Dark Daughter

Chapter 1: Talking

(September 2^nd 1995)

Amy Evans stood outside Albus Dumbledore's polished oak office door, waiting for him to finish speaking to her Potions Master, Professor Severus Snape. Amy wondered what the headmaster wanted to speak with her about. He couldn't have found out her secret, could he? Or had Snape told him?

I should have told him last night! She thought to herself.

But you didn't know where his office was, or how to get in, came a defensive voice inside her head.

I still should have found a way, said the critical voice. What will he think of me? He'll make me leave Gryffindor! He won't want me near Harry.

Then the defensive voice came in. No he won't! He won't kick you out of your house, it's little too late for that, don't you think?

The door opened. Amy pushed her black hair out of her eyes and adjusted her oval glasses. Dumbledore beckoned her inside his office.

"Professor, I--" but Dumbledore put up a hand to silence her.

"Miss Evans I need to speak to you," he told her. "And I ask you not to interrupt me, because it is very important."

Amy nodded. Dumbledore indicated that she should sit, so she sat. Snape was still in the room. Amy thought that Dumbledore probably wanted him to help him with some information but Amy would bet all of the little gold that she had in Gringotts that it couldn't be much help to her. For some reason Amy was very nervous. She could feel moths in her stomach, fluttering around her ribs and tickling her gut. She gulped.

"Miss Evans, Professor Snape has told me that you have become a Death Eater, is that true?"

Amy's heart plummeted. Why did he have to ask it like that? Just like it was nothing! And after all, she'd done it for him. So that she could be his spy! Now had come the time she'd feared most, when she would have to tell him. Possible retell the whole thing! But Amy could tell that he already knew everything, but felt it was fair to ask anyway. But She needed to make sure that he knew the whole truth.

"Professor," she said. "I'm not really a Death Eater. I accepted because I thought that I could help. I only became a Death Eater two days ago, I figured that I'd tell you when I got to Hogwarts, I planned on telling you tonight, after dinner."

The headmaster stared at her, right into her emerald green eyes. Amy, though it had been hard, had been careful to look exactly into Albus Dumbledore's eyes too, so that he wouldn't suspect that she was lying (and she wasn't).

After considering her for moment Dumbledore said, "Well, Amy I trust you whole heartedly," Is that true? "I want to leave no doubt about that. Is there anything you would like to tell me? Any fears?"

He doesn't know, does he? Amy's mind buzzed but she did all she could to block out the truth from her mind. She tried not to think of what she had just learned about herself, and her father. Should I tell him? Has Snape already told my secret? She decided that if Snape had or hadn't she still didn't want tell anyone about it. She thought of what she was going to tell her friends. Or would she tell her friends? What if they didn't trust her? Amy got a strange feeling that maybe Dumbledore didn't trust her like he said he did, could it be so impossible that her friends would do the same, or worse?

"No, Professor, I haven't learned anything secret. There isn't anything."

Amy and Snape left the office. It had grown dark while the two had been speaking to Dumbledore. Amy hesitated, and then said, "Professor Snape, what did Voldemort mean when he said that there is a portkey inside the castle?"

"There is one in the dungeon near my office," he told her. He hesitated, as Amy had done, "I'll show you."

Amy followed him into a particularly cold and dark dungeon, where he walked to the back wall and touched a spot on it; Amy could just make out a serpent carved onto the place where he had placed his hand. A circle with a radius of five feet on the wall moved backwards then slid to the left. The small stone chamber concealed behind it contained only one thing, a small sculpture of The Dark Mark (a skull with a snake coming out of the mouth like a tongue).

"What you must do is hold it in your hand and say the word 'colubrerous.' It will take you directly to Voldemort's side. Do you understand?" said Snape, pointing to the Mark.

Amy nodded. Not too much of an explanation, she thought. Then the question she had been aching to ask burst from her mouth before she could stop herself.

"Professor, could I ask you something?"

"If you must," Snape said icily.

"Did you--did you tell the headmaster that I'm . . . well you know--did you tell the Headmaster about my--my secret?"

Snape looked at Amy with an expression that was hard to read. Whatever he had expected, it hadn't been that.

"No," he said finally. "No, I didn't, I thought it fair that you should choose when to tell him and how to tell him. But I do urge you to tell him soon if you want him to trust you."

"But he said he trusted me already," Amy said desperately.

Snape's lip curled, as it so often did, "Did you not hear his voice, or see it in his eyes?"

"I sensed it," Amy confessed. "But I hoped that--well . . . maybe I was wrong."

"Hmm . . . maybe Gryffindors aren't as stupid as I thought," said Snape. Amy went slightly pink.

"You should go to your common room," Snape continued, seemingly pretending that he hadn't noticed Amy's reaction. "If you meet anyone tell them to come to me and that you have a good excuse."

