I was too much to handle for them, inexperienced parents as they were, and I would be shipped off to another foster home. After a few years like this, by the time I was about eight, I had developed a sort of reputation for being odd. The other children at the orphanage that I always returned to had decided that I was too weird for them, and they left me alone when they went outside to play games, or to discuss other childish matters. For that was what I considered them and their feelings-something to immature for me to dabble in. Even as a young child, I always had opinions about things I shouldn't have known about. My reading had expanded my knowledge of the world immensely, and I would creep up to the closed kitchen door in the evenings when the caretakers would listen to the one old radio in there and discuss the things they heard. In this way, I became a rather opinionated girl, and I never hesitated to speak my mind. For a few years at least. As I was a quick learner, I soon discerned that adults didn't want to hear what I thought. They would look at me from their towering heights and down their long noses and smile indulgently, commenting about how sweet I was to think I had any idea what I was talking about.
It annoyed me that no one would listen, but after I while I shut my trap and kept to myself more and more. The years passed, and I began to count important events by the foster homes I ended up in. When I was about twelve, I was adopted by a single man who claimed to want someone to help him out around the house. This "helping" was not quite what the orphanage workers had expected, and I ran away after a few days, winding up at the orphanage once again, but a few orders of magnitude more reclusive and scarred than before. For several months afterward, I harbored a horrible phobia of all single men, and even the nice men who worked at the orphanage were unable to get near me before I would start crying and promising to be good. The women took pity on me and were gentle with me, fending off the other children who came to mock me for the scars I'd received on my arms and slowly developing chest.
About two years after that incident, another sexually abusive family adopted me; only this time it was a couple. They returned me, bruised and broken, to the orphanage after about two weeks, claiming I was too weak for the kind of work they needed from me. After that unpleasant occurrence, I tried to be strong, and put up a brave front, not letting anyone behind the walls I built up around myself. I even managed to convince myself that the walls were for my protection, even though I only ended up distancing myself irrevocably from the people who wanted to help me. I resorted to writing morose and depressed poetry, as teenagers were wont to do, and the orphanage workers put it down to hormones.
For that was what had happened to me. Over the space of two years, my childhood had stealthily been robbed away from me, replaced by painstaking womanhood. Although I was not, by a long shot, anything like the girls in the magazines the older girls read, I was pretty in my own way. I was always skinny, a little past the border of anorexic looking, although I ate as much as I could-but the orphanage was a little low on funds. The breasts I had were sorely lacking, a fact I never forgot to complain about to myself, berating myself for burdens that were in no way my fault. Other changes happened and I made the slow journey to becoming a woman.
Around my fifteenth birthday, I was adopted by Lillith, a single woman who lived far from any major "congestion of traffic", as she liked to call them, or urban areas. She was nice enough, and immediately tried to make me welcome. Although she was by no means wealthy, she had funds enough to take care of herself, and she took care of me as well. I was unused to her kind of doting attention, and for the first few months I kept wondering when the catch would show up, but none did. She seemed perfectly content to take care of me in a slightly distant way, and write her books in her home on the border of a forest. It was comforting, after I got used to it, to hear her clacking away at her computer at all hours, and I particularly enjoyed her welcoming my input. After she discovered, to her immense joy, that I shared her love of reading, she put me to the task of editing her writing and giving her my opinion. Although she wasn't a very talented writer, she put her heart into it, and it showed in her writing, and the way her stories flowed.
We sometimes got in fights, but they were quickly resolved most of the time, and we continued on with our lives. I tolerated her friendliness and tried to return it, but I found it difficult to unfreeze my heart after the time I'd put it in a cryogenic sleep, so to speak, after the unfortunate events of my childhood.
