The Spy
"Nemo unquam sapiens proditori credendum putavit. - No wise man ever thought that a traitor should be trusted." (Cicero: Orationes in Verrem. II, I, 15
Lucius Malfoy was bored. It was Thursday again, and he had now spent an entire week at St. Mungo's. Even snarling at the nurses didn't lift his spirits any more and he gloomily stared at the ceiling. If one gazed long enough at the rough plaster without blinking, one could imagine one saw the shapes of dragons, griffins, and other grotesque magical creatures.
However, after an hour that game, too, got boring; and the nurses seemed to avoid him now when they could. He looked around the small sickroom. On his nightstand lay a crumpled-up, lightly blood-spattered copy of the Daily Prophet which he had read earlier from front to back – twice. On top of it sat a metal spitting-bowl. The mere thought of blood these days nauseated him and he had decided that the most hideous fate that could possibly befall anyone would be getting turned into a vampire.
He had to admit to himself that with the help of the antidote he had made some progress over the last few days. Apart from the occasional and rather spectacular nosebleed his veins and arteries generally held together again. He only had to take one daily dose of the disgusting leucographus elixir to counteract a mild case of anemia, and even his bed-sheets didn't look any more as if someone had been ripped apart in them by a mountain troll.
Lucius stretched, reached for a small brass bell on his bedside table and rang it. A minute or so later a nurse clad in lime-green robes stuck her head into the room. Behind her he could see the shadowy silhouettes of two aurors that stood guard before his room.
"Yes, Mr. Malfoy," the rather irritated nurse said. "What is it now?"
He suppressed a smirk. "I would like some tea and some apples, if that's not too much to ask."
"Mr. Malfoy, I told you before, I'm a medical professional, not your house elf. There are meal times at this hospital. In the meantime I can bring you some water."
"My dear girl," said Lucius with deceptive gentleness, "if you were my house elf, you would know it; I can assure you of that. As a matter of fact, you would be acutely aware of it, after you had dared to give me that kind of an answer. Surely the medical bill I am running up here each day is keeping you and half of the staff on the payroll. So be a little darling and get me my tea and apples, before I have a word with Dr. Septimus about your most unprofessional bout of flirting with one of the aurors yesterday. Mr. McNulty, wasn't it?"
The nurse huffed in frustration, but did not dare to aggravate her patient more. "Fine, tea and apples," she muttered and shut the door behind her with more force than was strictly necessary.
Lucius smoothed his long slender hands over his sheets and smirked to himself thinking about what else he could do to make his attendant's life miserable.
Just then one of the aurors poked his head into the room. "Professor Sartorius here to see you," he said.
"Thanks," replied Lucius sternly, "By the way, do you think it would be too much to ask of you to be polite enough to actually knock the next time round before you open this door?"
The auror merely rolled his eyes and ushered the visitor inside.
"I see you are working hard already at making friends, Lucius," she laughed. "You must feel so much better. In fact, you do look quite well!"
He stretched out his hands in greeting and smiled back as she stepped up to his bed, hugged and kissed him and then sat down at his side on the mattress. He kept his fingers entwined with hers and looked at her. She was wearing reddish-brown slim silk pants, matching tailored, knee-long robes with a subtle gold-brocade appliqué and a black velvet-trim cloak. Her hair looked quite endearingly wind-mussed and he stroked a few stray strands out of her face.
"You rode here," he said, shaking his head.
"Well, this infernal rain has finally stopped, and it's actually quite nice and sunny outside. I wanted to be out on a broom for a while. I still need to get yesterday's nightmare out of my head."
Lucius compressed his lips as he remembered. Eleanor had come to visit him the day before and had appeared visibly shaken by the Dark Lord's legilimency invasion of her dreams. She had told him about her mirror research and her vision of Voldemort, and her story had him quite worried.
Still, she had assured him that while the intruder had been able to uncover much of her knowledge about the Mirror of Battle, she had not revealed any clues about her ancestry. Her relation to Desiderius Wermuth was still not known to anyone but them.
He had eventually managed to reassure her that his former master had probably ended up about as wise as he had been before. After all, Lucius had freely shared his knowledge about Wermuth's creation when he had researched it for him. But Voldemort would still believe that the mirror was unattainable.
