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Bellatrix knew at once that she could not tell her husband about this. Rodolphus would not care that their vassal had raped Adelaide, under these circumstances. Indeed, he would not even consider it rape if Adelaide had been tipsy at the Yule—the winter solstice party, Bellatrix corrected herself in thought. According ... |
But simply murdering the rapist herself would not do, she thought. Well—it would have to be done, but she would have to cover her tracks and make him think someone else had done it. If she told Rodolphus that he had been a traitor, he still would not be satisfied. He had not "permitted" her to execute criminals without... |
Hermione at last cornered Adelaide Lestrange in a room—the very room where the potion-induced abortion had occurred, she thought with dark pleasure. She was not sure what she thought of this feeling of satisfied darkness. When she really focused on it, she felt as if something inside her, something beautiful and irrepl... |
"You backstabbing liar," Hermione seethed, pointing her wand at Adelaide, whose own wand lay across the room where Hermione had caused it to fly with a disarming spell. "Why did you do it?" Without waiting for an answer, she cast a punching hex at her enemy. |
Adelaide doubled over, wincing and swearing. She lifted her head to spit on the floor before Hermione. "I don’t answer to you, Mudblood," she got out. |
"You had better. You owed me, and instead you compounded it by spreading a lie about me. Why? You didn’t even have to "save face,’" she snarled. "No one saw you. You had no reason to do it except spite." She glared down at the girl, who was still hunched. "That’s it, isn’t it? You couldn’t stand to accept help from a "... |
"I... don’t owe you anything," Adelaide snapped, clutching her abdomen. |
"That will certainly be true in a bit," Hermione agreed. "I’m taking my payment this way." She cast another curse at the girl, this one causing her to fall to her knees with a cry. "I have already sent my memory to your mother," she said as she left the room. Adelaide looked up at her with horror in her eyes. "What com... |
Hermione turned away coldly, opened the door, and pulled it closed behind her, making sure to lock it magically. Adelaide could get out eventually, but Hermione was not about to risk having a vindictive enemy sneaking up behind her. She stalked into the Slytherin common room, through the door to the girls’ dormitories,... |
As she gazed at herself in the mirror, the energy-sustaining hot darkness seemed to flee her body, leaving her feeling truly empty now. Seemingly of their own accord, tears formed in her eyes and flowed down her cheeks before she could stop them. |
Castle l’Etrange. |
Scabior dangled from the stone walls, his wrists chained just high enough that he could not touch the floor with his feet. He had long stopped straining against the pain. His wand lay at his feet, snapped into several fragments, and his mostly naked body bore the signs of magical torture—the bleeding cuts, the bruises,... |
"You may be a pureblood," Bellatrix hissed, prowling around him like a predator about to make its kill. "But you are a low one, unworthy of touching my noble daughter even with your hand." |
Standing along the wall, Narcissa Black Malfoy gazed upon the proceedings, her gaze hard. She had not wanted to participate in the actual torture—she found it distasteful, albeit sometimes necessary—and she was not about to tell her sister some of her thoughts. It was a crime that this scum had raped Bella’s daughter, ... |
Scabior glared back at Bellatrix. "You are a coward," he managed to get out. "A coward. Why not let your husband take his "justice’?" |
"My husband has a false idea of justice," Bellatrix said. "And you know what he would have done. That is why you did it in the first place, scum." |
He sneered back wordlessly. |
"You do not deserve a painless death," she said, turning her wand around in her hands contemplatively, gazing up at him with a malevolent smirk on her face. "And I have plans for your corpse." She drew out the moment as long as she could wait, making sure that he flinched in dread before raising her wand to point direc... |
A stream of blood erupted from the gaping gash, bright red and stinking of iron and copper. Bellatrix stepped backward almost elegantly, avoiding the spatter. She watched in sadistic delight as he bled out his life, choking on his own blood as his skin quickly paled. At last, his body went entirely limp. |
Bellatrix smiled and cast another curse, this one to release him from the chains. The body crumpled to the bloodstained stone floor with a thud. Bellatrix stalked over to a corner and took out a long, heavy bag. She turned to her sister. |
"Let us do this, then." |
Narcissa nodded, took a deep breath, and swished her wand through the air. Together the sisters magically slid the body into the heavy cloth bag. Narcissa cast a spell to lighten its apparent weight so that they could Apparate easily. With each of them holding one end of it, they linked their other hands together and D... |
