Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ This Wild World of Ours ❯ Chapter 1

All Harry Potter characters are owned by J.K. Rowling. Those not recognizable are mine unless other wise stated in an author's note.

 

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She'd died long ago-not physically; no, the world had needed her too much for that. But what had once been her heart was now merely the facade of the thing-only a beating, pulsing thing, with no room for silly, nonsensical notions of love. And for that reason and more, five years before, the Death Eaters had re-entered her life.

Another bar, another drink. Smiles and laughs abounded, but the one woman in the corner that took it all in was not smiling or laughing. Black hair streaked with purple hung around her face, one eye hidden to the world and uncaring, the other visible and just as violently blazing with hatred.

“You look like you could use some company,” a cold voice to her right remarked, its owner sidling into the booth beside her and pulling his rain-covered black hood back from his detached face.

“Lucius Malfoy,” she'd answered, preparing for a bout of pitilessly argumentative stinging comments. Yet her old comrade's next sentence was unexpectedly tantalizing.

“Come back to us, hm?” Lucius had asked, his thin, long-fingered hands grasping the equally thin handle of a wine glass. “Surely you've felt the mark burn as well, Rhianna. We all have.” His ice-shot grey eyes burned into hers from across the table, daring her to contradict the words falling like venomous snakes form his tongue.

“Damn you...” she'd answered suddenly, unequivocally, a silent torment reflected million-fold in her tortured, dead eyes. “The burdens are not mine. I never wore the cloak and dagger, Lucius.” A silent tear slipped down her cheek.

“No,” he answered, wiping away the unexpected moisture with a finger. “But you accepted the fact that you might have to when you let us burn the mark into your forearm.” He slipped the note to her then, his hand taking hers and squeezing for a brief moment of silent understanding before he pulled away and stood up. “I need to go. My wife will worry.”
“Of course,” Rhianna answered, absently taking the note and slipping it into a jacket pocket. “You're married now...” A silence ensued, and then Rhianna looked up and smiled briefly, an almost unseen sparkle in her eyes. “All right, then. We'll be in touch.” Lucius nodded as he pulled his hood back over his head, turned, and walked away. He turned back once at the door, only to see that the woman had disappeared. A smile touched his pale lips as he, too, vanished, and reappeared in his house. He looked over to Bellatrix and nodded resignedly.

“She knows.”

 

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Rhianna's fingers moved absently over the worn parchment, not really following any particular pattern. Lucius stood on her left side, Bella on her right. The other remaining Death Eaters ranged in a circle around the lone figure in the middle, silence reigning completely over everything. “You've come back to us, Rhianna,” the cold, starved voice finally said, almost everyone jolting to attention, heads lifting, robes whispering.

“You called,” came the answer from the woman's bloodred lips, her hair still black and streaked throughout with purple. The bald figure nodded.

“True, true...Crucio!” This last word thrown out viciously, snapped off at the last syllable as if the man could not wait to get it off his tongue so it could do its dirty work. The woman jerked and collapsed, a hand to her forehead. Her mouth remained closed, no sounds escaping from the treacherous orifice. “It took you long enough. Five years, in fact. Did you forget your oath?”

“The oath of a desperate woman in pain?” the woman on the ground rasped out, a small laugh also escaping with the words. “How could I forget? Driven along into only you know fully what, and not a word of what was to come? Yes, I remember, master. I remember completely the night you burned the mark of death into my arm.”

“Good,” Voldemort answered, silently removing the painful curse from the woman kneeling on the ground. She stood up slowly, supported by the blonde man on her left. “And now it is time for you to, as you so tastefully put it those five long years ago, don the cloak and dagger.” He threw her wand back at her, along with a long black hooded robe. Rhianna struggled into the robe and slipped her wand into the sleeve, still grimacing in pain. “Now then...all of you...leave. And wait for my commands.” The black-robed figures disappeared one by one, soon leaving only the Lord of Darkness in the deserted graveyard, a cruelly unnerving laugh on his bloodless lips.