The yew hedges muffled the sound of the n’s footsteps. There was a rustle sowhere to their right: Yaxley drew his wand again, pointing it over his companion’s head, but he quickly lowered it again. The source of the noise proved to be nothing more than a pure-white peacock, strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.
“Humph, he always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks …” Yaxley thrust his wand back under his cloak with a snort.
Snape said nothing. He had been here many tis and of course knew what style the manor was.
A handso manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned downstairs windows.
Sowhere in the dark garden beyond the hedge a beautiful 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 lit, and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificent carpet stitched with gold thread covering most of the stone floor. The walls and columns on either side were inlaid with fragnts of gemstones, which glowed faintly under the light.
The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the walls followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past.
The two n 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 ca from a roaring fire beneath a handso marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror.
Snape and Yaxley lingered for a mont on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustod to the lack of light, they were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene: 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. None of the people seated underneath this singular sight was looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly below it. He seed 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, his 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 seed to emit a pearly glow.
Whether it was an illusion or a reflection of the flickering firelight behind him, those scarlet eyes seed to be glowing red as well.
Yes, an unnatural red glow!
Snape thought that unnatural was the perfect word to describe the Dark Lord’s current state. He was becoming less and less like a human wizard.
Voldemort was more like a monster. Although he had always been one, this was a very different kind of monstrosity.
One was a Dark wizard who had undergone countless chaotic and twisted experints in Dark magic, but who was, at his core, still human. The other… Snape wasn’t quite sure what word to use for what Voldemort was becoming. Perhaps it was just as that Evan Mason had said, Voldemort was rging with an evil god. He himself was turning into one.
An evil god, a terrifying magical monster parasitic in the shadows of the void.
What lay beneath those flowing black robes that completely shrouded Voldemort’s body?
Snape was certain that once, through an opening in the sleeve, he had glimpsed so strange, inhuman organ. …
At that thought, he quickly cast Occluncy on himself, and at that exact mont, Voldemort’s cold voice rang out.
“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his imdiate right. “Yaxley — beside Dolohov.”
The two n 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: So 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 so 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 mont or two, Voldemort’s lipless mouth curved into sothing like a smile.
“Good. Very good. And this information cos —”
“— from the source we discussed,” said Snape expressionlessly.
“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, as if he had expected Yaxley to say that.
“My source told 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 ti; he is known to be susceptible. Everyone in the Order of the Phoenix knows that. They wanted him to leak that information.”
“I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seed quite certain,” said Yaxley hurriedly.
“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. They don’t trust the Ministry at all and have not cooperated with Rufus Scrimgeour.”
“But —”
“My intelligence tells that Scrimgeour originally planned to work with Harry Potter and Evan Mason, but their talks fell apart,” said Snape slowly, turning to Voldemort. “This happened at Dumbledore’s funeral. Since then, the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry have had no contact, my Lord!”
Voldemort did not respond. His gaze had wandered upward to the body revolving slowly overhead, and he seed to be lost in thought.
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