The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

The Chamber

The Chamber

The ocean was angry. It roared, crashing against the rocks as a storm blew in over the Atlantic. Waves smashed into the stone and high above the wind whistled as it struck the clifftop, moving the grasses on the moors. The sound of the sea's bellowing was so loud that even standing upon the very rock where they apparated, you never would have heard the crack that accompanied the arrival.

Voldemort's robes twisted around his figure in the low light of the horrible storm, the wind whipping them around his legs and Maryrose's clothes were not enough to even begin to keep her warm against the weather. Far, far off across the ocean and the beach and the moore, she could almost see her house - or at least imagined she could - and she wondered whether her Mother and Father were warm and safe, if Pandora was there or with Xenophilius somewhere. She wondered what their wedding would be like.

She doubted very much that she would ever get back to see it.

They'd been standing in the room at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Rudolphus had gone to get James, and she could hear their duel, hear James's voice shouting words and the anger in Rudolphus's voices, the weird quacking and fluttering of fowl, and the moment James had escaped. The Dark Lord had gone into a rage, cruciatused Rudolphus like a madman, and pressed his Dark Mark in anger, sending several Death Eaters that responded after James Potter and Lucy Minchum. "Get them," he had hissed, "Or suffer the fate of Orion Black!" and then she'd turned to Rudolphus Lestrange and continued inflicting the cruciatus until Rudolphus had begun to cry like a baby upon the floor. Then, he had turned to Maryrose.

Kreacher, the Black Family house elf had come in the room during the administration of the torture curse and he'd hovered awkwardly, blocked by Walburga. He'd looked anxious and nervous and been tugging at his ears and biting at his fingers, which were sore and red from him punishing himself several times already. Walburga had looked down and noticed him and shouted, "GET BACK TO YOUR CUPBOARD, KREACHER!" and pointed to the door and the elf had gone nearly mad with a whining, wheezing, ear-tugging sort of madness. "Crucio," hissed Walburga aiming for the little elf and he'd toppled over, crying and run from the room the moment she lifted the curse.

He hadn't gone far, though, they could still hear him hissing and wheezing and tugging his ears in the hall, just outside the door, where he'd taken cover.

Voldemort had turned to Maryrose then. "You underestimate me. You think the Dark Lord does not know when he has been deceived? The Dark Lord knows everything. Maryrose Jenkins." He leaned forward and tapped her head with his wand. "Revelio."

Clearly not everything. He didn't know that it wasn't a spell or polyjuice that had transfigured Maryrose into looking like Lucy Minchum. And he looked quite confused when his spell didn't work to change her back and he rapped her over the head, quite roughly, with his wand and tried again... and again, frustrated.

"You bleeding idiot, I'm a metamorphmagus!" Maryrose had shouted after she'd been rapped several times. The words were out of her mouth faster than she ever could've edited them and she looked up at him with nearly as much shock as he looked at her.

Recovering, Voldemort had hissed, commanded Walburga to see to it that the Potter Boy and the MInchum Girl were restrained the moment the Death Eaters returned with them, and he would return. (Not "we" Maryrose noticed later) and he grabbed hold on her arm and he disapparated with her.

That was how they'd come to be standing upon the rocks there in the ocean by the mouth of that horrible, awful inferius-infested cave. Voldemort was still clutching Maryrose roughly by her arm, holding it up at an awkward angle, his fingers so tight around her that they were bruising her skin and she cried out when he whipped her along beside him, walking hurriedly, expertly, over the rocks that had taken her nearly all of her life to figure out how to walk without falling upon. It was very clear, very quickly, that the Dark Lord had been here before, that he knew these stones very well. As well as she did.