The Devil's Due
Title: The Devil's Due
Rating: NC17
Fandom: Harry Potter/Crow Crossover
Summary:Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry spirit rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.
Spoilers: HBP and the Crow mythology
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the mythology. Just my sick imagination.
Archive: At Twisting the Hellmouth and Crossoverfic. If you want it, check with me first.
A/N:Thanks to Selenya,who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
Uh. I disturbed myself with this part. Be warned that there is nothing nice beyond this cut.
Chapter 8 -- Pain and Retribution
Goyle was nervous.
If asked why, he would have denied it. Actually, if anyone had asked him why, he would have bashed their face in, then shoved it into the pavement while he cast a nice flensing curse for good measure. When Goyle was nervous, he got even meaner than usual.
The revel had started, but most of the early arrivals stood in small clusters, worrying over the news of the day. The whispers about what had been done to Nott were getting louder, but Lucius Malfoy had done his job well, slipping in and out of enough conversations that people were beginning to repeat the party line. By the time the Dark Lord arrived, every soul in the room would be claiming with conviction that Nott’s fate was what awaited any who angered their Master. Some of them might even believe it.
Goyle didn’t believe it. Not that such an act was beyond the Dark Lord, but that Nott’s death was due to Voldemort’s retribution. Goyle knew about Avery; he had seen the… evidence… first-hand when he and Crabbe had gone to get Granger. The Mudblood had been long gone, and Avery’s blood….
Goyle took a hefty swig of his firewhiskey and surveyed the unwitting revelers. For the first time, he found himself envying them. None of them had to spend the afternoon scouring the bloody imprint of a bird from the walls of an anonymous room in the Leaky Cauldron.
The only piece of luck so far this day was that Crabbe had the bright idea to bring in Malfoy, otherwise tonight’s revel might have been buzzing with the news of Avery’s demise as well. There was no way even Malfoy could have sold the idea of both Nott and Avery falling afoul of their Lord on the same day.
So, Goyle was nervous. It was only a matter of time before someone wondered where Avery was, and why the Mudblood wasn’t on display. It was only a few steps from that before the Dark Lord’s paranoia caused him to lash out at whomever he saw fit to blame. Goyle had seen loyal Death Eaters killed by the crossfire of that kind of situation on more than one occasion.
Shoulders twitching, he looked around for someone inconsequential to hit.
“ ‘Ere, Goyle. I need your help.”
“What is it?” he growled at Crabbe, who wasn’t inconsequential, but might do in a pinch. Recalling that his compatriot was more than able to fight back, he forced his fists to unclench.
“Someone forgot to bring the specimens for Bellatrix’s experiments. She’s in a right strop about it, and Rudolphus has enough to do with preparing for our Lord’s arrival. Malfoy wants us to take care of it.”
Goyle was about to snarl that he wouldn’t be playing errand boy to the Lestranges or Malfoy, when he realized that this might not be the best time to rock the boat. Crabbe must have come to the same conclusion to submit so readily to performing such a simple task.
Still, neither of them had to like it - or be nice about it.
“Fine,” he said, draining the last of his firewhiskey, “let’s get this over with. Maybe we can have a little fun with ‘em before we turn them over to Bellatrix.”
For the first time since arriving at the Leaky Cauldron that afternoon, Goyle was smiling.
**************************
Finding specimens proved quicker and easier than either wizard had imagined. Most of the Muggles in the area around the Lestrange’s townhouse had moved away after the rash of disappearances and murders became more than even they could ignore. But every society has its dregs - the ones that don’t matter, the ones that no-one will miss - and these huddled in conveniently large numbers in the nearby alleys and stoops. Unlike the upstanding members of Muggle society, they’d had no way to flee.
It was a moment’s work to grab two unsuspecting Muggles and bodily haul them back through the townhouse and down to Bellatrix’s lab. It would have gone more quickly, but the Muggles had more fight in them than Goyle or Crabbe expected, and the two wizards spent an enjoyable few minutes beating them into submission.
Hauling one of the two subdued captives down the stairs, Crabbe waited impatiently while Goyle juggled his own burden to open the door to Bellatrix’s lab. Crabbe hated it down here. There was something distinctly… off… about the Lestranges, and Bellatrix in particular. If the rumors he heard were to be believed, the experiments she conducted down here with her Muggle victims were twisted even by Death Eater standards. Crabbe liked a good, clean beating or even a straightforward Entrail-Expelling curse as well as the next bloke, but what happened to Muggles down here….
He shuddered and followed Goyle into the room, anxious to be done and back upstairs with a mug of butterbeer, enjoying the apprehensive respect that was accorded to Lord Voldemort’s inner circle.
“Oy. I thought you said nobody had gotten Lestrange her specimens.” Goyle’s irritated gripe pulled Crabbe from his musings.
“That’s what Malfoy told me.”
“Then who’s the bint?”
