Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels By Blaise A. Snape

Prologue

"Was there a moment when I felt no pain?
I want to feel it in my life again.
Let it be over now.
Oh Oh over now...
Oh I want you here with me.
Oh be here with me..."

-- Sarah Brightman: Only An Ocean Away

As sleep slipped away from me, I slightly opened my weary old eyes and blinked several times. The room was a terrible blur. It was just one blotch of colour. And not just one colour, oh no, but a multitude of colours, blending together into a giant blob that eerily resembled a rainbow. Only a few years ago, I could have told all of the little objects on the mantelpiece apart, even from this distance. By now, I simply knew they were there. Damn my eyesight! It was getting worse by the second, but what could I say? I was getting old, after all. I hoisted myself up on my elbow, pushed the old black curtains aside. Somehow, a part of them had come loose during the short time that usually were my nights. I grabbed my glasses off of the night table beside my king-sized black four-poster bed. It was almost a comfort to me. I had been sleeping in this bed since the young age of nineteen. It seemed such a long time, but yet it didn't. The bed itself had powerful memories. Some of them I wanted to remember, and others I did not want to remember for the life of me. It was unusual for a bed to have such sentimental value to a person. Most people have some piece of jewellery or a photograph that are sentimental to them. It's usually something small, but for me the bed held all emotional value to me. There were many places that meant something to me, but this bed was among the few that were most significant to me...

A yawn tore itself from my throat. I had been trying to just get a little rest. I felt weaker everyday that went by. My bones were becoming frail, and I felt almost like glass at times; fragile, but still there. Of course, trying to get a mere ten minutes of sleep rarely came to any avail. In the middle of the night, some teacher or another would inform me of some students' rule-breaking. Thus, I would be woken from my lovely slumber and forced to prowl the halls at night. Now I knew just how Professor Dumbledore had felt. He'd known each and everything; and there had to have been some ingenious way that had allowed him to know everything that would go on within this castle, because he'd find everyone and everything that wasn't where they were supposed to be when he had to. I bet you he'd do this night after night. But then again, the man could do without sleep. He'd been much stronger and more capable than I. Being Headmistress of the school was just as difficult, if not more so, after everything that had happened.

It wasn't as though I'd wanted the job. I'd been appointed to do it. And despite everything, I'd only thought of refusal for the fraction of a second. My son, Mordred, and his wife, Anne, had requested I be appointed. He was after all the Minster of Magic now. I'd agreed to do it, if only to keep my mind off the death of my husband, the bastard that he'd been, but I was still upset and torn by it. He'd caused his own demise and had left me to rebuild Hogwarts to the way it had been before it had been taken over, to the way it had been in my days as a student: the Hogwarts I'd known, loved, and been educated at. That, however, is a story to be told later on.

Still, I lay in my bed just relaxing my body. Of course, as I said before, I'd been indeed disturbed, but this time it was not a call of distress. I could tell from the quiet and gentle knock on the oak door to my chambers. It was a knock I recognized very well. The lightness and delicateness of that simple soft knock on my door was enough for me to know at once who was there to see me. It was funny how you could tell which person was at the door just by the way they knocked on it. The door opened, letting a little light from the hallway emanate into my dark room. A dark and thin figure appeared in the doorway.

"Headmistress?" the light sounding voice belonging to my lifelong best friend, Elizabeth Lestrange, yes, daughter of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, drifted into the room. Her voice was ever so light and airy, as compared to the dark and ever so harsh tone of her mother when I saw her upon occasion. I could recognize Elizabeth's voice anywhere. Had I been blind, I would still be able to tell it was her, just by the sound of her voice. I lit the candle beside my bed doing the wandless magic I had been taught to do at only seventeen. The light illuminated the pale face of Elizabeth; her green eyes twinkled in the candle light like cat eyes in the dark, as I sat up to see what was going on now. Her brownish-black hair had a tint of red in it from the light too. It always did that. Oh, how I envied her. We were the same age, but yet she looked young compared to me. I looked like I was more than a hundred, but the dark times I had faced early on in my life had caused me to age quicker because of simple stress, trauma, and the terror I had once faced. I was dying. This I knew and I accepted it willingly for I had no reason to live at all. It is a sad thing to say, but Elizabeth's friendship was not enough of an incentive to rekindle the dying flame that was my will to live--although I knew that my death would affect her deeply. Yet I had accomplished the task I'd been set. I had rebuilt the school. That was all I could ask for. My husband was dead, my three children were all grown up and had teenage and adult children themselves, and I had but a small handful of great grandchildren.