Of my biological parents, I remembered little, but something about Lillith always reminded me of the way I felt in the dreams I had about my parents. The blurry, faded images of two people who were very much in love always gave me a warm feeling at the pit of my stomach, and Lillith gave me that kind of feeling. The dreams I had of them were often disjointed and too often, I woke up to quickly to remember anything tangible. But I always remembered the long, beautiful shining locks of black hair and pale skin that I had apparently inherited from my mother, and the bright blue eyes from my father. And somewhat else, a tune, sung in a sweet, clear soprano voice; a lullaby, it seemed, for I always heard it on the border between the waking world and the calm, yet disorganized world of my dreams. And somehow, I knew it was my mother that had sung those notes, sung them to me when I was so young I could hardly remember.
I kept those sparse memories with me always, locking away whatever I could in my heart, so that, in the dark hours before morning, when I sometimes awoke from terrible nightmares in which I revisited the horrors I'd experienced at the hands of my past foster homes, I could reopen the memories like a treasured locket and remember those who had loved me before I was of any worth; who had loved me because I was theirs.
About a year after Lillith adopted me, I noticed a rift growing between us. She grew irritated with my frequent silences, and I grew annoyed by her constant chattering, for I was used to silence. We fought more and more, and the arguments almost always ended with my storming out of the house in a fury, to go sulk in the trees. It was during these fractious times that I learned to climb trees, and recognize many of the flora and fauna that populated the forest. I often spent days alone, wandering the large woods, learning by trial-and-error what I could eat, and what I couldn't. If I got dangerously sick, I always managed to drag myself back to Lillith's house where she would patch me up, all arguments forgotten in her worry over my well-being. And then, as my stubborn nature was wont, I went out again for a few more days. Eventually, I knew every inch of the forest, and I stayed out for almost a week at a time, fending for myself, and the animals grew accustomed to my presence. I could even get birds to land on my hand sometimes, or pet the shy deer that usually bound away at the first scent of danger.
Then I met my Master, and everything changed. I grew sullen and more withdrawn than I'd been in months. I refused to tell Lillith about what I'd done in the forest and she grew worried about me, but I was sixteen, although newly so, and she reckoned that I was old enough to take care of myself. So I trained with Voldemort and I eventually accepted the fact that I really was abnormal, it wasn't just a bunch of orphan children's ostracism of someone with slightly more ascetic tendencies. But my Master seemed pleased by my idiosyncrasy, and I was quite content to please him that way, and by learning everything avidly that he had to teach me.
After a few months of training, I came to one of my secret meetings with Voldemort and he told me of his new plan, and what part I was to play in it. He told me about Hogwarts School, and about how it tried to corrupt young witches and wizards into believing that my Master was evil-needless to say, I was shocked. Although I had been put under two Unforgivable curses (I learned this term much later) myself, I still had every reason to believe that I was useful to my Master and that he was doing what was best for the world-and fighting against him when they left the school.
Voldemort told me about the Headmaster, a Professor Dumbledore, with considerable and formidable power. This Dumbledore was a bumbling old fool with too much power in his hands, and he was in charge of the movement against my Master. His front piece was a boy named Harry Potter, who, due to an insane amount of luck, had almost defeated my Master in a battle of wills several times over. This Harry Potter was not only an obnoxious, powerless boy, but also, incidentally, the person I was to befriend. Voldemort described his strategy to me; I was to make friends with Potter and behave like an innocent girl, but when the time came and my Master gave the signal, I would lure him away from the considerable safety of Hogwarts ground, and out into a space where Voldemort could kill him and be rid of him. Dumbledore was sure to come out to try to save Potter, and Voldemort would finish him off as well, at which time, the defenses around Hogwarts would ostensibly fail and my Master's fleet of loyal Death Eaters would descend upon the school, rooting out those loyal to Voldemort and cull the rest.
I had grinned in anticipation of the plan. My part was obviously important, for I was the bait for the famous Harry Potter, and I would be the one to laugh as he died, for he was the keystone of my Master's plans. Excited as I was to get to Hogwarts, a small part of me, that I tried to squash, told me that what I was doing was wrong, and that I should feel guilty. But I told myself that my Master was the important one, and I was doing this for him, so he would be pleased with me. And yet my conscience persisted to bother me, popping up at inopportune times, like when I sat on a swing in the backyard of Lillith's house and pondered the plan ahead of me.
