His Dark Lady | Tom Riddle Novella

Chapter 12: Diving Deep

October 3rd, 1950

So early on in his life, Voldemort rarely made mistakes. He would rarely slip-up and spill any information that may compromise him- least of all to some mindless witch. Emelina Du Lac Smith smirked at the thought: he truly underestimated her. Did he believe that she would sit back and do as she was told?

He had refused to allow her to accompany him to his death eater rendez-vous, but now that she knew when it was occurring, the matter of where would be easy enough to find out. After all, there were a number of idiotic delinquents she knew were in his ranks; tracking just one of them down would hardly be a task.

Thus, after Tom had apparated her home and bade her farewell with a promise to see her again soon, she waited a full five minutes before disapparating to track down who she believed would be the weakest link among Tom's death eaters: Romulus Lestrange.

After casting disillusionment and muffling charms on herself, Emelina apparated to the wizarding-redlight district just on the outskirts of Knockturn Alley and began her hunt for the useless lump of Lestrange; there were only a handful of bars at brothels that he was known to frequent as he apparently didn't have a job or any hobbies. She was confident in her search, seeing as she did have quite a bit of experience tracking lunatic wizards from teaching her students' abusive husbands a lesson. Sometimes, they'd just need a little magical nudge to straighten up their acts and Emelina was glad to be the enforcer.

The brunette witch was smug, despite herself, as she cast a quick search over the second bar. She was used to hearing people praise her beauty and fawn over her "legendary pureblood lineage" but it was another thing to hear praise for her magical skills from Lord Voldemort of all people. Undoubtedly, praise was not something that left his lips often and Emelina was proud as hell to be on the receiving end of it. 

To add to that, it was almost laughable that one of the driving forces for Tom courting was simply because his ego had been hurt from the way she'd been avoiding him. Being so desired by the future Dark Lord was definitely something to be proud of.

The fact that they were more or less an official couple now was still being absorbed by her and she still didn't know how exactly to feel about it- she would play along for now, of course, until the other shoe dropped. Lord Voldemort was a sociopath, after all, she wouldn't have to wait too long. She just had to make sure she didn't fall for his manipulations before then- a task that was growing increasingly more difficult. He was letting her in and spilling just enough information about himself, that Emelina knew to be true, to earn her trust and make her feel as though he was letting her in.

How much of it is real? She had no idea at this point. 

A door opening with two wizards laughing loudly caught Emelina's attention and her lip curled as she located the bastard, drunk out of his mind, outside of a brothel and being half-carried, half-dragged out by an almost-pitiful Avernus Mulciber, Cornelia Malfoy's fiancé.

"What'll happen if I don't show," Romulus Lestrange was slurring out, his voice barely audible over Emelina's muffling charm. "I hate getting wet."

Avernus chuckled as he forced Lestrange to rest his body weight against the building and rifled through his coat, procuring a small vial and forcing it in Lestrange's hands. It was a wonder how Lestrange had survived so long without Tom killing him- Emelina would've imagined seeing his face often enough would do the trick for a 'swish and flick' of an Avada. It would for her at least.

"If you weren't so useless at drying charms then maybe you wouldn't hate going down there so much." Avernus chortled.

Emelina listened intently, brows furrowed. The day was rather sunny with some cloud cover, so their meeting grounds must occur somewhere that would require passage through water- or maybe some other wet element?