Chapter Text
July 15th 1980
A thick humid heat hung in the air of the lush green paddock, about 20 kilometers of dirt paths away from Yorkshire. The only light in the dark field was from the silvery moon, casting a luminescent glow on the wet dew. Any passing muggles might have commented on the stormy atmosphere, wondering if the charge in the air was indicative of an approaching lightning storm.
Ottilie Hemlock stood alone. The surge of the night tickled the hairs on the back of her neck, and she thought, not for the first time that night, of her daughter and husband, and how likely it was that she was to never see them again.
Yards away were a young couple, who had picked the wrong night for a moonlit picnic.
A voice rang out, stark against the quiet.
“Oh, Ottilie… are we so soft now that we’ve resorted to stunning the beasts?”
Two flashes of green light and the muggles were dead.
Ottilie gripped her wand tighter, trying to connect deeply with the magic inside, wanting to let its power bolster her nerves. “Come out where I can see you, Tom.”
“With a tone like that, you’d think our roles were reversed here.”
The cloaked figure walked out of the darkness itself, like it had been molded from it. Tall, hooded and crackling with power. Ottilie’s stomach dropped. She fired a curse, but it was deflected with cool ease, nothing to the Lord of Darkness before her.
“Now, now. Is that the proper way to greet an old friend? Your old master?” The figure laughed, a hollow violent sound.
Ottilie ground her teeth. Her wand hummed in her hand, and every bit of her told her she was in over her head; she was making a mistake. “It’s the proper way to greet someone who, rumor has it, has been planning your murder.”
“Murder?” Voldemort scoffed. “What gave you that idea?”
“Oh, spare me the theatrics. Let’s end this.”
“So brave for a woman seconds from death.”
Ottilie’s face did not reveal her fear.
The man, if he could still be called that with his melted face and slit of a nose, continued, “It doesn’t have to go this way. I am a merciful Lord, afterall. Have you ever considered returning? I’m sure I could find space for you in the fold. We’re always looking for target practice after all…”
The figure strode forward toward her, the dark of his cloak sweeping around his pale pointed feet. “Better yet, you could have the role of shining my wand. You’d have to earn it, of course, and I do imagine Bellatrix would be quite put out by the competition.”
Ottilie fired another curse and hot fire blazed through the dark, scorching the green of the paddock. But, again, it was deflected easily, reduced to nothing but the simmering embers between them.
“And,” Voldemort continued, his walk still casual, his face still indifferent, “all I would ask for this new role would be the simple disposal of that filthy muggle of yours and your rotten half-blood daughter.”
Ottilie blanched.
“Thought I didn’t know?”
Another curse. Another deflection, followed by the first return, gleaming white, hitting Ottilie’s face. Blood bloomed hot and dripped down her jaw in thick rivulets.
“Pity.”
And it began in earnest. The villagers of Yorkshire would later talk of the dreadful lightning they witnessed on that hot summer night. They’d lament the young couple that had died in it, freshly graduated from secondary school, sweethearts for years.
Ottilie managed one landing blow. A slicing hex that streaked across Voldemort’s arm, ripping through the thin luminescent skin.
But the single hit was enough to propel him into growing weary of the fight. When it landed, his skin opening to the hot red beneath, he grimaced, as though it were a simple disappointment to be reminded of the blood and sinew within.
Ottilie was bleeding and bruised but standing, her eyes still fixed on the man she had once thought had all of the answers.
“Avada Kedavra!”
Ottilie died, her face still contorted in anger.
In the quiet that fell, Voldemort walked the short distance to her broken body, silent in the dewy green. He reached down to her hand, bloody and lifeless, and yanked the thin wooden wand from her. Crouching down, he spoke to her body as if she were still alive to hear it.
“Your death is meaningless. I will find them and kill them both. No one will mourn you.”
He pocketed her wand and was off and away again. He thought nothing of the dead muggles or of Ottilie, or even of the blood that was still coursing down his arm. He thought only of wasted potential.