Abyss

Chapter 16

His groans and her sighs filled the dark room like the sensual embrace of satin. His hands clenched at her arms above her head. She let out a soft, endearing cry and arched her back as he moved in her, and he kissed her roughly on her mouth, caressing her gasps with his own. Every time she was in his bed, she wished that she could be with him more often, but a man of his position... She held him all the more tightly, wrapping her legs around his hips and kissing him back like it was the last time. Soon, their passion culminated in a delicious climax, and they rode the orgasm out together.

"It's been far too long, love," he said into the shell of her ear before laving the sensitive skin under her jaw. "We should have done this weeks ago. Tell me you've thought of me."

"Always," she whispered back. He adjusted them so that he held an arm around her waist and pressed against her from behind. She missed the intense intimacy of their moment just before, but this was pleasant in comparison to her other men. Just companionship.

"Are you quite finished, Carmen?" Voldemort asked, lighting a lantern in the bedroom and pulling aside the curtains that hid the two lovers from view.

"Yes, my lord," Carmen answered a little breathlessly. He was not even surprised, although he could not deny that he was disappointed. "And it's still you I have to thank for it. And you, of course, Sarah." He grinned and kissed her cheek, her eyelids. "Sorry about the rush, darling, but I guess you have to leave. My lord requires my services at all hours."

"And coincidentally, you are awake when I want your services," Voldemort said. He leaned against the table on which the lantern burned and waited, staring unabashedly at them.

"I understand," Sarah said, grinning back at Carmen. She let Carmen slide away from her with the extraordinary strength in his arms. For all of his physical deformities, he was still an ardent, generous, and gentle lover. They had sex in the dark at his behest, not hers. As he put his tunic around his body and settled himself on his magic carpet, Sarah donned her own sheer robe and, stroking Carmen's cheek goodbye, left the two men to their activities.

Carmen looked at Voldemort in expectation.

Voldemort sneered at the scene he had just witnessed, but he set aside his disgust to reply, "I came here for you to ask me to share your dinner."

Carmen smirked. "I could invite her back, but generally I'm not inclined to share."

Voldemort sneered in the direction of the woman. "Not interested, Carmen. I've never understood your interest to form a lasting relationship with a girl of the Harem."

The old wolf flew to hover in front of Voldemort. "It's not going to last much longer if I don't have more time with her." Carmen did not even try to be subtle. "And I thought you had that thing with Bellatrix, or was that just a rumor?"

Voldemort began to laugh. "A rumor started by dear Bella. I admit that it is amusing to watch her try. Her husband would be the most satiated man on this side of the Atlantic if she did everything to him that she has tried to do to me. And despite all the tortures as punishment for her insolence, she still persists. The chit is loyal, but I do not require such loyalty that she offers."

"It's not a matter of requirement," Carmen said. "Requirement is what you can find with a prostitute. Enjoyment is what you can find with a woman who wants to be with you despite some of your... less attractive traits. Sarah is both--she is something to hold and talk to--but my own Magda was..." His voice trailed off as he remembered the way his wife died. If that was the right word. He was there, chained and bleeding, when they killed her, when Grindelwald had his followers strip her of her skin. He choked back a rough sigh and brought his mind back to the present.

"And look what it's done to you," Voldemort said, dismissing the man's sorrow. "A distraction. A potential fatal distraction if it falls into the hands of those who might want to destroy you. I have no intention to start a pointless affair with Bella just for a sort of loyalty I have no use for."

Carmen cocked his head to indicate that Voldemort should follow him. "You've never had a use for it?" Carmen asked as he led the Dark Lord down the corridor of his own house adjoining and under the same protection as the fortress.

"When I was young, I had my times, but it was still a distraction--an intentional one. I no longer want or need that sort of distraction."

"I don't know whether you are to be admired or pitied, my lord. You're missing so much," Carmen said, finally reaching the dining room. "But to each his own--clearly you find your distraction in other things... a certain charming, intelligent young lady, I presume?"

Voldemort glared at Carmen from his place at the table. "I will one day have to kill you for knowing far too much for your own good. Do my Death Eaters think I have an unhealthy fixation, or is it just you?"

"Your Death Eaters do not know what to look for," Carmen said, indicating that his waiting house elf should begin serving. The house elf looked up tremulously at the Dark Lord, then hurried off to do his master's bidding twice as fast as he ordinarily would. "They are too preoccupied with their own distractions, or they are too blinded by your brilliance. You hide things well, but not well enough to fool me. Or not well enough for me to guess wrongly." He gave Voldemort a lopsided smile.

