Old Stiff Necked

"You are not an Auror. What were you doing in my flat?"

I swallowed, casting my eyes to the left; the children were still playing obliviously, though their mothers were starting to call them as the sky began to show the first signs of darkening.

Numberita was still furiously working for a strategy to escape, but so far she'd been unsuccessful. I'd have to stall.

"Who are you?" I asked. He scowled, moving the wand so it pressed deeper into my side. I flinched, eying him with wide eyes.

"Answer the question," he said evenly. "I really don't want any…harm to come to you." Dominique's voice flashed in Numberita, her angry voice saying, "Bull." Of course, if I said that to this guy he would probably curse me on the spot.

"I…was visiting the pet shop and heard noises in the flat above. I-I'm a Gryffindor, you see, and we're always a bit too curious – I thought someone might be hurt," I lied, sending silent apologies to Rowena Ravenclaw for the transgression.

He sighed, shaking his head. A flash of disappointment gleamed in his eyes.

"Mm…and that's why old stiff necked looked so horrified whenever a spell came near you. Because you were an innocent…stranger. Right. I'd hoped it wouldn't have to come to this." Then he narrowed his eyes, clearly concentrating on casting a silent spell-

My eyes widened, and I tried to fling myself off of the wooden bench, the splintered wood digging into my trousers-

And the black swallowed me whole.

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When I woke, I was in a dark room with no windows. It was only around three meters by four meters, and I quickly began feeling claustrophobic. The walls were pressing in around me, a million hungry mouths waiting in the darkness…

I sat up with a start, looking down in surprise to find that I wasn't tied down or secured. I was sitting on a thin cot without any sheets or pillow. It was the only furniture in the room…well, not including the small black ceramic vase at the corner…the corner that I could smell all the way from over here. I could feel the icy stranglehold of panic begin to claw up my throat, and I resisted the urge to cry. No. Think. You are a Ravenclaw, Adela. You can figure a way out of this mess.

So I forced myself to survey the room once more. My jacket was folded neatly at the foot of the cot. I scrambled forward, my heart in my throat as I searched its pockets desperately. They'd confiscated my wand, but that was to be expected. My only hope was that maybe – maybe – they'd have missed the small coin pager. As my fingers overturned each pocket, my stomach twisted even more.

Finally the very tip of my left index finger just brushed something cool and metallic. The coin! I swallowed a triumphant yell, not wanting to alert my captors to their mistake, and quickly slipped the coin into my tangled hair (finally, a use for my hair texture!). I let out a deep, shuddering breath. Okay. I couldn't contact anyone with the coin – the communication only worked one way – but it gave me a sense of relief to know that at least I had this connection with the outside world.

I glanced around the barren concrete walls once more. My watch was gone, so I had no idea what time it was. I didn't even know where I was – I could be in Bulgaria for all I knew. I sniffed the air, trying to catch a whiff of the wet aftertaste that always scented London air, but the overwhelming stench of urine from the corner overpowered all other scents.

Okay. Rose would owl tonight and when I didn't respond she'd get worried; it was a part of her nature. Or would she think I was too busy with the case to respond? Or what if she was too preoccupied with Teddy's disappearance to worry about me? A soft, snide voice whispered doubts into Numberita, slowly unraveling my defences until I was huddled on the bed, my knees hugged tightly against my chest and my back rocking against the cold, slimy wall behind me. Teddy was her sort-of relative (well, not technically. But they'd grown up together). I'd only become friends with her in sixth year. What if she was too worried about Teddy to remember me?

Merlin. I'd been kidnapped.

Merlin. Merlin. Merlin.

What if this bloke was working for Greyback and Ragnuk? And if so, why would they need a phoenix?

They were obviously desperate. They were bound to know that someone would eventually notice I was missing. Kidnapping someone was a major move, one that painted a giant target on their backs. So why take the risk?

From what I could tell, the bloke didn't know who I was. He'd accepted the Gryffindor lie without too much protest, but Numberita could tell he suspected a tie between Al and me. Perhaps he wanted to get back at Al? Or…?

A dull, throbbing pain resonated at the base of my head, preventing any further thought. I hissed, bringing up a trembling hand to touch the spot. It was tender to the touch, but there was no blood. A magical wound, probably. Numberita quickly ran through my mental list of spells to think of possible hexes. Maybe a stupefy?

The metal door swung open, the edges scraping against the concrete floor. I tensed immediately, flinging myself back so I was crouching behind the narrow metal frame of the cot.

