Disclaimer anything or any characters you recognize belong to JK Rowling.
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Leathery wings pumped the night skies as I climbed for altitude above the four Death Eaters. They were flying north by northeast in a diamond formation with what had to be Lucy Johanna Foght magically bound and supported between them. Lucy Foght was the item of interest. Not the Death Eaters.
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Lucy Johanna Foght was Granger's cousin and I first heard of her three days ago. When there was a sudden commotion over at the Gryffindor table. We all looked to see Granger on her feet, talking with Professor McGonigal and the Head Master with Potty and Weasel standing around. Potter was looking concerned while Weasel was doing what Weasel did best.
Blaise leaned across the table. "Common room, usual nook, eight o'clock tonight." I nodded. We both knew that we'd get our asses hexed if we tried to get to within eavesdropping distance. Not that it mattered. There's no one better at ferreting out info than a Slytherin and Pansy and Astoria both looked to be ready to work the vine. Anything worth knowing we'd know at eight tonight.
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"Granger's cousin was kidnapped," Pansy was the one to spill the beans. She glanced at some notes she'd written. "Lucy Johanna Foght, sixteen, taken from her muggle school in West London."
"Which Dumbledore had warded against Death Eater attacks," Astoria contributed. "Bet he'd never do that if she was related to one of us."
"Course not," Blaise snorted. "We're not pet Gryffies."
"Didn't do her much good," Pansy snorted taking the last cup cake and biting into it. "One minute she was leaving class, everything went dark and poof she was gone. Didn't even get to her next class."
"An inside job," I decided, placing my empty glass on the table and looking into the fire. "Dumbledore would have known if it was a Death Eater attack. So it's likely magic wasn't used, at least not directly." Everybody looked at me. I was a couple years younger, but they appreciated my ability to think things out. "I remember hearing that the Weasel twins were working on some kind of powder that absorbs light or something, that didn't need the actual presence of a wizard to activate. I bet some of that was given to a group of imperioused students and that was how they got to her."
"Why," Astoria asked. "Why her?"
"Because she's Granger's family. To show her that Dumbledore couldn't protect her." I looked at my parchment. "Girl's probably dead now. Gryffies will be on edge. Watch your backs."
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The Gryffindors were on edge all right. On the way to breakfast the next morning, three Gryffies jumped out at me wands drawn, wanting to know where I'd stashed the girl. Explaining one's innocence to a Gryffindor was like beating your head against a brick wall. It feels so good when you stop. So I kept the explanations short so we could get to the hexing part of the conversation.
Well, they did the hexing and I just grinned as their hexes rebounded off me and onto them.
I wasn't sorted into Slytherin because I was good looking.
Daphne, Astoria, Pansy, and Blaise weren't as lucky and were glaring at me as I entered the Great Hall and sat at the Slytherin table. They hadn't been so lucky, but their code wouldn't allow them to hide behind protective charms. I grinned. "Gryffies eh."
"Gryffies," Pansy snarled, turning back to her meal. "Something's got to be done about them. It's not like WE had anything to do with the girl's disappearance."
I leaned forward. "We are going to do something." I smirked. "We are going to find the girl and then we are going to rub their noses in it."
"Just how do you plan on doing that?" Blaise dropped into a seat beside me.
"Tonight at eight. Be there." I forked in a bite of egg.
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"Missing your cousin Mudblood?" That question got me three wands at my neck. "Touchy touchy." I grinned at Potty Weasel and Granger. Granger was in the middle as if they expected her to disappear between classes. "Just a question."
"Yeah," snarled Potter. "Well I got one for you." He dug his wand in deeper. "Where is she."
"No idea," I grinned. I seemed to be doing a lot of that these days. "Like I said it was just a question. Thought I'd commiserate with the Mudblood. Tell her how sorry I was. You know, that kind of stuff."
Suddenly I brought up my fist behind Potter's wand and clipped him on the chin. Both Weasel and Granger, Gryffies to the core, rushed to see if he was okay, and I whistled as I walked down the corridor.
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"I got to thank you man," Blaise said that night. The firsties had been scared off to bed and we had the common room to ourselves. "You've gotten the Gryffies off our backs by giving them a common target. You. You're going to need those charms of yours."
