Redeemable 01

One: Redeemable

 

It was on her eighteenth birthday that she got the Dark Mark, as was the custom. The inner circle of Death Eaters took one new member per year, and she was this year’s initiate.

Draco, her best friend, who had been like an older brother to her since the Sorting Hat placed her in Slytherin, was last year’s. He came to the Slytherin common room by Portkey, where he led her, blindfolded and giggling, into the portal of the fireplace. She knew him well enough to guess that he was smiling. She’d always been silly about important things.

So she fervently hoped she looked all right for this, her initiation into the highest level of Voldemort’s ever-growing movement of Death Eaters. Her dress robes were fine – Draco had given them to her for a Christmas present one year – if a little short. But she couldn’t do much about her tall, skinny body or her lank, pale red hair. With a sigh, she stepped into the fireplace…

Draco took off her blindfold after a few minutes of wandering, seemingly aimlessly, around a field. The grass crunched beneath her worn black boots. "It will go just fine," he murmured into her ear before he untied the blindfold. "Don’t be frightened."

It was, she thought, a place she had been to before. Night had fallen; the moon was high in the sky, and full. She was on a large plain, bordered by a circle of men and women. And, beyond them, there was a ring of stones. Great grey stones, stones that were older than most other things left in the realms of mortal men.

She stared, wide-eyed, at the forty-or-so men and women that surrounded her. No, that wasn’t right. More like forty-or-so men, she realized. She was the only girl.

The tallest of the men, a handsome, dark-haired man who looked a little older than Draco’s father, spoke first. "My dear," he began, his voice smooth but menacing, "I suppose you have noticed that you are our first- lady comrade. Forgive us if our welcome is, thus, a little less than polite society allows."

She met his gaze without flinching, and his dark eyes’ limitless depths seemed amused, if such a thing were possible. He smiled, and in that instant, she knew who he was.

Voldemort.

"Crucio," he said, but she refused to let him break her, the pain shooting through her body like a thousand knives. She stood straight, looking into his eyes without blinking. When she tasted blood in her mouth, she knew that she had bit her lip open, but she did not utter a sound.

When he let go of the curse, she almost fell over, so great was the relief from the horrid, stabbing pain, but she caught herself in time. "Master," she said softly, but loudly enough that everyone could hear her, "Have I proved my self worthy with so easy a parlor trick?"

"A parlor trick, you say." He savored the words. "And how?"

"Practice. But I am always prepared."

He threw half a dozen more curses at her, all of which she blocked without hesitation.

"Very well, intrepid daughter. Are you sure you want this?" he asked.

"With all my heart," Ginny Weasley replied, and she smiled as they burned the Mark into the pale skin of her arm.

* * * * *

After the brief ceremony was over, some idiot gave her a small singing cake – Draco, she knew, because even with his hood up, he still smelled like the rain. Then He – somehow she could not think of Voldemort, her Master, as a mere "he" – separated them off into pairs with a gesture of his hand. Apparently, it was all procedure with them. He took her aside, though.

"Weasley," her Master said in an unnervingly gentle undertone, "We all have- partners. You and your partner will, of course, know each other’s identity, have means of contact, that sort thing, but those things can be revealed to no one other than your partner. Understood?" She nodded. "I am aware you know some of your fellow comrades-"

"Draco, yes-" Ginny affirmed.

"-but from this day forth, you must never, ever refer to them as part of my flock. Forget that they are among my brethren. Forget."

"Do you mean to pair me with him?" she asked, looking into his eyes. She was not the tallest of them, and surely even the shortest could do so, but somehow she got the idea that they avoided such a thing at all costs. Vaguely, she wondered why… they were beautiful eyes…

He broke the gaze. "You, Weasley… I had thought to pair you with him- such as I usually do… but you are a surprise. Gryffindor and Slytherin are not so very different, are they?"

"I’m not a Gryffindor!" she protested. "I never wanted to be like Percy or Bill…"

"And that is why you are here, at night, among the forty-seven most wanted murderers of Mudblood folk?" She was silent. "I thought so. You will be very interesting to observe."

"Is that a threat?" Ginny asked. Her Master said nothing, simply seizing her by the wrist and propelling her to a lone dark form that stood a good distance off from the others.

