My first memory of the night the war ended was of large hands grabbing me under my arms and pulling me out of bed, though my feet never touched the thick rug on top of the flagstone floor of my bedroom. Instead there was the strange, intensely unpleasant feeling of being forced through a straw head first, along with a rush of colors and sounds that bombarded my groggy but fast awakening mind.

When my feet finally hit the ground it was on a tiled floor that shone as though it had recently been polished, and I swayed with a sudden bout of nausea. Unable to resist the impulse, I bent over and vomited all over the shoes of my captor, who was still clutching my upper arm in one large hand. He let go rather quickly at that, backhanding me across the face and sending me sprawling to the floor.

The blow to my head did wonders for my awareness, though now I had to contend with the pounding in my skull coupled with my confusion at being yanked from my bed at one in the morning and flung through space to an unknown location.

I looked around the room I was in and first marveled at its beauty. In the center of the hall was a vast golden fountain made of several statues, though it looked as though a few of the statues were missing, and there was an entire wall of large fireplaces lined up together. To my surprise I saw more and more people appearing out of thin air accompanied by men and women all holding short sticks in their hands. They held these twigs with the air of someone holding a gun or a knife, and I could see some pressing the tips of their sticks into their captives' necks or backs.

Suddenly my own "escort" reached down and dragged me from the floor, shepherding me onto a lift located in the back of the hall and pressing the button that closed the door. I finally found the common sense to push myself away from the man holding me, spinning around to face him, but the demand that he tell me what was going on died on my lips at the sight of him. He stood a couple of inches taller than my six-foot height, and his hair was matted and hung in front of his face in thick strands. His eyes glowed a faint yellow from behind this greasy curtain, and as he looked me up and down his lips curled in a grin as his eyes darkened with hunger. Pointed teeth glinted from in his mouth, and a shiver ran down my spine at his expression.

Swallowing in terror, I said, "Where the hell are you taking me, and how did we get here?" The man's grin widened, and he stepped forward to crowd me against one wall of the lift. His long black robes, tattered and stained with things I preferred not to think about, swirled around his ankles. In the background I could vaguely hear a cool woman's voice announcing which floors we had stopped on, but I had no attention to spare on anything besides the ferocious man/beast standing in front of me.

"You're an inquisitive little piggy, aren't you girlie?" I puffed myself up in anger, but quailed under the look I received in response. "I like that in a meal. Makes the chase more fun most of the time." He placed his hands on either side of my head, and my heart started racing in fear. "So you want to know what's happening?" I forced myself to nod and pretend to not be scared out of my mind.

The man chuckled, and the low rumble emanating from his chest reminded me more of the growl of a wolf than anything. He leaned in a little closer, and I could feel the metal grille cutting into my shoulders because of the force I was exerting in the direction opposite my captor.

The thing pressing me against the wall of the lift stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest and directing his own short piece of wood in my direction. "Well, I'm not gonna be the one to tell you," he finally said, a smug smirk still clinging to his face. "That's up to the Dark Lord himself, if he decides to address you filthy Muggles." I frowned at the strange word, and my captor chuckled at my obvious ignorance.

"Muggle means you can't perform magic, piggy." When I kept staring at him in confusion, he brandished the short stick in my direction. "You don't have a wand?" I was still lost. "Fine," he sighed, stepping forward and raising the 'wand' above his head. Pointing it at me he shouted "Tarantellegra!" Instantly my feet started performing a frenzied tap dance of their own accord, spinning and flailing about and causing me to fall on my face.

With a harsh bark of laughter my captor waved his wand and released me from the spell, and I got up onto my knees with a gasp and stayed there, panting, for a moment. "What the hell was that?" I shouted, not even pretending to be compliant anymore.

My captor's grin widened, and he assumed the air of a child divulging some dark secret. "That, piggy, was magic." I blinked, my mind refusing to accept this newest bit of information at first, but after a few moments it ceded to the irrefutable proof that had just been presented to me. Magic was real, and for whatever reason the people back in the fireplace room, as well as the creature before me, had kidnapped myself and many other 'Muggles' and brought us here. Feeling my knees start to shake under the pressure of the information I had just absorbed, I forced myself to straighten and look my captor square in the eyes.

"Why have you brought us here?" After a moment the beast laughed, pocketed his wand and leaned back against the wall of the lift, which was still moving down. He grinned horribly at me with his razor-sharp teeth and I shuddered at the knowledge that his hands (claws?) had been on my bare skin not five minutes before.

