Lord Voldemort stared at the death eater’s head, where it landed on the ground. She had slapped him, hard- and while that had broken the Veela’s spell, she could have done it by attacking the Veela, rather than him. Had the Veela not killed her so suddenly and efficiently with her completely unexpected earthbending powers, and had he had his wand in his hand, he would have tortured her to within an inch of her life, but allowed her to live.
Had she instead attacked the Veela… That thought gave him pause. He would still have punished her- and possibly killed her outright. And had she finished her torture charm and hurt the Veela, he definitely would have killed her outright, after retrieving his wand from the inside pocket in the Veela’s cloak. He might even have used the Veela’s wand, if she didn’t seem able to defend herself!
… What had the Veela done to him? He was pretty sure Veela didn’t have any lasting effects!
He hadn’t realized she was a Veela when he had apparated to right behind her to ensure she couldn’t dodge his punishment for allowing that other boy- nobody had known he was there- to get away with Harry’s body. Even though Harry’s return to Hogwarts was actually planned.
It was a memory that now appalled him. He just couldn’t stand the idea of hitting her with the Cruciatus Curse.
Was this a short-term lingering effect? It didn’t feel like a love potion- he still had no affection towards her, beyond her ongoing Veela aura (which, now that he knew it was there, he was resisting effectively). It was entirely possible it simply made him want to protect her for a short time, as a lingering side effect of the entrancement- he doubted the Veela had ever used their auras in battle before.
Still, though. When he had hit her with his torture charm, she had collapsed straight away- and the moment her hand had touched the ground, the ground had moved. He had been smacked and thrown, slightly, by the spikes, causing the curse to break instantly while he regained his balance- then he had commented on her strength. He was fairly certain it was her passive aura- which he hadn’t noticed at that point- that made him do that.
He had been just about starting to realize she was a Veela when she had pounced. Hardly two words into her answer, he had forgotten entirely about his Veela defenses- she had suckered him too hard, and had him in too strong of a trance. He didn’t really know what had happened next- but somehow, she had taken his wand from him, and pocketed it- the wand that Yaxley had worked so hard to retrieve from the Ministry just over a year before. And, because he had been suckered, he had complied with her.
Then this death-eater had appeared. He hadn’t even had time to recognize her face, while he had been recovering from her slap, before she had been smashed flat. Even now, her face was away from him, where her head was lying on the ground, and he didn’t recognize the back of her head.
But, no amount of smashing would have severed her neck that cleanly- it looked like a slice, not a crush. Even her hair had been sliced cleanly!
“You should know, Tom, that not even death can stop a true Slytherin.”
He looked up, and hesitated.
The girl that had just spoken was resting her hands on the hilt of a glittering, jewel-encrusted sword, the tip of which was resting on the hard ground at her feet.
And, he saw the telltale mark of fresh blood on the blade.
As a bonus, he realized that he actually recognized both the girl and the sword.
It was the girl he’d had Yaxley kill- one of the ‘extras’. Now that he saw her more clearly, he recognized her description as that of the third Hogwarts Champion, Silversong. He was certain she had been hit by the Killing Curse- and, apparently, had survived it. She was a very dangerous girl.
And the sword… was the Sword of Godric Gryffindor. It also matched the badge she wore on her chest- she was in Gryffindor house.
But why was she talking about Slytherin?
He felt the ripple of her magic in the air, and somehow knew that he couldn’t just apparate away.
“Silver!” the Veela cried, thankfully it seemed. “You’re alive!”
Voldemort let out a small huff of breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. If the Veela was friendly towards Silversong, presumably that meant the opposite was also true- that Silver was friendly towards the Veela, and as such, he didn’t need to worry about them hurting each other.
Hurting him, on the other hand, was a different matter- Silver was staring him down, as if waiting for something, with a dangerous gleam in her eyes.
“Yes, I’m alive,” she answered calmly, without looking away. “Can you close the entrances? I don’t want the other Death Eaters interrupting.” Her voice was dangerously calm- and her speech pattern seemed familiar somehow, but he wasn’t sure from where.
The Veela put her hand out, touching one of the spikes- and walls instantly shot up between them, before forming a ceiling overtop.
Finally, Silver tilted her head. “Do you not have your wand?” she asked.
“I have it,” the Veela told her smugly.
Silver finally broke her gaze and looked at her. “You… You stole Voldemort’s wand.”
He flinched at the sound of his own name. She could stand to use it? She wasn’t afraid of it, like everyone- even his own Death Eaters- were?
The Veela grinned, completely unbothered by hearing the name. “He’s vulnerable to Veela.”
