It was near impossible to stuff both Weasley twins into the cupboard, so eventually they had to give up and simply Levitate them both into the storeroom and cover them by building a wall of boxes around them. Amycus was fairly proud of this idea – at first.
"First good idea you've ever 'ad, Am," Scabior said, sounding genuinely surprised as he Levitated the last box. "Right, did ya get a piece of their 'air?"
Amycus looked blank.
"What?"
"I said…" Scabior's voice tailed off as he surveyed the least intelligent Death Eater that Voldemort had ever allowed into his ranks. What was the Dark Lord even thinking, letting this total imbecile become part of his inner circle? "You're a fucking idiot, Am. You 'ad one job." Resisting the urge to cuff the taller man around the head, he began pulling boxes down and throwing them viciously to the ground.
"Careful!" Alecto warned, looking up at the ceiling. "That little bitch might hear us."
Scabior's lip curled into a smirk. "Anyone would think ya didn't like her already, Al."
Alecto sneered, at the thought of Cassie or at the nickname, or perhaps both. Once the unconscious twins were within reaching distance, she and Scabior each grabbed a chunk of hair from the nearest twin. Amycus had made himself useful by holding the two vials of Polyjuice Potion. The other two dropped the hairs in, and the Polyjuice turned to a pleasant shade of pumpkin orange.
"You two take the Potion and I'll box these two up again." Chuckling at his own terrible joke, the laughter soon stopped when he looked at George. Even the nametag bearing his name made him furious. Without thinking, Scabior drew back his fist and punched the man in the eye. Good luck opening that up when ya come around again, he thought viciously.
"Scab! What are ya doing?" Amycus asked, apparently shocked at his behaviour.
"It's what 'e deserves," Scabior muttered childishly.
Amycus wandered over and stared at them both. Then he lifted his leg and kicked George right in the face. The sound of shattering cartilage put a deranged smile on Scabior's face. It was easy to forget with Amycus and his almost child-like stupidity that he was just as violent and cruel as any other Death Eater when he wanted to be.
"Amycus! Come and take the potion with me!" Alecto said urgently, glancing up at the ceiling again. Amycus joined his sister and together they drank the potion. It appeared to have a pleasant taste as neither one made any noises of objection, until the transformation began.
Scabior was delighted once the pair had taken on the physical appearance of the Weasley's, but the Carrow's were not so impressed and began bickering about who had the most painful transformation.
"That 'urt my knees, that did," said the twin that Amycus had transformed into, and the other one snorted loudly.
"I just shot up by about a foot, you daft sod, quit your whining-"
"Shut up!" Scabior hissed as a female voice above called, "George? Where are you? Fred?"
The three of them froze. The stairs were creaking, signalling that she was coming down.
"It's up to you two now," Scabior whispered. "Don't let us down, or I'll 'ave your guts for garters. See ya in the garden." With a quiet POP, he Disapparated, leaving the twins staring at each other in horror. They were completely unprepared.
~~~(O.O)~~~
"I'll take the lead, don't you say a word," Alecto warned her brother. If anyone was going to ruin this operation, it was going to be him. Not for the first time, she wished she had someone else with her. That Rodolphus Lestrange, Alecto mused, he would have been a good choice. He was smart, ruthless, not to mention extremely handsome…
As Alecto fell into a daydream about performing a mission with him and him alone, Amycus snapped his fingers in front of her face, a habit that irritated her no end.
"Oi, are we gonna go out there or what?" Amycus demanded.
"Of course," Alecto replied, eyeing him hard as if it were him in a daze and not her. "And if you do that again, I'll jinx your sodding hands together."
It was what Bellatrix had done when he'd been foolish enough to snap his fingers in her face.
The pair wandered out as casually as they could into the shop, where Cassie stood. She was holding a mug with a large black 'C' on it, and didn't smile when she looked at them.
"Still packing up?" The girl's voice was dull and uninterested, and her face held no warmth. Alecto had no idea how to talk like a young man, but she had no choice but to give it a go.
"Yeah, yeah, nearly done." Cassie frowned but made no comment. She looked around the shop dismally, and Alecto felt a rush of dislike towards the girl.
"Do ya fancy going out?" Amycus asked out of the blue, and Alecto turned to shoot him a most venomous look. She thought in that moment that he had spoilt everything. To her great surprise, Cassie's miserable face lit up.
"Duh! Of course! I've been saying for days I wanted to go out-"she turned away from them now, abandoning the mug on the counter. "-And I'm sorry about earlier, George. I just felt like I was losing my mind in here." When neither of them replied, not knowing which one of them was meant to be George, she turned and looked at Amycus expectantly, eyebrow raised.
"Don't tell me you're sulking now too?" Cassie asked, a hint of humour in her voice.
"Nah, 'course not," Amycus replied with a foolish grin. Alecto could have facepalmed at the sight of it.