Amy nodded and hurried up the marble staircase (she didn't meet anyone) to find her friends and tell them what had just happened. She quickly found her best friends in the whole world. Derek Abbott, Jason Black, Joanne Davies, and David Fletcher sat in corner of the Gryffindor common room, working on their Care of Magical Creatures homework (Write a two paragraph essay about flobberworms)

"We're not going to work on flobberworms long, are we?" Jason was saying, his dark brown hair on end, because of all the times he had ruffled it in frustration.

"I hope not, because seem really boring! We could be doing something useful, like practicing Transfiguration!" said David; he too had his light brown hair standing up all over the place. The two them had been having a hard time with their Divination homework when Amy left.

"I think he just wanted to give us something easy for our first homework assignment, you know?" said Derek, whose dirty-blonde hair lay flat on his head. He had chosen to take Arithmancy.

"Yeah, I heard he had a hard summer--Oh, hi Amy . . . what's wrong?" Joanne looked worried.

"I need to talk to you," Amy muttered. "In private . . . it's important."

They looked around the crowded common room.

"We'll have to wait until it's empty," Derek muttered.

Amy pulled her bag toward her, and began to do her homework. The five of them did their work until they were finished, then they just doodled for about ten minutes before the common room was completely empty, as they had wanted.

"So . . . Amy, what is so important?"

In a low voice Amy told them everything that had happened over the last two days.

"He took me to a graveyard and asked me," Amy finished. "I figured I would just be a spy for Dumbledore, but I'm not so sure that he trusts me."

"Why wouldn't he trust you, you haven't done anything yet, have you?" said Derek.

"No! No, of course not!"

"Then why doesn't he trust you?"

"I'm not sure . . . But I told you, even Snape can tell, he said so when I talked to him."

"How are you so sure that we can trust Snape?" said Jason, obviously having his usual doubts about the Potions Master.

"I've no choice, Jase! Even if he is really on Voldemort's side, he probably thinks that I am too!"

All of them flinched at the mention of Voldemort's name, but, for once, they ignored it. Then Joanne, while curling her straight, red-brown, hair around her finger, asked the knottiest question of the night, "Amy, it's not that we don't trust you or anything, but could you show us your arm . . . with the Dark Mark on it?"

Amy gave them a slightly hurt look and rolled up her sleeve, to show a red tattoo-like Dark Mark, there were traces of blood around it. Amy's four friends gasped.

"What?" Amy pulled down the sleeve again.

"This is for real," said David.

"What d'you mean? It's been 'for real' this whole time!"

"We just hoped--more than thought--that it was a brilliant prank, or you were under the Imperious Curse, something strange--you get the idea," said Jason quietly. "But David's right, it is for real!"

"Anything else you wanna say, Ammster, you look odd?"

"Well . . ." Amy hesitated. "Well, I've been worried about what Potter's going to think if he finds out."

"Amy," said Joanne. "Harry won't find out! We won't tell!"

"I know you won't Joe, but you know Harry and his friends, they're always looking around trying to find out what's going on if something is wrong, they're legendary for it. I'll bet--I'll bet first chance they get they'll find out what I am--" Amy gulped, "who I am!

"They're out of the common room a lot during the night, if they saw me going down to the dungeons in the middle of the night with Snape, it's not hard to figure out! They might blurt it out, the whole school would know in about a day! Someone would try and take it into their own hands. People in this place assume too much."

"Harry would go to Dumbledore first, if anyone's got sense in this school, its Potter," said Derek.

"What would he think of me?" muttered Amy, her face in her hands.

"Who cares what he thinks?" said Joanne, her voice rising slightly. "Amy, what does it matter if he knows? I'm sure he'd keep a secret!"

"What does it matter?" Amy repeated, her voice rising too. "You guys, he'd suspect me for anything strange! He would tail me and he'd make sure he was never alone with me!

"And that's just the part that makes me upset! If I ever needed to get him out of trouble he might not trust me enough to let me save him. There's the bit that concerns his safety. What about me? If he was hurt or--or killed while I was there? Dumbledore wouldn't trust me in the slightest! Everyone would be against me!"

"Amy! We wouldn't be against you!" said Jason, in a slightly hurt voice.

Amy grinned, slightly. "I know, Jase," she said quietly. "But I need more than four people on my side."

"You've got Snape," said Derek in a small voice.

"We can't be so sure that Snape's on our side," said Jason.

"Listen," said Joanne firmly. "We haven't really seen the future that we're looking towards. We don't have much of an idea of what Harry is like, we are assuming too much!"

"You're right Joe," said David.

They heard a clock chime somewhere in the distance.

"Midnight. We should go to bed," said Derek.

All of them nodded and, without another word, climbed the staircases that led to the girls' and boys' dormitories. As Amy and Joanne lay down in their four poster beds Amy wondered what was going to happen to her this year. She knew, deep down, that her worries had only just begun!