The Potions Master's Daughter (Book Six)

Chapter 24

The rest of the week passed in much of the same manner. Neville and I tried to keep our thoughts more to ourselves during class and had only received one more detention in which we were tortured but it wasn't nearly as bad as it was that first time. Ginny was also being very outspoken in class, nad I had to heal her twice from her wounds inflicted by one of the Carrow siblings. We had even spoken to some very trusted friends about reforming parts of the DA to be ready to fight when the end fight would finally come. Everyone was more than happy to do something to screw over the Carrows and my father as well as Voldemort however indirectly it may be.

That Saturday night I went up to my father's office, which I still thought of as Dumbledore's office and bid him goodbye before I took the Floo network from his office to Malfoy Manor to meet up with the Dark Lord.

When I was ushered into the back room by Narcissa my heart dropped. My mother was seated next to Voldemort. I may have been okay i I had my father by my side right now, but there was no one to protect me except myself, and I always had a problem when it came to the woman in front of me.

"I figured it would be nice to have some family bonding," Voldemort explained, "Both of you are very important to my end plan afterall. Come let's go practice. Marlene do you want to come?"

I had never seen Voldemort ask a single other person what they wanted in my whole life. It made me wonder what my mother had ever done to gardner so much respect from the Dark Lord.

"I'd love to see how she's been progressing for myself if that's okay with you," was my mother's reply.

With a ball of nerves in my stomach I allowed Voldemort to apparate both of us to our familiar spot in the woods where we went to practice. Now that she was bathed in moonlight I was able to see my mother more clearly. She looked better and more full of life than she ever had when I was younger, or perhaps my perception had just changed a lot since then. On her collarbone sat a jewel encrusted snake necklace that immediately piqued my interest for I had seen that necklace before. In a memory with Dumbledore I had seen that necklace when Morfin Gaunt had been showing it off as his family heirloom, and one of the last good things he had. I wondered how my mother came to have it, and why Voldemort didn't recognize that it should be his. There were ties my mother had that I hadn't figured out yet, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

I spent the next three hours laboriously fighting against Voldemort. I didn't know what he had been doing the past couple months while he was gone, but it had dramatically improved his skills. I was holding back just slightly,  but we were very evenly matched in the moments that I didn't hold back at all. He taught me more Dark Cruises that I was eager to know about. I told myself it was the knowledge I liked, not the fact that he thought I was worth giving his knowledge to.

"You need to straighten up when you cast that spell," my mother interjected once while we were dueling, "it will give you a faster shot when his back is turned against you gearing up for the next spell that he always casts."

Once we were done Voldemort conjured three chairs for the three of us to sit in. The air was a brisk, cool breeze against my skin as Autumn air tended to be. Sitting here with my mother and the ark Lord was the last thing I wanted to be doing right now, but I had to say the weather was surely very lovely.

"I want you there when I duel Harry," Voldemort declared, "I have been having issues with my own wand, and have been searching for another with little success, so I might need someone to back me up, or merely someone to provide reinforcement so as to take him down more quickly."

"Whatever you please is most agreeable to me my Lord," I replied though i wasn't certain how I would be able to help; anyone could win in a duel against Harry I was afraid.

When there was a lull in the conversation I decided it was time to be bold and get some answers, "That's a very pretty necklace, where id you ever get something so exquisite?:

My mother held it up to her face and looked at it before replying, "I never thought you were into things of this sort. It was a gift given to me by a close friend. It was something very important to their family."

Seh exchanged a glance with Voldemort as she said this and then the corners of her mouth turned up as she spoke, as if hiding an inside joke from me. I inwardly rolled my eyes, I was no closer to finding out why Voldemort had given it to her if it was so important to him, but at least I was pretty sure it was the necklace I had seen.

When I came back to my dormitory finally and fell asleep I was too tired to remember to take my option so I fell into a very fitful sleep.

I had another dream that mirrored some of the other dreams I had been having. This time, the little girl was no longer a baby, instead she looked about two years old. She was now walking and gurgling a few words out in broken English. The man from last time was not there, but the woman seated on the couch drew my attention even more than the man had. My mother was seated on the familiar couch, with a cup of tea in her hand, and a book in the other. The blanket that I now possessed from Dumbledore was strewn over the arm of the chair she was sitting in.

My mother looked much younger and nicer than any woman I had ever met, and for the life of me I couldn't remember ever seeing that house, but I was more sure than ever that the girl was me. There were still a few problems, concerning the girl's appearance. She had much blacker hair than I idd, and her eyes were a light green shade. Her smile was much wider than the smile I now had. If this was me, what happened to cause me to look so different? And if it wasn't me, then who was this girl? DId I have a sister my mother never told me about? And if I did, then what happened to her?

I woke up with my mind reeling and a thin layer of sweat coating my body from breathing so heavily. I threw the blankets off of me and went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror examining myself, trying to find similarities or differences to the girl in my dreams.

I took the glamour off myself so there was nothing to hide.I held a strand of hair within my fingers and noticed how brown it was. I stared at my eyes. They were a piercing red now, but there was a thin rim of light green pupil around the red. I smiled, and tried to make my smile wider to match the baby's. The green scales crawling up the side of my neck were new but they helped reassure me that I couldn't' be that girl. I never remembered living in that house, and my mother had told me we lived in the same house I remembered since I was born.

I gritted my teeth and put back on my glamor before returning to bed. I didn't mention it to anyone, even as I saw Neville, Ginny and seamus the next morning. Neville told me that Seamus was falling into a bit of a depressive stupor without his best friend by his side, and my heart went out to the kids. Neville's bruise on the side of his face was finally healing, he hadn't let me heal it. Ginny had a long gash along the side of her face from when she spoke back to Amycus in class.