33. The Queen Provides

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There in the secrecy of his safety the husk of a once great wizard sat in a dusty opulence he can't enjoy. When there through the floo Malfoy reaches out to him. Why? What news does he bring? Before too long, Pettigrew, the rat of a man, had shuffled to his side to ask for permission to bring the woman that has something of his to him. He can feel it. But what what is it that she has?

"You've seen better days Lord Gaunt, or would you rather Lord Slytherin? I'm not calling you that Voldy name, it doesn't suit you well enough for it to be believable." His red eyes, the color of a particularly nasty curse looked over the speaker before answering.

"I can ssstill kill." He threatened in a raspy hiss.

"I bring a gift and I get threatened? Some Lord you are." She hissed back at him startling him, he knew this intonation.

He held out his hand, there that woman that Quirrel never got around to getting rid of placed a suspiciously familiar red marble. Things were silent as he stared at it before it began glowing and spreading a mist that sunk into his skin. A feeling of coming together filled his frame, his mind filled with memories, memories that were still his, yet not as well. That's where he met her a second time.

"Miss Black, I thank you for-"

"That's not all, I need your word that you won't kill my favorite cousin. He has something of yours as well, unfortunately it's eating him." She stopped him from acting like she was done earning a dangerous glare.

"Girl, you will respect the-" Pettigrew's annoying voice was cut off.

"I give my word no harm will come to this dear cousin of yours." He rasped.

Soon a patronus orb, one cast wandlessly, was before them as she reached through the orb and grabbed something, no, someone by the hair and was pulling him through. She then yanked the locket off of her cousin and handed it over to him.

"Sweet (n/n), stay away, away." The nearly skeletal cousin mumbled continuously as he rocked and she examined the cousin thoroughly before summoning the now brown marble from the dark lord's grasp.

She held it over his heart and murmured something. Red eyes watched as the marble gained back its blood red sheen from before, before it plopped back into his expectant hand.

"Why do you help me?" The question was tentative, calculated, and a tad hoarse.

"You know who I am?"

"I know Bellatrix wouldn't stop going on about her 'cute' goddaughter, anything else I know of you comes from Pettigrew." He sent a glance to the uselessly sniveling fool that stood off to the side.

"I completed my NEWTs in fifth year, I had to stay at the school until I had reached a more acceptable age to be on my own when I got a letter. In that letter I was told that now that I was of a more acceptable age, that I was now my adopted brother's magical guardian. I went to plead with the headmaster to get the poor boy out of his muggle aunt's house and with me in literally anywhere else. I came to a few months later pregnant in a cage in the States with a Prewitt glamored to look like a Lestrange shoving just enough food in so I don't die. Add on to the fact the lemon louse has found a way to muddle my sight I find helping you would be in the best interest of myself, my children, and my particular fellows." She explained, she watched his eyes narrow as she did.

"That's not all he did is it?"

"The ponce isn't even paying me for the work I do for the school proper." She gritted her teeth. "He'll pay the werewolf decently enough to be comfortable but charge me medical fees for shit I can't control."

"He's keeping you subservient to him." He huffed a dry emotionless chuckle.

"I'm not the only one either, the boy, you can't kill him."

"Why not?" His eyes flashed dangerously in warning.

"He's got part of your soul merged to his. It would only make you weaker."

"I was planning on the political route anyway." He muttered.

"Good, one moment if you would be so kind." She said before turning to that patronus orb and sticking her arm back through and pulling out the diadem and sending it to his hand.

She did this a few times, pulling out the ring, the cup, and his dear Nagini before releasing the patronus.

"Nagini should be fine since she was an intentional horcrux and her soul is separate from your fragment." She brought these all to him and motioned him to take them.

With the marble in his hand, his soul fragments all created a mist that sunk into his person. Goodness he did some dumb shit.

"How shall I return the favor, Miss?"

"Don't be an idiot again. Because it isn't just you that will pay the price now." She grabbed her cousin’s arm and carried the half dead man off and away from him.

It was about an hour later that the thing that was less man than he should’ve been stood shakily from his chair as red eyes looked around the room before locking on the terrified looking rat in the corner of the room.

"Wormtail." The formerly hoarse voice of his became an approximation of what it was in his twenties.

"My lord, I-I beg of you-" the sniveling fool began to grovel, how quaint.

"If you have a request of me, you need only look into my eyes Wormtail." The red eyed man nearly hissed.

The moment the fool met his eyes he scoured the rat's mind, there hidden behind layers upon layers of compulsions and fear mongering was what he needed to know. Albus too-many-names-and-titles Dumbledore was the one who performed the Fidelis Charm for the Potters, he was the one to twist the love the sniveling rat before him had for James Potter into something so disgustingly self-preserving that it even made him, the Dark Lord, shiver in disgust. Further, that old man was the one who, with Wormtail's help, covertly sent a girl to the States and made a rather respectable man play a sick game of pretend with said girl under the affects of an imperius curse. That girl, now a woman, trusted him to keep his word and to not muck up his second chance. Dumbledore must be stopped.

But first he needed to heal some more while he prepared for his return and rallied the support he- no not he, his long lost son or cousin perhaps, but never him- finally takes his rightful seat in the Wizengamot.

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