Ascent

Chapter 8

My skill with a pen is poor, but I shall transcribe what little I managed here with a better hand once I return to my old form... if I ever return. However, my plans against Harry Potter and Hogwarts seem to be progressing flawlessly despite my wearied, muddled state. My hands do not want to hold the quill, but what I have accomplished must be recorded.

Hermione was falling asleep on the couch despite the intensity of the story behind her years with Harry. The magical theory and practice was becoming more and more arcane, and she was tempted to try some of it just to see if it could work with some one else, as all experiments should be studied. However, trekking to the deserts of western Asia was not something that she could ask someone to do, especially since the process of transforming under Naga venom was an extremely painful one, and the transfigurations necessary in order to live that experience made the possibility of experimentation utterly impossible because that kind of wand work was more than just impressive - it was genius.

Her fingers trailed on the carpet as her head deepened on the pillow. All she could think about, in swirls of deep red and black velvet, was the crack of the boy's bones, Voldemort's eyes, the way his black wand stroked the boy's skin, a rush of words, the whispering of the Dark Arts texts and the smoothness of the notebook's cover before her.

Her lips were parched, and a cold wine slid over them, over her tongue, down her throat, bitter, like blood, but she had tasted blood before, and this wasn't it. More like satin made liquid. Her thirst was quenched, but she still reached out, a silver thread spewing from her mouth even as her hands opened and closed, clenching in desperate need. Faces, a glint of glasses, scars all over the body, fangs, teeth, eyes, eyes, eyes. She wanted to scream, wanted to die, her legs spread, wrapped around a pillow that she knew wasn't a pillow, but she did not want to see what it really was. She gasped for air as the wine choked her. She began convulsing, her body jerking with pangs of lightning.

Fingers stroked her cheek, and her eyes fluttered open, her body still shaking.

"You screamed in my head," Voldemort explained, pulling away and sitting back on his heels. "I remember what that feels like. I don't like to be reminded."

"I'm-I'm sorry," Hermione gasped absentmindedly, pushing herself upright. "When I have nightmares... I guess it was just intense. I'm sorry."

"As long as I don't have to kill someone I don't want to kill," Voldemort said. He stood and looked at her as she looked back down at the book. "I kill, Hermione. You know why."

"Because you're a sociopath who thinks it's okay to kill," Hermione said, closing the notebook. "Admittedly, you're a fascinating sociopath, but there are other ways of gathering energy, magical or otherwise. Although murder is the most efficient, it is generally frowned upon."

"But you don't, or you shouldn't," Voldemort said. "Once you became my Medicus, this fallacious concept of good and evil, right and wrong, should have turned into rules, what you can and can't do with me."

"And yet I'm still a human and not some mindless automaton," Hermione said. "That's how I can address your problems properly, by having opinions, being able to formulate theories, by considering, deliberating, ruminating, whatever you want to call it that some machine would be unable to accomplish. The very conflicts I face with you are what allow me to better meet your needs. Does that sound good?"

"It's interesting to see how you justify yourself," Voldemort replied, sitting down on the coffee table across from her so that their faces were level. "And it will be even more interesting when you actually have to help me rather than research how you are going to help me. I'm curious to know if you even will."

"I will," Hermione said softly.

"Yes, you will," Voldemort said, eyes narrowing slightly. His voice dropped to a hiss. "At the expense that you require, you will. But I require assurance." He slid his wand from his belt and brought it to his throat. With a quick Serrato, blood began to slid down his chest in a slow line. He had not punctured anything fatal, but if she just let him bleed, he could lose too much blood. She did not know what this sort of dying would do to him - the charms surrounding his bodies were still indefinable, and Hermione did not know how he would return... because he would not put his blood at her mercy without certainty.

