One note:
I have had certain reviewers ask about what happens to Revelin's father, and the tone of these questions is generally along the line of, "Did I miss something?" Fear not: You have not. What has happened thus far to Revelin's father is exactly what you have read has happened; that is, absolutely nothing, aside from a year of psychological torture. Revelin's father is living and raising his family as any other man would. Voldemort allows this, because he has a very specific fate in mind for Revelin's father, one which will be revealed later. :)
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It had been almost ten hours since the attack on Hogsmeade, and Albus Dumbledore was beginning to wonder, morbidly, if he was going to need to start planning the funeral of Severus Snape.
He turned his head to gaze out the window—he had a clear view of the front gates—and anxiety tightened his chest as he saw, for the hundredth time in the hour, that Severus's dark form had not appeared.
It had taken him an unusually long time to notice that Severus had been gone for an unusually long time. Voldemort's attack on Hogsmeade, though eventually repelled, had left utter destruction in its wake. Even with an army of Ministry workers and volunteers, Dumbledore had been up till two getting everything in order, ensuring his students were safe—by some bizarre miracle, they had all survived—helping take care of the injured, cataloguing the deceased, and helping to rebuild the town, all the while his mind constantly flicking back to the peculiar wizard who had saved them all. Indeed, Dumbledore had been so distracted that it wasn't until Madam Pomfrey had appeared before him, looking remarkably like an enraged tiger, and ordered him back to Hogwarts for rest, did it occur to Dumbledore that Severus had been gone for an unusually long time.
Dumbledore had spotted Severus leaving the premises shortly before midnight. The man had cast him a significant glance before rushing off to the Apparition Points, which Dumbledore had understood to mean that Severus had been summoned, which, though unfortunate, because it deprived him of a Potions Master in a time when a great many potions were needed, was not unexpected. After the sort of defeat Voldemort had just suffered, it was only to be expected that he would want to punish his Death Eaters.
Dumbledore had expected Severus to be gone an hour, maybe a few minutes more. Voldemort always made his torture excruciating but short, so as not to incapacitate his servants. At two o'clock, Dumbledore began to be concerned. Voldemort must be unusually angry. At three o'clock he began to be worried. At four o'clock, he began to worry that, in his rage, Voldemort had killed some of his servants, and Severus had been one of them. The thought made him twist his hands, anxiety blooming in his chest. He had been the one to convince Severus to spy on Voldemort. He had thrust the poor man into that situation.
He glanced out the window. It was a chilly and misty morning. The pale sun cast pink light across the loch, creating long shadows that moved across the lawn and lake outside. A cool, light breeze ruffled the hair of Dumbledore's beard, puffing lightly against his face. His glasses fogged. Still, he daren't closed the window, daren't move, because what was that he was seeing? A tumult of emotions swept through Dumbledore as he peered more closely out the window, and yes, indeed, he was seeing what he thought he was seeing!—The dark figure of Severus Snape had appeared outside of Hogwarts' gates.
Relief so strong it was staggering swept through Dumbledore, and he whipped around, his arms and legs trembling slightly as he rushed out of his office, his aged heart racing inside of him. His knees felt weak. He had truly begun to believe that Severus was dead, but no, he was here, alive…A twisting sensation gripped his gut as Dumbledore wondered what horrors the man might have gone through, these past few hours.
He swung open the castle's front doors—they creaked loudly in the silent morning air—and ran down the hill, his feet slipping and sliding in the wet, slippery grass. Severus had already entered the grounds. He was walking to the castle with a slowness and heaviness that alarmed Dumbledore.
"Severus!" he gasped, upon sliding to a stop a few feet in front of his friend. "What happened?"
His blue eyes flicked over the Potions Master's form. The man didn't seem to be suffering the after-effects of the Cruciatius, or indeed, any popular form of physical torture, but something about the unusual whiteness of Severus's face and the way his eyes were fixed on something only he could see, sent a tingle of fear shooting through Dumbledore. Something unusually bad had happened.
"Severus," he said softly, anxiety filling him. He reached out gently and touched Severus's shoulder. Severus didn't look up. His eyes continued to stare blankly at the knoll ahead. "What happened?"
Dumbledore shook him ever so slightly, and slowly, Severus turned haunted eyes to the headmaster. "Albus…" he said hoarsely. Then his voice tapered off as if he didn't know what to say.
"He was angry, wasn't he?" asked Dumbledore quietly. "About the attack failing?"
Severus let out a great, shuddering breath and shook his head quickly. Genuine surprised swept through Dumbledore, derailing his concern momentarily. If Voldemort hadn't been angry about the attack failing, what on Earth had the meeting been about? Severus opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, still shaking his head. Immediately, worry replaced surprise. It was obvious whatever had happened had been horrific.
