Assassin
Chapter 7: The Wizengamot
By Raquel
Jordan couldn't breath, couldn't think, couldn't move. Her whole being was consumed with the icy white fog she'd lived in for more than a month, and it filled her lungs, her brain, and her bones. The Dementor stood over her, face hidden by folds of blackness that seemed darker against the white inside her head. It had fed upon her soul, picked over her emotions until there was nothing left.
Nothing.
She was so wasted; so very thin and so rotted emotionally that she couldn't even feel the frigid fingers of fear that were clawing at her throat. Jordan watched blankly at the hooded head bent down to hers, as though it were going to whisper in her ear or brush a lover's lips against her own colorless ones. Somewhere in the void that her soul stretched across, like the filaments of a spider's web, a voice began to murmur, echoing in the hollowness.
"I didn't do nothing wrong I just did what I was told I was good I did like they said I didn't do nothing wrong I was good I was a good girl sir."
The voice hesitated as the Dementor's breath touched her face, whispering across her forehead. The folds of black cloth it wore had a curious smell, sweet and foul in one, the scent of something that has died long ago. The Dementor was pulpy inside its robes, as decomposed as month-old meat. It put one of its soft, rotten hands in her hair and pulled her head backwards so that her neck was stretched and she was looking towards the heavens.
She saw a star fall.
"I was good I just did what I was told I didn't do nothing wrong I was a good girl...I was a...a..."
The voice quivered and then began again, slightly stronger.
"I didn't do nothing wrong! I was told to, but I disobeyed, and that was right! I was told...but I didn't...do...it."
The Dementor's rotten, lipless mouth closed on hers.
Jordan screamed and sat up, her own hands caught in her hair and tears wet on her face. She felt her mouth, ran her hands over her bony ribcages as though she might check to see if her soul was still there. It was too much, too much to have these dreams every time she closed her eyes. Satisfied that it had been a nightmare, she relaxed against her slab of a bed and wiped her tears with her Azkaban robes.
The dreams had gotten worse lately, as her birthday approached. Soon the day would come when she was eighteen, and when that day came she would be put to trial as an adult. When that day came, she would most certainly be put to death.
Dui had come. Jordan couldn't remember when: Azkaban had eroded her sense of time.
He had spoken quickly and without much feeling, but she knew he was upset. She remembered the shudder in his voice as he told her what her fate was to be if the courts found her guilty, remembered the fall of his hair as he tried to hide from her in plain sight. Her mind presented her with the image of a hand clutching a forearm in a grip that looked painful as he told her about her choices once she'd been found guilty.
It was left up to her, in the end. She could choose life and the Dementors and their rotten kisses. Or she could choose the headsman and merciful death.
Admittedly Jordan preferred the latter. She had no wish to lose her soul inside the pulpy mouth of a Dementor for she had already seen it happen in countless dreams. It may have been the weariness of Azkaban speaking, but she thought a headsman sounded fantastic: a nice change after the monotony of Azkaban.
But was it right?
She wrapped her arm-bones around her leg-bones and hunched over her ribs until she was nothing more than a ball of skin and sinew and bleach-white bones. "I did not do it," she whispered. "I shouldn't be here for what I didn't do."
The problem was that Jordan was having more and more trouble remembering what she'd been charged with. The white fog that had once protected her from the Dementors had begun to nibble away her memories and her sane mind. She was left with an undesirable choice: open her mind to the horrors of her past that Dementors drove to the surface or let herself go mad, lost in icy white fog forever. One of her emaciated fingers found its way to her mouth, the knuckles huge compared to the bones. With palpable concentration she gnawed on her fingernail, summoning up the grit for her decision.
A Dementor swept by, trailing its reek of rotting flesh. It was funny how she'd not noticed their stench so much at the beginning of her imprisonment, just as she had not noticed the evil of her master before it was too late. Jordan barely felt its presence as it paused outside her cells, sucking at the air as though testing her heath. She had no more emotions left; all that she had was the cold calculation of her own death, and that was unappetizing to a creature that fed on hope and happiness and all good things.
Her emaciated body wearied and she lay down again, hoping that this sleep would bring merciful death and no thoughts of the sweet stench of a Dementor's breath. Jordan tried to roll over but failed, and this effort brought with it powerful sorrow that made the Dementor outside the cell breathe more deeply. She was too exhausted to live, and the last thought in her head was that at least she would not have to look at Fudge again.