Bellatrix dusted herself off and took in her surroundings. A short distance away, the village slept. The imposing castle that used to belong to Gryffindor and now was owned by Lucius overlooked the town, but they were too far away, and their black cloaks blended in with the darkness of night. No one saw them as they du... |
Godric’s Hollow. |
Lucius Malfoy, lord of Godric’s Hollow, sat imperiously at the high seat as he considered what to do. A wizard’s body had been found on the outskirts of the town, half-buried in snow and debris, mutilated in a way that suggested torture. Generally, Lucius would care little about such matters; these villagers were mere ... |
This... was a problem, Lucius thought in dismay. Scabior had not, apparently, been robbed. His coin was still on him, along with the family ring and other valuables, including his fine clothes. That and the strong signs of torture indicated to Lucius that the killer had murdered him not for such a low and common reason... |
Why would he even be here? Lucius thought. It’s contrary to law and custom for one lord to send his vassals into another lord’s lands on the sly, without making a proper introduction to the ruling lord. This does not make sense. It would be no trouble for a wizard to travel magically. Just because the body was found he... |
Could Lestrange himself have killed Scabior and set up this situation to cause unrest in my town if I punished the villagers indiscriminately? Or to see if I would react at all? If he did, Scabior must have fallen from grace already. Lestrange would not kill a loyal vassal of his. |
Lucius rubbed his eyes in irritation. He would have to tell Lestrange about this, no question about that. He dreaded what would come of it. Sighing to himself, he rose to go to his private office to compose a letter. |
Barely half an hour later, his house-elves were hurriedly announcing the arrival of Lord Lestrange himself, who was demanding audience with the lord and lady. |
Lucius took in his brother-in-law’s beet-red face as he and Narcissa sat in their stately seats in the grand hall. The man was apoplectic. Lestrange can be deceptive if he wishes, but he cannot make himself look this angry, Lucius thought. If he did send Scabior to Godric’s Hollow, he was not expecting him to be murder... |
"I demand restitution!" Lestrange bawled, spittle flying from his mouth before Lucius and Narcissa, much to their disgust. "This is an outrage! These lowborn barbarian peasants must be punished for it!" |
Narcissa and Lucius exchanged quick looks. "Your lordship, we will certainly punish the guilty," Lucius said, "but we must ascertain guilt first." |
"They did it! They obviously did it!" |
"With all due respect, sir, it is not obvious," Lucius disagreed. "A wizard or witch could have killed your vassal somewhere else and brought the body here by magic." |
Narcissa shifted in her seat a bit at this, but neither her husband nor Lestrange noticed. |
"I insist that they be questioned!" Lestrange exclaimed. "Your lord grandfather—I’ve told him too, and he agrees!" |
"You told his high lordship?" Lucius exchanged another look with his wife. It was inevitable that Lord Malfoy would find out eventually, but it was offensive and troubling to Lucius that Lestrange was getting to him so quickly. |
"Certainly! I’m surprised that you have not." Lestrange eyed Lucius suspiciously. |
Affronted, Lucius huffed, "Narcissa and I have been busy notifying you and taking care of the body." It was not quite true; the elves were tasked with that menial job, but what was true was that Lestrange was being unreasonable to think it suspicious that they had not notified Armand Malfoy immediately. It was little t... |
Lestrange’s face turned sour and spiteful. "Very well—but I demand justice for this. I want every one of those villagers to be tortured until they talk." |
Lucius’s temper rose further still. "Lord Lestrange, I assure you that I will uphold the law—but no one but his high lordship himself will instruct me in my own castle about how to administer justice." |
Lestrange’s eyes popped. He was about to spout another burst of outrage, but Lucius continued. "The villagers revolted sixteen years ago. I will not risk a repeat of it by torturing those who were innocent in this. I will have every person of magic questioned, and if that uncovers the guilty, they will suffer the full ... |
Lestrange seethed but could not think of an argument to this. |
"My lord," Narcissa spoke up, "I am by no means suggesting that your vassal was responsible for his own murder... but supposing that my lord husband’s questioning finds that villagers from Godric’s Hollow killed him, what was he doing here in the first place? We had no word that he was in my husband’s lands. What busin... |
"I don’t know," Lestrange spat. "What of it? Can a wizard not go where he pleases?" |
"If a nobleman enters another lord’s lands, it is customary for him to announce his presence," Lucius said. Rather than sneaking about at night like a thief, he thought. "You definitely did not send him on business, then?" |
"I did not. Lord Lucius, it hardly matters. The fact is, my man was killed in your lands, and I insist that the murderer pay the price for it." |
