Chapter 18 - Gellert Grindelwald

Lizzie sat outside the mouth of the tent, bundled in a jacket and a warm blanket, with the handle of Hopkirk's wand lodged in her mouth so the lit end would illuminate Skeeter's book in her lap. The tent opened and Hermione emerged with two cups of hot tea. Lizzie smiled up at her with the wand still between her teeth and Hermione choked on a laugh.

"It's tea, isn't it?" Lizzie asked, now removing the wand and sticking it in the snow so the lit end illuminated their immediate surroundings.

Hermione nodded and sat down across from her, "warm your hands, drink it if you'd like, I was going to switch with you so you could get some sleep," Hermione said.

"Thanks, I'm invested in this unfortunately, if you want to catch some z's, I'll be fine for a few hours," Lizzie contested, wrapping her hands around the cup and breathing in the warm steam emitting off the top. Hermione took the book from Lizzie's lap and flipped through some of the sections casually.

"What happened in that room, Lizzie?" Hermione asked. Lizzie's face went cold and dark. "What did you mean about him only needing your mum?"

"When we were in the cottage, I saw visions of my parents, memories of them there with Dumbledore and another with Bathilda. Real as day it felt like. The music box was Ariana's, Dumbledore gave that to me as a child. Bathilda and my mum were close, she'd come over and spend hours with us while we stuck in that house. Those were my memories, but in Bathilda's house I saw Nagini's... before she was Riddle's..." Lizzie explained. Hermione frowned looking confused.

"I saw the girl in the mirror, and then flashes of her life before Riddle. It meshed with my own, she was doing what Riddle would do in reliving the worst, she knew exactly how to make it unbearable because she was uncannily familiar with the same fears..." Lizzie continued.

"Of what, exactly?" Hermione asked.

"Being... owned. No control. The worst part about being...violated... is not the physical pain, that goes away. It's being powerless and the shame that comes with it. I couldn't tell if I was getting strangled by the snake or being mauled by Whalen. Then he wasn't him, he was You-Know-Who, and then he wasn't him either. I'm not sure I've ever been quite that terrified," Lizzie continued.

"Then I relived the night my parents died, but through his eyes. That's happened before, but not like that. Something happened before I lost consciousness that night. He cast the curse that rebounded, and I watched Leah, an almost inferi-like Leah, seize my mother's hand and leave. I almost thought I saw my mum's spirit leave her and just the shell of her body was left behind. What I saw after, wasn't Leah, I got this certain feeling she'd gotten what she wanted. I mean her mother died in front of her exactly 44 years prior to that night, the witch of equal exchange I suppose. What I saw was myself, like that boggart from Lupin's first class, and I screamed. She became me... I think... I just think that the debt he had been trying to satisfy with all these girls was paid with my mother's death. The curse rebounded on me though and that is what I've been seeing ever since. Had he not tried to kill a child, he would have been free and clear...does that make sense?"

Hermione nodded slowly in thought. "Bathilda was an inferi?" She asked finally. Lizzie nodded.

"Nagini possessed her, she must have been dead for a while," Lizzie explained. "She was speaking in parseltounge, I didn't realize you could not understand her," she added. "Did you find anything in the stuff from the cottage?" Lizzie asked.

"Not really, no. Some notes between Dumbledore's brother and a girl who was being sent away, some child drawings of Ariana and one of her brothers. Jewlry of Kendra's from the looks of it, but none of it is riddled with anything," Hermione explained.

"I guess the stuff from the cottage is probably least of importance, I was hoping this book would have something that pointed to where the sword might be. I know that's a longshot..." Lizzie said. Hermione looked up at her sharply and flipped through the book to a dog-eared page. "Apparently, the summer Kendra died, Gellert Grindelwald came to live with his aunt, Bathilda..." Lizzie stopped when Hermione's jaw fell open.

"Dumbledore couldn't possibly condone the Grindelwald's calls for wizarding dominance," she contested.

"They were good friends... they say he left the Hollow when Dumbledore's sister died. Was never clear how she did, but his brother blamed Albus," Lizzie retorted. "They kept her locked away in that house, much like he intended to do with me. In one of the visions Bathilda was telling my mum how damaging it was and that they couldn't keep me hidden there indefinitely because of what it did to Arianna."

