Animalexus

Marie woke cold. She was sprawled on the floor, hard stone. Her jawbone was sore; she must have been carelessly dropped here. Her wrists were bound in front of her with a smooth cord, magically tight. No knots, just one continuous length of narrow rope. Voices around her, low and dark. Dread filled her mind before any coherent thoughts did, and suddenly she remembered it all, remembered what that dread was for.

Marie continued to breathe in and out steadily, knowing all the while that it was almost certainly futile to feign sleep, but still unable to give up on anything that might spare her the attention of the others in the room, even for just a few moments more.

The voices were becoming clearer in her head, more distinct. Death Eaters. It sounded like a large gathering, not just the inner circle. Marie tried to decide if that were good or bad before remembering that there was no 'good'. She squinted one eye open just the slightest bit. She was sprawled at an odd angle, as the crick in her neck testified--she'd been here awhile, evidently--and she could only see a few of the hooded figures, the silver lining of their robes and cloaks sparking against the black when they moved. They were all masked, as was custom when there were so many present, but Marie could recognize most by now, anyway. Crabbe and Goyle, standing together, low and blocky. McNair, erect and reedy. A cold centered itself in her chest and radiated outwards. Malfoy, there in the corner.

"The Aurors are looking in all the wrong places," he said, smoothly, his gloved hands clasped in front of him, eyes facing a part of the room Marie couldn't see. "They still think there's something to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts lead we planted at the Ministry."

"You're confident?"

Marie had to suppress a shudder at the sound of the thin, high voice. Her nightmares. How could those who had never faced this even conceive of it? How could they dare to speak the name of this creature? Ignorance rather than bravery, surely.

"I am, My Lord."

"Excellent. You have done well. Still," the voice continued, almost conversational in tone, "We must not rely too heavily on such misdirection. After all, it seems that whenever things are running smoothly, someone is bound to do something exceedingly rash and foolish. Isn't that so, Marie?"

She choked on her breath as he said her name, and her stomach twisted painfully. She wasn't surprised--the Dark Lord always knew, everything--but that didn't mean she wasn't terrified. Slowly, she pushed herself to her knees and rocked her weight back, but she didn't lift her head, unwilling to give up the pathetic security her thick curtain of hair provided. Some part of her mocked herself--so childish, the rationale: if he can't see me...

Nagini slithered into view, and twined herself around Marie's wrist and forearm, coiling up near her ear and whispering to her. "Back sssso ssssoon, Marie..." A menacing flicker of that tongue. "You're going to be ssssorry you ever thought of esssscape."

She hated knowing that she could understand the hisses, hated knowing that the Dark Lord spoke Parseltongue and understood as well. It made things too small, a private conversation in a room full of people.

At last, the silence too painful, she fought down the dizziness and lifted her eyes. The Dark Lord stood opposite, straight-backed and solid, the hems of his long, ornate robes just brushing the floor, accentuating his height and presence. He wore a hood, like his followers, but no mask; his features were shadowed as it was. He raised his chin when she looked up. "Marie. Come here, if you would."

He almost made it sound like a choice. Nagini slithered back across the stone and circled her master's feet.

Marie wanted to obey. She wanted to. But she was frozen to the spot, frozen by the too-familiar glitter of those eyes, a deep ember red that still made her think of jewels.

Get up! And yet, her body wouldn't obey her commands, wouldn't move. God, what had she done?

*

The Dark Lord shifted his gaze away from Marie, only for a moment. "Severus?"

Snape straightened, forced his tone to its hardest. It sounded strange to him when he spoke, sharp and clear in the silent chamber, like metal striking metal. Powerful. "Miss Llewellur," he said, with as much indifference as he could muster, "I would remind you that your circumstances are quite dire enough without exacerbating the situation."

She flinched at his words, just as surely as if he'd hexed her or even struck her outright, but she did finally manage to get herself on her feet. Her steps were short as she moved through the circle of Death Eaters, but her manner was more resigned than hesitant. She moved her eyes over his face as she passed, but Snape did not meet her gaze, and he knew he remained faceless to her behind his mask. Marie's hands, he noticed, were trembling through their bonds, but surprisingly, her expression itself betrayed nothing. He wondered briefly when she'd learned not to show her fear; it wasn't a trait he remembered her possessing.

At last she came to a stop in the center of the circle, and immediately dropped to her knees, eyes down.

"Obedient now that you have nowhere to go, aren't you?" the Dark lord observed, his tone anything but amused.

Marie kept her gaze fixed on the floor and stayed silent, no doubt knowing that there was no good answer to that question or any like it, that trying to offer one would do more harm than good. Apologies and excuses could only hurt her now.

It was a lesson Snape had learned early, from his father, and then again when he'd joined the Dark Lord's followers. Not that being a Death Eater had always seemed quite so...cultish. The man had always insisted on calling himself 'Lord Voldemort', of course, but in those early days, before his fall, it had seemed that the title was more suggestive of nobility than deification. In those days, it had been far easier for Snape to rationalize words and actions, both his own and others'. Everything had seemed different. Not so inherently, unquestionably malevolent. Not so clearly evil.

