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Chapter 1

=The Dark Lord Ascending=

The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow,
moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed
at each other’s chests; then, recognizing each other , they
stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the
same direction.
“News?” asked the taller of the two.
”The best,” replied Severus Snape.
The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the
right by a high, nearly manicured hedge. The men’s long cloaks flapped around
their ankles as they marched.
“Thought I might be late,” said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out
of sight as the branches of overhanging tress broke the moonlight. “It was
a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You should
confident that your reception will be good?”
Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway
that led off the lane. The high hedge curved into them, running off into the
distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men’s
way. Neither of them broke step; In silence both raised their left arms in a
kind of salute and passed straight through, as though the dark metal were smoke.

The yew hedges muffled the sound of the men’s footsteps. There was a
rustle somewhere to their right; Yaxley drew his wand again, pointing it over
his companion’s head, but the source of the noise proved to be nothing more
than a pure-white peacock, strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.
“He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks . . . ” Yaxley thrust his wand
back under his cloak with a snort.
A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight
drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned downstairs windows. Somewhere
in the dark garden beyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled
beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped toward the front door, which
swung inward at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.
The hallway was large, dimly light, and sumptuously decorated, with a
magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced
portraits on the walls followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two
men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for
the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle.
The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate
table. The room’s usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the
walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece
surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment
on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they
were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scenes an apparently unconscious
human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as
if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare,
polished surface of the table below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself
from glancing upward every minute or so.
“Yaxley, Snape,” said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. “You are
very nearly late.”
The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult,
at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they

drew nearer, however, this face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike,
with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He
was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow.
“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indication the seat on his immediate right.
“Yaxley—beside Dolohov.”
The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the table
followed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first.
“So?”
“My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his
current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall.”
The interest around the table sharpened palpably; Some stiffened, others
fidgeted, all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.
“Saturday . . . at nightfall,” repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened upon
Snape’s black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away,
apparently fearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of
the gaze. Snape, however, looked calmly back into Voldemort’s face and, after a
moment or two. Voldemort’s lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.
“Good. very good. And this information comes—”
“—from the source we discussed,” said Snape.
“My Lord.”
Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Voldemort and
Snape. All faces turned to him.
“My Lord, I have heard differently,”
Yaxley waited but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, “Dawlish, the
Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before
the boy turns seventeen.”
Snape was smiling,
“My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it.
No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be
the first time; he is known to be susceptible.”
“I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,” said Yaxley.

“If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain,” said Snape. “I assure
you, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry
Potter. The Order believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry.”
“The Order’s got one thing right, then, eh?” said a squat man sitting a short
distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that was echoed here and there
along the table.
Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upward to the body revolving
slowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in thought.
“My Lord,” Yaxley went on, “Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will
be used to transfer the boy—”
Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley subsided at once, watching
resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape.
“Where are they going to hide the boy next?”
“At the home of one of the Order,” said Snape. “The place, according to the
source, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together
could provide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there,
my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which
might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments
to break through the rest.”
“Well, Yaxley?” Voldemort called down the table, the firelight glinting strangely
in his red eyes. “Will the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?”
Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.
“My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have—with difficulty, and after
great effort—succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.”
Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbor, Dolohov,
a man with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back.
“It is a start,” said Voldemort. “But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour
must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the
Minister’s life will set me back a long way.”
“Yes—my Lord, that is true—buy you know, as Head of the Department of
Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the

Minister himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments.
I will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official
under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all work together
to bring Scrimgeour down.”
“As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted
the rest,” said Voldemort. “At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry
will be mine before next Saturday. if we cannot touch the boy at his destination,
the it must be done while he travels.”
“We are at an advantage there, my Lord,” said Yaxley, who seemed determined
to receive some portion of approval. “We now have several people
planted within the Department of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or
uses the Floo Network, we shall know immediately.”
“He will not do either,” said Snape. “The order is eschewing any form of
transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything
to do with the place.”
“All the better,” said Voldemort. “He will have to move in the open. Easier
to take, by far.”
Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, “ I
shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where
Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives
is due more to my errors than to his triumphs.”
The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of
them, bu his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry
Potter’s continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more
to himself than to any of them, still addressing the unconscious body above
him.
“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those
wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand
those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry
Potter, and I shall be.”
At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a
terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked
downward, startled, for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.
“Wormtail,” said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone,
and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, “have I not spoken
to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?”
“Yes, m-my Lord,” gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had
been sitting so low in his chair that it had appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied.
Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving
nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.
“As I was saying,” continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of
his followers, “I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a
wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.”
The faces around his displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced
that he wanted to borrow one of their arms.
“No volunteers?” said Voldemort. “Let’s see . . . Lucius, I see no reason for
you to have a wand anymore.”
Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the
firelight, and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice
was hoarse.
“My Lord?”
“Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.”
“I . . . ”
Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite
as pale as he was, her long blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath
the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put
his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort,
who held it up in from of his red eyes, examining it closely.
“What is it?”
“Elm, my Lord,” whispered Malfoy.
“And the core?”
“Dragon—dragon heartstring.”

