Why did I agree to this again? (open)

[The Dark Lord Voldemort]

((OOC: Please, make sure your replies don't get too drama filled....The Dark Lord is here and will not tolerate it.. Secondly, well known Order members would be spotted here quite easily, so only Trainees of both sides and Death Eaters should post here, unless you're looking for a battle or to get caught...Then by all means, post away... ;D Trainees for the Order, those who are not well known are considered trainees, should only post here if they are trying to pose as a Death Eater Trainee. Skilled Order Members can post if they are using disguises but you must change your appearance or you will be caught))

The Ministry of Magic was once again going through a purge of its employees. Lord Voldemort was overseeing this mass exile of many a loyal worker who in the eyes of the Death Eaters and Voldemort, failed to meet the expectations that were proper for a Ministry Official of the times. He stood in the middle of what many would call his office; a large room full of odd objects that were obviously the belongings of Lord Voldemort himself, many looking quite old and useless. Among them was a table set in the center of the room, surrounded by a few chairs that had rather high backs on them. The whole tone of the room was dark and dungeon like, very much mimicking the atmosphere of the Riddle Manor. The Dark Lord was staring out a widow that had been installed by the previous Minister in order to keep an eye on those who worked below. Through it, he witnessed the crowd of people that were waiting to be failed or passed, who stood huddled in the center of the Atrium, just past the statue made of Emeralds of a large snake and his master. The statue was of Lord Voldemort, who was holding his wand near his chest in one hand, while the other held the large snake’s head up near his shoulders. Statue Voldemort and his Snake had rubies for eyes, which were cast down toward the ground, as if keeping a watch on those who entered. Two more smaller snakes who had no jewels on them save for the eyes, which were also rubies, made up the rear of the statue. Each of these gold sentries was watching the other sides of the Atrium for any signs of deceit. Other jewels of various colors were scattered throughout the statue, making up the other colors that were needed to bring a semi-life like look to the whole piece of artwork.

Meanwhile, the real Lord Voldemort frowned at the statue from above, as if it were an eyesore in his perfect Ministry. He would have been satisfied with just him and his snakes, in gold, with Ruby eyes. But someone had gone overboard in their attempt to honor and please him, which in turn only made him nauseated because of all the glitter that came off that statue when the light bounced off it. Looking away from it quickly, his eyes fell upon a group of his Death Eaters, who were pulling a few people from the ranks and executing them on the spot for being in contact with an Order member or anyone who was against the Dark Lord. After a while of watching and sneering at the actions of his followers, Tom Riddle turned away from the window and headed down to the Atrium rather slowly. His followers were expected to be where he wanted them, exactly when he wanted them there. He on the other hand, could take as much time as he wanted in getting from one point to another, no matter how many people were waiting on him. The long trek to the Atrium was not a lonely one for six Death Eaters accompanied the Dark Lord at one point, then it was two, before another five joined in as they neared the Atrium. But no matter how many there were at his side, it was nothing compared to how many littered the rest of the Ministry, and how many would soon be standing near him once he reached his destination. At this moment there were twelve Death Eaters guarding the Floo Networks and Apperation points, they didn’t ask for any kind of identification from those who entered, rather they judged by the actions of the newcomers; those who were suppose to be there would know where to go, and those who were new to working there would ask a Ministry worker where to go.