My conscience would tell me that murder in cold blood was a horrible crime, and ask me what I would do with myself afterwards. As it was a question I couldn't answer, I pushed it to the back of my mind, but other questions full of doubt and guilt would fill its place. What if Potter wasn't as bad as Voldemort told me he was? What if I really ended up being friends with my quarry? What if I failed at the crucial moment? And even if everything worked according to plan, what would happen with Dumbledore? According to Voldemort, even though the old wizard was senile, he had a tremendous amount of magic at his control, and as I thought about it, I wasn't completely sure my Master could defeat him.but I pushed these thoughts out of my mind and tried to imagine what Hogwarts would be like.
And soon enough, the day of the plan rolled around. That morning, I told Lillith that I would be gone for a while, having "discovered a new place to explore" and I informed her that I expected to be gone for a month at least. If longer, I told her not to worry, for I was probably settled happily with my own colony of birds to do my evil bidding. She laughed and gave me permission-not that I needed it, and we both knew it-and I left, heading immediately for the clearing where I met Voldemort each time. He was there waiting for me and we went over the plan one more time, and then he handed me a Portkey that would take me to the fringes of the Forbidden Forest.
I felt a lurching feeling and something hooked itself around my bellybutton and I was whisked away. I opened my eyes again to find myself lying on the ground at the edge of an unfamiliar forest. As I stood, the foreboding feelings I got from it were enough to make me shiver, but I gritted my teeth and strode into the forest. Using all the skills I'd carefully acquired over the past year, I found my way through most of the woods. Suddenly, I became aware of something watching me. Whirling, I looked behind me in vain; there was nothing I could see, even with my unnaturally sharp eyes. I shivered and turned around, walking a few more steps before I heard something behind me. This time I was sure there was something there, but I tried to keep walking.
Again, I heard it, a light clopping of hooves maybe a few feet behind me. I whirled again, to be confronted with one of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen. Towering above me was what I'd learned from my Master to be a centaur. A good seven or eight feet tall, the half man half horse stomped it's hooves and looked down at me in mild curiosity and a bit of annoyance. I froze, petrified, as it asked me repeatedly who I was and what I was doing in the Forbidden Forest. When I didn't answer, it seemed to grow very angry, and glowered down at me, warning me.
After watching me, it seemed to decided that I was an intruder. With a sharp, echoing whistle, it began advancing on me. With each of its forward steps, I took a step backward, but it seemed to always be gaining on me. Finally it stood right in front of me, fists clenched, and I heard more hooves around me. Turning in a frantic circle, I discovered to my horror that while I had been terrified by the one centaur, at least five others had come from other directions and surrounded me. They all had the same angry expression on their faces, and I supposed that the fact that I was intruder had been passed on, and they were here to kill me.
They came at me with hooves, pounding me in turn, and keeping me from escaping by keeping me always within the circle. I tried to dodge as much as I could, but they were horribly accurate with their hooves and I heard at least one snap as my arm broke. I could feel blood flowing freely down my face as I looked around between blows, desperately trying to find a way out. Finally, I found an opening and dashed out, using all the speed I could muster, clutching my arm to my chest. The centaurs made to follow me, and I put on another burst of speed, finally making it out of the Forest. I fell to the ground, unable to go any further, convinced that the centaurs would be upon me in a second, to squash me into the ground. But instead of the terribly death I expected, I heard them cursing at the edge of the forest. I looked up slowly, struggling to see through my quickly blackening vision, and saw that the six centaurs were standing at the edge of the Forest, looking very angry, although it looked to me like they couldn't pass the edge.
I tried to stand, and finally managed to do so with great difficulty. Looking around my surroundings, I saw that I had emerged from the forest right near what appeared to be a huge castle. I recognized it to be Hogwarts, just barely, and stumbled forward, landing on the steps leading up to the great doors. The steps were rough and painful on my knees as I struggled up them. I'd never realized that it was possible to have so many steps in one place, but finally I made it to the top and just barely managed to hit the door weakly with my fist before I blacked out.
