Author's Note:

Chances are, none of my once faithful readers are still interested in this story, or even still have fanfiction accounts. It's been years since I've updated, so don't worry, I would leave me too. But if you are reading this—and you must be, because otherwise you wouldn't know I was asking if you were—I put far too much time into this story and it's predecessor to just drop it so close to the end. So I'm determined to finish.

However, I'm still unsure where I want it to go so suggestions, as always, are more than welcome. At the moment I have no outline and I'm quite literally making it up as I go, which may have something to do with why updates are so few and far between. I don't want to write crap for the sake of writing something so I wait for inspiration to strike, and with college, work, another in-progress fan fiction, and some seriously fucked up shit in my personal life, inspiration has been somewhat lacking of late. So please, if you have some brilliant ending in mind please PM me. No promises I'll use it verbatim but it could get the old wheels a-turnin' if you know what I mean. Anywho, I've rambled long enough. Here's yet another excruciatingly long awaited chapter:

Ch. 16 – Deals with Devils

When Delia awoke she knew immediately that there was someone else in the room. And she knew it was him. The Dark One.

She kept her eyes closed and attempted to keep her breathing normal, but for the first time she understood the complete lack of control her friends had over their body when the waves of fear swept through the room. All the hair on her body was standing on end and she started shivering in spite of her self.

Well, he knows I'm awake now so I might as well face him, she thought to herself, but nothing could have prepared her for the true horror of the man in front of her.

Delia sucked in her breath sharply at the sight of him, terrifying in her trance state, he was the human embodiment of fear in person. With red, glinting eyes and slits for nostrils, he looked like a snake, his extreme pallor seeming to emanate a glow of its own, reflecting the white lights in the room. He was tall and thin, but she never for a moment thought of calling him frail; his very presence radiated pure, raw power.

Remembering her plan, Delia closed her eyes, not needing to feign her fear. She took a deep breath and willed herself out of her body, controlling herself like a puppet but separating her consciousness from her physical form. It's lucky, she thought, I didn't even know I could do this till now. I never tried to visit myself.

I've never needed to, she realized as an afterthought.

"You are extremely difficult to place, Miss Namorn," he said. "When we first brought you and your friends in you sparked something in my memory, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it." Delia shuddered, both physically and mentally as he unfolded one pale, spidery hand from the depths of his cloak and tapped a finger on his chin thoughtfully.

"But then it hit me, a family in France. Phillips, I think it was…" he trailed off delicately, relishing the look of horror that was slowly spreading over her face. "You'll be glad to know he died honorably, unlike his pathetic excuse for a father. He even tried to fight me, for all of thirty seconds I might add, but he knew it was over so he just grabbed a photograph and stared at it as he waited for the death blow." Lord Voldemort smiled cruelly. "He may have even said something sentimental, but I can't quite remember now." He shrugged in a mockery of an apologetic gesture.

"Once he was dead I was over taken by curiosity, as I am wont to do from time to time," he continued. "So I pried the frame from his fingers but was disappointed to see nothing but a picture of an unremarkable dark haired girl in a hat." Delia remembered the picture well; she'd given Robbie the frame for his fourteenth birthday. "But you aren't unremarkable at all, now are you?" Lord Voldemort asked with a nasty glint of hunger in his eyes.

Instantaneously Delia's plan changed. He knows, she thought. She had been intending to just play dumb and try to sneak out somehow, but she realized that she would never succeed at that now. She didn't know how, or how much, but she was certain Voldemort realized she had some power that made her unaffected by their fear magic.

"So is that what this room is for?" She asked, surprised how calm her voice sounded. "To satisfy your curiosity?"

Voldemort's eyes widened in pleasure at her apparent ease in his presence, his laugh sending horrifying chills up and down her spine. "Oh, you are a fascinating creature," he chuckled, the sound distorted and off.

"Curiosity killed the cat," she answered blandly, shocked to find herself almost bantering with the most evil wizard—no, person—to live in a century.

Voldemort continued to shake his head, a vague and sinister smile playing at his lips. "We're going to have fun together, you and I," he said, walking through a door that disappeared as soon as he passed.