And those who were there to cause trouble for any of the Dark Lord’s minions, would be easy to spot because they always seemed shocked to see so many Death Eaters or were uncomfortable around them; if you were for the Dark Arts, you shouldn’t be worried about being there. The Dark Lord entered the Atrium with is head held high. His wands were hidden under the cloak, fastened safely to his belt. Voldemort wasn’t afraid of losing them to anyone, as no one would dare try to take them; he kept them hidden for a different reason. It was a sign to his minions around him, that if he had his wand or wands out, they too should follow suit. It was like waving a red flag to warn others of danger. Once he appeared at the base of his own, over glittery statue, the Dark Lord was surrounded almost immediately by trainees for the Death Eaters, who were all there to pay their respects to Lord Voldemort and ask if they could serve him in any way. Voldemort looked disturbed, annoyed perhaps, at the sudden attention he got from so many young trainees, all of them wanting to be full fledged members of his Dark Order. A group of Death Eaters rushed forward to beat back the trainees, so that the Dark Lord would not have to raise a finger or, as it was well known, a wand to do it himself. The trainees were then allowed to approach him one at a time, much to the obvious displeasure of Lord Voldemort, who seemed itching to use his wand on something to amuse himself.

[Victorie Weasley]

Victorie Weasley stood in front of the full-length mirror, quite pleased with herself. Most everyone thought her useless, just some punk kid that was only an Order member because of her family lineage. Really rather like how most all of the other pure-blood families such as the Malfoys were all Death Eaters, all the Weasleys were Order members. It made her sad that her family seemed to be the only one with the balls to go against tradition. Oh well. Too bad for them, she thought. She knew, for example, that Draco Malfoy had a teenage son named Scorpius who was trying to become a Death Eater. Sometimes the grapevine was indeed a wonderful thing.

She had a few older adult friends in the Order that wanted to go and do battle at the Ministry today, but to do so would be a massacre and cause the Order to lose valuable members, which they couldn’t afford to have happen. Fortunately for her, today was Saturday and she didn’t have any studies or school work to worry about. Victorie supposed all the Hogwarts students who were of legal age…and the few who weren’t but were privileged…were at the Ministry right now all clamoring to join the Dark side and get into Lord Voldemort’s good graces.

But back to her appearance. Victorie was taking no chances, because doing so could mean the end of her life and the lives of her family and friends. Not to mention possible torture. Granted, she wasn’t the Secret-Keeper and so couldn’t give away the location of their hide-out, but today was a day for caution. She had cut her long blonde and pink hair into a pixie sort of cut and dyed it a deep red the Muggle way. Yes, she could and would have used a color-changing charm, but those could be removed all too easily which was why she always used Muggle dyes. As for her face, she made her nose smaller until it was a button nose, her eyes were made larger and the color changed to a dark blue, and her eyebrows were just a bit less arched.

Changing into a purple baby T-shirt, black jeans that flared at the bottom and purple trainers, she pulled on some feminine black robes with purple trim before styling her hair with a spell until it was spiked. Then she admired herself and noted that the short style and color suited her, especially with her normal green eye color. Victorie started to hum to herself as she walked down the hallway before remembering her mission...and that was to make the Dark Lord believe she wished to be a Death Eater so she could hopefully learn something new to report back.

Oh yes, her grandmother wouldn’t be happy at all when she found out where Victorie had really gone. But it wasn’t like they could just bust in and snatch her away without triggering an all-out war that they would surely lose. This was the perfect time to do this while Jessica covered for her. And speaking of Jessica, it was time to switch wands with the older witch. The former blonde had visited the Ministry many times as a child (disguised of course) before security had gotten so tight and Harry Potter had died. So she knew how things worked.

You went in the visitor’s entrance and the guard at the desk checked your wand to verify you were who you said you were. Therefore, if she was claiming to be Jessica Way, her wand needed to reflect that. Be a bit of a giveaway to have the wand scream ‘Victorie Weasley’. I’d be captured in a heartbeat, she thought. After she greeted her friend and was complimented on her appearance, they switched wands and they hugged, Jessica telling her to be careful and Victorie assuring her she would. Stepping out the front door, she Disapparated, headed for the Ministry.

Re-appearing inside the Ministry at an Apparation point, she saw Death Eaters everywhere and somehow managed to keep a calm, almost bored look on her face. The Dark Lord was around here somewhere, of that Victorie was certain. It made her stomach upset a bit though to see so much evil concentrated in one spot, so she hid her face and pretended to fiddle with something in her robe pocket, all the while reminding herself that she had signed up for this and appearances were everything.