The next thing I could remember, I was in the hospital wing with my arm in a sling and my leg in an enormous amount of pain, though the blood and dirt seemed to have been thoroughly scrubbed off my body. When I opened my eyes to assess the damage done, I noticed that someone was in the curtained-off area.
And after that point, I could remember everything quite clearly, I mused as I sat in the comfortable armchair in the secluded corner of the library. And now, I had to separate Harry from Ron and Hermione, and when the time came, I would need an excuse to get him out of Hogwarts. But that wasn't something to worry about now, I decided, as I got to my feet and walked back to the infirmary. Voldemort would make sure everything happened exactly as it should. Of that I was certain.
I sat in the library by myself the evening after my first visit to the library. This time, I was alone, Hermione having finally convinced her study-disinclined friends (see: Harry and Ron) to study for the many tests the students were plied with. I had found a distant corner of the library with a comfortable armchair and enough light to read by, and I was happy. Just a few minutes prior, I had found a terribly interesting book on the history of the Dark Arts. I was reading it to check over the author's facts, and so far, it seemed pretty accurate.
Around me, but at a polite distance, other Hogwarts students went about their business, studying, talking quietly (thanks to Madam Pince's watchful eyes), or reading. None of them even thought to go near me, I was an oddity that they preferred to inspect from a distance. I was not something to be worried about, or avoided, like some of the more troublesome students, since I was obviously favored by Harry Potter. But I was too detached from their every-day lives to be befriended; they were all convinced we had nothing in common. I supposed my first impression might have had something to do with that-most of the students had seen me being carried to the hospital wing, or that's what I remembered, being only slightly conscious at the time. Considering the way I'd looked patched up, I must have been a sight at the beginning. But now, the scars on my arms, legs, and back were healing, and yet no one would approach me. I must admit, even during my times of isolation when I'd lived in foster homes, I had never felt this lonely. To be around so many witches and wizards, like myself, and to have none of them want anything to do with me; it hurt. All except Harry Potter, of course.
I had hoped to be friends with Harry's almost-constant companions, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. But, after taking one look at me and then at Harry, Ron had set his jaw and stubbornly refused to give me another glance. Hermione had tried to be friendly, but the three of them were obviously very close and had a penchant for finishing each other's sentences, and she soon gave up on me when she realized that I didn't really belong with them. Harry seemed quit oblivious to his friends' dislike for me-both covert and overt, and he was perfectly content to spend time with either faction.
As I pondered their friendship, and the obvious strength the ties gave Harry, I began to compare it to my life before Hogwarts and Voldemort.
I had gone through too many foster homes to count. Many of the first had been rich couples with too much money and too few children to spend it on. I hadn't been.spoiled, exactly-I stayed for too short a time for that-but I had been treated well. It soon was discovered, however, that despite my faerie-like appearance that was so endearing, I was quite different from other children. It began simply, with little things, like preferring to be alone. I taught myself to read before I could even speak, and would spend hours alone in the huge libraries of my foster parents, poring over huge tomes that I somehow managed to drag to the floor. My guardians, worried by my unnatural behaviour, had tried to invite over other rich little children for me to associate with, but I would always hide behind my mother's skirts and then, as soon as the adults went off to talk alone, I would scamper off to the library to continue reading some book or other.
Eventually, each home decided I was too much to handle for them, inexperienced parents as they were, and I would be shipped off to another foster home. After a few years like this, by the time I was about eight, I had developed a sort of reputation for being odd. The other children at the orphanage that I always returned to had decided that I was too weird for them, and they left me alone when they went outside to play games, or to discuss other childish matters. For that was what I considered them and their feelings-something to immature for me to dabble in. Even as a young child, I always had opinions about things I shouldn't have known about. My reading had expanded my knowledge of the world immensely, and I would creep up to the closed kitchen door in the evenings when the caretakers would listen to the one old radio in there and discuss the things they heard. In this way, I became a rather opinionated girl, and I never hesitated to speak my mind. For a few years at least. As I was a quick learner, I soon discerned that adults didn't want to hear what I thought. They would look at me from their towering heights and down their long noses and smile indulgently, commenting about how sweet I was to think I had any idea what I was talking about.
