Chapter 3: The Parley Ground
The Thames smelled of rotten fish and diesel, a thick, greasy scent that clung to the back of Lisa’s throat. She stood in the lee of a crumbling brick archway, part of an old warehouse whose roof had long since surrendered to the sky. The cobblestones under her boots were slick with a damp that wasn’t entirely water. Above, through a jagged gap in the ironwork, the moon hung—a swollen, blood-amber disc that painted the world in stains.
She was alone. Harry had fought her, of course. A silent, furious battle in the flat that ended with him slumped against the wall, tears of frustration in his eyes. “He’ll kill you the second he sees you,” he’d said, his voice raw.
“Then he’s a short-sighted idiot,” Lisa had replied, checking the plain Kevlar vest under her jumper for the third time. It was muggle-made, useless against curses, but the familiar pressure was a comfort. “And this whole war is even stupider than I thought.”
Now, waiting, the bravado felt thin. The cold seeping through her clothes was real. The silence was absolute, broken only by the distant lap of oily water against stone piers and the skittering of something in the shadows. She forced her breathing to stay even, in through the nose, out through the mouth. A cop waiting for a meet with a hostile informant. That was all. Just another night in the job.
She was wrong.
The air didn’t split with a crack. It didn’t tear. It sickened. A wave of nullity swept through the warehouse yard, a drop in pressure that made her ears pop. The ambient sounds—the skittering, the water—ceased as if severed. The red light of the moon seemed to deepen, to coagulate.
They appeared from the shadows between two gutted freight containers, as if they’d simply been part of the darkness and now decided to step forward.
Voldemort was at the center. He was taller than she’d imagined, and paler, like something kept in a cellar. His face was serpentine, the nostrils mere slits, his eyes burning a luminous red that held no warmth, only a terrible, focused intelligence. He wore simple black robes. He carried a bone-white wand loosely in one long-fingered hand.
To his right stood Rudolphus, a statue of composed malice, his dark eyes fixed on her with the intensity of a sniper.
To his left, Rabastan seemed almost to vibrate in place. His gaze jumped from her to the surrounding rubble and back, a faint, unreadable smile playing on his lips.
No one spoke for a full minute. The silence was a weapon. Lisa held it. She kept her hands in view, empty, at her sides. She didn’t fidget. She met the red eyes and waited.
“Detective Grimm.” Voldemort’s voice was high, clear, and soft. It carried in the dead air without effort. “You requested an audience. You stand in it.” He began to circle slowly to her left, his robes whispering over the broken ground. “A muggle woman. In a vest. Come to bargain with Lord Voldemort.”
“You got the message,” Lisa said. Her voice sounded too normal in this unnerving place.
“I received a… curiosity.” He completed his arc, standing opposite her now. “The claim that you could offer insight into the old fool’s designs. The threat that you would turn the boy into a guided missile if I inconvenienced you.” A smile, thin and humourless, stretched his lipless mouth. “It was the threat that intrigued me. It lacked the usual grandeur. It was pragmatic. Ugly. Like a shiv in a prison yard.”
Lisa said nothing. Let him talk.
“The Lestranges tell me you possess an… erratic power. That you broke their magic without a wand. An interesting parlor trick.” His head tilted. “Show me.”
“I’m not a performing dog.”
“Aren’t you?” he whispered. “You came when I called. You stand where I allow. You hope to trade barks for treats. Show me the magic, Detective. Or this ends now, and I will find the boy by tracing the grief that bleeds from you.”
The command was a needle of ice in her brain. Her fear, carefully boxed, rattled. A spark of anger answered it—hot, bright, and stupid. A copper coin left in her pocket from the cab ride grew suddenly searing hot. She flinched, her hand flying to her leg. The coin melted through the fabric of her trousers, hitting the cobblestone with a faint, molten hiss and a tiny puff of acrid smoke.
Voldemort’s red eyes followed the trajectory of the falling, glowing droplet. His expression did not change, but the intensity of his stare sharpened. “Not a trick. A leak. A stress fracture in a dam.” He sounded almost clinical. “How utterly undisciplined. How dangerous.”
“You wanted a show,” Lisa ground out, the burn on her thigh a sharp, clarifying pain.
“I wanted confirmation. You have it.” He ceased his movement. “Now, your bargain. You have information on Dumbledore.”
