Chapter 16 - Bathilda Bagshot
"The cemetery, the cottage, Bagshot..." Lizzie recited to herself like a mantra as they combed through plans to get in and out of Godric's Hollow with as much as possible, without being spotted.
"The sword, my father's family, Arianna, a horcrux, something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's," she continued. Hermione looked up at her from her drawings. Lizzie had already charted out what she remembered of the brief visit to the town.
"Godric's Hollow, birthplace of Godric Gryffindor, one of the only west country towns exclusive to wizards. Last resting place of the last known descendent of the Peverell Family... the graveyard and the standalone church are said to be haunted..." Hermione read from her notes in a History of Magic.
"Bagshot still lives there, Dumbledore lived there, his mother and sister died there. He hid my parents in their old home, so we only need to visit the graveyard for names, perhaps the church for any archives or potential horcruxes, especially if its known to be haunted, he could have hidden it there under that guise... or perhaps the graveyard," Lizzie shuddered at the thought he'd use her parents or Dumbledore's family's graves to hide one of the objects. But it would be in his line of sadistic thinking to ensure her or Dumbledore would have to desecrate their own loved ones. She explained the theory cautiously to Hermione since they had both seen the memory of him taking a small object from a buried body.
"Your parents' graves would have been protected, Lizzie. I'm sure of it," Hermione retorted. Lizzie clenched her jaw hard and pondered her thought process for a long moment.
"We're looking for the Nora horcrux though, a church and a graveyard like that? After what happened in Surrey?" Lizzie said, biting her lip nervously.
"Stop it, I still don't think he would hide one there, he'd use the place to lure you there and would not want to risk you escaping with anything of that much value to him," Hermione snapped a little impatiently. "We're going to find out about the sword and the mark, first and foremost... right?"
Lizzie nodded, but she secretly hoped the place would be a treasure trove of answers.
Hermione mixed her pre-brewed batch of polyjuice and picked a muggle town not far from Godric's Hollow to apparate to. They packed up their things and said goodbye to the cabin, but they were saying more than goodbye to the cabin, they were losing any hope of Ron returning.
The air was heavy as they left. Not a word was spoken as they set up the tent and enchantments. Hermione gave Lizzie nothing but a half-hearted salute when she embarked into the muggle town for hairs.
"Do you want to be a cute young mother of five fresh off the farm, or a teenaged waitress with an attitude problem?" Hermione asked when she came back under the cloak.
"Waitress, duh. Sounds right up my alley," Lizzie said with a faint smirk.
"Farm girl up mine?" Hermione asked incredulously.
"Well I wasn't going to say that out loud," Lizzie said facetiously and cracked the first giggle out of Hermione in what felt like an eternity.
When dusk turned the sky a deep shade of purple, Lizzie and Hermione clinked cannisters and drank the potion. They pulled on fresh clothing, the likes of which you'd expect to see in a wizards dwelling. Hermione tucked the locket into her blouse, but Lizzie reached out a hand for it. Hermione shook her head incredulously.
"Look, we'll lose time if I sit here and explain it, but I see the way you look at me when you wear it, if it starts to suspect we've got something or are near something that might destroy it... it will act through you. I'm not saying I never fail, but I do have ample experience resisting him. If it's for a couple of hours, I think it's best if I wear it," Lizzie explained quickly. Hermione paused with furrowed eyebrows but ultimately conceded and handed over the locket. Lizzie tucked it into her shirt and felt the familiar ticking commence.
They apparated under the cloak to the kissing gate Lizzie remembered from years prior with Cedric. She only just now realized how truly uncomfortable he was to bring her here, his hands deep in his pockets, holding his breath, not wanting to tell her that everyone in their world had paid respects to Lily and James Potter except for their daughter.
They pulled off the cloak when there was a lack of any onlookers and Lizzie pushed open the gate. Hermione pulled a camera from her bag, smaller than the likes of which Collin would carry, but not by much. She wanted to document the names as they proceeded down the aisles, Lizzie scanning for names and the symbol, Dumbledore's mother and sister, knowing her parents were at the end aisle but not wanting to rush too soon.