Silver burst into laughter. “And what might’ve happened if you’d happened along ten years ago,” she choked, leaning heavily on the sword.
The Veela winced. “Ten years ago, I could not control my aura,” she muttered.
Silver calmed. “I mean as you are now, obviously,” she told her, then looked at Voldemort again. “So.”
“So,” Voldemort repeated back at her.
The Veela looked at him. He resisted the urge to gaze into her eyes- that was her aura at work, and looking into her eyes would be a very bad idea; that always made a Veela’s magic that much more effective, and his defenses less so. There was silence for several seconds, before she spoke.
“Why did you come back?” the Veela asked.
“So that I can die,” he answered honestly, completely without thinking.
He paused, sighed, and sat down to lean against the stone spike behind him. She had surprised him again, and penetrated his defenses with impunity- but it didn’t seem like she was trying to put him in a trance like before, just to get him to answer her question truthfully.
But if he was going to tell them that much, he might as well tell them the whole story.
“Can you… make sure no death eaters can hear?” he muttered, softly.
The two girls looked at one another for a second, then back at him. The Veela put her hand out to the wall again- and for a few seconds, it felt like the floor was sinking, then it felt like it was rising for a few seconds too.
“There,” she nodded. “Fifty feet underground.”
“Why?” Silver asked.
“Appearances,” he answered simply.
Silver winced. He could tell, by her expression, that she understood what he was talking about right away. Was she related to the Malfoys, by any chance?
“I have always felt… wrong somehow,” he continued. “Perhaps incomplete, I don’t know. All the way back when I was a little boy, I did what I could to discover that wrongness, and perhaps even fix it.
“I tried to be good- I honestly did. The people running that orphanage were…” He sighed. “Not the best. Theft, fights, and whatever else ran rampant.
“Whenever the fighters went after me, though, I had the upper hand.” He shrugged. “I had magic. Accidental magic, technically, but I didn’t know what it was- and had attached that name to it to make it easy to think about.
“But just staying out of trouble wasn’t helping, so I tried… well, helping. Injecting myself into various fights to break them up. Taking stuff from the thieves, returning it to its rightful owners. Then Dumbledore came along, set it all on fire, and got me branded as a thief. Me!” He sighed in exasperation. “Before he set it on fire, I had been eager to go learn magic. He didn’t seem to understand that I wanted to say yes as soon as I heard the word ‘wizard’. Instead, he set it ablaze, called me a thief, and left me there.
“I never liked him, after that. Even at Hogwarts, when one of the other Professors showed up to help me through Diagon Alley, he gave me those looks at every opportunity I had.
“As I studied, and learned… I came to the realization that what I was good at seemed to be everything that was forbidden. Talking to snakes, ensnaring minds, Unforgivable Curses, finding Restricted Section books that had been misplaced into the unrestricted section. The Chamber of Secrets.” He gazed at his knees. “So… I tried that.
“And by Merlin was I good at it. I made a number of horcruxes, starting while I was still even inside Hogwarts with the assistance of the Chamber.
“But when I finished all those magical transformations, and truly became the Dark Lord…” He sighed. “I was going in the wrong direction,” he muttered. “I started a reign of terror… and it felt bad. It felt even worse than before.
“Then, when I looked at what I had built, at the Dark Lord Voldemort… I saw a demon. I had created a monster that would devour me whole if I allowed it to- and continue to devour, even after it ate me.” He leaned back against the stone wall. “I simply had to remain the Dark Lord. If I ever wavered… someone would overthrow me and take over, be even worse than me.
“The only way was for me to make them so devoted to me that they lacked the ability to make effective decisions on their own… Then hope I could die.
“So I did that. For many years, it just… went on.
“Then dear Severus Snape brought me news of that Prophecy. He only had a part of it- but it didn’t take much effort at all to uncover the rest of it. I don’t think Snape realizes that I know he’s a double-agent for Dumbledore- I was actually manipulating him into becoming one when he discovered the prophecy. He was too smart for me to leave behind, after all- if I died… He had to have either died already, or changed his loyalties, else he would take over and be even more terrible than me.
“The Prophecy gave me hope. It spoke of my death- at the hand of a certain boy. Well, one of two- both Harry and Neville Longbottom fit the description in the prophecy. I evaluated my options carefully, and picked one to attack, alone. I didn’t want to kill Harry’s parents- but I had to, or it wouldn’t work. On top of that, killing Lily would be the final straw to galvanizing Snape against me. Once the rat told me where they were, I deliberately came through the front door to provoke a battle. James was a good man, and I hated to kill him- but he gave me no choice.