My focus went back to Elizabeth, my mind finally coming out of the memories I had stocked up in my brain. Too many memories and all of them bad ones, with the exception of the birth of my children. There were memories of torture and terrible seduction. The very thought of it all over again gave me chills down my spine. I barely wanted to think about it. "Elizabeth, really now, you mustn't address me in such a manner. Have we not been lifelong friends?" I said, smiling in admiration at her. I found it, if anything, disrespectful for a friend of mine to address me so formally. It was absurd, in my own opinion.

"I'm sorry, Head--I mean Blaise. And yes, of course we are friends. We always have been," Elizabeth said, smiling at me somewhat sadly. I saw her heave a deep sigh. She looked awfully tired this evening, or should I say extremely early morning. She blinked too often and her skin looked irritated. The signs of a definite lack of beauty sleep, which the entire staff seemed to suffer from recently.

I smiled back at her. "I thought so. Now, what disruptions have occurred this evening?" I asked, placing my palm against the silver sheets and green comforter that I was enveloped in. I smoothed out the surface of the blankets near my knees to get out the wrinkles just for the hell of it.

"Oh, there aren't any disruptions this evening, for once. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I might actually get a few hours of undisturbed sleep today." At the tone that she had said this in, I couldn't help but laugh a little bit. We both knew that the students were trouble and we couldn't help but laugh at them. It was how we had once acted in our days at this very school. In the days when shadow and darkness hadn't yet invaded the halls and turned the castle into an evil mockery of a kingdom. "Severus says that the Slytherins are actually behaving properly this evening--which is a miracle in itself--." She threw me a meaningful glance. "--and Hermione tells me that the Gryffindors are all in bed. But that is not why I disturbed you and I do apologize for that. It's just--."

"Don't apologize," I said smiling happily at her exasperation. She needed her sleep, but she sounded so much like a little girl again worried about everything in the world. She was always the one to worry out of the group of us. Whether it be eating a proper meal to getting well deserved sleep she was always there worrying about everyone except, of course, herself.

"Well, I came to tell you that your granddaughter, Adhara, arrived just a few minutes ago, apparently very intent on seeing you. She seems to think something is wrong with you... Is there, Blaise?" my best friend questioned me. "Because if you're... not feeling well, you must tell me..."

I did not want to worry her just yet. Therefore, I had to tell her a lie, for the time being. "Yes, I thought she would come. I didn't think she would arrive until tomorrow though and no, Liz, there is nothing wrong with me. Everything is as it's supposed to be," I spoke softly pondering the way I had phrased the letter to my granddaughter, asking her to see me. I saw a figure standing behind Elizabeth. I peered around my good friend. "Adhara, is that you, child?"

My granddaughter peered at me from around Elizabeth with a beautiful smile on her face that practically illuminated the room all by itself. She was a sporty and bright young girl only in her late twenties. Her long straight reddish-brown hair flowed behind her as she came running towards me with light steps. She had inherited that hair from me and only me. Her hazel-green eyes twinkled and made me smile. "Grandmother Blaise," Adhara called to me with her arms wide open ready to embrace me in a huge hug. I held my hand up to stop her. I stared at her lightly with a smile.

"Easy there, Addy. I'm getting old, you know. Can't have my granddaughter suffocating me now, can we?" I winked at her and motioned for her to have a seat on my bed alongside me.

"Of course not," she smiled, flattening out the covers and taking a seat. There was a silent pause, but from outside the door another voice could be heard.

Another voice, but it was a voice that I recognized like only few others. I had known this voice since I'd been eleven years old, and despite the old voice's croakiness it still managed to frighten me. He'd always had the habit of scaring people out of their wits. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes on purpose. He had done that since I was a child. Ah, how I remember that first day of lessons in my very first year at Hogwarts... The way he'd entered the Potions classroom... Oh, this was no time for another stroll down memory lane!

"Lizzie, darling?" The said "Lizzie" and I looked at each other, smiling, and giggling quietly to ourselves as Severus Snape entered the room. He'd aged like all of us, but he was still as healthy as could be. His hair had gotten very long and less greasy-looking, but it had gone from the raven black colour it once had been to a duller grey colouring. Elizabeth and Severus had been married for nearly fifty years now, if not more. I was losing track of how many years had gone by already. And Severus still adored her. That was plain to see when his eyes first came to rest on Elizabeth for a moment. But he greeted my granddaughter and me before her. "Oh, forgive me, Blaise, I hope I wasn't intruding on a private conversation. Good evening, Adhara."

"You're not," I said. I was happy that he had addressed me as a friend would. He and I were indeed good friends, despite the tension that we still held between us. But it was there with good reason. I still felt bad for what I had done to him, but if I hadn't, we wouldn't be here today.