Music chimed in the church and the lights flickered warmly through the window. Lizzie gave Hermione a worried look as people started filing out and retreating back down the streets to their cottages. Christmas carols. "Lizzie, I think it's Christmas Eve," Hermione whispered.
The cold snow was numbing her feet and icing over watering eyes. She ignored the church goers and proceeded up the walk. Hermione caught up to her.
"Do the Peverell's mean anything to you?" Lizzie asked when the mark was visible for the first time on a headstone they'd examined. Hermione frowned.
"It does sound familiar doesn't it?" She asked. Lizzie nodded but couldn't place it at the moment. She passed a cross further up the walk that read 'Kendra Dumbledore' and next to it, 'Ariana Dumbledore.' There were no other marks on either but the engraved words, "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Lizzie mouthed it a few times to make sense of it while Hermione snapped pictures. She then moved toward her parents grave and stopped.
It felt wrong to stand before them as someone else. Hermione approached her cautiously. Lizzie thought maybe it was the locket, but she felt estranged from them, nothing like how she felt when she was here with Cedric. Hermione seemed to pick up on the cold demeanor. She'd long known the coldness wasn't her friend. The charismatic, sarcastic, and compassionate Lizzie was only ever overshadowed by the fiercely competitive, cold, means to an end Lizzie often dominated by spite, reservation, and disdain. The only perfect blend of the two was perhaps on the quidditch pitch, but the latter was frightening and had grown evermore so over the years she'd known her. Her eyes changed, a darkness lingered ominously behind the bright green, but with the locket they could be mistaken for black at a quick glance.
Lizzie's fists were clenched and her jaw set. She wanted so desperately to yearn for them, there was something cathartic about the release of even the most stifled sob on their behalf, but all she heard was the locket clicking, all she could mustered was tempered breathing. Hermione reached for the locket and pulled it off Lizzie's neck. For a moment she was taken back in time and turned around hoping to feel Cedric's arms around her, but saw the stranger woman Hermione was impersonating and felt displaced. She swayed on her feet, stared back at the names and after a moment, then fell onto her knees in the snow. She dug shallowly with gloved hands through the ice. She wanted to climb inside their caskets and let the air leave her as slowly as possible, just so they'd know how bad she felt to be the reason they were dead. "Lizzie will be buried with her parents one day, not here," she heard herself say to Claire. Hermione's hand behind her head meant as a comforting gesture made her flinch, she heard the locket twitch violently, and scanned the surroundings anxiously.
From the small spot where Lizzie dug, flowers grew despite the cold. She plucked a petal and watched it transform into a bird in her palm before fluttering away in the dense air. As she followed it with her eyes, Lizzie watched a figure graze past the kissing gate at the far end and a shadow enter the church.
Hermione's breath caught in her throat and Lizzie moved toward the church doors facing the yard. All but one candle had been smothered from the Christmas service and the smoke whisps in the air hovered around the distinguished flames. The room was dark and grim in this light, she heard the sound of at least three dozen people rise and looked around to a now well lit room with a priest at the hilt beneath the cross. Two caskets were side-by-side. Lizzie recognized the young faces of her parents. There was an emblem clutched close to the heart of her father, Lizzie examined it closer to see the same shape on the grave and in the book. She looked to her mother and saw clutched to her heart was a crocheted child's blanket.
She reached out to touch them when the priest's voice startled her. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death," he said. Lizzie turned and looked on the sea of faces. She stared back at Dumbledore looking astonishingly grim, Minerva, Remus, a couple of the older order members, and Bathilda Bagshot. The candles went out as she followed Dumbledore and Bathilda out of the building and into the street. When she crossed the threshold they were gone, she turned to see Hermione coming down the steps anxiously, behind her was the shadow of a woman, but when Lizzie stepped aside for a better look, the shadow was gone. Lizzie snatched back the locket from Hermione with a disorienting surge of panic, then clasped her hand and walked up to the line of cottages at the end of the lane. Her long, urgent strides stopped at the gates to the ruined house. It looked different this time. The mailbox at the front was ajar, and Lizzie pulled out a folded letter and some scribbled parchment notes, but pocketed it all.