Removing her head from the robes, Victorie walked up to a Death Eater, swallowed hard, and said with fake excitement, “Hi, I’m a trainee for our most exalted Dark Lord. I really want to join up…d’you think you could point me in the right direction of where I’m supposed to go?” The Death Eater just sneered and pointed to a group of people who were crowded around the base of a glittery statue of Lord Voldemort. Right off to the side of the statue in the Artium was the Dark Lord himself, who was surrounded by Death Eaters and was taking people one at a time, not looking pleased at all. She stood in the line, which was moving rather rapidly, and tried to think on what she would say to the monster that had killed thousands.



((OOC: Sorry about the length. I got caught up writing it LOL.))

[The Dark Lord Voldemort]

‘Yet another annoying person to beg for the mark, when will I get to the interesting ones?’

Voldemort snarled mentally, cursing all his ancestors for passing down the ‘I have little patients for idiots’ gene to him. So far, none of the trainees here were worthy of the mark, honestly, which made the Dark Lord very unhappy. But his face only showed boredom and disinterest, never betraying his true feelings to those who surrounded him. Just the other day he had dueled the son of one of his minions, a boy by the name of Scorpius, just to see if the boy was fit to wear the Dark Mark. He had bested the lad of course, but the end of the duel had resulted in the young Malfoy getting his mark and earning his place among the Death Eaters, even with his recent failure, the rest of these...Children, were nothing more than arrogant fools who had come to waste his time.

And just when he thought things couldn’t get anymore annoying...A flock of violet, twittering paper birds suddenly flew into view from the many different lifts in the Ministry Atrium. Tom’s head jerked up in curiosity as he surveyed the strange sight with an expression of relief; perhaps this would help with his irritation. The birds swooped down upon those in the room with odd screeches, fluttering here and there, causing many to dive to avoid paper cuts, before parting just as they reached the statue, going around a surprised Voldemort and plowing into the statue with violent force. The many paper birds kept pelting the statue, as if charmed to destroy it,
until they were nothing but shreds and fell lifeless onto the ground. They knocked off the overly sparkling jewels, much to Voldemort’s amusement, onto the floor or onto the people who were laying flat on their stomachs with their hands shielding their heads. This event brought the attention of all those present to set on the statue and all other activity ceased. The Death Eaters that were scattered throughout the Atrium for security purposes, groaned as one in dismay; someone was going to get it for allowing this to happen.

Meanwhile the trainees that were still gazing up, either from the ground where they landed or from crouched positions, all gaped in horror and the other Ministry workers froze in fear of retaliation as more of these charmed bits of paper crowded in and finished removing the jewels from the statue. They then all fluttered to the shiny black floor, laying motionless, looking crumpled, yet somehow triumphant-if that is even possible for a piece of paper to appear-at the foot of the puzzled Dark Lord.

There was silence for a moment, with everyone holding their breaths in shock or fear. Many a head was darting from Tom to the statue, then to the birds, before landing on Tom again. Quite a few of them were now looking back at the lifts from which the birds had arrived, perhaps hoping that they could see who did it. Voldemort himself was eyeing all those before him with a cool expression and his gaze slowly made it back to the birds. As the silence stretched on, a few of the people in the area started to head toward the exits as carefully and quietly as possibly. Then a low chuckle started up, freezing people in their tracks and soon turned to mad cackling that chilled the listeners to the bone.

At first, no one knew where it came from because they were looking everywhere but at the Dark Lord, but after it had risen in pitch, all eyes fell on the Dark Lord and many gasped. He was standing over the pieces of paper, still laughing at the destruction that these little birds caused. His face alight with a pure glee that could only spell death for the one who caused this ruckus. But it wasn’t his expression or the fact that he was laughing that made them all gasp, no, it was that his eyes were full of real humor, which everyone knew just didn’t happen with Lord Voldemort. Gone was the boy that many of the inner circle who had grown up with him knew, gone was the lad who could take a joke and sit back to enjoy it instead of killing or torturing the one that had spoken. Now, when the Dark Lord laughed, it was a bad sign, but at the moment, it appeared that he was taking this action as nothing more than a well played joke instead of an attack as it was meant to be, and for just a split second, his old “friends” that were present could see Tom Riddle, not Voldemort.

