I am back! And this time is forever (well except from middle of January to middle of February)
I have to thank the always divine lil'hawkeye3, who beta'd every word of this fanfic
To shravanthi, who I am unable to send a PM, I am glad to say now I am free to work on it. Winter Reign is kind of in hiatus, however, sorry about that. I am glad you like it!
Have a good reading!
Dominik Meier opened his eyes to find a lake above him in the morning of the first day of the sixth month. For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming, but then something yanked open his mouth and poured a liquid into it, a hand massaging his throat and obliging him to drink. That was certainly not a dream, and the taste of the liquid was far from that of a dream. He shoved the bottle away and heard the sound of something being smashed. His eyes met indigo ones and he knew who his kidnapper was.
He had been sat on a rock, and although there were no visible restraints, the Durmstrang student was unable to stand. He also recognised the potion he was forced to down. Scentless and colourless, but not tasteless – he had been subjected to it several times in order to build up a resistance against it, but he had never managed to do so. Few were the wizards resitant to Veritaserum.
"Is your name of birth Dominik Liohtleben?" Tom Riddle asked.
"It is." He agreed. "Hello, Tom. I didn't see you before the full-body bind."
"I wasn't there; I have an apprentice. Now, were you born from Marika Bethany Liotleben on the 12th of November – in 1925?"
"I was."
"Tell me how your father died. And who killed him."
"Beaten, by filth. Don't know their name."
Tom smirked in satisfaction – the potion was working. The truth serum would only reveal things Meier regarded as truthful, but if they were truly truthful or not he didn't care – he wanted to know about Meier's purposes, not about a murder story. "Did you threaten Anastasia Donbyre?"
"No."
"What is your relationship with Anastasia Donbyre."
"I watch her."
"Have you done her some wrong?"
"I'm doing her good."
"Or at least, you think you are. What do you know about Anastasia Donbyre?"
"She is not Austrian."
Tom sucked a breath. Anya hadn't told him about that – but she had to know. It was very obvious that she didn't like Meier, yet she went out of her way to dig his past. There was only one reason for her to do that. Meier was blackmailing her.
"I am."
Tom didn't realise he had spoken his conclusion out loud – nevertheless, he saw red. He would torture the older boy when the effect of the potion ended. But not now - there were still more questions to be answered. "Why were you watching Anastasia?"
"I was ordered."
"By whom?"
"Lord Magnus."
"What does he wants with her?"
"He seeks power. You two are powerful."
"You were watching me as well?"
"Yes."
A new player in the game, it seemed. Incognito but powerful enough to have spies. Interested in both of them. Tom wanted to question Meier further about this Lord Magnus, but he was plainly aware he wouldn't discover much more – loyalty was much stronger than any potion.
"Your stepfather also died. Werner Meier, I believe, was his name. How did he die?"
"Stabbed five times."
"Is your mother alive?"
"No."
"What was your mother's cause of death?"
"A shot to the head."
"Why did you leave Vienna and go to Salzburg?"
"We were being followed."
"By your stepfather?" Meier didn't answer. Tom sighed. "When did you leave Vienna?"
"December of 1936."
"When was your stepfather killed?"
"October of 1936."
Well, the stalker wasn't the stepfather then. But he had hesitated. "Was your stepfather the reason you left for Salzburg?"
"Yes."
"Did the one who stabbed Werner Meier threaten you?"
"No."
"Did you stab Werner Meier?"
"No."
"Did your mother stab Werner Meier?"
"Yes." Tom smirked.
"Did the police follow you?"
"Yes."
"Did the police kill your mother?"
"No."
"Did someone close to Werner Meier kill your mother?"
"Yes."
"Was your mother killed by your stepfather's lover?"
"No."
"Was your mother killed by your stepfather's relative?"
"Yes."
"What was the relation between your stepfather and your mother's killer?"
"Fraternal." A brother getting revenge on the evil witch then.
"Was your mother mad?" He didn't answer again, the potion's effect should be ceasing now, but there was still some answers to be given. But not all answer needed a truth serum to be revealed. "Tell me, Dominik, tell me about what the muggles did to your father."
A vein pulsated in his left temple – but that wasn't a signal of resistance to the remaining effects of the potion, no, leaving the stupor the Veritaserum induced was a progressive process, very gentle. The vein indicated rage – a rage that wasn't controlled by any potion. "Father loved those filth films of muggles. He was a fool, both of them were! But those muggles…they snapped the wand of a wizard! And then – they dared to profane their betters…A disgusting kind. They are no better than cattle. Obtuse stupid cows and blind bulls!" He roared, and Tom could hear his conviction there. He wasn't wrong of course – muggles were nothing but animals, but he allowed himself to be to affected by those mammals. "My mother married one of those filthy things. It was a little calf, but I had to adopt his name when we were being followed for slaughtering it. Muggles are so obnoxious. You don't see cattle rioting against humans, do you? But they – oh they think they are better! They think they better than us – they think there are better among themselves. But they are blind – they don't see that they are all worms beneath our feet!" Dominik cackled at the end, and Tom was very aware that he was seeing the true face of that boy. He was half-insane – but half of the world was; and the other half was completely bonkers.
