Into the Fold

Bellatrix's Examination

Late Winter/Early Spring 1980

Voldemort knew the worst of him, and he had survived.

Severus finished breakfast in the Malfoys' dining room, attended by that thought and the Malfoys' house-elf, Dobby. During their Occlumency lesson, the Dark Lord had learned the worst: that Severus had once loved Lily Evans. Yet he hadn't killed Severus for being best friends with one of his worst enemies. Nor had Severus died of shame after showing Voldemort what Potter had done to him by the lake after O.W.L.s.

He was alive, if drained by his ordeal of the night before. His bones ached with the memory of the Cruciatus Curse; his mind felt scoured raw by the Dark Lord's ravages. But perhaps for the first time in his life, he commanded his emotions. Although lesser people at other times had undone him, he could face the Dark Lord calmly.

Thus Severus was ready to meet the Dark Lord when he returned to Lucius's library that morning. He wasn't ready to meet Bellatrix Lestrange.

But Bellatrix was there, standing before the fireplace beside the Dark Lord with a twist of a smile on her lips.

"Ah, there you are, Severus," said the Dark Lord. He nodded toward Bellatrix. "Another pupil. Bella has studied Legilimency and Occlumency under me, and I dare say she's the best at both in my ranks."

"Hello, Bellatrix," said Severus. "What a great honour for you, to hear that from the Dark Lord."

Bellatrix said nothing. Her smile widened, showing teeth.

"Bella will give you your final examination in Occlumency," said Voldemort.

"Bella? Why not you, my lord?"

"I must hold back. Bella's powers, though great, are merely human. So she need not." Voldemort smiled down at Bellatrix, who, rather surprisingly, paid him no heed. Her attention was fixed on Severus.

"Firstly," said Voldemort, "there's a different quality to an unrestrained Legilimency. Secondly, I've found that Bella's uninhibited nature adds a power to her magic that her fellows lack."

At last Bellatrix took her eyes off Severus and looked adoringly at Voldemort. Severus took the opportunity to gird himself.

"Help yourself," said Voldemort to Bellatrix, and she did.

Bellatrix's Legilimency was like a clubbing to the head. As if from a distance, Severus heard his own harsh cry of pain, and the memories spilled out: Tobias's drunken bellowing, games of magic and trips to Diagon Alley with Mother, the loneliness of knowing no one like himself living nearby, until one day he left Spinner's End and approached a playground in a somewhat better part of town--

No.

But even through the pain, Severus knew he couldn't block the memory of his first sight of Lily. That was too crude; Bellatrix would know he'd withheld something.

He'd die--or kill--before he gave that memory to her. So she must never know there was a memory at all. He had to make it seem as though the memory didn't exist. But how?

In the instant he wondered that, the silver doe appeared. She trotted the perimeter of Severus's mind, guarding the memory he did not want Bellatrix to see.

Through the distance, across the terrain of his mind, Severus heard her shriek.

"A Patronus! My lord, he has a Patronus!"

Her anger released Severus from the grip of her Legilimency. He returned to himself, to see the Dark Lord regarding Bellatrix with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

"It is a problem, Bella, that I trust you can deal with," Voldemort said.

"You know--you permit this? In a Death Eater?"

"You will allow me to use my own judgement as to what I find useful in my servants."

Fear replaced Bellatrix's indignation. "Oh--yes--of course--forgive me, my lord."

Without taking his eyes off Bellatrix, Voldemort gestured at Severus. "Go ahead. Deal with the problem."

The interruption had given Severus just enough time to cobble together a solution for shrouding the playground memory, a sort of mental invisibility cloak--

"Crucio!" Bellatrix cried, and with the pain came a hot summer sun shining on an asphalt playground--

"Protego!" gasped Severus. The sunshine receded to reveal Bellatrix stumbling backwards.

Voldemort looked at her with a touch of contempt. "Torture and Legilimency can be a potent combination in the right hands. Such as mine. I'd suggest something subtler in the present situation. If you can handle it."

Severus was so ready that he could almost see the spell forming in Bellatrix's mind: Legilimens! And then the attack came.

Bellatrix threw it at him with the same disordered passion, but Severus felt more in control this time. He gave her by choice nearly as many memories as he had given the Dark Lord--the taunts of Potter's gang, the disdain of Slytherin House before he'd proven himself there, even some early school memories of Lily--because he knew he was showing her nothing she didn't know.

Over certain others--the sunny playground, the night he had lain before the Fat Lady's portrait after calling Lily Mudblood, the night of the moon-shifting mushrooms, when Lily had left him for good--he cast his new device, so new, created a few seconds before, that he didn't have a name for it yet.

But it did what he wanted it to do. Like an Invisibility Cloak, it made the memories Severus wanted to hide disappear. In the parade of events which passed through his mind, some of them humiliations which she ransacked with glee, it was as if those few memories, precious and painful, did not exist.

He let her have everything else, so that she would think she had it all. He fought exactly hard enough to make her think he was fighting as hard as he could. He even let her have a piece of the memory of his and Mother's first escape from Tobias, into Spinner's End on a damp summer night.

"Wait, Mum, wait!" Sev whispers excitedly. "Let me say the words too!"

"All right, Severus." There's a smile in Mum's voice. "The Light word, remember."

