DiSnaper: Everything besides further plot development and Incarceratio
charm belongs to JK Rowling and Reive. Beinn Mheadhonach belongs to Scotland.
"First you will go to Florence," said Peter Pettigrew next day in the morning, catching up with
Fleur in the field, where she was trying to find some peace after the events of the day
before.
Wormtail was another Voldemort's house pet, with rat-like habits, yet close to the Master and perhaps
the only one who managed to prove credibly his fidelity to the Dark Lord, even if with a part of his
own body. He liked to think that he looked somewhat imposing with his new silver arm, though it was
not hard to notice that phantom pains in the lacking extremity haunted him. Fleur, who preferred her
evil to be straightforward and impressive, pitied Wormtail. She sensed his awkwardness, and his
attempts to look more fatal than he could possibly be made her smile. Animagus or not, he was
pathetic with all his attempts to play Voldemort's lieutenant. All right then, let's hear him
out.
"And why should I want to do that?" asked Fleur without stopping for the conversation and pretending
not to realize that he was speaking on behalf of Voldemort, "I was supposed to go directly to
Hogwarts."
"The Dark Lord commands that you go to Florence and meet the Snapes and, very probably, Dumbledore
there. At the Conference."
"Oh, really," hemmed Fleur, "The Snapes. And—Dumbledore. In Florence. How many of them—all
three? Do you think you're being funny?"
Wormtail nearly jumped in anxiety:
"I'm giving you your orders!"
"Since when?"
"Since when—what?"
"Since when have you been giving me my orders?" said Fleur, coming to a halt finally, and sizing him
with the coldest glance in her arsenal.
Wormtail was close to explosion:
"Your Veela looks are not going to help you outplay me, Mademoiselle Delacour!" shouted he, and Fleur
couldn't restrain from laughter any longer:
"You miserable worm, don't even dream of playing with me. You are nonexistent, and if Lord Voldemort
has something to tell me, he will not hesitate to do it personally".
Fleur hardly finished the sentence: the sky instantly grew black, rare gray clouds clustered and
formed a low heavy screen, pregnant with thunderstorm. She suddenly felt it was hard to breath;
Wormtail hastily fell on his face, but didn't dare transform into a rat. The whirlwind, summoned in
the distance, approached them with unusual speed, throwing dust, dry grass and insects at Fleur's
face. Puzzled, she tried to stay on her feet, but when the twister reached her and Wormtail, tore
her from the ground and carried towards the Beinn Mheadhonach castle's tallest tower, she had but
to obey to its force.
Fleur was thrown onto the upper platform of the tower, where the wind kept blowing with even
bigger strength.
"What do you want?! Stop it!" cried Fleur to the centre of the wind, not sure, that she will be able
to stay on the platform and desperately holding at the ledge of the wall. She couldn't even hear
herself; the wind went on throwing her against the wall and the stony floor, tearing her robes and
leaving scratches on her face. The storm stopped almost as unexpectedly as it began. Fleur
struggled to stand, her back to the low wall, blinking and trying to discern the source of the
turmoil, which didn't wait to appear. Lord Voldemort stood in the centre of the platform with his
hands and face dramatically raised to the skies. As he was lowering his arms, the wind was getting
smaller. Fleur was terribly angry at this show, though scared too. She preferred flying on the
broom, if it was so inevitable, not within the hurricane.
Voldemort streamed his albino gaze to her eyes:
"You think you have the luxury of taking sides here? Running away from them and joining me to find freedom and
revenge?.."
"I…" started Fleur, but another, now invisible but heavy blow slapped her against the wall, rendering
silent and choking with something suspiciously salty. She tried to wipe her mouth but her arms were
pinned to the wall.
"Silence, dear," said Voldemort, coming closer to her and putting his hands on her strained shoulders.
His touch was almost unbearable, deadly with immanent killing intent, his nails felt like the
poisonous snake's fangs. Fleur bite her lip and tried to hold his gaze, though her eyes were
streaming.
"Silence." He wasn't in a hurry. Voldemort stepped away from Fleur and drew his hand across her face.
He looked at his palm and showed it to her too—there was blood on it.
"You are spitting blood, and blood is running of your eyes, dear. But consider it my small token of
affection. I can not be loved, remember. A should be feared and obeyed. Now say it."
Fleur concentrated and managed a laugh:
"My Lord, you don't need to tame me. I'm already your—…"
Voldemort stretched his hand and in a moment Fleur's precious wand was squeezed in his grip.
"I see that you can not understand. If you can't, then learn it and memorize.
You should obey me, or Wormtail, or every single Death Eater who says to you that he's talking on my behalf. A wizard who
isn't my messenger simply cannot pronounce these words, silly girl. You have lots to learn yet."