"Good evening, Professor Snape. It's good to see you again," Adhara addressed him in his formal title, just because it was proper to do so.

"And you," Severus inclined his head towards my granddaughter. "Lizzie, how come I always find you here when I'm looking for you?" He smiled at Elizabeth.

"It's because you're looking for me when I'm with Blaise." She smiled up at him and wrinkled her nose at him, saying, "Just don't let any of the students hear that their Head of House actually reacts to being called Lizzie." Despite the fact that she'd been a Slytherin when a student, Elizabeth had taken over being Head of Ravenclaw House, she certainly had the brains of one and had it not been for her own lineage she would have made a wonderful Ravenclaw, I had taken the privilege of being Headmistress to ask the Sorting Hat myself what house she would have done well in, and so, Ravenclaw it was.

Hermione Granger, whom I had become friends with during the years after Hogwarts had fallen, had become Head of Gryffindor House. She was always a Gryffindor to the bone. She never wavered in her courage, even if it was only a matter of staring a person in the eyes as a means of defiance. She didn't take no for an answer, but still even in our days now had that same attitude of a pure and everlasting Gryffindor. That would never change and because I knew her to be this way I would place her in charge of no other house but the one that had been her own from the very beginning. The one with the memories that I knew she still loved and savoured and held on to, despite the peace she had been granted in her own mind only years ago.

Ginny Weasley had decided to take over the position of being Head of Hufflepuff. Houses never mattered to her anymore. She did not care about house rivalries or blood types any longer. Those were things that had once mattered just before the fall of Hogwarts and sometimes still did. Yet, Ginny's eyes were the only ones that had seen what the rest of us had not. Though she never told us, we knew. We knew very well that she had sat there for at least two months watching the people around her die, wishing only to die herself, but yet they tortured her eyes by keeping her alive. The things she saw in those two months caused her to forget the old prejudices of blood and house and take any position she was given with honour and dignity, something I could never possess.

And as no one would ever question, Severus Snape had remained as Head of Slytherin House, for that was the house that he knew best. He was the only male out of the heads of house, but he was the only one that could understand the Slytherins. Of course, I very well could have appointed Draco for that job, but Severus had been head of Slytherin even when Malfoy went to school and I would never deprive him of his rightful duties. Besides, he was the only one who knew both sides and could deter the bright new Slytherins from joining whatever Dark Side that we feared would form once again after we all had gone to our graves.

"What is it this time? School business or your own?" Elizabeth broke through the flashes of memories I had of each one of them.

"Darling, one of your students is not feeling well," Severus replied.

"And there I was hoping for a quiet night..." she mused to herself.

"With a castle full of teenagers, that hope will always be in vain, Liz," I said, throwing her a little smile.

"Well, I must go then. Blaise, I shall see you in the morning. Have a good stay here, Adhara," Elizabeth said in the cordial manner that we had learned in what I would call a 'forced charm school'. And I don't mean charm as in spells. I mean charm as in etiquette. Severus and Elizabeth both left, leaving me and my granddaughter to ourselves. I sat up in my bed, but Adhara had a worried look upon her face as she took out the latest letter I had sent her, only a day or so ago.

"Grandmother, you said in your latest letter that you were sick. I came as quickly as I could--," she started in the panicky tone that all people assume when they are upset and frightened.

"Adhara, you could have taken your time. I would have waited for you," I said patiently to her. I was dying, but my death would have waited until I saw her one last time. "Put that letter away, for there is something I must tell you. I have told no one else this before."

"You're not dying, are you?" she asked persisting that I tell her what was wrong with me.

"Adhara..." I sighed, and she finally quieted down. "I'm not ill in the physical sense, my child. I'm ill in the heart and soul. Nothing more than that. My heart has been torn for too long a time for me to live any longer, and there is no hope of piecing it back together."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'm dying of a broken heart. I do not have the will to live any longer, but I have one thing to do before I die."

"What is it, grandmother? I'll do whatever you need me to."

"What I need you to do shall come later. For now, I want you to sit and listen. It's been fifty years since my husband was killed and there's not a moment of my life when I don't regret my actions on that day. I've been keeping these secrets for more than fifty years of my life and I can't bear the burden any longer. I chose you, because you are me. You are the one woman in the family that reminds me of myself as a young girl. You are the only person who could understand my story and fulfil my last demands."

Adhara looked at me confused, but somehow lost for words. I could see that she wanted to understand the words I just spoke, but I knew that she didn't have a clue as to the meaning of the words I'd just uttered. "I don't understand. What about grandfather? And what secrets?"

"Secrets that I can only explain by telling you the tale of the Fallen Angels," I said softly.