True to his word, Lucius had his chief enforcers, MacNair and Dolores of Umbridge, summon every adult witch and wizard to the castle to be questioned under truth potion. They were feared in the village, Umbridge because of her proficiency at vicious torture curses, MacNair because of his knives and swords that he had m... |
Lucius did not expect the questioning to uncover the killer. If a villager or villagers had killed Scabior, it made no sense that they would not have taken his money—and what possible reason would any of them have had for killing him, anyway, let alone brutally torturing him? |
As Sirius Black was brought before them, his handsome face bitter with anger, Narcissa handed Lucius a goblet of potion, carefully keeping her own features as scornful as she truly felt for this black sheep, this traitor to his own kin—her kin. What a disgrace it was that he chose to live with the Potters instead of ta... |
"Should we question them about that, too, now that we are putting them under the influence of this potion?" she had asked Lucius. |
He had considered it seriously before finally deciding against it. In other circumstances he would have; this was the very thing that he had been unable to do at the time of the rebellion because he did not have enough of the potion available, but he already felt under siege by Rodolphus Lestrange worming his way into ... |
Sirius Black drank the potion reluctantly. His face settled, the anger dissipating from it, as Lucius asked him the same question he had asked everyone before him—to no avail. Sirius Black knew nothing of the murder. |
After Lucius and Narcissa had finally summoned all of the magical residents of the town, Lucius’s suspicion—and, though he did not know it, his wife’s knowledge—that it would not uncover the killer had been borne out. |
Lestrange was still deeply angry about the murder, but he could not question the evidence of truth potion. "It must have been those Riddles," he sniped the day after Lucius had finished the questioning. |
Next to him, Armand Malfoy nodded gravely. "I saw the body. It was tortured, and I think that it was ritual torture." |
Bellatrix’s eyes gleamed in relief and excitement at this. |
"With all due respect, my lord grandfather, it looked like ordinary torture to me," Lucius said. "There did not appear to be any purpose or order to the markings." |
"Ah, but you have not seen what I have," Armand said. He leaned forward in his chair. Narcissa and Lucius noted, with some disgust, that Lestrange was staring at the man as though he worshiped him. "My grandson, when I first sailed to this country, I accepted the oaths of many barbarian lords. One of them was the son o... |
"The great-grandfather of the present Lady Riddle, then," Narcissa mused. |
"Yes. I accepted his oath, and even chose to permit one rather... peculiar... practice of the Gaunt family, because it did promote magical blood purity—very much so. I speak of the fact that the man was married to his own sister, and that the family apparently arranged such matches every few generations for just that p... |
Lucius and Narcissa suppressed their disgust. They had known of the marriage between Slytherin’s son and daughter, though they had not known that the practice of sibling incest went back further than that. Perhaps, Narcissa thought, Lady Riddle had debased herself with her elopement with a Muggle to avoid another such ... |
"But a custom of the Gaunts that I could not permit was the practice of pagan rites, including ritual human sacrifice," Armand Malfoy continued. "Now, I care little about religious worship as such—but I do care about practices that would have attracted the attention of the Muggle king, and invited Muggle interference w... |
"Have you seen a description of such a ritual, then?" Lucius pressed. "Something that resembles the markings on Scabior’s body?" |
For a moment Armand looked caught out, but then the mask of pride suffused his face once more. "I am quite certain that the markings are the result of a Celtic sacrifice ritual," he said, "and we know that the half-blood has defied one of my laws, the one about Celtic and Anglo-Saxon symbols. Furthermore, Lestrange tel... |
"My lord, he is a pupil at Hogwarts," Lucius exclaimed. "How would he have left the school and captured one of your vassals—an adult wizard? And why would he have then brought the body to Godric’s Hollow?" |
"Indeed," Narcissa agreed. "Draco has told us that Riddle, the Granger girl, and young Potter are a trio. Why would he do something that would cause problems for a friend’s family?" |
"Perhaps he sees Potter as a rival for the girl," Lestrange said shrewdly. "But if it wasn’t Riddle himself, it must have been the mother or Snape." |
"We do not know that these markings have anything to do with Celtic sacrificial rituals," Lucius protested. |
"Well, I believe your lord grandfather," Lestrange said pointedly, his gaze drilling a figurative hole in Lucius’s. "He knows more about such things than we do." |
A part of Lucius wanted to continue his objection. As far as he was concerned, their present problems ultimately stemmed from his grandfather’s determination to bully and antagonize the Riddle family. Lucius was ready to let it alone, let the blood-traitors have their fief and the disgraceful marriage to a Mudblood. He... |