I don't want to know what that means, Delia thought, curling up on her side and closing her eyes.

o.0.o

"LEGILIMENS!" For what had to be the fiftieth time, Delia watched her body get thrown back on the floor and twitch uncomfortably as Lord Voldemort attempted to break through her mental barriers. He could have no way of knowing that her mind wasn't in her body, that he might as well have been pointing his wand at the wall for all the good it would do.

She knew that when he left the room and she returned to herself she would be bruised and sore but for now all she could do was watch, occasionally sending a flittering of a memory back into her body, just half a glimpse of some meaningless moment to make him think he was making progress.

After half an hour he stopped and studied his wand contemplatively but she could see the frustration burning in his eyes. She hated to think what would happen when that frustration overcame his "curiosity." She was fairly certain her out-of-body existence wouldn't weather avada kedavra as well as legilimency. She realized she had to do something, to change his tactics. She had to be gutsy to convince him that she had the cruelty to do what she was about to suggest.

She started laughing, forcing the sound out of lips that hadn't made it in what was probably months. She rolled around on the floor like a madwoman, cackling away, stinging tears streaming from her eyes. "You really can't do it," she gasped, grinning insanely up at him. "You can't get in! And what will happen to the curious cat if he doesn't get any satisfaction?" she asked, hoping he was familiar with the phrase as she burst into another fit of manic giggles.

"CRUCIO!"

Pain comes from nerve reactions telling the brain that something is wrong. So Delia faked shrieks of mind-numbing pain, if he knew she couldn't feel the torturing curse he would know there was more than occlumency at work. It's a good thing I have experience screaming like this, she thought grimly, remembering her reaction upon first learning that Robbie was dead. Recalling that unending, horrifying pain made it all too easy to make her cries sound real.

When he lowered his wand she quieted, panting and gasping, hugging her arms tight around herself and glaring up at him. "Now, now," she muttered in a haggard whisper. "There was no need to lose your temper. Where will that get us?"

His eyes widened in surprise at her nonchalance and she sighed inwardly with relief. He thinks I've really lost it, she thought.

"Are you, negotiating with me?" he asked, clearly not used to being confused.

Delia laughed again, the broken sound sending chills up her own spine. "No," she said in a sickly sweet voice, batting her eyelashes mockingly. "I want to spend the rest of my life wasting away in this miserable little room being your favorite toy."

Suddenly Voldemort laughed and the sound was far more frightening than anything that had ever come from her mouth. "Oh, you are proving to be delightful, aren't you?" he asked. "What makes you think I'd want to negotiate with you? As far as I can tell, I'm the only one with anything to offer."

Delia rocked forward and back, her eyes fixed on his however much she wanted to get as far as possible from that horrible gaze. Faster and faster she rocked, wondering how she was able to instinctively play the part of madwoman so well. Maybe I am going crazy, she thought to herself. I feel sane enough, but who can tell.

But she forced her features into a smile as she rocked nonetheless. "I'm powerful," she said, recognizing the glint of agreement in his eyes. "And seeing as you're still operating underground—quite literally in this case, I'd guess," she added, gesturing at the windowless walls. "I think you can use all the powerful witches and wizards you can get."

"Let's see," Voldemort mused, turning his back from her so she couldn't see his face. Somehow, this managed to make her even more petrified. "I killed your first boyfriend and his family. Then I kidnapped you and all your little friends and tortured them and you—though I suppose you wouldn't know I had all your friends too until now." He turned and grinned.

"I assumed," Delia answered, holding her breath.

"So why would you ever want to join me?" he asked.

She made a funny clicking noise in her throat, keeling over to her side but fixing her eyes on the long, wicked looking wand in his pale hand. "Because I want more," she whispered.

Voldemort smiled. "My, my, how alike we seem to be, Miss Namorn," he said.

His eyes drew hers and they were cold.

"I don't believe you."

Rather than slumping in defeat or leaping at him or any logical reaction to such a blatant rejection of her lie, she rolled onto her back, cackling again, spreading her limbs and laughing a full-bodied laugh to the ceiling. "Okay," she said, when she could manage it. Only someone truly crazy would take a life sentence so gleefully, she thought. I guess I am losing my mind. She was surprised at how undisturbed she was by that fact.

She didn't hear him leave the room.

o.0.o

When Delia awoke she wasn't in the White Room. She was in a bedroom, an exquisitely decorated bedroom.