He looked at her wand and it turned into dust in his hand. Voldemort picked a Veela-hair out of it,
and Fleur desperately twitched, but in no avail. The Dark Lord took his own wand and pressed the
hair to its side. The Veela hair disappeared.
"Let this symbolize that you are now my slave, dear. No one will know about it besides the two of us.
You'll stay in detention till your trip to Florence. I'll confer with you on your further course of
actions later. Incarceratum!"
And while Fleur was falling through the well that opened in this dark and seemingly endless
tower, she heard Voldemort's words:
"You will have enough time to think about that maroon potion in Severus Snape's vial".
DiSnaper: Everything besides further plot development and the new
realities belongs to JK Rowling and Reive.
Though Fleur felt humiliated, miserable and beaten, she still considered the lesson just, although
excessively pretentious. Who did she think she was: someone special, separate, and with definite
clear-cut rights? To be honest, however, at the moment she thought nothing at all. She had to pull
herself together and think what to do next, although right now, deprived both of her wand and freedom
of movement, she could do little. So she concentrated on healing and contemplating.
Fleur was incarcerated in a gloomy gray dwelling with a small round window near the high ceiling. In
the daytime, it produced weak grayish light; in the night it let in a ray or two of moonshine,
provided that the night was clear. Her diet also proved to be rather limited. Needless to say, the
room was cold and somewhat damp. She used her first pot of water to wash herself from blood and dirt
and didn't even touch the rough bread and cold meat with suspicious greenish tint. Next day she
understood, however, that Voldemort's word was as good as his actions and she was not going to be
released in a day or two. "All right then", thought Fleur, "the more time I will have to think
everything over without being interfered with." For another day she felt strangely euphoric: she
hummed ancient Provencal songs of her witch ancestors and thought of sunny fields surrounding their
Augive de la Montagne estate, her precious blue stream in the Silvery forest, which Gabrielle and she
had called English-style "Rattlie" for its desperate ramble. The Delacour family had always been
anglophiles. Then she understood that her strangely light attitude, too, wasn't natural. How could
she be euphoric? She had to find a way out for Gabrielle, and for herself. She had to save the girl
at any cost. She was responsible for Gabie's sickness. When she proves herself to Voldemort, he'll
help to restore the girl's mind. He can do it, he's the strongest wizard in the world, he can… he
can even put a stopper in death. Or… but whose words were these?
Next day she drank some water. It tasted unusually sweet, and Fleur got suspicious. But suspicion
came too late: she was drugged.
***
…This time the drowning sensation complemented the darkness of the dungeon. She was standing at the
doorstep, looking at Professor Snape slowly raising his head from the strange blood-like maroon
potion, which he was holding over the burner.
"Mademoiselle Delacour," said he coolly, "what is such a model student like yourself doing out of the
Beauxbatons carriage at this time of night?" His expression was obscure, though she was sure that he
wasn't surprised to see her. "People might think that you are—up to something."
"Someone has called me", whispered Fleur, shuddering from cold.
"And dare I suppose this someone is hiding inside my vast laboratory, or—is he not, Mademoiselle?"
asked Snape, making no suggestion at all: to help her out, or to invite her inside, or at least to
stand up. He was clearly absorbed in his potion-brewing, and Fleur noticed that he handled the vial
with extreme caution.
"So—how can I possibly help you?" inquired Snape, but Fleur still thought that he had something
on his mind and that she had found herself at his doorstep not without some given reason.
"Mademoiselle Delacour", repeated the low voice of her dream, she flinched and intently looked at
silent Snape, who raised an eyebrow and cocked his head.
"Say something", demanded Fleur.
"I beg your pardon?" frowned Snape arrogantly and closed the vial up to the burner.
"Say… Say my name! Slowly."
"But clearly you are out of your senses, my dear lady", snapped Snape. "Let me show you the way to
your quarters"; he held the vial a little higher and looked through it at the candle light. The
potion was opaque, cloudy and with heavy burgundy sediment. Snape neatly arranged it on the stand and
stepped away from the table.
He had to walk only three strides to reach her, but Fleur suddenly felt obsessed with panic and
hastily began to retreat in the darkness of the passage. He saw the change of her mood and flew to
her with fantastic speed, which Fleur attributed to the surreal nature of the dream she was seeing.
Having returned back to the center of the dark dungeon room where she had found herself in the
beginning of the dream, she lingered in hesitation, not knowing where to run.
There was again only muffled rustling and nothing else in the vaulted room, so she stopped to take
out her wand.
"...Mademoiselle Delacour", repeated then the low and leisurely voice in her ears.
Fleur shouted Lumos! and turned back. There on the doorstep of his study stood Professor Snape
leaning against the wall; his left arm was bent and his other arm was outstretched to her. And once
more she couldn't interpret his expression, but she was not able to move.
DiSnaper: Everything besides further plot development and the new
realities belongs to JK Rowling and Reive.