The food appeared on their plates, bypassing the salad and soup and heading straight for the meat. Voldemort sighed in pleasure as he saw the perfect, rare steak practically dripping with flavor. Carmen seemed to have the same taste in meat as the Dark Lord, drastically different from the majority of his Death Eaters. He closed his eyes to relish the first bite. When his red eyes opened heavy-lidded, Carmen pointedly ignored him, but he was hiding his laugh in his wine. Voldemort hissed lightly in half-hearted warning, but he continued his meal, and Carmen joined him in companionable silence.

The old wolf enjoyed his time with the Dark Lord because Voldemort was always so much more relaxed alone with him, although he was still very much the Dark Lord. Sometimes the similarities between he and Grindelwald made him pause. But Grindelwald was never as intelligent or ambitious as the younger man before him. Grindelwald could have a crowd on tenterhooks, but his politics were never quite as strategically sound as Voldemort's had been before his intentions were made clear. And Grindelwald had been killed early in his career. Voldemort was still alive after so long. They were very different men.

This comfort with the Dark Lord was the only reason he was sure he would not be hexed when he said, "Have you ever even considered kissing her?"

Voldemort set his fork down onto his plate. "Next time I have dinner with you," the Dark Lord murmured, "it will not be after you've finished making love to a whore. No."

"Ever considered considering it? She's a passable dish, and young at that. Not to mention she might be able to understand you when you start to ramble about variable vectors and spell wakes."

"Stop playing matchmaker, Carmen." Voldemort snorted slightly and lifted his fork again.

"It's been an age since you dined in my house, Lord Voldemort," Carmen chided. The use of his name startled Voldemort into locking eyes with the old wolf. "You came here because of the girl, and if it isn't because of a clandestine romance you don't dare tell your Death Eaters, I'd like to know why you're here--although I hope part of it is the pleasure of my company."

Voldemort took a pensive drink.

"I haven't seen you so obsessed with a member of the enemy since the Potter boy, except you would never be so kind with him as you are with the girl." Carmen gestured to the house elf standing surreptitiously in a corner. The house elf jumped to his task and cleared the table, preparing it for the dessert.

"Kind?"

"By your standards."

Voldemort laughed. "You mean keeping her alive and talking to her. I confess, I'm tempted to treat her in a less straightforwardly antagonistic manner."

Carmen leaned back in his chair. "You really do like her, don't you?"

"If she weren't a friend of Potter's, I'd consider properly inducting her. She's all Gryffindor nobility and morality, despite everything she has done for me, but..." Voldemort stared at the chocolate confection that had been placed in front of him by the cowering house elf. "Take a look at this," he said, sliding the book of her translations down the dining table. Carmen closed his hand on the binding and lifted it to his lap.

"This is Severus'," Carmen said, looking up in surprise. "I thought he wrote everything except inconsequential potions labels in code."

"She broke it. When she finally set her mind to decipher his writings, she broke it in less than an hour. Who else could do that, Carmen?"

"Besides you."

Voldemort waved that aside. "I cracked the code weeks before I gave the book to her. I wanted her to translate it. But who else? Dumbledore could probably crack something Severus concocted in a matter of days or a week. Others, maybe weeks, months, even years. Not minutes, Carmen. This girl is extraordinary, and she has to be Potter's friend. Imagine if that brain power were added to our side."

Carmen read the introduction. "That must have stung her." His eyes passed over her even hand in admiration. "This is amazing. She's wasted on Dumbledore if she wasn't inducted into their Order earlier."

"They denied her because they didn't want her mixed up in the Dark Arts," Voldemort said with a half-smile.

Carmen choked on his chocolate in amusement. He read a few more lines, nodding slightly. He looked up to comment on one of Snape's observations when he noticed Voldemort's untouched plate. "Do you want your chocolate or does it still bother you?"

Voldemort Levitated his dessert to Carmen. Carmen set the book on the table. "What does this have to do with me?" Carmen asked.

"She isn't talking much. At all, actually. Draco Malfoy has brought her cat to her sometimes, and he keeps her company when I ask him to. But she doesn't talk to anyone. She's doing a few of the more difficult potions that do not require a wand." His white finger traced his chin gently as he sensed her working through the Dark Mark. Her focus was like warm water over cold skin--he wanted to soak in it. "She's only ruined one. She hasn't since, not after I came in and personally disposed of the remains. She does not ask what potions she brews. She knows anyway. And still the vials of the potions are unadulterated, neatly labeled, and put in the cupboard where they belong at the end of the week."