"You want to know why you're here? Well fine, but don't say I didn't warn you." He took a deep breath, a slow smile curling as he thought back on what were obviously happy memories, and began.

"Wizards have been around for centuries, piggy, make no mistake, but your kind could never recognize them for what they really were. They tried burning them, drowning them, and killing them in all other manner of ways, but of course those always failed. This continued for many years, until finally the wizarding community banded together and created a government, one that would watch over its charges and help to hide them from the eyes of Muggles. Then the Dark Lord appeared. He decided that the time for Muggles to rule this planet was at an end, and began a cleansing such as there has never been. We were his most trusted followers, the Death Eaters, and we served him faithfully and with unswerving loyalty. But then there came a night, a cold night, when The Dark Lord traveled to kill a family, a wizarding family that, due to a prophecy, he knew posed a threat to his rise to power. Everyone in our world knows the story. The Dark Lord swept in, killed the father, went to find the mother and son, killed the mother when she tried to protect her son, and turned to the baby. Here is where the mystery begins. With a curse that had killed hundreds before The Dark Lord struck the child, but it rebounded and stripped The Dark Lord of his powers. He fled, weaker than a newborn child, and settled far away and away from the Ministry of Magic and its meddling. It wasn't until three years ago that his plan to regain his body succeeded, but once it had he began preparations for the war that was to come. Gathering followers, magical creatures long ago cast out by wizard-kind, and spreading lies and deceit everywhere.

He sighed at this point, his eyes misting over.

My fellow Death Eaters and I were right at his side through the entire war, of course. We were his most trusted followers, and he rewarded us beyond anything we had ever expected. But I never needed a reward for the work I did...

He bared his fangs in a twisted semblance of a grin, his eyes gleaming with a crazed light, and I crushed myself harder against the opposite side of the lift.

"Ah, the killing, piggy. It was better than I could have dreamed... And it is all thanks to The Dark Lord. The violence we spread through the Muggle cities... But that's beside the point." His feral yellow eyes focused on me, and I felt a cold sweat break out across my skin and a terror such as I had never felt before grip my stomach. The man/beast leaned across the lift in my direction, his nostrils widening and teeth gleaming. "You remind of one of my last victims, piggy. She was pretty, too..." A snarling laugh ripped itself free of his throat. "But I changed that very quickly. There's nothing like a good meal to make you feel human again." He seemed to find this hilarious, and continued moving nearer to my side of the lift.

My heart slamming in my chest, I panicked and turned to face the lift doors, scrabbling wildly at the seam between the two panels and feeling a scream bubble up in my throat. The cool woman's voice continued speaking, listing off the floors, and I considered with hysterical panic how sad it would be for that to be the last thing I heard in my life. My captor's breath was suddenly on the back of my neck, and I spun around to face him. I would not die scrambling like a mouse or cowering like a child, but upright and looking him in his gleaming pitiless eyes.

The beast's mouth opened, his tongue slipping out to wet his lips as his teeth appeared to lengthen in his jaw, and he leaned over my neck with a sigh. A string of saliva had just fallen across my throat when the lift opened; and a man's voice rang out clear and cold, but soft as a snake's hiss.

"Stop, Fenrir." Fenrir stepped away from me as though I'd just become radioactive, and adopted the look of a chastised child, but with an added element of fearful respect. I remained in place, panting in terror, with Fenrir's saliva still warm on my throat, but turned slowly in place to face this new and unknown danger.

The minute I had heard that ice cold voice and seen Fenrir's reaction to it, the sparse hairs on the back of my neck had stood straight up and a shiver had raced down my spine. The voice was like death; death made audible and so clear it was nearly tangible. My death was in that voice, in the dark and merciless tone with the barest hint of sadistic amusement buried deep within it. So I turned, wanting to see this being; this inhuman thing that could incite such a reaction with a mere two words.

Oh, God. My mind froze in fear and horror at the skull white face with its red snake-like eyes before me, with the hands like giant spiders resting at his sides. In one hand he held a wand loosely, as though still unused to the feeling of gripping something himself, and he lazily lifted it over his head and pointed it at me. When he tipped the end of the wand downward I felt my spine arch and my knees buckle beneath me until I was prostrate before the terrible figure on the dais that dominated the center of the room. He spoke again, and this time it wasn't just the tone that sent chills down my spine.

"You have been granted a great privilege, Muggle. You are the first of your kind to lay eyes on Lord Voldemort and live."