The next few days were more like a nightmare than anything else. Fleur couldn't eat the food that was
duly brought to her, but lack of food was somehow tolerable. What she couldn't do without was water,
simple clean water. She was not going to have a dry hunger strike and die of it, because she realised
that Voldemort wasn't the person to play games of life and death with. He was able to waste her life
and service with easiness, and not even think of it as a sacrifice. And even if he needed her in "The
Goodies" camp, she needed him even more. In a week she suspected that she was forgotten; in another
week and a half, being in a constantly drugged and starving state, she still decided to die. Her
consciousness was failing her more and more often now, but she was proud enough not to yield to the
necessity to depart in narcotic intoxication. If she had to clamp a one-way ticket in her palm, she
preferred to do it with clear mind, not crowded with unintelligible dream-like scenarios of dungeons,
flying Snapes and blood-like potions.
So Fleur stopped drinking water completely. Having decided to surrender to death she also stopped
scratching lines on the wall to count days. On the eighteenth evening of her being in confinement
she staggering came up to the water-pot, carefully washed herself, then came back to her cot and
lay down, staring at the window-spot high up. It was a clear night, and her now acute eyesight
allowed her to see sky and even faint stars. She felt relieved, spared from the painful fright and
mystery of her uneasy dreams. After death good wizards go to the stars, her grandmother Daffodille
used to tell her when Fleur refused to behave and was especially naughty. But bad wizards do not
know where to go when they die. The stars turn away from them, and they stand on the bridge between
the Gates of Death and the Gates to the Stars and wait.
"What are they waiting for?" asked curious Fleur, shrinking in sweet children's terror.
"They wait until all the good wizards pass to the Gates of Stars," answered Granny Daffodille
seriously.
"But it's impossible—the Good wizards will never end!" protested little Fleur, vividly imagining the
uneasy crowd of miserable Bad wizards, forced to let all the endless Good wizards pass, squeezed
further and further, unable to stop or join the endless flood of Good wizards, joyfully heading to
the Gates of Stars, even unable to touch them. Then, usually, she lost control:
"Is the Bridge strong enough?" demanded she.
"Hm-mmm... I don't really know. Why?.." Daffodille pretended not to understand.
"But Granny, how many wizards can it bear?!"
"I don't know, sweetie, I'm sorry," smiled Granny Daffodille, who was an extremely Good and respected
witch.
"Will it… will it—ever—…"
"Oh, dear, no, I don't think it will ever fall down. No. That would be too cruel to those poor lost
souls."
"But can they be ever rescued?!" insisted Fleur, who was not so easy to repel if she was after
something.
"I—don't—know," usually cut off Granny Daffodille, and the conversation was over.
"…I'm heading for the Bridge," thought Fleur now, looking at the stars, "Dear Trismegistus, I deserve
my fate, do not spare me. Let me drop that Bridge with the heaviness of my soul, because it is
better to be nowhere than to stand on the Bridge, watching all the Good ones pass. And Gabrielle
among them, too. So good… and—insane."
Fleur was very close to oblivion when she heard some faint scratching at the window. She
couldn't determine the origin of the sound. There seemed to be some shadow behind the window. Even
if Fleur—the physical body—was ready to die, the curious and hoping young woman inside her was not.
So she waited for a minute, two, finally for half an hour. Positively someone was scratching by the
window. And suddenly she understood—it could be Velocite, her clever magic falconet, used to finding
her anywhere in the world. Driven by this thought, Fleur dashed out of her bed and used all her
remaining strength to move the heavy table to the wall opposite to the window, to look at Velocite.
She wasn't strong enough to climb the table as fast, as she desired, but after a few desperate
attempts she mastered the unsteady grip on the wall and stood on her tiptoes, peering narrowly into
the diminutive window and hoping to see at least a brim of Velocite's sharp wing.
Fleur didn't know what she would do if it really were Velocite. She couldn't break the window without
the wand—she couldn't reach it physically either—but she longed to see what was there. A letter?
Maybe from Dumbledore again? Maybe if Velocite returned to him with the letter undelivered, he would
be able to understand that she was in danger?
"Velocite!" Fleur tried to shout, but her voice was hoarse and hardly audible. A wand! She needed her
wand and the simple sonorous charm would carry her voice to her falconet.
"Velocite!!" cried Fleur, but her harsh dry throat, deprived from water for too long, gave just a
cough, and she went silent. Fleur kept looking at the window, as if all her will was in her gaze. And
then she saw it. She saw the big dark crooked wing, the ugly head with pricking ears, empty black
eyes and even the claws, scratching the glass and the bars.
It was no Velocite. It was a big black bat, attracted by the glimmering glass of her window.
Fleur started to laugh, then all of a sudden burst into tears, out loud, shaking of self-contempt
and weakness, stumbled and fell from the table.
*
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