Carmen looked confused. "Are you worried about her?"

Voldemort looked up. "No. She has been quiet before. If she doesn't want to talk, she doesn't have to. I have not visited her since the ruined potion. Wormtail's Animagus and Draco are my eyes, and I occasionally see through Legilimency if I need to."

"So... why are you here?"

"I have an idea that will sound crazy, and my Death Eaters won't properly understand it. I want you to understand."

"I'm honored, my lord," Carmen murmured sincerely. "Though, if I may, should you not feel more comfortable telling your Death Eaters rather than someone who is not? No Dark Lord wants incompetence or possible mutiny in their highest ranks."

Voldemort smiled. "I think you'll know why I want to tell you before the Death Eaters when I explain. What I intend to do is... entirely unprecedented, but my plan is an ideal complement to her personality and status. My Death Eaters will have no trouble accepting my decision, but their comprehension of some of the subtler manipulations leaves something to be desired. Damn, I miss Severus sometimes. That man knew every nuance of a gesture, an expression, an idea. And he would understand what I plan to do with his 'Miss Granger.' When he was still my loyal Death Eater, he would have been the first to support the plan. As it is, Lucius and MacNair are the subtler of the ranks, and they are far too pureblood elitist to respond favorably in the beginning."

Carmen abandoned his dessert and floated to Voldemort's chair, leaning forward. "Now I'm intrigued."

Voldemort opened his mouth. Then he abruptly shut it and stood.

"Something's amiss," he muttered, and he stormed out of the room, his robes doing a remarkable impression of Snape's. Carmen tried to keep up with him.

The carpet stopped short when he saw Hermione on the floor of a corridor being beaten by Nott, whose hypersensitive arousal was more than clear as his left hand struggled with the fastenings of his trousers. The manic Death Eater had her broken chains in his right hand and was hitting her across the face, the breasts, the stomach with them, as though they were metal whips. When she cringed into fetal position on the floor, he would kick her in the back, causing her to open herself to assault again. Carmen was shocked in spite of himself. He knew how much the Dark Lord liked the girl, and to see her being treated like this, being beaten so crudely, was a sight that he would not have expected from one of Voldemort's own Death Eaters. Although Nott and Avery had a different role among the Death Eaters--trained for torturing the younger element of Voldemort's enemies--Carmen thought they knew no finger was to touch her without the Dark Lord's permission.

Voldemort was startled to see Hermione escaped from Snape's laboratory. But he recovered long enough to curse Nott away from her before he could do any irreparable damage.

"She was running, my lord," Nott whined, nursing the side of his head where he hit the wall. "She was running away. She was trying to escape from you, and I couldn't let that happen."

"So you decided to spoil her," Voldemort said coldly.

"I didn't mean..." Nott began.

"Then what did you mean to do?" Voldemort said. "Paint her like a picture? Beat her into submission after I specifically ordered that no one was to do anything to her beyond their expressed duties? Did it never occur to you that the girl could be apprehended without hitting her? Could you not understand that there is more to keeping a prisoner than covering her with bruises and broken bones? This girl is mine, and you dare to lay a finger on her? She bears the Dark Mark, the brand that I gave her, and you dare interfere?"

"I'm sorry, my lord," Nott said, cowering. "I did not think..."

"No, you didn't. And I don't allow thoughtlessness in my Death Eaters." Voldemort unsheathed his wand and pointed it at the quivering man. "Crucio."

The Cruciatus Curse was short in comparison to what he might give to an enemy. Voldemort could not show any sort of fanatic favoritism toward the girl, so he was only punishing Nott for damaging property, not for damaging a girl with momentous potential within his grasp. He only hoped that Nott's work could be undone without a mark of disdain left on her body.

Nott was sobbing and kissing Voldemort's boots, slobbering sickeningly on the edge of his robes. Voldemort kicked him away.

"I trust that such a mistake will never happen again. I would hate to send one of my Death Eaters who isn't Wormtail into conditioning. It would be so degrading, wouldn't it, Nott, to be the equal of Wormtail?" Voldemort said softly, somehow making himself heard over Nott's keening. "And Hermione, you wouldn't have gotten far as you were, despite your schematic memorization of the fortress--I don't think you'll get much farther as you are."

