Chapter Ninety-Six: Triple-Edged Blade: Third Cut

It came on him as a sudden swelling tide would, black and littered with the wrecks of ships. It struck through the Dark Mark on his left arm, and it overwhelmed his mind like a sped-up spider's web of frost crawling across rocks.

Lucius stumbled, clutching at his left forearm, gasping, trying to find himself in the sea of emotions.

The foreign presence in his mind cut through his feeble efforts like a blade of ice. In that moment, Lucius bitterly wished he had learned Legilimency, or that the research on the Dark Mark he had conducted rather desultorily a few summers ago had yielded results. It had not.

He could hear the Dark Lord laughing, a sound he had not thought he would have to hear again. He bent his head and scrabbled blindly for his wand with his right hand. Some part of him thought that if he could cast a spell on the Dark Mark, then the call would stop coming through it, trying to make him leave the safety of the wards on the house and Apparate.

The blade had cut through the surface layers of his mind, though, and brought up something that Lucius himself had forgotten.

Dreams, dreams, dreams. Black and purple and deep reaching blue, they rolled down on him, and Lucius remembered how much he had hated Light wizards in the aftermath of his Lord's first fall. They had sneered at him as if they thought he should believe that what he had done as a Death Eater was wrong, and Lucius had longed to simply draw his wand and hex them.

And the Mudbloods who had propagated the Grand Unified Theory, and the disgusting idea that the Malfoy line had ever mingled its blood with the dust of the earth—

Thomas Rhangnara, the man he had yearned to control, to kill—

Against that welling tide of contempt, Lucius tried to raise his love for his wife and son, but he understood it as a feeble defense even as he tried. He loved only two people in the whole world, and he had never believed in the supposed "power" of love as the Light wizards did. He could not shelter behind a shield he had no faith in.

The web tugged tight, and bound the part of him that objected and would rather stay in the house. Lucius rose to his feet, put his wand back in his pocket, and passed outside the wards, ready to Apparate.

A small part of him, still free, remembered a thought he'd had the first time he met Harry, when Draco brought him to Malfoy Manor for the Christmas holidays. He had felt a fierce gladness that he would get to face an enemy like Harry Potter across the battlefield before the end.

That part of him laughed, an ashy chuckle. It does seem as if you will get your wish after all.

And then he Apparated, and he was kneeling at his Lord's side, head bowed to receive the touch of his hand, while the part of him that knew better watched from behind steel walls of hatred and Legilimency, caged by his own lack of love, helpless to act.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

And he was back in Azkaban, in the cold, filthy cell, surrounded by Dementors and the stink, not of human hatred, but of human indifference, which was worse, with the phoenix web shining in his mind, a beacon of what being friends with James and Lily Potter, and the protégé of Albus Dumbledore, had cost him.

"No!" Peter shouted out loud, and shoved the vision away.

But it returned, reinforced now by images from his dreams, sweeping up towards the surface of his mind like dolphins seeking the sun. He had lost twelve years of his life to that prison, and he would never regain the weight, the sunshine, the health that should have been his. He had broken free only to help someone else who was a sacrifice like himself, and was that right? Was that fair? Should he not hate his friends? Wasn't he entitled to hate them, when they had done so much wrong to him?

Peter felt the burning of the Dark Mark, the call to Apparate, as a dim and distant thing. The hatred, and fighting the hatred, took much more of his attention.

The questions echoed in his head, asked by a voice he recognized now, as he had not recognized it when it appeared in his nightmares, taunting him.

Peter answered with a blast of love.

He had asked himself all these questions when he hid in the Forbidden Forest during Harry's third year, cold and hungry, watching vigilantly for an opportunity to get Harry alone and a weakness in the phoenix web that would let him tell the truth. He had had no choice but to ask them again in the Sanctuary, when Vera had peered at his soul and demanded answers from him in her own inimitable, subtle way. The answers had rung like bells in his head when he saw Remus walk away from Harry, once again following the strongest personality in his immediate vicinity, and when he had burned with the desire to punish him.

It was not a matter of forgiving his friends and Dumbledore for everything they had done. It was a matter of love being stronger than hatred, of caring more about the future than the past. He could not change the past. He could change himself.

He felt the hook lash out, swinging, trying to snag on a projection in his soul—

And he felt it fall back again, washed away by the fact that he had moved on into the future. The Dark Lord snarled in his ear as his shadow dissolved from Peter's mind like the nightmare it was.