"I agree with you, mostly. Now, you admitted you blackmailed Anya – and while I'm very keen to blackmail, I don't like it when it's applied to her, or to me. But no one can blackmail me." He smirked. "If you want to share some information on Lord Magnus, I can show some mercy. Nevertheless, I advise you to behave – there is only one more person aware of this chamber, alive at least, and she isn't very pleased with you either.
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It was interesting to see the number of students who came to seek for guidance at the end of the year. The first weekend of June was the busiest of all. Examinations would start at the Monday, and students of both first and second years would come for her – and sometimes even a third year would question her. The year before, Tom had been with her to review; it was a useful time to make alliances, even though Tom didn't mingle too much with their year-mates. This weekend, however, Tom had vanished – and so had Dominik Meier, Delphine informed her.
She had a weird feeling about that. Tom had been acting normally, except for fleeing away once in a while – at the most unusual times – but the month before he had found the notebook she kept on Meier; he had refused to give it back. She had to postpone her investigation on their disappearances, however, as she was holding something akin to a class to their peers. Sometimes she would order Dorea or Abraxas or Ragnar to lecture on some subject (the others being too shy, or impatient, to work as teachers) but she had to stay around. Most students of other houses didn't trust other Slytherins aside her.
They had taken over an abandoned classroom in the left Bell Tower. It was a mess of cushions over the desks and at the grounds, and the young teens sat where they saw fit. Lions lounging at the desks and the chairs, taking more space than needed, most without shoes or with loose ties and ribbons; badgers sitting together on the ground, leaving space for the others and half-spread over the stone floor; the ravens sitting leisurely on the chairs and tables, all in very comfortable positions to read their books; and half of the snakes sitting stiffly while the other half lazed around, both of parties rather full of pomp and decorum. Anya was the exception – she had sat the whole morning between Harfang's legs, and no one was able to move her from there.
Except Ragnar. When they were leaving for lunch, the auburn-haired wizard had informed her of Tom's plans for that weekend. He was worried because Tom hadn't returned to their dorm the night before – and Slughorn had been looking for him since the previous evening. He had no idea where Tom had taken Meier, but Anya did: to the only place nobody was aware of the existence – under the Great Lake.
She had run there after that, skipping lunch with an order to Dorea to bring her tea, chocoballs and treacle tart. Anya had found her Arawn there, as expected, leaning over the figure of a tortured Dominik Meier.
"I can deal with my own problems, Arawn." She had huffed, while repeating several times the Vulnera Sanentur spell. "Really, you cannot leave lasting damage if wish to remain incognito. Will he need shock therapy?"
"No, I didn't use the Cruciatus Curse. It's too difficult to vanish the traces of it." Anya gave him an appreciating grin. "And you did such a wonderful job dealing with him." He criticised, full of sarcasm.
Anya ignored the jab. "Did you obliviate him?"
'Yesss.' He hissed, rolling his eyes. "I found out every question you had on him." Tom told her, smugly.
That caught her attention. And her attention was enough to make him spill his beans, too eager to flaunt himself. So he told her all he had discovered, and she listened to him – two thirteen year-old magicals talking below a lake that could be an ocean, in a language only snakes could understand, and a tortured body at their feet.
"And you have no idea who this Lord Magnus might be?"
"No. He refused to answer."
"Magnus is a Latin name. Many wizards are named in Latin." She shrugged. "We will find out, we have to finish the term and then we will be free. You should go to the dorms, Ragnar told me you weren't there last night. I'll ask a Hufflepuff to bring some food from the kitchens to you."
"What about him?"
"I will leave him in an abandoned classroom. The exams are so exhausting for students – no wonder one of them fell asleep through the whole weekend."
"You think people are going to believe in it?"
"If they don't, Dominik better start creating some excuses. What about my secret?"
"He never intended to tell – and the Durmstrang student body will be going to Ilvermory at the end of the term, so who cares? I could wipe his memories of you but that-"
"That would catch much more of Lord Magnus' attention." She realised and he nodded. Well, whatever. She stunned the older boy and whispered a mobilicorpus and a notice-me-not charm, and the body trailed after her.
