Animalexus

Red feathers, a dark scarlet hue. Yellow on the wings, then blue. Dark eyes, intelligent eyes. Marie had never seen a Phoenix before. He was by far the most beautiful bird she'd ever seen, and she told him so.

He swished his tail and ducked his head in an appreciative, if subdued, gesture. "I am called Fawkes," he said, "And you have done well in coming here, Marie."

She wasn't surprised he knew who she was. Seemed the rest of the world---the rest of the wizarding world, anyway, had known who she was long before she was even entirely aware of it.

Fawkes' eyes glanced towards the door. "I doubt you'll have to wait here long."

"I can wait." She could wait forever. Here, on the floor, propped against the hearth. She'd actually made it. She was still reeling from the Floo Powder, and other things, but she knew that much: she'd made it. She could feel the proof of it in the solidness of the bricks pressing against her back. Marie pulled her cloak tighter around herself, tried to ignore the glinting of the silver snake-shaped clasp. She never would have thought she'd make it. Never.

"I've never talked to a Phoenix before," she offered, conversationally, without planning to.

"And how do you find us?" Fawkes asked, a wry glint in his eye.

"Beautiful," she said, again.

If Albus Dumbledore was surprised to find a ragged girl slouched against his fireplace, ashes in her hair, he didn't show it. Much.

"Oh my," he said.

"You were right," Marie said, to Fawkes. "That wasn't long at all."

"Oh my," Dumbledore repeated. Marie knew it had to be him, had to be the headmaster of Hogwarts; she was fairly sure, judging by the grandeur of the office itself, and the sleeping portraits of wise-looking wizards lining the walls that she had in fact come to the right office. And she knew Dumbledore was who she needed to find. Because the Dark Lord hated him. And feared him. That much had been clear.

An older witch with a thin, pinched face looked over the Headmaster's shoulder. One eyebrow went up and her face narrowed even more. "Albus?"

He held up a hand. "Shh, shh."

The witch turned. "I'll go."

"No, Minerva. Stay, if you will." He knelt next to Marie, and Fawkes took a few steps back to accommodate him. Marie felt the sharp warnings of panic rising in her throat at the bird's retreat; animals were so much safer than wizards.

But Dumbledore just brushed a hand over her head, pushing a few strands of limp hair back and dusting away some of the ash. "My child," he soothed.

Marie wanted to relax into that touch, that voice. Let herself go. But she pushed herself to her feet with one hand and reached out to steady herself with the other. She was still dizzy, though unsteadiness had become a familiar feeling over the past couple of years; traveling by Floo had simply made it worse than usual. If only her mind wasn't so muddled, her thoughts thick. "Sorry," she said, quietly, her eyes darting from Dumbledore and then to the witch before settling on the floor. She brushed a hand down the front of her cloak. "Sorry. I've never traveled by Floo Powder before."

"A bit disorienting, is it not?" Dumbledore asked, guiding her to an overwhelmingly large plush chair with a gentle hand between her shoulder blades.

"Yes. I'm sorry," she said again. She couldn't seem to stop apologizing, couldn't seem to stop talking. "I didn't know where to go. I said 'Hogwarts'--God, I said it so fast; I didn't know if it would even work--and then it put me here. I came because I'd heard about the wards. Is it--it is true, right?"

Dumbledore nodded, blinking slowly. "No one can Apparate--or Disapparate--on school grounds."

"I thought the fireplaces might be protected, too."

"They make allowances for those in need," Fawkes explained, in that same tone Dumbledore used, calm and gentle and almost amused.

"Albus," the witch said, again, more insistently. He turned to look at her this time, and she pointedly directed her gaze towards Marie. "She can talk to Phoenixes? Parselmouths are one thing, but--"

"Not just Phoenixes, Minerva." He glanced at Marie and winked. She gazed back evenly, not used to being acknowledged in this way. She was accustomed to being talked about. And if someone did speak to her, it wasn't in any way remotely so platonic as this. "She is an Animalexus."

The witch's eyes widened. "Then--"

Dumbledore sighed, straightened. "Yes, yes...I suppose introductions are in order. Marie, you have already met Fawkes--" The bird dipped his head and trilled, just a sound, no words. "--And I am Albus Dumbledore, though I expect you already knew that as well."

"Yes."

"This," he said, nodding to the witch, "Is Minerva McGonagall, professor of Transfiguration and Head of Gryffindor House."