"Lizzie, wait!" Hermione hissed under her breath as she pushed open the gate and up the walk. She stopped in the kitchen as Hermione's footsteps rushed behind her. Lizzie could almost hear her friend's heart beating, but before her mind was submerged in the long resurfaced memories, she started looking through cupboards and drawers feverishly. She closed the door of the last cupboard and heard a giggle that startled her. Feet ran down the stairs after a pair of smaller ones. "Lizzie, baby, stop!" Her dad shouted.
"No!" She screamed and laughed again a little maniacally.
"Put it down," her dad warned. "Lily! You can't leave your wand lying around!" He shouted over to her. There was a bang and an orange tabby cat scurried out of sight. Lizzie frowned swearing she saw Crookshanks but thought she must be mistaken, the cat disappeared under furniture.
"Baby, put it down!" Her dad yelled. Lizzie smiled a devilish grin and raised it in the air testing the waters. His mouth twitched in a veiled grin at the defiance, but he summoned it from her hand by makin a clutching motion in the air with his hand and could see the tears start to redden her cheeks before they fell. James scooped her up and spun her around until the impending sobs of a toddler tantrum turned back into giggles.
"Fatherhood suits you," a familiar voice said from the sitting area. Lizzie stared up at a younger Dumbledore in a purple and gray suit-like get-up. Her mother sat next to him and poured out some tea.
"She's a little menace, and stir crazy, you sure we can't get out of here for awhile?" James asked as he sunk down into a cushioned chair with Lizzie scrunched into his lap. Dumbledore gave her a meaningful stare but shook his head apologetically.
"Can I show her something?" Dumbledore asked, nodding toward the bedroom upstairs. He gestured for Lizzie to follow and she did so shyly. Dumbledore paused at the bedroom door with hesitation, something dark from the past in his eyes.
At the top of a dusty shelf was a small photo box he pulled down and opened on the bed. Ignoring the photos, he pulled out a wooden box with a latch and opened it with slightly trembling hands. The figure of a dancer was erected when the lid was opened, and she twirled to the chime of a sweet melody.
"You can have this," he said when Lizzie picked it up with sparkling eyes. He looked down at the photos but closed the lid with a heavy weight in his chest.
"Thank you," Lizzie said as he got up to leave the room. Dumbledore looked back at her almost surprised by the comment.
"No, sweetheart, don't thank me..." he said with a weak smile and sad eyes.
"You sure you don't want to stay for dinner? I invited Batty over..." Lily asked in the hallway.
"No... no, no... I'm quite alright," he replied. "But thank you, I'll come bearing better news soon, I hope," he said reassuringly and squeezed her mother's shoulder.
Lizzie was sitting on the bed listening to the song. The room suddenly became dark and open to the elements and the music box cracked a broken melody in her hands. Hermione was shuffling through the photos and stowing them away in her bag. "Hermione," Lizzie whispered.
"I didn't think you were here, you seemed somewhere else," Hermione said. Lizzie nodded absently. The room was in shambles, her family was gone, and so was Dumbledore.
"That was Arianna's," Lizzie said and handed it to Hermione who put it in the bag.
"I... um... well I checked your parents bedroom and grabbed a few things. Probably nothing, looks like some notes, the family bible, some pictures. Figured you'd want them," Hermione said. Lizzie nodded a silent thank you but made her way around the room wondering what else was inherited from Ariana. Thus far she'd only found some old dresses in a trunk in the closet, a children's story collection with a book missing from the center of the lineup, and some drawings that all appeared to be of black shapes. "What are these?" Lizzie asked. Hermione frowned at them.