"Come along, Severus," said Dumbledore briskly, trying to put a light note in his voice. He wrapped his arm around Severus's shoulder and guided him up the hill to the castle. Severus allowed himself to be led without protest, which alarmed Dumbledore even more. It was a further sign something terrible had happened. "Let's get you to the hospital wing," said Dumbledore.
Severus stopped abruptly, digging his heels into the slick grass and shaking his head quickly. "I don't need to go the hospital wing!" he said stubbornly.
Ah, there was the Severus Snape Dumbledore knew. "Severus," he said, a bit relieved to see the man acting like his usual stubborn self. "I really do highly recommend it—"
"I wasn't the one he tortured, Albus!" Severus burst out, sounding suddenly irritated. He shrugged off Dumbledore's hand. His hands clenched ate his sides. He stared at the castle, his nostrils flaring.
Dumbledore was silent for a moment. "Then who was tortured, Severus?" he asked quietly. He wondered if it had Lucius Malfoy, for it to affect Severus so badly. Severus and Lucius were friends.
Severus was silent for a moment, his jaw clenched tightly, his entire body tense. It seemed like he might not say anything, but Dumbledore just waited in silence. The silence seemed to stretch on forever. At last, however, Severus exhaled heavily, and his entire body went limp. He said then, in a clear, emotionless voice, "He killed all of them, Dumbledore. All of them except Bellatrix Lestrange."
A myriad of emotions swept through the headmaster, the strongest of which was surprise and confusion. His quick mind flicked through a hundred different scenarios of what those words could possibly mean, none of which were satisfactory, and at last he suggested quietly, "Perhaps you should explain from the beginning, Severus."
Severus was silent for an agonizingly long moment. "He summoned all of us," he said tightly, his hand curling once more at his side. "All his Death Eaters, all his nonhuman subjects, everyone who acknowledged him as master. There were thousands of us there, multitudes of people in black robes, coating the sides and valley of the loch we were in. He was down there at the bottom of the valley. He had brought before him every one of his servants involved in the attack on Hogsmeade." He was silent for a moment. Dumbledore waited. "Albus…" Severus said slowly, "He didn't authorize the attack on Hogsmeade."
Silence reigned as Dumbledore took a minute to process that information. He was genuinely surprised, yes, but also, at the same time, not. He had been surprised that Voldemort had attacked Hogsmeade in the first place, had thought that something celebrating an accomplishment of his beloved ancestor would be an unlikely target. That Voldemort had not ordered the attack was reassuring in a way: it meant Dumbledore hadn't greatly erred in assessing the Dark Lord. If Dumbledore hadn't greatly erred, it meant Dumbledore's assessment of the man might still be trustworthy. What surprised Dumbledore was that Voldemort's Death Eaters had been both courageous and stupid enough to commit such a large assault in Voldemort's name without Voldemort's permission.
Voldemort's reaction could not have been pleasant. Somewhat dreading the answer, he asked again, his blue eyes serious, "What happened, Severus?"
"He killed them." Severus said it flatly, bluntly, emotionlessly. He was trying to distance himself from the reality of it, Dumbledore realized. "He killed them all, in front of us," Severus continued. "But not before he tortured them to insanity."
Dumbledore felt his stomach twist, as it always did when he heard the horrors his former student committed. Oh how had he not seen Tom Riddle for who he was until it was too late?
"Dumbledore…" Severus's voice wavered slightly. "He's so powerful, Dumbledore…" Doubt lingered in his voice. Doubt that the Light side could win. Dumbledore caught it, and he felt a sort of heaviness on him. "What did he do?" he asked quietly. It would have taken a great feat of magic for Severus to doubt.
Severus swallowed thickly. His fists curled and uncurled at his side. He still wouldn't look at Dumbledore. "He cast a spell on all of us, Dumbledore. Everyone there, and there had been thousands of us. A compulsion spell of some sort. It required our full attention. We could only focus on him torturing them. All we could see was them. All we could hear was their pleas and screams. All we could think about was them—their suffering, their mutilation. We had to pay attention." He closed his eyes briefly. "He tortured them simultaneously, Dumbledore! Simultaneously. There had been 22 survivors, not including Bellatrix Lestrange, and he cast the Cruciatus on all of them at the same time. I didn't even know it was possible! It was like something inhuman was egging him on, making him more powerful than I've ever seen him! He was beyond furious, beyond enraged—his anger was somehow primal! It didn't end. He just kept on torturing and torturing them, even Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange. First the Cruciatus, then a variety of other curses and we couldn't stop watching." There was a note of undisguised horror in the latter part of the statement, and Dumbledore knew Severus was seeing in his mind's eye the torture from the night before replayed over and over again. The man shuddered, closed his eyes, and stilled. When he opened his eyes again, his voice was clearer, softer. "Bellatrix Lestrange is the only one he didn't kill, Albus. She's still too valuable to him, though she's been punished dearly."