"Four Houses," Marie muttered, as if pulling a meaningless bit of trivia from her memory, nothing more significant than song lyrics or an old street address. She couldn't remember why she cared about this particular information, only that she knew it. "Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff. Slytherin."

McGonagall and Dumbledore exchanged glances, and some part of Marie wondered what she'd said.

"I'm sorry," she said, yet again, clinging to that apology. "I don't know what I was thinking; I don't think I was thinking. I don't...here." She pushed the wand she'd been clutching beneath her cloak, short and dark, into Dumbledore's hands. "It's not mine. I stole it. I can't do a thing with one of those, don't know why I stole it. I thought maybe..." Thought what? That maybe, despite no training and no practice, if she had to, that she might be able to just point the thing, say the words, and drop someone to the ground? Ridiculous.

"Let's get you to the hospital wing," Dumbledore said. "Do you need help?"

Marie tried to focus her eyes on the door, but it wouldn't quite stay still. She glanced down at her hands and saw the tremors there. "Probably. But I'd rather not," she said.

They let her walk on her own, kept to her excruciatingly slow pace without complaint. They met no one in the corridors, and Marie wondered if that were mere luck or if it was Dumbledore's doing. The hospital wing was similarly devoid of people.

"Poppy," called Dumbledore, "Your assistance, if you please."

McGonagall sat Marie onto one of the beds and then hovered just above her as if afraid to get too far away. Fawkes settled next to Marie, his talons digging into the crisp, tightly-tucked sheets. "I'm glad you came," she told him. The mediwitch who had just appeared raised her eyebrows.

"Obmoli clangor," Dumbledore said quickly, and Marie felt the magic spring up around them. Stupid, she was. Did she want to go and blow this whole thing right now? Let just anyone hear her carrying on a conversation with a bird, plain as you please?

"You're exhausted," Fawkes replied easily. "No blame."

The mediwitch's eyes widened.

"Madame Pomfrey," Dumbledore said, slipping easily into a formal tone, "This is Marie Llewellur. She has just arrived in my fireplace." Those eyes were going to bug out of Madame Pomfrey's head. "A calming potion of some sort, I should think," Dumbledore added, in a low voice.

"Of course," the mediwitch said, and bustled away, obviously relieved to have something familiar to busy herself with.

Marie drank half the potion at once when it came, grateful to have anything to settle her nerves, help clear her thoughts; she also figured she'd better just down it before she lost her nerve. She immediately felt more like herself, but despite feeling her wits begin to come back to her, the muddled feeling in her mind remained.

Marie drank the rest of the potion quickly, but not before Madame Pomfrey had noticed the ripples on the surface of the liquid in the goblet. "Something for those tremors, perhaps?" she asked, ready to hurry off again.

"There's nothing for them," Marie said, shortly. "They'll fade. In a day or so."

Familiar understanding dawned on her face, and McGonagall's. Dumbledore only tightened his features a bit. It had merely been confirmed for him, not revealed.

"Oh," said Pomfrey, wiping both of her hands across her uniform, backs and then palms, and again. "Oh, then. Anything else I can do?"

"No."

"You have done well in coming here," Dumbledore said, echoing Fawkes' earlier words. "Voldemort--"

Marie cringed. That name was not something she wanted to hear out of the lips of anyone but its owner's. The fact that anyone else would dare...

"My apologies, child. He cannot follow you here."

"So it's true," McGonagall said, her tone a serious mix of understanding and disgust. "After Vol--after he reclaimed his body he went after Marie."

This was what she was used to. People talking around her, hearing her own name in the third person. She sat as still as her traumatized nerves would allow, let the words pass over her head.

Dumbledore smiled sadly. "Minerva, didn't we know, really? There is but one Animalexus in the world at a time." Marie closed her eyes. "And we are to think what? Of course he would want to posses a talent so rare. Of course he would take it."

'A talent so rare'. Rare, yes. No one else could speak to any animal they pleased, magical or otherwise, and be able to understand the replies. No one else, and that was a fact she was bloody well all too aware of. At least the Headmaster hadn't called it a 'gift'.

McGonagall was still stuttering, and Marie recognized her tone. She understood the situation perfectly well, she just didn't want to accept it. "But that would mean--that is to say, if it was shortly after he regained his body--it's been almost--"

"Two years, four months, and six days. Yes," Marie said, dully.