Again, there was a look of confusion but also disbelief on her face. "The Fallen Angels? That tale is pure myth, grandmother! All those stories about the seven girls condemned to hell on earth, inside a castle under the rule of one evil man and overshadowed by their masters! It's a stupid tale! It's for frightening children who don't listen to their parents. It's not real!"

"You are very much mistaken, Adhara. For the tale is as real as can be. When it was all over, the girls wished never to speak of what had happened. Not one of the seven girls spoke a word of what had happened. Few people know the truth. Everyone else invented rumours and passed on stories of the girls. The names of these girls were long since changed. Only someone who was really there could know the names of the seven girls."

Adhara stood up at once. "Grandmother, you're sick. You shouldn't be talking about things that don't exist."

"Adhara, I tell you, the Fallen Angels were as real as can be," I said slowly, carefully emphasizing every single word. "I can name six of them for you right off the top of my head! Elizabeth, Hermione, Ginny, Mandy, Mona, and Millicent."

Adhara looked at me shaking her head as if I were wrong, confused, and senile. "You're naming half of the women on staff here!"

I stared at my granddaughter, lost for words. She didn't believe me and there was only one way to prove to her that the myth was true. I got up from my bed. Adhara watched me, an anxious expression spreading over her face.

"Grandmother, sit down. You're not well; you shouldn't be out of bed and walking around. You haven't the strength!" She jumped up.

"Sit back down. I have strength enough for this, Adhara." I paused keeping my back to her. "So in this myth, as you say, what did the Fallen Angels have on them as a sign of recognition?" I was purposely trying to test her. To see if she knew the truth or if she would believe me when I showed the truth to her before her very eyes.

I could feel her stare at me as she sat back down, reluctant to do so. "In the myth, supposedly, the girls had a black dove carved into their lower backs with feathers and decorative lines on either side of the bird." As she said this, I unbuttoned my robe. I could feel her piercing stare; she was afraid of me showing her the very proof that the myth was indeed true. I knew she could believe it, but that she didn't want to believe it. I took a deep breath, then lowered my robe just enough to expose my lower back to her. I could almost feel the black dove scar burn again at the chill of the room that seared against it. It hadn't been revealed for almost fifty years now.

Adhara gasped loudly, but said nothing. I pulled my robes up and buttoned them again. Then I turned to face my granddaughter once more. "I only said six names, Adhara, because I am the seventh Fallen Angel," I said it dangerously and in a very low hush.

"But the names in the myth don't match! You can't be! The girls were Blair, Hannah, Jenny, Mary, Marcie, Elise, and Pansy!" Adhara nearly cried out loud. She knew it was true but didn't want to believe it. That's why she was trying to find every possible and impossible excuse for why it couldn't be true, but deep in her heart, she knew that there were no excuses. There was no easy way out. Because the myth was no myth.

I grasped her hand as I sat down again on the bed. "Don't you see?" I asked her. "The names were made up intentionally! Can't you see the resemblance of the invented names to the real ones? Blair and Blaise, Hermione and Hannah, Ginny and Jenny, Elise and Elizabeth! We practically made up the names ourselves and said that they had died long, long ago! We encouraged the rumours and stories!"

"But if what you say is true, why would you girls do something like that? It all seems so far-fetched to me!" she asked.

"We didn't want our true story exposed to the world. You can't begin to understand how terrifying the mere memory of it is. We were tortured, seduced, and brainwashed beyond your imagination. To the point that we were almost unable to imagine what our lives could have been like if fate hadn't decided to throw us on the mercy of one man. Adhara, I've kept these secrets for fifty years! I can't take them to my grave. My soul would not find the much needed rest. I want to be free of the terrible memories and the pain of it all before I die. That's why I asked you to come." I paused and looked deeply into her eyes, eyes like her grandfather, eyes that reminded me of only pain. Yet, her eyes were gentler, less scrutinizing. "Adhara, will you stay with me and listen to my story?"

"You know I won't say no, grandmother," she all but croaked.

I gave her hand a light squeeze and smiled at her. "Thank you for this, Adhara." All she could do was give me a small encouraging smile.

I took another deep breath before I began to tell her the tale of the Fallen Angels. Only that it was not a tale. It was not fictitious in any way. It was a real story.

And I had been there when it happened.

Perhaps that was the way to start the narrative...

"I had almost finished seven years at Hogwarts," I began, "when it happened. I was seventeen years old at the time and I didn't know yet that this very summer would be the beginning of something I would never be able to forget. I begin this tale on a spring evening in the middle of March, at the end of my seventh year. That was the start of a whole new era..."