“I have a theory. Supported by evidence. About the prophecy. About his long-term manipulation of Harry. About how he built the war, and the weapon, to a specific design.” She kept her sentences short, factual. “The blood sacrifice. Arabella.”
The name, in this place, felt like a sacrilege.
For the first time, a flicker of something besides analytical interest crossed Voldemort’s face. A hunger. “The squib,” he breathed. “He told you.”
“He didn’t have to. I’m a detective. I follow the evidence. It leads to a pattern of grooming. Of setting pieces on a board. Harry is his masterpiece. You’re the required opponent. The prophecy is the script.”
Voldemort was silent for a long moment. “And your proposed trade?”
“You leave Harry alone. Completely. You focus your war on Dumbledore and the Ministry. You cut the ‘Chosen One’ narrative out at the root. In return, I give you everything I have on how Dumbledore operates. His patterns, his weaknesses, the locations of his other pieces. I’m not a witch. I don’t think in spells. I think in motives, in patterns of behavior, in forensic holes. I can give you a profile that no wizard could.”
Rabastan let out a low, incredulous chuckle. Rudolphus shot him a silencing look, but his own gaze was locked on Lisa, calculating.
“You offer me a tactical analysis,” Voldemort said, “in exchange for sparing my prophesied enemy. You believe I fear the boy?”
“I believe you’re obsessed with him. I believe that obsession is part of Dumbledore’s design. It clouds your judgement. It makes you predictable. Cut him out, and you starve the old man’s primary strategy. You fight your war, not his.”
The logic hung in the foul air. It was a cold, mercenary logic. The kind that appealed to a strategist.
Voldemort’s wand hand twitched. “And why would you, the protective lioness, betray the old man? For the boy’s safety, yes. But this feels like… vengeance.”
Lisa’s jaw tightened. “He made my son a ritual object. He engineered the death of a woman for a spell. He’s no better than you. He just uses prettier words. I don’t care about your revolution. I care about Harry. If burning Dumbledore’s world down gets him safe, I’ll bring the petrol and the matches.”
A true smile, this time, touched Voldemort’s mouth. It was terrible. “How delightfully… base.” He paced again, thinking. “The offer has symmetry. But trust is a fragile currency. You could lie. You could omit.”
“So could you,” Lisa said.
“Indeed.” He stopped, facing her directly. “We shall mint a new coin, then. A wizard’s contract. An Unbreakable Vow.”
Lisa had read about them in Harry’s books. A magical oath. Break it, and you die. Her stomach turned to lead.
“The terms will be thus,” Voldemort continued, his voice taking on a rhythmic, ceremonial quality. “You will provide me, to the best of your ability, with all information pertinent to the defeat of Albus Dumbledore, gathered through your non-magical means. You will not withhold, you will not deceive. In return, I shall swear that neither I, nor any who serve me, will make any attempt to capture, harm, or kill Harry Potter, from this moment until the day Albus Dumbledore breathes his last.”
Lisa’s mind raced. It was narrower than she wanted. It only lasted until Dumbledore’s death. After that, all bets were off. But it was a guarantee. A real one. Time. That’s what she was buying. Time for Harry to live, to breathe, to get beyond the reach of this madness.
“And the meeting itself?” she asked. “Your vow of safety for tonight?”
“A separate clause. A simple thing. Shall we begin?”
He gestured with his wand. Rudolphus stepped forward, his expression unreadable. Rabastan followed, his restless energy now focused, intense.
“The vow requires a Bonder,” Voldemort said. “Rudolphus will perform the office.”
Rudolphus moved to stand beside Lisa, facing his master. He took his wand out. He did not look at her.
“Give me your right hand,” Voldemort said to Lisa.
Every instinct screamed not to. She saw Harry’s terrified face in her mind. She thought of the melted coin, of the shredded file in her office, of the lie built around a little boy. She extended her hand. It was steady.
Voldemort’s long, cold fingers closed around her wrist. His touch was dry, like ancient parchment, and utterly lifeless.
Rudolphus raised his wand. He touched the tip to their clasped hands. A thin, fiery cord of brilliant, twisting gold erupted from the wand, wrapping around their skin like a serpent.