It annoyed me that no one would listen, but after I while I shut my trap and kept to myself more and more. The years passed, and I began to count important events by the foster homes I ended up in. When I was about twelve, I was adopted by a single man who claimed to want someone to help him out around the house. This "helping" was not quite what the orphanage workers had expected, and I ran away after a few days, winding up at the orphanage once again, but a few orders of magnitude more reclusive and scarred than before. For several months afterward, I harbored a horrible phobia of all single men, and even the nice men who worked at the orphanage were unable to get near me before I would start crying and promising to be good. The women took pity on me and were gentle with me, fending off the other children who came to mock me for the scars I'd received on my arms and slowly developing chest.
About two years after that incident, another sexually abusive family adopted me; only this time it was a couple. They returned me, bruised and broken, to the orphanage after about two weeks, claiming I was too weak for the kind of work they needed from me. After that unpleasant occurrence, I tried to be strong, and put up a brave front, not letting anyone behind the walls I built up around myself. I even managed to convince myself that the walls were for my protection, even though I only ended up distancing myself irrevocably from the people who wanted to help me. I resorted to writing morose and depressed poetry, as teenagers were wont to do, and the orphanage workers put it down to hormones.
For that was what had happened to me. Over the space of two years, my childhood had stealthily been robbed away from me, replaced by painstaking womanhood. Although I was not, by a long shot, anything like the girls in the magazines the older girls read, I was pretty in my own way. I was always skinny, a little past the border of anorexic looking, although I ate as much as I could-but the orphanage was a little low on funds. The breasts I had were sorely lacking, a fact I never forgot to complain about to myself, berating myself for burdens that were in no way my fault. Other changes happened and I made the slow journey to becoming a woman.
Around my fifteenth birthday, I was adopted by Lillith, a single woman who lived far from any major "congestion of traffic", as she liked to call them, or urban areas. She was nice enough, and immediately tried to make me welcome. Although she was by no means wealthy, she had funds enough to take care of herself, and she took care of me as well. I was unused to her kind of doting attention, and for the first few months I kept wondering when the catch would show up, but none did. She seemed perfectly content to take care of me in a slightly distant way, and write her books in her home on the border of a forest. It was comforting, after I got used to it, to hear her clacking away at her computer at all hours, and I particularly enjoyed her welcoming my input. After she discovered, to her immense joy, that I shared her love of reading, she put me to the task of editing her writing and giving her my opinion. Although she wasn't a very talented writer, she put her heart into it, and it showed in her writing, and the way her stories flowed.
We sometimes got in fights, but they were quickly resolved most of the time, and we continued on with our lives. I tolerated her friendliness and tried to return it, but I found it difficult to unfreeze my heart after the time I'd put it in a cryogenic sleep, so to speak, after the unfortunate events of my childhood.
Of my biological parents, I remembered little, but something about Lillith always reminded me of the way I felt in the dreams I had about my parents. The blurry, faded images of two people who were very much in love always gave me a warm feeling at the pit of my stomach, and Lillith gave me that kind of feeling. The dreams I had of them were often disjointed and too often, I woke up to quickly to remember anything tangible. But I always remembered the long, beautiful shining locks of black hair and pale skin that I had apparently inherited from my mother, and the bright blue eyes from my father. And somewhat else, a tune, sung in a sweet, clear soprano voice; a lullaby, it seemed, for I always heard it on the border between the waking world and the calm, yet disorganized world of my dreams. And somehow, I knew it was my mother that had sung those notes, sung them to me when I was so young I could hardly remember.
I kept those sparse memories with me always, locking away whatever I could in my heart, so that, in the dark hours before morning, when I sometimes awoke from terrible nightmares in which I revisited the horrors I'd experienced at the hands of my past foster homes, I could reopen the memories like a treasured locket and remember those who had loved me before I was of any worth; who had loved me because I was theirs.