Crabbe opened his mouth to reply, but never got the chance to discover what his reply might have been. A dark, flapping shape had launched itself at his face. He dropped the struggling captive he’d been carrying and raised his arms to protect himself from the razor talons that were slashing alarmingly close to his eyes. Ahead of him he heard Goyle grunt, followed by a few meaty thuds and a sickening crunch of bone hitting stone. Belatedly he fumbled for his wand, but his wrist was caught in a unyielding grip and wrenched away from his robes. He opened his mouth to shout for help as he was forced to his knees, but a brutal strike to his throat left him choking and struggling for breath.
He blinked through sudden tears. A red-haired woman in black, her face painted in a death-rictus, grinned at him. Dizziness assailed him, but he was sure he knew her.
You. He managed to mouth the word even though no sound emerged.
“Yes. Me. And you.” She locked his arm behind him and began tying him with the black cords that Bellatrix always kept in ready supply. Her almost-pleasant response was at odds with the rough way she was binding him. Goyle whimpered from the floor nearby. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes, and his mouth was slack and drooling. Crabbe realized he’d get no help from that quarter.
“But I’m afraid my fame precedes me. We’ve never been properly introduced. I’m Lily Potter. And you are…Goyle? Or is it Crabbe?” She finished trussing him and turned to the moaning man, “Severus was right. You are rather interchangeable.”
You…killed…Avery, he mouthed. His breath was coming in short, shallow gasps and it was agony trying to force sound through his crushed windpipe. He yanked at his bonds, but they were so tight that they were already cutting off his circulation.
“And Nott,” she said, giving Goyle’s bindings an oddly maternal pat. With unexpected strength for such a slight woman, she hauled Goyle back into the cage where Bellatrix kept her specimens, then did the same to Crabbe. He struggled and tried frantically to shout, but only succeeded in exhausting himself.
Unconcerned, Lily Potter turned away from them and moved towards the Muggles. Too stupid to run, they were huddled near the door nursing their injuries. They shied away from her when she leaned down to speak to them, but after only a few soft words they were allowing her to stroke their heads and comfort them like imbecile children. Crabbe couldn’t hear what she said, but whatever it was sent them scrambling for the stairs without a backwards glance.
When the Muggles were gone, Potter turned back towards them. Crabbe watched in horrified fascination as she poured a measure of one of Bellatrix’s potion bases into two mugs.
“It’s an interesting property of Polyjuice Potion that despite the apparent physical changes, one is still oneself,” Potter lectured in tones that reminded Crabbe of their old Professor Slughorn. She added hair that she had pulled from the Muggles while stroking their heads, and Crabbe could hear the potion begin to bubble and froth even from across the room. The familiar, sickening stench of fresh Polyjuice filled the room. “One’s magical and mental capacity remains the same, injuries sustained in one form persist to the other.” Potter picked up both mugs and approached the cage where Crabbe and Goyle were trussed. “And of course, if one dies while polyjuiced, the body will revert to its original form at the end of the duration of the potion, but one will still. be. dead.”
Putting one mug down, she grabbed Crabbe by the jaw and pried his mouth open, forcing the disgusting draught down his throat. He tried to close his mouth against it, tried to bite her, tried to spit it out, but she was too strong and too brutal. He was forced to swallow even past the constriction in his throat, or choke to death on the vile potion.
The pain of the transformation distracted him from paying attention while she similarly force-fed Goyle. Before he could think to try to wriggle free of his bonds, she had turned back to him and was tightening them around his now much narrower wrists. He glared up at her and wished that he had the knack for wandless magic.
You’re… going… to… kill… us.
“Oh, no. I have much too much to do this evening. Your fellow Death Eaters aren’t going to conveniently kill themselves. No, I think I’ll do for you what you’ve no doubt done for countless Muggles. I’ll leave you to Bellatrix’s tender ministrations. If you’re lucky, she’ll get bored with your inability to scream and finish you off quickly. If you’re very lucky, the fact that you’re not wearing Muggle clothes might penetrate her addled brain. But then,” she shot him a humorless smile, “it doesn’t appear that luck has been kind to you tonight.”
Crabbe began to struggle again as Potter rose and returned to the counter. He saw her pour a fresh mug of Polyjuice base and add three long, black hairs to it. In moments he was staring into the cold, dark eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange. He froze in fear, even knowing that it was just her imposter.
Please, he mouthed desperately, tears beginning to pour down his cheeks.
“How many pleas did you ignore?” Her borrowed face was a strange mixture of implacability and compassion, “Why should I be merciful when so many lives are owed to your lack of mercy? No. You will not find any mercy here. 'Death is a debt that we all must pay'. And your account is long past due.”
He watched as the false-Bellatrix strode from the room. And then he could only wait in growing terror for the true-Bellatrix to bring him and Goyle their deaths.
***********************
He had lost her within moments of their arrival.
Secreted in an alcove off the main hall of the Lestrange’s labyrinthine townhouse, Snape surreptitiously watched the comings and goings of his fellow Death Eaters. Hours had passed, yet so far, his spying had yielded no results. No snippet of gossip about any unusual happenings had reached his ears. There was not a clue that Lily was even present - no indication that somewhere in Lestrange House a vengeful Gryffindor revenant was torturing and killing Voldemort’s inner circle.