Heavy drapes hung over windows, blocking almost all the light, as she squinted she discovered they were a deep red, scarily similar to blood. The room was filled with dark brown furniture, bulky but carved with elegant ivy patterns. A vase of some dark purple flower she didn't recognize sat on the armoire across from her. The duvet cover on top of her was soft and thick and matched the curtains perfectly. But the real masterpiece in the room was a massive, heavy looking bronze-framed mirror, the two cherubs carved into the top of the frame seeming to stare at her from frightening, darkened eyes.

Where am I? she wondered, sitting up and swinging her feet to the floor. Resting on a chair near the bed was a small stack of clothes with a note on top that read in a sinister, spiraling script:

For the girl in the hat.

Underneath was a neat stack of the clothes she had worn in Robbie's picture, right down to the bright red beret she'd been wearing.

Of course, they couldn't be the actual clothes, she didn't have them anymore and surely they wouldn't fit her now and these clothes looked like they would fit perfectly. He must have transfigured them to look just like my old ones, she realized.

Delia quickly got dressed, noting that she was right in thinking these would fit, and placed the beret on her head, tilted to the right, the way a proper Parisian girl would wear it. Glancing quickly around the room, she felt the uncomfortable absence of her wand she hadn't felt in the White Room. Shrugging to herself, its not like she expected to get out of that room, let alone get her wand back, she walked to the door and opened it.

She was surprised to find it unlocked, but if they tried to keep her in she supposed she could just apparate. She didn't know if there were anti-apparation jinxes in place but she had a gut feeling there weren't. She was being tested and her friends would be killed if she failed the test.

Delia padded quietly down the hallway towards voices she heard in a study at the opposite end. Rather than knock and wait for admittance—she remembered she was supposed to be unhinged—she walked right through the door as though she lived there.

A dark man and woman started when she entered, clearly amazed at her abrupt appearance and uncaring demeanor. She plopped herself in an armchair in front of a desk that looked like it matched the furniture in her room. She looked expectantly at the woman seated behind the desk and then at the man standing across from her, as though she expected them to carry on their conversation with her. This would actually be rather fun if I weren't so terrified of what he's probably doing to my friends without me there, she observed.

"So you're up," said the man with a cruel sneer, looking at her as though she was something slimy he had stepped in. "About time."

Delia allowed her head to roll to the side as she studied him in silence for several long moments. He squirmed under her unflinching gaze until finally she looked towards to woman. "Got any food?" she asked before she even realized how ravenous she was.

The woman smiled, her hawk-like features sharpening. She was beautiful, Delia observed, but in a predatorial way. She realized that out of the two of them, the woman was the one Delia was going to have to look out for. "Downstairs," the woman said, standing and gesturing for Delia to lead the way.

Once again, Delia held her gaze for longer than was socially acceptable, then stood and made her way to the door as though she'd done it a thousand times.

The stairs were wide and more airy than she expected; she was clearly in some kind of mansion. Delia wondered vaguely if the man and the woman were married but quickly dismissed the idea, she wouldn't settle for a weak, power starved man like him.

"The dining room is to your right," the woman instructed from above when Delia reached the last step so she veered in a funny sort of swooping pattern across the foyer, seemingly unsteady on her feet. Delia heard the man scoffing behind her but ignored him, entering a dining room just as richly decorated as the rest of the house and plopping herself at the head of a fantastically long dining table.

The man dropped ungraciously into a chair to the right of her as the woman lowered herself delicately into the one on the left. Delia noted the way she perched on the edge of her seat, never fully settled, never entirely at ease. This is a woman who has seen a lot of the world, she mused.

A stream of house elves, each more pathetic than the next, paraded by her, bearing plates heaping with fantastic smelling food. Delia wondered vaguely if it had been poisoned but came to the conclusion that regardless, they could kill her if they wanted to. That in mind she selected a heaping stack of pancakes and dug in with relish. She noticed that neither of her companions was eating but she ignored this, focusing only on the fact that she would need this food for energy if things turned nasty.

Ignoring the napkin next to her she wiped her hands and mouth of the table cloth, perhaps overdoing the insanity act but she didn't know what else to do. She thought about Sirius shrieking for her and Remus painfully transforming from man to wolf and back again and felt the craziness coming on. Good, she thought as she fought the need to gouge the woman's calculating eyes out of her face. I need some authentic insanity to keep this up.