"Well, her father went to Azkaban, I reckon maybe dementors," Hermione answered with no certainty. There was another drawing of three boys. They had evil looking faces and stood in front of a building with a cross erected at the point of the roof. She'd scribbled out their faces and the parchment was wavy from blots of dried water. Lizzie exchanged a look of mild horror with Hermione, she heard a hiss and the weight of something heavy move across the floor and over the body of her mother now lying in the center of the floor. Lizzie's heart rate spiked and the locket ticked. "Jamie!" She heard a man scream from downstairs, it was blood curdling, it was Sirius. Shouts ensued and feet charged up the stairs. Lizzie knelt by her mother but Sirius did not look at the woman or the little girl on the floor, he looked at her, straight at her, took her face in his hand and smiled.
"Hi," she whispered and closed her eyes to capture the loving look on his face in her memory, but when she opened them he was gone, it was Hermione with a concerned hand on her face and swimming eyes.
"I really think we need to get out of here," she said quietly. Lizzie nodded but tears streaked her face. There was chatter coming from the living room as they descended the stairwell.
"Oh, Lizzie, darling, come here," an old woman sitting across from her mother said. Lizzie watched her small self climb up to sit next to the woman. "See, Lily... it's really not good for her, Ariana was in this house for years, the isolation from the outside world just isn't healthy for this long... I wish there was another way," she said. Lily looked somber and sipped the tea.
"I planted these, she loves them, do you want to see?" Lily said as she got up and headed into the back garden. Lizzie scurried excitedly out after her. There was a row of azalea and lily bushes down the side of the cottage.
"Watch!" Lizzie shouted and ran up to each Azalea, touching them until they were all lit. When she reached the lilies they did not light up but burst into butterflies. Lizzie giggled and Bathilda smiled.
"Beautiful," she whispered approvingly.
"Happiness can be found... in anything... I want her to remember that," Lily said as Lizzie stared transfixed at the butterflies.
"My God..." Hermione said as they looked on the aged bushes, every lily had long since died and dried up, but the azaleas thrived. Lizzie reached out and touched one and they all shone especially bright.
"They lived on when you did," Hermione whispered. The locket twitched on Lizzie's neck and the hairs stood on the back of her neck. Just beyond the gate that led to the narrow gutter and alley behind the row of cottages stood a woman with hunched shoulders and face not clear in the light. Hermione stiffened at the sight while Lizzie approached with her wand lit in front of her.
"Miss Bagshot?" She asked when she drew near enough to see the face she'd seen moments ago in the sitting room, only impossibly older and sickly. She said nothing but gestured for the girls to follow.
They followed her slowly up to her home a few doors down the walk. Once they entered the narrow back entryway and into the small confines of a kitchen, Lizzie felt an urge to vomit at the smell of the place. It was dark but for the match the woman tried in futile effort to light. Lizzie lit her wand and examined the room. She stopped at a photograph of a young man she recognized from Gregorvich's memory, but dropped the frame when the Bathilda touched her arm and startled the life out of her.
"Azalea," she said is a voice so low Lizzie was surprised she understood her. Lizzie looked to Hermione but she had her hands and eyes fixed to a book on the side table.
Lizzie nodded discretely at the woman and she stared with deep black, sunken eyes at Lizzie's chest where the locket ticked violently in her ears.
"Who is this?" Lizzie whispered as she picked up the now broken frame and pulled the photo from the shattered glass. The woman stared but didn't answer. She pointed upstairs and nodded her head.
"Do you have something for me? From Dumbledore?" Lizzie asked. She looked at Hermione but she was halfway down the hall inspecting the area. The woman nodded and Lizzie swallowed with a clenched and apprehensive jaw, but followed her.
"Liz?" Hermione whispered but Lizzie didn't hear her over the ticking around her neck.
