Chapter 1
“It’s time!” a brutal voice from the fireplace shouted… just to disappeared as nothing had ever happened a few seconds later.
Dorcas sat up and stared into the fire.
It crackled and spat before hissing into life again, but this time it was just normal fire, with its lambent light that stole away the velvet-black shadows dancing on the wall.
She took her wand from the wooden table and whispered some words that made the fire go away, now everything was completely dark.
Dorcas started walking in the cold Hogwarts’ hallways with just a dim light coming from her wand. Outside the snow was dead-white, winter’s shredding hurricanes and screaming winds had come and gone, leaving a terrible calmness. It seemed the perfect set of an horror movie.
Besides, the castle never failed to maintain that mysterious beauty, even at night. Those same walls shimmered faintly with the eerie spark of residual magic and the shadows themselves appeared to hold things that just could not be there in the light, fooling the minds with hints that something was hiding in their darkest corners.
That night though, it just happened to be true.
Dorcas Meadowes, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less bothered by the ghastly splendour of the castle, she had left the cold Slytherin’s dorm for a long-awaited mission, and the promise of something that she had been waiting for too long.
The well-planned mission had started that very morning: at the end of potions class, she had managed to steal Marlene’s McKinnon potions parchment out of her handbag. The assignment that Slughorn gave them was due the next day… if she wanted to avoid detention, since it was their last year and exams were close, Dorcas was sure she would have gone looking for it any time soon now. All she had to do now was patiently wait and then real game could start.
The plan itself was quite simple, focus and precision were all it took, and as Dorcas perfectly knew sometimes simplicity was the key.
She slowed down her pace as walking through the shadows, she had reached the Gryffindor Tower and now she was searching for any sign of motion. It was past dinner, most of the students were already inside as she could deduce from the loud snoring of the Fat Lady portrait hang on the wall.
Most students checked their assignments for the next day right before going to bed, so it shouldn’t have been long before she noticed. Dorcas was completely vigilant… she had never been so meticulously prepared for anything in her life, that was her time to prove everyone else how valuable she was, nothing could have gone wrong.
After some time though, even the loud snoring ended, and the only noise Dorcas could hear was the subtle thrumming of her own pulse loud in her ears, but she did not budge an inch, she could have waited all night if necessary.
Meanwhile she retracted the next steps of the plan in her mind, she quickly checked her pocket: the glass jar was still there. She had noticed, over time, that being in that fancy Slughorn’s little club had several advantages other than insured high grades, like the easy access to all the potions supplies. All it took was some disgusting Flobberworm Mucus, Valerian sprigs, a bit of Lavender and a couple of others standard ingredient and the potion was ready, so Dorcas had put some on a side of Marlene’s parchment, now with only a touch she would have fallen asleep.
As she thought earlier, the beauty of simplicity never failed to amaze her.
A sudden rasping noise caught her attention, Dorcas noticed the portrait slowly moved from the wall and it opened cracking, causing the Fat Lady to woke up and yelled as to reproach the student that had disturbed her. After the mysterious student apologized slowly, the painting settled back into its place against the wall.
Dorcas’s face lighted up, it was finally her moment.
She heard the plodding of shoes on the cold stoned floor and the heavy breathing of the someone who was clearly a bit scared. But Dorcas still hesitated, a good observer knows exactly when and where to hit.
She cautiously started following Marlene, she just had to arrive to the right place and then everything could proceed as planned.
Meanwhile Marlene was running through a silent string of curses in her head, cussing herself for having forgot the parchment, she had no idea that she was about to find herself falling to the bottom of the food chain.
But right now, she was too busy dealing with an inner battle, fighting the hundreds of thoughts that had filled her mind while walking into the pitch black of the night, miserably trying to stay calm.
Marlene could not believe she had done it. Out of all the idiotic things, how could she have managed to forget somewhere that so important parchment? And worse... out of all the subjects, why did it have to be Potions? Marlene was sure that the professor already hated her because of how bad she was.
Still, she felt something was not right, Marlene perfectly remembered putting it into her bag, but just sometime earlier, when she and Lily had taken all their things to re-check everything, the assignment had been gone. It had taken her days to write those endless pages and there was no way she could have rewritten it in one night. She could have asked either Remus or Lily to help her, a way better idea, but no… she had decided to walk alone at night in the castle, because of her bloody pride.
Marlene turned at the end of the corridor to go down the staircases, nearly tripping over the edge of the first one, as she wasn’t already bothered enough.
Darkness had never really scared Marlene, the thing is… most of the people aren’t scared of the darkness itself, but it’s the thought of what lurks within it that’s fighting, and Marlene knew the Hogwarts’ walls better than any other place.
However, that night, frustration over her lost parchment and the irritation of staying there rather than in the warm, welcoming Gryffindor dorms had left her more agitated than usual. Tonight, she had the peculiar sense that something new was concealed in the dark corners.
Stop that she kept repeating those words in her head to calm herself. There's nobody here.
Unfortunately, she was wrong.
While trying to push away the bad thoughts and focus on the mission, Marlene made her way down flights of stairs, through the long hallways, and towards the dungeons. Something she was happy about was that there was no trace of any prefects or professors, getting a detention while trying to avoid one would have been pretty ironic.
