"Severus," Voldemort said, ignoring the woman's raving, sobbing protests, "this unfortunate occasion has pressed me to consider an option that I had hoped would be unnecessary."
James turned and saw Snape standing in front of the closed door of the drawing room. He knew neither Snape nor Voldemort could see him; nevertheless, he felt very uncomfortable standing between them as they spoke. He moved into a nearby corner opposite the staring figure of Lucius Malfoy. Snape merely stood and waited, looking unflinchingly at the awful, snakelike face.
"I have summoned you from your post for the same reason I have dismissed Narcissa, Greyback, and Lucius' son. No one else need know of the duty I am placing upon you. Lucius himself will have his own role if he chooses to accept it; I have every expectation that he will be eager to prove his worth after recent events. But you, Severus, will perform a very important duty in this arrangement."
"Whatever you wish, my Lord," Snape said evenly.
Voldemort went on, stepping away from the hearth. "As you know, Severus, I have prepared Horcruxes, creating an unbroken chain of immortality for my ascendance…"
As Voldemort slowly crossed the room, the broken chandelier rose silently from the floor, allowing him to pass beneath it. The shattered bits of crystal rose with it, turning and glinting in the air like water droplets.
"I am quite confident that these Horcruxes will serve me well; however, in the extremely unlikely event that any of them should be destroyed—"
"Never, my Lord!" Bellatrix cried, still groveling on the floor. "It is impossible!"
"—I have prepared one final Horcrux," Voldemort went on, completely ignoring Bellatrix's outburst. "It is rather unique. In fact, I am quite confident that such a thing has never before been created."
Voldemort reached the center of the room and stopped. As the broken chandelier hovered over him, he reached slowly into his cloak and produced a long, narrow dagger. It was singularly ugly, made of silver with a jewel-encrusted handle. The blade was tarnished to a dark glint, as if it had been rubbed with soot.
"This dagger," Voldemort went on, turning it slowly in the firelight, "is rather special to me. It has travelled with me long and served me on many occasions. You may be interested to know that it once belonged to my father. I took it as an inheritance from his dead hand. Thus, it is quite fitting that this dagger, Severus, is the final and perhaps most important of my Horcruxes. I am entrusting you to safeguard it within the protection of Hogwarts until the time comes for its use."
"I will guard it with my life, my Lord," Snape said, inclining his head. "I am honored to be entrusted with a task that will only add to your long life."
"Alas, Severus," Voldemort said, pulling the dagger away, as if reluctant to give it up. "This is not that sort of Horcrux. With this relic, I am thinking only of future generations. Never let it be said that your Lord is not gracious, for this Horcrux is not to be used for myself. As I have already told you, this Horcrux is special. The part of my soul that it contains is shut off from me forever. I cannot reclaim it. Thus, if, in the remarkable and unimaginable event that every Horcrux but this were destroyed, this dagger would not assure my survival."
Bellatrix gasped, but her eyes were huge and avid as she watched Voldemort. Her gaze never left the dagger as it flitted and glinted in his pale hand.
"The part of my soul locked within this dagger is a gift, my friends. It is meant to be passed on. Lucius, my loyal servant, I have asked you to remain because I know your desperate—and justifiable—desire to prove yourself to me. It shall be your duty and honor to bestow the gift of the dagger should that day ever come."
For the first time, Lucius Malfoy's face flickered with life. He blinked at Voldemort, and then stumbled forward, not quite daring to touch his master.
"Thank you, my Lord! It is my honor! I will not fail you!"
"I am certain of that, Lucius," Voldemort said smoothly, almost kindly. "For if, for some reason, you fail the dagger, it will find you. I have bound it to you, and your family. In the event that something unfortunate befalls Headmaster Snape, you must retrieve the dagger from him. It will be waiting for you. And in the event that the time passes for its use and you have not fulfilled your role, it will seek you with its own intent. It will come for you, and your family. I do trust that you understand."
"I do, my Lord," Lucius rasped, nodding. "I will perform whatever duty you entrust to me. I vow my oath, Master!"
