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Gabrielle was shocked when her husband came home one day and abruptly announced, "I want you to ask to be taken off the Dark Circle investigation. Tomorrow at work, tell them that you'd rather be doing something else."
"But I wouldn't rather be doing something else, Harry," she replied simply. "Why do you want me to say that?"
"Because..." Harry fished for an explanation. "Because it's too dangerous!" he declared finally. "And you're going to get hurt, and I won't have my wife put in such terrible danger. That's why."
She stared at him. "Excuse me," she replied hotly, "but I think I will decide what is too dangerous for me. The Dark Circle is getting more and more powerful every day... now that they've got that centaur for a leader..."
"Centaur?" Harry asked, confused.
"Yes, haven't you heard? The rumour is that they've got a new leader - his name is the Black Centaur - and he is the reason they've gone to ground. He's told them to wait before they kill anyone."
Harry could barely suppress a laugh. "I don't think the leader is a centaur," he explained. "I've heard that he's a wizard who calls himself the Black Center - you know, like the center of a circle. Because everything revolves around him." Harry was very proud of the name he'd created for himself, and he wanted everybody to get it right.
"Then why 'black'?"
"People say he was modeling himself after a flame... you know how a candle flame has that dark part in the middle? The Black Center. Like that."
"Oh." Gabrielle digested that. "But I still don't like the way they're just biding their time. Almost as if they're concocting some huge plan. Harry, I'm really scared...and I won't deprive the Dark Force Defense League of one of its best investigators!" she said defiantly, bringing him back to their original argument.
"Gabrielle! You have to!" he shouted. "Trust me, it's for the best. Please!"
This was shaping up to be the worst fight they'd ever had. Gabrielle and Harry didn't fight much, really... the worst disagreement they'd ever been through was the argument over their children's names. Gabrielle had insisted that they not be named after dead relatives or old girlfriends: "I want our children to have completely new names," she'd said. "Otherwise they will forever remind us of people we used to know. That's not fair to them."
She'd won that time, and Harry began to resent that she wouldn't give way today. "I don't ask all that much of you," he began in what he thought was a reasonable tone of voice. "But this is very, very important to me. I mean it. I've been losing sleep over it..."
Gabrielle's eyes narrowed. "Yes, I've been meaning to ask you about that," she said nastily. "Because I seem to notice waking up every night without you in my bed. I've been wondering exactly where you go at night...what you do that makes you exhausted every morning, unable to give me a kiss or even to make eye contact..."
He reached out to touch her. "Gabrielle-"
"Don't touch me!" she snapped, slapping his hand away. "I don't want her germs all over me!"
"Her?"
"Whoever she is!"
Harry's eyes widened. "Oh, no, Gabrielle, I'm not... I mean it, I don't go to see...someone... at night, that's not where I go! I swear, I really don't..." He was starting to lose it, she could see. He collapsed in a chair and held his head in his hands.
"Harry..." she touched him on the shoulder and he looked up at her. She was shocked to see that tears were forming in his eyes. "Harry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to accuse you of... it's just that, well, you do disappear, I get worried... I don't know what to do."
Harry lit up with sudden inspiration. "Hey, Gabrielle, let's make a deal, all right? You get off the Dark Circle investigation, so I can stop worrying about you. And I...I'll stop going out at night. All right?"
She nodded, tearful herself now. "All right, Harry. I hope this is over soon."
"Me too."
That night, as she sat in bed reading, Harry came in with two cups of hot cocoa. "We haven't just sat around with cocoa in a while," he said brightly. "Let's have a cup and try to cheer ourselves, shall we?"
She brought the cup to her mouth, noticing that Harry was watching her with avid interest. Hmm...
"Ow!" she exclaimed as the liquid touched her lips. "It's hot...I'll have to cool it... Where on earth did I put my wand?" She stood and began to look around.
"I'll do it-" Harry began to offer, but she'd already headed out into their bathroom.
"Oh, there it is, I left it when I was fixing up my hair..." She looked over her shoulder to make sure Harry couldn't see her, then dipped the wand into the liquid.
Her eyes glowed as she concentrated hard on the cocoa, and soon her theory was confirmed. A glob of some pearly liquid, probably about four drops by the look of it, congealed from the cup and hovered in the air.
She bent to smell it, and recognized it immediately as coming from the little blue bottle Harry kept in his nightstand. A sleeping potion, then? Harry was trying to drug her?