"Don't worry about it, dear," he told her again. "If you are really nervous about him finding out more, you could always use a pensieve to store your memories of the mirror before you go to sleep. There's one in my study in the large cupboard by the left window. It may still have one or two of my father's more unpleasant memories floating around in it, but you can delete those."
She nodded and ran her fingers over the backs of his hands. "So did Dr. Septimus talk to you this morning?"
Lucius' lips twitched briefly in annoyance. "Yes, at six o'clock, if you would believe it. No decent witch or wizard should even be awake at that hour. They wake you at five here, when the night-shift goes out, the doctors visit at six or seven, then it's breakfast, which is more to dread than to look forward to – and then they leave you till lunch-time. I'm more terribly bored than I have ever been in my entire life! They could at least let you sleep."
Eleanor tried not to smirk at the petulant tone that had crept into his voice. It didn't surprise her that he did not make a good patient. She was secretly glad that the hospital staff had to endure his moods rather than her and some house-elves back at the Manor.
"So, what did he say?" she asked.
"Well, he seems more optimistic, thinks I can probably leave the day after tomorrow if I'm able to keep all my blood where it's supposed to be. So far I seem to be down to one nosebleed a day. I'm sick and tired of it!"
Just then a nurse entered, carrying a tray that she set down on the bedside table. She acknowledged Eleanor and Lucius with a curt nod that seemed to imply that they had at some point killed and possibly eaten a member of her immediate family and vanished with a huffy swirl of her robes.
"What's gotten into her?" asked Eleanor as she leaned over to fill a cup of tea for her lover.
Lucius shrugged his shoulders and looked at her in bland innocence. "Beats me," he told her. "They are all this cheerful here. And to think that between Narcissa's charity work and my donations we've pretty much kept the whole damn place funded for the past few years… Bloody waste of effort."
For a little while they sat together, Lucius propped up against some pillows, she perched on the mattress of the bed, munching on apples, drinking tea from his cup and talking about nothing much in particular.
Eleanor told him about her plans for the Defense workshop later that day and about the progress she had made with her research into the Mirror of Battle. She allowed herself the luxury of the pretense that everything was going to be all right, and studiously avoided talking about the dangers that still surrounded them and about the poison incident that was now exactly a week old.
Just to see him slowly restored to health seemed enough for the time being. His icy-grey eyes were clear again, his face and hair washed and without any telltale stains, and the coppery-sweet odor of blood that had surrounded him on every one of her previous visits seemed to have finally faded. With a smile of relief she leaned in to kiss him and felt his arms surround her with his customary strength as he pulled her down to him.
The Silver Hall was illuminated by magically suspended candles this time. Mindful of the accident with the chandeliers the last time round, Eleanor had taken precautions. She now watched the arrival of her students setting out the last few props she needed for tonight's workshop. Marigold and Woollett stood over by the family tree mural, talking to each other. Two female aurors seemed to compare wands. Several people practiced warm-up spells and Libby and Nibbs scuttled back and forth between the front gate and the south wing to guide new visitors through the wards.
Eventually Eleanor counted all sixteen of her students and called the workshop to order. "As I advised you earlier this week, we will be practicing some legilimency tonight. I hope you have all come prepared. As you are aware, You-Know-Who is one of the most powerful practitioners of this art alive today, and in order to defend yourselves, I believe you need to know more than what is provided as part of the current auror training sanctioned by the Ministry of Magic."
Her audience stared at her now. Her words seemed to indicate that she would touch on techniques that the Ministry either felt were unnecessary or that were possibly even forbidden.
"I'm not going to make you do anything illegal," she reassured them. "But over the next few sessions we will deal with legilimency as well as occlumency. For example, you can't always rely on Veritaserum. What do you do if you have a suspect, who might lie to you and you do not have a warrant to use potion on him?"
People started offering up answers and a rather lively discussion ensued.
"Well, let me show you what I mean," Eleanor finally said. "Mr. Woollett, are you up for a demonstration?"
The young auror appeared rather uncomfortable now, but eventually stepped forward. "What are you going to do?" he asked, licking his lips nervously. If anything he looked rather guilty.