Voldemort nodded slowly. "Then your work begins this day, Lucius. Find for me a worthy vessel. Find a family whose blood is pure but whose loyalties will never be suspect. When the time comes, go to the woman in that family who is with child. She must take the dagger unto herself, and by her own hand, use the dagger to trace my symbol—the first initial of my name—upon the swell of her unborn son, drawing it in her own blood. Let her willingness infuse the life of the dagger into that mother's blood, taking it to the child. Thus, this relic of my soul will be passed on. The boy will carry my essence, made anew, ready to serve yet another generation. This is your duty and your oath to me, Lucius. Swear it."
"I swear, my Lord!" Lucius rasped, falling to one knee.
"My Lord!" Bellatrix cried breathlessly, crawling to her knees and imploring with one hand. "Choose me! Let me be the vessel of your gift to future generations! I will raise the boy to be your perfect image! I am willing! I am eager!"
"Yes, loyal Bellatrix," Voldemort said softly, not turning to her. Bits of the floating crystal chandelier revolved in the air between them. "But your loyalties are your most damning quality for this task. No one must guess in whose womb my soul is to be reborn. Despite your greatest wish, this duty cannot fall to you."
Bellatrix sobbed. "Then why have you kept me here, my Lord?" she wailed desperately. "Why have you retained me only to see my greatest desire plucked from my grasp?"
Voldemort sighed indulgently. "Your very question contains the answer, dear Bellatrix. But do try to look on the bright side: I had considered simply killing you for allowing Harry Potter to slip through your grasp this night. Instead, I have merely killed your greatest dream."
"Nooooo!" Bellatrix shrieked, crumpling, and James' hair stood up. He'd never heard a more despairing, hopeless cry.
Voldemort strode forward, smiling as if Bellatrix's wail of agony was the sweetest music. He held the dagger out to Snape. As Snape took the dagger, the suspended chandelier fell again. It crashed noisily to the floor behind Voldemort, shattering like a bomb and drowning out the pitiful wail of Bellatrix Lestrange.
The memory shattered as well.
There was a flash of swirling smoke, and then one more scene materialized, swimming out of the mists like a fever dream. In this memory, James saw Severus Snape again. He was pacing in the Headmaster's office, which was his own office by this time.
"You seem to misunderstand, Albus," Snape said, speaking apparently to the portrait of Dumbledore on the office wall. "It will not be a request. Slughorn is the man responsible for the Dark Lord's ability to create Horcruxes in the first place. He understands them better than I do. He owes his service to the world to render this one useless."
"If only that were possible, Severus," the portrait of Dumbledore replied. "But it is not. You may destroy the Horcrux, yes, but no one can simply render it ineffective. Besides, I seem to recall that my instruction was to simply poison the instrument, assuring it would kill both the mother and the son it was meant to infiltrate."
"I cannot destroy the dagger while the Dark Lord still lives," Snape replied. "He has bound it to Lucius Malfoy; he will know if it is compromised, and my loyalties will be revealed."
"Then do as I instructed," Dumbledore insisted ardently. "Poison the blade. It is within your abilities. There are any number of undetectable poisons in this very room. Let the same instrument that carries that dark soul also carry its doom."
"You might have been able to oversee the murder of the woman and her child 'for the greater good', Albus, but I'm afra
id that that ability has fled me."
The portrait replied sadly. "Then you are a fool, Severus. The fruit of this Horcrux will be on your head, not Horace Slughorn's."
Snape exhaled slowly, thinking. Finally, he glanced up. "Perhaps not," he said, as if to himself. "Perhaps there is another way."
"You are mistaken, Severus," Dumbledore replied. "My way is the only responsible method. Otherwise, the boy will be born with the thread of Voldemort himself beating in his veins."
Snape smiled slowly, coldly. "Perhaps not…," he said again.
"Surely you do not doubt that the dagger Horcrux will transmit the remnant of Voldemort's soul?"
"I do not," Snape said, narrowing his eyes. "But perhaps it will not be transmitted into a boy…"
Dumbledore sighed patiently. "This is not the time for conspiracies, Severus."