It struck him then that rather than skulk around hoping to hear some whisper of her doings, he could track her through the absence of her quarry. He cursed himself for being three kinds of an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.
Extracting himself from the shadows, he began to cut through the pockets of muttering Death Eaters. The few brave souls who noticed and dared try to approach him were frightened off with one of his deadly glares.
Unlike Nott’s spacious Georgian manor, Lestrange House was a warren of twisty hallways and darkened rooms. This meant that the revel was scattered throughout the lower three levels of the house. Snape passed through salons, parlors, studies, libraries and even a linens closet in search of his fellow inner-circle members, but all he found were the lower-level enforcers and toadying sycophants who had been flocking to Voldemort’s side since The Fall.
He searched with growing disbelief. Surely she couldn’t have dispatched seven powerful wizards so quickly. It was with something akin to relief that he spied a flash of white hair against black velvet robes.
“Lucius,” he murmured in greeting as he slid next to the other wizard, effectively cutting the witch Lucius had been speaking with out of the conversation.
“Severus.” Lucius’ smile was tight, “You’re socializing. How novel.”
Snape’s twist of lips made Lucius’ smile look positively effusive, “There are so few of the old guard in attendance. I thought it would be prudent.”
“What do you mean?”
That Lucius hadn’t noticed worried Snape even more. Either the other wizard was slipping, or Lily was even more subtly deadly than he’d thought. Habit, rather than calculation, made his tone condescending, “Surely you’ve noticed. Our hosts are nowhere to be found - nor are Crabbe, Goyle or Pettigrew. Given the recent mysterious death of Nott, it occurred to me that we ought to be more cautious.”
He carefully gauged Lucius’ reaction. He knew he had to be careful in how he played the other wizard. He didn’t want to give Lily away, but Lucius knew his in-laws better than Snape. If there were hidden rooms in the house, Lucius was far more likely to know of them.
“And Avery.” Lucius’ words interrupted Snape’s thoughts and it took him a moment to recollect that he was not supposed to know of Avery’s death. He pasted a look of faint confusion on his face.
“Pardon?”
Lucius’ eyes glanced around them. Apparently deciding that even the people in the hall outside the study were too close, he pulled Snape to a bookcase, which slid silently open at the wave of Lucius’ wand. Within moments the bookcase was sliding closed again and Snape found himself standing in a wood-paneled hallway. Lucius muttered a Lumos charm and dim light threw their faces into eerie relief.
“Avery’s dead. We found his body at the Leaky Cauldron this afternoon, in even worse condition than Nott’s. He had captured the Mudblood, Granger. We told Lord Voldemort that she killed Avery during her escape, but he doesn’t really believe it. Neither do I.”
“Wait. Granger is alive? Granger was there?”
“Keep up, Severus. She eviscerated him. Pulled out his entrails and played with them like a cat’s cradle. Or, rather, someone did.”
Even having seen Lily afterwards, even having guessed something of what she had done, seeing the normally imperturbable Lucius Malfoy shaken made the awfulness of Avery’s murder more real. Snape swallowed against the churning bile that threatened to rise and reminded himself that it was no worse than what Avery had done to countless women before.
Snape recalled Lily mentioning that Avery had a girl with him when she went to kill him. If it was the Gryffindor swot then the girl would have recognized Lily Potter. She would have told the Order. Even now, they might be planning another foolish, doomed strike. Events were spiraling out beyond his control. Once again, he was serving at the whim of Gryffindor bravado. He hated the uncertainty of such an existence. He had to re-establish control over all the factors before the situation ended up as bolloxed as it had been the previous June.
He forced his mind back to the task at hand - find Lily, see if she had learned anything about the final Horcrux, and if she hadn’t then get her out before Voldemort arrived.
“Who do you think did it?” he asked Lucius, his cool tone betraying none of his inner turmoil.
“The landlord didn’t break when I questioned him, so either it really was Granger, or he didn’t see anything.”
“Or he did see something, but he’s more afraid of it than of Voldemort,” Snape muttered as if to himself. Lucius rose to the bait.
“Do you know something, Severus?”
“Only that two of our number are dead, and not by our Lord’s orders. And now all the others seem to be missing on the eve of our Lord’s triumphant celebration. Were this a Muggle horror novel, I would suspect one of our own, perhaps even hiding somewhere in this house.”
“And that ridiculous supposition is why anything Muggle is a waste of-” Lucius broke off as they both heard a low, animal moan from down the secret hallway. Both wizards had wands drawn in defense, and Lucius had snuffed the light of his spell before the sound faded away.
“What is down that hall?” Snape whispered as his eyes adjusted. He noticed a faint glow from around a far turning in the hallway.
Lucius flashed him a look, “You don’t know? Ah. But of course you wouldn’t. Bellatrix never really favored you, did she? It’s the Lestrange’s… playroom.”
Snape’s lips pursed against any response he might have made. In the early days he had avoided the more sexual escapades of the inner circle. To change that after he had turned spy would have invited potentially fatal comment. Since he was both ugly and lacking in an inclination towards rape, Bellatrix hadn’t been forthcoming in her invitations. It was little wonder that he hadn’t known of the room’s existence.