That silenced them all. She was well aware that most people who came into the Dark Lord's 'possession' did not last more than a few days, never mind years. Fawkes stepped closer, and leaned his body against Marie's. His touch filled her with a warmth, a hope, in spite of herself, and she reached up to stroke his plumage.

"We will find you quarters on the professor's hall for the time being," Dumbledore was saying. "And later we can..."

As he chattered on, though, making plans, Marie's eyes darted to the door. A tall man had just entered--stormed in, really--preceded by two young students. They did not look happy, which was understandable, since something vaguely purple and gelatinous seemed to have exploded in their faces. Marie's attention was on the man, though. She knew him. The limp black hair, the downward-bent nose, the meticulously upright posture. The voice.

"Madame Pomfrey," he called, rigidly, the words cutting through the room, "These gentlemen, in true Hufflepuff form, have managed to ignite so simple a potion as a hearing enhancement draught. For the moment, I expect they are quite deaf, and as I will not be at leisure to prepare the antidote until this evening, I should like you to take them off my hands so I might return to my class and ensure that none of their only marginally more intelligent brethren manage to find themselves in the same--"

He broke off suddenly and turned to stare at Marie. Directly at her. Her breath caught. What frightened her most--as if she could even order the fears at this point--was being utterly unable to read his expression. She knew those dark eyes, knew every detail of that face, and couldn't discern anything from it. He wheeled on the students, shouted, "Out, out!" and reiterated the sentiment with waving hands. The instant they had gone, he strode over in just three reaching steps, robes swishing menacingly behind him. Dumbledore and Marie both rose to meet him.

"Severus, now is not the time--"

Snape ignored the Headmaster, and his eyebrows lowered even more, intensifying the glower even more. Marie allowed herself a very small amount of pride in that she didn't wither beneath that gaze. She was exceptionally close to doing just that, however. "What," he said, softly and icily, "Are you," another pause, "Doing here?"

She stared at the tiled floor, cleared her throat. "Talking to you." It wasn't insolence, but he couldn't know that. "I might ask you the same thing," she spat, jerking her eyes up from the floor and curling her lip into a sneer to rival Snape's, "But then, I suppose you do...all have your...day jobs."

Snape held his own sneer and, if possible, pulled himself even straighter.

"Marie," Dumbledore said, calmly, "Professor Snape is a--"

"Murderer, yes, I know. Did a bloody fine job on my parents, didn't you? Most efficient."

McGonagall gasped, then pressed her lips back into their thin line. She hadn't known. Marie didn't think Dumbledore had, either, but it was difficult to tell. For his part, Snape didn't flinch, just folded his arms easily and didn't take his eyes off her. "The others would have tortured them to death." He didn't seem to be offering this as defense, just as fact.

Marie saw those green flashes of light again, one and then the other right after. Two bodies falling to the ground in the space of a few seconds. That impossibly cold, indifferent voice.

"Are you implying," she asked, carefully, "That I ought to be grateful to you for killing my father and mother, albeit using Avada Kedavra rather than a more...excruciating method?"

Something glittered in Snape's black eyes as they searched her face. His voice lowered even more. "You've been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse often enough, Miss Llewellur," he said, hitting the consonants of her name with force. "You tell me: should you be grateful?"

Dumbledore frowned. "Severus--"

"Yes," Marie whispered, the word slipping out through her hatred.

A slow hint of a smile crossed Snape's face, just a slight movement at the corners of his mouth. "Headmaster," he said, not taking his eyes of Marie's face. "If you have any questions for Miss Llewellur, you would do well to ask them now."

"And why do you say that, Severus?" Still calm. Jesus, would it get a rise out of the man if Snape killed her right here?

He matched the old man's matter-of-fact tone, letting just a bit of disdain show through. "Because...she's still under the influence of Veritaserum. An overdose of it, judging by the way she's prattling on."

Dumbledore or McGonagall must have looked skeptical, because Snape glared. "Let me assure you, Miss Llewellur will not, of her own volition, string together more than two or three words at once. By her standards, this is outright babbling."

McGonagall glanced sideways at Marie. "Are you sure? Why would--"

Snape stepped directly in front of Marie, and the sudden gesture made his robes swish again, an alarming dark flash in a room otherwise so blindingly white. He eyed the clasp on her cloak, but made no comment. He met her eyes. "What is your name?" he demanded, in a hard, direct tone.

"Marie Sania Llewllur."

"What--"

"I was named after my mother."

