The Only Thing Worth Fighting For

a/n Sampdoria: I promise Dumble Bashing will be an open season sport for quite some time. I also GARENTEE he will get at least some of what he diserves at some point in the story. as for snape, he will finally get to have a better ending. I adored the char and thought JKR should have never let him have that sucky of a life.
any way thx for feeding the muse!


Riddle Manor

The Inner Circle was to wait in the parlor of the Manor. It was a very odd occasion that they were allowed in this room at all. Voldemort had this room warded so well only a parslemouth of his bloodline could allow entry into the room and they had to be present to allow someone entry.
So they waited. Or to be more precise two thirds of them waited. Voldemort had a rather tightly organized group of Death Eaters. No one Death Eater knew who all of the other ones were for the protection of all of them. Only three Death Eaters walked around unmasked for most occasions. They were the inner circle. They were Roudolophus LeStrange, Lucius Malfoy, and Severus Snape. Every Death Eater knew who they were; but they each had their own sections of Death Eaters that reported to them.
Now all they were waiting on for this very important meeting was for Snape to return from gathering up the Granger chit’s things. There was absolute silence in the room as they calmly sipped their brandy and watched the Dark Lord pace. It was unnerving for them to see the Dark Lord so out of control.
The entire Manor was on lock down. No one was allowed to exit. No excuses were allowed. The only one allowed into the Manor who was not here currently was the potions master. No one knew exactly why the appearance of Hermione Granger in the ballroom upset the Dark Lord so much. But it had. LeStrange and Malfoy were content to allow Voldemort to pace the energy off while they waited. The more he paced the less likely he was to curcio them.
Severus Snape walked calmly into the room escorted by a house elf named Star. No one could ever figure out the elf. It had shown up about fifty years ago and proceeded to take care of the Dark Lord. However it was bound to another would not reveal who it was bound to.
It was the most loyal of servants though. She wore a small tunic of blue with a green serpent on it. Upon walking in the elf shook her head hard enough that her ears flopped to and fro. “Mister Dark Lording, Sirs, you must take care of yourself. How are you to complete the mission if you are so upset? Star will make Mister Dark Lording’s favorite soup for dinner ifin you woulds clam down and drink some tea.”
They all knew better than the question the elf’s informal speech to the Dark Lord. After all the elf could get away with murder. She had done so in the past. She would do anything at all to protect her “Mister Dark Lording.” It would have been comical if it had not been so necessary over the years to go to the elf when the fight against Dumbledore got too much for any one being to shoulder the burden of.
Snape sat down quietly on the dark green velvet sofa. While the elf continued to chide Voldemort he looked thoroughly around the room. The Dark Lord had told him once he had never altered this room from the way his mother had left it. Lilac walls and cherry wood floors furnished mostly in hunter green fabrics, he could almost swear that the Granger girl had decorated this room.
Once Star had left the men to their brandy and the Dark Lord to his tea, Severus decided he had to know how she was. “My Lord, does she live?”
“Poppy is with her Severus. The injuries are… extensive. Did you have to use force?” came the ominously quiet reply.
“No, she was crawling as best she could to answer the doorbell when I had decided against waiting any longer. I opened the door and she was barely out of the kitchen dragging her body with one arm. I don’t know exactly what has happened to the child but I am sure it’s not a recent development.
My lord, I must ask why have you become so very obsessive about her as she grew?”
The room held it’s breath because Voldemort didn’t allow anyone, even his most trusted to question him often.
“Did you all notice that there is something on every wall of this room but one? The wall you are all staring at behind me as a matter of fact.
When I graduated from Hogworts, I came back here and disillusioned that wall in such a way as I did the wards to this room. Only a parslemough who is also a Riddle can show what is upon it.
My mother was very concerned with genealogy, so when her father Old man Gaunt told her she had to marry she went looking for something particular. She had traced our ancestry to Salazar Slytherin.
Slytherin had no sons but a single set of twin girls. Only one had the ability to do magic but he could not bear to separate them, as custom would have dictated at the time. The squib would have been left to muggles and that would have been it. However he raised both girls together and to his surprise the squib turned out to have a different gift. She was a Seer. When she married and had children none of them had the ability to do magic. However there was always one Seer per generation.
Knowing this my mother, Merope Gaunt married Thomas Riddle one of the last in a direct line of seers that had dated back to Slytherin himself.”