Why am I so groggy? My head was pounding mercilessly as I slowly, gingerly opened my eyes. Darkness. I blinked my eyes a couple times, unsure if I had actually opened them or just hoped I had. Nope, actually dark. Slowly looking around, I noticed a faint light coming from a different room. Looked like a computer light of some sort.
My body hurt when I tried to sit up and even when I managed to, I bumped my head on something metal. A cage? I was in a small cage of some sort, so small I could hardly even sit the hell was I in such a tiny cage? So that I couldn't transform and escape? It was certainly hurt to transform and be impaled by all the broken bars. Well, what poor thinking; I can just breath on it and break it in half. I still have the strength of a dragon, after all.
I blew my ice breath on the bars and growled in frustration, Why wasn't the ice collecting on the bars? It was bouncing off some invisible barrier back at me. It didn't really affect me considering that it was my own breath. A magic boundary was the only conclusion that I could come to.
Wonderful.
Panic gripped my chest and I just starting hitting and pulling at the bars the best I could to no avail. My breath raced and quivered, my chest tight.
"M-Mom?" I called out shakily.
Charlie's POV
"So you found her hone?" Remus inquired, furrowing his eyebrows. "All right I'll have to go call Kingsley," he murmured quietly, going outside to do just that.
"What were you doing by that bus stop anyways, Charlie?" Tonks inquired.
"I stayed at Avelyn's last night. She was supposed to come to out house to watch a movie with Percy, but when I went to go get her, something seemed off... She punched and broke her bathroom mirror, so I patched her up and tried to get her to talk to me, but... she just wasn't having any of it. I left, but then rethought the situation and returned with two movies and a bunch of candy. We watched the movies and that's when I noticed the blue roses."
"Blue roses?" Tonks repeated. "I think I saw those same roses. In a crystal case, right?"
"Yeah... I asked her about them, but she didn't really want to talk about it. I uh... kinda bumped into and broke it."
"How did she react?"
"She hugged me; said that she'd been wanting to do that for a while, I guess. She explained that the vase scared her," I answered quietly.
"Did she say why?"
"No... said she didn't know why," I sighed quietly. "I just want to know how someone could scare her so badly," I mumbled, looking down at the table.
"You know what she told me about those flowers?" Tonks murmured lowly. When I looked up at her, she continued, "She said that blue roses meant 'I can't have you, but I still want you'."
I frowned deeply. What kind of person would send her those flowers? Were they aware of what they meant? He must have...The thought of some sick bastard kidnapped her made my blood boil.
"Charlie. There's nothing we can do now, but investigate, okay? We will find her, I promise," Tonks swore.
"Okay, so Kingsley wants us to head over to Ava's home. She was told to keep a diary, mostly for herself, but he thinks there's a chance she wrote something about this stranger," remus sighed softly, coming back over to us.
On the way there, Tonks and I filled him in on the previous night. "After we check out her home, we should stop by the flower shop to see if Neville has any information," Remus murmured as we entered her apartment complex.
"Sounds good."
When we finally entered her room (I locked it, so we had to make sure there were no muggles near by so that we could unlock it with magic), it looked exactly the same as I left it. It even still smelled like popcorn.
"Did you guys clean up or something? I thought you said you brought a whole bunch of stuff over," Tonks commented, looking around.
"I did after she left in the morning," I answered her calmly.
"And do you remember what time she left?" Remus inquired, going over and checking the garbage can.
"Yeah... like 5:30 or so," I responded, also taking my time to really scan the room.
Everything seemed exactly right, but something very small seemed wrong, out of place. And it seriously bothered me. I locked the door, then again it wouldn't take a second for a wizard to unlock it with magic. The lock certainly didn't seem tampered with physically. Maybe I was going nuts; maybe there really wasn't anything off.
"I'm going to go check her room for the diary," Tonks informed us.
"Okay. Charlie, you want to accompany me to the bathroom? I want to check out the mirror," Remus told me.
I agreed and upon entering the bathroom, I was caught off guard.
_ Give up. You'll never get her back in one piece._
_ _"Is that blood?" I found myself whispering, eyes glared to the writing on the wall.
"Yes. Let's hope it's not Ava's," he responded lowly, taking the first step towards it.
A spell later and small particles of blood came off the wall and formed into a word.
_Aurora Maria Luna Akull_
_ _"Huh? Who's that?" I asked quickly, reading the name over and over again.
"I'm not sure. Quite the name, though. Akull. Isn't that Albanian for ice?" Remus mumbled, probably to himself.
"Wait... this name seems almost familiar," I said suddenly. "I think I read it somewhere..."
"In your studies? Do you think you have the book still?" Remus asked hurriedly.
"I'm sure I do. I bring my studies home," I told him, wracking my brain to try and figured out where I'd read that name.
"Hey I found the diary- oh my- What? Who's blood is that?" Tonks exclaimed.
"Someone named Aurora Maria Luna Akull," Remus answered, quietly letting the blood go back on the wall. "We'll have to make sure that no one enters her apartment."
"Quite the name... Oh, so her diary mentions a stranger on the beach. Do you remember her panicking and freezing the water?"
"She never told us about any person then, but she did seem pretty freaked out," I murmured thoughtfully.
"And then she mentions a guy at the flower shop. The writing is short here, probably because she was tired, but all it talks about is the guy who apparently touched her hair."
"He touched her hair?" I repeated, angered. "What creep would do that?"
"I'm not sure... Maybe Neville saw something thought," Remus commented worriedly.
"Even if he didn't, the shop has security cameras," I pointed out. "Are we done here?"
"There's some more tests I'd like to run. You two go on over to the flower shop. I've already called Pomona and Neville to head on over," Remus informed us.
We nodded and went off. The entire time, I was silent, wracking my brain for where I'd seen that name before. Akull... And not just the Akull part. The entire name was burned into my skull and I was so angry that I couldn't remember where the hell it was from.
"There's a chance that that's not even her blood," Tonks murmured gently.
"We don't even know her real name though," I countered. "She could have that name for all we know."
"What we need to have is faith that she's okay. These people are desperate, meaning somewhere along the line they messed up. They want us to give up. You can't tell me that doesn't scream failure," she pointed out.
"Faith isn't going to keep Ava safe," I mumbled, opening the door to the flower shop.
Third Person POV
Remus stared at the wall with the blood writing, a deep frown creasing his seasoned face. The words gave him hope. They messed up and were panicking. But where did they mess up? What did they do or not do to make them feel worried enough that they had to risk coming to her home, where any of them could have been at any time, to write this?
And the blood. There's no way they would use blood from any of their own people to write this. That would make it far too easy to find them.
So it's either some poor passerby's blood or Avelyn's. And if it is Avelyn's, that name... Wouldn't they be worried they could trace it's origins and truly figure out why they took her. If they could figure out why they took her, they could figure out who took her.
Why would they take so many risks? If they thought she could yield any information about her race, they're sorely mistaken. Remus and the others had practically scrubbed her memory the best they could. The only way they could pull any information out would be...
Remus widened his eyes and yanked out his phone. The ministry needed to know.