Snake Song - Prelude

Prologue

You can't hold me

I'm too slippery

I do no sleepin'

I get lonely

You can touch me

If you want to

I got poison

I just might bite you

Cordelia Prince blankly stared at the bottle green tile wall in front of her. She'd long lost track of time. How long has it been? Days? Hours? She didn't know. For the first time in a very very long time, her mind felt blank; she vaguely wondered if she was in shock or maybe the Ministry had sedated her.

Her eyes traced along the uniform tiles. She supposed that at this point any sensible person should be pacing back and forth, worrying that they were staring down the barrel of a life sentence at Azkaban. Maybe she was, but she just couldn't find it in her to care what happened to her anymore.

After everything she had done...

After everything she had risked...

In the end, she was, to them, what they believed her to be.

A Slytherin. Of course she'd turned out bad. As they'd said since she was a young girl, there wasn't a witch or wizard in Slytherin who hadn't gone bad.

A traitor. It was to be expected considering the people she associated with.

A Deatheater. Naturally, considering who her family was.

A murderer. A charge that no one would doubt, considering all the above traits.

Only two men could refute these charges and, unfortunately, neither of them were alive anymore. So here she sat, staring at the tile wall in front of her and waiting for the inevitable. Soon, she would be brought out in a cage to be judged by the victors and would, without a doubt, be found lacking.

She could deny their charges until she was blue in the face. Or she could scream her innocence high into the rafters of the court chamber. Or, perhaps, she could tell them the true reason she found herself sat in a ministry cell. That everything she had done had been out of desperation to protect the person she loves... but that sounded childish, even to her. All of it would be about as useful as screaming underwater. Nobody would hear her, let alone listen.

They had made up their mind about her the moment the sorting hat had touched her head. A snake was not to be trusted. She'd been set on this path a long time ago, whether she knew it at the time or not...