Hermione had struggled to her swollen hands and knees and tried to crawl away while Voldemort had his attention on Nott. Voldemort's face shifted into a more presentable countenance when she stumbled even on four feet. She fell to the ground, her eyes nearly shut with the red swelling around them, but still looking at him with fury.

"I should have seen this coming," Voldemort said, his wand now pointing at Hermione. "I suspected a desperate attempt soon, but not this soon. Nott, retrieve Draco from the laboratory."

Voldemort and Hermione did not shift their attention until Nott entered the corridor with a disoriented Draco Malfoy holding Nott's shoulder for balance. He was laughing despite the blood dripping down the back of his neck.

"And here I thought she had turned into a clawless kitten," Draco gasped through his laughter. "That's the second time you've hit me, Mudblood. You've still got more force behind that hand than I expected."

"It wasn't just my fist," Hermione said through puffy lips.

"What'd you use, a rock?" Draco released Nott's arm and dropped gracelessly to his knees.

"Yes."

Draco nodded with a tight smile as he tested the sensitive, rent flesh. He winced. "Where'd you find a rock?"

"It's a potions laboratory, Malfoy. The question would be: what couldn't I find there?"

Voldemort directed his order to Draco. "Go to the laboratory and find something there for your wound. If it doesn't work, I'm afraid there is nothing I am going to do for you."

Draco nodded--he knew better than to ask the Dark Lord to heal it with a wave of his wand. He had let Hermione escape. Even if Voldemort had been expecting it, he had no excuse for such an infraction. He used the wall as a crutch and made his way through the corridor back to the laboratory. He thought he knew where the healing potions were. He just hoped that the one he chose was not one of the adulterated potions or a hidden poison.

Voldemort did not sneer at the boy as he left. He rather liked Draco. Unlike his father, he was more solemn--even his humor was deadpan. He could never be subtle, but he could learn enough to be one of the best among his Death Eaters. He only hoped Lucius would not get his hands on the boy and fill his head with inaccuracies that would ruin him for good. Draco was not his father, but sometimes Lucius forgot that.

Draco, however, was not the issue at the moment.

"Carmen, can your carpet carry Hermione with you?" Voldemort asked, dismissing Nott with a gesture of his hand.

"Yes, my lord," Carmen answered, floating to the floor next to Hermione. "Come, lady, let me help you." He pushed himself to the edge of the carpet and braced himself with his thighs as well as he could. With gentle hands, he guided her onto the carpet. Hermione did not resist the opportunity to be treated like a human and yielded herself to his assistance. When she fell against him in a half-faint against the pounding of the fire all over her body, he held her head against his stomach. Her fingers gripped at the ends of what was left of his legs, right under the knees, but jerked back at the feel of the scar tissue. Instead she clenched the edges of the carpet as it lifted from the ground. Carmen could not resist stroking her hair, and she buried her face in his tunic. He could feel the dampness of the tears of pain she was trying to repress.

"Follow me." Voldemort led them to his chambers instead of taking her back to the laboratory. He did not look back to see whether Hermione was still awake--the assault to her head might have been concussive, but that could be remedied quickly, unlike internal bleeding. Internal bleeding required knowledge of how far the bleeding extended, how serious the bleeding was, and whether any vital organs had been torn. He was talented, but he was not a mediwizard, and his knowledge of medicine was shut in the dustier areas of his mind.

When he closed the door to his chambers behind them, he took the dangling chains and pulled her off the carpet. Her body fell onto the ground, and she cried out as she landed on her stomach. Carmen bit back a reproach, knowing that the Dark Lord would not take well to any sort of advice that he wanted to give. He was not much for the darker manipulations, but his loyalties demanded exposure to the very things against which he had fervently fought in his youth. Carmen knew that the Dark Lord measured every action he took, especially those he took with his obsessions. If this girl was the obsession Carmen thought she was, Carmen should avoid any and all attempts to interfere with Voldemort's gradual molding and shaping of someone he valued enough to spare his time.

"Stand up, Hermione," Voldemort said. "If anything is broken, I don't care. You can stand."

Hermione stumbled on the hem of her cloak--and she cried out as she fell to her knees again--but she managed to get to her feet, doubled over against the pain through her abdomen and on her back and face.

Voldemort slid a hand under her chin and lifted her face so that her bruise-framed eyes were looking into his.