"What do you think it did to Arianna?" Hermione asked.

"I think she was... like me. I think she was an obscurial. From the sound of the relationship Dumbledore had with Gellert, I think they were planning to use her to carry out their plans," Lizzie said. Hermione shot her a look.

"You really think him capable..." she said abrasively.

"I'm certain he knew what was going on at Privet Drive for years, Hermione. I think him capable of anything for the... greater good," she said darkly. Hermione stifled a shallow sob that intersected with shiver. "Rita left nothing out of the section on Dumbledore's relationship with me. She spoke to Fletcher probably, I'm sure of it. Whole bit on how he let his 'favorite' student get abused worse than his sister because if he could let that happen to his own blood, he couldn't possibly have an ounce of empathy for anyone else. 'Grooming the sociopath,' is what she referred to him as doing in terms of me..." Lizzie said bitterly.

"Can I ask you something?" Hermione said nervously. Lizzie nodded.

"You didn't join him... despite you hating Dumbledore, despite so many not being on your side, why?"

Lizzie was silent for a long moment. "It's... I don't know if I have an answer to that, except that part of me has always wanted to...out of spite for the injustice... but after the Manor I've thought that him burrowing into my mind. Whenever I think about it rationally, in my right mind, it would be insane to join someone so bent on killing me. I'd be used until I was shell of a person. I can't be under that kind of control, it's one of the things I fear most...selfish on my part more than anything else, I hate to admit," she explained.

"I think you should get some sleep," Hermione said after a long pause.

"Blessed be the day you deterred me from reading a book," Lizzie said with a smirk.

"Nothing written by Rita Skeeter can be construed as a book, besides you skim books, I've yet to see you read anything cover to cover," Hermione retorted harshly, grabbing the book. Lizzie choked back a laugh.

"If it looks like a book and talks like a book..." she said facetiously, grabbing it back from her.

"It's a pile of gossipy garbage," Hermione said.

"Literary work of art," Lizzie retorted sarcastically.

"Oh, shut up, you can't be this gullible. The first time this woman targets someone you already had so much animosity toward, and you gobble it up like turkey dinner as if she hasn't been smearing your name through a pile of shit for three years, I don't believe this about Grindewald," Hermione snapped but Lizzie was laughing, and they both needed the simple release after weeks of being alone with the locket.

"Where to next, or dare I ask," Lizzie said as the giggles subsided.

"This mark means something. I don't have a clue where else the sword would be, so I think we should start there. Dumbledore must have written it in the book because it's at the bottom of that letter to Gellert in the book. I think this must have been the one missing from Ariana's shelf - your shelf... sorry," Hermione explained.

Lizzie paused and nodded slowly. "Xenophilius might know more," she said finally. "I want to know why my father was associated with it."

"Maybe we should give Nigelus another shot?" Hermione asked. Lizzie groaned.

"Nigelus the pompous asshat, sure. Had he been headmaster while I was at Hogwarts, don't think I would have lasted a week," she grumbled.

"Even with Dumbledore, I don't know how you lasted six years," Hermione said with a smirk.

"Yeah, that's fair, I don't know how i made it through 6 years at Sacred Heart either," Lizzie chuckled.

They went inside to pull Nigelus out of the bag and it took some considerable prodding for him to surface.

"How is it going Finneus, how many children were tortured today?" Lizzie greeted sarcastically.

"Pleasure, Miss Potter, where do I have the pleasure of speaking to you this evening?" He asked. Lizzie smirked.

"I'm not daft, but do give my best to Headmaster Snivelus, be sure to pronounce it correctly - Sni-vel-us, rhymes with mur-der-ous," she said.

"Lizzie, shut up," Hermione hissed and rolled her eyes. He glared reproachfully but she swore he almost smirked a little.

"Couple questions, first, any idea at all where Dumbledore last took the sword?" She asked.

"I've already told you; he used it to break open a ring. That was an especially dark day in the office. After that, I do not know."

