Ascent

Chapter 6

She had never really looked at the fortress before. Of course, before she was always on the inside, shackled to something and divested of a wand and clothing. The only time she had seen it before was during the initiation, but it was difficult to see such a behemoth of a building in the dark of night.

Hermione was walking again, enjoying the chill of the morning and the crunch of snow under her feet from the night's snowfall. It would melt quickly and spring was nigh upon them, so she wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. She took a long look at the fortress itself rather than the wide, wild forest around it. It took had its own sort of uncivilized aura, as though it had a menace that was just the building rather than the inhabitants. Hermione could not quite decide if it harkened back to the grotesque grandeur of the old cathedrals or whether it had the sort of stateliness and clean lines of a Greek temple. She looked at it one way and it loomed over her - another way transformed it into something almost welcoming in comparison to the unpredictability of the woods. Then again, all evil is easier to look at in the light.

And I guess it's home for the rest of my life, she thought with a wry smile. It was her second real look at the fortress, and somehow it was less frightening to her, even in the eerie blue and orange glow that reflected from the snow in the reaching heat of the rising sun.

Still... the windows still felt like eyes, so many eyes that wanted her either inside in its warm maw or away, just away. She found herself staring at it, caught between the fortress and the forest, hands tucked into her cloak, face pink, wishing she had grown her hair out for winter, frizziness be damned. Her breath froze outside of her mouth in tiny clouds that dispersed as quickly as they came, blurring the picture of the fortress for a second or two as she watched it crouch there on the top of the hill.

She heard him before she saw him, and his casual stride betrayed his identity, slow and even in the cold that must bite under his skin unless he had cast a Warming Charm.

"I'm not accustomed to search for people when I want them," Voldemort said. He was not angry or annoyed or amused. His tone was without any sort of emotion, and Hermione recognized it for the hesitation that it was.

"I have a Dark Mark. You could have found me that way," Hermione replied. "I don't like being trapped in a room. But I guess you know that."

They stood there in silence for a minute, and, remarkably, the peace of the early morning remained until the golden line of sunbeams reached from the illuminated fortress to their boots. Hermione squinted in the light and turned to look at the Dark Lord, who was looking back at her as though she was a piece of parchment that needed to be filled. It was an odd kind of look.

"You wanted to see the books I used for my transfiguration spells," Voldemort finally said. "And I have something else to show you."

"Is something wrong?" Hermione asked.

"No," Voldemort said.

He started up the hill again, and Hermione found herself following him before she even realized what she was doing. His entire demeanor seemed closed off, and she hesitated to pull at the threads that connected them to spread the curtains of his almost impenetrable aura. She felt that looking beyond the barrier that Voldemort built around him would be invasive in such a way that he would not realize what she was doing... and that was just wrong somehow, especially with him... although she should have no qualms about it after all he had done, that voice wiggling into her head like a tiny lamprey, like his spirit when he possessed creatures. She should feel no qualms for a little quiet retribution. But she only followed him silently. Hermione could see Shannon's face in the back of her mind, that oh so stern half-smile that warned Hermione that she was regressing back into old, dangerous habits - she faintly heard the shaking of chains behind the insubstantial memory.

The shift from the chill of outside and the warmth of inside caught her body by surprise, and her nose, ears, and fingers began tingling with the sudden change. She liked that feeling - it made her feel alive, and in spite of the so familiar connotations of the objects and furniture about her in the corridors, she grasped tightly to the feeling as she had so many times since first leaving the fortress.

"There are so many good little things, so many things to ground you in the now. Close your mind around them and don't let go until they start to fade. Then find another. And another. The darkness can be subtle, but the little things are all that anyone really holds onto."

They passed so many people, more than Hermione would have expected eight years ago, but with the great polarization between the sides, even the slightest supporters for Voldemort had been hurt just as supporters of the Order and the Ministry had been disowned or abused... it went both ways, always both ways, no matter which moral standard was supposed to be followed. It hurt Hermione to watch the wizarding world divide itself, not least because she may have been one of the catalysts for the stronger divide - the weak, the moderate, and the ignorant were the ones who really lost as two grand masters played their terrible strategy game, callously sacrificing pieces who did not even know they were playing.

