446Author's Note: Sorry about the slightly crappy summary, but hopefully it conveys the general idea of this story. Also, apologies to anyone hoping to see Lupin soon, because he unfortunately won't be showing up for sometime.
So, this is my first fanfiction, and any feedback or criticism would be appreciated. Or just any sort of response, really. I'm not fussy.
Anyhoo, on with the story :)
Friday 30 October, 1981
Heavy rain began to splash against the window, but the small girl curled up on the bed gave no indication that she had noticed the change in weather. Instead, her blue-grey eyes were fixed on the open book lying beside her. Anyone who didn't know the girl would assume that she was simply pretending to read the thick tome, as it would surely be far too advanced for such a young child.
Their assumption would be wrong.
The girl absentmindedly twirled a lock of her long, wavy, black hair around a finger as she read, her brow furrowed in concentration as she digested the information in the book. Uncomfortable with the way her black tights had twisted around her legs, she momentarily paused her reading to fix them and smooth out her dark green dress. Her eyes found the clock on her bedside table. It was seventeen minutes past two. Just over forty minutes, she noted, before He would arrive for their lesson.
With that comforting thought, she returned to her reading. Only this time, she couldn't help flicking her eyes over to the clock every few minutes, anticipation building as the hands on the clock slowly made their way to 3 o'clock. One minute before they did, she heard a noise downstairs. He had arrived.
She quickly placed a bookmark in the book – A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot – and closed it, placing it on the bedside table next to the clock. She ran across the spacious bedroom to where a full length mirror stood, and checked her appearance. Her reflection looked back at her: eerily pale from too little sunlight, slim but well-nourished, and eyes that had thankfully not inherited the heavy lids of her mother's. She made a few adjustments to her hair and straightened up her clothes, then moved back to the bed, sitting down on it, and faced the closed bedroom door. She strained her ears, listening for His quiet footsteps. He had reached the floor on which her bedroom resided.
An idea suddenly occurred to her, and a small, mischievous smile appeared on her face. She raised her right hand and concentrated on the door. She waited until the soft footsteps were directly outside the door, then twisted to her hand as if she turning a knob, and pulled back. The door swung open to reveal her teacher, who also happened to be most feared wizard of their time.
Lord Voldemort seemed mildly surprised by the magically-opened door, and looked across the room to the young girl sitting on the bed, who was barely concealing a pleased expression, and could not contain his own smile.
"Most impressive, Lena. I am glad to see you have been practising this past week."
The girl, Lena, stood up. "Thank you, Sir."
Voldemort stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Despite the rain outside, he remained perfectly dry. He was wearing his usual black robes, and was cloak-less, having already deposited it downstairs. His skin was as pale as Lena's, and his hair as black as hers too – only his was slicked back, away from his face, which was almost reptilian in its bone structure. The red glint in his eyes frightened most people, but not Lena. Never Lena.
At the same time, the two occupants of the room moved towards the centre of the floor-space, and sat down cross-legged, facing each other with about a foot-and-a-half's distance between them.
"What would you like to start with today?" Voldemort asked her.
Lena slightly tilted her head to the side, considering the possibilities. "Could I practise moving multiple objects at one time?"
Acquiescing to her request, Voldemort pulled his wand out of his robes, and waved it around the room. The doors to her wardrobe flew open, as did drawers of her dresser and bedside table, and clothes began to zoom out. Books flew off their shelves, as did various trinkets and objects. Soon, most of Lena's possessions were flying around the room. Lena was impressed at how Voldemort managed to avoid colliding any of the objects. Then, as quickly as it had begun, he brought his wand down, and everything floated down.
Lena looked around the previously neat bedroom. Everything was strewn across the room in a big mess. It was a bigger challenge than she had expected. She turned back to her teacher, who was watching her closely. Lena simply nodded, and focused on a pile of clothes from the wardrobe first. She held her hands out, palms raised to the ceiling, and slowly moved them in an upward motion. Fewer of the clothing items then she would have liked began to shakily rise. Putting aside her disappointment, she steadily guided the four items towards the wardrobe that was only about four feet away. Once they reached their destination, Lena attempted to hang them on the bar, and accidentally dropped two of the items in the process. Lena refocussed her efforts of the last two, a dress and a blouse. The small sense of achievement she felt when they were hung was greatly overwhelmed by the enormity of the task as she looked around the room again.