"I shouldn't heal you," he said. "I should let you bleed and turn pretty colors. I should let Wormtail take you for another night. I should beat you myself. But I'm not going to do any of those things."

With his wand in hand, he carefully scanned every inch of her body. A trained mediwizard would be able to tell what was wrong with her in a second, but he had to consider all possible maladies and remedies, shuffling through them like a card index.

When he was still Tom Riddle and experimenting on himself, he had subjected himself to a great deal of curses and self-harm for the sake of advancement. Because a young boy could hardly show up to class bleeding from his ears and the tips of his hair, nor could he walk into the Great Hall with claws for nail and wings like a bat, he stormed the Restricted Section for antidotes and counters for the more extensive problems that arose with his dabbling. But he also needed to look up texts of the medical persuasion, if just to cure his ocular hemorrhages and gastro-intestinal rearrangements--and not to mention the ways to cure mutilation necessary for certain kinds of individual blood magic. After he became Lord Voldemort, many transfigurations and incantations later, he had a better instinct for experimentation... and other people on whom he could experiment without the need to heal them.

Healing Hermione certainly brought back memories. The tip of his wand stroked the rough material of Professor Snape's altered clothing, healing the flowering of darker color all along her body. She closed her eyes at the steady stream of relief bursting in little balloons of warmth from her knees to her face. There had not been enough time for the bruises to fully form, but the initial colors were there, only to fade with the restoring magic of the Dark Lord's administrations.

As the pain dissipated, Hermione was able to stand straight, her eyes fully open and lucid.

"Does anything else hurt?" the Dark Lord asked, withdrawing his wand and sheathing it in his robes.

"No," Hermione replied. She deliberately left out a title.

"Good," Voldemort said. He let his hand swing and connect with her cheekbone in a muffled slap. It would not leave a mark, but Hermione was startled nonetheless. Her face flushed red where his palm had struck her, and her face snapped to the side from the force of the blow.

Voldemort took advantage of the stunned Hermione and took her wrist in hand. Without malice or violence, he led her to a sitting area near the hearth. A crook of the finger indicated that Carmen should follow them. Like a gentleman, Voldemort helped Hermione into an armchair. The same hand that hit her touched the warm flesh, cooling it with his unnaturally cold skin--one more reminder that he was not just human, that he had been changed.

"Now," Voldemort said amiably, sitting in the armchair opposite, "how did you escape? And don't leave out any details. I'm curious how you managed to get as far as you did."

"You mean with the Death Eaters watching me?" Hermione said. "You ought to have had a spy that knew the difference between the ingredients of a Formidable Foe Potion and a Corrosion Concoction. Not one of your spies--I don't know how many--noticed that I was using different ingredients for different cauldrons."

"You burned through the chains," Voldemort said, sinking back in the chair and resting his chin on a hand. "Simple, effective. But you didn't burn through the spells on the door."

"Draco opened the door. I was waiting for him and hit him on the back of the head with the rock in my fist. I didn't know that I could hit that hard." Her lips curled in a wry smile. "I suppose motivation and petty vendettas help. In hindsight, I probably should have poured the rest of the Corrosive Concoction on his head." She looked up at Voldemort. "Anyway, you were right when you thought I memorized the way out of the fortress. I remembered how to get back to your chambers, and from your chambers, I had already figured out how to get outside from the initiation."

"And what did you think would happen when you were caught? Not just what I would do to you, but what the Death Eater that found you might do." Voldemort leaned forward, lowering his voice so that he could insinuate himself into her head. She knew what he was doing and tried to look away. She couldn't. "You are lucky that you only ran into Nott. He prefers the younger ones, younger than you are, although he won't say no to fresh meat. Avery doesn't care about what he takes into his quarters. And just imagine where I might have found you if Wormtail caught you first. Or Lucius. Did you think about that?"

"You've put me through the mill," Hermione snapped. "I doubt there was anything that your Death Eaters could have done that hasn't happened to me before. I can take it."

"You could have taken the full extent of your injuries if I hadn't healed you?" Voldemort asked. He raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Even Crabbe and Goyle had to correct the more severe blows you sustained on your first night with us."

Hermione did not answer, but she found she could not maintain their intense eye contact.

Voldemort settled more comfortably in the chair and let the pregnant pause hang in the air between them, let her think about what she could have done--or rather what she could not have done.