"Alright, fair enough. You said you sent Estrella away, that wasn't to a catholic convent in Albania, was it?" Lizzie asked hopefully.

"Wha- no! We would not have sent her to muggles," he said indignantly.

"Who then?" Lizzie asked.

"I don't recall. It was a family member, no direct relation, former husband or wife of one of my first or second cousins, I believe," he said. "Why are you preoccupied with this?" He asked. "You don't need to worry about sharing our fortune with anyone," he added disdainfully.

"I know that," Lizzie smirked, knowing it infuriated him that she inherited everything.

"Liz!" Hermione whispered sharply. They'd both heard it, a noise outside that couldn't possibly be an animal.

"Pack it up, we're getting out of here," she said in a hurry and left the tent under the cloak to look around. Hermione had the place packed up in record time, Lizzie tossed the cloak over them and they apparated. She cast enchantments while Hermione set up the tent in a forest clearing covered in thick snow.

They sat at the mouth of the tent and looked out onto the sun climbing the horizon. "This is beautiful, where are we?" Lizzie asked.

"Forest of Dean," she said. "I came here once with my parents. It's exactly how I remember it," she said. A sadness washed over Hermione at the nostalgic thought and Lizzie wrapped an arm around her back for a close hug.

"My aunt killed herself, Hermione, I know in my bones death eaters didn't find her... your parents will be alright, I promise," Lizzie said and squeezed her hand tight.

"Go get some sleep, Lizzie, I'll hang out for a while," she said rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

Lizzie woke up a several hours later and squeezed Hermione's shoulder so she'd in turn get some sleep as well. Then she sat at the mouth of the tent and continued reading for about an hour while the sun went down over the horizon. She pulled the locket from the pouch and turned it over in her hand.

'We need to get rid of you," she mouthed and exhaled in frustration. She felt a presence near her and thought about the ominous photos from the graveyard that depicted Emily Teller. Lizzie touched the slowly healing and scarring cut on her chest where Hermione sliced it off.

The locket had already resumed her former reign of terror over the Sacred Heart girls by claiming Heather and Heather's husband. She stared into the mouth of the tent at Hermione with a pit in her stomach that it would somehow claim her life too. She sat and thought about their next moves carefully. Nagini and the locket in the same room was unbearable, they needed means to destroy this one before they could continue to hunt the rest.

It was dark and now impossibly cold. Lizzie bundled tight and closed her eyes to clear her head, but it was a futile effort. She thought about transforming and trudging through the woods as a free, untargeted deer, without a worry in her heart. She could stay that way for years like Peter had as a rat, if it didn't mean leaving her best friend alone with the evil they carried around in a pouch. When she opened her eyes, she saw a figure in trees that startled her. Lizzie stood and pointed her wand. The figure stood no more than five feet high, if that. It was wearing some sort of basic tunic despite the crippling cold. Lizzie stepped forward apprehensively, realized immediately what it was, and took off in a run after the little girl when she heard feet disappear into the trees.

She came to a small clearing and almost stumbled backwards at the sight, covering her mouth as not to vomit. The girl was now lying on her back naked in the snow. There were dark holes where her eyes should have been. Her chest was cut open and the skin sank around an absence of insides. Lizzie trembled and pointed her wand light at the grotesque sight to get a better look.

She closed her eyes which weighed heavy with dread and saw a young boy, no older than fifteen, shaking at the sight of the mangled body. He had a sack-full of something bloody and handed the eyes to a dark-haired man Lizzie recognized as Riddle. The boy was covered in blood and Lizzie got waves of images of a young Brian Teller dismembering his sister, Emily, and then scrubbing the blood clean. She no sooner remembered cleaning his daughter's blood off the bathroom floor and felt lightheaded as everything spun.

Images flashed through her mind of him repeating it on countless wives, one that he'd smothered to death, another who had killed herself but whom he found, another he'd hit hard across the head and done this to alive. Riddle still burrowed in his head all those years later. He saw Lizzie at the school the day his daughter Katie died, and he washed over with a look of ominous recognition.