"I just wanted to help."

"Through here," Voldemort said, opening the door to his chambers.

"What is it that you wanted to show me?" Hermione asked. "I still remember the order of the books in your shelves; I know everything in this room... and how."

"Not in my chambers," Voldemort answered, eyes glinting in amusement. "Through my hearth." He reached into a box on his mantle, the simple dark wooden box that Hermione had assumed held Floo powder. Voldemort threw a bit of the bright blue powder into the fire - there was no visual change to the color and movement of the flames. He beckoned Hermione forward.

"The library is through fire," Voldemort explained quietly. "The books you want are there."

He touched her shoulder as she ducked into the hearth, through the fire that was hot but not burning. She stumbled when he let go of her, but she caught her balance only to be staggered by the sight of her first love.

Merlin, he found my weakness, she thought, resisting the urge to smile or shake.

A heavy tome of hand-bound parchment came to his outstretched hand. He opened it upside-down on his lap so that she could see it. He kept his eyes on her. Hermione looked down at the book. Like his smell in the room, Professor Snape's familiar, spidery script sent a pang through her.

"You want me to decipher his writings so that you can know what was going on in his head, what kind of mutinous thoughts and actions that he had. You want me to betray the Order, my friends, everything I believed in... for you."

"Yes."

He was standing behind her, and she could feel his eyes watching as she stepped forward, wary of the rattling of chains in her head. Just looking at this library... it would not have anything so tame as Moste Potente Potions. Black, leather-bound texts lined the shelves along the walls and in aisles through the room. The library was not large - not like the Hogwarts library or Medicus library - but Hermione would not have been surprised if most of the Dark writings in the world were collected in this one library. Dark magic thickened the air with something like longing, something that pulled, caught her interest. Rustling parchment that smelled musty, ancient, ripe with age, accented with faded spiky writing, grisly illustrations, words and words and words of magic that always seemed to elude her - or she always eluded the words, she was not quite sure which. She could hear the pages whispering to each other, within each other, vibrating with restraint and quivering desire. Her fingers brushed against the spines, the smoothness of leather an old friendly enemy.

Fingers caught her wrist, wrapped tightly around the fragile bones, cold skin against warm pulsing. Hermione blinked and let Voldemort pull her hand back.

"Careful in here," he murmured, leading her away from the shelves and to a round wooden table. There were stacks of books - two hundred would not have been a liberal guess - all whispering with the same seduction. "You are welcome to come to the library when you like, but I would be careful not to stay for too long. Unless, of course, you would like to drown in the Dark Arts while your vulnerability is still raw and new."

She heard the smile in his voice, but she did not look at him.

"You brought me here on purpose," Hermione said, looking over the gilded titles on the spines. The pads of her fingertips danced against them as she read, wanting so much to pick up the book and knowing that it was a dangerous road she was about to follow, more dangerous than being Lord Voldemort's Medicus, more dangerous than searching the Forbidden Forest for ingredients, more dangerous than anything she ever did with Harry and Ron in her school days.

"I brought you here for these books," Voldemort said. "You should have known that you would have to delve back into the Dark magicks if you wanted to help me. That you are impressionable to the Dark arts is incidental, if amusing."

"I don't know what the Oracle was thinking," Hermione muttered as she continued to look over the wall of books. She could not take her eyes off of them. Maroon, navy, black, dark green, all dark, so dark.

Perhaps that a Dark Medicus would be more use to a Dark Lord than a good one.

The thought brought shivers to her spine, but it did not frighten her as much as she knew it should.

A tome, heavy with knowledge and scaly against her skin, slid into her hands.

"This is my notebook," Voldemort said. "In some of the books, I gloss in the margins like you in the books themselves, but for my own theories and spells, this is what you want to read. The rest are references - you will find casual citations."