"Indulge me," Snape replied slowly. "I am merely speculating. The Dark Lord believes his soul will pass into a boy child. He is, in his heart, that most arrogant of men, the sort that believes unquestioningly in the superiority of his own gender. But what if Lucius' judgment were to become impaired? What if his divinations were clouded? And as a result, what if the final Horcrux were transmitted to a girl child?"
"That is not evidence that his soul would not dominate the child's personality. She would still be influenced by his living essence."
"His quintessentially male essence," Snape muttered, hardly listening to the portrait. "But how would that balance against the unexpected polarity of her own female heart? How indeed…"
The portrait interrupted gently. "This is speculative foolishness, my friend. I tell you: poison the dagger, or if you cannot, destroy it when the proper time comes."
Snape looked up at the portrait, his eyes narrowed. He took the dagger out of his robes and held it in his hands. It glinted darkly, just as ugly as James had last seen it. Snape nodded.
"Yes," he agreed. "You're right, of course, Albus. When the time is right. I cannot destroy the Horcrux yet; there is too much at stake for my loyalties to be challenged. In the meantime, however, perhaps I will experiment. Lucius Malfoy is bonded to the dagger. I may be able to use that bond, pervert it, cause it to cloud his mind in the event that it does survive. If Lucius succeeds in using the dagger, he will 'accidentally' use it on an unborn girl child, thus foiling his master's wishes. Perhaps, just perhaps, that would be enough to tip the balance. Otherwise, I will destroy the Horcrux myself when the time is right."
"Forgive me, Severus," Dumbledore said, looking him evenly in the eye, "but what if you do not live that long?"
"I have more than one reason to stay alive, Albus," Snape answered, slipping the dagger back into his robes. "And as you well know, destroying this mysterious object is not even the most important. Trust me, I shall be careful."
On Snape's last word—careful—the memory rippled and faded. Swirling, silvery smoke filled James' vision and he realized he was leaning on something hard. It was uncomfortable, so he pushed back from it. As he did, he drew his face away from the bowl of Dumbledore's Pensieve, disoriented and dizzy. Ralph and Rose pulled away at the same moment. They clutched at each other, struggling to stay upright.
"Did you see it?" Scorpius asked. James blinked, recovering his balance. Scorpius was seated on a trunk in the corner of the storage room, leaning languidly against the wall. "Did you see the dagger?"
"I did," James said. "Did you, Rose? And Ralph? I never saw either of you in there."
Rose shook her head in dismay. "I saw it all. I saw Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor Snape talking about the possibility of some sort of successor. And then… I saw him. He Who Must Not Be Named. He was awful."
"I didn't understand a lot of what he said, but I think I got the gist of it," Ralph said, his face pale. "Those Horcrux things were supposed to keep little bits of Voldemort's soul safe, so even if he got killed, he wouldn't really die, right?"
"But the last Horcrux, the one embedded in his father's dagger, was different," Rose nodded. "He couldn't reclaim that part again, no matter what. It was meant to be passed on to a baby boy, carrying that bit of his soul to a new life."
James furrowed his brow. "But why would someone so obsessed with immortality waste a Horcrux on someone else's life?"
Ralph shrugged as if the answer was obvious. "It's still his life, but hidden away. Who'd suspect it? As long as Voldemort was inside Voldemort, all the good wizards in the world were gunning for him. He knew that at least a few people, like your dad, James, would never stop until every last Horcrux was destroyed and every shred of Voldemort was killed. Hiding one last little bit of his soul in some anonymous new baby was sort of genius. I mean, you saw the way Voldemort looked. It wasn't like he could pass himself off unnoticed in a crowd, was it? But if he was part of some little kid, who would ever think to look there? It's the perfect disguise."
"But even so, he wouldn't be that little kid," Rose said, screwing her face up in disgust. "That little bit of his soul would have to compete against the whole soul of the person it was inside of."
"Or work with it," Scorpius said. "If it could find some weak place in the host soul, it could exploit it, somehow bend it to Voldemort's will. Even a tree can be bent if it's manipulated from the time it's a seedling. Voldemort was very patient and wily. His essence would take the time to prune and bend that new soul to his will."