“Will you, Lisa Grimm,” Voldemort intoned, the magic thrumming in the air, a physical vibration she could feel in her teeth, “swear to provide your knowledge and insight towards the defeat of Albus Dumbledore, withholding nothing gained by your skill?”
The gold cord pulsed, searingly bright. It felt like her veins were filling with light. “I will,” she said, and her voice was not her own.
The cord tightened, sank into their flesh, became part of the bind.
“And will I, Lord Voldemort,” he continued, the red eyes boring into hers, “swear that Harry Potter shall be held immune from all harm by my hand or the hands of my servants, until such time as Albus Dumbledore is dead?”
“You will,” Rudolphus prompted, his voice a gravelly whisper.
“I will,” Voldemort said.
A second strand of fire wound around the first, braiding it, sealing the pact. The light was blinding. Lisa felt it brand itself onto her soul, a contract written in her own magic, her own life force.
“So it is sworn,” Rudolphus said, and with a slash of his wand, the cords of light flared and vanished.
The release was immediate. Voldemort dropped her hand as if discarding rubbish. Lisa staggered back a step, her right arm numb and buzzing, an invisible tattoo of promise burning just beneath the skin.
“The meeting is concluded,” Voldemort said. He seemed almost bored now, the transaction complete. “You will be contacted. Have your information ready.” He turned, the shadows around him deepening.
Rabastan lingered for a half-second longer. His eyes, wide and unnervingly bright, scanned her face—the sweat on her temple, the clenched jaw, the haunted look in her eyes she couldn’t quite hide. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it. His gaze dipped to the small, blackened burn on her trouser leg. A strange, almost sympathetic expression flashed across his features—a recognition of pain, of cost—before he wiped it clean, turned, and followed his brother into the waiting darkness.
They were gone. The pressure lifted. The sounds of the river returned, loud and sudden. The red moon looked just like a moon again.
Lisa folded over, bracing her hands on her knees, and vomited onto the cobblestones. The convulsions wracked her, empty and violent. It was the fear, the adrenaline, the violation of that magical bind leaching out of her.
When it was done, she spat, wiped her mouth with the back of her trembling hand. The burn on her thigh throbbed. The ghost of the vow hummed in her wrist.
She had just made a deal with the devil. To protect her son, she had allied herself, however temporarily, with a monster. And she had done it with a binding that would kill her if she wavered.
She straightened up, the cold air sharp in her lungs. The path was set. There was no walking it back.
Somewhere in the city, Harry was waiting. She had to go home. She had to look him in the eye and tell him he was safe, for now. She would not tell him the price. Not yet.
She took one last look at the empty yard where the most terrible man in the world had just held her hand, and then she walked away, her footsteps echoing too loudly in the sudden, ordinary dark.
She took one last look at the empty yard where the most terrible man in the world had just held her hand, and then she walked away, her footsteps echoing too loudly in the sudden, ordinary dark.
In the dense silence that followed her departure, the air in the warehouse yard remained curdled. It did not clear. With a soundless, unanimous decision, the three wizards reappeared precisely where they had vanished, as if they had merely paused the world and now pressed play.
Voldemort stood observing the spot where Lisa had been sick, a dark patch on the wet cobbles. His head was tilted in contemplation.
“Well,” he said, the word slicing the quiet. “That was not what I anticipated.”
He turned his crimson gaze upon the brothers. Rudolphus stood at rigid attention, his face a mask of obedient stone. Rabastan shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his fingers twitching at his sides as they often did when the silence in his own head grew too loud.
“She is… remarkably ungrateful for the mercy of this meeting,” Rudolphus offered, his voice carefully neutral.
“Mercy?” Voldemort echoed. He let out a soft, breathy sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She did not ask for mercy, Rudolphus. She demanded parley. She presented terms. She negotiated.” He began to pace a short, slow path on the broken ground. “How long has it been since anyone offered me a trade, instead of a plea or a curse? Decades. They either weep or they fight. They never simply… deal.”
Rabastan watched the Dark Lord pace. A familiar, anxious heat coiled in his gut. It was the same feeling he got when Rodolphus’s attention was captured by a complex piece of dark magic for too long, a jealous, hungry need to be the sole focus. But now the focus was elsewhere. It was on the burn mark on the ground, on the ghost of the muggle woman’s defiance.