The thoughts in her head were feeling ironic. Her dreams were full of her fall from all graces, the morning after she had done—whatever it was she had done.
"There she is!" Snape sneered. "Albus Dumbledore's murderer!" He spat at Jordan, as though the very thought of her disgusted him. Jordan hoped it did. At the moment, she was feeling fairly lousy about what she had done herself.
"You don't, don't understand!" Jordan said, her very breath quavering. "I- I didn't want to!" She sobbed. "It wasn't my idea! He," She pointed at Snape. "He doesn't know, know the whole story!"
"Then why don't you enlighten us, dear girl. We would all like to hear your engorged version of the truth before the Dementers suck your soul from your body," Snape's hooked nose leered in front of Jordan's face, his menacing voice pulled at her anger.
Fudge, who had been seated, replied to this. "Jordan Marvolo, none of us even knew of your existence. We know nothing of where you are from, who you were raised by, nothing. Allowing you to attend Hogwarts for your seventh year, although you have demonstrated a level of potion-brewing ability far below her level-" Snape glared at her. "You have been considered an exceptional student. Though you have pushed the corners of some envelopes, as many other students have done in previous years, nothing, I repeat, NOTHING has ever come up that ever endangered the Headmaster. Dumbledore was a notorious wizard. And he was rumored to be the only person feared by You-Know-Who. The good Lord rest his soul." Fudge bowed his head, as if in prayer. "The person who killed him must be prosecuted." His stern eyes rested on Jordan. "Poppy, Severus, if you don't mind, I'd prefer it if you left the, um, room. Miss Marvolo and I need to talk." Snape's protests were aborted by Fudge's upraised hand.
Once they left, Cornelius' Fudge's eyes came to rest on Jordan once more. "Miss Marvolo, are you aware of the consequences that are given to a person acquitted of murder? If you aren't, I will gladly tell you. Three years in Azkaban, and then a Dementor's Kiss. It hardly seems worth the risk, doesn't it?"
"Get up, get up!" someone half-shouted in her ear, pushing at her bony shoulders until she gave a raspy moan. "If you aren't up you'll be late!"
Jordan couldn't sit up properly by herself so the person propped her up and began jerking a comb through her knotted hair. "Late?" she asked blearily, aware that her face was crusty with tears and snot and that there was a pain in her belly from not enough food and her head ached it ached it ached.
"For your trial," said a deep male voice she recognized. She lifted her eyelids with a Herculean effort and peered at the dark hair, at the sallow skin, at the eyes that understood.
"Dui," she murmured in greeting. "I dreamt about you, but you were angry with me," she said in a singsong voice, shaking her head slowly. "So very, very angry, but I didn't do it sir, I swear it." The person holding her upright released their grip and Jordan slumped sideways.
"Jordan? Do you remember what you're being brought to trial for?" Snape pushed her up again and held onto her shoulders so tightly that her bones creaked. "Jordan, look at me."
She met his eyes and remembered. "Dumbledore," she said after a little thought. Snape nodded grimly as the woman who had come with him handed Jordan proper robes. "I didn't kill him, I swear it."
"I believe you," he said, and it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard. Jordan was so pleased that she leaned forward and kissed his wrinkled forehead with her thin lips. "Get a hold on yourself," he said, but she could tell that he didn't mind.
"I feel better already," she told him, "but I don't know what I ought to say."
"To the court?" Snape released her shoulders and turned his back as the strange woman stood Jordan up and stripped her of her ragged robes. She made a disapproving noise.
"I'm going to have a talk with the Ministry about this," she said sourly, gesturing at Jordan's swaying frame. "I can see her stomach growling." Jordan looked down, saw ribs and hips sharp enough to hang things on covered in translucent white flesh. Experimentally she rapped her knuckles against her pelvic bones and giggled at the clacking they made. The woman made an indignant noise and dropped the robes over her head.
Jordan peered at them, noting that they were not black. She supposed that if she wore black she would look like a stick figure, though her arms and legs were skinny enough to be grotesque. They were brown, a rich brown, with tiny gold vines around the low neckline and sleeves. The fabric felt familiar.
"Come on," said Snape as the woman scrubbed a cloth across Jordan's grubby face. Too tired to protest, she followed Snape outside her cell. Her feet were very sensitive for she was so thin that her body had devoured the fleshy pads at their bottoms. Jordan hobbled behind until Snape growled a curse and swept her into his arms. He nearly overbalanced: he had expected her to weigh more. "Jesus," he swore, "she can't be more than eighty pounds."