Another moan sounded from down the hall. It was not a noise that Snape would have ever associated with pleasure, even of the masochistic variety. Lucius apparently was in agreement. Rather than lowering his wand or dismissing the sounds, he began to creep cautiously towards the bend in the passage. Snape quietly followed.
Around the corner was a sturdy wooden door standing slightly ajar. Dim light shone from the other side. With his free hand, Lucius pushed the door open… and froze. Snape was about to snap at the other wizard to move aside when the smell hit him. It was not the first time that day that he had smelled the unmistakable combination of blood and offal. Underneath the moaning he heard a soft, rhythmic squelching.
Ahead of him, Lucius made an incomprehensible choking noise and fumbled a handkerchief to his face, turning aside in the process. With the morbid curiosity that had inspired his interest in the Dark Arts when he was younger, Snape stepped forward so that reality could supersede the awfulness of his imagination. Reality didn’t fail him.
The layout of the room was rather plebian in its perversion. There were stone walls covered with swags of wine-dark velvet. Manacles and chains draped over wooden crosses. A variety of leather-wrapped implements of abuse were arrayed on a rack, and from a half-open wardrobe a selection of high-quality PVC, latex, rubber and leather gleamed darkly.
In the center of the room was a huge, wrought-iron bed. It was obviously placed with an intent to draw the eye, but Snape’s gaze kept slipping past it, unable to parse what was before him into a coherent picture.
Blood pooled black against the crimson of the bedspread, and dripped down either side of the bed, forming an inkblot shape that looked like nothing so much as a great, dark bird in flight. Chains led from the twisted headboard and footboard to a bloody, huddled shape in the center of the bed. At first it looked like an abomination, with too many limbs for a natural creature, but as Snape stared the shape resolved into two separate forms curled tightly around one another. One of the forms was deathly still, but the other rocked compulsively back and forth. He was pumping desperately into the mouth of the body he clutched, while his own mouth burrowed into the hollow gut cavity, devouring flesh down to the white bone of the spine.
Snape stumbled back, gulping deep breaths of the slightly fresher corridor air to keep down his bile. Lucius appeared to be doing the same.
Taking a deep breath and covering his lower face with his robes, Snape took two steps into the room and thrust his wand towards the bed with a growled ~Finite Incantatum~
Nothing happened. The mass of flesh that was Rudolphus and Rabastan Lestrange continued to fuck and devour itself.
He cast the cancelling charm again, his tone shrill from horror and disgust.
“It’s not a curse,” Lucius panted next to him, “not a spell. It’s the chains. They’re enchanted. We have to… remove them.”
“Enchanted?” Snape looked at Malfoy so he wouldn’t have to look at the grotesque on the bed anymore. Lucius’ eyes slid away from his, away from the bed. He was even paler than usual. Snape imagined he didn’t look much better himself.
“One of Bellatrix’s… toys. They’re enchanted to increase one’s…” He choked; closed his eyes, “appetites.”
Breathing shallowly, Snape approached the bed. Puzzling out where the chains manacled around flesh was hellish in its own right. He was forced to decompartmentalize his awareness of the shapes on the bed in order to understand how they fit together. Rudolphus’ face was buried in his dead brother’s belly. He seemed to be chewing on a bit of gristle attached to the hipbone.
And the hipbone’s connected to the…. Snape followed the rhyme down Rabastan’s leg and found the shackles at his ankles. They clicked open as he touched them with his wand tip and muttered ~Alohomora~. Two manacled wrists were wrapped around Rabastan’s knees. As he released them, he became aware of a sobbed muttering. Ignoring it, Snape moved his eyes back up the bodies, past where Rudolphus’ mouth was whispering bubbles into his brother’s gut, past where his chewed entrails were draped and across his brother’s chest, past where his torn and bloody cock fucked his brother’s slack mouth. Snape found two more manacled ankles and flopping nearby a pair of manacled wrists. He released them. There was a relieved whimper from Rabastan’s belly. Backing away, Snape leveled his wand at the still twitching form of Rudolphus Lestrange.
~Avada Kedavra~
Then he was back in the corridor, the door shut against the sight and the smell, breathing deep breaths of fresh air.
Lucius Malfoy had already collected himself. He seemed to be covering his earlier cowardice by enjoying Snape’s discomposure with a certain malicious glee.
“Our Lord won’t thank you for being so merciful. He will have wanted to question Lestrange as to who did this.”
Snape allowed himself the luxury of an extra moment to compose himself before responding. “He wouldn’t have survived long enough for us to bring a mediwitch,” he said, pleased that his voice at least had returned to its detached drone, “nevermind surviving being questioned by Voldemort.
“What was he saying?” Lucius asked. It was an indication of how shaken he still was that he didn’t twit Snape for using Voldemort’s name so casually.
“Bella,” Snape replied uneasily.
“He was asking for his wife?”
“No. He was cursing her for killing them.”
******************
Note: The quote “Death is a debt we all must pay” is from Euripides.