“Then I faced Lily. She was a beautiful woman, and she begged for mercy. I wished- oh, how I wished I could give her mercy… but in order for me to be vanquished, I had to kill her- and in so doing, grant little Harry the protection of a mother’s love, which would forever protect him from death by my hands.
“Last came little Harry. I knew what would happen, and I was so sorry to give him a curse scar that would continue to hurt from time to time for years to come, aside from making him an orphan- but that was the act that would cut the head off of the monster I had created.
“So I cast the charm… and died.
“Except, I couldn’t die. Still can’t.” He sighed. “Even a single horcrux is enough to mean that I cannot be killed, merely reduced to an almost ghost-like state.” He gazed up at the sky. “I hadn’t given myself extra time to figure out what was wrong with me- I had prolonged my own torture. All I needed to do then was to escape notice, quietly revive myself, and go through some more transformations in secret, so nobody would recognize me as the Dark Lord.
“But, I never managed to do the first of those. I was forced to revive myself as the Dark Lord… which would only put me back where I started.
“Except, Dumbledore had cheerfully obliged in training Harry up as an upstanding member of the Light, to oppose me- and when I used Professor Quirrell to get close enough to look at him…” He sighed. “Quirrell kept getting distracted by some girl called Hailey.” He paused, looking up at Silver, who had let out a sudden snort of laughter. “What?”
Silver shook her head. “Nothing,” she told him, but her smile told him it most definitely wasn’t nothing.
“Whatever,” he mumbled. “Apparently, Hailey kept getting in his way, and screwing up all his plans. Not my plans- no, he almost never followed those. Quirrell wasn’t a very good follower, but he did the job- thanks to him, I learned that I could not touch Harry’s skin without suffering intense pain. I figured it was probably a side effect from one of the transformations I went through, reacting with his mother’s protection.
“That gave me an idea.” He looked at the wall, in the direction that the Cauldron would have been. “The specific way I revived myself… Bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy. It would render the enemy I took the blood from immortal until I died. I could have used Bertha Jorkins, and was even planning to, before driving her to insanity like the Longbottoms were- except, her information was too good to be true. I didn’t have to use such a disposable enemy- that same method would grant me a part of the Mother’s Love as well, making me immune to harm by it without defeating its protection against me, and she told me about some tools that could be manipulated to yank Harry Potter, the Hero that vanquished the Dark Lord, right out from under Dumbledore’s nose, and use him.
“What was more, he was already so heavily anti-Dark Lord that I could rely on him to remain dedicated to my defeat. As such, I instructed my tool at Hogwarts- he’s probably dead by now, he never was very good at staying hidden whenever he got excited- to make the Cup a two-way portkey, with one way activated by Harry’s touch, and the other activated by any touch. Ostensibly, I would throw Harry’s dead body at it to strike fear into their hearts- but what I actually intended was for him to escape, after much fanfare- exactly what happened. He was then supposed to reach the Cup and return to Hogwarts alive and well, tell Dumbledore, and start setting the wizarding world up to fight me before the Death Eaters realized what was happening.
“Then… He died. That spell shouldn’t have done any more than make him stumble, with his mother’s love and the resurrection both protecting him, but I must’ve miscalculated.” He sighed.
Silver nodded. “Hailey will probably talk about mayonnaise again when I ask her how she got the body,” she told him. “She always does, whenever we fake someone’s death.”
He stared at her for a second, then sighed; she evidently wasn’t too interested in elaborating. “That way, in theory, I would be in power… Yet I would also have a powerful foe that I simply could not defeat. Throughout the process of my return and announcement to the wizarding world at large, I intend to manipulate Dumbledore into finding and destroying all of my horcruxes, so that I can be defeated, once and for all, in battle.” He looked sideways at Silver. “Make sure you’re still alive at that point, girl. I will have to go down fighting either Harry himself, or someone out of my league, if I am to behead the monster at the same time.”
Silver burst into laughter, then quickly stifled it, waving off his and the Veela’s inquisitive looks.
“But if he’s died…” He sighed, staring up at the ceiling. “If Harry died, whether it was faked for the public or not, I’m going to have to face off against someone out of my league.” He looked at Silver. “And with your speed with that sword, or whatever that was earlier, when you were protecting the Veela-!
“Fleur,” the Veela corrected him.
He paused. “When you were protecting Fleur,” he repeated. “That’s the kind of skill that will be required to behead the monster once more.”
Silver nodded calmly.
The silence drew on for several seconds.
