Chapter 3: A Successor

Meli had plenty of time for thinking in between Mina Harker's compiled papers, and even though Zarekael was not available for conversation, her sanity showed a rather dangerous improvement for which she was indebted to more than just the writings of Bram Stoker. Time had stood still while Zarekael was unconscious, but his revival had restarted the clock, making her acutely aware that sooner or later she would have to leave the hospital wing and, thanks to an unnamed but hopefully very dead Death Eater, she had no life to which to return. That meant making a new life for herself, and she wanted very much for that life to keep her far too busy to think.

She didn't want to remember that Collum was dead, and she most certainly didn't want to remember that Pierce was dead, too. The first required her to acknowledge that she had seen one close friend murder another, and the second demanded that she admit to herself that she had murdered an old friend.

Former friend, she amended firmly, clenching her teeth and flipping a page. Pierce had long ago ceased to be her friend—or Collum's or Crim's. He had murdered Crim in cold blood and for no other purpose than to further his own ambition, and he'd had no problem murdering Collum for even less reason than that.

It hadn't been murder when she killed him; it had been survival. It had been her or Pierce, and if Pierce had survived, he might very well have been able to harm Harry Potter—or even, now that she thought about it, blow Snape and Zarekael's covers because he would very probably have been outside of Zarekael's blast radius, and he would have known how best to get out of the dungeons without being taken out by the Aurors.

It was the right thing to do.

Meli squeezed her eyes shut until white geometrics danced through the black field of her vision and her head began to pound. When she reopened her eyes to look at the book, she found that three pages or more had passed since the scene she last remembered.

She sighed and set aside the book; there was no sense in pretending anymore.

How long had it been since she'd slept without the help of a potion? She couldn't remember offhand, but she knew with certainty that it had been before Voldemort's attack on the school. The two or three times she'd managed to drift off since then, she'd wakened as soon as the dreams started.

It had been hard enough sleeping through Crimson's blood-spattered face swimming before her eyes; two more faces added to that were too much altogether.

The Skulkers were all dead—three in truth and one on the basis of a technicality—and the war continued without them. And yet it didn't, for there was one Skulker still standing, and she was the one who could most hurt Voldemort…and more to the point, she had a vested interest in hurting both his cause and the man himself.

How does someone neither living nor dead best strike out at a Dark Lord?

She leaned back against the head of the bed and let her eyes wander aimlessly around the room. They settled eventually on the Dickens books that still lay scattered on the floor where they had fallen, and the last one she'd read caught her attention.

Our Mutual Friend…the tale of a man mistakenly ruled dead under suspicious circumstances. John Harmon had not been a great hero by any definition that wasn't strictly Dickensian, but he had taken shrewd advantage of the limbo in which fate had placed him, both to exonerate a man wrongly accused of his murder and to prove the quality of a materialistic young woman. He'd had the perfect cover for his operations, for no one would believe that a dead man was doing anything but pushing up daisies.

So what could a dead Skulker do for the Order of the Phoenix?

How many characters are there in that book? she wondered idly. I bet I could use a different name from OMF every day for a year and never once repeat—

She stopped short, a strange and intriguing idea taking root. Someone whose face had to be hidden could keep to one face…or she could have multiple faces, and no one would be the wiser. And a person with many faces could hide in plain sight and act with temerity.

She could do anything for the cause, short of infiltrating the Death Eaters, and because she could be so bold, because she could conduct one-woman hit-and-fade operations, she could undermine Voldemort and, as a side benefit, drive him absolutely nuts in the process.

More importantly, though, she could be consistently active in the war now, rather than taking a sideline position. Subtle and deliberate she might be, but in the end, she was a Gryffindor, and her primary nature was to charge in with guns blazing and wreak as much havoc as possible.

All right, then. So how can a woman of many faces wreak the most havoc under the circumstances?

For that answer, she suspected she would have to consult Dumbledore. He didn't know everything by any means, but he would surely be able to find a use for a spook—and he would certainly agree that almost anything was better than Meli hiding out any longer than necessary in the hospital wing.

