The Daily Prophet, 27 December 1971
In an isolated incident yesterday, a number of merrymakers are believed to have been responsible for the hexing of two Muggles near King’s Cross in northeast London. The Muggles in question, a man and woman, are reported to have suffered a violent outbreak of illness as a result of this encounter, vomiting large slugs and horned toads for several hours. Their memories have since been modified and they have been returned to their families.
Two arrests have been made in connection with the incident, but the Ministry has yet to release the names of those in custody. The Ministry does remain concerned, however, that these two persons are not the sole perpetrators of this attack. Daphne Dawdlebrook, of the Auror Headquarters, commented.
‘The two arrests we have made are certainly connected to this incident,’ she reassured The Daily Prophet. ‘But both persons were highly intoxicated at the time of their arrest. Furthermore, witnesses claim to have seen a group of some five or six people involved in this attack, which gives us reason to believe there are still a number of suspects we should be looking for.’
In addition, several witnesses claim that there were in fact two groups involved in the attack. One witch, who wishes to remain anonymous, insists that she saw a group of clearly intoxicated witches or wizards joined by a second, smaller group shortly before the attack. This second group is reported to have been wearing crude masks, raising the possibility that the incident may have been premeditated. The Ministry has declined to comment on these additional claims.
Dawdlebrook remains confident that this was an isolated incident and urges any further witnesses to come forward. The investigation continues.
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Charlie bid his Black relations farewell at noon on Boxing Day and returned to his own London flat bearing, courtesy of Kreacher, more Christmas dinner leftovers than there should have logically existed. But then, knowing what little he did of the Black’s ancient house-elf, Charlie would not have been surprised if Kreacher habitually cooked an entire second dinner, just in case his beloved masters had felt hungry after the first.
Yet while Charlie had a large platter of turkey and more stuffing and cranberry sauce than he knew what to do with, he found himself so uncommonly busy that he had little time to enjoy the last trappings of Christmas. Several extremely tricky potions matured only on New Year’s Day and so required Charlie’s near constant attention in the week following Christmas. One moment of distraction could ruin an entire year’s supply of very profitable potion.
Draver’s Draught, for example, which was banned for its ability to turn an unsuspecting victim into a virtual worshipper of whosoever slipped him or her the brew, required a clockwise half turn every eleven and three-quarter minutes, or else it turned blood red and emitted a smoke that could put a full-grown man into a permanent vegetative state in under three minutes. Another tricky (and equally illegal) potion was Casper’s Calling, which left victims with haunting visions of ghosts and every other manner of ephemeral beings for the rest of their life, had to be kept unflinchingly at exactly thirty-seven degrees from February 21st until midnight on New Year’s Eve.
It was Evanidus’s Elixir, however, that required most of Charlie’s attention. Evanidus’s Elixir kept one’s outward appearance from aging, even as a person’s organs and bodily functions began to shut down. But the potion was labour intensive. It required two grains of coarse powdered bicorn horn to be added every day at dusk and needed an anti-aging charm cast over it every hour for the last five days before it matured at noon of New Year’s Day. Although Charlie’s elderly house-elf Tolly could assist with tending most potions, Evanidus required a wizard’s magic, such that Charlie found himself leaving his flat very little in the run-up to the New Year.
With this constant busyness, New Year’s seemed to come and go even more quickly than had Christmas. Charlie spent the turning of the year alone, sharing a Butterbeer with Tolly and listening absently to the music and celebrations broadcast on the Wizarding Wireless Network. And then, abruptly, it was 1972. The festive season faded and life seemed to return to something akin to normal. The Christmas decorations disappeared, turkey leftovers were finished off, and the furious activity of the street vendors in Diagon Alley diminished once more into an aimless humdrum.
For Charlie, the sleepless nights spent giving attention to his most finicky potions paid off and he soon had some fifty new vials of various size and colour locked up in a cupboard for safe keeping. As for his brief exchange with Bellatrix at Christmas, the memory of her revelation continued to buzz anxiously at the back of his thoughts until an owl arrived in the middle of January bearing Charlie’s name in heavy black ink.
