A large grey wool blanket was wrapped tightly around the figure in front of him. I couldn't see what-or who- was underneath. The grimy snatcher who looked as if he hadn't bathed in months carried whatever it was over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes towards the family's basement. Guessing that it was someone whom Voldemort had ordered captured for information, I opened the basement door for the snatcher. I had assumed that the large, foul smelling man would carry the prisoner down stairs and place it on the floor, but instead the man suddenly swung it from his shoulders and hurled the lump down the stairs. Immediately reacting off of instinct, I quickly whipping out my wand and levitated the thing to prevent it from hitting the stone steps. Carefully guiding the thing midair down the steps, I placed it softly onto the ground at the bottom.

"What are you trying to do, you half-whit? You could have killed it! Do you know what my father would do to you if you killed the prisoner before we could even get any information from it?" To me, whoever it was inside the blanket was simply an "it". That was something I learned a long time ago. "It" was the only way to deal with what happened to them without upsetting myself. They were all half bloods and mud bloods, after all...lower than real wizards.

The snatcher merely grunted and I felt a cold hand on the back of my shoulder. "It's okay, my son. She isn't here to be interrogated, she already has been and knows nothing of Potter's or the mudblood's current whereabouts. She's here as leverage to control that idiot blood traitor father of hers and she's a blood traitor herself. It is not necessary to keep her in working order."

I turned around to my father as he spoke and nodded to him in response. "Yes, father." I began to wonder who the girl or woman was…there wasn't many that fit that description.

"Good boy. Thank you for being on guard though." With that, Lucius patted his son on the shoulder and walked away back toward his office, leaving me alone at the top of the stairs looking down into the still open basement.

My curiosity burning, I walked slowly down the stairs to uncover the body. It took a minute to undo all of the ropes that bound the heavy wool blanket around the girl, but once I did I was stunned at what I saw. It wasn't because of who it was; that much I could have easily deduced based on what my father had told me. It wasn't because of condition the girl was in either, I had already seen much, much worse. What shocked me so was how unreal she looked up close…like a porcelain doll or something. I had never been closer than several yards away from Luna Lovegood before and every other time I had seen her I had been much too distracted by the crazy things she wore to pay any attention at all to what she actually looked like. She lay there unconscious in her very uncomfortable looking contorted position on the dirty stone floor with her hair matted in blood and her skin largely bruised and still managed to look like some sleeping princess from a muggle fairytale.

Reaching out carefully I lifted the girl up from the ground and removed the rest of the blanket from her body...though why I did it I still can't be sure of. She was still wearing her Hogwarts uniform, which was unusual considering the snatchers that had caught her. I looked her body over once, slowly, taking in the beautiful alabaster skin exposed at her knees. The uniform was not ripped anywhere and her knickers were still in place, from what little I could see of them where her skirt had ridden up while I had removed the blanket. That alone made her very lucky considering her small body and pretty face and figure. The snatchers were known to have a little too much fun with some of the younger women and girls they snatched before turning them over.

Normally, I would have never sullied my hands even touching a prisoner, but Luna wasn't some half-blood like most of the others brought to our house for punishment. For all her strangeness, she was a pureblood, just like me and my family. I began to wonder what my aunt Bellatrix had in store for her once she arrived, if the girl ever regained consciousness. Deciding that I felt mildly sorry for the girl, I took out my wand and conjured a cot in the back corner of the basement room. I picked her up and carried her to it, putting her down on her back and tossing the wool blanket carelessly over the bottom half of her body. Then I turned around and left, never intending on seeing her again.