I smirked and placed an egg carton on the table. Pansy reached for it, and I stopped her by grabbing her hand. "Pansy no touchie, I said. She rolled her eyes and glared at me.
"What am I," she asked. "Five?"
"Nope but you do have a tendency to act like one." Blaise chuckled and Pansy turned her glare on him. "Besides," I said opening the lid to show a dozen glass balls. "They're not eggs."
"What are they," Astoria asked, dropping down onto the couch beside me with a tray of cookies she'd pilfered from the kitchens. Hufflepuffs were lucky. They got to hold parties in the kitchens and the House Elf's catered. Not so the Slytherins. We got by with the sweat of our wits, and they wonder why the only sin in Slytherin house is the sin of getting caught.
"Remembralls," I said. Remembralls with a twist. Remembralls that will not aid you to remember what you need to remember. Rememberalls that imprint themselves with the energies of your auras." I took four glass spheres from a pocket. "You have, no doubt, heard of my little run in with the Three Amigos…"
"Yes," interrupted Blaise. "And may I repeat that we are all grateful for getting them of our backs."
"It got me close enough to Granger to imprint this remembrall with her aura." I tapped t with my wand and a brilliant violet light appeared in the core of the sphere. "What you see is a magical representation of her aura, and let me tell you that it was a bitch getting the spells to work."
"Man, you're a third year. You're not supposed to be able to do all this."
"My Aunt Mauve spent the last two summers home schooling me. Ever since she learned I'd been sorted into Slytherin."
I polished a remembrall. "I don't do nothing you can't do if you apply yourself."
"Your Aunt Mauve was a Gryffindor wasn't she?"
And the scourge of he Slytherins when she was in Hogwarts," said Astoria. "So why's she helping you?"
"Because blood is thicker than water, and she knows how I'll be treated by Gryffies." I polished a second remembrall. Instead 0f replacing it on the table, I held it out to Astoria and watched as it glowed white and a pinkish grey light appeared in the glass sphere.
Astoria leaned back into the couch. "What did you do?"
"Imprinted the remembrall with your aura." I glanced over my shoulder. I palmed a remembrall. "Hey Daphne, mind coming over here?"
"What?" Astoria' sister stomped over. "You think you can order me around just because you get to sit with sixth and seventh years?"
"Hey," I said, if that's your attitude then go back to what you wee doing."
"Fine," she snapped and headed back to her seat and her book. I set the remembrall back down beside Astoria's and tapped it with my wand. A pinkish grey light shone into existence.
"As you can see," said proudly. "The two auras are different but the same. Because they came from two sisters. Now this one," I took a fifth remembrall and placed it on the table. The light in it was a navy bluish with pink and grey streaks. "Is mine. "Astoria and Daphne are my cousins, some distance removed, so there are similarities. Assuming the same exists between Granger and her cousin, which is much closer than the Greengrasses and me, she can be found."
"So," mused Pansy. "You need to find one aura out of how many millions?"
"She was snatched by Death Eaters," Astoria said. "Draco's daddy would be a prime suspect."
"Let us not forget the Notts or the Lestranges," sad Pansy. She wasn't as into Malfoy as she let the Gryffies believe, but they had been friends for ages.
"Not the Lestranges," Blaise said. "There'd have been a massacre if they'd been involved." He popped a cookie into his mouth. "Even if it was one of them, there's no telling where they took her. Or even if she's still alive."
"Which is why, we're going to be writing friends and cousins and acquaintances. Tonight, and then we're going up to the Owlry and sending them out with one of these babies. We're going to request that they be returned post haste. Each of these have been spelled to seek out any auras similar to Granger's."
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There was a banshee yell as I entered the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning and I was the attention of all the students and a fair amount of the teachers. Attention that was soon diverted to the Gryffindor table where a fourth year was fingering the ass ears she was sprouting. A friend escorted her out of the Great Hall while the rest of the Gryffies glared at me like it was all my fault. It was too much for the She-Weasel, who came storming over.
"You're a bit of a coward aren't you," she snarled when she got close enough for me to count her freckles. "All smug and smarmy behind all your protection charms." She glared up at me. "It just makes you pathetic. That's what."
"You'd like it if I put them down wouldn't you?"