Charlie was in his study at the time, or at least, he was in the room that had once been intended as a study. It was, like most of his flat, taken up with shelves and cabinets and tables, every single one of which was crammed tightly with a precarious jumble of bottles, vials, jars, ingredient boxes, cauldrons, stirring sticks, and an odd assortment of Other things. And indeed, these Other things deserved the capital letter. There were little silver and gold instruments that whirred and emitted puffs of coloured smoke, and mirror-like objects that showed no reflection. Fully a dozen pocket watches were scattered about the room, some thrown in corners, others hanging from the wall, none of them bearing a simple twelve-numbered watch face. The only thing that distinguished this particular room as a study was a general proliferation of haphazardly strewn books. Some of them were vibrating.
“Master Charlie!” From the doorway, a high-pitched voice that rattled with age drew Charlie’s attention away from a bronze cauldron over which he had been leaning, repairing a melted hole at its base. A stooped old house-elf stood in the doorway, framed by the light of the gas lamps in the hallway beyond. The elf had a button nose and long, drooping ears from which sprouted the same curly white wisps of hair that clung to the wrinkled skin under its chin.
“An owl, Master Charlie!” wheezed Tolly, excitedly waving a letter in one hand and hopping from foot to foot as if he were far younger than he looked. A tiny pair of circular glasses perched across his round nose.
“An owl? At this time?” Charlie said, checking one of the pocket watches that hung on the wall and then adjusting his own pair of crystal reading glasses. He left off the bronze cauldron and accepted the letter from Tolly’s bouncing hand.
“Twas most unusual,” Tolly went on, round grey eyes watching Charlie unfold the letter. “It insisted on entering through the kitchen window and would not go away until Tolly opened it! It must not be knowing of the post box, Tolly thought, but now Tolly is thinking is did not wish to be seen at Master’s door! The owl is not wanting to be seen, that is, not the letter. Tis quite late for owls to be dropping in, unless they is being told to go by dark. Yes?”
“Mmm,” Charlie replied absently. But he was already reading and seemed to miss most of Tolly’s meandering suspicions. The letter was only a few lines.
Dear Uncle,
My friend would like to meet with you as soon as possible. He will await your arrival tomorrow evening at the rear of The Green House, at seven. I trust you will take the necessary precautions. Please send your elf with your reply.
Regards,
Bella
“It’s from Bella,” Charlie grunted at Tolly, once he had finished reading. The house-elf was bobbing up and down eagerly for information. “You remember her? Little Bella?”
“Oh yes!” Tolly answered wheezily. “Little Miss Bella, one of Master’s favourites.” Judging from the beaming smile that now flitted across the elf’s face, this clearly translated into Little Miss Bella also being one of Tolly’s favourites. “What is Miss Bella wanting?”
Charlie seemed to ignore Tolly, gently fiddling with the scroll of parchment in thought. Gradually, however, a smug grin began to creep into his eyes until he waved the letter at the house-elf. “The Dark Lord wants to meet with me, with me. For all his secret and mystery, he can’t get by without old Charlie’s help. How about that, eh?” He shoved a pile of books off of a nearby chair and seated himself.
“Well, Master is a very important person,” Tolly replied solemnly, a touch indignant, as if this should have been obvious to the wider world. He bowed profusely as he hastened forward and immediately began tidying the upset heap of books into a slightly more respectable stack. “Master is making all sorts of witches and wizards great and they is never thanking him. And it upsets Tolly most grievously!”
“Oh hush, Tolly,” Charlie said, though he looked pleased. “I know who owes me a debt and they know I know. That is enough for me. But I wonder...” he continued, now speaking as if to himself. “What sort of need might this Dark Lord have of me? Information? Something of a Dark magical nature? Well, there is enough of a thriving market in that respect that he should hardly have need of my skills for finding most Dark objects of any significance. Information then, I would hazard to guess. How intriguing, that he wishes to meet as soon as possible.”
“Perhaps he is knowing that Master should not be kept waiting.”