So, Marlene welcomed the silence, but then, so did Dorcas. She had followed her as quietly as possible, distancing from her only the bare minimum, but now that they were approaching the dungeons Dorcas felt safer and more secure… she knew every spot of that place. In silent company, Dorcas and Marlene passed the turn that would take them to the Slytherin dormitories and continued direct to the potion’s classrooms. While studying the plan, Dorcas had taken a whole afternoon just to explore those old corridors, at the beginning it only seemed that they had been abandoned years ago, then her explorations had led her to an old passageway, dusty with disuse. She now was grateful for that exploration, she had again an advantage.
The smooth shuffle-scratching sounds of Marlene’s footsteps stopped in front of the door of the potion’s classroom. The door was obviously locked, but still Marlene tried a couple of times before grabbing her wand, but those seconds gave Dorcas the time to slink along the wall opposite the door until he was directly behind her.
Her father would be so pleased if he could see her now, Dorcas thought. After that she would be accepted with honour into the ranks of the Death Eaters. Hardly daring to breathe lest she ruin her chance, she drew up behind her.
Marlene heard a distant crackle behind her only a split second before feeling a string presence right next to her. She quickly turned around in shock, instinctively bringing her arms up to shield herself.
"Meadowes!" she murmured in confusion.
Dorcas smirked at her with confidence: “hey there… you shouldn't be walking around the corridors at night, McKinnon. It could be dangerous, who knows what the shadows hide, am I right?”
"Shouldn’t it be the same for you?" Marlene snapped back "What the heck do you think you're doing?"
"Well, it seems obvious MacKinnon…just a little Potions homework." Dorcas reached into a pocket, taking the parchment and then looking at her with a sly smile "Look familiar?"
Marlene opened her mouth as wanting to reply but the second she understood she stared at her in disbelief, she was used to the Slytherins’ stupid pranks, but she didn’t get the meaning of that.
"What the fuck Meadowes, how- never mind. Don't you have other people to bother?"
Dorcas took a step forwards, closer to her, pulling herself up to her most threatening pose. Marlene could almost feel Dorcas’s breath on her cheek, her lips were incredibly close. She tried to back away, suddenly feeling more uncomfortable than she usually did around the Slytherin, a weird feeling was invading her stomach: “Believe me, I have a very good reason to be here” Dorcas whispered slowly in Marlene's ear and then backed away, leaving her space to breath.
“What 's wrong with you? Give me my parchment and go away” Marlene replied giving her a death stare, Dorcas shook her shoulders and handed her the parchment.
“I am sorry, but you were too pretty to be working for the wrong side anyway” she added as Marlene’s fingers touched the enchanted parchment.
Marlene suddenly felt a freezing sensation spreading all over her body. The ice flooded through her veins, down her arms, across her chest. "What did you…?" but before she could finish the sentence her legs went numb, Dorcas hurried to catch her, she placed her hand around her neck to hold her steady.
Then she leaned down so that her face was inches from Marlene, her voice was deceptively soft but there was a happy and proud tone too "Don't worry McKinnon. I don’t mean to hurt you, I just want to give you a lesson, something that you will never forget"
Marlene tried to shout for help, but everything was becoming blurred and confused, her heartbeats slowed, and sounds echoed all over her ears. She could barely force her chest to rise to take in the next breath. With a last strangled gasp, Marlene watched Dorcas Meadowes pitch black eyes then everything stopped.
Dorcas moved Marlene’s blonde hair from her eyes, then she reached her hands under Marlene’s arms and pulled her towards the entrance of the secret passage. She had used the levitation charm, now she was as light as a pillow.
Hidden under Dorcas’s shirt was an unusual pendant her parents had insisted she wore for this mission. It rendered all sorts of tracking charms, it kept her completely hidden from magical detection until they were far from Hogwarts.
Her father and a couple of other Death Eaters were already waiting to meet her at the exit. Her father would have been finally proud of and greeted her with praise, and the Dark Lord himself would honour her success. She had accomplished a task which was the envy of all Voldemort's senior Death Eaters.
“Dorcas, let me see the girl” was the first thing her father said to her as he saw her coming out of the passage.
“Perfect… now we can go. The Lord is waiting.” he concluded, and Dorcas started to follow him with a bit of disappointment, he did not say a word about her.
But a bigger problem suddenly presented itself.
“Hey, you assholes, let her go!” a voice yelled from the exit of the secret passage, Dorcas froze as her father turned around while giving her a furious look, she knew that voice.
“Didn’t you hear what he said? Put your hands off her” another voice added with a firm tone… they were going towards Marlene that was now held by a couple of other Death Eaters, Dorcas could feel her body trembling due to the fear and panic as her father kept yelling at her things like: “you had one job, that’s not of you after all” or “how did they manage to follow you?”.
Nobody had noticed the oddly strange parchment the two boys were holding, a map, you could have said.
Dorcas was too busy thinking in those seconds that seemed eternal, she was going to get punished, really badly punished, if she didn’t come up with an idea right that second, just one simple idea…
“Father” Dorcas took her wand, “they were with McKinnon that day, they are in the team, let’s take them too, the Lord would be twice as proud” she spilled that stupid idea out, hating herself even more, but her heartbeat slowed when she saw the relived look on his dad’s face.
He gave the Death Eaters a sign and in less than the blink of an eye the two boys were on the floor.
“Good thinking darling” he beamed her a chill smile as they walked towards the others, “who exactly are they?”.
“Sirius Black and Remus Lupin” Dorcas replied carelessly, while watching Marlene being taken away the feeling in her stomach came back, so she lowered her gaze then gave a quick look at the shiny moon before leaving.
It was so beautiful yet so terrifying, but as she had learnt… beauty was terror.