"You are certain, Severus, that this is the boy's residence?" A skeletal man, tall and slim with burning red eyes stared not at the man he had named, but at the house in front of him. It was a good sized home, and looked awkwardly, impossibly perfect. It was nearly identical to every other house on the street.

"One hundred percent, my Lord." Severus replied. He felt bad about giving away the child's position, but he was tired of this war. He was tired of playing both sides and he was ready to end it as quickly as possible. He too stared at the house before him, with its manicured lawns and white fences, and rows of flowers and hedges under windows that were curtained with a creamy white lace. It seemed cold, too perfect and symmetrical, to clean.

Behind Severus, in his dark, dour appearance and imposing presence, and his Lord, in his skeletal, almost monstrous glory, stood another man and a woman. This pair was silent, not just quiet. The man looked ratty and haggard,hunched like a wild animal with matted hair and filthy, scarred skin that barely differed in colour from his dirt coloured, torn clothing. He wore a snarl on his face, teeth sharp and demented, and his light brown eyes almost glowing and raw. The woman beside him stood tall and proud, a barely sane grin splitting her regal looking face in two. She wore a torn black dress that looked as though it should have been elegant, long fingers with sharp, unkempt nails scrunching the fabric as her eyes, heavy and grey like the storm clouds and half hidden by a wild tangle of spiralling corkscrew curls, followed the stare of the two men in front of her.

"You may leave now Severus. I am no longer in need of you this night." His eyes never left the building in front of him.

"As you wish." And the sour man vanished in a cloud of heavy, acrid black smoke.

"How about you put up some anti apparition wards, Bellatrix dear." He turned his violently scarlet eyes towards the woman, who gave a little cackle and bowed. She placed a dainty looking clawed hand over her chest. In her other hand she grasped what appeared at first to be a broken stick, made of dark and dry wood with a mean looking point. Little etchings ran along it's surface, half hidden under the pale skin of her hand.

"It would be my pleasure, my Lord." And when she stood straight again she pursed her lips and raised the long, crooked lump of a wand and swished it briefly to and fro. Her eyes narrowed. She hummed under her breath, slow and oddly pitched, with a look of great concentration on her harsh, anorexic looking face until a very faint, barely discernible, bright bloody red glow burst into existence and spread until they couldn't see where it ended any longer. If faded to nothing almost as soon as is had shown itself.

"Excellent," His half bored praise made her titter shrilly into her narrow fingers. "Would you care to add some of our other favourites?"

The wild looking woman nodded slightly.

"How about a Tumultu Ward series, my Lord, or an Apage series and maybe our favoured wards of the Distractio Warding series?" She offered, lips pursed. " Perhaps a Cruent or a Crudus?"

She looked very thoughtful.

"I think the Crudus. What do you think my Lord? Anything else you would like?"

"That is fine. Perhaps a Stellae curse ward." The man replied without warmth. It pleased him that her insanity did not affect her spell casting. The woman was brilliant when it came to curses and wards, not that anyone could tell after a few bouts of her favourite Crutatious curse.

"Perfect my Lord. Absolutely perfect." She purred and squealed the words affectionately, clapping her hands in front of her. She wrung out her hands and flipped her wrists flicking her wand out in front of her.

The two men watched as she cast gleefully, her usually scattered mind thankfully not preventing her from weaving a powerful web of spellwork. They watched as her face became raggedly protective, the emotion morphing her face into an even harsher light as she muttered "ambago totalus" and then "discedite abiapage", facial features shifting into great joy as she snarled the words "distraho hostemeum" and it's counterpart "distineo dristraho" that would link together with the anti apparition wards in a way that only she seemed to ba able to manage, and the absolute cruelty on her face as she screamed "Crudusanguilis benefacitis" to the world. Her voice dropped back into almost a whisper as she rasped "violentafidem estellae maledictio" with crisp precision that rarely showed up in her speech.

"Now the door. Fenrir, if you please. Do not worry about making it quiet, we only need to be fast now." The deathly white man spoke again as Bellatrix continued to cast wards and curses for any who dared to get too near, the most interesting part of her work finished as she dropped into even more commonly known spells and a fair few they knew she would never tell a soul what they did. The other man did not bring out any wand or weapon, merely charged the locked front entrance of number 4 Privet Drive as his Lord had asked and he dealt with the door. He rammed his shoulder violently into the wood, head cracking sharply against it before the door gave away. The wood cracked and moaned and the lock broke with a harsh metal clink and a delicate tumble of little pieces, slamming it's mass back into the wall behind it. A clear dent showed where the man's shoulder had gouged the wood with inhuman strength. The wall behind the door was not so lucky as Fenrir seemed to be with his lack of injuries, the doors knob smashed straight through the wood, paper and plaster and cracks and dents littering what wasn't completely broken. The force and speed he had used did not appear to have done any more damage than to lightly bruised him at most and an exhilarated, alarmingly wide and fangy smile ripped over his dirty grey face.