Peter sat on the floor, breathing, for what seemed a very long time. He knew he should be moving—if this had happened to him, then something similar had probably happened to the other former Death Eaters—but all he could really think about was the fact that Voldemort had called him back to the Darkness, and he had resisted. He was free of that threat, should it ever come again.

Now, of course, he had more of an idea why he'd had those dreams, always focused on his enemies and his past, and more of an idea why he'd had an infected Dark Mark almost a year ago. That had been Voldemort sending part of himself ahead into the Marks, trying to sow his former followers' minds with seeds that would grow and force them to accept him.

Someone rammed a fist on his door. Peter stood, still blinking, and staggered over to it.

When he opened it, he found himself on the end of Regulus's wand, and then his stare, and then his embrace. Peter wheezed. He thought Regulus forgot most of the time that, physically, he was still a young man in his twenties, while Peter was in his late thirties now and not the best of health.

"Thank Merlin you escaped," Regulus whispered. "When I realized what was happening, when he tried to take me, I thought you would, but I couldn't be sure."

"How did you escape?" Peter asked.

Regulus pushed his sleeve back from his left forearm, showing the dark dog on his skin. "He has no claim on me any more," Regulus said quietly. "I belong to another mistress now." His shadow snapped its jaws in agreement.

Peter caught his breath. "And Severus?"

"I'm sad to say don't know." Regulus's eyes were shadowed. "Come with me to find out?"

Peter followed at his heels.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The wolf in her welcomed it, of course. It panted and wagged its tail and thought that this was the greatest thing that had happened since the invention of blood.

Hawthorn fought. She had never known she could put so much effort into a single thing. The hook scraped through her, bringing up the images of her dreams where she had run on four feet after Lucius and Aurors and Gloriana Griffinsnest, and still she shoved them, forced them away, answered with Harry's image of the storm-clouded world and how one storm did not mean the end of that world.

Her wards twanged. Hoping Harry, or some other ally, had come to help her, Hawthorn forced herself onto her knees, tried to ignore the burning in her left arm, and stared blearily out the window.

Indigena Yaxley stood on the lawn.

The wolf in her howled. She wanted her daughter back.

Oh, Merlin, Pansy, Pansy ripped apart by this monstrous woman's plants, her neck broken, her beautiful daughter all destroyed and the most beautiful part of Hawthorn's life snuffed out like a rose by a frost—

The wolf leaped. The balance tilted. The hook caught, and Hawthorn knew a brief moment of despair so exquisite that she would have rejoiced to have caused it in an enemy.

Her hatred was stronger than her love, and it had cost her even as Harry had proclaimed in his speech last year, during the alliance meeting on the spring equinox, that vengeance would always cost wizards and witches.

"Come, sister," Indigena called, voice gentler than Hawthorn had believed it could be. "I have long wanted to discuss gardening techniques with you. And I know this is harder for you, and you will need a few days to settle in. Mindless chatter might be just the way to do so."

Hawthorn stood, grasped her wand, and passed out of the house. The wolf and the blood-crazed witch walked together in the front of her mind, the witch's fingers twined in the wolf's fur. The sane part of her cowered in the back of her mind and cried, sometimes in sobs, sometimes in muffled lupine whines. She had the deadening feeling that it would not be sane for long.

Indigena laid a hand on her shoulder, her smile full of pity. Then she closed her eyes, and together they Apparated.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

It took less effort to take possession of Adalrico than it had almost anyone else. Adalrico knew that, understood the moment the hatred began inundating his soul, and he half-defiantly half-welcomed it.

He had a right to hate. Harry should have let him kill Pharos Starrise. The whelp had defied law, custom, tradition, honor, everything when he had told the Unspeakables to capture Adalrico. It was too much. It was—there were no words for what it was, and if he had killed Pharos, or at least performed a vengeance ritual of some kind on him, then Adalrico knew he could have healed his wounds.

Then he would not be subject to the call of Voldemort.

It had been a moment of sanity that made him call on Harry, a moment of desperation as he found himself plotting ways to actually use the Black Plague spores on Pharos in the Ministry. And then, by the time Harry had arrived, Adalrico had wanted to listen to the dreams. They were making him a bit clumsier, a bit less than Slytherin in his planning, but did that matter? He would have used them soon, and then been done with it, and Pharos too.