Rating: NC17
Fandom: Harry Potter/Crow Crossover
Summary:Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry spirit rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.
Spoilers: HBP and the Crow mythology
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the mythology. Just my sick imagination.
Archive: At Twisting the Hellmouth and Crossoverfic. If you want it, check with me first.
A/N:Thanks to Selenya,who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
Uh. I disturbed myself with this part. Be warned that there is nothing nice beyond this cut.
Chapter 8 -- Pain and Retribution
Goyle was nervous.
If asked why, he would have denied it. Actually, if anyone had asked him why, he would have bashed their face in, then shoved it into the pavement while he cast a nice flensing curse for good measure. When Goyle was nervous, he got even meaner than usual.
The revel had started, but most of the early arrivals stood in small clusters, worrying over the news of the day. The whispers about what had been done to Nott were getting louder, but Lucius Malfoy had done his job well, slipping in and out of enough conversations that people were beginning to repeat the party line. By the time the Dark Lord arrived, every soul in the room would be claiming with conviction that Nott’s fate was what awaited any who angered their Master. Some of them might even believe it.
Goyle didn’t believe it. Not that such an act was beyond the Dark Lord, but that Nott’s death was due to Voldemort’s retribution. Goyle knew about Avery; he had seen the… evidence… first-hand when he and Crabbe had gone to get Granger. The Mudblood had been long gone, and Avery’s blood….
Goyle took a hefty swig of his firewhiskey and surveyed the unwitting revelers. For the first time, he found himself envying them. None of them had to spend the afternoon scouring the bloody imprint of a bird from the walls of an anonymous room in the Leaky Cauldron.
The only piece of luck so far this day was that Crabbe had the bright idea to bring in Malfoy, otherwise tonight’s revel might have been buzzing with the news of Avery’s demise as well. There was no way even Malfoy could have sold the idea of both Nott and Avery falling afoul of their Lord on the same day.
So, Goyle was nervous. It was only a matter of time before someone wondered where Avery was, and why the Mudblood wasn’t on display. It was only a few steps from that before the Dark Lord’s paranoia caused him to lash out at whomever he saw fit to blame. Goyle had seen loyal Death Eaters killed by the crossfire of that kind of situation on more than one occasion.
Shoulders twitching, he looked around for someone inconsequential to hit.
“ ‘Ere, Goyle. I need your help.”
“What is it?” he growled at Crabbe, who wasn’t inconsequential, but might do in a pinch. Recalling that his compatriot was more than able to fight back, he forced his fists to unclench.
“Someone forgot to bring the specimens for Bellatrix’s experiments. She’s in a right strop about it, and Rudolphus has enough to do with preparing for our Lord’s arrival. Malfoy wants us to take care of it.”
Goyle was about to snarl that he wouldn’t be playing errand boy to the Lestranges or Malfoy, when he realized that this might not be the best time to rock the boat. Crabbe must have come to the same conclusion to submit so readily to performing such a simple task.
Still, neither of them had to like it - or be nice about it.
“Fine,” he said, draining the last of his firewhiskey, “let’s get this over with. Maybe we can have a little fun with ‘em before we turn them over to Bellatrix.”
For the first time since arriving at the Leaky Cauldron that afternoon, Goyle was smiling.
**************************
Finding specimens proved quicker and easier than either wizard had imagined. Most of the Muggles in the area around the Lestrange’s townhouse had moved away after the rash of disappearances and murders became more than even they could ignore. But every society has its dregs - the ones that don’t matter, the ones that no-one will miss - and these huddled in conveniently large numbers in the nearby alleys and stoops. Unlike the upstanding members of Muggle society, they’d had no way to flee.
It was a moment’s work to grab two unsuspecting Muggles and bodily haul them back through the townhouse and down to Bellatrix’s lab. It would have gone more quickly, but the Muggles had more fight in them than Goyle or Crabbe expected, and the two wizards spent an enjoyable few minutes beating them into submission.
Hauling one of the two subdued captives down the stairs, Crabbe waited impatiently while Goyle juggled his own burden to open the door to Bellatrix’s lab. Crabbe hated it down here. There was something distinctly… off… about the Lestranges, and Bellatrix in particular. If the rumors he heard were to be believed, the experiments she conducted down here with her Muggle victims were twisted even by Death Eater standards. Crabbe liked a good, clean beating or even a straightforward Entrail-Expelling curse as well as the next bloke, but what happened to Muggles down here….
He shuddered and followed Goyle into the room, anxious to be done and back upstairs with a mug of butterbeer, enjoying the apprehensive respect that was accorded to Lord Voldemort’s inner circle.
“Oy. I thought you said nobody had gotten Lestrange her specimens.” Goyle’s irritated gripe pulled Crabbe from his musings.
“That’s what Malfoy told me.”
“Then who’s the bint?”