She would have to be careful, of course; if she came into contact with anyone who thought her dead, she would have to take especial care to be sure that they never suspected her of being someone they knew. Passing acquaintances would be no problem, but the true risk lay in running into more observant people who had known her well, like Andrea Underhill—

Meli grinned suddenly as her thoughts turned a sudden corner. Andrea Underhill's day job was as an Auror and an FBI agent, and she moonlighted as an Eraser. How many people did the Order rescue and disappear—and as Voldemort continued to come to prominence, how many more would need to be disappeared in the future? Andrea wasn't officially in the Order, and even if she had been, she wouldn't have been able to handle as many cases as Dumbledore might very well toss her way; such work would be a full-time job.

And if there was an official Order Eraser, I'd know about it, Meli thought coolly. Even if all I had to go on were rumors and whispered conversations, I would know; we all would.

That meant, then, that there was a possible vacancy, and while she didn't have all of Andrea's government contacts and connections, she was at least as resourceful and, in her humble opinion, a bit more creative than that worthy Auror was. It would be necessary for such an agent to be known only by a code name, which suited her just fine, and if she played her cards right, no one need ever know even that she was female, much less details of her actual identity.

As a student at Hogwarts, Meli had drawn the most academic attention for her skill at Potions, but her greatest gifts actually lay in the disciplines of Charms and Transfiguration. Knowing that anything outstanding about her might eventually be reported to Voldemort, she had intentionally flown under radar during class, practicing by herself during her free time. While McGonagall and Flitwick had probably not known her reasoning, they respected her evident wishes and drew no attention to her, though her marks, both in class and on her standardized tests, spoke quite eloquently for her abilities.

The grand melding of those two disciplines was the tricky art of glamourie—appearance charms—and, simply for the joy of the challenge, Meli had worked at it until she had mastered it. Like obscure duelist's hexes, she took everything she learned, developed, and stowed away in her steel trap of a mind, and treasured it for a rainy day. The rain had called out Tu Quoque to play, and now it looked as if glamourie was up for its turn.

Creating identities would be no problem at all; she had the full dramatis personae of her books to help her with that, and as she had observed, just one Dickens work by itself would provide her with well over two dozen names to start with. And, come to think of it, several of the women in Our Mutual Friend married in the course of the story, which really meant that she could pull two names from those characters—four for Bella, whose husband used two pseudonyms in addition to his true name.

Meli permitted herself a reptilian smile as she picked up Dracula once more (she could pull at least three names from Dracula). Suddenly limbo didn't seem like such a bad place to be.

---

Dumbledore returned about three hours after Meli's epiphany and found her grinning madly over what proved to be Dr. Van Helsing's soliloquy on blood and blooms.

"I see you've traded in Austen for more serious fare," he remarked sardonically.

"The problem with Frankenstein is that Mary Shelley had no sense of humor," Meli told him philosophically. "Stoker managed to convey the horror without giving the reader suicidal tendencies. That doesn't make him less amusing than Jane Austen, but it does cause the reader to appreciate his humor all the more." She arched an eyebrow. "How are things back at the ranch?"

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Things are settling down again," he replied. "There still remains a great deal to do, but people are much more optimistic—"

He was interrupted by a sudden stirring from Zarekael's side of the room. He and Meli turned to find that the apprentice was not only awake but sitting up in bed, his eyes fixed on the door and a hand clapped over the Mark on his left arm.

Meli swallowed. "He's not…calling you, surely?"

The apprentice shook his head. "I have to go," he stated.

"Zarekael," Dumbledore began, "he cannot expect you to be recovered—"

The younger man cut him off with a look. "He will keep calling until I respond," he told the headmaster. "It's better that I go now, as I am, than that I wait until I'm fully healthy."

"Can you even stand on your own?" Meli demanded. Granted, Poppy had said that Zarekael was in far better shape than she was, but he still looked one step removed from death itself. Assuming he could get past Poppy, he might very well arrive in Voldemort's presence only to collapse at the Dark Lord's feet.

"I must go," Zarekael insisted firmly.

Before anything further could be said, the door to the room opened to admit Snape, who was carrying what looked like a very full satchel. He closed the door behind him, set down the satchel on the only chair, and drew from it a set of very familiar black robes, which he handed to Zarekael.

The door opened again just then, and Poppy stormed in, jaw clenched and eyes blazing. It seemed that she had seen Snape coming in and hadn't needed much help to figure out what the satchel was for.