Her throat prickled, either with heart ache or with shared feeling - she suspected from past experiences that it was the latter. She knew when his breathing turned harsh. Hermione felt a heaviness in her stomach as she stood and went to her cupboard to find a potion - this sort of injury, as dangerous as it was in the Muggle world, was no different than any ordinary cut if treated properly. And Hermione knew how to treat it properly. Taking the salve and pouring a little in her hands, Hermione pressed the gelatinous substance across the deep cut, deep into the furrow created by the edge of the wand. A swallow brought the skin together around her fingers, which felt strange, but the potion worked as it had always worked, slowing the flow of blood to a trickle before closing the wound.

He looked up at her, clearly pleased, before taking his notebook from the sofa cushion.

"Sleep," he said. "I'll bring this back to the library. You can read it tomorrow."

"I'm awake now," Hermione protested. "You bloody woke me up."

"Nervous energy," Voldemort said. "You'll fall asleep again. Just rest."

"Last time I checked, you were neither my parent nor my Medicus," Hermione said, coming up behind him into his room.

"Last time I checked, your hand needed soaking, your handwriting is nearly illegible, and the notebook will continue to be here for you. And I told you to take care of yourself. Sleeping is one of those things."

"I'll have nightmares again," she said softly.

"I'll try and shut my mind," Voldemort replied.

"Because of you."

Voldemort set the book on the table in the library and turned around to face her. His face was closed, but Hermione could sense a level of disquiet, if not discomfort. "I told you, Hermione," he said slowly. "I am what I am. This is what I am and what I do - the two are interchangeable. You must accept that and move beyond your childish ideas of right and wrong when they mean nothing as a Medicus."

"They mean something to Hermione," she murmured. "That sort of discernment is inextricably linked to my personality. You can't dismiss the person behind the title."

"No," Voldemort said. "You can't. But when you've chosen the title, the choice itself must be acknowledged. I'll block my mind as best as I can from your screams if you have a nightmare again."

He ducked through the fireplace back into his room again. Hermione looked back at the notebook with longing, but she ducked after him.

"I'm trying to help you. Why are you so insistent on making me sleep when I want to work?" Hermione said.

Voldemort whirled around, grasping her shoulders. "You aren't helping me," he snapped. "You're indulging whatever morbid curiosity you have for me. You're not helping me by driving yourself to exhaustion - your stripping yourself of any ability to function just so you can read another page about me, not for me. This has all been for you, the healing a few minutes ago notwithstanding. Now go to your chambers and go to sleep."

Hermione felt like a chastised child, but she was so stricken that she did as she was told. She lowered herself onto her bed, closing the curtains that let her see the door into his chambers. She felt a burning behind her eyes, but she clenched them shut and drifted into the Hogwarts library, wandering through the aisles until she fell asleep again.

***

Hermione began as an obstacle. She has become an opportunity. She can keep the right Death Eaters distracted, Carmen has taken an instant interest in her, and she provides entertainment for me. How fortunate that her presence among my followers is secondary to my primary focus - I watch as Dumbledore's foundation crumbles around him. I can feel Harry's desperation and despair through our connection that he thinks has been guarded against. Patience has always aided my cause in the end, and Harry is still young enough to misunderstand my silence. It is almost a relief, however, to strike Harry with the silence of his girl. She falls apart at my coaxing, and he hears only speculation, bleak and uncertain. Yes, indecision and uncertainty are two of the most potent weapons. However, soon, this subterfuge must end, for my followers gather, grow...

The months recorded during which Hermione was a prisoner in the fortress were interspersed with gleeful or introspective paragraphs regarding her place in the fortress, among his prisoners, in comparison to other thoroughly tortured victims, the methods of breaking her, layer by layer. She was not mentioned nearly as often as she might have expected, but even when he did not write her name, she recognized when she might have stimulated a certain thought.