"Okay," Cassie replied with a small frown, which was quickly replaced with a huge smile. "I'll just go and get changed quickly…" She turned on her heel and ran up the stairs.
"Where are we gonna go, Al?" Amycus asked in a panicked voice. "I don't know nowhere round 'ere."
"We let her lead," Alecto said, trying to appear authoritative. "She looks desperate to be let out the building, poor thing." She cackled maliciously before adopting a more serious expression. "Now you listen to me, dear brother. One more word out of you unless she specifically addresses you and I'll hex you into something far worse than a lanky ginger knobhead. Understand?"
Amycus looked at his feet like a child chastened. "Yeah," he muttered. Noisy footsteps could be heard thundering down the stairs.
"Snap out of it and look happy!" Alecto ordered. Amycus adopted his lopsided, goofy smile and Alecto smiled too as Cassie reappeared wearing black boots and a grey cardigan over her t-shirt. "Let's go." She hoped she didn't sound too keen, but then again, no one looked keener to be out than the girl herself.
"Alright, where do you guys want to walk to?" Cassie asked, grabbing some keys off the table and pushing her wand more firmly into her pocket. Amycus looked worried and Alecto began to sweat. She knew nothing about these twins and yet could instinctively tell that their natural personalities were totally different to the ones she and Amycus were portraying.
Cassie raised her eyebrows. "Not very talkative today, are you?" She looked at Alecto, then at Amycus and shrugged. "Alright, well, let's walk to the meadow. We haven't been there in ages."
Thankfully, she took the lead out the shop, leaving the two nervous Death Eaters to follow.
~~~(O.O)~~~
Fred and George were acting strangely. They were barely saying anything, and kept giving each other funny glances. Cassie was used to this, when they pranked other students at school or their brothers, but they were never this weird around her. Had she taken her sulking too far?
'I'll ask them,' Cassie thought. Communication was key in friendships and relationships.
~~~(O.O)~~~
"You alright, Fred?" Cassie asked as they walked silently down the road, the twins falling behind to hide the fact that they had no idea where they were going.
Alecto opened her mouth to answer, having remembered that she'd addressed Amycus as George, but apparently her brother had forgotten this fact.
"Doin' awright, thanks," Amycus said, and Alecto shot him a horrified glance. The total idiot! Cassie wheeled round, light on her feet in her joy at being outside. It was pathetic, Alecto thought viciously. She won't be so happy once we're done with our little plan.
"Thanks George for answering on his behalf," Cassie said sarcastically, but in good humour.
"He's just messing with you," Alecto explained, then regretted it instantly as Cassie looked confused, then suspicious.
"I know. You guys can't fool me, I've been able to tell you apart since day one, remember?"
They were the only people walking down the street now. It seemed that everyone else was either indoors or had returned home. Amycus kept looking at Alecto and mouthing 'now?' but she was shaking her head furiously.
Cassie meanwhile was desperately trying to hold a conversation. Every now and then she'd twirl around and comment on the lovely evening, despite the puddles everywhere, or ask a question that Alecto deflected with a monosyllabic answer. She could tell that it was beginning to irritate her, and was just wondering how long the pair could keep up the pretence for just as Cassie wheeled round to have her sixth attempt at conversation.
~~~(O.O)~~~
"Is there something up with you two?" Cassie demanded. She'd tried so many times to talk to them, but so far she had gotten nothing out of either of them, and they were nearly at the garden. The twins looked at each other, but there was something not quite right about the glance yet again. It was shifty, and the twins were never shifty unless Mrs Weasley has caught them in the act of doing something wrong. Even then, the shifty glances weren't quite this shifty. Her heart began racing as a most uncomfortable fear set in. Something wasn't right here.
Just then, George's wand dropped out of his pocket and fell into a shallow puddle.
"Whoops, clumsy," Cassie laughed, not very humourously, but George looked extremely worried, shooting a fearful glance at Fred. He looked livid, with a vicious expression upon his features that made Cassie want to walk away from him.
"Pick it up, you stupid sod!" Fred snarled at him in a most un-Fred-like manner.
If this wasn't a huge red flag for Cassie, the next few seconds most certainly were.
Both twins reached down to pick it up, and she frowned as she watched them. Then her heart stopped when she looked at the wand.
It wasn't George's wand.
"George, where did you get that wand from?" Cassie asked, and as George looked up at her, she recoiled. The look in his eyes was one she'd never seen before. It was purely predatory. She was now genuinely wondering in her sudden terror if the twins had been killed and used as Inferi. They'd covered Inferi in her sixth year, and now she wished she could remember the details.
She looked down at his hand. It was a horrible, Dark wand with a huge white skull at the top, and a bandage-like effect extending underneath it.
"You two aren't the real Fred and George, are you?" she challenged them, and they looked at each other once again, a long, sinister look. "Stay back!" Cassie drew her wand suddenly and pointed it at them. "What have you done with them?"
