The Taste of Your Fear.
Chapter 2
November 14th 2001
It has been a little bit over three years since the Battle of Hogwarts. All the Death Eaters present in Hogwarts have either been killed or captured on scene. Some, smarter than others, had managed to flee, but their luck had run out. By the one-year anniversary of the Battle, each Death Eater had been caught. All of them, except for one.
Antonin Dolohov was not the type of man that just got caught. No, he was smart, too smart, and he knew his way around the country like no other. It was funny, because he was only half British, and most of his life outside of the walls of Hogwarts was spent in Russia, where his grandmother still lived to this day. The Aurors had paid her a visit, questioned her for hours on end under Veritaserum, trying to get the location of the last Death Eater's whereabouts from her. It did not work, because Antonin Dolohov was not stupid enough to visit his babushka when he was a hunted man. He chose to hide in plain sight.
The man they thought he looked like… well, that was just another one of his perfectly executed plans. He would smile to himself whenever he thought about how he had effectively deceived not only the Ministry, but also his own Dark Lord and brethren. He had spent a good amount of time before the First War carefully building a new persona, going so far as to transfigure his looks to be those of a man who had succumbed to the Dark. He made himself look scrawny, made sure his beard and hair were kept long, unkempt, and dirty. He changed his eye colour to be a brown so dark that they almost looked black. He made his accent sound heavily Russian, when in fact, he spoke perfect English, and even had quite a posh accent. People who knew that information about him had… well, let's just say, Dolohov was skilled when it came to magic, and Memory Charms were one of the many areas he had excelled in.
He had known that this very long con would one day come to fruition. He had altered the transfiguration spells he had used to last until he, and only he, cast the counter curse. So it had held, all throughout his years in Azkaban in between wars. If he had not known himself so well, he might have thought that Azkaban did affect him mentally, but that would be the furthest thing from the truth. Azkaban had actually helped him, it made his goals very clear in his mind. He planned for them from the moment he woke up, until he finally succumbed to sleep. If anything, his obsessiveness was what had kept him afloat in a sea of despair and terrible company. The Dementors were not known for being uplifting drinking companions.
But he never gave up, he knew the day would come where he would be a free man. He just needed to wait for the perfect moment to strike.
He knew the Dark Lord's secrets. Voldemort might've been a very skilled Legillimens and Occlumens, but Dolohov? Well, he was better. He picked the secret right out of his Lord's head, never raising alarm bells, the most efficient thought-burglar in history. Voldemort's cockiness made him think no one would be ever as good as him, as powerful as him. He thought he could not be cheated, he could not be betrayed, because he would just know. Hah! Dolohov knew about Snape being a turncoat the second he had made his decision to be. He could understand the bastard's motives, his Lord had taken his witch, killed her when he had begged him to spare her. Even Dolohov would have turned his wand on his own Master if his witch had been killed. But Antonin… he would have won that duel.
He smirked to himself as he strolled down Diagon Alley, his eyes catching the hundreds of flyers stuck to every shop and wall, displaying an unhinged man called Antonin Dolohov. No one expected him to be that man, though to be fair, these days he had dropped all the transfiguration charms he had cast on himself all those years ago and went by the name Alexei Borisyuk.
No one could suspect him to be the criminal they were all looking for, as he had been sauntering in the streets of London and introducing himself as this new persona for years, before the Dark Lord even fell. Wizarding Britain being the size of a shoe box, words had gotten around quite fast about this new handsome Russian man who had been doing a lot of business in Britain since 1995. He would forgo meetings with his brethren for drinks and raping muggles to attend meetings in London, all the while Aurors and the Order were looking for him. He even met Kingsley Shacklebolt a few times at the ministry, shook hands with the man. People just could not begin to wrap their mind around Alexei Borisyuk and Antonin Dolohov being the same person. All they had in common? They were both Russian. What were they going to do, ban all Russians from Britain? The economy would have loved that.
Today was a big day, though. He was going to start a proper job at the Ministry, turn his life over as if the fifteen years spent in Azkaban were just a blip in the timeline, soon to be erased and forgotten. He had his fanciest dress robes on... Well, he said his but really, Lucius Malfoy just thought he was giving all these nice and expensive clothes to Antonin out of the goodness of his own heart, when really, there has just been a very strong compulsion charm cast on him. Same with the now overflowing Gringotts bank account of one Alexei Borisyuk. Always a pleasure doing business with the Malfoys. Lucius was definitely not dumber than his father Abraxas, although the bar was incredibly low, Abraxas could not tell apart his broom from his cock.
Witches would stop and ogle at him as he walked down Diagon Alley, a smirk on his face. He knew he had charms that surpassed those of the regular wizard, and it had gotten him quite a few favours. British witches loved a foreigner, and when they got a feel of how full his vault was, they just could not help but throw themselves at him as if their life depended on it. More often than not, their life did depend on how useful they could be. Dolohov made sure they knew what they could provide for him. They were so eager to please, that he ended up amassing an unreasonable amount of gossip and insider information about a lot of people in power. Which was how he was granted as a starting position, the office of the Head of the Department of International Magical Co-operation. Everyone that was ready to go against his new title was promptly dealt with, a mass casting of a compulsion charm that made them all believe that he was just the right person for this job.
As he reached the massive white building that was Gringotts, he took out the key to his vault out of his pocket. He was not sure how it happened, but the very clumsy woman in front of him managed to trip, and elbowed him on the process, making him drop the key he had just taken out, as she laid sprawled out on the marble floor.
"Are you okay, Miss?" he asked, reaching his hand towards her, feigning that all the air had not just left his lungs, making sure he was ever the gentleman.
The little creature sputtered apologies as she grabbed his hand and got up on unsteady feet, mentioning something about not being used to be wearing heels. She handed him his key, and although her face was half hidden with her hair, he could tell she was a very nice shade of red, embarrassment apparent on the little bit of her face that he could see. Grabbing his key back, and muttering his thanks, he very nearly just walked away as she was back on her feet and seemed steady enough, but then the minx had to push her hair away from her face.
A curious pair of brown eyes latched on his own ocean blue ones. He knew then. He just knew. He was fucked. And nothing, NOTHING, was going to go according to plan.
