The Female of the Species

Chapter 10

Only a handful of people had ever known of this object's existence, and each was in turn sworn to secrecy. Narcissa had been given it by Poniard, a childless uncle on her mother's side of the family, but its true origin was lost in the mists of time. Her uncle had told her as much as he knew, that it had come from an ancestor many years ago. The exact year was unknown, but he had lived during the time of the European Renaissance. He had been a very powerful wizard working with a group of fellow wizards and philosophers, and he had been the Secret Keeper of the object on behalf of their Guild. His name was Jaumes Paradis, and he had lived in a place called Cité des Corbeaux, the City of Ravens, somewhere in the south of France, close to the Italian border: a place that no longer seemed to exist if one consulted modern maps.

The Guild had forged the object, but once it came into existence, they realised that it was far more powerful than ever they had guessed. Some of them wished to destroy it, but even had that been possible, they would have not been allowed to do so by others who wielded greater influence. Some wished to use it to wreak great destruction in order to gain untold power, but were prevented from doing so, because even in their lust and greed they recognised that the consequences of its use were unpredictable, and it may be their final undoing. In the end, Jaumes took the object to the highest turret of the Tour des Anges, the Tower of Angels, and there concealed it behind many magic spells. History was undecided as to his motive: he may have been altruistically preventing its use by others he considered less trustworthy, or he may have stolen it for himself. In any event, if the latter was the case, he never found a way to use the object for his own gain. When he finally died, grown mad by the making of so many impossible plans, and by constant fear of its discovery, he left its secrets to his son. Since then it had been passed down from Secret Keeper to Secret Keeper, generation after generation, and the stories that accompanied it grew with the telling. One legend spoke of its being the antidote to evil, but also warned that it would only generate further evil unless it was used from the purest of motives.

Poniard had had a choice of three nieces when he decided how to dispose of his worldly goods. He had been generous with all of them, but it was to Narcissa, the youngest, that he bequeathed his most valuable possession. This he had done following a secret meeting with her shortly before his death. He had explained that it would appear to Bellatrix that she was the favourite, as nobody must ever know what Narcissa really inherited. He did not trust Bellatrix: she was self-centred and too fond of cruelty and evil; she could not be trusted either to keep the object secret or to refrain from using it for her own selfish ends. He would not leave it to Andromeda, for although in herself she was a wise and reliable witch, she had committed the unforgivable sin of marrying a Mudblood, and had been disowned by the Blacks and their kin by marriage: therefore she could not be trusted with an object designed by and for pure blood wizards. Narcissa had been instructed that she in her turn must be very careful to whom she left it following her own demise.

Narcissa now lifted the object, encased in a dragon skin sheath backed with a piece of unicorn horn, and held firmly in place by buckles on dragon skin straps. She released the buckles with a simple spell, and picked up the object by its handle of dark green jadeite. The handle was decorated with golden wires formed into the shape of Veela, in human form on one side of the handle, and winged supernatural form on the other. She stared at it for a long time.

The Subtle Knife. Its name sounds so innocent, she thought, as she gazed upon the blade, which did not reflect as other blades do, but seemed to draw the observer into its cloudy depths of swirling shadowy hues. The edges however gleamed, drawing Narcissa's eyes unerringly to them: both so keen they were almost invisible, each a metallic infinitesimal line. One was clear, bright steel; the other silver, untarnished in spite of long disuse. Narcissa remembered the words Poniard had spoken to her: "Silver for Slytherin. It is not a coincidence that finally the Subtle Knife rests in the hands of the Blacks, whose witches and wizards have been in Slytherin since the founding of Hogwarts."

"Have you ever used the Knife, Uncle?" a younger, wide-eyed Narcissa had asked Poniard. He had shaken his head in reply.

"Narcissa, nobody has used the Knife for years untold. Each Secret Keeper is instructed in turn that it must not be used for a fickle or unworthy reason; and each is also told that in their heart they will know when it should be used. The Subtle Knife was forged by necromancers who thought they were merely making a weapon to supersede all others: but the Knife has a will of its own, and if it is used meanly or wickedly, the deeper magic within it will destroy the user. Eventually, philosophers came to believe that it exists for a great purpose, and that when the occasion for which it was forged arises, the Secret Keeper will be so certain, that they will use the Knife positively and without fear. What will then become of the Secret Keeper and the Knife has not been revealed to us. It may be that you, like me, are yet another who will be no more than a Secret Keeper awaiting the call, destined merely to hold this object safe for the future.

"This only we know: the steel blade can cut through any material in any world, and the silver blade can cut into the next world. We are told that if we ever use the silver blade, we must close the window it makes, lest unforeseen consequences result, and this world disappears forever. But it is for the Secret Keeper of the Knife to discover how to close the window, for nobody has yet dared to try its edge."

Narcissa handled the Knife with great care, ensuring that her hands avoided the blade. She had spent long hours working out how she could carry it in concealment, but also easily accessible, without coming to harm herself. She replaced the Subtle Knife in its sheath, and laid her rowan wand beside it, the unicorn horn touching the wood. She wrapped the straps tightly around the wand, and with another spell she secured the buckles once more, so that when she lifted the wand, the Knife stayed firmly attached. The Knife could cut through anything, therefore the tough sheath alone was not sufficient protection from the blade: this was why the buckles were needed, else its own weight would force the blade through the dragon skin. Narcissa then put her wand into its special long pocket stitched into the side seam of the full skirt of her dress.

Now she could use the Knife at will, for as the wand was touching the sheath, she could cast a spell releasing the buckles without using her hands. Narcissa had also taught herself to do magic by the power of thought alone, so she had no need to speak a spell aloud for it to work, she merely had to direct her thoughts to the tip of her wand. So long as her own wand was somewhere about her person, the spell would work.

