Chapter Text
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The rain pours harshly on the roof of a small tent. The fabric bows under each heavy raindrops. The thunder shakes the thin planking and ropes that help hold up the structure. If there wasn’t magic to help hold it together it would topple down on the cages under it. The only light is that of a few candles that are lit by her mirror and the ever-persistent flash of lightning. There is a strong breeze that is washing over those that are too close to the door. It's cold and vaper escapes the mouth of a young woman that shudders and holds hard onto her shoulders. Her damp black hair is freezing along the edges. Before this, she had been accustomed to the warm jungles of her homeland. She moves her hands slowly down her thin arms and she blinks and wills herself back into existence. She is tired. She is in pain from a rough transformation and her fingers feel like they will never stop shaking. The blanket that covers her is too thin but enough to stop her from dying.
This had been her life for 10 years.
Nagini isn’t this frail girl anymore. She knows that in her bones. She has met death and she has fought wars. Her beautiful, disgusting form had become her prison and she had outlived every one of these people that left her here in this cage. She had become more than the girl who was stolen from her home, more than the teen who dreamed of love, more than the battered woman who lost her human form. No Nagini had become the only one the Dark Lord had ever loved. She had been his companion, his confidant, his protector, and the vessel for his soul. She loved Tom too. He was twisted, controlling, and powerful. Yet absurdly enough vulnerable, trusting, and lonely. They fit together because they could understand each other on a level that none could. And Nagini loved him. She loved him with all the broken parts of her that still existed trapped behind a wall of grief in her loss of Credence and the unfortunate realization that none had come for her. No one cared about the creature that she had become.
She feels Voldemort even now when she places a hand against her chest. She feels the absence of his magic and an ache for what once was and what could have been. If only things had been different. If only she hadn’t let him chase the boy. There are a lot of things that she has to grapple with. Many things that she is going to ensure never happen again. For Nagini had returned to this body and this time with a purpose and she would achieve it. She rubs at her neck and feels it under her thin fingers. Her head had been severed. She had felt it drop from her neck. Her last sight was Tom and his anguished cry on her demise. She had rendered him mortal and she feared what had become of him. It wasn’t fair.
None of it was; how the world got away with all the tragedies that made them who they were. How the murderers, the rapists, the child abusers got parts of them. She curled her fingers into a fist. She wouldn’t let it stand this time.
“Vengeance will only harm you.” The being looks at her as she looks at her human face in the water. Her form might be that of a woman but her teeth are as sharp as a snake's and she can feel the urge inside of her to strike out in fear. Fear of the being calling itself death and fear for her now imminent damnation.
Even in the second life or world between that she found herself in she can see the scars inflicted on her in her youth. They are branded with cut marks to get her magical snakeskin and her blood. Tom never took he asked. She splashed the water of the great lake she had a perfect view of her life in. She hit it with her firsts in anger as tears slipped down her cheeks. She had lost the ability before this to cry. Snakes couldn’t.
“Vengeance? No, it's justice.” She stood on wobbling legs. “I want justice for how I have been treated. I want retribution for what happened to Tom. Such things never would have happened if the world wasn’t how it was. It was cruel to us and is it so wrong that we blinded it back?” Her voice descended into a hiss. “If I could I would stop him from ever experiencing the things that I did. I could save him.”
“I can grant you one wish as you made it with the remainder of your magic and the soul that burned inside of you against your own. However, be warned that it is one chance, one attempt, to reverse what you have endured. To fail would be to end up between worlds, a cursed afterlife.”
“I would do anything for him.” She takes a deep breath. “I would trade my life in seconds for that and my afterlife without a second thought to hold him again.”
“So be it.