But maybe, he acknowledged rather grudgingly, that had merely been an adolescent's view. No older than Marie herself when he'd first stepped into this realm, Snape hadn't been long into adulthood when he fully came to understand to what he'd pledged his soul.

Before him now, Marie was unnaturally still. She was, Snape realized, not even breathing. Just waiting.

And she wasn't alone. All eyes save Marie's were on the Dark Lord, waiting for that low, breathy utterance, more command than incantation.

But when the he opened his mouth, the word that came out was not 'Crucio' but instead, again, "Severus."

"My Lord."

The man turned his head slightly, and Snape could see a shadow of the wizard the Dark Lord had been years ago, not unhandsome, with decidedly aristocratic features that belied Tom Riddle's humble origins. "You do have my gratitude for returning to me that which is mine."

"Thank you, My--"

"...however belatedly," he finished, bitingly. "And yet, Severus, I fear that my Animalexus'...extended holiday...may have allowed her to forget her place." He turned back to Marie, an expression of positively visceral fury on his face--and yet his voice stayed flat and calm. "You will remind her."

"Of course, My Lord," Snape answered smoothly, and yet, even as he stepped forward, he was sure this was it. His throat had closed up, and even as he drew his wand, he knew he couldn't cast this spell on this woman--this girl--not now or ever again. He was going to choke, to hesitate, and then there would be no pretending. He would die, slowly, painfully, under the gloating eyes of a master Snape suspected already knew more than he let on about where this subject's loyalties lay.

These thoughts passed through his head incoherently, in the briefest of instants, and then he drew in another cold breath, and spoke the incantation, and had made his choice.

*

Marie didn't hear the word pronounced--she never did--but even had she not heard the orders, she would have known who cast the spell anyway. The Cruciatus Curse, like Imperius, and probably the third Unforgivable as well, felt different coming from Snape than from Lucius, or the Dark Lord. From the Dark Lord, the pain was beyond the scope of imagination or description, and it felt polluted, too, threatening and final and overall just far too powerful. From Lucius, it was furiously intense, fiery, unrelenting. From Snape, though, the curse seemed methodical, practiced, and clinical. The suffering it caused was incredibly thorough, controlled, and so much the worse for it. She might have wondered, had she been able to form coherent thoughts through the blind agony, what this curse had felt like to him coming from her own wand.

Marie's sense of time had skewed as soon as the pain hit her, but she kept her jaw clamped shut at first. She always did. Reflex, not rebellion, whatever the Dark Lord believed. Then, finally, after how much time she couldn't have said--a matter of seconds, surely--she did scream, a guttural shriek equal parts pain and rage, torn from between her tightly clenched teeth. There must have been some signal that passed over her head sight unseen, for the curse was lifted, and she was sprawled on the floor, coughing, the worrisome taste of blood at the back of her throat.

The circle was silent.

"You will not run from me again, Marie."

The words seemed to take a few seconds to arrange themselves into meaning in her head, and she stuttered in her hurry to form a reply. "I--My Lord, I'm sorry, I--"

The Dark Lord actually laughed at that. "You are not sorry," he corrected sharply. "You want nothing more than to be anywhere but here. Surely you don't think so little of me that you believe I am not well aware of that."

"No," she said, immediately, "I--"

And then she was hit with it again, from the Dark Lord himself this time--she never saw him lift his wand, but she felt it in the blackness of the curse, in the dangerous threat of death the pain held this time around.

No, she corrected herself, not for the first time; it was not a threat. It was a promise.

*

Snape held himself as still as possible. If he was especially careful, measuring each breath evenly, he could recede inside himself a bit, step back. Watch and observe rather than partake. Detach. He'd passed a not insignificant part of his life in this manner.

Marie's screams were not unlike dozens of others he'd heard in his time, but rarely had he known his victims well; he had certainly never shared drinks with them or watched them happily share a schoolroom dance with an overly chivalrous half-giant.

She would receive far worse than Cruciatus later, he was sure. Some people could conceive of nothing worse than physical pain--and Cruciatus was certainly terrible enough to warrant every bit of fear surrounding it--but the Dark Lord knew just as well as Snape that if you wanted to hurt Marie Llewellur, you went after her mind, not her body. This...display...was for Snape's fellow Death Eaters. Few things are so persuasive as the implied threat of another's pain.

The Dark Lord lifted the curse, and, released, Marie promptly coughed up a rather disturbing amount of blood onto the stone floor. Only fools, Snape mused, would try to argue that the effectiveness of this curse was all in your head. Fools and those who had never been so unfortunate as to experience its effects firsthand. He who claimed it had no real bearing on the physical body had never choked on his own blood, or been left in fits of tremors and convulsions, or known how very, very dangerously close this curse came to destroying sanity and body each and every time it was cast.

