Once again, warnings for torture, blood and other unpleasant things. Please remember that I warned you.I want to thank you all for sticking with me on this adventure and for being patient. Don't forget to leave me comments and thoughts, even the not so nice ones. This is the longest ff I have ever written and I'm working as I go, so sometimes I miss things and your constructive criticism is welcome. Plus some of you are really funny. *cough* carerra.hughes *cough*
Tears cascaded down her face as she forced herself to breath. She could hear Pansy's screams coming from her left, screams that set Millie's teeth on edge from the raw intensity of it. Screams she was sure would haunt her, even in death. Millie's screams for help went unanswered as her friends eyes rolled back in her head, but even after Pansy clearly had passed out, wails of pain still passed her lips.
Millie pulled at the binds around her wrists and ankles as a shape she couldn't clearly see from the salty liquid blurred her vision moved from between Pansy's thighs. Blinking furiously, she watched a dark headed figure leave her friends bent legs and move to a table near a metal door. The room was stark white, clean and unwelcoming, except for the blood puddled haphazardly around the floor. The stranger, a girl, placed some things on the table that sounded like metal touching metal, the sound reverberating around the room. Millie pulled hard on her straps, hoping to see what she was doing but her binds were tight with barely any give.
"Can you help me?" Millie called out to the girl.
The girl spun around at the sound of Millie's quiet plea. Cho Chang. Millie remembered her from school, from when Cedric Diggory passed. Crying in random alcoves and abandoned classrooms. Pulling at her hair in frustration when the tears wouldn't subside. Millie had felt bad for the girl, but she offered her no help, no friendly wave, no shoulder to cry on. Millie hadn't helped her then. So she probably wouldn't get any help in return now.
Cho's head cocked to the side, as if studying her. The girls eyes were milky and seemingly detached from what she was seeing. She fingered her wand while she watched Millie's chest rise and fall with struggled breaths. Finally she moved, flicking the wand over the instruments that lay on the metal table and bringing them to where Millie was trapped. She moved the cuffs up the bar she was strapped to so her knees bent up and her legs opened.
Screams filled the chamber once more as Cho's metal sphere wrecked havoc on the girl. Millie's mind worked double time, trying to protect itself as the pain radiated through her body. The fog in her minds eye whirled until she could almost feel nothing, except jarring coldness. It felt as if she had left her body for a second as she took in the room around her. She turned her head toward Pansy who must have woken up, because her fingers twitched as their eyes met. She could see Daphne over Pansy's smaller frame staring at the ceiling while tears streamed down her face. She felt fingers against her thighs as Cho worked but her eyes took in the sight before her.
Pansy's table seemed to be the same as hers. Wrists and ankles were strapped to a long bar against a metal table. The straps themselves were leather and attached to the bar so Cho could manipulate their legs and move them to where she wanted them. They had metal teeth that set into the leather, not unlike Neville's belts or her fathers. Sliding her wrist down the bar, she found that the wrist could only be pulled down another inch before it was caught and wouldn't move further down.
A cold shift in the air met her exposed skin as Cho moved away from her body back to the table by the door. She felt warm liquid pool between her legs, knowing that it was more than likely blood. She watched Cho place the metal instruments down, before picking up a glass jar. Cho place something inside the jar, a pinkish grey square of something that Millie didn't want to think too hard about.
As Cho stepped over to Daphne's table, the girl yanking hard at the leather straps, Millie thought she might have an idea. But for fucks sakes, she thought, can we get a white knight to save our asses before then. Now would be good.
Theo's patronus scared the living shit out of her. The bear burst through Draco's office window, reared it's large head causing her tea to slop out of it's cup and all down her front of it's own accord, of course.
"Found Eloise Midgen. Dead awhile. Bring back a wardrobe. The hunting shake is secure." Theo's tightly strained voice came from the beast. As the bear dissolved into bits of sparkling light another appeared in it's place. Grabbing a bit of parchment she wrote quickly wrote down what he had relayed before Robins's lemur Patronus started his message up. "Madam Goyle in custody, Granger. We are bringing her in for an interrogation. Make coffee ya? Be there in 5."
Hermione wrote down Madam Goyle's name at the top of another piece of parchment for the interview and ran to the kitchenette in the break room to make coffee. She got out multiple cups, sugar and cream thinking while running things through her mind.
Pansy had been taken in broad daylight from Grimmrald Place. Padma had been snatched away from her office with multiple witnesses watching her leave. Millicent had been port keyed out of Neville's home at the tip of his fingers. Eloise had been missing since Tuesday, now dead and not a soul had seen her since her marriage on Monday to Anthony Goldstein. Mandy Brocklehurst had been missing just as long and her husband was beside himself with worry. Gregory Goyle was dead. Cho Chang was mixed in somewhere in this craziness and it was not looking good.
Just as she was pouring another cup of tea into her now empty cup, Seamus's fox brightened up the room and skid onto the table. "We need all back up at the dower house. Possible victims. We aren't moving until we have more hands. Unsure of the circumstances till more arrive. Send help, Mione. Need information on one Madam Ivanov and Madam Goyle."
Hermione dropped her cup and in one smooth motion her wand was out and flicked in front of her till her delicate otter patronus stood waiting on it's hind legs in front of her. "Find Kingsley Shacklebolt.," she told the glittery figment," Need all teams at Goyle Dower house, Derbyshire. Possible victims. Sending backup." After the other took off she sent 9 more to the other teams scattered across England and Scotland to the other teams of Aurors.
She heard a pop in the main office area where McGonagall and Sprout where pouring over notes and transcripts. Peeking around the corner, a large wardrobe was sitting near Draco's office door. The elevator door opened at the end of her hall, Theo Nott, Professor Flitwick and Lee Jordan stumbling out, looking like they ran the whole way up instead of jumbled elevator.