"He tortured her?" Dumbledore asked in slight surprise. He couldn't imagine torture being effective on Bellatrix.
Severus gave him a look. "You know as well as I do," he said bitterly, "that the woman is a masochist. She enjoys pain. Physical torture is not a punishment for her. Instead he did something with her mind. Brought her before him. Mental rape, I would call it. She was screaming and crying the whole time. When he released her, she was a mess. She'll never be the same again."
It sounded like a more extreme reaction than even Dumbledore would have expected, all things considered. To kill 22 of his own Death Eaters and severely maim his most devoted one, after already losing so many in the attack, spoke of a sort of rage Dumbledore had never seen in Voldemort, or even anticipated. If he had anticipated that sort of rage at all, it would have been at someone who had tried to attack Voldemort himself.
As if he was thinking along the same lines, Severus added. "I've never seen him like that, Dumbledore. It was almost as if this attack was personal."
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In the end, Voldemort decided not to move. It wasn't an easy decision to come to by any means. In the hours following the attack and his subsequent, sweet revenge on his stupid Death Eaters, he had contemplated seriously the idea of moving Revelin to an isolated cabin in the Andes where few wizards had even heard of Britain, much less that there was a war going on there.
Several factors had contributed to his decision to remain in Morocco. The first that, though his anonymity to both sides had been erased in a truly spectacular fashion, there was little he could do keep Revelin safer than he was now, for while Voldemort could change his appearance at will, Revelin could not, and it would be much too dangerous for Revelin, as a child, to be kept constantly under magical disguise. That meant that wherever they lived, it would have to be in a place where Revelin had little chance of being recognized. Marrakech was as good a place as any for that. The Wizarding neighborhood of Marrakech was unusually insular. Voldemort wouldn't be able to find a community much more isolated, so on that account Revelin was safe there. Besides, Revelin, and to a lesser extent, his 'father,' were familiar faces in Marrakech. To move would be to draw attention, which was undesirable.
Better than running and hiding, which was sure to cast suspicion if they were caught, which they could be if Dumbledore focused all his attention on finding them, was further solidifying the squeaky-clean backgrounds of Cadmus and Revelin Ellwood. In this delicate art of deception and lies, Voldemort was a master. Voldemort, as Cadmus Ellwood, would not run from Dumbledore. Such an action would ensure Dumbledore trying to find him.
Instead, Voldemort was going to try to deceive Dumbledore. It was a risky avenue of action, but less risky in the long term, Voldemort thought, than trying to flee. If he fled from Dumbledore, he had something to hide from Dumbledore. It would surely raise the old man's suspicions, which was very dangerous. If Voldemort met with Dumbledore, however, and successfully deceived him, it would seem as though he had nothing to hide. Dumbledore, then, was less likely to pry into his affairs, and Revelin could continue living in Marrakech unhindered.
But to deceive a man as intelligent as Dumbledore—and it grated Voldemort greatly to have to mentally admit the man was intelligent—Voldemort's story would have to be absolutely airtight. Everything would have to back his story up, for one—financial records, school records, administrative records, everything, would have to pass scrutiny. For another, Voldemort knew he would have to come up with a very good reason for (1) his dueling skills, (2) fleeing England, and (3) his ever-so-slight resemblance to Tom Marvolo Riddle, which Dumbledore was sure to notice eventually.
For the latter three problems, Voldemort had come up with a solution so breathtakingly ingenuous that it didn't even bother him too much to have to reference and claim something so disgraceful. The idea, the brilliance of it, almost made him want to laugh. Dumbledore would be sure to be sympathetic, if Voldemort pulled this off correctly.
But first, Voldemort would need the paper-trail and the modified memories to back it up. Today was Friday. His meeting was Monday. That meant he had three days to cobble together an airtight family history.
He started in northern England, where he tracked to an old manor in the countryside a spinster Muggle woman, whom he spent an entire morning absolutely destroying—in body, and in memory. He erased all records of her existence for the past several decades from every neighbor and every piece of documentation. Then he went and transplanted that same woman to a small muggle city in France called Colmar and created a fictitious family for her, with proof of her existence there in all the muggle records and in the memories of the ancient muggles who lived there. Records and memories were made for each and every member of the woman's invented family.