But when Voldemort looked up, even though his face still had a ghost of a smile on it, his eyes were back to being hard, cold, cruel and accusing. He scanned the crowd for a moment, before looking back down at the birds.

Each of the birds was shaped just so, that anyone with half a brain would know they represented a Phoenix. And on the ones that weren’t terribly shredded, the letter W could be made out on the chest and back. This was a planned attack on Tom’s ego by the Order, obviously executed by a Weasley or by someone who had the Weasley products well on hand and knew how to operate them. Riddle was throughly stumped as to how an Order member had made it in here to set this off, but wasn’t too upset that the statue had been destroyed, in fact, he was quite happy to be rid of the irritating parts of it. This being the case, whoever had done this wouldn’t be hunted for it and it was indeed a very good trick.

‘At least the hideous jewels are gone’ he thought smugly, kicking a few of the birds out of his path as he glided down from the raised base of the statue. Most of the trainees were on the ground, except for a few that had either gotten up after they figured the birds weren’t a threat, or had never dropped in the first place. Among those standing, was an oddly familiar lady who stood nearest the Dark Lord. Tom didn’t know who she was or what it was exactly that made him think she was familiar, but it was almost as if he had seen her from long ago. Not too long ago mind you, just a few years back. As his eyes rested on her, he suddenly felt as if this was a very important person, someone of interest in other words, and he made his way over to her. He brought his wand hand up, sans wand, and pointed one long, pale digit at her.

“You...Give me your name.” he commanded softly, not sure why he needed to in the first place. A part of him seemed to be drawn to her, while another part of him was fighting it, arguing almost at the stupidity of the move. Lord Voldemort wasn’t ‘drawn’ to anyone, he was above mortal feelings...yet he couldn’t place what it was that he felt. Was it admiration? What had she done for him to have a need for such an emotion? No it wasn’t that. Perhaps she was just a looker and his latest ritual had restored some of his more....human needs. But no, that didn’t seem the case either. It was like a feeling that one gets when they come across someone who isn’t what they seem, one that should be watched carefully. But at the same time it was an attraction that he didn’t understand at all; he felt as if he should be near her...

Mentally shaking off the sensation, Voldemort closed the distance between them and stood not more than two feet from her. He was not really towering over her, but being near six foot and one inch tall, Tom was quite a bit taller than the woman. The fact that he was standing so close to her didn’t help either and now that he was that this close, the feeling was starting to become ever the more curious. Now it felt as if he did know this woman, but also recognize the ‘pull’ to her. It was close to what he had experienced a very long time ago as a young man during his travels when he ran into a Veela. He had managed to escape with no harm done, as he wasn’t transfixed as normal people would be. But after he had reached his twenty-first birthday, Tom had been experimenting with some very Dark Magic that had removed this attraction to these strange creatures called Veelas. It was back again, no doubt the fault of the many rituals of late, but that didn’t mean the woman had Veela in her, just that the sensation was similar.

“I know you from somewhere...” he said in a near whisper so that no one but her could hear him, his brows knitted together in thought as his red eyes looked her over. She was wearing near Muggle clothes and this did bother Tom a bit, but he disregarded this in favor of finding out who she is. The serpentine features of Voldemort were sharper now the more he racked his brain for any kind of hint of who this woman was and where he had seen her before.

He leaned even closer to her so that their faces were no more than mere inches apart.

“What do you want?” he finally asked, not leaning away from her in an attempt to intimidate her seeing as he was still drawing a blank at her identity.