Eleanor felt a sudden stab of suspicion and realized her next words came to her rather unpremeditated. "Mr. Woollett, how about I asked you what you did last Thursday evening while you were here, and you try to lie to me?"
Woollett swallowed. "O-okay," he stammered. "L-last Thursday." He concentrated and tentatively began to speak, avoiding Eleanor's gaze.
She had an odd, weightless feeling in the pit of her stomach now. The idea had struck her quite suddenly, but had taken a firm hold on her imagination almost immediately. What if Woollett hadn't used the time he had been out of the dueling room for a stroll in the garden? Lucius had been busy suspecting Severus, but they still did not know who the actual poisoner was. Who had really put the exsanguinium on the goblet? It was worth a shot.
"Well, I came here for the workshop. I arrived with Marigold, and we practiced disarming and blasting spells for most of the evening. Unfortunately I got hit by a spell. I fell down, but I wasn't much injured, so I just went and took care of my wound…"
So far this hadn't even been a lie, but as Eleanor concentrated on her student her legilimency had already caught obvious traces of lying: she felt fear and discomfort and probed a little further breaking down the auror's rather weak defenses. Woollett's voice began to change.
"Actually that's not true," he said, sounding slightly slurred as if he was falling into a trance. "I, I can't remember what happened after I got hit. It's all a blank until I was back on the drive-way of the Manor. I'm making everything else up." He stared at her dizzily now.
Eleanor leaned it, capturing his eyes and fully forcing her will on him. She had not meant to bring the young man under her control to this extent, but his confession struck her as very odd. "What do you remember?" she asked. "The truth now!"
He shuddered. "N-nothing. It's all blank from the moment I hit the ground to the moment I left the house."
Just then the witch felt a hand on her arm. She broke off the contact and looked at Marigold who eyed her with concern. "What are you doing?" she asked. "You said 'nothing illegal', but we are not allowed to influence people like that. That is very strong spellwork."
Eleanor drew a deep breath. "You're right. I'm sorry. I went beyond what I wanted to demonstrate." She paused, and met the rather shocked eyes of her students. "Mr. Woollett?"
The young wizard snapped out of his trance.
"Mr. Woollett, my sincere apologies," she said and considered for a moment, then she took Miss Brannock by her sleeve. "Please excuse us a moment," she told the others and drew her former student to the side.
The auror leaned in to catch her urgent whisper. "Marigold, I'm too close to this, and I'm no auror, but I need to ask you to investigate this matter further. What if Lord Voldemort or another Death Eater put an imperius on Mr. Woollett to make him poison Mr. Malfoy? What if he was obliviated? We know the poisoner was someone who was authorized to be on the premises. He was away from the Silver Hall for close to twenty or thirty minutes with no one to account for his whereabouts."
The young witch stared at her. "Great Merlin, you are right!" she gasped. "We could do a detego imperium to check, and there are means to find out if he was obliviated." She straightened and looked back at her colleague. "Leave it to me, Eleanor."
They returned to the group, and Eleanor hung back and let Marigold handle the explanation. After all, checking a possible suspect was auror business.
Mr. Woollett appeared first outraged, then appalled by the suggestion that he might have become Voldemort's unwilling tool, but readily submitted to first an imperius detection spell and then several checks for obliviation – without result.
Eventually Marigold lowered her wand and shook her head. "Nothing," she declared.
An older wizard spoke up. "Well, remember Woollett had a cut over his eye. He may have suffered a mild concussion. That sometimes makes people lose their memories."
Eleanor nodded slowly. "I suppose you may be right."
Woollett sighed with relief, but just then everyone stopped paying attention as the large marble fire-place flared up in lurid green flames and a head appeared, which hollered. "Alarm! Death Eater raid in progress at 64 Blackbird Lane in Newcastle! Ministry authorization for emergency call-up 473/C! Come on guys, we need everybody!"
Immediately everyone exploded in a flurry of activity grabbing wands and cloaks. "Wait," shouted Eleanor. "I'll lift the fire-place wards! You can all floo out from here. Take your floo-powder already – there in the urn on the mantelpiece."