It was interesting for Hermione to see elements of her imprisonment from this account - although she still occasionally had nightmares of the time, she began to realize how long ago it was. There was still about one hundred pages of close writing to go through, spanning over eight years. Although she felt a twinge when Voldemort's crueler plans for her were discussed so callously, reading it on a page somehow distanced it from her. She no longer froze at any mention of that past. She could force herself to read through the words that spoke of her torture as easily as it wrote about the occasional bad weather. He could disparage Dumbledore in one paragraph, then admire something one of the training Death Eaters did. He could throw her to Wormtail and follow the sentence with his own darkly humorous interpretation of their relationship. She felt like vomiting, but she could not see Wormtail's room as vividly; she could not remember the pain at all. Her hands clenched tightly to the arm of the sofa as she read of Voldemort's plan to kill her parents, but she no longer fell into a sort of catatonia, staring at a wall and seeing their deaths a hundred times.

After she had been accepted as a Medicus-in-training, Hermione went back to the ruin that was once her house. The city had already begun to clean up the wreckage for someone else to live on the land, but she set a bouquet of lilies on the front walk, saying her final good byes to her parents. Even after the new house was built, she continued to visit the place every month, just to look at the place where she had once been content, if not happy. Drifting from her parents had been inevitable, but she still loved them. Part of her knew it was not her fault that they died, but she felt a certain sense of responsibility. She supposed that the people who owned the new house just threw the lilies into their trash, but Hermione persisted in honoring her parents' awful deaths. Lilies always reminded her of marble eyes, mutated bodies, and blood seeping from bite wounds now.

I have released her, and the result has been better than I even imagined. Already, there are whispers around the Ministry, whispers of betrayal. It is remarkable how easily they can be manipulated by the very person they fear the most. The fear makes them pliable, subject to my whim by their own paranoia. I can simply sit back and observe their single-handed destruction of themselves. Not only themselves, but a girl who could very probably be their greatest asset if they ever trust her again. Even those who might believe her story will always wonder in the back of their minds. The genius of it is that she will wonder the same thing.

She will return to me. The thought alone imbues me with pleasure - the friend of Harry Potter, ostracized for her experiences, denied from every person who she once counted a friend, with nowhere to go but to the person to whom everyone expects her to go - to me. Without Hermione on their side, something in their dynamic will be torn from them, as it has since I ripped her away the first time. And her mind, her brilliance, and her loyalty will be for me. Only for me. How delicious. Who knows how long it might take for her to find her way back here, but she will come.

***

"Is that really how you thought of me?" Hermione asked even as her eyes continued to read down the page.

Voldemort did not ask how she knew he entered the room. He, too, had begun to feel her presence, like shifts in a cool draft. One more result of the binding. Voldemort was wary of the way Hermione seemed to slip into every aspect of his life, be it the effects of the decay and his other undiagnosed problems or hearing the tell-tale crack of her house elf in the library or the dull, foggy pressure in his head when she slept. He wondered if she was feeling his mind as keenly as he felt hers. And he wondered if he knew how open her mind was when she was inside of him.

"Explain," he said. Hermione could hear the movement of his robes as he swept around the sofa to sit in the armchair to her right.

"Just a pawn, something that can be used. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but..."

"But what?"

Hermione looked up, setting her quill onto her notebook and stretching the hand. She was really going to damage it if she kept forcing it beyond its endurance. "But you focused so much of your energy on me. When I was a prisoner, you mentioned my name or the effects of my absence in Hogwarts almost as much as you mentioned Harry or Dumbledore, more attention that I thought you would give to a pet if she was insignificant."

"Everyone is a pawn to Lord Voldemort," he replied. "You were not as special as you think you were. You were just a particularly useful pawn."

"What about now?" she asked quietly. "Am I still just a useful pawn?"

"Yes," Voldemort answered without missing a beat.

"You said to your Death Eaters that I am an extension of yourself. How can a pawn be the extension of a Dark Lord?"

Voldemort smiled. "Why does it matter what I think of you if you stake so much of your confidence around me on being my Medicus?"

Hermione paused. She set the notebook on the coffee table and walked to the window, where the blue velvet of evening transformed the forest, turning it into something peaceful, quiet, less fierce. "I don't know," she said. "I suppose there will always be a small part that wants some sort of approval. It isn't logical, and I don't need it, but I'm still curious."