“She is an animal,” Rabastan blurted out, then clenched his jaw.
Voldemort stopped pacing and looked at him. “Yes. A cornered one. And cornered animals are transparent. They have no art for politics, no talent for grandiose lies. You see their survival, pure and simple. It is… refreshing.” He sounded genuinely pleased, like a scholar who had discovered a fascinating, violent new species. “She sees Dumbledore as I see him. A puppeteer. A liar wearing a saint’s skin. She uses different words—‘grooming,’ ‘patterns,’ ‘forensic holes’—but the contempt is identical.”
Rudolphus felt a cold trickle of unease. The Dark Lord was analyzing her, dissecting her motives with the relish he usually reserved for a particularly cunning curse. He was not ordering her immediate torture for her impudence. He was admiring the architecture of her anger. Rudolphus’s loyalty was a brutal, unshakable column, but this felt like a crack in the expected foundation. He should be jealous of the attention, he thought. We should both be. But the jealousy was a tangled, double-edged thing. Was he jealous for the Dark Lord, because this scrappy mortal dared hold his interest? Or was he jealous of him, because the woman with the wild, leaking magic had looked at the Dark Lord with more directness than she’d ever glanced at them?
“She will betray you the moment the vow allows,” Rudolphus stated, clinging to the solid ground of suspicion.
“Undoubtedly,” Voldemort agreed, still pleased. “The vow expires upon Dumbledore’s death. She will immediately become a shield for the boy again. I expect nothing less. It makes her predictable. It makes her reliable, within these defined parameters.” He turned his palms upward, examining his own long fingers as if seeing the echo of her wrist in his grasp. “She fears me, but the fear is a tool she uses. It does not master her. She is not broken by it. You can see it in the set of her shoulders, even after vomiting from the vow’s aftershock. Most interesting.”
Rabastan kicked a loose piece of brick. It skittered into the shadows. “She melted a coin. It’s a child’s accident.”
“It is a seismic event waiting for a fault line,” Voldemort corrected, his voice dropping to a whisper. “No training. No discipline. Just a geyser of power linked directly to her primal mind. Imagine that force… directed. Imagine it taught to hate specifically.” He finally looked away from his hands, his red eyes finding Rabastan’s restless ones. “You felt it, did you not? The rawness. It called to the damage in you. To the things Azkaban left behind.”
Rabastan froze. He felt Rudolphus’s protective anger spike beside him, a silent wave of heat. He couldn’t lie. “It felt… familiar. Like screaming without sound.”
“Exactly.” Voldemort’s smile returned. “She is a creature of damage and survival, just as you are. Just as your brother is, in his more polished way.” He acknowledged Rudolphus with a slight nod. “This is why her perspective has value. She is an outside contaminant. She will see weaknesses in Dumbledore’s design that we, who are born into this war, are blind to.”
He fell silent again, his gaze drifting back to the exit Lisa had used. The appreciation hung in the air, palpable and disturbing. It was not affection. It was the satisfaction of a collector acquiring a brutally efficient new instrument.
Rudolphus and Rabastan exchanged a glance. In the dim, bloody light, the same unasked question passed between them. The Dark Lord had just bound himself to a muggle, had just praised her as refreshing and interesting. He had dissected her psyche with more interest than he’d shown any new recruit in years. The possessive devotion they shared, their taboo anchor in the chaos, suddenly felt like it had a challenger for his intellectual attention—and a challenger who was, herself, a target of their own confused fascination. The jealousy was a knot they couldn’t unpick.
“We are to be her handlers?” Rudolphus asked, the words tight.
“For now,” Voldemort said. “Ensure she delivers what she promises. Protect the investment. But do not touch her. Do not threaten the boy. The vow is pristine. Let her think she is managing us.” He smoothed his robes, a sign of dismissal. “This changes the board. The old fool is playing wizard’s chess. He does not yet realize someone has just introduced a gun to the game.”
With a final, lingering look at the empty night, he disappeared, leaving them alone with the smell of salt and acid and their own silent, seething conflict.
With a final, lingering look at the empty night, he disappeared, leaving them alone with the smell of salt and acid and their own silent, seething conflict.
The silence he left behind was different. It was theirs. It buzzed with everything unsaid.
