Third Year, Part Five

A loud crack split the air, making her drop the book and look around wildly, her heart hammering in her chest.

"Miss, miss, it's just being me."

Her eyes found the speaker after a moment. It was a house-elf, a female one by the looks of it.

"Professor Moody, Miss," it squeaked, "He was asking me to give this to you."

She took the note from the outstretched hand, thanking the elf in a tremulous voice.

It blushed before disappearing with another loud crack.

"Come to my office as soon as you get this."

The feeling of unreality smothered her as thickly as ever it had as she rose on trembling legs, wondering what he wanted.

Since Moody has discovered what she'd done, three days ago, she'd been wondering when she would receive a summons.

She still couldn't believe that he'd simply let her go after finding out what she'd done. It didn't make any sense at all, but that's what he'd done, after promising to help her and making her promise to tell nobody that he'd called her in and examined her mind.

As if there was anyone she could tell.

But that was it, as if Moody didn't really care what she'd done.

As if he didn't care that she was planning to help Tom, if she ever could.

The door to his office opened almost the same second she knocked.

"In," he growled, waving his wand at the door as soon as it closed behind her.

"Do you still have the hairs?"

"Wh-"

He scowled, waving an impatient, marred hand. "The hairs! From the squib's cat, from Higgs and the other animals. Do you still have them?"

"I-I have Mrs Norris', but-"

He cursed under his breath, waving his wand again and making hers fly from her sleeve and into his hand.

"And you didn't do anything about your spell record," he snapped, tapping her wand and starting to mutter under his breath.

"What are-"

"They suspect he was cursed," he said, "they're going to test the cat. You need to destroy those hairs."

She froze, even her shaking stopping as she realized what he meant.

They suspected that Higgs had been cursed. They were going to find her out, they'd expel her, she'd be sent to Azkaban, they'd-

His hand shot out, whipping across her face.

The burning pain sliced neatly through her panic, bringing her harshly back to reality.

"Listen to me," he said roughly, "tonight, I'm taking you to someone who might agree to help you. Until then, you need to keep yourself together. Go and burn those hairs, make sure you've got every one of them."

She nodded, fighting the urge to bite her fingernails.

"Burn them, flush the ashes down the toilet. They'll be able to prove the curse was done on the cat, but they won't be able to track you if the hairs are destroyed. They won't know it was you."

She nodded again, turning to go.

His hand shot out again, gripping her tightly around the wrist.

"Be back here at eleven tonight," he hissed, "tell nobody where you're going, make sure you aren't seen. We'll have more of a chance to talk after-after you see the man I'm taking you to."

The flickering candles cast strange shadows upon her as she walked, keeping as quiet as she could.

She ducked into a small alcove behind a suit of armour, holding her breath as Peeves went past singing a rude song about hedgehogs.

Once he'd passed, she crept out the hiding place, swiftly making her way to Moody's office.

She glanced at her watch. Eleven o'clock.

Gritting her teeth, still unsure why he was helping her, she knocked on the door.

The door opened a second later.

"Get in," He hissed.

He looked as stressed as she'd ever seen him, his magical eye rolling round and round like a top.

"You're going to come with me on a patrol of the grounds," he said. "I know a shortcut out of them, I'll be Side-Along Apparating you from there. You've been Apparated before?"

She nodded.

"Good. Won't have you being sick on me. Put this on."

She fumbled his sudden throw, almost dropping the silvery cloak tossed to her.

She stared at it for a second before she realized.

"An Invisibility Cloak," she whispered reverently, "cool!"

"Put it on! We need to get going!"

Wearing the cloak was almost exactly how Ron had described his experiences with Harry's.

She followed Moody, a few steps behind him at all times, as they walked through the corridors and staircases, all the way out onto the grounds. There was one nerve-wracking moment when Professor McGonagall walked past them, but she just nodded to Moody and let him and his unseen follower continue. The icy January night bit at her face and hands even through the cloak, the trees in the distant Forbidden Forest groaning in the cold wind.

They walked on, past Hagrid's hut, and she suddenly realized where they were headed. The last time she'd been this way, she'd been looking through an owl's eyes.

"The Whomping-"

"Shut up," he hissed, "voices carry."

Blushing furiously, her fingers curling into fists, she carried on walking, stopping when Moody did, just out of reach of the flailing branches.

"Wormtail," he muttered, jerking his wand and levitating a branch, "if you were lying about this…"

He twisted his wrist, sending the hovering branch forward to touch the tree.

Apparently, Wormtail, whoever he was, hadn't been lying.

Her gasp was swallowed up by the great creaking noise the Whomping Willow made as it froze, a large hole opening right at the tree's trunk.

"C'mon."

She stared around wild-eyed as they walked through the tunnel, eventually arriving in a desolate and ruined hut.