Hermione's fingers curled around the sides of the book, grasping tight in something like desperation.

"The other books may be removed from the room, but my notebook stays within either the library, my chambers, or yours," Voldemort said. "Is that clear?"

"Crystal," Hermione replied absentmindedly. Her hands were shaking, not from fear or anxiety but from anticipation for the illicit from which she had held herself for so long. She barely felt the hand at the small of her back that led her to a chair at the table.

"Do you know what some people would do to read this?" Hermione said, caressing the cover of the notebook. "Or what some people would do just to be in this library for five minutes?"

"Oh, I imagine that there would be a river of blood and gold leading to my doorway, no question of that," Voldemort said, leaning against the table and looking down at her.

This was a completely new feeling, Hermione thought as she opened the cover - she reveled in the slight creak of the binding. It was reminiscent of eight years ago, but the stab of betrayal and helplessness was replaced by unfettered curiosity and, yes, even desire. There was no shame in this. There should be, she knew that, but her practical side, the side that had been carefully cultivated within the Medicus training, knew only duty, only what she had promised she would do, only that to which to bound herself. That thread, that silver thread that wrapped from core to core - it was as though that thread made her forget all her qualms about which side she was on. She saw Harry, Ron, Ginny, Luna, Remus, Severus, even Albus in the back of her mind, but superseding those images was the ever familiar visage of the Dark Lord, to whom she had forfeited her life.

The Dark Lord who now watched her with his inscrutable eyes - no derision, no malice, no intrigue or amusement, just watchful, objective, observant. She looked back at the book.

There was no cover page. The top of the first piece of parchment broke into immediate prose in an even hand, almost too perfect, like copperplate. Occasionally, Hermione could see where eagerness lengthened the script and blotted the page, but Voldemort managed to make every word clear and precise, with turns of phrase adorning the primarily dry language. This was not like Severus's writings at all. There was linear progression, everything had its place, as though Voldemort's mind itself were like a thought-out thesis.

One day with this book and she would have a look into the mind of one of the most brilliant wizards for a few centuries - certainly the most brilliant student at Hogwarts. And she could have it for more than just one day. Even as his pet, she would never have turned down such an opportunity.

Voldemort gently closed the book, and the smooth white on textured, weathered black drew her attention back to him.

"Will you stay here or take it to your chambers?" Voldemort asked.

Hermione did not know quite what to say, as though a haze shadowed her mind from reality while the words that etched the pages of the notebook shone clear as day. "Here, I suppose," she said. Her hands still clutched at the book.

"Then perhaps my chambers or yours would be more appropriate, Hermione," he said. "I want you to have a clear head when you're reading my work."

"Here is fine, Lord Voldemort," Hermione replied. "I'm thinking clearly in here." Her nail ran along the uneven stack of parchment that made up the notebook.

His eyes followed the progress of her finger.

"Fine." He reached to the top of one of the piles of books and handed her another book. "This one is for you, to make notes as you're writing. Do not write in my books, and I would not touch any of the other books that are here without my knowledge. They are... dangerous, as I'm sure you are aware. Even with your admirable knowledge of Dark texts - as I remember it - there are traps waiting for you if you are overly eager. With this," he tapped the book, "distraction, you may fall into the traps laid out for you."

"Would you mind?" Hermione asked, the haze still blurring her thoughts.

"Not much, although some of the books might," he paused, "damage you in ways that I do not want my Medicus to be damaged."

"Where did all these books come from?" She looked around at the shelves that were quieter now, less insistent.

"Collected through the years," Voldemort said. "Some are my own, some inherited from Slytherin's own library in the Chamber, some from my Death Eaters. You can appreciate the collection of such a span of years."

"Yes," she whispered, thinking of the Medicus library.

"You will be all right here?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do not let yourself be distracted."

"I won't." She set the blank notebook down on the table and put Voldemort's next to it. She opened both books and took the quill and ink in front of the stacks to prepare. Her only duty now was to read the book and understand it.