"Here," He said to the man, spitting out the greeting like it was a curse. "Your new partner."

And Ginny was left alone with a man in a black hooded cape.

* * * * *

"Hello," she greeted the man, feeling very gawky, tall, and awkward in her three-year-old, too short dress robes. "I don’t suppose you’d like to play storyteller?"

Her new partner (who was perhaps an inch taller than she was, but still gave her the feeling of being looked down upon) snorted. "Not at the moment, Miss Weasley."

"Eek," said Ginny, but in a low tone, as she was quite sure that the great Voldemort would find no problem with eliminating a scrawny string bean of a girl who shrieked like a peacock. "Er, hello, Professor Snape." And, because she couldn’t think of anything else: "Is there something that we ought to be taking care of?"

"Yes, in fact," Professor Snape said brusquely, which only served to make her feel more mortified. "1040 Lewis Boulevard, Stratford-Upon-Avon."

"Shall I Apparate?"

"Most promptly." With that, he Disapparated, and she followed.

"You kill them," he hissed, upon her arrival in the shadows beneath the trees that overhung Lewis Boulevard. "I’ll keep lookout."

It was an ordinary house, she realized, only an ordinary little two-story white cottage. Ivy covered the walls and part of the roof; a large rose bush stood outside the front door. A broom – a Nimbus 3200, she thought, from the look of it – leaned against the porch railing, giving the porch a homey look. The absolutely normality of it unnerved her.

She freed her wand from a pocket in the depths of her robes, ignoring the fluttery, aching feeling her stomach was giving her, and entered the house, warding herself with murmured spells and curses.

They never knew what hit them. Ginny screamed "Avada Kedavra!" twice in quick succession, and first the man, then the woman, slid down in their chairs surrounding the fire. There were blank looks of surprise on their faces. Upstairs a baby began to wail.

"Mama! Mama!" it cried.

"Oh," she said, "Oh…" And suddenly her knees, so rigid and strong underneath the burden of the Cruciatus Curse, were jelly. She barely made it to the rose bush before she threw up.

Strong arms caught her and held in those terrible, interminable minutes when she lost most of her dinner and all of her bravado. She lay in their warm embrace gasping for a few minutes afterwards, and then she cried.

"Hush," said her protector, "We’ve got to get out of here."

* * * * *

Ginny awoke in the glow of lamplight sometime later, and she realized, with a jolt of momentary horror, that she was in the Potions office. Then she remembered the events of the night before, and cried out before she could stop herself.

"They don’t know," he said quietly, rising out of the wooden chair behind his desk. "Not Voldemort, nor your fellow students."

"Professor," she asked, with a distinct note of horror in her voice, "Have I gone mad?"

"You understand, then, why there are no female Death Eaters in Voldemort’s circle," Snape replied drily. "My former partner was the first… she killed herself on our last mission. She went insane."

"Anita Lestrange?"

"Precisely." The Potions master abruptly stood up and walked over to where she lay, in a large armchair facing the fireplace. "Will you do the same, Miss Weasley?"

"Will you, Professor?" She looked up at him, certain that she had not imagined the earnestness in his voice. "Is there no other way to leave?"

"No. None that I have ever found."

"Then," she said dully, "I suppose that will be my way out. I lied to Voldemort, you know. I told him that I wasn’t a Gryffindor."

"Do you think all Gryffindors have qualms about killing?" Snape questioned her. "All Slytherins possess none? Why did the Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin?"

Ginny sighed. "Because I put it on, and asked it to make me different from my brothers. Better. Perhaps it took me too literally."

"The Sorting Hat knows its business. You’re clever, aren’t you? Ambitious, determined, any means to an end… I can offer you a better end."

"What? Betrayal?" She laughed bitterly. "And how would that help me? I would be dead, just the same."

Snape rested a hand on her shoulder. "A man once gave me a chance, when I, too, had tired of the killing. He offered me a role in his plans… it’s a game of duplicity, a dangerous way to live. Would you be willing?"

"A double agent?" Tentatively, she tested the words. "Don’t think such a thing could make you, or I, redeemable…"

"Nor do I," he replied with a grim, ironic smile. "But we can try."