"We are the real Fred and George, honest," George said, and Cassie laughed madly, for she knew him better than that. Everything was so wrong: the mannerisms, the speech… There was a distinct aura of weirdness around these two.
Fred pulled out his wand and pointed it at Cassie's chest, apart from it wasn't his wand. This one was vile too, a skull with a long protruding tongue and ribbed torso was cocooned inside the harshly chiselled wood.
"Whoa, slow down, Al," George said. Cassie stared at him, eyes wide and gripping her wand tighter.
"Al? Al? Who's Al?" Cassie shouted hysterically, then turned her wand on the imposter George as he tried to shush her. "Don't you dare shush me. You two are mad!" She turned and ran away, towards the gate of the garden they were heading towards.
"Stop!" she heard George's voice say, but didn't catch the imposter Fred's next sentence as she flung open the gate and ran to the right, hidden partially by the uneven stone wall.
"Let her go," the imposter Fred had intoned sharply, pulling back the twin as he made to go after her. "She's going to run straight into Scabior in there, and our plan will be complete."
Cassie meanwhile kept running for a good few minutes, and only stopped once she realised she wasn't being followed. She took a good look around as she stopped, resting her hands on her knees and breathing hard. What was she doing in such a sheltered, lonely place? Surely it wasn't safe to be here alone in these dangerous times? Clutching her wand hard, she walked forwards a few steps before becoming aware of another's presence. She turned around and found herself looking up at the evil looking man who had Apparated in her kitchen.
"You!" Cassie cried out in horror. A cocky smile played across his lips.
"Yeah, it's me," he replied. "I've been waiting to meet ya for a long, long time-"
He lunged for her wand, but she darted backwards and held it up, her hand level to her head.
"Oh no you don't," Cassie said, feeling an adrenaline rush. She racked her brains for all the offensive spells she could think of.
The man threw his hands in the air in mock defeat. "Oh no, you got me there. Whatever am I to do now?" Cassie stared at him, trying to make him out. In a lightning quick second, he pointed his wand at her and shouted, "Expelliarmus!"
Her wand flew out of her hand, and landed somewhere behind her, hidden by the long blades of grass. Having already taken advantage of her lack of attention once, all the man had to do was to watch her turn her back to him before he could hit her with another spell. Cassie automatically turned away from him to search for her wand, her only chance at defence against this revolting person, and seconds later was falling to the ground, her arms and legs locked together. She landed face down on the ground, and a pain in her right cheek told her she'd landed on something hard and sharp.
The man chuckled as he strode past her in heavy black boots. A small grunt told her he was bending down to pick her wand up. Moments later, there was a clatter as wood fell to the ground and a loud snapping sound.
Cassie's heart stopped. Surely not. Surely he can't have done…
"Reparifors," the man muttered, and she felt herself lifted to her feet by the back of her t-shirt. He seized her round the neck in a headlock, and dangled her broken wand in front of her face.
"This is to symbolise the end of your freedom," he told her, and tears stung her eyes. Her precious Ashwood wand, with a core of unicorn hair, was one of her most important possessions, a sign that she truly belonged in the Wizarding world even when it seemed she was all alone. And there it was, snapped, useless…
"Let me go," she gasped, and he laughed again, tossing the wand into the high grass like it was a piece of rubbish.
"'Fraid I can't do that, beautiful."
Trying to push his arm away to no avail, Cassie became aware of his wand which had been stashed away carelessly in his right-side pocket. If she could grab it, and Stun him quickly…
Just as quickly as she reached her hand out, his fist swung round and caught the side of her mouth. Cassie let out a loud cry of pain and he grasped her upper arm painfully hard, digging in his fingers.
"I'll forgive ya for that, sweetheart, only because you're a lovely one," the man said, "but if you ever do that again, don't expect me to play nice."
He looked around distractedly, and she noticed that his long, tangled hair was tied back in a black bow. She wanted to laugh, at the same time as being more frightened than she'd ever been in her whole life.
"Where are those two fuckin' idiots? They were meant to be with you-"
"It was you, wasn't it?" Cassie said furiously, even though it hurt to talk. "You've done something to the Weasley twins, haven't you?"
"O for Outstanding, my sweet," the man replied annoyingly. "They probably got themselves lost, bless 'em. Still, never mind. I have you now, and when I turn up with you in tow, I'm gonna be rewarded beyond my wildest dreams. Perhaps they'll let me have a go with you, if ya know what I mean?"
His words made her skin crawl, but there were important questions to be asked too.
"Turn up where? Where are you taking me-?"
But as he Apparated with her, Cassie's questions became lost in a darkness that she felt she'd never return from.
I hope this was satisfactory! There will be less POVs in the next chapters of this story as they are quite difficult to write!