“Good,” said Voldemort. He drew out his own wand and compared the
lengths. Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second,
it seemed he expected to receive Voldemort’s want in exchange for his own.
The gesture was not missed by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.
“Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?”
Some of the throng sniggered.
“I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I
have noticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late . . . What is
it about my presence in your home that displeases you, Lucius?”
“Nothing—nothing, my Lord!”
“Such lies, Lucius . . . ”
The soft voice seems to hiss on even after the cruel mouth had stopped
moving. One or two of the wizards barely repressed a shudder as the hissing
grew louder; something heavy could be heard sliding across the floor beneath
the table.
The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s chair. It rose, seemingly
endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort’s shoulders; its neck the
thickness of a man’s thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking.
Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long thin fingers, still
looking at Lucius Malfoy.
“Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my return, my rise
to power, not the very thing they professed to desire for so many years?”
“Of course, my Lord,” said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as he wiped sweat
from his upper lip. “We did desire it—we do.”
To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted from Voldemort
and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco, who had been gazing up at the
inert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to
make eye contact.
“My Lord,” said a dark woman halfway down the table, her voice constricted
with emotion, “it is an honor to have you here, in our family’s house. There can
be no higher pleasure.”

She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her dark hair and
heavily lidded eyes, as she was in bearing and demeanor; where Narcissa sat
rigid and impassive, Bellatrix leaned toward Voldemort, for mere words could
not demonstrate her longer for closeness.
“No higher pleasure,” repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a little to one side
as he considered Bellatrix. “That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you,”
Her face flooded with color; her eyes welled with tears of delight.
“My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!”
“No higher pleasure . . . even compared with the happy event that, I hear,
has taken place in your family this week?”
She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused.
“I don’t know what you mean, my Lord.”
“I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And your, Lucius and Narcissa.
She has just married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You must be so proud.”
There was an eruption of jeering laughter from around the table. Many
leaned forward to exchange gleeful looks, a few thumped the table with their
fists. The great snake, disliking the disturbance, opened its mouth and hissed
angrily, but the Death Eaters did not hear it, so jubilant where that at Bellatrix
and the Malfoys’ humiliation. Bellatrix’s face, so recently flushed with
happiness, had turned an ugly, blotchy red.
“She is no niece of ours, my Lord,” she cried over the outpouring of mirth.
“We—Narcissa and I—have never set eyes on our sister since she married the
Mudblood. This brat has nothing to do with either of us, nor any beast she
marries.”
“What say you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, and though his voice was quiet,
it carried clearly through the catcalls and jeers. “Will you babysit the cubs?”
The hilarity mounted; Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his father, who was
staring down into his own lap, then caught his mother’s eye. She shook her
head almost imperceptibly, then resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite
wall.
“Enough,” said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake. “Enough.”

And the laughter died at once.
“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time,” he said
as Bellatrix gazed at him, breathless and imploring. “You must prune yours,
must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health
of the rest.”
“Yes, my Lord,” whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam with tears of gratitude
again. “At the first chance!”
“You shall have it,” said Voldemort. “And in your family, so in the world
. . . we shall cut away the canker that infects us until only those of the true
blood remain . . . ”
Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowly
revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure
came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds.
“Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort.
Snape raised his eyes to the upside down face. All of the Death Eaters
were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission
to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a
cracked and terrified voice. “Severus! Help me!”
“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.
“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s snout with his
wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. now that the woman had woken,
he seems unable to look at her anymore.
“But you would not have taken her classes,” said Voldemort. “For those of
you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage, who until
recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunched
woman with pointed teeth cackled.
“Yes . . . Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all
about Muggles . . . how they are not so different from us . . . ”
One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face
Snape again.

“Severus . . . please . . . please . . . ”
“Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s wand, and Charity
fell silent as if gagged. “Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds
of Wizarding children, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense
of Mudbloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept those
thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says
Professor Burbage, a most desirable circumstance . . . She would have use all
mate with Muggles . . . or, no doubt, werewolves . . . ”
Nobody laughed this time; There was no mistaking the anger and contempt
in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face
Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back
at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from his again.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell,
with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked.
Several of the Death Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto
the floor.
“Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and
slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.

ENJOY =)
Okay off to sleep...very tired.Night People!!