What Riddle forced him to do evidently stayed with him and his daughter, the mean-spirited little sociopath herself was obviously terrorized by it. "I know how you feel, son. I grew up there too. It was a mercy," Riddle said to him about his sister.

She opened her eyes to the eye-less girl now close enough to her to hug or strangle, and Lizzie fell to the ground unconscious in the snow. When she startled awake, she wasn't sure how much time had passed, the cold had turned her bones brittle as ice. Lizzie looked around for the body but couldn't find a trace of it. The locket was around her neck though she hadn't remembered putting it on.

There was still the uncanny feeling of being watched, but this time a silver doe stared back from a couple of yards away.

Lizzie thought she was dreaming. She frowned, rubbed her face. The doe was still there, staring back. She was beautiful and Lizzie stared transfixed, not wanting her to leave. She broke the trance suddenly to look around, but she didn't see anybody casting the patronus. The thought crossed her mind that it was a traveling patronus, possibly someone from the Order that Dumbledore taught, but she could recall the others.

Dumbledore's was a phoenix, Molly and Arthur's were Weasles, Kinsley a linx, Tonks and Remus's a wolf, Charlie's a Ridgeback, Minerva's a tabby cat, Ron's a Jack Russell, Fred and George's both a magpie, Bill and Fluer's a stallion and a mare, she had no idea Mundungus's but he's the last person to cast a doe. Doge and some of the other older members perhaps, but she'd never seen them cast one.

This was her. She was certainly seeing things, and there was the inexplicable draw that made her not the slightest bit apprehensive about following it deeper into the forest when it beckoned. She quickly transformed into her doe form to follow the mysterious counterpart and trodden close behind through a path about a mile out and into a clearing with a small iced over pool of water.

She looked around and transformed back as the silver patronus compounded itself down into a ball and sunk to the bottom of the pool. Lizzie stepped carefully onto the ice and cast her wand light down on the depths below. Her heart gave a leap and then constricted. She looked up sharply and swung the wand around into the trees to see who was nearby. There had to be someone nearby. The sword of Gryffindor was at the bottom of the pool.

"Accio, sword," Lizzie muttered knowing that would fail the moment she uttered it.

Lizzie backed up and thought hard. She'd need to dive; she knew she needed to dive. The sword required chivalry and daring, the traits of a true Gryffindor. But it had come to her when she needed help the first time in the Chamber. She closed her eyes and pled for help silently. The sword didn't budge. She looked around still feeling watched, swearing she heard a presence in the air. The locket ticked around her neck, and she knew this was the only shot at getting rid of the thing, at making any progress.

The cold split through her bones the moment she removed her top jacket. She stripped down to next to nothing so there would be dry clothes to put on after, then muttered a diffindo curse to break the surface of the ice while her teeth chattered violently.

Lizzie remembered the ice-cold water bath water to reduce bruising, the cold of the Black Lake in the second task mid-February and being dragged under the lake in the cave where the water never baked in an ounce of sunlight, but none of it had anything on this.

"You couldn't have put it in a tree?" Lizzie hissed into the air, feeling completely humiliated and utterly vulnerable by the ordeal.

She sat on the edge and put her feet in the water. It felt like thousands of tiny knives pierced every pore and an involutary shriek left her throat. Before the backs of her thighs could adhere to the ice, Lizzie jumped in and immediately couldn't breathe.

Swimming wasn't a strength, had never been a strength of hers, and whoever did this must have known that. She froze in the water as the pain penetrated every nerve in her body before she willed herself to dive toward the sword. It wasn't far down. Just a few feet.

As she touched the handle, she heard a click from the locket like a violent spasm and lurched backward in the pool toward the surface, but it had resealed, and she felt hands holding and pulling her rib cage until she was flush and stuck in an unnatural position with her back to the underbelly of the ice. The locket constricted tight around her neck, she watched a figure come inches in front of her face but couldn't see the whites of eyes, just black holes where ones should be. Fingers lunged in a claw-like gesture toward her eye and gouged hard. She sealed her eyes shut and pried furiously at the chain as she elbowed the surface in the hope it would break.