Voldemort turned to look at her profile against the background of the darkening sky. The profile had changed in the eight years, although she was still very much Hermione, still very much his in her own fashion. She was softer than she had been when he first saw her. Her face was more pronounced in its maturity, her expression less earnest. She was poised and relaxed in his presence, although her hands still twitched, stroking the material of her robes, touching the window. He glimpsed the edge of the Dark Mark on her forearm and could not help but let his mind drift through it, making it hum through his head and her arm. Hermione felt the twinge, and she touched her Mark absentmindedly, still staring out the window.

"I know you were pleased that I came back to you," Hermione said quietly. "But are you pleased that I am your Medicus?"

He walked up behind her, watched as the rays of the sun withdrew from the clouds so that they were shadow against shadow. "I am pleased that you have returned. But aside from invading my body and diagnosing the decay, which I could have told you myself, you've done little more than sit in the room and read. I know that you can read and write more quickly than this, Hermione, even when you are being thorough. You are avoiding your duties, and time continues to move forward. That time furthers the decay. You nearly finished reading so you will need to begin searching for a cure."

Hermione sighed. She knew that her duties, beyond the test that he gave her a few weeks ago, would soon have her helping Lord Voldemort in her fullest capacity, devoting her life to a man who she hated. Her thoughts were circular, all heading toward that one point, helping her enemy. But he was not her enemy - not anymore, although she wanted him to be. She was in him, woven through him like silver braid. His magic curled about her like tendrils of fog, and she could sense the decay more strongly. She would need to enter him again before long to see how the maggots of decay had spread. Feeling that pain made her want to ease it, regardless of the afflicted.

"I will need to leave the fortress," she murmured. She thought she felt a hint of cold breath against the back of her neck. "You are right, I'm almost finished, and I have what I need to start studying what causes the decay as well as search more deeply into your magical core to search for... your other afflictions that you haven't told me about. It would make things move more quickly if you tell me, but I imagine you have your reasons. I need to acquire materials that are not in my stores or in Severus's. I looked in the laboratory. I'll probably have to find Severus to help me find a few items on the black market. Also, I need to leave. Just for a few days. If you need me, I know you can just summon me through the Dark Mark. But I... I need to talk to a few people."

Voldemort touched her shoulder, turning her around. "I don't like you leaving, but I can't stop you if you are going for supplies. Macnair will need to go with you."

"I'm going to places that Macnair cannot go," Hermione said emphatically. "I'll be fine on my own."

"He will go with you," Voldemort replied. "That is one thing that I will not negotiate. He can take a room somewhere, and you can summon him when you are in a less private area, such as when you are procuring the ingredients you need. But he will go with you. If he is unable, I'm afraid Wormtail is the Death Eater to take you."

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment, pushing away the thought, but she nodded.

"You'll have to find Macnair yourself when you're ready," Voldemort said, pulling away and heading toward his own chambers. "Tell me before you leave."

"Where is he?" Hermione asked.

"I said you'll have to find him." Voldemort's countenance was wicked as he slipped the open door between their two chambers, closing it behind him.

Hermione allowed herself a little huff of frustration before she returned to her research.

***

She knew that Voldemort's Death Eaters lived primarily in the east wing with him, but their activities within the fortress tended to slip into the north wing where the dungeons, empty rooms, and the audience chamber were. The fortress was immense - Hermione could wander the full extent of its rooms and corridors and grounds for over a week and not explore every facet of its structure. She was not entirely sure why Voldemort wanted her to search through it rather than telling her exactly where Macnair could be found, but she suspected that he wanted her to be doing something beyond reading and writing. Now that she was finished with her note-taking on Voldemort's notebook, it occurred to her that her hand hurt terribly and she had not moved from their chambers and the library more than twice or three times since she had been giving access to the library and the notebook, when meant that she had sequestered herself for almost two whole months. Voldemort was right, she had been stalling in a way, but she had also went on for pages and pages of her own notes, running her mind through her quill, pondering every step of his ascent to power and his methods of achieving it.

