Butterfly Storm

Whirling through the chimneys in the Floo network, Cho seemed to pass behind several particularly dirty ones. The ashes rose into her face, tickled her nose, and trickled into her throat, causing her to sneeze uncontrollably. Suddenly, she shot out of the Floo network onto a hard stone floor, landing painfully on her hands and knees. Soot swirled around her, as if this fireplace hadn’t been used for Floo transportation in a very long time. Trying not to cough from all the dust in her lungs, Cho looked up to see where she was. Before she could even comprehend what she saw, every alarm bell in her brain went off simultaneously, and she felt a moment of pure, unreasoning terror. She was nose to nose with a giant snake.

Immediately, Cho scrambled backwards into the fireplace she had just vacated until her back bumped against its dismayingly hard brick. She gasped, but just as she was about to scream, a deep voice said, “Petrificus Totalus" and she found herself unable to move. She could feel the cold stone floor on her hands, and she could feel the hair plastered to her forehead, and she could feel the soot sticking to her throat, but the spell left only her eyeballs free. Once again, she looked up to see if she could figure out what was going on.

The giant snake had slithered away. A few feet in front of her, Cho could see a dining room table that looked out of place in the small room. There were silent people all along its length, but her attention was fixed on the thing seated at one end of the table. It was shaped like a wizard, but its face was deathly white, its eyes were red, and there was no nose on its hideous face. As she frantically ran through her mental catalogue of Dark creatures, its eyes held hers, but only for a moment. They then turned to sweep those at the table dispassionately. After a moment it addressed them, and Cho felt a chill through her entire being at its voice.

“Who was responsible for making sure that this fireplace was disconnected from the Floo Network?”

The silence in the room, which had been absolute, now became profound. Cho was trying to scream and cough at the same time, accomplishing neither but contributing to the growing tightness in her chest. As she watched, the thing twirled its wand idly in its long pale fingers. A small ghost of the Dark Mark rose up from the end, and suddenly Cho knew exactly whose fire she had fallen out of. She tried to scream, but all she could manage were small, panting sighs. She could feel the individual grains of soot on the back of her throat, almost making her gag with their sour taste.

Speechless, she watched as Lord Voldemort stalked over to one of his followers and pulled a man out of his chair. The man fell sprawling onto the floor, and Cho could hear his terrified breaths in the room’s desperate silence.

“You cannot lie to Lord Voldemort, Flint. Ebullio.” Cho quickly averted her eyes from the other side of the room. But the man’s screams seemed to trail icy fingers up her spine, and she could not block the scent of meat as it filled the air. After a few seconds, or perhaps a lifetime, the screaming ended and the man stopped flailing. Either the spell had run its course, or its victim had finally lost consciousness.

Voldemort then turned to Cho, raising his wand as he did so. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Cho had lost all ability to breathe. The floor felt like ice beneath her palms. She commanded her muscles to move, but the charm held her stiff as a board. She tried to shut out the sight of her death approaching, but not even her eyelids would obey her. And then a vaguely familiar voice shouted, “No!”

Voldemort turned, obviously irritated, but Cho could see a blond boy jumping to his feet from the corner of her eye. “She’s a member of Dumbledore’s Army! She’s Harry Potter’s girlfriend, or at least she used to be. She might have information we can use, my lord.” Cho could barely concentrate on what he was saying. Somehow she couldn’t focus on anything other than Voldemort’s wand.

Lord Voldemort let the silence spin for a long time. Cho tore her eyes away from the Dark Lord long enough to see the boy sink back into his chair, looking apprehensive. It was the Slytherin Seeker, who was always bothering Harry. Malcolm, or Macnair, or something like that. Finally, Voldemort spoke. “Excellent suggestion, young Malfoy. You, Wormtail, lock her into a room somewhere. We’ll find out what’s in that pretty little head.” He smiled mirthlessly at Cho, and she lost consciousness.

When she awoke, Cho found herself in yet another strange room. This one had no fireplace, but there was a window and a rickety bed. She was slumped against a corner, dressed in an old patched nightgown but still covered in ashes. There was no sign of her clothes or trunk.

She could see her wand, however. It was in the hand of a short, rat-faced man who pointed it right at her heart, its tip quivering.

“Awake, girl? Well, listen up. There’s no way out of this room, and even if you do find a way, here’s what will happen to you.” He raised his arm, allowing the long sleeves of his robe to fall back, and Cho could see that he wore a silver glove. As she watched, not daring to move, he tightened his grip and the end of her wand was reduced to dust. He crumbled the rest of her wand bit by bit, until all that was left was a handful of rowan splinters and a phoenix feather, which had been impervious to the crushing grip. He put the feather into a pocket, and carelessly brushed the dust off of his hand and onto the floor.