"So what happened to the dagger?" Rose asked, seating herself on a crate. "We have to assume that Professor Snape was killed before he got a chance to destroy the Horcrux. But did he succeed in hexing the dagger to fool your grandfather?"
"Not according to him," Scorpius said, smiling grimly. "My grandfather knows nothing of the Pensieve or the memories it contains. He tells the entire story rather differently, of course…"
Scorpius launched into the rest of the tale as he knew it.
It began, he explained, with the death of Severus Snape at the hand of Voldemort, killed not because the Dark Lord suspected his divided allegiance—Scorpius himself hadn't even known of that until he'd discovered it in the Pensieve's stored memories—but because of the mistaken notion that Snape must die for the Elder Wand, the unbeatable instrument of magic, to belong fully to Voldemort. Snape had not expected this, and thus had not destroyed the dagger Horcrux. Snape had, however, been wily enough to hide the dagger extremely well, and to tell no one of its location. Shortly thereafter, after Voldemort himself had been killed and his Death Eaters scattered, Lucius Malfoy had gone after the dagger Horcrux, fanatically intent on fulfilling his duties to his dead master. He crept into the school shortly after the battle was over, while its defences were still very weak. He used every art at his disposal to search for the dagger, but even though he could sense its presence, he was utterly unable to find its hiding place. It drove him mad with fear and rage, for he believed that if he failed, the Dark Lord would exact his revenge even from beyond the grave.
While he was still searching Snape's Headmaster office, Lucius' presence in the castle was detected. He fled, masked and cursing everyone and everything in his way. As he escaped through the Forbidden Forest, however, his heightened sensitivities detected a powerful magical object lost there. He had no time to search for the object, but he determined to return as soon as he could, for he believed he had quite by accident stumbled upon the hiding place of the dagger Horcrux.
Time passed, however, and Lucius was unable to return to the Forest. Most of his fellow Death Eaters were in hiding or had already been captured and imprisoned. Lucius covered his tracks exceptionally well, but lived in abject fear that he was being watched, that at any moment, he would be found out and apprehended. His wife, Narcissa, had left him shortly after the battle, and even his son, Draco, seemed to want little to do with him, so Lucius went into hiding. He used the last of his money to buy a rundown manor house on Cannery Row, protecting it with the best secrecy methods he knew. There, alone, he began to plan his return to Hogwarts castle to capture back the dagger.
Unfortunately, in the time that had passed, Hogwarts had been rebuilt and fortified. There was no way for someone like Lucius to get inside the grounds undetected. He needed partners and he needed money. Soon enough, he encountered both in the form of Gregor Tyrannicus, a soft but hate-filled refugee from his own royal wizarding family in Romania. Gregor came with a small fortune in gold, granted to him by his father in an effort to assure he left quietly and never returned. Gregor was instantly enthralled by Lucius' tales of his dealings with the famous Dark Lord, and vowed every bit of his treasure in support of the search for the mysterious dagger Horcrux. In exchange, he merely asked for his own position of power once the predicted pureblood kingdom was instated. Lucius graciously accepted Gregor's support, even catering to the man's rather obsessive infatuation with collecting relics from the Dark Lord's life.
Together, they assembled a small team of thieves and murderers, training them for the death-defying siege of Hogwarts castle. In reality, Lucius had no intention of accompanying the siege. He planned to use the distraction created by the siege to sneak alone into the Forbidden Forest and seek out the hidden dagger. Despite his and Gregor's training, in fact, Lucius fully expected the siege team to be captured and sent to Azkaban. Frankly, so long as they provided the short distraction Lucius needed, he didn't care. They would be one small sacrifice in the ongoing work of the fallen Dark Lord.
The siege never happened though. Less than a week before the planned trip to Hogwarts castle, Lucius was alone in the manor house on Cannery Row when one of the thieves he'd hired for the siege team, a young man named Malcolm Baddock, stepped out of the shadows, a knife glittering in his hand. The man grinned, ordering Lucius to turn over the gold hidden somewhere in the house.
James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper Page 47
