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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.

Tears soaked Maryrose’s face.

“I made my first kill here,” he hissed, and he pulled her down, over the rock where the Inferius had grabbed James Potter’s ankle over the summer.

Maryrose saw there, on the rock, washed up after all this time, his broken glasses - the ones he’d lost that night and without the Dark Lord seeing, Maryrose caught them up quickly and held them tight in her free hand. She felt somehow less lonely holding them, as though a part of James was now with her, and she felt a lump rise up in her throat thinking of him… of how much she wished she could ever have meant as much to him as Lily Evans meant to him.

“A little girl,” Voldemort was continuing, “Not much different than you.”

Maryrose shivered as he pulled her along the narrow pathway along the side of the cave. He waved his wand and sent a ball of eerie green light to hang in the air and illuminate the darkness. The water was thick and dark black, undulating slightly and Voldemort pulled her deeper and deeper into the cave, where it narrowed and the stalactites and stalagmites nearly touched.

“I left her body here in the water… floating for eternity….” he laughed lowly and he paused and waved his wand and a ghostly, horrible figure - a girl - rose up toward the surface of the water, eyes glassy and wide, mouth in an eternal moan, her arms extended, animated, grabbing toward Maryrose, who gasped and jumped back. Voldemort laughed even harder at he fear and he lowered his wand and the girl sank back into the depths of the pitch blackness. “And so began my collection.”

“C-Collection?” Maryrose knew she’d regret asking, but she also knew she needed to keep him talking long enough that somebody might figure out where she was, might be able to help her. His habit of talking was the only thing that could save her.

Voldemort grinned wickedly, “Yes, my collection.” And he waved his wand again, another ball of green light flew forward… and with a swish of his wrist, the ball descended into the water, glowing brightly, setting the whole pool to glowing brilliantly green and illuminating even the darkest depths and in the water were hundreds and hundreds of corpses. Bodies pressed and packed together, laying on top of one another, with horrible faces that stared up at her with disembodied expressions of horror and fear… They swept about, mixing and stirring, like giant ingredients in a horrible potion. “I collect the bodies of those I’ve murdered… those whose bodies were remained at all, that is.” He smirked and he waved his wand and there was Orion Black. “You were there when I killed him, weren’t you?” Voldemort smiled at her, as though he were showing her a photograph of a happy time they’d shared.

Maryrose felt like she might throw up.

Voldemort let Orion Black sink back into the depths,

“They are countless,” Voldemort whispered, “And with but a wave of my wand I can command them to rise up from the waters and fight. An army of inferius so great that there would be no defeating it. And soon, one day very soon, I shall do exactly that and Albus Dumbledore, the old fool, will have no way of stopping my rise to power then.”

It struck Maryrose as odd that Voldemort said Dumbledore, of all the names he could’ve said.

He whipped her around suddenly to face him and the light in the pool beside them continued to glow and he glared into her eyes. “Now. I have need of this place to hide something very precious to me. I had planned to submerge it beneath my collection, but it seems… messy, unelegant, and I desire something better, something more.” He looked her over, head to toe. “In your mind, child, there is a chamber. A secret chamber here that you found as a child. I command you - if you ever wish to see your precious little boyfriend again - to show me where it is and how to get inside of it.”

Maryrose’s fingers tightened around the broken glasses in her fist.

He drew his wand and pressed it to her. “Now,” he hissed.

Maryrose shook. She nodded and she turned and he followed, his wand still pressing into her, directly between her shoulder blades now, and she shook as she stepped carefully toward the large stone that acted as a door, trying not to think of all the corpses that swam about just steps away in the black water. Her breath came so hard and heavy from nerves that it seemed to echo around her and she could feel her heartbeat, could nearly hear it in her ears it was so hard and fast. She pressed her palms to the great stone and pushed and it moved with her touch, as though it had been waiting for her to come and open it up.