“You said there was a constant feeling of wrongness?” Silver asked.
He looked at her, trying to read her face. “Yes?”
She rubbed her chin. “Did it ever peak- like, perhaps when you were doing things like using the bathroom, or talking?”
He stared at her. “H-How did you know?” he muttered, then sighed. “It was bad enough I cursed off my…” He paused. “Manly Bit long ago.”
Fleur wrinkled her nose in disgust and looked away, one hand rising to her mouth. Silver, meanwhile, seemed completely unbothered.
He shrugged. “It helped, somewhat, but it didn’t do everything.”
“Yeah…” Silver muttered. “I think I know what it is,” she told him. He only raised an eyebrow, so she grinned. “You want to become a girl, don’t you?”
Fleur whirled back around, looking curiously back and forth between Silver and Voldemort. She was completely unsuccessful in hiding the surprise from her expression- she evidently had not expected that.
There was silence for several seconds.
Finally, he spoke.
“Y-Yes, that was one of the, er, additional transformations I was planning… And looking forward to, back when.”
Silver looked at Fleur, then back at him. “How about now?”
He let out a snort of laughter. “There’s no way I’d be able to do that now,” he told them. “They’d pounce on me right away.”
Silver nodded. “Oh, you’d be surprised. There is a way. You know how Harry died today?”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“She didn’t,” Silver finished, stressing the pronoun slightly, before sitting on the floor with him. “Back in the days of Professor Quirrell, she turned herself into a girl every day.”
Voldemort and Fleur both stared at her.
She giggled. “That is to say, Harry and Hailey are actually the same person. What happened up there was that she was faking Harry’s death, so she’d never have to turn into him again.” She smiled. “I’m the same- except that we killed Draco Malfoy just under a year ago, so I never have to turn into him again.”
So she was related to the Malfoys. “Every day,” he muttered.
She nodded. “That was back when she hadn’t found a way to make the instant transform voluntary- but now, we have, so neither of us ever turn back.” She grinned. “And considering that Hailey has- oh, what was the list?” She started counting on her fingers. “Got a reputation for using spells she shouldn’t know yet on her very first day at Hogwarts, check. Earned the very public title ‘Goddess of Reports and Duels’ in her second year, check. Treated the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets like a chew toy not long after, check. Resurrected all the dementors and subsequently became their mother last year, check. Stopped the Death Eater march at the Quidditch Cup in about five seconds last summer, check.
“On top of all that, we happen to know that even if the four real, surviving Gods and Goddesses- the four Founders of Hogwarts, incidentally- were to gang up on her, she would still flatten them in a fight. So, if you were to simply, ahh, show up at Hogwarts while she was there… It wouldn’t be very hard to disappear you into it and make things right- just say Hailey curbstomped you like she did those death eaters at the Cup. The entire Ministry of Magic is already afraid of her- I’ve even heard mumblings that Cornelius Fudge is recently actually viewing her as his superior, despite having the top job himself.” She rubbed her chin. “You’d probably want to wait at least a little, so we can tell her about it so she won’t actually kill you with a toothpick and a burp, but other than that?” She shrugged.
He rubbed his chin, choosing to ignore the odd murder weapons. “For… For appearances, now that I’m gathering my Death Eaters, I’m going to have to wait for a logical time to go to the Castle,” he told them. “The longer I can go without announcing my return to the world, the less people I have to kill in the meantime.”
She shrugged. “And if you hand Hailey an attendance list of Death Eaters, she’ll have them all incarcerated in a few minutes. It’d be a bit anticlimactic, and might start a big scare as people look for them where they’re not, but I’m no expert in that stuff.” She grinned. “That said, disappearing people is easy. We had Barty Crouch- Senior- ‘disappeared’ like that for a while because he was ostensibly dead. More mayonnaise, apparently. I don’t know who was supposed to have killed him, but I do know she said he would be un-disappeared after the Third Task.”
“R-Right,” Voldemort muttered.
“Anyways, um,” Silver looked around. “I never learned long-distance teleportation the way Hailey did, so do you think you could take us somewhere near the Hogwarts grounds by side-along apparition?”
“Welcome back.”
Silver, Fleur, and Voldemort all jumped, whirling to look.
There was… There was some sort of archway carved into the air, such that a small room opened up onto the grass outside the Hogwarts Grounds, where they had just apparated. Inside the room, there was a girl with wavy black hair, sitting in one of five comfortable-looking armchairs set around a circular table and leaning forward to pour tea into five identical teacups. There was another black-haired girl in a chair next to her, though she looked younger and her hair was a lot curlier.