Because the sun was up, the Death Eaters were a little restless - things really started to happen at night, mostly because the creatures that allied with them began their own pleasures after sunset. Macnair would not be in the Death Eater chambers. It was likely that he would be in the Harem or the dungeons, playing with something or someone. She steeled herself for objectivity in the face of deliberate violence as she slipped from the comfortable warmth of the living halls to the harshness of the dungeons. She could hear a few faint shouts, but otherwise, there was silence. Hermione thought that finding the prisoners screaming might lead her to someone who could tell her where Macnair was.

Upon following the screams, she discerned two separate victims, either in the same cell or close to each other - they both came from the same level. Hermione stared straight ahead as she walked down the aisle between the cells, shutting out all whispered, rasping pleas for help, salvation, death. She remembered when the dungeons were empty, when every slight sound ricocheted so many times that they collided with each other in an almost disorienting way. Now there was an occupant or four in every cell, the spoils of war.

She found a cell open near the center of the level, and she peered cautiously in. She found Bellatrix and Rodolphus circling two women, one old, one young, probably related. Bellatrix and Rodolphus moved like wolves or hyenas - creatures fierce and terrible in their predatory symmetry. The spells from their wands entwined about themselves like snakes wrapping around a staff, striking the huddled mass of screams at their feet. Rodolphus's face was as it always was - blank, yet intense, like a quiet volcano. Bellatrix was radiant with delight, her eyes sparkling. Hermione could see the sharper point of one of her teeth prick her lip, drawing blood. Bellatrix relished the taste of the welling crimson as she relished the synchronized pain of the two women. Hermione did not have to undergo a binding to know how the pain gave Bellatrix her strength, her life. The shadows that had settled on her face since Azkaban lifted when she could hurt someone or make them fear her. Hermione knew she loved to mock, loved to startle and make them stumble. Hermione wondered how Rodolphus treated her when Hermione did not see them. Here, there was a triangle of focus, and Hermione was momentarily hypnotized by them.

Rodolphus noticed her first, and the shift of attention alerted Bellatrix to an intruder on their private enjoyment. Hermione did not know what to expect, but she was not surprised when Bellatrix pulled her wand back, breaking the relentless cries of the women. They gasped for air, whimpered, huddled together. Hermione was not surprised when Bellatrix smiled at her, a beautiful yet terrible smile that reminded her of a dangerous feline. Hermione did not know why Bellatrix had decided to favor her other than the fact she had become Voldemort's Medicus rather than pet, the latter which once deserved scorn from the Black daughter. Hermione wondered if it was more than her new status that changed Bellatrix's mind - after all, her blood was impure, and that should have been damning, even for a Medicus. However, she preferred Bellatrix's support, especially since her loyalty was unwavering from Voldemort, and her vote of confidence must mean something among Voldemort's other followers.

She was not surprised by Bellatrix's initial actions, but she jumped as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Hermione whirled around to face Draco Malfoy. Lucius was further down the hall, eyes half-lidded, face slightly flushed. Draco looked more like his father now, but Hermione could recognize elements of Narcissa in his narrower face and darker hair. Now that he had grown into himself, his face was angular, his eyes even icier than his father's.

"Hello, Granger," he said. His voice was overly pleasant, and Hermione could see the way his hand rested on his wand.

"Draco." Hermione backed into the cell, turning away and looking back at Bellatrix and Rodolphus, who were watching her quietly. "Where is Walden Macnair?"

"There are other ways to get to you, Granger," Draco said. "Just because you've got the Dark Lord wrapped around your finger now doesn't mean that we're going to lick your feet."

"Strange," Hermione murmured. "You wanted me to do that when I returned. And you did lick my feet, or don't you remember."

"You were made for it," Draco replied. "You did so well before, when the Dark Lord had you in chains."

