"There would've been my personal assistant, Mr Dunbar, here as well, but he seems to have vanished on us," said Katelyn Canmore as dusk fell over Hogwarts.

At that same moment, Hadrian Dunbar would have been found many miles to the southwest, in the captivity of her enemies.

He and his captor were beside a loch, the surface of which gleamed golden and black under the setting sun and dark sky. They were in a meadow by the waterside, which was covered with the merest sprinkling of snow. Tough, wiry grass and even a few tenacious flowers bloomed underfoot.

He was forced to kneel, his feet bound together and his hands tied behind his back. His pale blond hair was plastered against his skull with dried blood, his eyes were bloodshot and fearful, his grey robes were tattered and burned.

His captor towered above him, and would have done so even had he stood upright. She was a tall, rangy woman, with a head of long, matted, black hair that fell below her back. Her face was sharp and angular and scarred, her eyes burned with a feverish amber light, her nails were as sharp and yellow as her prominent canines. Her only garment was a shift of leather and fur that fell to her knees, leaving her arms bare.

Every time Hadrian whimpered, she hissed a rebuke. Every time he tried to speak, she lashed out with her claw-like nails and sent him reeling. If he looked like he planned to escape, she growled a rebuke. He stayed still.

As the sun neared the final border of cloud against the horizon, there was a crack behind them, and the woman turned to see Nachlan Gaunt. He stepped briskly forward as soon as he appeared, his gaze set on Hadrian.

"Has he been any trouble?" asked Gaunt of the woman.

"No," she said simply. "Nothing uncontrollable."

"That's good," said Gaunt. "I wouldn't want him to make unnecessary trouble for you." Hadrian, hearing another voice, twisted frantically and saw Gaunt.

"Lord Gaunt," he gasped between blood-caked lips. "Please help. This brigand has waylaid and assaulted me, she threatens to..." and he screamed as the woman span and dashed him to the ground with one precise blow from a fist. Hadrian sprawled and spat blood and a broken tooth, and stared upwards at Gaunt. He saw that handsome face, those bright brown eyes, that terrible extended smile. Except that only the scar was set in a smile. The rest of Gaunt's face showed only a chilly contempt.

"Do not presume to speak when you are not spoken to, half-blood," Gaunt said curtly, and then turned back to the woman. "I shall need to interrogate him, Skadi. But once I am finished, you may attend to your own affairs. Am I understood?" The woman, Skadi, nodded. Gaunt turned back to the cringing Hadrian.

"I have some questions to ask you regarding Headmistress Canmore's recent activities," said Gaunt, fixing Hadrian with a look normally reserved for errant excreta on the sole of one's shoe. "You are her personal assistant. I will expect true and complete answers. You will not lie, or I will hurt you. Nod if you understand."

Hadrian frantically nodded. "Yes, my lord, please don't..."

"Do not presume to speak unless I order you to do so, scum. Nod if you understand."

Hadrian nodded frantically.

"Good. And on my honour as a Gaunt, I shall free you and deliver you back to Hogwarts alive and unharmed once this is over." Gaunt reached out casually for a length of wood that lay discarded on the grass, and held it up and span it between his fingers, stopping when it was angled down at Hadrian. "This is your wand, I take it?"

Hadrian nodded.

"Hmm." Gaunt thought for a moment, then spoke his first question in a measured and easy tone. "Tell me, Hadrian, when the muggles pushed another muggle slightly higher up the dungheap they call a society by giving it a crown, did Headmistress Canmore go through the usual motions of unveiling the Masquerade for the muggle in question? You may respond verbally for these questions."

Hadrian nodded eagerly and spoke quickly, his voice cracked and harsh. "Yes, Lord Gaunt. She performed the usual greetings to the muggle king and queen."

"And was this a perfectly normal meeting? Did she drop in, inform them, drop out, and have done with that? No other business done?"

Hadrian hesitated before responding. "Yes, Lord Gaunt. Everything went as normal."

Gaunt nodded and twirled the wand thoughtfully. Then, quietly, "You're lying, half-blood. Crucio."

Hadrian doubled over and fell prostrate onto the ground, screaming and writhing and shrieking and twisting as invisible knives slashed at every nerve across his body. Pain such as he had never felt blotted out his world, made thought impossible, made his universe a dark and ever-constricting ball of agony.

It burned forever, and then it was gone, leaving agonising aftermath throughout his body and soul. He groaned weakly, unable to process what Gaunt had just done to him with his own wand.

"If you lie to me again," he heard Gaunt say, "Then I shall do that again. I have other, cruder and no less effective methods. Shall I be forced to use them?"

No sane wizard would do that to another wizard, knowing what it did, thought Hadrian. A wizard wouldn't do that. A mad dog wouldn't do that. And Gaunt had just done it. Nachlan Gaunt, the Heir of Slytherin, Gaunt Half-a-Smile, the not-so-hidden enemy of Katelyn Canmore and sworn foe of the Masquerade, stared at Hadrian with cruel amusement and held the wand, perfectly ready to do it again.

"You … shan't be forced to use them." Hadrian's voice was a choke on the edge of audibility.

"Earlier today, I saw the Malfoy twins at the Ironlith. They had what looked like two muggles in tow. What business took place between Canmore and the muggle king? What does it have to do with the Malfoy twins and the muggles?"

"It … when she met with the muggle king and queen, they requested that a representative of their people be stationed at Hogwarts. To act as a go-between..."

"A muggle at Hogwarts?" Gaunt's lip curled. "Desecration. Bad enough that she allows Mudbloods, worse still that that prospect even be considered. She surely refused?"