“Mm,” Charlie replied absently, again seeming to ignore Tolly. Yet he straightened after a second and waved Bellatrix’s letter at the elf. “Find Bella, Tolly, and tell her I shall attend her friend at the appointed time and place. Then return here.”
Tolly nodded obediently and gave a sweeping bow with both arms extended. Then the wrinkled old elf disappeared with a crack.
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A scattering of white stretched lazily across Hogsmeade as day faded into night the next evening, but what little snow clung still to the rooftops and muddy streets was rapidly turning to ice. The clear skies above threatened a hard frost by morning. Most of the village’s residents seemed to have made a point of settling in early for the night rather than braving the clear cold, for the streets boasted only a handful of passersby when Charlie Apparated into an alley just off the High Street at exactly half-past six.
He first checked to make sure the alley was appropriately abandoned, and then withdrew from one of his many pockets a metallic purple pocket watch. Once opened, it revealed a series of tiny gold concentric circles, each with a teeth-like pattern on its outer edge, each spinning either clockwise or counter-clockwise at varying speeds. Charlie stared at the miniscule contraption for a second, seemed satisfied, and again pocketed the watch. He approached the High Street.
For a few seconds, he lingered in the shadow of the alley in which he stood, but once it became apparent that none of the sparse witches and wizards on the street had any interest in him, Charlie stepped out onto the frozen road and began making his way in the direction of the Hogsmeade station. He could see the glow of The Three Broomsticks as he came around a bend, but abruptly turned down another alley before he neared the inn. This alley was wider than the one into which he had Apparated, but it was hardly any more inviting, being blanketed in a velvety darkness. It continued past the rear walls of the two buildings that flanked its entrance onto the High Street and revealed further on yet more building fronts, though most of these appeared to be houses. Just as the alley seemed to widen into a small road of sorts, Charlie passed two men who were whispering quickly and kept looking over their shoulders up the hill that the road began to climb ahead of Charlie.
“”most horrible shrieking all the time!” Charlie heard one of the men hiss as they shuffled past him. He followed their backward glances to the dark bulk of a building that squatted at the top of the hill. It was clearly abandoned and, judging from its slightly tipsy appearance, quite dilapidated as well. Charlie had known it as the Hill House for many years, being simply a long-abandoned home atop a hill. But rumour had it that a ghost of exceptional violence had taken up residence there sometime in the last six months and now periodically vented its fury to the night with enough screams and wails to keep even the most brazen away. Already the profiteers were calling the house the Shrieking Shack in an effort to stoke a potentially profitable tourist niche.
Yet it was not the Hill House “ or rather, the Shrieking Shack “ for which Charlie was now bound. Out of the darkness to his right emerged a low building with a wide overhang and single green lantern hung outside. The lantern gave murky light to a small sign that hung beside the door.
THE GREEN HOUSE
Enter Ye of Pure Magic
Est. 1456
Finally, Charlie’s pocket watch (this one not purple, but a battered silver piece with planets circling the outside) showed nearly seven. He turned up his collar and approached The Green House.
The dark front door of the establishment opened into a wide entrance hall with a ceiling that was magically higher than the low roof outside should have allowed. A dapper concierge in jet black dress robes stood stiff-backed behind a podium.
“Master Charles,” said the concierge without hesitation when he looked up to see Charlie closing the door behind him. The concierge gave a rigid bow and came around from behind his lectern, but Charlie waved a hand at the man.
“Never mind, Brooks. I know the way. Which parlour is Bellatrix Black in?”
“Ahem,” Brooks coughed, bowing a second time, even as he retreated once more behind his precious lectern. “Miss Black is in the first parlour, Master Charles. She is accompanied by several companions.”
“Good, good,” Charlie nodded. He left the entrance hall behind and followed a dark corridor lit with more green lanterns until it opened into the main of the restaurant, where a muffled hum of voices, cutlery, and fine china gave evidence to its being dinnertime. But Charlie continued along the far wall until the passageway left behind the main eating area once more and narrowed to another dark corridor. This one ended at a T with a wide hallway, where a number of dark, numbered doors faced Charlie. He chose the one with a brass number one at its centre.