“Well,” Rabastan hissed, the word cracking the quiet like a whip. He spun on his brother, his eyes wilder than usual. “Refreshing. That’s what he called her. He’s never called Bellatrix refreshing.”
Rudolphus didn’t move. He was staring at the spot where the woman had stood, his jaw a hard line. “He called her an animal. A tool. Remember that.”
“He sounded like he wanted to polish the tool. To keep it in his private box.” Rabastan’s laugh was a short, sharp bark. “A muggle. With a leak. And we’re to be her handlers.” He spat the word. “Like she’s a skittish Thestral.”
“He gave an order.” Rudolphus finally turned his head, his dark eyes glinting in the poor light. “We follow. We watch. We ensure the information flows. That is all.”
“Is it?” Rabastan took a step closer. The air between them thickened, charged with a familiar, chaotic current. “You felt it too. Don’t lie. That… rupture in her. It didn’t feel like a witch. It felt like a mirror.”
Rudolphus’s gaze flickered. A muscle in his temple jumped. He had felt it. In the warehouse, when her coin had melted, it wasn’t the pathetic spectacle it should have been. It was a raw, gravitational pull on the damaged parts of his own magic, the parts the Dementors had left frayed and howling. It was an echo. An invitation to chaos. He said nothing.
Rabastan saw the acknowledgement anyway. A smirk touched his lips, devoid of humor. “He told us not to touch her. He specified.”
“He did.”
“Why would he need to say it,” Rabastan whispered, “unless he saw the want in us?”
Rudolphus’s hand shot out, grabbing the front of Rabastan’s robes, yanking him close. “Careful.” The word was low, a vibration against Rabastan’s cheek. “You let the Azkaban madness speak. It makes you sloppy. He saw her value, not your… fascination. Contain it.”
Rabastan didn’t struggle. He leaned into the grip, his breath quick. “Or what?”
For a long moment, Rudolphus just held him, the possessiveness in his grip warring with the warning in his eyes. Then he shoved him back, straightening his own sleeves with a sharp, violent tug. “Or we fail him. And we lose everything. Again.”
He turned and strode toward the street, his cloak swinging. Rabastan watched him go, the ghost of the grip still burning on his chest. He looked back at the darkened archway. He could still smell her there—cheap soap, ozone, and fear-sweat. He kicked the cobblestone where she’d been sick.
“Handlers,” he muttered to the empty dark, and followed his brother.
The following days settled into a grim, silent rhythm.
Lisa’s life had always been a circuit: the flat, the station, the grocery, the flat again. Now it had a shadow. Two of them.
She spotted Rudolphus first, because he wanted to be seen. Three days after the vow, he was sitting in a parked, rust-peeled sedan across from the police station, motionless as a gargoyle. He didn’t look at her as she walked out. He stared straight ahead, his profile sharp and unreadable against the grimy window. A statement. We are here. We are watching.
It was the professional in her that recognized the tactic. It was the woman with a branded soul that felt a cold trickle down her spine.
Rabastan was harder to pin down. He was a flicker. A shift in the crowd at the farmer’s market. The silhouette in a building’s high window when she took out the rubbish at night. He was never where she could confront him, but he was always present, a persistent itch between her shoulder blades.
The command was easy. Follow. Report. Ensure compliance.
It was also impossible.
In Lisa’s cramped flat, the air was thick with unsaid things. Harry paced, a caged thunderstorm. “You can’t just leave it like this!” he’d argued the night she returned, his voice cracking. “You made a vow with him!”
“I made a cage for him, around you,” Lisa had replied, her tone final, leaving no room for debate. She was scrubbing the kitchen counter, over and over, as if she could scour the feel of the Dark Lord’s hand from her skin. “It’s done, Harry. The how doesn’t matter. The result does. You’re off the board.”
“I never wanted to be on a board!”
“Tough.” She’d looked at him then, her green eyes hard. “The game existed before you knew the rules. I’m changing them.”
Now, he was sullen at the small table, dismantling a broken radio with more force than necessary. Lisa stood at the window, pretending to watch the street. She was tracking the shadow in the doorway of the closed charity shop two blocks down. Rabastan. He was leaning against the brick, rolling something between his fingers—a coin, perhaps. Her skin prickled.