"You would have died, Hermione," Voldemort murmured, breaking the silence. "Nott knows where to hit. Women are abused all the time, but those with the most experience know exactly where to beat someone to keep others from knowing--or where it will kill. Your eye would have burst with all the blood rushing into it. You would have been infected from the inside. Your body would have blossomed with bruises from the internal bleeding. You wouldn't even recognize yourself. It would have only been a matter of time."

"I don't owe you a life debt," Hermione said quickly. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be in the situation in the first place."

Voldemort's mirth rippled through Hermione's dignity. "Blame is awfully difficult to place. There is plenty of blame with me... or Draco... or Wormtail... or you..." His grin broadened. "Or Dumbledore... or the werewolf that was once your professor... or Harry Potter."

"How is it Harry's..." she began indignantly, but she hesitated as she realized what he meant. She took a deep breath and tried to tamp down on her anger. "I was Harry's friend by choice. And if you hadn't targeted him, I wouldn't have been in the scene at all. It's not Harry's fault."

"And if you'd like to continue in the vein of fault," Voldemort said, warming to the topic, "analysts of certain schools might consider the way I am and the decisions that I made in order to become who I am today to be the result of my lack of a good father figure or the loss of my mother. Or an abusive orphanage. Or repressed memories of abuse. Or," he said with relish, "even better, it could be entirely society's fault. That would be a wonderful Daily Prophet headline--It's Our Fault."

"You're so full of crap," Hermione said.

Carmen held his breath.

"Excuse me?" Voldemort said.

"You're not as special as you think you are," Hermione muttered. Voldemort had to strain his ears to hear her. It seemed she realized exactly what she had said on impulse and was afraid of the consequences. Curses, long, slow torture, and the like struck her as appropriate. "Fifty or sixty years ago, this could have been you if some idiot got it in his mind that he wanted to ruin everyone's lives and take over the world."

"Last time I checked," Carmen interjected, "he's male. There is no possible way he could have been in the same situation."

Voldemort and Hermione turned to him simultaneously and said, "Shut up."

Carmen swallowed a chuckle as they returned to their sparring.

"I'm just as special as I think I am," Voldemort said. "I'm a self-made man, Hermione. I've looked at myself in the mirror, in Pensieves, through other people's eyes. I have a vision. I wanted something when I was a youth, and now I am this close to having it."

"And a little boy keeps getting in the way," Hermione snarled.

Carmen winced as Voldemort almost unnoticeably tensed.

"Parseltongue. The similar cores in the wands. His mother's protection that I now carry in my own blood," Voldemort said, his temper held in check. "That is not Harry Potter. That is everyone else giving him power... including me. That was a mistake. I've made mistakes."

"People on such high profile," Hermione said, "can't make mistakes that large."

"I haven't made many, and I've survived them all. And I've taken so many of my enemies down, taken every last essence of their magic into my own. For every witch or wizard that I have killed, I took a bit of them into me--they imbue me with the last breath of their strength."

Hermione looked into the fire. "And you lose a bit of yourself in the process."

Voldemort tilted his head so that he could see her eyes again. "Perhaps. But the gain is ever so much more than what I lose in the Killing Curse. Excluding the Potter boy, of course. But I gained the knowledge that one or more of my immortality preparations worked."

She did not saying anything more. Voldemort saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes. Old memories. Delicious. He wanted to take her tears and taste them.

He let her sit there in the armchair, slightly curled, holding the tears back, for a few minutes, letting her drown in nostalgia that she tried so hard to deny. Then he shifted, stood without any of the groans and creaks of his age.

"I'm sure you are still sore from the beating that Nott gave you," Voldemort said softly. "You are permitted to use my bath again. Take your time."

She did not face him, but she unfurled and walked straight to the bath. The door did not slam--there was barely a sound as it closed. He heard the water run. It was only when he could hear her sinking into the bath that he turned to Carmen.

"I'm glad she tried to escape now. I can do what I need to do--she wants so desperately to go home to her precious Harry and the Order of the bloody Phoenix." Voldemort held his smile in check, but Carmen could sense the welling excitement as Voldemort walked back and forth in front of the fire. "This will tear her apart."

The Dark Lord's repressed giddiness was contagious, and Carmen found his stomach tightening in anticipation. "What do you plan to do, my lord?"

"She will come back to me, openly and willingly," Voldemort continued, drawing out the moment. "She won't be able to bear it."

"What, my lord?"

Voldemort ceased his restless pacing and faced Carmen dead on. His smile was unrestrained and malevolent.

"I'm going to set her free."