As was his habit, Charlie did not knock before entering the parlour. In this case, however, the unexpected intrusion on those within did little to serve him, for the silence behind the door told him that no conversation had been active at the time of his entrance. The room was far from empty, however.
Two men stood leaning on either side of the mantelpiece, under which the crackling fire was the only noise that broke the quiet parlour stillness. Both men were middle-aged, but one was thin with clever blue eyes, while the other was thickset, swarthy, and had a narrow, penetrating gaze. Charlie knew them both from prior business dealings; Thaddeus Nott and Marius Mulciber, respectively. Yet before Charlie had a chance to greet either man, Bellatrix stepped out from behind the door and gestured for him to enter.
“Uncle Charlie,” she said smoothly, smiling as she closed the door behind him. “So good of you to join us. How are you?” Her voice was as heavy as her eyelids and it drawled almost condescendingly by habit, but Charlie was barely listening to her contrived pleasantries. His eyes were sweeping the room. One of the high-backed chairs around the fire had its back to him and he peered to see if anyone was sitting there.
“Yes, yes, a pleasure, of course,” he said, speaking just a little too quickly and thereby betraying his eagerness. He cleared his throat. “Well?”
“Ah yes,” Bellatrix replied, smirking. She turned to face the fireplace and seemed to straighten as if to attention, then gestured for Charlie to do the same. He frowned and made some small effort to stand taller with his hands behind his back, but a short man with a pudgy mid-section does not cut a terribly impressive figure even when stood as rigid as a board, and he seemed well aware of the futility of attempting to imitate the much taller Bellatrix.
Bellatrix coughed. “My Lord. Charlie is here to meet you.”
At first there was no response from the chair with its back to them, but then a soft rustle of cloth was followed by an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. It was a man’s voice, but unusually sharp, as if something had been drained from it. “Come,” it said, simply.
Charlie glanced at Bellatrix first, then gathered his robes about him and moved slowly towards the fireplace, circling so as to come around to the front of the chair. Neither Nott nor Mulciber moved or made any greeting to him. Charlie shuffled into the light of the fire and turned to face the chair.
Many years of diligent practice had deadened Charlie’s face to revealing emotions when he chose to mask them, but the sight of the man who occupied the high-backed chair drew from him a small intake of breath and his eyes flickered wide for a second before he could force himself once more to adopt a neutral expression. The man before him smiled. Like his voice, the Dark Lord’s person seemed a mockery of man, as if some essential essence that made it human had been drained from it. His face was deathly pale and waxy, even in the orange glow of the fire, and its features were oddly distorted, as a clay bust of a striking man whose once-prominent facial bones have been inexplicably flattened. What drew the small intake of breath from Charlie, however, were the Dark Lord’s eyes. There were pupils there, but the whites were shot through with a bloody red. They gave leap even to Charlie’s stoic heart.
Recovering himself, Charlie gave an appropriately deferential bow to the man known as the Dark Lord. “So, you are the Dark Lord,” he stated simply with an attempt at his familiar, confident grin. The Dark Lord steepled his unusually long fingers and stared appraisingly at Charlie with a half-smile, giving no response. Charlie felt suddenly very silly. His grin faded.
Still the Dark Lord said nothing. Unexpectedly, Charlie found himself overcome with the urge to say something, to express his admiration for the Dark Lord perhaps, anything that might break that pale silence and return to Charlie a measure of his command over the situation. He did not, however. It was an odd feeling, for Charlie, usually so self-assured, to feel himself beholden to speak in front of that penetrating, bloodshot gaze. Yet still he did not. These unfamiliar emotions roiled within him, but his face was impassive, his body relaxed, his eyes unwavering as they held the Dark Lord’s.
Finally, the Dark Lord spoke. “I have heard much about you, Charlie.”
“I imagine,” Charlie replied after a second. He was surprised to hear a certain breathlessness in his voice. “And I about you.”
“And what have you heard about me, Charlie?”
The older wizard narrowed his eyes. As with Bellatrix at Christmas, he felt his usual dry wit giving way to strict formality. Something in the Dark Lord’s authoritative demeanour commanded it. “That you stand for wizard’s rights,” Charlie said slowly. “That you oppose the Ministry with its love of Muggles and Mudbloods. That you value the strength of a wizard’s blood.”