“Yesss,” hissed the Dark Lord behind her. “Yesss…” and he walked over and inspected the way her palms touched the stone, the way she moved her wrists to encourage it opened. “Most excellent,” he whispered, “So inconspicuous!” Yet another ball of light was produced and sent in through the mouth of the chamber, illuminating it within and he poked her the moment he’d finished casting it. “In.”

She shivered as she stepped over the threshold of the stones and into the cavern. “I’ve never been inside,” she said, a little disclaimer incase there was something unexpected ahead. “I don’t know what it holds.”

Voldemort was too excited now to care and he shoved her forward, his wand prodding her along, eyes hungry and wide with excitement as he picked his way over the rock bed. “It’s beautiful, beautiful!” he hissed, looking around at the wide, empty space, as big as an underground ballroom, or larger, stretching away into the dark further than even the illumination of the ball of light reached. He made her lead the way, and she slipped over stones several times, her feel sliding across them as she picked and chose her way along the narrow path that hugged the wall. She skinned her knees and drop of red blood dripped over her shins. She scraped her palms, and a streak of dirt ended up on her face when she wiped tears from her eyes…

They walked for what seemed like forever, as far as they could go. There was an island in the black water, and Voldemort hissed with excitement, and he grabbed onto her and apparated across the water to the island so that with a loud crack that echoed about in the dark, they stood there on this craggy, built up crop of land. She slipped and slid over a wet rock and landed on the ground, just inches from the black water. Voldemort was inspecting the island, hurrying about it with glee, as he took it in, muttering to himself…

Maryrose looked down at the glasses in her hands, at the thick black frames, and she wished so very, very much that James was there with her right then. He would know what to do. But he wasn’t. She was alone, so very, very alone, and her bravery was beginning to waver, her belief that she’d ever get out of there alive extinguished.

She knew too much.

There was no way in all the universe that the Dark Lord would let her go now.

She sat there upon the stone, tears wetting her eyes, and she felt her goodbyes welling up in her. She turned to look over her shoulder at where Voldemort happily stepped about, looking over the rocky island with a wide grin upon his face, oblivious to the fact that she existed at all at the moment. She looked across the water and thought desperately that she could swim away. She could swim to that shore and climb out and run. She could run to her home. Her palms sweat. It was insane, it was probably impossible. But it was the only option left, and she had a very small window in which it could even remotely work.

Now, while Voldemort was distracted.

She clutched the glasses in her fist. This was the sort of last-ditch thing that James would do, she knew it. And she looked over her shoulder and slid across the stones, slowly, as quietly as possible, her heart racing as she moved, trying to stay as silent as possible, to avoid calling attention, and she found herself at the water’s edge all too fast. Her breath shook and she bit her lips… counted to three… and slid herself over the side of the rock and into the water, keeping her limbs close together to avoid the sound of a splash.

The water was ice cold, colder than anything she’d ever felt before and her muscles stung and her skin burned from it and she tried very hard to catch her breath, but the water was so cold that it seemed to have frozen her up. Her breath cast clouds over the water’s surface. It took all her strength to push away from the rock, and she let her body roll over in the water so that she was facing the door to the chamber and she frog-swam, silent as she possibly could, like a waterbug glazing over the surface. She looked back. Voldemort was still climbing over the stones of the island, looking, looking, imagining how he would use it…

Every stroke of her arms hurt and she had tears streaming over her face, hot compared to the water she swam through. Her shoes felt heavy under the water and she had to push the image of the girl and of Orion Black out of her mind. There were no corpses in this water, she reminded herself - this was just regular water, just plain water… no inferius were in below her… but as she swam she felt reeds - seaweed - touch her legs or her arms and she would have to rein in the scream that threatened to escape her chest, thinking of floating hair or of hands trying to grab her in the dark black water…

She’d nearly made it. The shore was so close…

She could almost call what she felt hope.

CRACK!

The Dark Lord stood before her on the shore, framed by the light of the doorway out of the chamber, his eyes boring down at her, horrible and flashing with anger, his robes moving in the wind once more that whistled through the cave outside. She stared up at him as she floated in the water and he carefully, evenly raised his wand, aiming it directly at her.

Maryrose closed her eyes.