Shoot. I should have been waiting behind the door so I could jump the person and escape. Cursing myself for not thinking ahead, I watched with a beating heart as the bloke from before entered the cell cautiously. A dark-haired, scowling girl holding a wand lit by lumos accompanied him. My breath caught in my throat when the light hit her face; they looked almost exactly alike. Siblings, maybe even twins.

"Come out, lion cub," the bloke called in his rasping accent.

Right. I was pretending to be a Gryffindor. What would a Gryffindor do in this case? Certainly not hide behind a cot. I sighed and stood, putting on my best "outraged and brave" face.

"Yo, what's wrong with you lot? How dare you kidnap me? Do you have any idea what I can do? I can punch your faces, that's what!" I blustered, trying to swell my chest so I appeared larger and more menacing (that's what Sir Archibald does whenever Clara's cat visits). The duo exchanged looks, and to my horror I saw the corner of the bloke's mouth twitch.

Well, this is why the Sorting Hat didn't Sort me into Gryffindor.

I strode forward, screeching to a stop when the girl smoothly moved her arm so her wand was jabbing at the skin of my throat.

"What do you want with me?" I asked hoarsely, my air supply hindered by the hard wooden object jabbing into my wind pipe.

The bloke rested a hand on the girl's shoulder, and she scowled once more before stepping back five centimeters, lessening the pressure but still keeping her wand at my throat.

"Aleksandra," the bloke said warningly. She shot him a glare but lowered her hand all the way, gripping her wand tightly and eying me distastefully.

"Now, I think we got off on a bad start," he said easily, turning to me with a crooked smile.

"I am Andrei. This is my sister, Aleksandra. All we want is for you to tell us where your Aurors" – here his mouth turned in a distasteful sneer – "have taken our phoenix. We only wish to recover what is rightfully ours."

The phoenix? If it had remained in the flat when Andrei had escaped, the team of Aurors was sure to have found it. They would have confiscated it as evidence and put it with my wand in the De-

Wait. Numberita froze in her tracks, noting the way Aleksandra was moving her mouth silently and staring into my eyes, a look of complete concentration on her face.

I forced myself to calm down, Numberita becoming hyper aware of our surroundings. T-there! Something – no, someone, I told myself, eying Aleksandra with genuine fear – was rifling through my head, sifting through my thoughts as she searched for the truth. She was a Legilimens.

No! I shouted.

"Get- get her out!" I yelled, scraping at the sides of my head, trying desperately to expel the foreign presence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Andrei with an expression of genuine surprise. I couldn't tear my eyes away from hers – they were dark, bottomless pits. Jagged mouths erupted from her pupils, biting at me ravenously as they attempted to swallow me whole –

Tears ran down my face, my nose running as I struggled to get away. Why couldn't I move? Why couldn't I move? Hysteria bubbled up from my stomach to scrape at the insides of my throat, and I let out a short, frenzied gasp.

Merlin. Merlin. Merlin. I couldn't stand having something in my head – that was the best part of me, the one part that made me me. It felt contaminated, like some dark spot was staining my insides and gleefully uprooting everything –

I gathered my control, my stubbornness, everything that I could and weaved it into my next words.

"GET OUT!" I shrieked. Then I stumbled forward, knocking into Aleksandra with a pitiful amount of force that wouldn't normally have affected anyone. But Aleksandra was deep in her reverie, and the movement was enough to break our eye contact. Immediately the presence disappeared from Numberita, and I sank to the ground, shuddering violently as I struggled to calm myself down. Deep, body-wrenching sobs wracked through my body as I trembled on the cold, rough concrete floor.

Aleksandra must have recovered, for she took a threatening step forward like she was about to curse me again.

"Ne," Andrei said abruptly. She spat, the liquid splattering on the concrete floor, some drops ricocheting up to hit my face. I cringed, hating myself for being so weak. What good was a mind when it was so easily vulnerable to invasion? A real Gryffindor wouldn't be cowering on the ground like this.

"It is not everyone who can sense Aleksandra. Perhaps there is more to you than meets the eye. We will come again later," he continued.

Then they were gone, banging the metal door behind them, and I was left alone with my fears and the thoughts that wouldn't stop gouging me from the inside out.

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Time passed in a dazed blur. Sometimes Andrei came into the room to ask about the phoenix, other times Aleksandra would come and try to invade Numberita again. Luckily she wasn't skilled enough at it to perform Legilimency without eye contact, so I was usually able to avoid her. When she forced me to maintain eye contact through a Petrificus Totalus, I filled Numberita with thoughts of bacon. This usually ended up with her hexing me in annoyance. At least I'd gotten better at fending off her mental attacks.