She slowly stood with all her strength and she held the blanket over herself, like a robe she wrapped it around herself. She wouldn’t let them hurt her any longer. She looked at the blue that decorated her arms like a blooming flower of rage. The yellows and the purples were her second set of scales and she found her magic. It was deep under the surface. It was weak but there, and as such, she could use it. She was well aware that it was burning inside of her. She looked at the trunk that was full of the few things that she was forced to wear and she held one hand up. Slowly she willed it and the candle's fire transferred from a small flicker to a blaze that consumed it. She threw her hands to the sides and it burned up the red to the tent even with the heavy rains. It burned stronger with the infused magic. It took the face of a snake and she felt it fighting to become more than it was; more wild. She could hear the terrified cries of those trapped with her and she laughed.
“Be free,” She willed her magic, “Free us both.”
Nagini’s prison burned as she stepped out of the melted bars. She truly in this moment shed the skin of the frail girl that she was.She looked at the man that had bought her like a common animal and treated her as less than a person standing trying to salvage his livelihood. The other creatures were running off into the night and she hoped they would find good places. She wished them well.
“Nagini.” He yelled at her. “Don’t just stand there you foolish girl. Get a bucket!”
She tilted her head and felt the hunger of the snake beneath the skin. He noticed her eyes and perhaps he noticed the change in her stance. Once she would have moved timidly to help. She would have cowered under the loudness of his voice. She would have prayed that if she did what he asked he would leave her be.
“Nagini!”
When she was 7 years old this man beat her to the point that she couldn’t move. He had choked nearly all the life from her thin body because she had not transformed on demand for him. He had hit her repeatedly with a stick, the same one that he banged against her cage as a warning. Now she has endured worse. Now, she knows better. There was no good in this world, only power and those who were too weak to seek it. Nagini had power that she hadn’t realized at this age. And so for the first time, she turned into the form she hated willingly. She shed her human self and became a snake. The snake won the grapple, and it only took one bite. She poisoned him with her venom. He would die for what he had done. There is no Severus Snape to make an antidote at the last minute to save his life. She bites him a second time and then a third for good measure before she turns back to a woman.
Her transformations still need work at this stage. She watches the ringmaster as he chokes on his blood. He has dropped his one hope of possibly prolonging his life and retaliating against her. She picked up the small stick from the ground that belonged to a less-than-competent wizard. Voldemort would have had a few good lines to share with his victim, one that would bring them even closer to despair in their final moments but Nagini is not like that. Maybe it is the snake in her but she prefers it clean, fast, and done. She looks into the dark eyes and they stare back at her.
“I took you in…” He gasped. “You betrayed me.”
“Betrayed you?” She tilted her head feeling another wave of anger and perhaps pity. He couldn’t understand. What was the point in talking to him if he did not see what he had done as wrong? “You betrayed me. I trusted you… and you used me. You abused me. You abused me and others.” Her voice is far more frail than she wished. Tom would not have been this weak. “You will not be able to do that anymore. I took that power away from you.”
Nagini watched the fire burn long after the rain should have put it out. She took everything from the man that was once her captor. She saw it not as stealing but as regaining what he owed her for every hit and humiliating performance that he forced upon her... for taking something so precious from her that she dared not think about it. Her innocence was lost long ago in this life and the one before it. She need only look at the scars and remember what trust did, what hope and promises brought her. She wouldn't make the same mistakes this time.
She took the good clothes he would give to the dancers who had fled as the larger animals had been freed. She took the fortune-telling cards that had fascinated her as a little girl. The ones she had turned and asked the gods of her fate. She took the other valuables from his trailer and the others. She would have need of it. When she was done she shrunk it all down just as she had seen him do thousands of times. The wand between her fingers felt clunky and she was exhausted because she wasn’t made for using magic like this. It drained her. It made her ache even more.
Yet she would need it. If she was to truly save Tom she would need this money and she would need to look the part. With one last look at the ashes behind her, she felt a breath of relief, as this was all that remained of the past and the parts she longed to forget. She was free years before the last time and all that remained of her tormentor was a corpse that would rot.
She smiled for the first time in a long time. She truly was free.