TAKEN!

Although life with the Dursleys had improved drastically over the last few summers, the sight of Hogwarts castle atop the hills in the distance always filled Harry with a sense of comfort and belonging he would never know at home. Moving steadily along the tracks, the Hogwarts Express sounded its whistle alerting all passengers that they would arrive at their destination in just a few minutes. The aisles began to fill with students, old and new, pulling their packs and portmanteaus from the overhead bins as they prepared to depart. As the train cars hissed one by one to a full stop, the children burst out of the doors full of excitement and enthusiasm, elated to be reunited with their classmates once again. Returning students clustered together, regaling each other with summertime adventures and anticipating what the new year might hold for them. First-years started to form a line before Hagrid at his behest, their eyes wide with wonder having their first glimpse of the half-giant. Professor Moody exchanged muttered greetings with the conductor while Filch loaded carts with crates and cages from the train. Among all of the commotion, Luna alone noticed the shadow moving quickly towards them from the distant sky. It seemed to move along the clouds with purpose. Her eyes fixed upon it, she spoke not a word but slowly raised a pointing finger upward at the looming darkness. It approached with great speed.

The Gryffindor boys stood huddled at the walkway leading to the front gates of the castle. "Is it true, Ron?" chided Seamus, "Kate says you asked Fleur Delacour to the Yule Ball last term. Fleur Delacour! What were ya thinkin'?!" he chuckled, playfully punching at Ron who pantomimed the rejection playing along with him. Harry, throwing his head back in laughter at Seamus's dig, caught sight of Luna from the corner of his eye and followed her gaze to the unbridled expanse of darkness descending upon them. Before he could utter a sound of warning, all light was completely gone from the rail yard.

He shouted; everyone shouted, but all sound was lost to the thunderous beating of hooves rolling overhead. Only flashes of images could be seen as light peeked through here and there in places where the blackness didn't quite touch the earth. Bodies scattered; some of the younger students were raised up to safety from being trampled by the older ones, some of them were less fortunate. Bursts of red, green, and blue sparks from Moody's wand were continuously snuffed as he furiously spat out one incantation after another. Harry thought he saw Hagrid lunging for him through a cloud of dust with terror in his eyes. Several boys and girls fell to the ground clutching at their ears to escape the deafening chorus of shrieks piercing through the clamor of the darkness – which suddenly lifted and continued to pass by as quickly as it had set in. Within just a few seconds, it was but a distant shadow on the clouds once more and Harry was gone.

The horsemen moved onward with their prize in silence, the echo of their victory cries far behind them. Harry, dizzy from the sudden speed and change in elevation, wrestled as best he could with what seemed to be a wrought iron post across his chest pinning him against what felt like a slab of ice along the length of his back. The iron post tightened its hold the more he struggled. He forced his watering eyes open, his lenses barely shielding them from the assault of the rushing wind as they sped through the clouds. He was surprised to find that within the darkness that had abducted him, there was light enough to see clearly. He could see the oversized, dusky sleeve of the very large, very rigid arm of his mounted captor that held him close against his chest as they rode on. Strips of worn black cloth engulfing both rider and horse whipped wildly in the wind, smacking at Harry's face and neck. Looking beyond the waving mane of his abductor's airborne steed, he could just make out that they were sloping down and away from the cover of the clouds to where the trees below parted at a river.

The nightmares' stride touched down just above the thickest part of the mist that hovered silently over the water. They galloped along the vapor, curling it up into wisps of ethereal ribbons that climbed about their swift and powerful legs. The lead rider suddenly pulled Harry tighter to his chest and spurred his beast onward with a new sense of urgency. Their velocity pulled thick sheets of the mist to the bellies of the mounts where it continued to rise, dispersing into a fog that enveloped the riders. The horses whinnied and began to rear but were prodded on. Harry fearfully pushed back into the chest he'd been trying to pull away from as the mist began to creep up on him. It poured onto him from all directions, spreading itself across his body then coalescing into binds around his waist, wrists, and ankles. The binds solidified and tightened and Harry was effortlessly pulled away from the icy grip of the horseman whose momentum continued to propel him forward some distance before he could order the others about-face with a wave of his arm. Harry flailed about in mid-air, his body bound and cradled by the mist. Although he kicked and twisted violently, he was let down slowly and gently. When his feet touched the earth his binds unraveled and fell to the ground like strands of silk; he collapsed in much the same way, exhausted from the constant struggling. On his knees, he adjusted his glasses while trying to catch his breath and reorient his senses to stillness.