The stairs weren't stable but they climbed the steep incline slowly. Lizzie lit her wand at the top of the stairs but didn't see Bathilda immediately. She stared ahead at a dusty mirror and saw a much younger girl looking back from over her shoulder. In the corner sat a man she didn't recognize with his arms splayed across the headboard of the bed behind him. He had a satisfied, anticipatory hunger in his eyes that Lizzie recognized the intentions of immediately. Lizzie opened her mouth to say something but her wand light went out and the ticking became so loud it was blurring her vision with a sharp, painful, repetitive crack deep in her eardrums. Lizzie felt a hand on her back and jumped at the sight of the old woman in the dark.
"What are you doing?" Lizzie whispered, as she suddenly felt a sense of intense dread. There was a loud lurching sound from the furniture in the room and Lizzie spun on her heel at the noise to see the man hit the girl from the mirror hard across the face and pull on her ankles as she scrambled away on the bed. Lizzie impulsively lunged to help but as the girl spun around to face him, her face was no longer human, and a serpent savagely struck his neck. "Ross!" he screamed but the snake struck several more times. Lizzie stammered backwards into the dresser with a yell for help for Hermione. She flicked her wand to light the nearest candles but they snuffed out with a strong draft leaving them in complete darkness.
There was a loud but low hiss in the air and Lizzie felt around in the dark where she touched the body of the woman as she crumpled into a pile of clothing and a pair of sharp teeth struck her wand arm. Her wand rolled across the uneven wooden floor. The locket beat fiercely on her chest and felt as though it had been absorbed into the beating of her own heart that beat so savagely she couldn't breathe. There was a sudden bright light and a surge of flames, Hermione screamed from where Lizzie thought the door to the bedroom was. Her scar burned white and the ear splitting pain made her ears ring too loud to stay focused on any of the commotion in the room.
"Hold her," she heard and closed her eyes. She was on her knees and felt her uncle's uncompromising death grip on her from behind. Damien crouched down in front of her and pulled on her hips and legs until she was flat on her back with her arms locked in hold above her head. With a fierce surge of anger, she spit at his face and struggled to knee him in the chest. In turn he snatched her jaw in his hand with a bone crushing grip, his other plunged down the waistline of pants.
"You're mine and you're going to look at me," he hissed as she struggled to look anywhere but into his unnaturally scarlet eyes. He pressed a finger to the scar which seared in a fresh wave of pain. She felt something coil around her torso until all the air left her body. It felt muscular, like the strong hands that had once pressed so hard on her lower rib cage it paralyzed her hips and pelvis. She desperately tried to twist away from the impending assault. Every movement made her ribs feel like they'd snap under the pressure of those hands. Except they weren't hands.
"Hold her," she heard again but it was Voldemort's voice. Lizzie slammed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to block his entry into her mind, but she was three again, shrieking at the snake coiled into a tight cage around her body, she was small enough then to swallow whole. There was a sudden blast that ricocheted around the room and offered enough slack from the grip to get her hands on an object to strike the large serpent with. There was another flash of light and she was free for a suspiciously quiet moment as she fumbled in the dark for a grip on her wand. Her fingers closed around the handle and she stared into Nagini's yellow eyes before sending a bright flash of green light into her gaped open jaw.
The curse rebounded across the room, blowing it apart, her wand snapped in her hand that felt as though every bone had shattered in it instantly. Hermione shrieked and Lizzie's heart seized at the thought the curse struck anyone but the snake. She closed her eyes as hostile movement and venom ran through her body, and could see herself kneeling by where the window was. Her heart leapt with excitement, she was him and he had her. A shield charm broke across the center of the demolished room and and arm wrapped Lizzie like a vice. With a loud crack they were gone. Voldemort lunged but it was too late.
He felt split in half and screamed in raw pain. Lizzie could see herself through the window with her father in the living room. He was carelessly stretched out, smiling at the little girl talking in rapid, semi incoherent English. Her mother rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and smiled weakly at them. The isolation had deteriorated most of the happiness in her face, but there was still inexplicable spite. She stopped at the window and stared out in horror. Her husband stood up and edged closer with the child on his hip, but frantically handed her off to Lily and grabbed fists of his black hair in distress. He pointed for them to hide and moved to stand guard at the stairs as the door opened.