Her ears rang and clicked and ticked with the locket, but the water waved suddenly with a loud crash and air finally intersected with her lungs on the surface of the pool. Lizzie coughed violently but felt like her insides had already frozen. Someone plucked her off the ground and half carried, half dragged her in one arm to a snow-less patch. When she landed, still frozen in shock, she felt for the chain but there was a cut around her neck where the chain was. Hands hurried to check for a pulse and rub life back into her limbs with a dry jacket. Lizzie touched her eye where the gouge and felt a deep cut with a furiously shaking hand. She was still coughing and wheezing.

"Lizzie, c'mon..." she heard as a hand rubbed her back where the jacket had been wrapped around her shoulders. The figure fumbled with clothes to get her pants back on and a shirt over her shoulders, Lizzie opened her eyes finally, bleary and numb from the cold, and stared up at Ron in more shock than the water had thrown her muscles into. He propped her up against a tree and wrapped her in layers of clothes, but she stopped him and handed him the oversized jacket to replace his wet clothing.

"No, I have an extra pair in my bag," he said quietly and wrapped it around her shoulders while he inspected her eye and neck.

"The bloody hell were you wearing this for?" He asked.

She couldn't get her voice over an octave. She stared down at the sword with wide eyes. Ron smiled weakly.

"What cut you?" He asked and touched her eye. Lizzie flinched.

"Emily," Lizzie whispered and shook at the thought. Every breath hurt take. "How did you get here?" She struggled to say.

"We need to get to the tent, I'll tell you there," he said. "I've been looking for you both for a while. I saw the doe then I saw you jump in and struggle mad... the position you were in didn't look natural, but I saw the ruby hilt and grabbed for it after I got you above water," he explained in a hurry while he changed his clothes. "I thought you must have been fully possessed to jump practically naked into a pool of ice, but the sword explained it. How did you know it was here?" Ron asked.

"We didn't. I followed the doe... I... don't know who cast it," Lizzie said and Ron frowned.

"I think I saw someone, but only an outline, only for a second. They were craning to see if you'd come up. But I haven't the faintest..." Ron trailed off and looked around. You could hear a pin drop it was so quiet. Lizzie looked between him and the locket and the sword. How had he known to come here? Why?

"Ron, use the sword on the locket, I think it needs to be you. Chivalry and daring... you just saved my life," she said between shaking breaths.

"No, no. That thing... I don't even want to tell you the things I saw and thought wearing that bloody thing," he said bitterly.

"Oh for the love of God, you don't think we've seen those things too?" Lizzie retorted. "It's designed to drive you to madness. It's picked up on the intention to kill it and wants us driven to kill ourselves or each other to prevent that from happening," she explained.

"I think I can open it," she added. Ron looked over at her sharply. "But it's going to try to kill us so you need to stab it quickly..."

Ron looked apprehensive and gripped the hilt of the sword. He swallowed and nodded with trepidation.

Lizzie fumbled onto her feet, still shaking hard from the cold. She set the locket on a flat rock with the serpentine "S" moving ever so slightly in the moonlight.

"Open," she hissed in parseltounge. It burst open for her to see two eyes staring up from either side of the locket. They twitched furiously and Lizzie lost the ability to breathe as if her lungs had constricted and collapsed suddenly. She stammered back and fell to her knees in suffocating pain. Ron stood fixed in place watching something happen Lizzie couldn't see. Her ears rang in a high-pitched scream, and she fell down onto her hands coughing up blood. It felt like a long incision was growing down the front of her chest.

"Ron!" She sputtered. "Kill it!" He looked down at her with scarlet eyes and for a moment she thought all hope was lost. They were done, and he'd won.

She turned her head to see the eye-less little girl crawling toward her with an unnatural gait. Lizzie gripped her wand and shot a curse that did absolutely nothing to the thing that resembled a creature more than the remains of a mutilated child.

Lizzie felt thousands of spiders crawl wild on the forest floor, Ron fell to his knees yelling in some agony that must have been countless times worse than a cruciatus. She felt herself pushed to her back and pinned under the figure. It reached for her face and Lizzie screamed at the vision of doing the same to Bethany. She shut her eyes tight.