The horses touched down as the riders drew near, forming an arc around him just a few yards away. There were six of them, each one not only cloaked and hooded in black but shrouded by some sourceless shadow besides. They were so entirely indistinguishable from one another Harry couldn't be sure which one he had been riding with. They held their position in motionless silence as the fog continued to move with a clear will of its own. It swiftly drew itself away from the air around the riders, away from the surface of the water, and away from Harry. It began to billow into itself forming a cloudy circular mass, like smoke churning over and over in a crystal ball. Harry brought himself cautiously to his feet as he watched with amazement. Only a foot or two across, it grew more and more dense as the surrounding air became more and more clear until every drop, wisp, and strand of it had combined to form a perfect white sphere. It was floating just a few feet above the ground midway between the boy and the horsemen at the river's edge. A bright light from its center pulsed for an instant and it began to take on a new shape. The sphere became elongated, branching out here and there but with distinct boundaries as if pouring itself out into some invisible vessel that encased it. Its stretching limbs took on the unmistakable form of arms and legs; a head emerged, and in a few blinks of an eye, a human figure stood in place of the glowing white orb.

The Captain, who did not intend to go on without his charge, dismounted from his position closest to the water. His tattered and colorless cloak concealed every part of him but his massive size. His steps fell so heavy as he approached that Harry could feel the earth shake underneath of him where he still stood several yards away. His shrouded armor clinked and clanked while he walked only far enough forward to look straight down at the mist-person who by all appearances was a woman - though young or old it was hard to say as the cover of the trees obscured what little light the setting sun had to offer. She was equally small in stature as he was large, her pale skin wrapped loosely in white cloth from her bust to her knees, her feet and shoulders left bare. Her hair was a contrastingly dark tsunami of wavelets that cascaded over all. She craned her neck to meet the goliath's gaze, her posture suggesting neither fear nor aggression.

Soot shook loose from his hood as a low, guttural, echo of a voice spoke quite disapprovingly, "Selena".

A prolonged moment of silence followed. Harry argued to himself that it was more courage than cowardice that moved his feet forward until he was standing just behind Selena. The trappings covering her body flowed behind her, slowly swaying in the absence of wind, mingling with the tresses of her hair and brushing across the tops of his shoes and into the folds of his slacks. The crown of her head didn't quite reach his line of sight so that he too faced the Captain, nose to belly.

The rumble of his words came at her again demandingly, "What business is this of yours?"

"I could ask you the same," she said accusingly in a voice surprisingly rich for her size and with an accent Harry didn't recognize.

His chest rose with the deep inhalation of limited patience.

Selena turned slightly and looked over her shoulder at the Boy Who Lived. Though night was falling there was a subtle glow about her that illuminated her features. Capturing the reflection of the moving water off the bank, a halo of amber danced around the oversized pupils of her large round eyes. Her cheeks were high and her chin pronounced, her skin unmarred by age. She reminded Harry of some of the older statues at school. She smiled knowingly at him and turned back to answer coyly, "I have a vested interest."

Plainly irritated at her response, he pressed with weakening restraint, "You will not yield?"

She cocked her head slightly, and with some annoyance of her own answered, "No".

The sound of metal sliding on metal started the nightmares snuffing, snorting and stamping at the ground. Harry began to step away but Selena reached back for his hand pulling him close behind her. In a single snapping motion the Captain raised an iron clad palm signaling his subordinates to stay their blades. The other riders looked at one another briefly as they sheathed their weapons then all eyes turned back to their commander, or to Selena, it was hard to say.

He exhaled a biting black vapor that stung Harry's cheeks as it dissipated into the air around them. "So be it," he resounded and with only a few heavy steps he was mounted again, twisting up the reins of his sable stallion. The others began to fall into rank.

Selena looked down at her feet and pressed back into Harry. He could feel the excessive warmth of her body through his shirt. Some flowery aroma wafted up from her hair but it wasn't familiar to him. As she leaned in even closer, her hand brushed across something hard resting against his leg. She suddenly looked up and grabbing at it shouted, "Barnabas, wait!" Before he realized what was happening, she pulled the wand from his pocket and hurled it toward the Captain of the Guard. Harry watched helplessly as it sailed through the darkness turning around on itself until it disappeared into the giant mitt of its target. Barnabas nodded to Selena, reared his steed, and retreated with his men into the night sky.