“H-Hailey!” Silver gasped. “How-?”
“Hermione invented this spell a week ago,” the older girl- Hailey- answered, “for the Third Task. We didn’t tell you because it would have made the entire maze moot. So.” She glanced at Voldemort. “Do you think you could explain why the Dark Lord Voldemort is giving you a lift back to school?”
Voldemort winced again, but none of the girls did.
“Uh-!” Silver began, glancing at him, then chuckled nervously. “Yeah. About that.” She then led the way through the strange archway, into the room, and sat down to accept her tea. “It’s a bit of a long story.”
It was good tea, Voldemort had to concede. The conversation had gone even better than his explanation to Fleur and Silver had gone. Hailey was very friendly, a little bit carefree, and also very smart- she had even guessed half of the details herself, rather than having to be told!
Finally, the topic turned to Voldemort wanting to be a girl- which amused Hailey just as much as it had Silver.
Finally, Hailey spoke. “Yeah. We can do the Papa Tango whenever you like, really.”
“Papa Tango?” Voldemort asked, raising his eyebrows.
She nodded. “That’s the spell that makes the instant transform possible,” she told him. “It’s very painful, and takes anywhere from a minute to three months depending on how fast we set it, but you only ever go through it once. Come to think of it, once you do turn into a girl, do you have a chosen name?”
“A what?” he asked.
“A chosen name,” she repeated. “A name that you would prefer to go by, over your given or whatever name, in your preferred form.”
He scowled. “So… Once I turn into a girl…” He nodded slowly. “Amelia.”
“Amelia, huh?” Hailey muttered, then grinned at Sadarina. “That’s going to be fun.”
Sadarina giggled. “It is,” she agreed.
“Fun?” Voldemort asked.
Hailey nodded. “You see… Legally, Sadarina here is my daughter. She also happens to be the oldest Dementor, and the Mother of Dementor Kind, in a manner of speaking.” She grinned. “And ever since we saved her last year, Amelia Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement… is also a dementor. As such, she’s technically my granddaughter.”
“Even though you’re only fourteen,” Silver said flatly.
“Even though I’m fourteen,” Hailey nodded. “I’m probably the youngest grandmother that ever lived, or something like that at least.” She grinned. “It gets funny when you consider that all of my children and grandchildren are older than me. Anyways.” She turned to Voldemort. “Voldemort, Amelia, whoever you want to be-!”
She broke off as a sharp knock sounded on the door.
Voldemort looked- the portal to the lawns was gone, revealing the inside of an office.
“Perfect timing,” Hailey commented. “Come in,” she called.
The door opened- and Voldemort saw the plaque, recognized the hall outside.
He was deep inside Hogwarts Castle… in Hailey’s office. She seemed to have a lot of titles, but he couldn’t read them from so far away.
A girl entered, with pink and dark blue candy floss hair. She looked around, smiled, closed the door, then trotted over. “Having fun yet?” she asked.
“Yup,” Hailey nodded. “What brings you here, Bonbon?”
She shrugged. “The usual. Just got back from cleaning out those criminals in Manehattan, and thought I’d stop by to see if you had anything important going on.” She glanced carelessly at Voldemort, but he noticed the appraising quality in her gaze- she was evidently an incredibly dangerous person as well. Hailey and Silver weren’t the only ones that could ‘kill’ him easily. “I notice you’re having tea with the local Dark Lord,” she commented. “How are things going?”
Voldemort choked on his tea. “L-Local?” he gasped. That made it sound like she had known and defeated multiple Dark Lords before!
Hailey grinned. “The Dark Lord Voldemort will be joining the Order of the Phoenix,” she told the girl.
Voldemort blinked, and stared. The Order of the Phoenix? Seriously? That was- That was-
“Excellent,” Bonbon nodded. “What will his name be? Er… Her name, I want to say?”
Voldemort sputtered in disbelief, but Hailey just raised an eyebrow. “It’s that obvious?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Amelia,” she answered. “Speaking of.” She turned back to Voldemort. “Do you mind if we do a few pain tolerance tests? It’ll let us know what to expect on the Papa Tango- and plan it for maximum stealth, like we did with Fleur’s.” She glanced at Fleur. “You’re a Raeth, by the way.”
“A Raeth?” Fleur asked, blinking as she looked at her hands. “I thought I was an Etrah.”
Hailey smiled. “Padma said you’re also an Earth elemental- that’s probably part of it. Means you should be able to swim through stone the way the Patils swam through water in the Second Task.” She shrugged. “And I’m apparently a magic elemental, whatever that does.”