Lee came straight for her, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her curls.
"All I could see when I looked at her was my little sisters face, Alicia's face, you and Ginny, all the girls I've encountered at school," Lee was shaking under her palms which came up to wrap around his frame at the embrace. Flitwick was puking in a near by bin.
"Is she in there?" she asked tentatively.
The professor whipped his mouth on the back of his hand, standing barely tall enough over the trashcan to spell the mess away, "I made a portkey for her...wardrobe and sent her here. I knew the wards would allow evidence" Hermione nodded against Lee's frame.
"Poor girl," tears rolled unbidden down her cheeks. " We will need to get a Healer here to transfer her to St. Mongo's." She flicked her wand, to send a message to the hospital asking for assistance.
As the otter once again leapt to do her bidding, Zabini and Robins came through the elevator dragging a reluctant Madam Goyle along with them.
"Put her in the integration room, and then you all need to go to the Dower house as well. Seamus said he needed all hands on deck." Hermione told the men scattered around the office space.
At Hermione's declaration, Madam Goyle started pulling at the hands that held her. Zabini tried to trip her up, when Robins lost his footing but her elbow went into Blaise's stomach causing the man to bend over with a gasp of air. She turned completely around to barrel down the hall from which she came, Anthony Goldstein sending a Cunfundus charm at her caused Madam Goyle to trip over her own robes, head long into the wardrobe and falling to the floor. The doors to the wardrobe flew open and the collective gasp filled the room.
Anthony's whole body seized up and his wand clattered to the floor. Eloise's body was pushed into the tiny space, arms and legs splayed at odd angles. Her eyes stared blankly out at them. The noise that left Anthony's mouth was inhumane and animalistic. Eloise was Anthony's wife, she remembered sadly. Lee tried to pull Anthony away from the grisly sight but he refused and clawed at Lee's hands.
"She can't be...I won't...She can't be," Anthony's anguished cries broke his words as he struggled to get to his wife. The sorrow that filled the room was immense and heartwrenching.
More than anything, she wished she could fix what had just happened. Send Anthony away before he saw her like that. Anthony didn't deserve that. The pairs hadn't even been married a week but seeing the person you where suppose to grow old with dead had to be the shattering. What if it were Harry or Ron, Neville...Draco?
She moved from her spot to shuffle around Anthony and Lee. Closing the door in the wardrobe slowly and she told them to go to the kitchenette to sit down for a second. When everyone had dispersed, she headed to her office, now on a mission. She was going to Dower house. Whether anyone wanted her to or not.
The door clicked shut when Cho finally left the room, leaving the girls alone after what felt like hours. A few blissful minutes of silence filled the room before the table next to Pansy's started to move.
"What are you doing?" Pansy kissed at Millie's form.
"Trying to escape?" was the answer she received.
Pansy watched Millie's face screwed up in concentration as she tried to slide her foot as far as she could up the bar she was trapped to. Her fingers slide the leather down on her wrist till it no longer had room to go and tried in desperation to reach the strap at her ankle. But her fingers couldn't reach.
Pansy started working on hers. The pain between her legs making her gasp at the odd movement but she swallowed her cry and worked desperately on sliding her wrists down as far as they could go.
"Daphne, wake up." Millie whisper- shouted at their friend. "Try to move your ankle up as high as you can to reach it."
Daphne's sniffles answering the girl, she too began trying to pull her ankle up. With their wrists bound near their heads, there was a large gap between the straps that held their wrists to the ones that held their ankles.
Pansy's fingers couldn't quite reach and the minutes that passed by started eating away at her confidence. What if they got caught? She could come back at any second. So while the others tried to lift the ankles high enough, she began shifting her wrist around to see if the spot she was stuck on would break through the leather. Twisting her wrists back and forth across the metal, she watched Daphne try to slide her leg in an odd angle, pushing the leg almost behind her. But still her fingers wouldn't reach. Understanding bloomed in Pansy at what her friend was trying to do. She was trying to slide her leg almost under her back to reach the straps at her ankle. But how would that release their wrists? They could untie one another with their feet!
"Wait...Millie, how are you proposing that we get free if just our feet are undone?" She twisted a little harder at her wrists, willing the leather to wear and break. "How are we supposed to get our hands free, if we don't have a hand to free ourselves?"
Millie struggled with her ankle, a sharp pop and gasp filling the room when Millie's leg had bent oddly. Her fingers could now brush against her toes but the look on her face said the pain was breathtaking. "If I can just...reach my ankle," sharp breaths left her mouth as she grasped her toes and inched her fingers further down her foot, "I can undo the strap and use my free leg to maneuver over and undo the other. If I can get them both free, maybe I can tip this table over and get to your wrists." Her face was screwed up in concentration while her fingers brushed at the leather.
Daphne was struggling with hers, her legs seemed to come up the bar further than Millie's due to Daphne being smaller proportioned, but Daphne's hips were curvier, which made reaching almost impossible. The blood on Daphne's table, only helping to make her slip, seemed to be moving more freely. Her skin was grey and her eyes drooping heavily.
Pansy kept rotating her wrists, hoping for the leather to break in her ministrations. She moved her head back to see how Millie was faring, when she heard it. A chink on the table. A deafening clang. Her earring. She had ripped one out when Cho showed up at Harry's house looking worse for wear, hoping to leave a little clue. Cho hadn't noticed but Draco might understand or her husband if he paid any attention to her.
She slid her body closer to her face and began pulling on the diamond, hearing the back slide off more than feel it. After a few seconds of light tugging, it was free and in her hands. Carefully maneuvering the earring to pinch between her thumb and forefinger, she stabbed at her binding with the pointy end. This is going to work. It had too.