Harry watched, relieved, as Gabrielle came back into the room and sat next to him on the bed. "There, that's better," she said sweetly. She took a sip of cocoa and yawned. "Mmmm, thank you. I like when you bring me hot chocolate in bed... je l'aime beaucoup..." Another sip and she began to close her eyes...
He couldn't help smiling. "Thank you, Professor Snape," he muttered under his breath, watching Gabrielle sink slowly into her pillows. The diluted potion had been perfect, apparently. She would wake up in the morning, with Harry beside her, and think they'd just fallen asleep naturally together. Perfect.
He watched her breathing become deep and regular, then passed a hand in front of her face. She didn't flinch. "Gabrielle?" he asked softly. There was no response, so he carefully rose from the bed, picked up his wand, and left the house.
The minute he was gone, Gabrielle sat up and began to cry.
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"Tonight, I am going to explain to you my reason for ordering that we lay low for now," Harry was explaining to the Circle an hour later. He could sense that the wizards were getting restless - they wanted to kill, and soon.
"I know many of you think that I only intended to test your loyalty, and see whether you would obey me, but my reasons lie deeper than that," he assured them. "I prohibited you from murder for two reasons. One: If you are caught in the act you will be interrogated, and may reveal our secrets to the Ministry. For that reason, we cannot afford to proceed in a haphazard and dangerous fashion. Two: Even if you are successful, it will tip off the wizarding world to what we are trying to do. I want the blow to fall suddenly and thoroughly, wiping out all opposition in a single night. Do you understand my logic?"
The wizards all nodded their assent.
"Good."
The meeting began to focus on the list of "opposition" that would be wiped out in the Dark Circle's initial crippling attack on the Ministry of Magic. Harry had been encouraging his followers to make such ridiculous lists, in order to stall them from taking any real action yet.
In the process of finding out all he could from Snape about the old Death Eater gatherings, (in order to support his claim that he communicated with Voldemort's spirit), Harry had learned exactly what they liked to do at their meetings. As a result, he realized that he had to have his own plans made up...or the Circle would want to revert to the horrifying activities they were usually so fond of.
A few minutes into Harry's careful time-killing, the meeting was disrupted by Avery's screech, "Center, there is someone in the woods! I saw them! A spy!"
"Catch him!" Harry ordered imperiously.
The wizards reacted immediately. They fanned out to search through the nearby trees, and Harry stood still, racking his brains trying to figure out what to do. He expected his followers to reappear any moment, carrying with them whoever had dared to spy on this gathering... but he was mistaken.
Apparently, they had decided to take matters into their own hands. Harry suddenly heard a shriek, accompanied by rowdy laughter. Curses and wailing came next, and he decided he would have to go look for them, to put a stop to whatever they were doing.
He made his way through the trees. He knew he was getting closer because now he could hear, along with the raw screams, the exact words the wizards were using. "Crucio! Tsk, tsk, you're regretting spying on us now, girlie, aren't you?"
Finally he could see, up ahead, that they'd levitated their prisoner and were flipping her around and around, as well as making liberal use of the Cruciatus Curse. When Harry approached and shot off sparks from his wand to get their attention, they let the person fall to the ground.
Since Harry had heard them call the spy "girlie," he supposed it was a woman, but couldn't tell because all she was at the moment was a tangle of robes on the ground. He turned to the Circle. "I thought I ordered that no one be killed," he grated wrathfully.
Lucius Malfoy stepped forward and offered a slight bow. "We were careful, Center," he assured Harry. "No mess and no death... I do not even believe we've drawn blood yet."
Having heard the prisoner screaming in such agony, Harry wasn't too sure about this. He stepped forward and bent over to pull the woman to her feet. The minute he touched her, though, she shrank back against the ground and cried, "Take your hands off of me, you filthy beast!" He drew back, shocked. That voice...
No, he was imagining things... Wasn't he?
"Get up," he growled. He levitated the woman to her feet, and with a flick of his wand removed the hood that covered her face. As a silky sheet of white-gold hair tumbled loose, his worst fears were confirmed.
It was Gabrielle.
Harry stared in shock. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even think save for a constant litany of No No No Nononononono that flooded through his mind over and over.
"You're the Black Center, then? You're human?" she asked, trying to make out his features that were shrouded in his usual supernatural black mist. He still couldn't answer.
Luckily, the wizards misinterpreted the way he froze up. "Yes, she's quite something, isn't she, Center?" Davis asked jubilantly.
"She's part Veela, actually. I can tell," Nott said importantly.
Finally Harry got a handle on himself enough to speak. "Well, whatever she is, we'll have to let her go. It won't do to have the Ministry on our backs this early in the game. Release her - the time is not yet right for murder."