He was swiftly dealt with, they were wholly unprepared for this. His eyes before he died seemed to dwell on the how, the recognition that it must have been a friend. The dread of betrayal washed over his corpse, it was etched permanently into features.
Small feet could be heard on the floor above, and he stepped around the young man's body and up the stairs to find a shuttered and locked door. He laughed at the futile effort and listened against the door for the sounds of a woman frantically trying to find something. It went quiet. The door blasted open. The way she held onto her daughter was pathetic and he laughed with one flick of his wand that flung the little girl out of her reach. She screamed for mercy, but only on the little one's behalf. It was foolish, but it wasn't necessary to kill her, so he turned to the girl. The eyes were uncannily familiar and he muttered the spell before there was time to dwell. Except it struck her mother instead as the woman threw herself in front of her daughter. He pointed the wand again at the little one's face, wholly ignorant that only one of the girls in the room needed to die to satisfy his growing debt, that he could stop now and be free. Had he waited another moment before casting the second curse, the little one would have ceased to be a threat, he could have walked away. But he didn't.
Voldemort was gone with the explosion around the room. It was dark, quiet, except for a rustling noise of a girl who looked too gray to be alive, who Lizzie recognized now to be Leah, crawled from the shadows of the room, eager and excited. Lizzie watched her touch Lily's hand and smile. She muttered 'finally' and clasped the hand, Lily almost moved, there was a spark of life that Lizzie only took to be her spirit leaving her body and going with the little girl who looked back at a halfway conscious little Lizzie, with a sad and almost guilty expression.
When Lizzie sat up and looked around, she saw the small version of herself staring back menacingly with bright white eyes and a sinister grin. She screamed in terror, then the figure was gone. She blinked away her own milky white eyes that returned to a dull shade of green.
First, she checked for her father by crawling partway down the stairs, but he was as still as her mother. In a desperate attempt to do what that other girl had done, she touched her mother's hand and even curled tight next to her body. No movement, no spirit. She closed her eyes and tried to go with her, hoped she wouldn't wake, that somehow they would walk away like the other had. She didn't open them when she heard someone in the room, afraid it might be the scary little girl again. A hand brushed hair from her face and she heard a voice she recognized. "Pity," Pettigrew whispered. He picked something up off the floor while Lizzie stayed astonishingly still. He paced anxiously and seemed to sob quietly before he left.
Lizzie opened her eyes as far as they would let her before an intense pain behind them surged. Her scar still burned. Hermione had a cold cloth to her head, she wasn't wearing much of anything except for underwear and her skin was scalding hot to the touch.
"Lizzie, you're alright," Hermione said, only half convinced, and pushed on her shoulder for her to stay lying down. Lizzie whimpered pathetically and hated the sound it made. Her stomach was a deep shade of red and purple. Hermione handed her three potions in quick succession to take, but her hands shook too badly to hold them.
"How..." Lizzie muttered.
"Been back for hours. It's nearly morning. We're safe," Hermione said. Lizzie sat up slightly on extremely weak muscles.
"You... you've been really sick. Nagini bit you, and I reckon his anger triggered the ophidians..." she explained. Lizzie ran a hand over her abdomen where it was sore enough to have been bitten a few dozen times. "You've thrown up several times, your fever was so high I had to strip you down and even put you in the snow for several minutes. Nothing broke it. You've been having a nightmare I gathered..."
Lizzie felt a wave of sick and sat up sharply to heave over the bed into a bucket Hermione had on standby. Her body shook badly in shock. She touched a burn and cut on her chest where the locket was, it would surely scar. Hermione explained that she had to resort to cutting it off.
"He could have stopped at my mum" Lizzie muttered quietly, the image of Leah clutching Lily's hand seared forever into the backs of her eyes.
"What?" Hermione asked. But Lizzie faded and lost consciousness again before she could say anything else.