"Where-"

"The Shrieking Shack," he said, "put the cloak on the table and take my arm."

"Wh-"

"We'll have time to talk later," he said, a look of annoyance flickering across his face. "Right now, we need to go. Take my arm."

She'd barely done more than wrap her fingers around his meaty forearm before there was a crack and they were gone, spinning through the tight tube of apparition.

She fell to her knees as they arrived, nausea rising in her belly. She recovered after a minute, pushing herself up to her knees to see Moody talking to a strangely familiar-looking man.

She'd never seen him before, she was sure of it. She'd have remembered that scraggly whisker-like moustache, those enormous front teeth, and the long, wrinkled fingers. Still, something about him rang a faint bell in her memory.

He kept glancing at her, his eyes darting to her face before returning to Moody.

"Tell him we've arrived," Moody said.

The man looked for a second like he wanted to protest, but he nodded glumly, leaving the room.

It was only then that she actually looked around the place they'd arrived.

It seemed to be a living room, far more similar to the pictures she'd seen of Muggle homes than to the comfortingly chaotic setup of the Burrow. There were two leather couches in the centre of the room, but they looked like they hadn't been sat on for years.

A small coffee table stood in the centre of the carpet, a fine layer of dust covering it.

It felt more like a museum than a home.

If not for the open book lying on the couch, in fact, she'd have assumed that nobody had been there for years.

The only real sign that it was a wizarding home was the moving photograph atop the large fireplace.

The photograph showed a man and a woman, him wearing a silly grin, her laughing at something.

As she looked closer, she blinked, realizing that she knew who the man was.

"That's my brother's boss," she murmured, "Barty Crouch."

"Yup."

She jumped, not having noticed Moody walking up to her. He too was examining the picture, although his lips were twisted in a sneer.

"This is my father's house," he said.

"Your-"

"He wants her to come."

She spun, turning to face the door where the man Moody had been talking to earlier had just walked through.

"Just her," the man said. "He wants to talk to her alone."

"C'mon," Moody said, grabbing her arm and pulling her.

She let him take her, too busy trying to figure out what was going on to try and fight.

'Crouch is his father? What? Is that who he's taking me to?'

Moody led her through the other door the man had used, pulling her into a bare-walled corridor.

At the second door in the corridor he stopped, gesturing to it.

"He's waiting for you. Just go down, into the basement."

"But-who is-"

Moody just opened the door and pushed her toward it.

"We'll talk afterwards. Just go, speak to him."

With a sudden, unexplained fear filling her, she walked.

The door opened into a dimly-lit staircase, the wood groaning under her feet as she descended.

After what felt like hours, she'd reached the bottom. It was a large room, the floor carpeted but otherwise bearing almost no furnishing.

There was another fireplace here, the dancing flames casting illumination on the high-backed chair before it.

An enormous snake lay stretched out in front of the fire, its forked tongue sliding out of its mouth as she watched.

"Come forward."

She started, the terrible voice making her hair stand on end. It was high-pitched and cruel, grinding against her ears like nails on a chalkboard.

For some reason, her nervousness lessened at the sound.

"Come to where I can see you, girl."

Her legs responded automatically, pulling her forward.

She was careful not to tread on the snake as she rounded the chair, but what she saw when she looked at its occupant made her take a step back, her hand flying to her mouth even as horrified nausea filled her.

It was the most terrible thing she'd ever seen, worse than any of the pictures she'd seen in the Restricted Section, worse than her most frightening nightmare.

Her first thought was of a baby, a large, mutilated and malformed infant.

Its limbs were gangly and thin, far longer than the body they were connected to. It was naked but for a tiny strip of cloth around its waist, and its skin was a horrid shade of blackened purplish-red, looking burned and blistered.

A wand was clutched in one claw-like hand that looked too weak to even hold the light length of wood.

The creature was hairless, with no nose or lips, its ears twin mounds on the sides of its misshapen head.

Its eyes were misty, white balls that she somehow knew were seeing her.

It was smiling, revealing uneven rows of brown teeth.

It was the worst thing she'd ever seen, the worst thing she could ever imagine.

And yet, it gave her a sense of something she almost couldn't place, something that made her feel warm and comfortable.

There was no conscious thought, no careful application of facts to draw a conclusion.

She just knew.

She fell to her knees before him, her body seized with a fit of powerful trembling, tears welling up in her eyes.

"You know who I am," he said, cold amusement in his voice.

Her tongue felt like she'd swallowed one of Fred and George's sweets.

It was him, he'd come back to her.

It was Tom.

She nodded, her eyes stuck to that face, wondering how she could have ever thought it was ugly.

"Legilimens!"

Far too shocked by his appearance to do anything, she just watched as he explored her memories.

Dozens of conversations with Tom played in her mind, the scratching of her quill against the diary's pages the only sound in those memories. Then she was going down to the chamber for the last time, crying and wishing that she could have helped him in any other way even as she gladly did his bidding.