The Dark Lord nodded, still half-smiling. “And do you wish to stand with me?”
Charlie chose his next words carefully. “I wish to support you, yes, my Lord. Your aims are my own.”
“Are they?” he replied. There was something disturbingly knowing about the Dark Lord’s expression. “You are an old man, Charlie. You have had many years to pursue these aims you profess to own. Why so suddenly eager, in the twilight of your life?”
Something within Charlie bristled at the blunt appraisal of his age, which had never slowed him enough to particularly notice its continued march. His face remained neutral, however, and he even smiled. “You ought to know the answer to that if anything you have heard of me is true. I am no leader. You are said to live in shadow, my Lord, but my own shadows are very different from yours. I am the man who makes things happen, but who is forgotten as soon as they are done. My shadows erase my memory, where yours merely conceal your person.”
“Of course.” The Dark Lord was silent for a time, staring at Charlie from over his steepled fingers. Finally, he said softly, “But how to trust you?”
Charlie frowned. “Trust me, my Lord?”
“Your shadows are thick, Charlie. Who knows what may lurk within them. Who knows where your true loyalties lie. I do not even know your true name.”
“You are not alone then,” Charlie replied, more confidently. “Few do. But it is not so different for you. My true name is forgotten and so I am called Charlie. Your true name is forgotten and so you are called Voldemort.”
Yet if Charlie had sought to earn the Dark Lord’s trust by comparing their similarities, then he most grievously mistook the other man’s character. Instead of flashing the indulgent smile that Charlie had anticipated, the Dark Lord’s eyes glittered red and a cold displeasure leapt across his pale face. Charlie stared at the waxy mask in surprise, frowning at the unexpected reaction.
And suddenly, like a horde of spidery fingers, he felt a presence unlike any he had ever experienced delve deep and uninvited into his thoughts. Indeed, to call it a mere presence did little justice to the force of its power. As if roughly hurtling through the archives of his mind, Charlie found himself physically thrown back as the force of a thousand memories flashed before his eyes, an endless, impossibly fast reel of images.
He was a short, squat little boy with a thatch of black hair, playing Quidditch with his brother and sister on toy brooms in the garden of their London townhouse. He was eleven years old, sitting nervously beneath a tattered old wizard’s cap as a small voice muttered in his ear of talent and resourcefulness and the ambition to be indispensible to others, before finally crying out SLYTHERIN! Then Charlie was a teenager, almost a young man, good-looking but still pitifully short, and so he was the calculating whisperer beside a tall boy with blond hair and a pointed face. Just as quickly as the others, this memory dissolved and another, darker one flashed before him.
High, grey walls choked the poor light of the room in which Charlie sat, still a young man but now dressed in dirty grey robes, his face thin. A grasping coldness stole over him as waves crashed somewhere outside. And the image changed again. Now Charlie was approaching middle-age, smiling as a young girl with red-brown hair played tic-tac-toe across from a house-elf with drooping ears and a button nose. Then the image vanished. Charlie was fully middle-aged. Grey streaked his hair and beard as he stood in the middle of Flourish and Blotts, arguing with a boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen; the former shouting about stupidity and brashness, the latter crying about weakness and the decrepitude of age. A dozen more memories rushed past Charlie’s eyes, each of a meeting in a dark and secret place to arrange dark and secret business: the sale of a blood red vial of potion, a request for a box of cursed Russian dolls, a conversation about how to dispense with a particularly inquisitive Ministry investigator.
These dissolved to show the interior of the Hog’s Head and Charlie, now clearly an older man, crouched over a table with the barkeep there, complaining of Fenewick Cambridge and leprechaun gold and of a young new upstart threatening to make fanatics of everyone. Then Charlie was puffing on a pipe that emitted purple smoke, smirking at a black-haired, square-jawed man. The scene dissolved and he could hear the music of The Holly Wand as he spoke in whispers with Bellatrix and felt a surge of excitement at the prospect of meeting the Dark Lord.