"There was … I think the muggles strong-armed her. They threatened war on wizardry and she appeased them. There could be no harm in it, she had no interest in waging another war with muggles as well as with you..." Hadrian shut up a few words too late. Gaunt's face was unreadable.

"She considers me equatable to muggles?" he said in a voice that was tranquil in its fury. "She dares consider me an enemy to wizardry? She … I will not waste words on you. But she is mistaken." He shook off the brief spasm of rage that crossed his face, and became neutral and composed once more. "So the good Headmistress permitted a muggle access to Hogwarts. Where did the Malfoy twins come into this?"

"I suggested they be dispatched to retrieve the muggle in question. He was a wandering knight, hard to find."

At the mention of the Malfoys, something that could have been … regret? … stole over Gaunt's face, and was replaced with a look of contempt he threw at Hadrian.

"I see. If what you've told me is true, then the muggle is already warming his heels in the home of wizardry. Like a blind, rancid animal, fouling the halls of its betters. An animal you helped bring in, half-blood." He sighed. "I have heard enough. I have no more questions."

"Then can … can I go?"

"Hmm?" said Gaunt, broken from a short reverie.

"You swore on your honour on a Gaunt that you'd let me go once you were done." A high note of terror entered Hadrian's voice. "You swore!"

Gaunt smiled then, a full and genuine smile that burst across his face like a sunbeam. "My father once told me that promises made to blood-bastards and blood traitors were like promises made to air." Hadrian stared in panicked bewilderment so Gaunt clarified with a chuckle. "Worthless. Baseless. Voiceless. What right do the likes of you have to a portion of pure-blood honour?" He turned his back and stepped away, dismissing Hadrian with a wave. "Do with him as you will, Skadi. A Gaunt honours his debts to the worthy." Skadi advanced with a feral and wild grin.

Hadrian was not a naturally brave or foolhardy man, and being trapped between an unstable madman and a woman who had the rank of a wolf about her did his moral fibre no favours. But he had principles, based on an obligation to Katelyn Canmore. And even a cornered rat can still turn and fight, or at least make one last bid for freedom.

His eyes drifted to the wand in Gaunt's grasp, held casually behind his back. He sized up the threat posed by Skadi, which could be considerable. He tried to breath normally, to manifest the wandless magic necessary to slip off his bonds and to Apparate away.

He watched Nachlan Gaunt's back, who imperceptibly spun the wand between his fingers in anticipation.

Hadrian sprung and Gaunt struck. The small grey man leapt loose from suddenly loosened bonds and seized for his wand in Gaunt's grasp. Gaunt side-stepped his stumbling grab with ease, sweeping aside as Hadrian stumbled past. Gaunt brandished Hadrian's wand in his left hand at the same moment as his own wand flew into his right hand, and he angled the two wands at Hadrian's legs and hissed "Diffindo."

Two bursts of light flashed from the two wands and Hadrian fell forwards, hamstrung and bleeding. Before he could scream, Gaunt dropped Hadrian's wand and said, in the same breath, keeping his own wand leveled, "Petrificus Totalus."

Hadrian lay still, frozen but for his eyes which rolled in blind panic. Behind him, Gaunt glanced down at Hadrian's wand, and broke it in half with one stamp of his foot.

"A spirited attempt," said the woman in a guttural voice. "Desperation and passion in the last moments of life makes for a better offering to the All-Father."

"Then make it while he lasts," came Gaunt's sneering voice. "He can hear everything we say. The Body-Binding Curse is unparalleled for letting you get the measure of an enemy, I find. They nearly all die in terror. Only the mad face me with no fear, and they don't deserve to live in the first place." A foot hooked around Hadrian's frozen side and flipped him over onto his back. Gaunt's face rose into view. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth was taut and spiteful.

"You'll be of use to me yet before the end, blood bastard," said Gaunt. "Have you been introduced to my companion? This is Skadi Ulfsdottor, Doyenne and Alpha of the werewolves of Norway." The woman showed a mouth of sharpened, yellowing teeth, and Hadrian moaned faintly in fear.

"She had graciously come to Britain at my invitation, with a full pack of her brightest and fiercest, to help bring ruin to those who would deny the cause of pure-blood supremacy. And she and her pack will be well rewarded once I have reclaimed the rightful place of wizards. However, before she can begin her work proper, these isles must be consecrated and dedicated to her gods. The old gods. As old as blood and stone and winter itself."

"Fear not your death," said the woman in a surprisingly soft tone as Hadrian's eyes rolled in fear and realisation. "For by your death, you shall leave this land a proper hunting ground." She patted the handles of the long knife and spruce wand that dangled from a piece of twine wound around her waist.

"I can see you two shall get along famously," said Gaunt. "I shall contact you later, Skadi, after you are finished here. We shall set about undoing this affront to wizardry."

He stepped away, and Apparated away.

"This daughter of Great Fenris sends her prayers and call to the gods," breathed Skadi, stepping closer to Hadrian. "Great Woden, Gallows-God and All-Father, know that I send to you my lust for battle and victory. Take this life given to you, so that I and my kin may know true war in the nights to come."

The knife rose. It shone silver and wicked in the dying light. Hadrian had no voice in which to scream.

"And know that even as you are Fenris's foe, his children honour you as an opponent, and devote this ritual and life for your favour. Woden means war. Woden means madness. Woden means death."

Her last intonation was barely more than a breathy whisper. "Woden means victory."

The knife descended as her wand came out. Hadrian died in terror and pain.

Once she was done, she hung his body with a makeshift noose from a branch overhanging the loch, as a final devotion to Woden, and left it there as she Apparated away to rejoin her pack. The body would remain there until it rotted and fell apart.

Storm clouds gathered over Scotland as night set in.