A whale of a man thundered downstairs with a roar, face a brilliant puce and fists clenched in fury. He wore an ugly house coat and powder blue pinstripped sleeping trousers. His mouth opened to release his rage on the intruders, to demand they left, but Bellatrix raised her wand and beat him to the punch.

"Stupefy!" She shrieked, malicious glee on her face. The fat man fell down the remaining stairs, landing on his face with a grotesque, squishy crunch.

"Shrink him or something and we shall place him in the dungeons back home. You may enjoy him later." Bellatrix cackled again, though he had not specified which of them would get to play with the fat man. She rushed to follow her masters wishes.

"He is upstairs, my Lord," Fenrir's voice matched his appearance, raspy and gruff and it left you feeling dirty. "With two others. Blood has been spilled."

"Round up the others, Greyback, quickly now. And of course blood has been spilled, a fat muggles." The chalky white man looked almost bored.

"Not the muggle scum, something or someone else. It's fresh, but it's not his. Some of it seems to be... not as fresh." Fenrir growled lowly.

"Is it the boy's?"

"I cannot tell, not now. But there is so much of it…" And the filthy excuse of a man thundered up the stairs, the second one creaked loudly in complaint, and clawed fingers that rivaled that of his female companion ripped the ugly floral print paper on the ugly, fanged smile was still on his face.

"My lord?" Bellatrix held her hand up, offering to let him go first.

"After you. Why don't you pay the Potter boy a visit?" He suggested, slitted pupils aimed just above her head.

"You are so kind. I would be honoured." And she slipped up the stairs almost silently. She crossed the holes town into the wall paper with a set of her own violent slashes. She snickered and cackled madly as she tore more holes into the paper.

"Behind that door." The gruff voice of Fenrir Greyback seemed a tad unsettled as he pointed toward a door coated with locks, there was a cat flap installed at the bottom. There was a very fat boy cowering under his claws and an unpleasant looking blonde woman pleading with him almost silently. He ignored her and kept casting little glances at the locked door.

"What is wrong, my friend?" The skeletal Lord almost purred. The skin where his eyebrows should have been were arched oddly, wrinkling the chalky white forehead ever so slightly as his slit nostrils flared. You could see every muscle in his cheeks move as he frowned.

"We do not have time for hesitance, Greyback. Not when we have wasted so much as it is. Dumbledore's Order could be here any second." The calm, bored voice had slipped down to a faint warning growl. Bellatrix was staring at the filthy man too.

"No hesitance, my Lord, I promise. Just… so much blood… I cannot hear him moving but I know he is there." His eyebrows drew themselves into a near solitary line, divided only by a harsh line. Fenrir spared his Lord a glance, flicking his eyes back almost immediately. He looked almost puzzled.

"Bella, my dear, why don't you open that door for me?" The woman wasted no time in blasting in to smoldering pieces. Her creepily thrilled grin fell almost instantly.

"M-my Lord…?" She stammered faintly, stepping into the room. It was bare of personal items, covered in mountains of damaged and broken items. There was an unwashed mattress and blanket in one corner of the room, their should be white surfaces grey with dirt and stained with reddish brown splotches. A small desk with a lamp on it sat beside the bed, clearly damaged and marked with red stains, and on its other side, amidst the piles of wreckage, was a wardrobe and it too did not appear to be void of staining. And in the center of it all, curled weakly in the floor in a still spreading pool of dark, dark red blood was Harry Potter, the child they had come for.

There was clear bruising on the child's face and his left arm was obviously broken. His knuckles were bloody and looked painful and his ankles swollen. He looked painfully thin, thinner than any of those who had been imprisoned had been, and he was so, so pale under the blood and bruising. There were clear hand prints at his throat and slashes over his collarbones. His over sized clothing was so caked and plastered with blood that they almost looked as though they fit him. He did not appear to be breathing.

"What is it? Bella? Bellatrix?" A small, shrill sigh ran through the Dark Lords narrow nasal passages and he shoved her a little roughly to one side and stepped around her. He knew she had hit the door rather harshly and felt no guilt for potentially bruising the crazy woman, but he too froze at the sight that greeted him; the stains, the blood and the sixteen year old boy curled up on the floor among piles of broken items. He broke himself from the startling scene and moved farther into the room. He had not expected this at all…

"What is the meaning of this?" He hissed and spun violently on hi heel, red eyes fixed on the woman, who squeaked in alarm. She stuttered out a few terrified syllables before he stopped her.

"What is your name, muggle scum?" His eyes narrowed.

"P-P-Pet-tuni-ia D-D-D-" Her stammering was cut off again.

"Silence!" He commanded, a deathly calm backing the demand. "Are you directly responsible for this outrage? This theft?"

"Th-theft?"