Harry was left standing alone in the dark with the woman, unsure of how to react, unsure if he had been rescued at all. She turned to face him, allowing some space between them. "Well, well. Harry James Potter. Figured you to be a bit taller by now," she spoke casually but so quickly that her words spilled into each other making them hard to make out at first.

Surprised to hear his own name spoken by a stranger in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night, he asked cautiously, "You know who I am?"

"Darling, everyone knows who you are."

"Then you must know what's happened! He's back! Voldemort is back! Those men were probably sent to take me to him just now!"

"'Course he's back." she stated unphased, her speech so rapid she barely finished one word before beginning the next. "He wasn't ever really gone, was he?"

"Well, don't you realize what you've done?" he bravely chastised, "He'll have my wand now. They're connected somehow, mine and his. With both of them he'll become even more powerful!" he had worked himself up into quite a panic.

She looked at him quizzically and retorted calmly, "Sweetheart, even if any of that were true, no wand is worth six lives." She looked down at her feet, lifting one a few inches from the firm sand of the riverbank and holding it there a second or two before setting it back down to do the same with the other foot. She repeated this several times.

"I don't understand." he said honestly.

Without looking up from watching her own feet step in place she replied, "What do you think will happen to them when they return without you? Can't you guess at how he's likely to reward failure?"

"Why does it matter what happens to them? They work for him!"

She stopped stepping and looked up at him, stunned for a moment by his sentiment. "Yours is not to judge, dear." Then she smiled, and laying a hand upon his shoulder said rather sweetly, "It doesn't suit you."

Finding her touch to be quite calming, he recognized the folly of his frustration, "Even so, even if Voldemort having my wand saves any life at all, wont he just use it to take countless others?"

She placed her other hand on his other shoulder and fixed her eyes on his saying, "Harry, your wand will not aid him. I only hope he doesn't realize that right away himself, that his thirst for power deceives him …just long enough." Her eyes began to fill with sorrow as she spoke and her gaze drifted to the bit of sky that could be seen above the water, between the trees. Harry suddenly found himself feeling very sad as well until she dropped her hands to her sides and looked back at him, smiling again. "Now, shouldn't you be studying or something? Let's get you back, eh?"

Relieved to discover her intention to help him return to Hogwarts, he simply nodded and braced himself for the journey; having been unexpectedly transported, teleported, and transmogrified over the years, he was beginning to learn to expect the unexpected. But it didn't come. She merely walked by him, away from the river and into the woods, back in the direction he had come from.

"We're walking then?"

"Is that a problem?" she asked without turning around or breaking her stride.

"No. No, not at all. A bit refreshing, actually." and he really meant it as he scrambled in the dark to make up the distance of a few steps.

They walked in silence for some time through the wilderness. Selena led, he thought, with no earnestness at all; although he really had no idea how long they'd been walking or what distance they had traveled. She moved easily through the trees, hopping along stumps and roots like one would use stones to cross a creek. Harry, in contrast, was constantly stumbling in the dark, swatting at biting bugs and pulling sticks and thorns from his hair and clothes - all the while brushing cobwebs away whenever he had a hand free from minding the bugs and sticks. He wanted to ask her about the men who had seized him, about the mist she came from, about Voldemort. But she had already been kind and candid with him and he didn't want to be impolite so instead he just did his best to keep up.

After what must have been hours, they emerged from the forest at the base of high rolling hills. The moonlight smoothly rounding the top of each one until a structure set upon a line of hilltops abruptly broke the light apart into several different angles. A railroad track! Harry sprang into a run straight up the first hill, putting Selena behind him. As he neared the top he could see the spires of Hogwarts castle only a few miles out.

"Oh, you want to race!" Selena called up to him enthusiastically. Without hesitation she bolted up the hill and rushed past him, giggling. He stood watching her for a moment, still a bit perplexed by his new acquaintance but no longer apprehensive. Whoever she was, she'd led him back. Safely. Considering how nimbly she navigated the forest, she certainly wasn't a very fast runner, a bit clumsy even. Feeling recharged, a wide grin spread across his face and he ran after her, passing her quickly and egging her on to catch him. They continued on this way, taking turns at the lead, laughing, taunting, running among the grassy hills in the moonlight.