"I do not know about ritual sacrificial markings," Bellatrix said, "but it is certainly true that the Riddles have a motive." She shared a meaningful look with her sister. This wasn’t their intention, but if they could get the Riddles blamed for it, it would be a good thing. Bellatrix was surprised when Narcissa did no... |
"I have difficulty believing that the Lady Riddle would have done it... word is that she likes to keep her robes clean of blood," Lucius objected. Bellatrix shot him a hostile glare, and they both eyed each other with dislike. |
Lestrange snorted. "Not too clean if she let a Muggle into her bed and has her son marry a Mudblood!" |
Bellatrix laughed maliciously at that. "A fair point." |
"I have heard it too, though," Lestrange said more seriously, "and that would include dispatching Severus Snape to do it for her. If any of them did it, it would have been the young wizard, pupil at Hogwarts or no." |
Bellatrix’s dark eyes were glittering with glee. |
"If it please your high lordship"—he glanced respectfully at Armand Malfoy—"I think someone should be sent to Hogwarts to interrogate the half-blood. It must be on your orders, though—no one else has the authority to overrule the High Master in his castle." |
"With pleasure," said Armand maliciously. |
Tom got himself ready for the day in his bedchamber, his thoughts swirling—as they often did lately—in inescapable vortices of frustration. The more he thought about—well—everything, the more frustrated he became. He was no closer to finding the Chamber of Slytherin and claiming his birthright. His friends had deceived... |
He was also irritated about Hermione. What had she been thinking? Tom supposed he could understand why she would want to make the potion for Adelaide, but why not swear the girl to secrecy? Why not use memory magic on her? And then she had apparently sent the information to Lady Lestrange! More was going to come of thi... |
He knew from Legilimency that she had not dallied with Potter or other wizards in their estrangement. There was that, at least—that noble honor that Hermione had so insisted upon when she was younger and their betrothal had just begun. Tom understood it now, at last. It was true that the idea of touching other witches ... |
She seems determined to finish her schooling at the same time I do, he thought. That’s the summer after this one. The competitive jealousy, which he had felt when Hermione had advanced to three mastery classes this year, earlier than he had, had mostly vanished. He knew he could have advanced that quickly as well if he... |
Perhaps it is improving now, he thought, pulling on his outer robe—the dark green one with Celtic designs on the edges. Hermione had been almost civil with him when she had asked about protecting his mother’s castle from Malfoy’s tax assessors. And when she had confronted him and Potter over the ugly rumor, it could ha... |
Tom finished his morning routine and headed down the boys’ corridor toward the Slytherin common room. He pushed open the door. |
"And there he is right now!" crowed an unfamiliar male voice. |
Tom immediately identified the speaker. A scruffy wizard dressed in fine robes that did not fit him very well was speaking with Master Slughorn, who bore an expression of mixed outrage and helplessness. |
"My lord Carrow, this is all very irregular," Slughorn protested. "Lord Thomas is my pupil, and High Master Dumbledore presides here. How can you make such a demand?" |
Carrow? Tom thought, anger suddenly flaring up inside him. He drew his wand and pointed it at the stranger. "Carrow, is it?" he said roughly. He sneered. "How dare you put yourself in my presence, traitor. My mother has you and your sister under a death sentence." |
Slughorn winced. "Tom, don’t." |
Amycus Carrow’s eyes glinted malevolently. "His high lordship Malfoy pardoned me," he said. He turned to Slughorn. "And this brat has already said it, old man. I will add that to the list of offenses. Furthermore, as I have said, and this scroll proves"—he waved a scroll in Slughorn’s face—"it was his high lordship who... |
Slughorn looked helplessly at Tom. "I’m sorry, T—Lord Thomas." |
"What is going on?" Tom said darkly. "What is the meaning of this?" |
"You are suspected to have a hand in the murder and torture of Lord Scabior, who was in service to Lord Lestrange." |
"What?!" Tom exclaimed hotly. "How dare you—" Instantly a suspicion filled his mind, one that vanquished all of his good feeling toward Hermione. |
Carrow smiled. "Don’t worry—yet. I am here only to question you." |
"Do it, then, filth. Question me. Right here." He glared at Carrow. "I will even take truth serum. I’ll tell you everything I know about Lestrange’s vassals." |
"Oh, no," Carrow said. "Not here. You must surrender your wand to Slughorn, and you will come with me to a private location in the castle for it." He unrolled the scroll. "That’s authorized too." |
Slughorn extended his hand shakily. "Please, Tom, just cooperate," he urged. "I’m sure you had nothing to do with that business, and it’s better just to prove it—" |
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