Jordan was about to contradict him when suddenly she got even lighter.
A sky exploded before her eyes, rosy pink and swirling clouds. It was indoors, and a girl—Elia—was standing next to her and telling her that Rowena Ravenclaw herself had enchanted it. There were people there that she liked, and she saw her kitten, Namir, and decent food and decent people and not a Dementor in sight.
She remembered Hogwarts—remembered Harry—remembered herself. For an instant she saw herself as she had looked the night of the Yule Ball, a pretty girl with dark hair and wide brown eyes, wearing robes trimmed with tiny gold vines. Jordan looked at her knees and saw her Yule Ball robes.
"Why am I wearing these?" she asked in surprise. "I'm going to a trial, not a party." The air around her was cold and salty, and though it was what had surrounded her for a whole month, it had never tasted better. Suddenly the feelings of happiness became too intense and she leaned against Snape's black robes, letting him support her as he had when she was a very small child. "It's not fair," she muttered.
"Life generally isn't," Snape replied tightly. His voice echoed up through his ribs into Jordan's ear.
"No, I mean that I'm going off to my execution right after I remembered what it feels like to be happy." She sighed, her eyes dry. "I suppose it's good to end life on a high note."
They got into the boat that had transported her to Azkaban so many weeks ago, where the woman and Snape sat Jordan down and proceeded to feed her. She ate hungrily, enjoying the tastes and memories that came with each one. It wasn't until she'd finished that she thought of last meals on death row and felt the good food turn to lead in her stomach as they rode the waves towards Scotland.
After six weeks in a fortress surrounded by inane babble and piercing screams, the pedestrian chatter of Muggle London seemed almost too bubbly and lighthearted to Jordan as she was marched down to the Ministry by Snape and the woman (who, during their trip, had revealed she was an Auror and would gladly kill Jordan for her work in Albus Dumbledore's death if she didn't fancy the headsman. Jordan kept as much distance as she could between them).
They went into the Ministry through a secret entrance that was reserved for prisoners. It was normal for the prisoners and their guards to take a Portkey or some other, more secure method of travel than walking through Muggle London, but since Jordan was considered far too mad to be dangerous to anyone but herself she was taken on foot with only two guards. Snape explained that this was a good sign as they walked, because under wizard law the mad could not be executed, only imprisoned.
The room she was to wait in was naked stone without any chairs, just an iron chandelier and several guarding spells that glimmered on the doors. One was locked and led to the exit. The other was waiting for her, the door to the courtroom. Snape was in there now, testifying before the Wizengamot.
Jordan was shaking. She had been in worse situations than this, she supposed, but those had involved Voldemort, someone she could almost understand or at least predict. Behind that door were the people who would decide her fate, people she didn't know, and also people who only knew that she'd been in the presence of Albus Dumbledore at the moment of his death.
They thought that she had done it. No one could accept that Dumbledore could have just died like a normal person.
During her three hours waiting in the room, she had the thought that if Dumbledore was far too great to die of old age, how could a shaky teenage girl have killed him? Then she remembered that they knew that she was nearly a Death Eater, and that Voldemort had trained her indirectly. That cinched that argument.
Then she thought about Dui—Snape, she must remember to call him Snape in front of the Wizengamot—and what he was saying. He had never told her what he planned to say, though Jordan rather thought that he was going to stick up for her. It would be difficult, she thought, considering that he only saw the dead Dumbledore with Jordan and only had her word that the curse excised from her wand by the Prior Incantato had been fired at him and not at Dumbledore.
And Voldemort—where was he? Jordan realized that she'd not done a great job of killing anyone, having failed with Harry Potter and Dumbledore, but she thought that he would at least put in an appearance. It was in his dramatic nature, to make sure that everyone knew of Jordan's connections with him. He had said more than once that he would kill her (if the Aurors didn't get her first) if she failed, but she had, to all appearances, succeeded. Shouldn't he save her then?
No. She was stupid to think that he would risk anything to get her out of this mess. Jordan was on her own.
The door opened, and Jordan blinked at the light.
"Go on," the Auror said, giving her a poke with her wand.
Trembling from head to foot, Jordan took her first steps into the room and faced the Wizengamot.
Note II: The large section in italics was a flashback written by my former co-author, Graciela, who may or may not still be writing...you could check and see if you've got excess time.
Note III: Review! lol I'm so subtle...