She locked eyes with Voldemort. There was a look in his eyes that seemed to be daring her to complain that the task was too difficult. Lena defiantly stared back, then swiftly moved her attention back to the clothes she had previously dropped. Repeating her prior motions, she hung them with slightly more ease. Without pause, she turned back to the original pile of clothes, and raised the rest of the items. She levitated them across to the wardrobe more confidently, and with an increased pace. As she started to hang them, she watched her teacher out of the corner of her eye. It was imperceptible, but she knew him well enough to notice the tiny, pleased smile on his face. It was, she thought to herself with a certain degree of smugness, almost proud.
It took almost fifty minutes to put everything back in its place. Finally, Lena placed the last two objects, the clock and the book she'd been reading earlier, back on the bedside table, and surveyed the once-again tidy bedroom. It felt immensely satisfying.
"Well done," Voldemort finally spoke again. He had remain silent the entire time, simply watching Lena. "You achieved that more quickly than I imagined. What was your process?"
This was his usual teaching method. Try first, then discuss what worked and what didn't, and then try again.
Lena tried to recall her progression with the activity. "Well, it was quicker to do lots of small groups instead of a few big ones, because I could be more precise-"
"Why do you think it makes a difference?" Voldemort interrupted. "The amount of objects?" He wasn't chastising her, simply trying to make her think deeper.
Lena frowned. "Because... well, it's like my focus is... is..."
"Too divided? Too split up?"
"Not split up," Lena shook her head. "Not exactly. More like it's spread too thinly. Like it's been pulled too hard and in too many directions, and it could snap at any-"
Lena broke off – she had felt something trying to slip through the mental barriers that were supposed to guard her mind at all times. Immediately, she put up another layer of protection, visualising it as a wall with iron spikes driven through it. It was just in time too, as a half-second later, the would-be intruder attempted to penetrate her defences again. This time, however, she could feel it quickly recoil as it touched the new wall, and it withdrew completely. Lena gave her teacher a reproachful look, and Voldemort laughed.
"You know it would be a pointless exercise if I gave you a warning," he said.
"I know," Lena muttered, "but I still don't like it."
"You're not supposed to" he replied, smiling wryly. "And I don't know why you're so annoyed, you did very well, especially considering the fact that you should be mentally exhausted after moving all of those objects back to their places."
"Well, you weren't trying very hard," Lena shrugged. "You could have easily broken through that new barrier if you'd wanted to."
Voldemort placed his hands behind him and leaned back. "I tried harder than you think." He paused, considering his young student for a moment. "I suspect you are a better Occlumens than your mother is by now." Expecting her to be pleased by the comment, he was surprised to see a brief shadow of irritation cross her face, before regaining a neutral expression. He paused, before asking in a gentle tone that he reserved for Lena alone, "Did you have another argument this week?"
Lena didn't immediately response. Instead, she stared at the carpet and began twirling a lock of hair around a finger. Voldemort patiently waited; he knew that the gesture meant she was carefully considering the matter. The only sound to be heard was the rain, persistent in its assault on the window.
Finally, she looked back up at him and spoke. "Three days ago, Aunt Narcissa and Uncle Lucius visited. They brought the baby with them. Draco. Anyway, we were all down in the dining room, having lunch, when Draco started to cry. Aunt Narcissa picked him up and was trying to comfort him, and then she – my mother, I mean," Lena added, as though it was painful to admit that they were related, "said to Aunt Narcissa, 'Why don't you just put a Silencing Charm on him, that's what I used to do her when she wouldn't shut up.'" Lena paused for a moment. "I mean, it's not like I didn't know she used to do that to me, I can even remember a couple of times..." she trailed off, looking back down at the carpet.
Voldemort watched her, his face remaining impassive as he waited for her to continue.
Lena looked back at him. "I just got so... angry... with her. So when Aunt Narcissa said, 'Don't be so horrible, Bella. I would never do that', I couldn't help it, I just... I said, 'Don't worry, Aunt Narcissa, Mother doesn't understand that just because she's entirely incompetent at raising children, not every woman is'."
"And how did she take that?" said Voldemort quietly.
Lena gave him a dry smile. "About as well as you'd expect. She told me that's because not every woman has to deal with such an awful little brat like me, and that it wasn't her fault if I was too stupid to understand that she had far greater priorities than me in her life."
It was left unsaid what these priorities were – they both knew they all revolved around serving the Dark Lord.
"Anyway," Lena continued, "after she said all of that, I, you know," she flicked her wrist in a vague manner," and the legs on the chair she was sitting on snapped, and she crashed to the ground. I ran out, and she started to send curses after me. I came up here and locked the door, but she never came up – the Malfoys must have reminded her of what you said to her the last time..."