The entire demonstration was more than a little unnerving. How could anyone destroy her wand? It would be like cutting off a hand. Certainly not something that could actually happen. She could feel tears streaming down her face, but she felt detached from them, as if someone else were crying. She must have made some sound, though, because the man began to look repentant as he gazed at her.

“Don’t cry, girl, don’t cry. I just did it to make sure that you don’t get hurt. If you had tried to go after him with it, he would have killed you outright. It’s – it’s all for the best this way.” He took a step toward her; Cho immediately scrambled to her feet and pressed her back against the wall. She felt herself cough hoarsely.

He stopped, thankfully, and backed away slowly, speaking in what was apparently meant to be a soothing tone.

“There, there, girl. Wormtail isn’t going to do anything to you. They’ll just come and ask you some questions later, and if you go along with it, you won’t be hurt. You’ll see.” He stepped out the door and closed it. Cho could hear the sound of a bolt being drawn. She counted to five, too quickly, then rushed over to try the knob. Even before she turned it, though, she knew that the situation was hopeless. They had locked her in.

As the adrenalin rush faded, Cho started coughing so hard that she doubled up. She managed to stumble over to the bed, and pulled the thin coverlet over her shoulders. Her wand was gone. In a way it was worse than what had happened before, because it was so unexpected. Everyone knew that Lord Voldemort killed people, but who would ever expect their wand to be destroyed?

When she had recovered from her coughing fit, she sat up and looked out the small grimy window. It had been sunny when she left her home just a little while ago, but here it was cloudy and raining. That seemed fitting.

Tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She felt as if she was about to be torn apart. Dumbledore’s Army was supposed to be something fun, something she could use to get closer to Harry and stick it to Umbridge . . . and to avenge Cedric.

Only now she was in the den of the serpent, literally, and she had no wand and no way to escape. And she was probably going to die here, after spilling her guts to a bunch of nameless, faceless Death Eaters.

Another coughing fit wracked her body, and she thought bitterly that she probably wouldn’t be able to tell them anything anyway, with all of the soot in her throat and lungs.

And then it hit her. She might not be able to do anything about these Death Eaters. She might not be able to fight them or run away. She would probably die here, in fact. But in the memory of Cedric and every other person who had been killed or tortured by them, the least she could ensure was that Voldemort gained no information from Cho Chang. She would go to the grave before she revealed what she had learned in the DA, or anything at all about Harry’s life. That was something that she could do.

Comforted by this grim declaration, Cho curled up under the sheet and tried to control her breathing. In time her eyes closed, and she slept.

Draco had always pictured a big, elaborate ceremony for someone becoming a Death Eater. There would be a big dark cave, with torchlight flickering across the walls like tiger stripes. A ring of all the full-fledged Death Eaters would surround the initiate, the shadows beneath their long hoods giving no hint of their true identities. There would be dark rituals involving sleek sharp knives and chalices and roughly whispered incantations.

The reality, when it finally happened, was heartbreakingly blunt and mundane. Draco swore his allegiance to the Dark Lord in a small receiving room, in a drab old manor house, empty brown portrait frames bearing mute witness. Oh, the oath was impressive enough, but after Draco had sworn his life and his love and his bones and his blood to the Dark Lord, he simply grabbed Draco’s arm and touched his wand to it. A brief burst of pain/pleasure running up his arm and into his heart, and the whole thing was over.

Draco looked down to see the familiar skull-and-snake image leering Gryffindor red from his forearm. As he watched, it sank into his skin and disappeared. “Thank you, master,” he whispered.

“It will appear again when I summon you. You will feel it, also.” Draco flinched, as he always did at the Dark Lord’s – his master’s – voice. Internally, he cursed his weakness and forced himself to look into those inhuman crimson eyes without cringing. It would not do to shrink from power. “It will remain visible while you are on missions, so that your fellow Death Eaters can identify you. Should I ever appear to be vanquished,” (Draco’s mind filled in the missing again) “it will reappear to signal my impending return.”

“Yes, my lord.” Draco kept his eyes downcast, but he couldn’t stop a smile from spreading over his face. This was a power far beyond petty schoolyard squabbles. Let Potter and his gang try to hex them! Let them talk about his father now!