I was pale and sallow from my days spent away from the sun. According to the small scratch marks I'd made on the concrete wall using the edge of my coin, it had only been three days. It felt like it had been months.

I hadn't been contacted yet, which made me think that either everyone had forgotten about me – which I refused to believe, despite the lingering worries that took up Numberita at the darkest of hours – or something was wrong with the magical connection. Neither explanation was good.

The breakfast – or dinner, I couldn't really tell – of some watery broth and stale bread (honestly, how much more can this whole experience resemble the bad Muggle mob movies that Cain watches?) had been served a while ago, but judging by my stomach's growls it would still be a few more hours until dinner (or whatever the next meal was called) would be pushed through the door. I had been silently listening at the door whenever I heard footsteps and gleaning as much information as I could about my captors, but I hadn't managed to get much.

From what I could tell, the duo was trying to find the phoenix and was getting more impatient with each day that passed. But it wasn't just impatience – I'd detected a hint of fear in Andrei's eyes the last time his interrogation had turned out to be fruitless. Andrei was usually the good cop to Aleksandra's bad cop, but when I'd refused to tell him anything for the sixth time…I shivered, hugging my knees to my chest as I remembered the way his eyes had grown cold. He'd taken a step forward, looking for all the world like he was going to kill me. At least with Aleksandra I knew what to expect. With Andrei I couldn't get a solid grasp on his intentions. He'd stopped himself, muttered a few curses in Bulgarian, and slammed the metal door behind him.

I got up from my perch on the grimy cot and tiptoed to the door, my legs weak from the lack of exercise. Pressing my ear to the cold door and suppressing a shiver, I listened with my heart in my throat for any other occupants. Nothing. I approached the cot and lifted the thin mattress carefully, wincing each time the fabric creaked against the metal frame.

Supporting the mattress (thank Merlin it was fairly light – I doubted my weakened arms could lift anything heavier) with a trembling arm, I bent down to work at the metal coils in the mattress. Over the past few days I'd been working at the springs to extract them from within the mattress, but it had been slow, painful work. The sharpened metal edges caught at my skin and tore at my fingers greedily, but I'd managed to remove six coils so far. I figured that although they were thin, they were better than nothing. I wasn't completely sure if it would work, but I was determined to try and weave some sort of long, jagged wire. If I hid behind the door and caught my captor by surprise, maybe I'd be able to wrap it around his or her ne-

I swallowed, pushing down the revulsion that was threatening to bubble up in my stomach. Despite all the abuses Andrei and Aleksandra had inflicted on me, I still couldn't stomach the idea of choking one of them. It was just so…violent. Yeah, I know I go around hitting people with OBTS (which, as it happens, was also confiscated), but this was…different. If I went through with this, it was with the intention of disabling them and not to express my affection or annoyance. Which also made Numberita speculate about the differences between such close, personal violence versus the relatively easy forms of violence inflicted by wands.

A slight creak sounded from outside; I froze, my fingers stilling on the seventh coil. I bit down on my lip, tasting coppery blood as the dry skin split. Hastily stuffing the coils back into the mattress and setting it down as quietly as I could, I jumped onto the cot and quickly pretended to sleep with my head facing the wall, my heart beating loudly as the door opened.

Quiet footsteps approached, soon followed by a heavy sigh. I struggled to keep my breathing even as I stared at the wall, willing the person to leave. Merlin must have been smiling down at me, for the person soon left, closing the door quietly behind him. Andrei, then. Aleksandra would have woken me up without hesitation.

It was a full seventeen minutes before I had stilled my heart enough to get back to work.

Before working on the next coil, though, I took the metal coin from within my ponytail and ran my roughened fingers over it.

"Please, please," I whispered, willing it to heat up.

Nothing.

I swallowed my disappointment, rubbed angrily at the moisture dripping from my eyes, and stuck the coin back into my hair elastic. Then I narrowed my eyes and ripped at the next coil haphazardly, ignoring the biting pain prickling at my fingertips as the jagged metal scraped against my tender skin.

I'd have to get out of this predicament by myself.

Author Note: Uh oh. Adela doesn't seem to be in a good situation. Anyway, thanks for reading! As always, please review and let me know what you think! :) All reviewers will be given a teaser of the next chapter c;

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