Voldemort stood as her sight traced the lines he wrote so long ago, when he was still human. He left her alone in the library.

***

She was obsessed. She knew this. Meals were brought to her after she failed to go to the ones set up for different groups of Voldemort's followers. When Voldemort ducked into the library to see what was wrong with her after the third missed feast - not meals - Hermione was writing furiously, her handwriting hardly legible in the fervor she applied to the quill and ink and ideas. There were circles and bags under her blood-shot, unfocused eyes, and her cheeks were red while her skin was pale. Her hand quivered where it held the quill, and he could see that she was awake on nervous energy alone. She had not eaten in a week and a half, and her lips were parched from dehydration.

He took the quill from her fingers, and by habit, she continued writing even though her hands were red and swollen. He wrapped his cold fingers through her own and pulled her from the books. He turned to the house elf that he had brought with him, and the elf jumped nervously to help Levitate her from the chair before she collapsed. Voldemort brought his hand to her face and closed her eyelids. She fell asleep almost immediately, her breathing deep and even.

He ordered the house elf to take her to her chambers, bathe her of the filth, ink, and dust that covered her hands and clothes, and put her in bed. When she woke, she was to have food and drink appropriate for someone who had abstained for so long.

He was waiting for her after she stepped out of her chambers and into his. He beckoned from one of the armchairs. Hermione quietly joined him by the hearth.

There was silence for a moment.

"Killing yourself will not help me, although it might free you," Voldemort said. "I don't think you want to kill yourself."

"If I'm still living after everything that has happened, I don't want to die," she said.

"I don't think you were meant to work yourself on my behind at the expense of your own health."

"I was... distracted," Hermione said, looking slightly to the left of him, toward the fire. "Fascinated."

"Do you find my work fascinating?" Voldemort asked.

"I cannot imagine anyone who would not think so," Hermione said. "How old were you when you began the notebook?"

Voldemort settled back in his chair. "I began developing theories when I was sixteen. The writing began at eighteen when I was searching for my answers. Young, like you."

Hermione's head whipped toward him. "I wasn't searching for those kinds of answers, you know that."

"We were looking for the same answers, Hermione," Voldemort replied. "We just had different intentions."

"We had different answers," Hermione said. "I was looking for the antidote. You were looking for the poison."

"Every poison needs an antidote. An antidote is useful whether you want to help or hurt. I was not always able to find one, as you have probably read," Voldemort said, his eyes half-lidded. "Just as you needed the poison to find the antidote."

They stared at each other. There was no anger, but the tension was far from comfortable.

"You missed three feasts already," Voldemort said finally. "There are not many feasts during one year - I don't like being confined to such a schedule - but I would like to make you a familiar presence among my followers. These last few were expendable, but two weeks from now, I want you to attend the feast with my Death Eaters again. The younger ones will have come back by then, the ones your age. I daresay they have been wondering when you would come back."

"Two weeks?" Hermione asked.

"I want you to be warned well ahead of the event. A clock and a calendar would not be remiss in the library if you intend to live there. I would also recommend eating, bathing, and going through regular hygienic rituals." He raised his brows, and a ghost of a smile quirked Hermione's lips. "You can feel me through the connection, Hermione, but I don't believe you've thought about how I can feel you as well. When you let yourself fall to pieces, I can feel it."

A faint anxiety uncurled in her stomach. "I knew, but I suppose I forgot. In temporary bindings, mutual empathy is not typical, unless it is a long-term, temporary arrangement."

"Take care of yourself as you will take care of me," he said. It sounded like an order, but the words were softened by very real concern in his tone. "Call for a house elf if you feel hungry or need any help. Or... if I am in the room, you may ask for my assistance. If it is dire, I will know and will come to you."

Hermione looked at him closely. "All right," she replied. "Likewise, whether due to the decay or some other problem."

"Agreed."

"Yes," Hermione whispered.