The Dark Lord waved a hand in airy dismissal. “You may go.” After kissing the hem of his master’s robes, Draco retreated to the kitchen.

No one was there, except Auntie Bella and the house elf, Tallie. Auntie Bella was knitting, her fingers a blur but her empty eyes focused on nothing in particular. A shapeless blue hat, sloppily stitched, was taking form in her lap. Draco sat opposite from her at the table and ordered Tallie to make him a tuna sandwich. He sneaked a look at his forearm, but it was still blank and white.

Auntie Bella took no notice of his arrival, but that was usual. He had worried about her, when he first came to this house. This wreck of a woman seemed to bear no resemblance to the vivacious, dangerous Bella of his mother’s stories. In the Dark Lord’s presence he could see a faint trace of the aunt he had always heard about, but away from him she seemed as dormant as a homunculus without a task. He was glad to see her knitting, though – usually, she simply sat or stood in whatever place Voldemort had ordered her to go, still, silent, and utterly unnerving.

He had mentally executed Potter, the Weasel, and the Mudblood a dozen different ways, surreptitiously peeked at his forearm half a dozen times, and finished off nearly his entire sandwich when she spoke.

“I remember when I took the Mark.” Draco paused in the middle of a mouthful.

“I had just turned seventeen. I was inducted with six others, all from my Hogwarts class save one.” Her harsh voice had taken on a dreamy quality. “There was no one else there, only us and him in the ruins of an old castle down in Wales. He called each of us up, had us swear to be faithful to him with will and wand, by troth and bond – but you know the oath, of course. As I bound myself by speaking those words, I remember thinking that they were the first true things I had ever said.

“After that, we Apparated into a shop a few miles away from the castle. There were eight Muggles in there, going about their stupid little lives. We each killed one, to show our loyalty to our master. He killed one himself, and the honor of the last cleansing went to me. It was glorious.”

Draco was barely breathing. A well of jealousy had risen up in him, and he cursed Potter again for denying this world to him. His aunt looked at him, for the first time since he had come in. For the first time since he had come to this house. Probably for the first time ever.

“For all that we have lost, all that we rightfully deserve, it is our duty to make the world secure for our descendants. We serve the Dark Lord, and through him every pureblood witch and wizard. Remember this.”

Draco waited expectantly for more, but Auntie Bella had apparently said all she meant to on the subject. After a moment she dropped her eyes and her needles started up again.

He finished his sandwich and licked his fingers. He fell into a pleasurable daydream about setting fire to the Weasleys’ hut and killing each one as he or she ran out. An adoring Pansy would be on his arm – no, better, Chang, newly converted to the Dark Lord’s cause. Deciding that it would not be at all inappropriate to celebrate later, he told Tallie to take a bottle of firewhiskey up to his room. He snuck another look at his forearm. Auntie Bella continued to drop stitches, but didn’t say another word.

Half an hour after he had come into the kitchen, an intensely pleasurable feeling swept through Draco’s entire body. He flushed, but Auntie Bella didn’t seem to take any notice. When he glanced reflexively at his left forearm, however, the Mark glared up at him, jet black.

Draco rose shakily and made his way out of the door and down the hall. As always, he had to stop before he entered the receiving room. There was always that wild desire to turn and run, and he had to get himself under control. His master turned to him when he entered the room, mouth twisted into a fearsome grimace.

“Excellent, my servant. And now I will give you your first mission.

“Go to the girl and discover all she knows about Harry Potter and his allies. Use any means necessary, but do not attract the attention of the Ministry. If possible, convert her to our cause; if she refuses, then turn her over to me.

“Succeed in this and I will reward you greatly.” Draco felt something unpleasantly odd; he looked down to see Nagini delicately tasting one of his ankles. “Fail me, and you will suffer the consequences.”

The audience was obviously at an end, but Draco decided to take a gamble. “Y-yes, my lord. Only, I wanted to know when we’d be re-rescuing my father from . . . ” The Dark Lord was looking at him with more than a trace of irritation, and Draco trailed off miserably into silence. There was an awkward pause.

“Go, young Malfoy, and do not question the timing of the Dark Lord,” his master said finally, and his voice was like ice. Draco quickly bent to kiss his robes and beat a hasty retreat. He hoped that Lord Voldemort did not hear the way his footsteps sped up as he practically flew down the hallway. It was a full five minutes before he could calm the shudders running through his body.

Now he stood at the door of the room where Chang was being held. His master’s words came back to him. Succeed and you will be rewarded . . . fail, and you will suffer the consequences. He straightened his shoulders and knocked.