She swiftly incanted the wardbreakers and was almost bodily pushed out of the way by the aurors who now all tried to get through the grate and to the other side to join the battle.
"I don't have my cloak, yet," complained Woollett, but Miss Brannock grabbed him by the collar.
"Never mind, Marius," she hissed. "We can pick it up later." She dragged her protesting colleague into the fire-place. "Sorry 'bout that Eleanor. Wish us luck!" she called, and then the last of the aurors had disappeared in a puff of green smoke.
The quiet in the great hall after the flurry of activities seemed overwhelming as Eleanor leaned against the mantelpiece and summoned her concentration to restore the wards. Tonight's workshop had been rather short and altogether quite disturbing.
She was torn between disappointment in herself for losing control in front of her students like that and invading Mr. Woollett's personal sphere, and frustration at the fruitlessness of her attempts to find the one responsible for poisoning Lucius. For a moment there she had been so sure that the young auror had been hiding a secret instead of just suffering from amnesia due to a blow to the head.
She sighed, turned away from the fireplace and summoned a house elf to help her tidy up the place. As the elf levitated the chandeliers back into position she picked up Woollett's discarded cloak. She considered sending it to London by owl and was just about to put a lightness spell on it, when something round and rather heavy fell out of one of the pockets. It hit the floor with a dull thud and slowly rolled away from her.
Eleanor dropped the robe and walked after it to retrieve it. When she bent down and picked up the object she found she held what looked like a round box carved from black soapstone. Its lid was closed with a delicate steel hinge and clasp and the fall had left a small whitish scuffmark on it.
Curious she twisted it in her hands, considered for a moment and then flipped open the clasp. She knew she should respect the auror's privacy, but somehow her suspicions had not been completely put to rest. As the lid opened she raised her brows in surprise as soft silvery light streamed from the inside of the small bowl, which seemed to be filled with a softly rippling liquid that reminded her of shimmering mercury.
"A portable pensieve," she murmured. She slowly walked over to a low stool, loosening her wand from its sheath and sat down. "What was so important you couldn't keep it in your head when you heard we'd be doing legilimency?"
She stared into the silvery depths of the small basin and moments later she saw the stored memories take shape before her mind's eye. Looking down at her out of slitted red eyes was a face she remembered vividly from her nightmare vision only a day ago.
"Voldemort," she whispered.
The white skeletal face moved and a hissed voice spoke. "You are a faithful servant and have done well. You shall be rewarded with the dark mark when you have fulfilled my will. Now go and kill the warlock who has betrayed me. Take the life of the wizard whom I have trusted above all others and who shamefully revealed our secrets to save his own miserable hide, the wizard who turned traitor to his own noble bloodline."
A towering figure in black robes stretched up before her, and Eleanor felt how Woollett had quailed under its tremendous power and hatred. "Kill me Lucius Malfoy!"
She almost dropped the small pensieve, but then other memories crowded her from the silvery depths: Woollett deliberately stepping in the path of a disarming spell, sneaking down the dark hallways of the Manor, making his way to the dining room using the map he had been given, smearing the poison on the lip of Lucius' monogrammed goblet. It was all there: in every small, incriminating detail.
Marius Woollett was an aspiring Death Eater, planted among the aurors to do the Dark Lord's work, and he had almost succeeded. Eleanor snapped the lid on the stone bowl shut. She had to get word to Marigold and warn her. She had to get Woollett arrested.
Then another thought struck her that made her stomach turn to ice: Woollett had been standing right by the mural that now bore her family line with her ancestry. If he got word to his master about her grandfather, Voldemort would know that he might obtain the Mirror of Battle through her. Not only had she jeopardized her lover's life by trusting the auror, she had now also given the Dark Lord the means to obtain a weapon to destroy them all.
"I have been so stupid!" she gasped, hitting her hand that held the pensieve against her thigh in frustration.
Only if she proved faster than Woollett could she hope to undo some of the damage she had wrought. Her mind made up she shrank the pensieve and slipped it into a pocket in her robes. A few quick spells disabled the wards on the fireplace and grabbing a fistful of floo-powder she called: "64 Blackbird Lane in Newcastle!" Green flames enveloped her as her spell whisked her away.