"Isn't that nice," Snape said, through clenched teeth. "Are you under the influence of Veritaserum?"

"Yes."

"Who administered it?"

"Wormtail. Have you ever wondered where a name like that--"

"No. Why did he give it to you?" His tone stayed hard, commanding, but it was bored, too. Of course it was. Snape knew the answers to these questions; he'd seen it often enough. Hell, often enough he'd been the one administering the potion.

"The Dark Lord ordered him to."

Snape sighed. "All right, I deserved that answer. I should have been more specific--"

"You know," Marie said, without really deciding to, "I keep thinking that one of these days the Dark Lord is going to get sick of that irritating little git--Wormtail, that is--and just off him once and for all. Zap 'im."

"That day cannot come soon enough," Snape said, rolling his eyes. He looked to Dumbledore and McGonagall. "How many times have I said it, 'Three drops will do'? Three drops, and you get answers, plain and simple. Any more and you end up with this," he jabbed a long finger at Marie. "Drivel." He studied her for a moment more. "How much Veritaserum did they give you?"

How much, how much? Marie didn't know, but the potion was looking for an answer beyond that. She didn't have one, but she had to find one, and it had to be truth, and she was going to be sick...

Snape flicked his hand in front of her eyes. "Don't answer that. Was it more than three drops?"

"Yes."

"More than six?"

"Yes."

"Bloody hell. More than--"

"Severus," Dumbledore said, a new sharp edge to his voice. "This is not an interrogation."

He held the Headmaster's gaze for a few seconds longer than Marie would have dared to. "Very well," he allowed, finally. "Minerva, I trust you are convinced?"

She nodded. "How did you pick up on it so quickly?"

"You mean besides the endless chattering? The fact that she answered every question posed to her even when she would have done nearly anything not to was a rather large clue. Her eyes: they're less focused than usual, and look at them: all pupil, solid black. Besides," he added, dismissively, flicking imaginary dust from his coat, "Any Potions Master worthy of the title knows his own brews."

"I hate you," Marie said. She would have liked to sound a bit more sophisticated, but Snape's questioning had only muddled her mind more. "I really, really do. Passionately."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "And they say young people today lack honesty. I assure you, Miss Llewellur, the feeling is mutual."

"Marie," Dumbledore said, making an obvious effort to steer the conversation back in the direction he had intended, "What I intended to say earlier is that Professor Snape is a spy. For the Order."

"He's a DeathEater."

"Yes, he was. You might even say he is," Dumbledore allowed, with a meaningful glance at Snape, whose expression was once again unreadable. "But he works for us, ultimately. I trust him," he offered, seeming to realize as the words left his mouth that perhaps it was not the best thing to say to a girl who had seen the man in question kill her family.

There were plenty of retorts Marie could have fired back, not the least of which was the simple fact that she didn't care whose bloody side Snape was on, he'd murdered her parents and turned her life into a living hell that was the end of that, and if she could return the favor she'd be happy to. Instead, she said, "That's not...entirely...surprising."

Snape raised an eyebrow expectantly. Marie would have liked to think the gesture was even slightly nervous, but she knew better than that. "Well," she said, looking at him, "The Dark Lord does punish you rather more often than many of the others, doesn't he?"

His expression darkened, and his lips parted. "I generally do not discuss the minute details of my job with my colleagues here at Hogwarts," he said, frostily.

Marie ignored him. "You know," she continued, coming alarmingly close to enjoying herself, "If you'd just let go of your pride and scream right away he wouldn't hold the curse so long."

Something dark flashed behind those eyes again. "If memory serves, Miss Llewellur, you might have done well, on a great many occasions, to take your own advice on that matter." His eyes flicked to her hands and then back to her face.

"Severus," said Dumbledore, firmly. "Go to my office and wait for me there. Now. I will join you shortly."

Snape held her gaze for another second, then turned on a heel and strode towards the door. He almost made it.

Marie's gasp was pulled out of her against her will, and she ground her teeth together to forestall a louder cry. Across the room, Snape's step faltered and he clapped a hand to his left arm. He wheeled back around and snarled at Marie.

She touched one of her own hands to her own arm, over where she knew the ugly marred skin to be, and felt the heat even through her cloak. She forced a grim smile. "Evidently, the Dark Lord has noticed one of his possessions is missing."

Snape didn't break eye contact. He didn't change his facial expression. He didn't even seem to be breathing.

"You'd better hurry," Marie said, flatly. "He hates it when you're late."