About a year after Lillith adopted me, I noticed a rift growing between us. She grew irritated with my frequent silences, and I grew annoyed by her constant chattering, for I was used to silence. We fought more and more, and the arguments almost always ended with my storming out of the house in a fury, to go sulk in the trees. It was during these fractious times that I learned to climb trees, and recognize many of the flora and fauna that populated the forest. I often spent days alone, wandering the large woods, learning by trial-and-error what I could eat, and what I couldn't. If I got dangerously sick, I always managed to drag myself back to Lillith's house where she would patch me up, all arguments forgotten in her worry over my well-being. And then, as my stubborn nature was wont, I went out again for a few more days. Eventually, I knew every inch of the forest, and I stayed out for almost a week at a time, fending for myself, and the animals grew accustomed to my presence. I could even get birds to land on my hand sometimes, or pet the shy deer that usually bound away at the first scent of danger.
Then I met my Master, and everything changed. I grew sullen and more withdrawn than I'd been in months. I refused to tell Lillith about what I'd done in the forest and she grew worried about me, but I was sixteen, although newly so, and she reckoned that I was old enough to take care of myself. So I trained with Voldemort and I eventually accepted the fact that I really was abnormal, it wasn't just a bunch of orphan children's ostracism of someone with slightly more ascetic tendencies. But my Master seemed pleased by my idiosyncrasy, and I was quite content to please him that way, and by learning everything avidly that he had to teach me.
After a few months of training, I came to one of my secret meetings with Voldemort and he told me of his new plan, and what part I was to play in it. He told me about Hogwarts School, and about how it tried to corrupt young witches and wizards into believing that my Master was evil-needless to say, I was shocked. Although I had been put under two Unforgivable curses (I learned this term much later) myself, I still had every reason to believe that I was useful to my Master and that he was doing what was best for the world-and fighting against him when they left the school.
Voldemort told me about the Headmaster, a Professor Dumbledore, with considerable and formidable power. This Dumbledore was a bumbling old fool with too much power in his hands, and he was in charge of the movement against my Master. His front piece was a boy named Harry Potter, who, due to an insane amount of luck, had almost defeated my Master in a battle of wills several times over. This Harry Potter was not only an obnoxious, powerless boy, but also, incidentally, the person I was to befriend. Voldemort described his strategy to me; I was to make friends with Potter and behave like an innocent girl, but when the time came and my Master gave the signal, I would lure him away from the considerable safety of Hogwarts ground, and out into a space where Voldemort could kill him and be rid of him. Dumbledore was sure to come out to try to save Potter, and Voldemort would finish him off as well, at which time, the defenses around Hogwarts would ostensibly fail and my Master's fleet of loyal Death Eaters would descend upon the school, rooting out those loyal to Voldemort and cull the rest.
I had grinned in anticipation of the plan. My part was obviously important, for I was the bait for the famous Harry Potter, and I would be the one to laugh as he died, for he was the keystone of my Master's plans. Excited as I was to get to Hogwarts, a small part of me, that I tried to squash, told me that what I was doing was wrong, and that I should feel guilty. But I told myself that my Master was the important one, and I was doing this for him, so he would be pleased with me. And yet my conscience persisted to bother me, popping up at inopportune times, like when I sat on a swing in the backyard of Lillith's house and pondered the plan ahead of me.
My conscience would tell me that murder in cold blood was a horrible crime, and ask me what I would do with myself afterwards. As it was a question I couldn't answer, I pushed it to the back of my mind, but other questions full of doubt and guilt would fill its place. What if Potter wasn't as bad as Voldemort told me he was? What if I really ended up being friends with my quarry? What if I failed at the crucial moment? And even if everything worked according to plan, what would happen with Dumbledore? According to Voldemort, even though the old wizard was senile, he had a tremendous amount of magic at his control, and as I thought about it, I wasn't completely sure my Master could defeat him.but I pushed these thoughts out of my mind and tried to imagine what Hogwarts would be like.