"This is absolutely not going to happen!" she snapped as soon as the door closed behind her. "You can just tell You-Know-Who that Zarekael is still unconscious because I will not permit him to leave. He's in no condition to go and you know it!"

"Poppy," Snape growled, "don't."

"Don't what?" she retorted heatedly. "Don't protect my patients? Don't protect you from a sadistic madman who doesn't care if you're healthy as long as you're useful to him? Don't protect you from yourselves when we all know you'd be perfectly happy to run yourselves to the ground for the cause? Well, I'm sorry, Severus Snape, but that just happens to be my job, and I refuse to do otherwise!"

"Severus, you can't be serious!" Meli chimed in. "Even if he makes it there in one piece, he won't stand a chance with Voldemort. You know he's going to be punished!"

"We all were," Snape told her coldly. "And the longer Zarekael delays, the worse his punishment will be in the end." He turned burning eyes on Poppy. "I'm sorry," he said through his teeth, "but we do not have the luxury of ignoring the summons. If you think it'll be bad now, how much worse will it be when the Dark Lord figures out—as he will—that Zarekael was conscious? This is nothing to what that would be." With those words he pulled his own robes out of the satchel and donned them without further comment.

"He is not setting foot outside of this room!" Poppy persisted stubbornly. "I don't care how urgent you think this is—Zarekael is in absolutely no condition to be going for a stroll through the Sculpture Garden, much less to a meeting with You-Know-Who!"

Snape narrowed his eyes. "That is not your decision," he told her through his teeth. "Now stand aside, or be pushed aside."

Zarekael chose that moment to stand up, or rather he managed to achieve something vaguely resembling vertical status, which was no sooner accomplished than he sank heavily back onto the bed with a groan. Judging by the superior look Poppy gave Snape, she obviously considered the argument officially over; she ought to have known better. Zarekael set his teeth and, with his father's help, again stood and, leaning heavily on Snape, managed to keep to his feet. The Potions master leveled a silencing glare at Poppy, then looked defiantly at the others.

Meli turned to Dumbledore. "Are you really going to let them go through with this?" she asked, hearing a frantic note in her voice.

The headmaster firmly set his jaw and made no reply, but he also made no move to stop the two spies.

Poppy will manage to stop them somehow, Meli thought, more out of desperation than anything else. After all, if Dumbledore backed them, or at least didn't back Poppy, there was little the mediwitch could really do. And as for anyone else standing in their way, the two of them apparently didn't mind the prospect of marching straight through the hospital wing in full Death Eater regalia, so she doubted that the idea of other resistance bothered them at all. In the case of a Gryffindor, it would have indicated a lack of planning; in the case of Slytherins in general, and these two in particular, it meant that they had specifically planned to deal with such a possibility.

Snape proved her suspicions right. Once he and Zarekael were ready to depart, he reached into the satchel one more time and pulled out, of all things, a small, hard-bound volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe. He moved as if he were handing the book to Zarekael, but as soon as his son took hold of it, he muttered, "Eulalie."

Before Meli could so much as wonder what the point of that message might be, the two Death Eaters and the book they held disappeared from sight.

"A portkey," she realized aloud.

Poppy glared venomously at Dumbledore, then made a thoroughly ungracious exit, slamming the door as a final indictment.

Dumbledore shook his head grimly, then offered the remaining patient a sympathetic smile. "They had to go, Meli," he told her quietly.

"I know," she conceded miserably. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

The headmaster shrugged, then, with a calmness that must have required a great deal of effort, stepped to the chair, moved the satchel to the floor beside Zarekael's bed, and seated himself in its place. "You may not consider this the best time for conversation," he said, "but there are a few things to be discussed, and now is as good a time as any."

She arched an eyebrow. "Hadn't you rather knock me out before Zarekael appears before Voldemort?" she countered. "I thought my voice was best left unheard until I'd been recalled to life."

"Voldemort will not subject him to the Cruciatus," Dumbledore informed her. "Not this time, anyway. He values Zarekael as a servant, and even as angry as he doubtless is, he won't be foolish enough to do anything that might limit or end Zarekael's usefulness to him."

"How comforting," Meli commented darkly.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "I half expect that the two of them will return within the hour," he continued. "Zarekael a little worse for the wear, certainly, but far better off than he would be if he delayed any longer than necessary."