In a way, it was Harry's fault.

So the Dark Mark flared, and so he gave up the long struggle to raise his soul from the poisoned garden in which he found it. He was probably never meant to escape anyway, not if he had gone back this easily. And he had sworn the family oath with Harry. He could not act against Harry or his blood family anyway, not without bleeding to death.

So it would not be so bad.

Even as he knelt before the Dark Lord's throne, Adalrico did not know if the justifications he had woven came from pragmatism or despair.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

Indigena appeared among the other Death Eaters, Hawthorn Parkinson at her side, and shook her head as she watched them. This was where her approval of her Lord's plan ran out. She did not like fighting beside traitors. They had no honor. They might pretend they had honor, that coming back to their Lord as they had done proved they had it, but nothing could make up for that first betrayal.

She gave a pitying look at Hawthorn as the werewolf knelt. She had not wanted to play this part, either, but her Lord had insisted. Hawthorn had resisted hardest of all of them, because she was used to fighting her wolf, a creature of savagery and hatred. It was no coincidence that, when her Lord had chosen to test his control over Evan Rosier and make him lure Connor Potter to a specific place, he had chosen Hawthorn's garden to be that specific place. Indigena had had three purposes there: to make sure that Evan did as he was supposed to, to make sure that Connor Potter did not die before the punishment her Lord had planned for him, and to see if Hawthorn would react to her with hatred. When she had, the Dark Lord had known that he could use Indigena as a final lure to tip the other woman's balance, if worst came to worst and she resisted the dreams even to the end.

Glancing around the throne room, Indigena noticed the absence of Regulus Black, Peter Pettigrew, and, most surprising, Severus Snape. She frowned. Really! That particular traitor resisted the call of his own impulses towards revenge to stay by Harry's side? I suppose I am impressed, but I am more puzzled. I never thought he could do it, with as long as my Lord has been in his head, seeing through his eyes and making him dream to his will.

She paused when she saw a figure she had not expected standing there, and clenched her fists. Evan's black eyes stared at her, the eyes of a caught mad thing, snarling. She almost expected to see the foam of a rabid dog falling from his jaws.

"Relax, my thorn."

Indigena slid to a knee with the others as Lord Voldemort rose from his bed, floating. When he was this close to so many Dark Marks, he could command the magic of their bearers. It circled through their bodies, the pieces of him they carried on their arms, and through his; when the hole in his magical core attempted to drain it off, it circled back to the former Death Eaters instead. He had been unwilling, mostly, to use Indigena this way, since she was with him willingly and he wanted her to use her magic for more important things. But these Death Eaters whom he was punishing for loving Harry and turning their backs on him made the perfect hands and feet.

"Evan has come to me like these others," said Voldemort, settling into his throne, "and I have control of him."

Glancing at Evan, Indigena was not so certain of that—as well control a thunderstorm—but she held her peace. It was true that Lord Voldemort would never have allowed anyone but her so close to his Horcrux cup unless he was assured they would not rebel.

"And now, my lord?" she asked.

"Now, my thorn," said her Lord, his hand caressing her hair while the snake wound about his waist stared at her with red eyes, "you will go to the new allies we have agreed upon."

Indigena sighed. She didn't like this part of her Lord's plan, either. She did not think the vampires would choose to serve Voldemort without asking too high a price. But she had sworn to be loyal, and honor held her still.

"And Harry?" she asked, glancing up.

Voldemort laughed, and the snake swayed.

"Dear Harry has seen all that happened," Voldemort answered, "though only, of course, what I thought wise to show him. I rather fear that I have made my magical heir a bit upset." The snake swayed faster and faster, dancing a mad pattern. "I rather fear that I have made someone else who bears a scar, a brand, connected to me full of hatred."

Indigena, who remembered reading the chapter "Brands and Scars" in the book Odi et Amo again and again, knew what that meant, and knew where her Lord was going when he closed his eyes and lashed his mind out and down another Legilimency connection. Before very much longer, if Harry's hatred was strong enough, they might have their Lord's heir standing at their sides.

And having felt the surge of Dark magic that destroyed Falco on Walpurgis Night, Indigena was fairly certain it was strong enough. Harry had a temper when he allowed himself to feel it.

Now, more than ever, she was sorry that she could not follow her Lord into the vision, and would simply have to wait patiently for the result.