Crabbe opened his mouth to reply, but never got the chance to discover what his reply might have been. A dark, flapping shape had launched itself at his face. He dropped the struggling captive he’d been carrying and raised his arms to protect himself from the razor talons that were slashing alarmingly close to his eyes. Ahead of him he heard Goyle grunt, followed by a few meaty thuds and a sickening crunch of bone hitting stone. Belatedly he fumbled for his wand, but his wrist was caught in a unyielding grip and wrenched away from his robes. He opened his mouth to shout for help as he was forced to his knees, but a brutal strike to his throat left him choking and struggling for breath.
He blinked through sudden tears. A red-haired woman in black, her face painted in a death-rictus, grinned at him. Dizziness assailed him, but he was sure he knew her.
You. He managed to mouth the word even though no sound emerged.
“Yes. Me. And you.” She locked his arm behind him and began tying him with the black cords that Bellatrix always kept in ready supply. Her almost-pleasant response was at odds with the rough way she was binding him. Goyle whimpered from the floor nearby. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes, and his mouth was slack and drooling. Crabbe realized he’d get no help from that quarter.
“But I’m afraid my fame precedes me. We’ve never been properly introduced. I’m Lily Potter. And you are…Goyle? Or is it Crabbe?” She finished trussing him and turned to the moaning man, “Severus was right. You are rather interchangeable.”
You…killed…Avery, he mouthed. His breath was coming in short, shallow gasps and it was agony trying to force sound through his crushed windpipe. He yanked at his bonds, but they were so tight that they were already cutting off his circulation.
“And Nott,” she said, giving Goyle’s bindings an oddly maternal pat. With unexpected strength for such a slight woman, she hauled Goyle back into the cage where Bellatrix kept her specimens, then did the same to Crabbe. He struggled and tried frantically to shout, but only succeeded in exhausting himself.
Unconcerned, Lily Potter turned away from them and moved towards the Muggles. Too stupid to run, they were huddled near the door nursing their injuries. They shied away from her when she leaned down to speak to them, but after only a few soft words they were allowing her to stroke their heads and comfort them like imbecile children. Crabbe couldn’t hear what she said, but whatever it was sent them scrambling for the stairs without a backwards glance.
When the Muggles were gone, Potter turned back towards them. Crabbe watched in horrified fascination as she poured a measure of one of Bellatrix’s potion bases into two mugs.
“It’s an interesting property of Polyjuice Potion that despite the apparent physical changes, one is still oneself,” Potter lectured in tones that reminded Crabbe of their old Professor Slughorn. She added hair that she had pulled from the Muggles while stroking their heads, and Crabbe could hear the potion begin to bubble and froth even from across the room. The familiar, sickening stench of fresh Polyjuice filled the room. “One’s magical and mental capacity remains the same, injuries sustained in one form persist to the other.” Potter picked up both mugs and approached the cage where Crabbe and Goyle were trussed. “And of course, if one dies while polyjuiced, the body will revert to its original form at the end of the duration of the potion, but one will still. be. dead.”
Putting one mug down, she grabbed Crabbe by the jaw and pried his mouth open, forcing the disgusting draught down his throat. He tried to close his mouth against it, tried to bite her, tried to spit it out, but she was too strong and too brutal. He was forced to swallow even past the constriction in his throat, or choke to death on the vile potion.
The pain of the transformation distracted him from paying attention while she similarly force-fed Goyle. Before he could think to try to wriggle free of his bonds, she had turned back to him and was tightening them around his now much narrower wrists. He glared up at her and wished that he had the knack for wandless magic.
You’re… going… to… kill… us.
“Oh, no. I have much too much to do this evening. Your fellow Death Eaters aren’t going to conveniently kill themselves. No, I think I’ll do for you what you’ve no doubt done for countless Muggles. I’ll leave you to Bellatrix’s tender ministrations. If you’re lucky, she’ll get bored with your inability to scream and finish you off quickly. If you’re very lucky, the fact that you’re not wearing Muggle clothes might penetrate her addled brain. But then,” she shot him a humorless smile, “it doesn’t appear that luck has been kind to you tonight.”
Crabbe began to struggle again as Potter rose and returned to the counter. He saw her pour a fresh mug of Polyjuice base and add three long, black hairs to it. In moments he was staring into the cold, dark eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange. He froze in fear, even knowing that it was just her imposter.
Please, he mouthed desperately, tears beginning to pour down his cheeks.
“How many pleas did you ignore?” Her borrowed face was a strange mixture of implacability and compassion, “Why should I be merciful when so many lives are owed to your lack of mercy? No. You will not find any mercy here. 'Death is a debt that we all must pay'. And your account is long past due.”
He watched as the false-Bellatrix strode from the room. And then he could only wait in growing terror for the true-Bellatrix to bring him and Goyle their deaths.
***********************
He had lost her within moments of their arrival.
Secreted in an alcove off the main hall of the Lestrange’s labyrinthine townhouse, Snape surreptitiously watched the comings and goings of his fellow Death Eaters. Hours had passed, yet so far, his spying had yielded no results. No snippet of gossip about any unusual happenings had reached his ears. There was not a clue that Lily was even present - no indication that somewhere in Lestrange House a vengeful Gryffindor revenant was torturing and killing Voldemort’s inner circle.