She caught the eyes of the woman and held them. "So where's the Lord of the Snakes?" she asked recklessly.

The effect was immediate. The man leapt to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor and his wand directed at her throat. "You DARE!" he roared, thinking himself intimidating. Perhaps he would be without such a quietly powerful individual to compare him to. Delia ignored him—she'd known he'd do something dramatic of the sort—and instead held the gaze of the woman, knowing her next move would be in those eyes.

She saw a flicker of shock, then anger, and then—her heart leapt at the sight—acceptance. For now at least, this woman was beginning to believe that Delia really was insane. "Sit down, Magnor," she ordered. "Our guest doesn't know how things work around here. It's only good manners that we explain before we go jinxing her into an even further state of insanity."

A few house elves hurried to right the fallen chair and Magnor—Delia remembered him from the Dark Room now, Voldemort had tortured him—huffed but sat.

"As you now know, this is Magnor," the woman gestured to the man but Delia refused to look away. "I am Bellatrix. You are in my home, mine and my husband's." Her voice was calm but strict; it rather reminded Delia of McGonnagall on the first day of term, laying down the law for her class. She had a feeling punishment here wouldn't involve House Points or writing lines.

"Currently, at the request of our master, the Dark Lord, you are our guest," Bellatrix continued. "However that arrangement is continuous only in the event that you," she paused for heightened drama but Delia kept her face unfazed. "Behave yourself." She paused again, waiting for interruption. Delia stayed silent. "You are expected to show respect for your betters, particularly the Dark Lord."

Delia waited to see if she would continue but Bellatrix stayed silent. It was clearly her turn to speak. She picked up her knife and started sawing at the beautiful carving on the armrest of her chair, blatantly not 'behaving.'

"Right," she answered monotonously. "So can I have my wand back now?" she asked, sure she'd get a negative but figuring it was worth asking, to see where she stood.

It was a battle to keep the amazement from her eyes when Bellatrix wordlessly produced Delia's wand from her sleeve and held it out, handle first, but she succeeded. Magnor made a funny noise in his throat as though he wanted to protest but thought better of it. Ignoring him again, Delia had to force herself to move naturally as she reached out and grasped it, as though she'd been sure all along all she'd needed do was ask.

She allowed her eyes to light up as her fingers clenched the handle possessively—she was supposed to be power-hungry after all—and several shimmering silver sparks spewed from the end, much as they had in Olivander's shop six years before. Pointing her wand at an elaborate and clearly valuable vase in the middle of the table she silently cast a spell that transfigured it into pure steam that quickly dissipated into the air.

Bellatrix chuckled, a sound almost as awful as Voldemort himself's laugh. "I never liked that one myself," she said, shrugging. "But if you're so eager to use your wand again, perhaps it's time to put you to your first test." She nodded to Magnor. Finally looking at him, Delia noticed with worry that he looked happy for the first time that morning.

She hid her concern as he left however and continued destroying parts of the ornate room at random, a candlestick here, a picture frame there, the head of a cupid carved into the fireplace, all the while testing the bounds of Bellatrix's patience. The older woman did not intervene however, seemingly amused at Delia's show of childish petulance.

It was only when she heard Magnor approaching, clearly dragging something heavy that Delia stopped the meaningless destruction.

She had only moments to register a ragged and clearly broken man being deposited on the floor before her before Delia heard Bellatrix's voice as though it came through a poorly transmitted radio. She said only two words. "Kill him."

Hesitation would mean immediate death for her and impending death for her friends. Delia raised her wand immediately, lazily, all the while maintaining her bored facial expression as every nerve in her body screamed for her to stop, but this wasn't about self preservation anymore. Even if she hatched some scheme to save her friends and pull it off, she'd spend the rest of her life running from Voldemort and his supporters. No, this was bigger than saving her already irreparably scarred soul.

"Avada Kedavra."

A/N: Sorry not sorry. You've waited so long and I'm sure many of you will be horrified with this turn of events but it is what it is. So our 'heroine' is a cold blooded murderess. Do you hate me now? Love me? Couldn't care less cause why would you read a story that hasn't been updated in two and a half years? Let me know.