Meli sighed. "All right, then," she allowed. "I'll submit to your expert opinion for the moment. What do we have to discuss in the meantime?"

"Well, there are your funeral arrangements to be seen to," he replied, his eyes beginning to twinkle again. "I'm afraid Minerva has been let in on the grand secret, as she'll be creating the simulacrum for cremation. She hopes to have it completed and ready for burning by breakfast time tomorrow."

Meli smirked. "I always had the impression that she wanted to kill me for some of my antics," she quipped. "Now she's finally got her chance."

Dumbledore smiled slightly. "I doubt she sees it in quite that light," he returned. "I shall have to point it out to her."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate it." She raised her eyebrows. "What else is there to see to?"

He cleared his throat. "Have you any wish to follow in the footsteps of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn?" he inquired, with something that looked suspiciously like a smirk.

Meli grinned. "Attend my own funeral?" she suggested. "Absolutely! I could be a juggler that comes in and does a splendid tap-dance routine atop the casket while—"

"While the Camerons and Fells look on?" Dumbledore countered pointedly.

"Oh." She sobered abruptly. "Well, when you put it in that light…I suppose I could sing."

"Sing?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes. No one who knew me very well at all would think it a proper funeral if I wasn't seen off with a verse or two of Burns."

Dumbledore looked thoughtfully at her. "The only difficulty there," he said at last, "is that your voice is rather distinctive and quite well-known."

That much was quite true; anyone who had attended school during the Skulkers' reign of terror, or anyone who had been present for her performance at the Halloween Ball less than a year before, would agree that Meli Ebony's Puckish voice was unmistakable. No one who had witnessed one of her songs would be likely to forget either the voice or the one who produced it.

"Ah, well," she sighed, "there I must confess to having deceived you all. You probably think I can't sing in any other way."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows a touch. "Can you?"

She smiled slyly at him. "Of course I can," she answered. "Do you honestly think someone like me would let any potential abilities lie fallow? Every little odd thing I can either pick up or develop, I do."

"Very well, then," the headmaster said. "We'll put you down for a song. You'll need an alias, of course—"

"Lizzie Hexam," she told him promptly.

There was a pause while Dumbledore tried to assimilate her quick reply. "That was very…sudden," he remarked, then, as realization probably struck, he smiled. "Of course," he said. "Lizzie Hexam, the waterman's daughter. I had forgotten you recent venture into Dickens."

"Well, that particular novel has inspired me to formulate a new ambition," Meli informed him. "Have you any need for a vocational Eraser?"

His eyebrows climbed nearly to his hairline. "A person charged with disappearing others?" he replied.

Meli nodded. "Someone who does full-time what Andrea does in her off-hours," she clarified.

He smiled wryly. "I don't know that it would be a full-time position," he answered, "but I am sure we could find work for you." He furrowed his brow. "If I may inquire…how did Our Mutual Friend inspire this ambition?"

She smirked. "Well, it occurred to me that one person with many faces—John Harmon, for instance—can accomplish a great deal, whether good or bad, and can disappear quite effectively."

"Yes," Dumbledore mused. "So he could. Am I to assume, then, that you would be using multiple identities?"

"One would be too easily traceable," she pointed out. "If I used a different face and name every time, the only common thread would be whatever code name was assigned to me."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled, not merrily as they usually did, but in rather a conspiratorial manner. "And the more untraceable you are," he murmured, "the more you would annoy Voldemort."

Meli didn't even bother trying to hide the fact that the possibility delighted her; instead she smiled thinly. "I want to serve the cause," she said frankly. "And if in the process I can get under his skin and irritate him past the point of rational thought, so much the better."

"You would need help," Dumbledore said. "At least one full-time assistant. You'll also need a base of operations—Hogwarts is too obvious and, in its own way, far too public. It needs a more remote location. And then, of course, there is the code name to think of." He looked expectantly to her.

Meli shrugged. "That's one thing I'm afraid I haven't thought on," she admitted. "A standard pseudonym, with a given name and a surname, is right out—too easily traced. I'd prefer something simple, something that's more of a description than a name."

Dumbledore looked thoughtfully at her. "It sounds as if you plan to be a blank slate of sorts," he said.

She gave him a reptilian smile. "Tabula Rasa is rather too long," she replied. "Shall we shorten it to Rasa and call it good?"

"Rasa it is, then."