She didn't need to elaborate. They both remembered the previous occasion on which her mother had been too heavy-handed with her punishment, and Voldemort's reaction when he had found out what she'd done.
"And I haven't seen her since then," Lena finished.
Voldemort regarded her for a moment, before speaking. "And your father didn't intervene at any point?"
Lena let out a short burst of mirthless laughter – an unnatural sound to hear from a child. "What do you think?" It was a response that no Death Eater would have dared to give, but when Lena said it, Voldemort was not the slightest bit irritated. In fact, in this case he thought he probably deserved the insolent reply – the notion that Rodolphus Lestrange would ever say so much as 'Are you sure that's a good idea?' to Bellatrix was simply too ludicrous to even entertain.
"The Malfoys love Draco," said Lena suddenly. "You could see it on their faces every time they looked at him, spoke to him."
"And is that what you want, Lena?" Voldemort asked softly. "Your parents to love you?"
"No!" said Lena vehemently. "I don't." She added in a quieter voice, "That's not what I want at all."
There was a momentarily silence, before Lena broke it.
"Why didn't you try another attack on my mind when I was talking?" she inquired. "It would have been a perfect opportunity, I was so... preoccupied that I wouldn't have noticed anything."
A flicker of surprise crossed Voldemort's face. "The thought honestly didn't occur to me."
Lena raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. She turned to look at the clock, and Voldemort followed her gaze. They had another hour left of their lesson.
"Would you like to properly practise Occlumency now?" he asked his student. She nodded, evidently keen to leave the conversation about her mother behind.
The rain had stopped by the time Voldemort ended their lesson. For fifty-five minutes, he had repeatedly tried to enter Lena's mind while they talked. He had eventually broken in every time until the last five minutes, where try as he might, he could not break through her mental barriers. Lena was delighted, and Voldemort told her she should be.
"I doubt there are more than a few grown wizards and witches who could manage to repel me the way you just did," he told a smiling Lena. "That fact that you can do it at your age..." he tilted his head to the side, as though sizing her up. "You will be six soon, yes?"
Lena nodded. "On the 7th of December." She hesitated, before saying, almost shyly, "It's because you're a great teacher. That's why I can do all of this."
Voldemort smirked. "Oh, of course. I do deserve some of the credit for your achievements." The smirk disappeared as he adopted a more serious expression. "But I couldn't teach just anyone to do the things you are now capable of." Without really knowing why, he reached a hand out and cupped the left side of her face. "You truly are remarkable, Lena."
Lena looked back at him earnestly. "Thank you for remarking upon it, Sir."
Almost identical small smiles graced their faces. Then Voldemort removed his hand from her face and stood up. Lena quickly copied his movement.
"And so another lesson comes to an end," said Voldemort.
"Why does it have to?" asked Lena, sounding slightly petulant. "Why can't they be longer?"
Voldemort laughed softly, before saying, "Maybe they will be in future. You see," he explained to a curious Lena, "It is quite likely that much will have changed by our lesson next Friday."
"Like what?"
"Let us just say that I believe we are about to enter something of a turning point in this war," said Voldemort mysteriously. Lena crossed her arms, irritated at the lack of information, but her teacher only shook his head. "I promise to tell you more during our next lesson," he said. "Who knows, I might see you before that."
"I'd like that," said Lena quickly. "I, I..." she hesitated before rushing, "I wish I got to see you every day."
"Lessons every day?" he asked, amused. "I dare not, you would probably surpass me by the time you were ten."
"No," said Lena, looking down at the ground. "Not for lessons, I mean..."
Voldemort watched the now slightly uncomfortable-looking girl in curiosity. What did she mean?
"... live with you."
Voldemort didn't laugh this time. He simply stared at Lena, before saying softly, "You wish to come live with me?"
Lena finally looked up at him again, then slowly nodded. "I hate it here." Her voice grew stronger. " I hate living in the same house as her. And you, you're... you're the best part of my week." She took a step towards him. "The best part of my life. I..." the words spilled out of her before she knew what she was saying: "I wish you were my father."
For a moment, Voldemort said nothing, but simply looked down at the small girl with an unreadable expression on his face. Then, he slowly knelt down so he was face to face with her. He reached out one long-fingered hand and took both her small hands in his. "If you were my daughter, Lena, I would be proud to be your father."
For a moment, the air in the room was heavy with some indescribable emotion. Then as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished, as did Lord Voldemort.
She stared at the door as it shut behind him, and for the first time in her life, Lena Lestrange felt truly happy.