"Ron! Kill it!" She screamed, reaching for anything to strike. She felt a hand on her face and neck, but both suddenly turned to black smoke. Lizzie curled up feebly and continued to cough blood while she felt for a cut down her body that didn't exist. She opened her eyes to see Ron keeled over in the snow. Lizzie crawled toward him.

"Ron..." she shook him, and he moved enough to assure her he was alive. Lizzie picked him up by the shoulders and set his head on her lap. "Hey, you're ok," she said quietly, and picked up the mangled locket. They were alone.

"Can you walk?" She asked.

"Can you?" He grunted, trying to sit up. Lizzie laughed weakly before starting to cough again.

"Three to go," he said, staring back at her exasperated from the ordeal.

"Well now we know what to expect," she said with a still trembling voice. They stood up on weak legs, lit fires to warm their frost-bitten hands, and Ron gave her a tight and supportive hug.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I know," she whispered. "Hermione is going to murder you."

"I know," he said with a shudder from both the thought and the cold.

They hiked back up to the tent in the dark and Lizzie passed through the mouth to see Hermione curled up on a bunk. Ron sat down apprehensively at the table and ran hands through his hair nervously before ironing his face down.

Lizzie made some hot water for tea and to warm hands and feet in. She changed clothes and sat down at the table with Ron.

"You want to wait until she wakes up?" Lizzie asked, but she heard something slide out from the bunk and looked behind her to see Hermione flush with a mixture of shock and anger, eyes fixed in a murderous stare at Ron.

Before Lizzie could stop her, she'd seized the handle of a tea mug and chucked it at Ron's face.

"Bloody hell!" He shouted. "If I wasn't freezing..." he muttered. "Hermione! Wait!" She'd seized Lizzie's mug and Lizzie snatched her arm to stop her.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" Lizzie interjected.

"How the hell did he find us out here?!" She shrieked. Lizzie opened her mouth to answer but didn't know how to answer. She looked behind her at Ron, standing with his hands up in surrender.

"You didn't explain that?" Lizzie said.

"You didn't check to see if it was really him?!" Hermione yelled.

"It's him!" She screamed. "He saved my life, risked his in the process and destroyed the locket... who else..."

"What?!" Hermione yelled. Ron held up the locket, her eyes darted to sword.

"I wanted to come back as soon as I left, but I apparated into a gang of snatchers and it took several days to escape... by the time I made it back, you'd left..." he said. "I heard something come out of the deluminator though. Christmas morning. So I clicked it, and something told me to just follow the light as it sort of went into my chest, and apparate. I came to a hillside. I looked for you for days, following the light every time I clicked it, until I saw a deer following a patronus and thought it had to be Lizzie..." he explained badly. They were both very confused.

Lizzie tried to explain the sword situation to Hermione and what happened when they destroyed it, but she quickly became overwhelmed and checked out of the conversation.

"We could have been dead!" She hissed at Ron from across the tent.

"It would have been all over the news if Liz were dead, I knew you weren't. I heard the report about her aunt though and got extremely anxious. I'm sorry for leaving, truly! I can't explain what that locket did, but I was someone else. Do you understand that?" He asked.

Lizzie nodded. "I know exactly... what you mean..." she quietly, shaking in her skin with aftershocks from the horror of the night.

"What did you see out there, Lizzie?" Hermione asked. Lizzie dropped her head but declined to answer.

"Bloody thing is gone. Get some sleep, Ron. We'll figure out what next in the morning," she stated firmly. It shut down the conversation and Lizzie sat by the fire until her bones dethawed. Out of curiosity, she unbuttoned her blouse and noticed a white line down her front, from her collar bone to her belly button as though cut open years ago and healed to scar. She stared into a dirty mirror at the cuts by her eye she wasn't sure would heal correctly, and the ring around her neck from the locket. Hermione sat down beside her to put something on her face. There was already a lightness in the air, they didn't feel stalked by a presence, maybe they could enjoy the peace before another was in hand, but none of them knew when that might be. She closed her eyes and saw Voldemort standing at the gates of a high prison, a feeble old man and then, nothing.