It struck him then that rather than skulk around hoping to hear some whisper of her doings, he could track her through the absence of her quarry. He cursed himself for being three kinds of an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.
Extracting himself from the shadows, he began to cut through the pockets of muttering Death Eaters. The few brave souls who noticed and dared try to approach him were frightened off with one of his deadly glares.
Unlike Nott’s spacious Georgian manor, Lestrange House was a warren of twisty hallways and darkened rooms. This meant that the revel was scattered throughout the lower three levels of the house. Snape passed through salons, parlors, studies, libraries and even a linens closet in search of his fellow inner-circle members, but all he found were the lower-level enforcers and toadying sycophants who had been flocking to Voldemort’s side since The Fall.
He searched with growing disbelief. Surely she couldn’t have dispatched seven powerful wizards so quickly. It was with something akin to relief that he spied a flash of white hair against black velvet robes.
“Lucius,” he murmured in greeting as he slid next to the other wizard, effectively cutting the witch Lucius had been speaking with out of the conversation.
“Severus.” Lucius’ smile was tight, “You’re socializing. How novel.”
Snape’s twist of lips made Lucius’ smile look positively effusive, “There are so few of the old guard in attendance. I thought it would be prudent.”
“What do you mean?”
That Lucius hadn’t noticed worried Snape even more. Either the other wizard was slipping, or Lily was even more subtly deadly than he’d thought. Habit, rather than calculation, made his tone condescending, “Surely you’ve noticed. Our hosts are nowhere to be found - nor are Crabbe, Goyle or Pettigrew. Given the recent mysterious death of Nott, it occurred to me that we ought to be more cautious.”
He carefully gauged Lucius’ reaction. He knew he had to be careful in how he played the other wizard. He didn’t want to give Lily away, but Lucius knew his in-laws better than Snape. If there were hidden rooms in the house, Lucius was far more likely to know of them.
“And Avery.” Lucius’ words interrupted Snape’s thoughts and it took him a moment to recollect that he was not supposed to know of Avery’s death. He pasted a look of faint confusion on his face.
“Pardon?”
Lucius’ eyes glanced around them. Apparently deciding that even the people in the hall outside the study were too close, he pulled Snape to a bookcase, which slid silently open at the wave of Lucius’ wand. Within moments the bookcase was sliding closed again and Snape found himself standing in a wood-paneled hallway. Lucius muttered a Lumos charm and dim light threw their faces into eerie relief.
“Avery’s dead. We found his body at the Leaky Cauldron this afternoon, in even worse condition than Nott’s. He had captured the Mudblood, Granger. We told Lord Voldemort that she killed Avery during her escape, but he doesn’t really believe it. Neither do I.”
“Wait. Granger is alive? Granger was there?”
“Keep up, Severus. She eviscerated him. Pulled out his entrails and played with them like a cat’s cradle. Or, rather, someone did.”
Even having seen Lily afterwards, even having guessed something of what she had done, seeing the normally imperturbable Lucius Malfoy shaken made the awfulness of Avery’s murder more real. Snape swallowed against the churning bile that threatened to rise and reminded himself that it was no worse than what Avery had done to countless women before.
Snape recalled Lily mentioning that Avery had a girl with him when she went to kill him. If it was the Gryffindor swot then the girl would have recognized Lily Potter. She would have told the Order. Even now, they might be planning another foolish, doomed strike. Events were spiraling out beyond his control. Once again, he was serving at the whim of Gryffindor bravado. He hated the uncertainty of such an existence. He had to re-establish control over all the factors before the situation ended up as bolloxed as it had been the previous June.
He forced his mind back to the task at hand - find Lily, see if she had learned anything about the final Horcrux, and if she hadn’t then get her out before Voldemort arrived.
“Who do you think did it?” he asked Lucius, his cool tone betraying none of his inner turmoil.
“The landlord didn’t break when I questioned him, so either it really was Granger, or he didn’t see anything.”
“Or he did see something, but he’s more afraid of it than of Voldemort,” Snape muttered as if to himself. Lucius rose to the bait.
“Do you know something, Severus?”
“Only that two of our number are dead, and not by our Lord’s orders. And now all the others seem to be missing on the eve of our Lord’s triumphant celebration. Were this a Muggle horror novel, I would suspect one of our own, perhaps even hiding somewhere in this house.”
“And that ridiculous supposition is why anything Muggle is a waste of-” Lucius broke off as they both heard a low, animal moan from down the secret hallway. Both wizards had wands drawn in defense, and Lucius had snuffed the light of his spell before the sound faded away.
“What is down that hall?” Snape whispered as his eyes adjusted. He noticed a faint glow from around a far turning in the hallway.
Lucius flashed him a look, “You don’t know? Ah. But of course you wouldn’t. Bellatrix never really favored you, did she? It’s the Lestrange’s… playroom.”
Snape’s lips pursed against any response he might have made. In the early days he had avoided the more sexual escapades of the inner circle. To change that after he had turned spy would have invited potentially fatal comment. Since he was both ugly and lacking in an inclination towards rape, Bellatrix hadn’t been forthcoming in her invitations. It was little wonder that he hadn’t known of the room’s existence.