And soon enough, the day of the plan rolled around. That morning, I told Lillith that I would be gone for a while, having "discovered a new place to explore" and I informed her that I expected to be gone for a month at least. If longer, I told her not to worry, for I was probably settled happily with my own colony of birds to do my evil bidding. She laughed and gave me permission-not that I needed it, and we both knew it-and I left, heading immediately for the clearing where I met Voldemort each time. He was there waiting for me and we went over the plan one more time, and then he handed me a Portkey that would take me to the fringes of the Forbidden Forest.
I felt a lurching feeling and something hooked itself around my bellybutton and I was whisked away. I opened my eyes again to find myself lying on the ground at the edge of an unfamiliar forest. As I stood, the foreboding feelings I got from it were enough to make me shiver, but I gritted my teeth and strode into the forest. Using all the skills I'd carefully acquired over the past year, I found my way through most of the woods. Suddenly, I became aware of something watching me. Whirling, I looked behind me in vain; there was nothing I could see, even with my unnaturally sharp eyes. I shivered and turned around, walking a few more steps before I heard something behind me. This time I was sure there was something there, but I tried to keep walking.
Again, I heard it, a light clopping of hooves maybe a few feet behind me. I whirled again, to be confronted with one of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen. Towering above me was what I'd learned from my Master to be a centaur. A good seven or eight feet tall, the half man half horse stomped it's hooves and looked down at me in mild curiosity and a bit of annoyance. I froze, petrified, as it asked me repeatedly who I was and what I was doing in the Forbidden Forest. When I didn't answer, it seemed to grow very angry, and glowered down at me, warning me.
After watching me, it seemed to decided that I was an intruder. With a sharp, echoing whistle, it began advancing on me. With each of its forward steps, I took a step backward, but it seemed to always be gaining on me. Finally it stood right in front of me, fists clenched, and I heard more hooves around me. Turning in a frantic circle, I discovered to my horror that while I had been terrified by the one centaur, at least five others had come from other directions and surrounded me. They all had the same angry expression on their faces, and I supposed that the fact that I was intruder had been passed on, and they were here to kill me.
They came at me with hooves, pounding me in turn, and keeping me from escaping by keeping me always within the circle. I tried to dodge as much as I could, but they were horribly accurate with their hooves and I heard at least one snap as my arm broke. I could feel blood flowing freely down my face as I looked around between blows, desperately trying to find a way out. Finally, I found an opening and dashed out, using all the speed I could muster, clutching my arm to my chest. The centaurs made to follow me, and I put on another burst of speed, finally making it out of the Forest. I fell to the ground, unable to go any further, convinced that the centaurs would be upon me in a second, to squash me into the ground. But instead of the terribly death I expected, I heard them cursing at the edge of the forest. I looked up slowly, struggling to see through my quickly blackening vision, and saw that the six centaurs were standing at the edge of the Forest, looking very angry, although it looked to me like they couldn't pass the edge.
I tried to stand, and finally managed to do so with great difficulty. Looking around my surroundings, I saw that I had emerged from the forest right near what appeared to be a huge castle. I recognized it to be Hogwarts, just barely, and stumbled forward, landing on the steps leading up to the great doors. The steps were rough and painful on my knees as I struggled up them. I'd never realized that it was possible to have so many steps in one place, but finally I made it to the top and just barely managed to hit the door weakly with my fist before I blacked out.
The next thing I could remember, I was in the hospital wing with my arm in a sling and my leg in an enormous amount of pain, though the blood and dirt seemed to have been thoroughly scrubbed off my body. When I opened my eyes to assess the damage done, I noticed that someone was in the curtained-off area.
And after that point, I could remember everything quite clearly, I mused as I sat in the comfortable armchair in the secluded corner of the library. And now, I had to separate Harry from Ron and Hermione, and when the time came, I would need an excuse to get him out of Hogwarts. But that wasn't something to worry about now, I decided, as I got to my feet and walked back to the infirmary. Voldemort would make sure everything happened exactly as it should. Of that I was certain.