And then it was over. The images had not slowed or become faster as they approached the present; they simply ceased to flash in one gasp of a moment.
The parlour of The Green House swam before Charlie. He head throbbed as if his brain had been prised from it and a gaping hole left its place. He even felt his fingers shakily probe through his silver hair, as if expecting to feel the hole that must exist. Yet they found nothing but the solid outside of his skull and the wispy smoothness of his thinning hair. Gradually, Charlie became aware that he was no longer standing. The strength of the Dark Lord’s Legilimency seemed to have forced his knees to buckle, for he was crouched on the ground, one hand propped against the floor as if he were about to be sick.
It took several seconds for the flood of memories to give way to reality once more. As they did, Charlie noticed that he was breathing very heavily and that every semblance of impassiveness that he had contrived to maintain in front of the Dark Lord had been wiped away. The shock, the horror, must have been writ across his face as plain as day. He was not unaccomplished as an Occlumens, but the force of the Dark Lord’s skill, the suddenness with which he had employed it, had easily disarmed Charlie’s defences.
As he shivered uncontrollably, Charlie felt fully the reality of the Dark Lord’s unforgiving assessment of his old age. Charlie’s eyes slowly rose, a mixture of horror and fascination swimming behind them as he looked up at the pale figure before him. The Dark Lord was watching him intently, his expression both commanding and pleased.
“Forgive me,” he said, without remorse, after a second. “It is a blunt instrument one must employ to be certain of one’s allies. You will understand. Please, take a seat.”
Charlie could feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck and he still shook slightly, but he came unsteadily to his feet and collapsed into one of the lounge chairs across from the Dark Lord. He said nothing.
The Dark Lord stared closely at Charlie for several seconds while the older wizard fought to control his laboured breathing and re-adopt a neutral expression. But it was a sly smugness that crept into the pale face across from him. The cocky old man had been satisfyingly undone.
The Dark Lord drew a breath and asked, almost conversationally, “When were you in Azkaban?”
Charlie straightened, running a hand through his hair. Despite his struggle to regain his composure, he watched the Dark Lord with eyes that were wide with a rapt attention. When he spoke, it was slowly. “A long time ago. Years ago. Everybody...everybody makes mistakes when they’re young.” His words felt stilted, as if they had been dredged up from some mind that was not his own.
“And what was your mistake?”
“Getting caught.” The reply was automatic, a familiar quip that Charlie often used when questioned about his time in prison. But the ease with which it came to his lips gave him a measure of renewed confidence, as did the indulgent smile that now spread across the Dark Lord’s face.
“Of course,” said the high-pitched voice, softly whispering a chuckle. “Very well, why were you arrested then?”
“I...killed two Muggles,” Charlie answered, speaking haltingly. “Accidently, I mean, but still. They lived a floor below my flat. Always complaining. About me. So one day I vanished the wheel of their Otto Mobel....th”the moving things Muggles use to get around. The wheel turns their direction, I think. Well. The thing”the Otto Mobel”the damn thing crashed. Killed them both. Not...not one of my more subtle decisions.”
The Dark Lord looked thoughtful at that, but did not pursue it. “How long were you in Azkaban for?”
“Two years,” Charlie said after a moment.
“Two years?”
Charlie gave a half-hearted sardonic smile. “It was a better time for wizards then, when the Ministry didn’t play slave to the idea that Muggles were worth making a fuss over.”
“Mm,” the Dark Lord mused, tilting his head slightly as he stared at Charlie. “Two years in Azkaban and yet you are still sane?”
Charlie shrugged weakly, frowning as if suspicious of the Dark Lord’s meaning. “It’s not impossible.”
“I see.” Again, the Dark Lord paused, regarding Charlie intently. Again, he abruptly continued his interrogation. “Who were the girl and the boy?”
“The...” Charlie started, and then coughed. His voice suddenly became bored. “My daughter and son. Long grown up.”
And then he felt it. With far more delicacy than before, a whisper of the brutal presence that had stolen into Charlie’s mind now brushed across the surface of his thoughts. No more images flashed across his vision, but he had the oddest feeling, as if he was speaking into a box and his voice was a mere thing, while the emotion he sought to conceal was the true object of significance. The Dark Lord knew well that the boredom in Charlie’s voice was contrived.