"And I suppose you, who have given yourself to Lord Voldemort, are made to be served by those who know how to use their own two hands," Hermione snapped. "Things don't work that way outside of your twisted little mind."

"Now, now, children," Bellatrix said, passing between them and tugging on Draco's hair. "Let's not argue over who gets father's attention."

"The Medicus needs to learn that not all of us are happy that she is our lord's Medicus," Lucius said, slipping into the cell with them. "He deserves better. Just because the Dark Lord has employed her does not mean that we should accept her without question."

"I was enough for the Oracle, and I'm enough for the Dark Lord," Hermione said, leaning against a wall, feigning bravado but really balancing herself on her shaking legs. "I'm just not enough for you because the Dark Lord punished you - your precious pride was hurt. I'm staying here, and there's little you can do about it. You know that."

"There are other ways of getting rid of you," Draco said. "Ways that may be construed as an accident - amazing what you learn when you're ducking Aurors and Law Enforcement, recruiting right under the nose of Muggles."

"You really don't know your Medicus history, do you?" Hermione said, honestly concerned. "Lucius, this sort of knowledge is supposed to be passed down - have you never told him?"

"The Oracle can be fooled," Lucius replied.

"No," Hermione said, stepping forward on an impulse and making Draco step back. "It can't, and I'm surprised it even crossed your minds to try and kill me. I'm a permanent Medicus, Lucius. The only way you rid yourselves of me is to rid yourself of the person to whom I am bound... and that, as far as I can tell, is impossible. And even as you rid yourself of Lord Voldemort, I would be fighting you all the way - that is what I am bound to do."

Neither Draco nor Lucius seemed fazed, but there was a sense of stillness in their demeanors, hesitation.

Rodolphus knelt by one of the women as his feet. He twisted his hand through her hair and pulled her head back so that her neck was bared. He stared at Hermione as he brought his wand to the woman's throat.

"Bellatrix and I will do this to your friends," he murmured. Blue lines, like ink, drew themselves over the woman's skin. She twitched as they slithered about her body, snaking around her limbs, curling around her fingers and neck and arms and legs. "Will you watch and say nothing as they die?"

When the last line closed over the woman's forehead, the woman screamed so loudly that everyone in the cell except for Bellatrix and Rodolphus stumbled back, pressing themselves against the walls and covering their ears. The woman's eyes were wide and white as the lines glowed bright and burning, blackening the skin around it and making her convulse on the floor, trying to put out the fire that lived in the lines. Then, all of a sudden, the screaming stopped, and the woman was still. The older woman stared at the steaming corpse and cried silently, biting her hands.

Hermione concentrated on breathing. Her mind turned the room to an open space where there was no body, no hurt, no pity, no desire for the abyss of oblivion. In this place, she knew what had happened, but she could not care. The face was unfamiliar to her.

"I don't know," she answered quietly.

"You'll watch," Bellatrix whispered in her ear. "And you'll sing. Because you've looked into our lord's mind - I can see it. When we make the werewolf bark, you will gasp in delight. You will be our lord's more than you ever were, and if you hold a few reins about his wrists, he can pull on you, you can pull on him, until you tangle about each other, becoming one." Bellatrix stroked her hair gently. "I think you're perfect, love. You're quivering. But are you shaking in fear, Hermione?"

Hermione edged away, eyes watching Bellatrix as she slipped past Draco and Lucius so that she was looking into the cell at the four Death Eaters.

"You are insane, Bellatrix," Lucius said, adjusting his cloak disdainfully. "She is not for us."

"If she is for our lord, Lucius," Bellatrix said, "she is for us." Bellatrix narrowed her eyes at the man. "If you are against her, you are against our lord."

Lucius glared at her. Rodolphus stepped behind Bellatrix, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Macnair is in the lowest level of the dungeons where we keep beasts," he said, and he pressed his lips against Bellatrix's neck.

Hermione started down the aisle, paused, turned back.

She did not look at them, but she said, "Thank you."