She knew this dance. The stalker and the stalked. She’d reversed it on countless predators. Knowing the steps didn’t make the music any less unnerving.
“He’s there again, isn’t he?” Harry said without looking up. His voice was flat.
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“The younger. The twitchy one.”
Harry drove a screwdriver into the radio’s gut. “He looks at you like you’re a puzzle he wants to break.”
Lisa didn’t answer. She’d seen the look. It wasn’t just Rabastan. Sometimes, during the rare moments Rudolphus deemed her worthy of direct eye contact, she saw it there too, buried under layers of icy control. A brutal curiosity. A need to categorise the anomaly she represented. It was a detective’s look, in a way. She understood it, which made it worse.
The want was a physical thing. It lived in the space between buildings, in the quiet engine of the rusted sedan. It was in the way Rabastan’s head tilted when she emerged from the corner shop, a plastic bag in hand, as if studying the mundane grace of her movement. It was in Rudolphus’s precise, calculated appearances, which felt less like surveillance and more like a display—a stark reminder of the power he was forbidden to exert.
She felt it in her own magic, a dormant, angry heat in her veins. Their attention was a key, scratching at a lock. It terrified her.
One afternoon, rain sheeting down in grey curtains, she deliberately changed her routine. She left the station early, ducking into the labyrinthine network of covered alleys and service roads behind the high street. She moved with purpose, her coat collar up, her senses screaming.
She heard the faint, almost inaudible crack of Apparition not ten feet behind her. A misstep. A moment of wet, desperate pursuit.
She whirled, hand going to the can of pepper spray on her keychain.
Rabastan stood in the narrow alley, soaked. Rain plastered his dark hair to his skull and dripped from the sharp angles of his face. He wasn’t smiling. He was just breathing hard, his eyes wide, drinking her in from three meters away. The space felt electrified, shrunken.
“You’re losing your touch,” Lisa said, her voice steady. The spray’s safety tab was off. “Getting caught in the rain.”
“You walk too fast for a mouse,” he replied. His voice was rougher than she remembered, unused. “You don’t look over your shoulder like prey. You look like you’re measuring for a counter-attack.”
“Old habit.”
“Why the detour?” He took half a step forward. The rain pooled between them in the cracked asphalt.
“Testing the length of my leash,” she shot back. “Is your brother going to pop out of the dustbin, or is this a solo performance?”
A spasm crossed his face—anger, insult, something else. “He thinks I’m impulsive. Unreliable.”
“Is he wrong?”
Rabastan’s gaze dropped to her hand, the one clutching the pathetic muggle weapon. He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Probably not.” He looked back at her face, and the intensity there was suffocating. “The vow is a string around your wrist. I can see it, you know. When the light hits just right. It’s like a scar.”
Lisa’s pulse hammered. She hadn’t known that. “What’s it to you?”
“It’s pretty.” He said it with a disturbing, childlike simplicity. Then his expression shifted, hardening. “He wants your files. The ones you showed the boy. Tomorrow. A neutral place.”
“Tell him I’ll name the place. Via a note. Left somewhere he can find it.”
Rabastan’s eyes flashed. “You don’t give him orders.”
“I do today.” She held his gaze, the rain running down her neck. “This isn’t a summoning. It’s a transaction. He gets the first installment when I’m ready, where I choose. Those are my terms.”
For a heartbeat, she thought he might lunge. The desire to reach out, to enforce, was a palpable wave coming off him. It wasn’t wholly violent. It was a compounded, frustrated need to touch the source of the disruption, to confirm she was real, to maybe break her and see what raw power spilled out. His hands clenched at his sides.
The vow hummed, a warning chill in her wrist.
He stepped back. The tension snapped, leaving only the dull roar of the rain. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said, but it sounded like a question.
“Not today,” Lisa said. “Not by you.”
She turned and walked away, forcing her steps to be even, refusing to run. Her back was a wall of exposed nerves, expecting a curse, a hand, something.
Nothing came.
Only the feeling of his wild, relentless stare, boring into her until she turned the corner and broke the line of sight. She slumped against a wet brick wall, heart pounding against her ribs. The pepper spray trembled in her hand.
The command was easy. Follow. Report.
But the hunger they carried with them, a hunger they were forbidden to sate, was a powder keg sitting in her blind spot. And she was the spark.