Harry rescued her, and she felt the raw and fresh hatred for him.

Then she was flying forward through those first terrible months, trying to adjust to a life without Tom, failing miserably. She was cutting herself in the bathroom, she was weeping and wishing she could kill herself, she was practising more and more violent spells, she was duelling Colin, she was inches away from ending her life and deciding that no matter what she would help Tom.

She was convincing the twins to show her how to sneak into the Restricted Section, she was spending hours at a time there, choosing to take the subjects that would help her in her plans.

She was getting fucked by Higgs, wishing that she could even just pretend it was Tom. She was killing Trevor, killing Crookshanks, killing the owls and the rat.

She was killing Higgs, laughing as she forced him to hang himself.

As roughly as it had begun, Tom left her mind, thrusting her back into the present.

She stared up at his beautiful, horrific face, tears blurring her vision.

He muttered something, his wand twitching in one deformed, perfect hand.

She felt the same sensation Dumbledore had caused, back when he had tested her for lingering enchantments. She just sat there, bathing in his presence, trying to get her breathing under control.

His wand flicked again and the sensation faded, a pleased look flickering across his face.

"Tell me, girl. Does my current form disgust you?"

She shook her head wildly, her hair spraying out and covering her face for an instant.

"It would," she babbled, "it would, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it's you, you can't disgust me, it's you, you've come back to me!"

"So I have," Tom said with a chuckle, "so I have. Do you still wish to help me?"

"Anything! Anything I can do, I've been trying, I've been learning, whatever I can do, please!"

Her voice choked up, tears flooding down her face.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, "I'm sorry, I tried, but Potter stopped it, I tried to help you, but Potter ruined it. It's his fault, I tried, I tried, Tom!"

Agony filled her, every inch of her skin feeling like it was being sliced open, her bones seeming to snap.

She fell to the floor with a strangled scream, pain suffusing everything.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun.

She lay on the carpet, twitching and shaking as the torment faded.

"You will never use that name to refer to me again."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'm-"

"I have killed for less," he said.

Slowly, she got back to her knees, the pain forgotten in the face of his presence.

"I didn't know," she repeated, "That's-that's how-"

"How I told you to refer to me. But that was then. You will not ever use that name in my presence."

"I won't," she said.

"My Lord."

"I won't, my Lord."

The snake suddenly rose, slithering past her to glide up the chair.

He made a spitting noise, and the snake curled around him, its head sitting just under his left hand.

"So, you wish to serve me. What use could you be to me?"

"What-whatever you want," she said, "please, I'll do anything. Anything. I'll-"

"If I brought your mother here," he said, his eyes filling up her entire field of vision, "and asked you to kill her. Would you do it?"

A lump of ice appeared in her belly, her heart stopping for an instant.

'Anything. Anything, anything, anything, anything.'

She nodded, her tears starting again.

"What if I desired your death? You were never meant to receive my diary. You are but a loose end."

"I wanted to die for you," she sobbed, "I tried. I tried, but Potter ruined it, he-"

"Enough."

She fell silent instantly, her voice dying in her throat.

"Could you continue your pretence? Are you capable of fooling even Albus Dumbledore, of leading him to believe you are nothing more than a regular student? Could you be my eyes and ears within Hogwarts?"

She nodded eagerly, hope warming her.

"Then that will be your role."

He made another spluttering noise, and the snake twisted off of him, slithering towards the exit.

She didn't watch its progress, didn't care to see how it would manage the stairs.

She kept her gaze focused on Tom.

"You are mine," he hissed, "You owe me your life. I am choosing to allow you to prove that you can make yourself useful. You will act as nothing more than a student, and you will watch and listen. And you will report back to me, you will keep me informed on everything that occurs within Hogwarts."

"I will," she said, "I will. Anything you want, anything I can do, I-"

"Barty will train you," he interrupted, "You must learn to fight just as you must learn to disarm any suspicions."

"Whatever I can do, however I can-"

"One day," he continued, "you will not have to hide your allegiance. One day, your loyalty will not be secret. I hope that you will stand as an example of what I expect from those close to me."

Those close to him. The words reverberated in her mind, drawing a joyous grin across her face.

She heard the clanking of Moody's approach but did not turn to look.

"I am expecting greatness from you," he said, "the memory of my younger self certainly believed you have potential. I agree. You will prove your worth to me. Once you have done that, you will be admitted into the ranks of my most cherished friends."

"I will, I will, thank you, thank you, my Lord, thank you!"

"Barty. Explain the truth to her. Train her in the art of subterfuge and combat. Keep her safe."

He looked at her again, favouring her with a warm smile that made butterflies flap their wings in her stomach.

"I am sure you will do me proud."

"I will," she swore, "I will, my Lord."