"Yes," says Sev. His voice is high and all stretched out like a wire, he's so excited. He loves this magic. Mum holds up her wand, the signal to begin.

"One...two...three...Lumos!" they sing out together and when the wand flares, "It's magic!"

Severus slammed the door on the memory as soon as he and Mother laughed. Bellatrix didn't try to wrench it open. She released him instead. He blinked his way back into the consciousness of his surroundings.

"I've found it, my lord!" Bellatrix said breathlessly. "The memory behind his Patronus!"

"Are you sure? He forced you out of his mind."

"Ask him." Bellatrix looked at Severus triumphantly; for once the Dark Lord's doubt hadn't frightened her. "I'd like to see him try to lie."

"Well?" said Voldemort.

"Yes," said Severus. "That's the memory. My mother Stunned my father after she caught him about to beat me with his belt. Bellatrix saw us just after we'd left him. A memory worthy of a Patronus."

"I should think," said Voldemort. "The happiest moment of your life."

Severus said nothing.

"Of course it was!" spat Bellatrix. "Leaving that Muggle filth!"

Severus looked at her, startled by her venom. Her eyes burned with a hatred he recognised. It had been his own, many times, when he'd looked at Tobias.

"Unless he closed the door on something happier," said Voldemort, looking at Severus.

"I wouldn't say so," said Severus. "We went to my grandmother's, but she didn't welcome us. In two weeks, we were back home again." He looked at Bellatrix. "In the memory you saw, I believed we'd never go back. So yes. I was happy then."

Voldemort eyed Severus. Without looking away, he waved carelessly toward Bellatrix. "All right. You can run along."

There was a silence. "Do you mean me, my lord?" said Bellatrix.

"Who else? Go!" Voldemort looked at her angrily, giving Severus a chance to look too. Bellatrix met his eyes with a look so corrosive it took his breath away. Then it warmed his heart.

She'd never liked him. But surely she'd never hated him more than she did at that moment. What could it mean but that she thought he had replaced her in the Dark Lord's favour?

"Yes, my lord." Her look, her voice told Severus that he had made an enemy. But she would never have loved him. It was worth the price.

She left very quickly. The door whispered shut behind her.

"You lied to her," said Voldemort. "You hid the Patronus memory from her."

Severus smiled and shrugged.

Voldemort laughed softly. Then he said, "You had better not lie to me."

He entered Severus's mind with the same searing agony as before. Yet through it Severus sensed that Voldemort was holding back. He didn't quite trust Bellatrix's ability, yet he didn't want to harm Severus. So the pain wasn't such that Severus couldn't work at all.

Because Voldemort wasn't having his Patronus memory. No one would have it.

The feel of hot sunshine on his neck, hot asphalt beneath his running feet tried to trickle into Severus's mind, but the Patronus memory didn't slip from his grasp. Inwardly he cast his arms wide and the Mental Mantle (that was the new magic's name, he saw) flowed over the memory. With a tiny ripple, as of the slightest shivering of reality, Severus's Patronus memory slid into nonexistence.

The other memory slotted into its place: the memory of wandlight trembling into life and wrestling with the gloom of Spinner's End. The memory of running.

Running, running, with his hands in the air and his head thrown back, he could fly to Gran Prince's, and Gran will let them stay if Mum's not married to him any more, she has to let them stay....

"Severus!...Severus, wait!" Mum calls, but she's already laughing. She catches up to him, still laughing, grabs his hand, and they're running--

Running from Spinner's End to Gran Prince's in London, running, running....

The mists of Spinner's End drifted across Severus's eyes, until he could no longer see the light at the end of his mother's wand, the pale gleam of his short-trousered legs pumping away, his feet pounding the cobblestones. The mist grew into darkness, and Severus, his limbs shaking and nausea bubbling into his throat, nearly fainted.

Then Voldemort released him.

It was so sudden that Severus stumbled backward, seizing the edge of Lucius's writing table and nearly upsetting the inkstand.

He clung to the corner of the table for a moment, rubbing his aching head. His brain felt lacerated. But he knew that Voldemort was satisfied.

The pain ebbed from a flood to a steady current. "I knew it," Voldemort said.

Severus blinked and looked up. There was a look of perfect satisfaction on the Dark Lord's face.

"And why not?" said Voldemort. "It makes perfect sense. That's why I killed him for you."

Severus knew better than to speak.

"I can hardly help but sympathise with a wizard who wants to free himself from his Muggle father."

"I remain grateful, my lord," said Severus carefully.

"As well you might. And you did reasonably well, defending that memory from Bella. You're ready."

Severus waited, but Voldemort did not elaborate. He tilted his head and looked at Severus through a stretched-out silence.

"Would you like to be a schoolmaster, Severus?" he asked at last.

"A what?"

"A schoolmaster. Hogwarts will have an opening this spring. I think you'd suit."

A schoolmaster? A professor at Hogwarts? Severus couldn't say he cared much for children--in fact, from what he'd seen of their noise and messes in the paediatric wards of St Mungo's, he was pretty sure he disliked them--but the prestige, the comfort, the security, the peaceful regularity of a professor's life at Hogwarts--"An opening, my lord? How do you know? And how--?"

Voldemort raised a hand. "Enough, Severus. There will be another meeting of our comrades this Saturday. I'll speak to you afterward."

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