"Think I'd believe it if you did?"
I muttered a word, and a feeling that something had shut down permeated the air around me. I could see that she could feel it too. "Okay, they're down."
Ginny Weasley very clearly didn't believe me. Smart girl. I wasn't a Slytherin for nothing. She also, very clearly, wanted to try something. "Go ahead," I egged her on.
The She-Weasel glared at me and then turned her back on me, something you never do to a Slytherin. Something I'd never do to a Gryffindor. She got five paces towards her table before she spun, wand in hand. My charms flared where her hex rebounded. But she was smart, the Weasely daughter. She had quite correctly assumed that I had not dropped my shields and had dropped and rolled as soon as she had cast.
"Miss Weasley, came a thunderous roar from the head table. We all looked to see Professor McGonigal with the most beautiful case of the Bat Bogeys I had ever seen. The Gryffindors watched absolutely flabbergasted as Professor Snape, who had witnessed the event, proceeded to remove ten points for trying hexing a fellow student, ten points for not being able to hex that student, and eighty points for hexing a Professor. He also assigned her a months worth of detentions.
Madame Pomfrey cleared the hex from Professor McGonagall, who scowled as I took my seat at the Slytherin table amid muffled sniggers and the odd guffaw that managed to escape. Clearly she would have liked to have punished me but as all I did was protect myself her sense of Gryffindorish fair play constrained her desire for a balancing of the scales.
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By eight that night eight of the remembralls had been returned. Instead of the Slytherin common room, we met in an empty dungeon classroom, where I'd spread out a map of the local area. On it, I had plotted the locations of each of the owls recipient and the most logical route the owls took. Very few took the owls near any known Death Eater locations. Only one remembrall had recorded an interesting aura. It was very faint, but it was there. It had close similarities to Granger's. It's owl hadn't gone near any known De4ath Eater location.
Tonight I would hunt.
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One of the things my Aunt Mauve taught me was how to transform into an animagus. Once she learned that I was one of course. Something that was highly illegal, but she trusted my instincts as aSlytherin to keep me, and her, out of trouble. So far it had worked.
In my animagus form, a dragon, I could cover a hundred and twenty four miles an hour. According to the map, I had an area of seventy five miles to cover, and six hours to do it in. A seemingly impossible task. One that could be solved after I has gotten past the first one. Getting out of Hogwarts without being caught. There was a passage outside the DADA classroom, but Weasel and Granger were scheduled to patrol there tonight. They had it in for me. Still they were Gryffies.
Granger and Ronnie were snogging. I couldn't believe it. Granger was so by the book it must really hurt for her to deviate away from it. Young love. I did notice a few detection charms, Weasel most likely, but they were basic and easy to fool. Ten minutes to the one eyed witch, thirty minutes to Honeydukes.
I had crossed the area twice before I spotted movement out the corner of one eye. Four Death Eaters riding brooms in diamond formation with an object suspended between them. The rememberall I had in a special pouch around my neck buzzed to beat the band. The object was Lucy Johanna Foght, Granger's cousin. I would congratulate my luck later.
Riddle needed new Death Eaters. Not one of the four looked up. Lucy did, and her eyes were saucer sized. Her mouth opened to scream. Of course they would have silencioed her as well as petrified her.
Made things easy for me.
I positioned myself above them. Matched my speed and direction to theirs. Folded my wings and dropped.
No matter what they say about the wonders of magic, it obeys certain laws. Such as the law that says that if an object is dragged behind something there is a bond between the object and the something. There is also a law that says that the same bond that supports a petrified girl is not the same force that will support a most definitely unpetrified dragon, and a dragon dropping in to grab the object would have an effect on the something. The four Death Eaters were in complete disarray.
It wouldn't last long. I grasped the girl in one large talon, and hauled ass to Hogsmeade.
I unpetrified her in the basement of Honeydukes. I thought as moment and also returned her voice.
"I'm going to take you to Hogwarts, where your cousin, Hermione Granger is. It would be easier to do so in dragon form but not practical. So I need you to follow me through the tunnel." I'll say this for the girl. She was terrified out of her wits. But she wasn't going to let that stop her.
It was just my luck that Granger and the Weasel were outside the DADA room when we came through the portrait.
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