Again, Lucius Malfoy voiced the mob's sentiments. "But for this one, Center, we think the time is right. This will be the kill that makes all wizards know us and fear us. You see, this is not just any spy... it is the wife of Harry Potter."
"Ah... how interesting," he murmured. So they knew. What on earth could he say, Harry wondered. Gabrielle was indeed a trump, and they would want her for a hostage if nothing else.
Malfoy seemed to take his hesitation for assent, and turned his masked face back to Gabrielle. "Crucio!"
"Finite Incantatem!" Harry said firmly. "Lucius, I distinctly remember ordering that she be released."
"Center, we all have the lust for killing tonight," Malfoy answered in equally steely tones. "You must not deny us."
All of a sudden, Gabrielle's eyes widened and she threw herself forward, clutching madly at Harry's robes. "No! Don't let them kill me!" she shrieked.
Seeing Gabrielle, who was usually so proud and independent, behave so strangely, Harry felt more determined than ever to have her freed before anything else was done to her. He pushed her away and forced himself to look at her.
She stood completely still except for the heaving of her chest. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides and she'd stopped crying, but was still shaking a little with pain and terror.
"Her intrusion has not gone unpunished," Harry stated.
"Let us punish her more," someone demanded. Harry felt a jolt of intense terror that they would turn on him if he refused...
"Very well," he blurted out. "A little more." In an instant, Gabrielle was doubled up, clutching her stomach and whimpering hysterically. She's not the only one being tortured, Harry thought, and wondered how much longer he could keep silent.
Not very much longer at all - they lifted her several feet with their wands and dropped her back to the ground with a nasty thudding sound, then cast the Cruciatus Curse again. Harry couldn't bear to hear his wife scream like that, and ordered a stop to it after only a few minutes.
"But I really think she ought to die. Let us make an example of her," Malfoy urged. Harry could see the heads nodding all around him, and felt control again slipping from his grasp. What would Voldemort do in my place? he wondered.
"Lucius, if you interfere again, I will make an example of you," Harry said coldly. To illustrate his point, he incanted "Serpensortia" and watched as a huge snake slithered from his wand. "Would you please act scary, and move a little closer to that man over there?" Harry asked it politely in Parseltongue, indicating Malfoy with his wand.
Malfoy stood absolutely motionless as the snake approached and rose up a little to hiss at him. "Like thissssssssss?" it asked.
"Thank you, that's enough," Harry hissed back. The snake retreated, and Malfoy immediately stepped closer to Harry and bowed low.
"I apologize for my forwardness, Center," he said smoothly. Harry still detected a trace of challenge as he added, "I will step aside...this time."
"Good," Harry answered, then turned to address the rest of his followers. "We will release this woman...for the moment. Don't worry, though, any of you - she'll be back with us soon enough. When the time is right, we will kill her and all others who oppose us." He faced Gabrielle. "Go, now, and remember that if you breathe a word of us to any living person, we will come after you again. We will kill your children and send you their heads by owl. Do you understand?"
She nodded, tears coursing silently down her cheeks. Harry indicated a path with his wand. "Go that way. Leave now or we may change our minds."
Somebody handed her her wand back and she turned and ran.
When the Circle was reassembled in the clearing again, Harry could see that many of them were still dissatisfied. "I see that you all grow impatient," he rasped at them.
They all nodded or murmured their assent.
"So I tell you that we will begin soon. We will make our final plans tomorrow night, and the massacre we've all been waiting for will take place one night later. Agreed?"
"That's it, Center! Just what we've been waiting to hear!" exclaimed Davis.
Even Malfoy seemed contented. "Finally, the time comes," he said quietly, "and we are all ready for it."
"We had better leave at once, in case that woman has managed somehow to reach the Ministry already. Tomorrow we meet in the woods where Davis first assembled you all," Harry directed. His followers Disapparated one by one.
When the woods were empty, he stood for a few moments alone, trying to steel himself to go home.
It was no good, though. Every time he closed his eyes he could see Gabrielle twisting horribly in midair, could hear her screaming so awfully that her voice wasn't even recognizable... No, he couldn't go home and face her. But he couldn't just stay here all night, could he?
Harry suddenly decided what to do. Instead of Disapparating as his followers had done, he put on his Invisibility Cloak, summoned a broomstick, and made a beeline for Hogwarts.
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How do you like it so far? Tell me. Next chapter will be more Snape and probably some Sophie and Juilen as well.
Thanks for reading.