"I demand an answer, Petunia. Now, before I allow my companions to break in their new toys now." It was cold as ice.

"T-toys?" She squeaked. "I-it wa-wasn't us. I-i-it-t w-wa-was V-Vernon, m-m-my h-husband."

"How convenient." The answer was snarky and unhappy, but before he could respond was a slight tug at his robes. His red eyes glared down at the other woman in the house, dark haired and wild and crouched on the floor.

"Forgive me my Lord, for this interruption. He is still alive, but only just." Her voice was lacking it's normal, insane cackle and mocking nature. It still held love, and devotion, and a little bit of fear, but she seemed to be more lucid than she was most days. Her stormy orbs were directed at the floor beneath her, not up at her Lord or where her long, bony fingers had grasped the great sweeping swaths of his robes. He had never heard her move to check the boy.

"We could use this, save the boy and turn him against Dumbledore and his blasted order, but if we do not act soon he shall pass." She hunched her back and touched her forehead to the floor, crouching beneath him as any good servant. "If we cannot turn him completely then perhaps we can gain his neutrality, and an oath that he shall not interfere with your plans. If we show him kindness and honesty we may gain his trust!"

"It could benefit us greatly. Maybe he knows the full prophecy… Bring him. We leave now." And he stalked out of the room, leaving the woman to bind the child and levitate him downstairs. She kept a hand of his cold arm to steady him as she went, following Fenrir and his two quaking muggles. She felt the one she had shrunk and stunned weighing down her pocket and the mad desires to torture him to nothing flitted back into her cloudy mind.

"Bellatrix, the wards. Release them." The reptilian man snarled when they stood on the opposite side of the street. The woman did so, smiling madly as men and woman burst into being on the other side of the street facing the house. Several ran into the building, screaming and shouting. Those that stood outside slowly turned around.

The Dark lord placed one arm through Bellatrix's, her other arm wrapping around the boy's body, and he grasped the arm of his disgusting male companion, who clutched with whimpering fat boy and his sobbing mother.

"Voldemort, Tom, please-" An old man with a long being and visually offending bright blue robes took a step forward, knobbed wand held out. His eyes widened in horror at the state of the sixteen year old in Bellatrix's hold and his voice stopped working.

"I do not so, Dumbledore," Voldemort said slowly, grinning lightly as he looked the aged headmaster of his old school right in the eyes. "Farewell."

They vanished just as Severus had earlier, in a cloud of acrid smoke that burst into the sky. The ground where they had been, they knew, likely smoldered with angry spells.

Near where they had been, on the ground, Dumbledore turned to an unpleasant teacher, his faithful spy in this war and the last one. The man who had directed the Dark Lord and his followers to this place without the headmasters knowledge to this very place not even half an hour previously.

"Did you know, Severus? Tell me, did you know?" And the man, with his hair hanging in greasy curtains about his face and his black eyes meeting the headmasters with cold, firm finality. He spoke in a low, slow drawl.

"I did not." It was not exactly a lie. "I was not told of this."

And he had not been. He hadn't known that this is the way it would end and he had told them. The image of his best friends child, limp and still and coated in so much of his own red blood was burned into his mind's eye. Guilt turned his stomach and his mind spun.

"Go, go and see what you can find out, please. Anything, my boy. Why did they take his body if he has died?" The ancient wizard seemed so defeated, ashamed and confused. Without any more words between them the old man trudged towards the likely empty house, Severus following slowly behind. He wanted to see.

They were guided upstairs, to the bloody room of broken belonging where Molly Weasley sobbed on the floor, the tips of her fingers dyed red. The sight was not pleasant. Dumbledore left quickly, as did most people.

Those who remained wandered the house, opening doors and cupboards, playing with the toaster sadly in the case of one Arthur Weasley, trying to find any clue, any hope. After all there was no mark burning above the house. There, right in the entrance hallway, was an unopened door with a padlock. A cupboard under the stairs.

The padlock was banished and the manual little sliding lock opened, and on a stained old cot was Harry Potter's magical belongings, crammed in with a few extra broken toys and a child's hand drawn picture labeled "Harry's room". He shrunk the belongings and took the picture, banishing the cot and a few spiders with it, and closed the door again. There was no need for those items to remain but he would remember them, that he knew. He felt ill.

"Anything in there?" A familiar woman's voice pierced his ears. Without looking at her he shook his head and left with the child's belongings in his pocket. He wasn't even sure exactly why he had done so, taking the child's belongings. After all it was likely he was dead. That house left a sour taste in his mouth and a bitter, angry feeling in his magic. He decided then that when he confirmed the child to be dead, if there wasn't a body left, he would bury the items at the site of his parents grave and hope it was enough.

He sent Lily a whisper of regret in his head. He missed her and if her child had died by his hands, even if he had not cast the curse, he knew she would not forgive him. But he was just so tired.

This time, he vanished with a faint pop.