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The Durmstrang students left the day before the end of the term – the wind swelled the sails as they pulled up their anchors. It was the 21st of June, and the students were reunited to say farewell at the paved grounds. The ship would sail away, taking part of the students to the American school of magic while others would return to their homes, preferring to be home-schooled or to attend the classes at their institute again, even if Grindelwald forces were controlling them. Parents had been coerced into changing sides, apparently.
The Van Tovenaars had instructed their daughters to return. Their family had to face obstacles together, and that was a challenge. As a neutral family, they couldn't perdure in a country in which alliance to a side was obligatory. Delphine had shared her parents' decision with Anya some days before – her faced marred by worry, but determined.
"If something goes wrong in Austria, you must floo me." The Danish witch instructed to the false Austrian. "The password is Paradis, and I will key you into the wards."
Anya had thanked her recent friendship. It was a useful safe haven. "I would do the same…but I won't put your name into my wards. Not in Austria." The blonde witch understood. Austria was the home-land of the muggle Führer and Grindelwald's playground. Having your identity keyed to a ward wasn't necessarily good in those circumstances. Both girls knew that, although while one had real people informing her by letters, the other one had to rely on slier ways of communication.
Laws approached them from behind, swinging her arms over their shoulders and squeezing hard. Anya chuckled as Delphine groaned and attempted to free herself from the embrace. Not that it worked – the Ravenclaw was surprisingly strong. They all bid farewell, promises of owling being exchanged.
The Danish girl grinned and stumbled in her sister's direction, the older witch had already boarded the ship which would take them away.
And it went, taking pureblood and half-blood students of all oriental countries in Europe – taking memories, some sorrowful, some dangerous. Taking friends and dates – and taking Dominik Meier away.
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The Hogwarts Express reached King's Cross Station at half past five. The twilight still had to reach the sky in the Summer, but London was a land of darkness. Anya and Tom said goodbye to their peers and walked through the barrier which connected the magical world with the muggle. And then, they saw it. Trains fully loaded with war supplements and soldiers marching around the station. Some of them were obviously new recruits – those carried an innocence that wasn't shared with the others, most of those who carried heavy injuries.
They walked past those men aloofly. Their trunks were too full, but lightening charms made them impossibly easy to carry. Anya had to cancel some of those, though, when a young looking man offered to help her with hers. She just smiled and accepted it – that was a muggle who still had to go to war, obviously.
"How can a lass like you carry this much?" The man inquired, while putting her trunk over his shoulder. Tom groaned, but only her was able to hear it – he found the muggle's behaviour too tiresome, she knew.
"We all have to be strong in this time, good soldier." She sang, and he beamed at her. "Where are you from?"
"A small village in Wales. You?"
"We are Londoners."
"You should leave London, this is no place for children – they have been evacuated." He counselled, settling her trunk in the taxi Tom had called.
"We know – we were in the countryside. Our aunt is taking us to America, though; we had to return." She hastily invented. Maybe the man was right and London wasn't a place for children anymore, but they had nowhere to go.
The cab took in, sweeping between the streets of a deserted London. The Wool's Orphanage could be found in a small corner of the West End, a building squeezed in the middle of city. Tom loathed it. The car stopped in front of it. And they stepped down.
There were none in the garden to tell Mrs. Cole that the freaks had arrived. And the building was without its particularly noisy soundtrack. Both gates and doors were locked. The war had certainly changed the orphanage. They paid the driver, who gave them a strange look before driving his cab away.
They couldn't use their wands to unlock the gate – but that wasn't a problem. Differently from the station, there was no one around to watch as Anya apparated them in their room. A small room with a lone bed – which they had managed to make bigger as they grew, but never to duplicate, not without wands. Their room was tidy, although dusty – they hadn't entered on it since they left, probably fearing what demoniac thing they had done in it.
No one came to them. There were no sounds of steps around the building. And they would soon discover that there was no one around to make those steps – the orphanage was empty. They had left them behind.
That was pretty expected of them.
There was no water, no electricity, no gas nor food. The rats ran wild around the house – a colony like no other. They found beds untidied, which was something they would dismiss as common if it wasn't for the cigarettes in some of those. Recently lighted, recently burnt. Apparently they weren't the only ones to have found a way to get in.
There was nothing to them there. The feeling of abandoned, the sensation of being an orphan had never felt so strong. They only had each other. If one day both of them died together, there would be no one to bury their corpses. Nobody would prevent their bodies of being devoured by vultures or of being defiled by humans. And even if they were incredible powerful, beautiful and intelligent – a mother wouldn't think twice before exchanging them for her troubled son.
Reviews are always appreciated, I wish a late Merry Christmas to all of you, and a wonderful New Year!