*

Marie did not dare look up. If she were honest with herself, she decided, she probably could not look up. Too gradually, she managed to slow her breathing and, when it became clear that she was not going to be struck down again immediately, relaxed her hypertensed muscles. Her palms bled freely from where her fingernails had clawed into flesh--the red fluid disappeared where it touched her Mark, mingling with the magic there--and she felt another trickle, too viscous to be mere perspiration, trailing from one ear. She blinked several times, but her vision would not quite unblur. This was more than a little disturbing; rarely had Marie ever done anything to warrant more than a few seconds of this sort of punishment. She had never experienced any aftereffects much worse than fairly mild tremors; she had no idea how much she could take without suffering permanent damage.

Her lungs seized again, and when she could once more take in air, fury and desperation came with each breath. She could not do this, could not go back to this, could not live this way again. She should have used her freedom wisely, shot herself or slit her wrists or done whatever it was wizards did, Avada-Kedavra-ed themselves, she supposed.

Something somewhere inside of her still recoiled at that thought, though, and she forced herself to remember the mantra she'd adopted years ago: Find your strength, Marie. Borrow it, if you must. Take it from Momma, from Dad. It had always helped before, to think that she didn't have to summon it all herself, that she could take power from outside herself to help sustain her. She added to her sources, now: Remember your horses, all your horses. Archie and even that little ninny Geoffrey, and Mash. Take your strength from Mash.

Gradually, slowly, her senses came back to her, and a teetering, fragile sort of calm along with it. She became aware, suddenly, that the room was nearly empty, and she vaguely remembered a series of Apparation crack! s. Rather than relief, though, panic fought to take hold over her again. She was not off the hook, so to speak. She knew that and knew it well. The Dark Lord would not regard a few minutes' of physical torture as adequate punishment for her offenses.

But, she reminded himself, now that she'd been thrown into this life once again, she must remember to focus on the present, on dealing with what she was faced with right now. And for the moment, at the very least, the Dark Lord was gone. And someone else was in his place.

"Miss Llewellur, can you stand?" Snape.

She inhaled deeply, shook her head.

"Unsurprising." His face wouldn't come into focus. It was beginning to become quite irksome.

He bent low, suddenly, his robes billowing slightly as they touched the floor, the edge of one boot smearing a drop of blood against stone. He made as if to pull her into his arms, but thought better of it at the last moment and stood. A moment later, Marie felt herself lifted off the ground, aided by magic of the mobilicorpus spell.

She couldn't decide if she were disappointed or not. Which was shallower comfort: the arms of a semi-reformed Death Eater, or the empty air?

***

It had begun to rain, Albus noticed. How very appropriate.

He sat alone in his office, tea and sweets closeted away, no comfort to him alone, now. He twined two fingers through his long, stiff beard, letting his eyes follow the trace-marks of the raindrops as they crisscrossed the thick windows, light-catching sparks against the black of the night outside.

This was not the first time he had been forced, either as head of the Order or in other circumstances, to sacrifice an innocent for a higher cause. He winced slightly at an imagined scoff--no doubt that would be Severus' reaction to the concept of 'higher cause'. The younger man claimed not to believe in such a thing; Albus suspected he reasoned more in terms of 'the lesser of two evils'.

Regardless of the phraseology, Albus was anything but at ease with the decision. Ironic, in a way, he mused. Severus had, again and again, been the one to argue vehemently against allowing Marie to stay at Hogwarts, citing the heightened danger in which her presence placed the school and its students, explaining that he could not possibly explain away a complete failure to return her to Voldemort. So long as the dark wizard believed to have a spy in Hogwarts in Snape, he would not feel the need to secure his information another way. Her presence put far too much at risk. Far too much.

Until now, Voldemort had not, in his current incarnation, approached the school itself. Thus far, he had been able to bring Harry to him, and so much was the better for the students of Hogwarts. But Marie could not leave the grounds and would surely not allow herself to be lured from them--nor could she be hidden away elsewhere; her Mark ensured that.

Voldemort had already shown a disturbing willingness to attempt a direct attack on the school to get her back. In torturing and killing Philip Reylock, he had likely come closer than ever before to finding a way to directly breach the Hogwarts' defenses.

It was a risk the school, the Order, simply could not take.

Choices had to be made.

Certain sacrifices were necessary.

Not all could be saved.

Severus, surely, understood this at least as well as Albus, but even so, the younger man had refused to speak to him ever since the plan had been laid.

Albus shifted his gaze away from the windows, looked over to Fawkes' perch. The Phoenix held his head tucked under one wing, facing away the wall, his tail feathers drooping miserabely. He had not so much as looked at Albus all night.

Shunned from all sides.

"There was no other way," the Headmaster said aloud, his voice sounding astoundingly weary even to his own ears. "Harry has to be protected. The students..."

The bird did not move, did not give any indication of acknowledgement.

"You understand..."

Still no reaction.

"Fawkes."

Nothing.