It was exhausting and ridiculously complex work. It required all of Voldemort's concentration—not only remembering in detail the story he was weaving—but the actual spellwork itself, modifying so many memories and doing it in such a way that even he couldn't tell the difference between the real memories and the fake ones. By the time he was done, by Sunday night, both sides of Cadmus Ellwood's lineage could be traced back several generations, and there were people from both Beauxbatons and Gringotts, including Madam Maxine herself, who would be willing to swear up and down that yes, they knew Cadmus Ellwood.
"Yes, I knew Cadmus Ellwood. He was in my Transfiguration class. He helped me with the Theory of Cross-Species Transfiguration…"
"Yes, I knew Cadmus Ellwood. He came to my Christmas party in '77…"
"Yes, I knew Cadmus Ellwood. I attended his wedding to Eleanor Hastings…"
"Yes, I know Cadmus Ellwood, but he liaises most often with the goblins at the Paris branch of Gringotts…"
"Yes, we do business with Cadmus Ellwood. Great curse-breaker. Brought back treasure from Halipani's tomb…"
When he was done modifying others' memories, Voldemort turned inward, creating in his mind an alternate set of memories that, should Dumbledore ever manage to break through his mental shields (highly unlikely), Voldemort would be able to shuffle to the forefront of his mind those memories which supported his supposed background.
All of this work was made that much more difficult by Revelin. Ever since the fateful attack on Hogsmeade, the child seemed determined to not let Voldemort out of his sight, trailing him from room to room like a tiny shadow, apparently terrified of being on his own. Whenever the child caught whiff of the fact that Voldemort was leaving to do memory modifications or document forgeries—and Voldemort wasn't quite sure how the child found out, since Voldemort had started taking steps to avoid that very situation—he would throw a temper tantrum of positively horrific proportions.
The first time it had happened had been the morning after the attack. Voldemort only required two to three hours of sleep a day, so despite staying up most of the night, he was up and eating breakfast by nine. Revelin was with him, only picking at his food, which Voldemort didn't notice, so occupied was he by thoughts of what, exactly, to do about Dumbledore. He had been, in hindsight, blissfully unaware of the horror the child was about to inflict upon him.
Voldemort had made it away from the dining table, no problem, though Revelin did patter after him across the courtyard, and it didn't happen until he was getting ready to portkey away, and had told Revelin, in no uncertain terms, after the child had asked, that he would not be accompanying Voldemort to England. Voldemort had shuddered at the thought—the child's first trip to England was so disastrous the boy would be lucky if he left the house again!
The tantrum that had followed had been both infuriating and worrying in its complete unexpectedness.
The child had screamed at him.
Screamed. At him.
Voldemort had been so flabbergasted that this little slip of a human being, not even tall enough to reach Voldemort's waist, had the audacity to scream, "I—WANT—TO—GO—WITH—YOU!" at him that at first he just stood there, frozen in surprise, as the child scrambled between him and his shelf of portkeys, tucking all the devices behind him as if that would prevent Voldemort from leaving.
Voldemort had tossed him lightly across the room with a spell, his wand shaking in rising anger, his eyes flashing—how dare that child speak that way to him!—but as he picked up a portkey and the child launched himself desperately around his feet once more, and fury swelled up in him like an angry dragon, clawing at his chest, making it difficult to breathe, the thought had crossed his mind: Something is wrong with the child!
Instantly—the change occurred shockingly and worryingly fast—concern replaced anger. Something was wrong with the child. This was unusual behavior for Revelin.
Between tears and screams that left Voldemort's ears ringing, Voldemort slowly gleaned the problem from the boy's mind.
Dumbledore. It always came down to Dumbledore.
It figured that the man was such a curse upon Voldemort's life that he could even make child-rearing difficult! The boy was afraid—not of the Death Eaters, not of the death and destruction that had wracked Hogsmeade, but of the gypsy man: Dumbledore. In the child's nightmares Dumbledore burst into the riad like a malevolent, cackling clown, an image Voldemort found amusing, absurd, and disturbing, all at the same time. The irony of the entire situation was not lost on the Dark Lord: children all across the world adored Dumbledore, except for his child, who thought the venerable Light wizard was the boogeyman.
Voldemort rather thought it was a sign that Revelin would be a good judge of people. Still, this comforting thought didn't prevent Voldemort from being absolutely irritated at Revelin's behavior in the days following the Hogsmeade attack. Each time Voldemort left, Revelin had a meltdown of almost impressive proportions, which only made Voldemort's temper shorter and shorter as the days went by.
By the time Monday rolled around, and it was time to meet with Dumbledore, Voldemort rather thought, upon escaping Revelin, that he would be lucky if he could get through this meeting without trying to kill someone.
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Thank you for all the lovely reviews! I appreciate them!