Another moan sounded from down the hall. It was not a noise that Snape would have ever associated with pleasure, even of the masochistic variety. Lucius apparently was in agreement. Rather than lowering his wand or dismissing the sounds, he began to creep cautiously towards the bend in the passage. Snape quietly followed.
Around the corner was a sturdy wooden door standing slightly ajar. Dim light shone from the other side. With his free hand, Lucius pushed the door open… and froze. Snape was about to snap at the other wizard to move aside when the smell hit him. It was not the first time that day that he had smelled the unmistakable combination of blood and offal. Underneath the moaning he heard a soft, rhythmic squelching.
Ahead of him, Lucius made an incomprehensible choking noise and fumbled a handkerchief to his face, turning aside in the process. With the morbid curiosity that had inspired his interest in the Dark Arts when he was younger, Snape stepped forward so that reality could supersede the awfulness of his imagination. Reality didn’t fail him.
The layout of the room was rather plebian in its perversion. There were stone walls covered with swags of wine-dark velvet. Manacles and chains draped over wooden crosses. A variety of leather-wrapped implements of abuse were arrayed on a rack, and from a half-open wardrobe a selection of high-quality PVC, latex, rubber and leather gleamed darkly.
In the center of the room was a huge, wrought-iron bed. It was obviously placed with an intent to draw the eye, but Snape’s gaze kept slipping past it, unable to parse what was before him into a coherent picture.
Blood pooled black against the crimson of the bedspread, and dripped down either side of the bed, forming an inkblot shape that looked like nothing so much as a great, dark bird in flight. Chains led from the twisted headboard and footboard to a bloody, huddled shape in the center of the bed. At first it looked like an abomination, with too many limbs for a natural creature, but as Snape stared the shape resolved into two separate forms curled tightly around one another. One of the forms was deathly still, but the other rocked compulsively back and forth. He was pumping desperately into the mouth of the body he clutched, while his own mouth burrowed into the hollow gut cavity, devouring flesh down to the white bone of the spine.
Snape stumbled back, gulping deep breaths of the slightly fresher corridor air to keep down his bile. Lucius appeared to be doing the same.
Taking a deep breath and covering his lower face with his robes, Snape took two steps into the room and thrust his wand towards the bed with a growled ~Finite Incantatum~
Nothing happened. The mass of flesh that was Rudolphus and Rabastan Lestrange continued to fuck and devour itself.
He cast the cancelling charm again, his tone shrill from horror and disgust.
“It’s not a curse,” Lucius panted next to him, “not a spell. It’s the chains. They’re enchanted. We have to… remove them.”
“Enchanted?” Snape looked at Malfoy so he wouldn’t have to look at the grotesque on the bed anymore. Lucius’ eyes slid away from his, away from the bed. He was even paler than usual. Snape imagined he didn’t look much better himself.
“One of Bellatrix’s… toys. They’re enchanted to increase one’s…” He choked; closed his eyes, “appetites.”
Breathing shallowly, Snape approached the bed. Puzzling out where the chains manacled around flesh was hellish in its own right. He was forced to decompartmentalize his awareness of the shapes on the bed in order to understand how they fit together. Rudolphus’ face was buried in his dead brother’s belly. He seemed to be chewing on a bit of gristle attached to the hipbone.
And the hipbone’s connected to the…. Snape followed the rhyme down Rabastan’s leg and found the shackles at his ankles. They clicked open as he touched them with his wand tip and muttered ~Alohomora~. Two manacled wrists were wrapped around Rabastan’s knees. As he released them, he became aware of a sobbed muttering. Ignoring it, Snape moved his eyes back up the bodies, past where Rudolphus’ mouth was whispering bubbles into his brother’s gut, past where his chewed entrails were draped and across his brother’s chest, past where his torn and bloody cock fucked his brother’s slack mouth. Snape found two more manacled ankles and flopping nearby a pair of manacled wrists. He released them. There was a relieved whimper from Rabastan’s belly. Backing away, Snape leveled his wand at the still twitching form of Rudolphus Lestrange.
~Avada Kedavra~
Then he was back in the corridor, the door shut against the sight and the smell, breathing deep breaths of fresh air.
Lucius Malfoy had already collected himself. He seemed to be covering his earlier cowardice by enjoying Snape’s discomposure with a certain malicious glee.
“Our Lord won’t thank you for being so merciful. He will have wanted to question Lestrange as to who did this.”
Snape allowed himself the luxury of an extra moment to compose himself before responding. “He wouldn’t have survived long enough for us to bring a mediwitch,” he said, pleased that his voice at least had returned to its detached drone, “nevermind surviving being questioned by Voldemort.
“What was he saying?” Lucius asked. It was an indication of how shaken he still was that he didn’t twit Snape for using Voldemort’s name so casually.
“Bella,” Snape replied uneasily.
“He was asking for his wife?”
“No. He was cursing her for killing them.”
******************
Note: The quote “Death is a debt we all must pay” is from Euripides.