She put on her cloak, arranging it so that it would conceal her hands should she reach into her wand pocket. Narcissa then stood a moment, her eyes closed, willing herself to carry out the most dangerous mission of her life. She had never before felt so alone. Cho Chang had gone back home two days ago, not waiting for Narcissa to return from the summer house. Lucius still lay in bed, his waking periods more frequent, and his keen brain working once more, but suffering the unpredictable agonies of the after effects of the Crucio curse. He had not yet tried to get up, a great lethargy seemed to have taken hold of him.

Narcissa had used the previous day to tie up her affairs. She had been to Malfoy Manor, hoping to see her son one last time as she tidied her parchments, but Draco was not there. Narcissa had felt a strange mixture of relief and sadness: she desperately wanted to see her only child, whom she loved with all her heart even though sometimes she did not like him very much. But her mother's love fought in her breast with the knowledge that she could not have explained to him why she wanted to crush him to her, and he would most likely have brushed her aside impatiently with careless, hurtful words.

Narcissa opened her eyes, stood proud and tall, and stepped forwards, calling to Hibou to follow her. She walked to the head of the dungeon stairs, and stood awhile listening carefully as she took a blazing torch from its sconce, Hibou watching her with intelligent eyes from his perch on a set of stag's antlers. Narcissa could hear no sounds emanating from below. She took a deep breath, and began to descend slowly, one step at a time, the torch casting strange shadows ahead of her so that she had to tell herself that it was merely the reflection from the uneven stone walls. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she held the torch even higher, and swept it in an arc before her, but she saw no sign of life, except Hibou, who had floated behind her silently, perching on an empty sconce.

She walked forwards very slowly, passing the place where she had discovered Lucius, the floor still rust-stained with his blood. She passed a number of openings, and looked fearfully into each room as she passed, but saw nothing save a brown rat that scurried away swiftly from the light. Then Narcissa stopped, convinced she had heard a sound. She listened carefully, not breathing, her heart thumping loudly in her ears. Yes, there was a noise! It came from the next opening ahead on the left. She could not identify the sound, but it was definitely something. Narcissa stepped forwards more slowly, and as she crossed the threshold of the room, she paused, holding the torch as high and as far forwards as she could reach, wondering what was causing the terrible smell that assaulted her nostrils. She immediately saw two things: one made her gasp, and the other made her want to retch.

Lucius had told Narcissa about the jade sepulchre, but the reality far exceeded what she had been able to imagine: in the torchlight the flawless pale green nephrite gleamed softly, and Narcissa finally understood the price Lucius had pledged to pay to preserve the life of the Dark Lord. Sun Chang must have been delighted with the business transaction, and it was no wonder Chang Jade Holdings had pressed for immediate payment, for there was more wealth in this dank dungeon than Narcissa had ever seen together in one place. It was this sight that caused her to gasp in both awe and horror.

But her eyes were drawn away from the sepulchre by another far more gruesome sight, and the source of the putrid smell: on the ground between her and the tomb lay the remains of Twinkle, the house elf Narcissa had missed a week ago. She had since been so busy with other matters that Twinkle's whereabouts had slipped from her mind, and she had forgotten to ask the other elves where she was. Now, at last she knew. What was left of Twinkle's body was naked, all four limbs were missing, and the torso was ripped open from throat to belly, the purple viscera spilling out into a pool of coagulated blood. Narcissa then realised that there were bones scattered near the entrance to the sepulchre, and she saw that these were what remained of Twinkle's arms and legs. As she stared open-mouthed at the bones, she could see that there were teeth marks on the small amount of flesh still attached to them: this was what Voldemort had been living on in the absence of provisions from Lucius. Narcissa looked at Twinkle's head, and realised with a sickening lurch of her stomach that her eyes were missing, and the top of her head was cracked open like an egg. A hollow where her brain should have been told Narcissa that the Dark Lord had fed on more than muscle. She guessed that the torso had been torn open so that he could also feed on the elf's liver and heart.

As Narcissa tried to take in all she had seen, her gaze swept the room, and she realised that what she had initially taken for a damp patch under her feet was really more blood. She looked about her for the source of the noise she had heard, her torch reflecting from Hibou's dark eyes blinking at her from the top of the sepulchre. She thought she saw a movement at the entrance to the tomb, and she stepped forward far more confidently than she felt: yes, there was something there.

"Something" described the creature more accurately than "someone", thought Narcissa, as at last she laid eyes on Voldemort/Wormtail. She saw a ravaged face, barely recognisable as the Dark Lord for whom she had worked so assiduously for so long, above a thin, bent, wasted body with its back to her. It was worse than she had been able to imagine: he was little better than an animal, clinging desperately to life. As Narcissa stepped towards the dreadful being, the torchlight showed her that Voldemort's face was caked with dried blood. She saw him smile, if such a vicious, lecherous leer could be described as a smile, and his teeth also bore evidence that he had feasted on Twinkle, with pieces of flesh and sinew lodged between the incisors.

Narcissa forced herself to smile at Voldemort, at the same time throwing her cloak back over her shoulders. She held the torch aloft so that she knew it illuminated her breasts, the shadow of her cleavage contrasting sharply with the white skin. It was cold here in the dungeon, and Narcissa felt her nipples contracting in response. She pulled back her shoulders and said in as seductive a tone as she could, "Hello Tom. It's been a long time since we met. Far too long, in fact."

Note:

The Subtle Knife is borrowed from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, where it first appears in the second volume called The Subtle Knife. Its properties and origins have been partly copied, and partly altered to suit my story, the wizarding world, and my invented history of Narcissa Black's maternal family. Pullman's knife came from an Italy in a parallel universe, whereas mine is from Provence in the south of France. Many of the names are merely translations from Pullman's Italian into French.