“I...” he started again, compelled now to make it seem as if it had been his original intent to tell the Dark Lord the full truth. “I never see my son anymore. But my daughter I am close to.”
The Dark Lord nodded, apparently satisfied. “And what do you think of me now, Charlie? Am I some young new upstart intent upon making fanatics of everyone?”
Charlie felt blood flood his face and knew it must be reddening, but he gave a half-hearted shrug. “No,” he said, too casually. “I did not know you for who you were then. There have been many before you, many who failed to achieve anything other than to create a short-lived ruckus. But you...” Charlie gestured towards the Dark Lord, and it came to him in an instant what he must say. “You are different, my Lord.”
Voldemort smiled. “I know. And now you know. And soon the world will know just how different I am.”
Charlie nodded slowly, and then let his gaze fall to the wooden floorboards. He dared not return his usual sarcasm, or smugness, or condescension. In a few meagre moments, Charlie had learned the awesomeness of the Dark Lord’s magical strength. Even now, Charlie knew that those ghostly fingers were probing his mind for any semblance of emotion that was not completely submissive. It was everything Charlie could do to still his thoughts of irritation and bravado and conceal them behind eyes that would not meet the Dark Lord’s.
“In the war that will come, I will need to understand perfectly those who work against me, Charlie,” the Dark Lord said after a moment. Charlie looked up again. His face was unreadable. “I understand that you are very good at procuring this type of information.”
Charlie nodded, slowly again. “I am, my Lord. What information do you require?”
A pale hand waved dismissively and Voldemort appeared suddenly bored. “Much,” he said softly. “My informants have been...unreliable, on more than one occasion. I am told that you have no such failing. Nott.” The Dark Lord waved again and this time the thin man with the clever blue eyes came forward without a word. He withdrew a large leather pouch and placed it on the table before Charlie.
“Consider this a good faith payment,” the Dark Lord continued. “My associates will contact you shortly. And you, meanwhile, I trust will continue to inform me of anything you should consider pertinent.” It was not a request, and the trust was not a declaration of faith in Charlie’s character so much as the Dark Lord’s confidence in his own fearful power.
“Of course, my Lord,” Charlie replied automatically. Instinct told him no other answer was permitted. He reached out and took the bag of coins, pocketing it. Then Nott made a small movement, indicating the door and signalling the end of the meeting. But before he stood, Charlie reached into his robes and withdrew a tiny round orb, a green marble with a sliver of silver through the middle. He placed it on the table between the Dark Lord and himself.
“Should you ever have immediate need of me, my Lord,” he said, careful to keep his eyes down, “this will tell me. Simply hold it in your palm and speak your purpose to it.”
The Dark Lord lifted a brow, making his distorted face seem even more oddly arranged. “How quaint,” he said finally, and then waved Charlie away with one deft movement of his long, pale fingers. The older wizard nodded and came to his feet.
Bellatrix, he noticed, was staring wide-eyed and hungrily at him, as if he had just experienced an unparalleled honour. Mulciber and Nott remained silent. Nodding his farewell, Charlie made for the door and was met there by Bellatrix, who opened it for him and whispered quickly as he shuffled through.
“I will speak to you soon, Uncle.”
He nodded in response and exited without a word. Only once the door clicked shut behind him did Charlie’s shoulders slump with a release of tension. He stood there for a moment, composing himself as he silently processed all that had transpired in the past half hour.
Relief gradually gave way to amazement and amazement faded to a mixture of horror and excitement. Charlie had come expecting to treat with the Dark Lord as an equal, but now that the ordeal was finished, he felt rather like a chastened child. He was no crony of the Dark Lord’s, but his subservience was sealed, in the same way the impertinent child reveres the terrible power of a father. One thing at least was certain as Charlie glanced at the closed parlour door behind him.
He would never again speak aloud the name of Voldemort. The deathly pale wizard with the blood-red eyes deserved the title of Dark Lord and nothing less would do.