Chapter 9-No Hope Left
Sonora would never grasp how she regained her senses and helped Remus put Sadie on his back. Nor would she ever forget that walk back to the castle. Remus used Sadie's wand to put up sparks and handed it to Sonora to light the way. The castle looked like heaven itself when they came to the edge of the forest. Dumbledore met them inside on the way to Remus's office. One look at the group of them and he had all the information he needed.
"Help her, Remus," he entreated softly, "Do all you can."
Remus's clawed hands could not unlock the door, so he told Sonora where the extra key was and they brought Sadie in. She was still out cold when Remus laid her on his lumpy couch in the side room.
"Shouldn't she be awake yet?"
Remus shook his hairy head. "You don't wake up until dawn with a werewolf bite. It goes all the way through your system. I don't know what we'll do when she gets up."
Dawn came slowly in the little office. Remus stepped out of the room when the sun was nearly up. He came back in human form moments after Sadie was revived.
She gazed intently in his eyes as he sat down next to the bed.
"I'm a werewolf, aren't I? Tell me straight, I don't want it to sound any better than it really is."
Remus sighed heavily. "Yes, you are a werewolf."
"You were that tan werewolf, weren't you?"
Remus smiled wearily. "Yes."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Sadie looked out the window, tears welling up in her eyes. "It's like illegal or something for me to be adopted now, isn't it? Or even go in a foster home? Or ever have a family?"
Remus's eyes grew misty. "Yes, it's illegal."
"Where is Emma? She needs to know. She needs to know a lot of things." A bitter darkness was in her eyes.
Remus looked very uncomfortable, like he knew something unpleasant that he didn't want to tell. "Emma is..." But Sadie's eyes begged him to tell her. "Emma is gone."
"/Gone?/ What do you mean /gone?/ Where did she go?"
Remus looked intently into her eyes. "To look for you."
Sadie fought back the tears and held on to her pride. "Can I be by myself for a while?" she entreated. The professors looked at each other and stepped into the main part of the office, closing the door behind them. They tried not to listen to the sobbing in the next room, the mourning over lost dreams, faraway friends, and the premonition of an empty future.
***
Emma ran blindly through the Forest, her wand--held high in her hand-- glowing faintly. She shivered as a mournful, wailing howl rose above the trees. /A werewolf,/ she thought bitterly. /Just exactly what I need./ The sounds did not come any closer, however, so she continued to stumble feverishly through the dark, moody Forest. She had lost all sense of direction--she could not be any worse off, as she had no idea where--or what--her destination might be.
After a full day with Sadie missing, she'd grown tired of the whispers that had followed her everywhere, the sad, pitying looks from the teachers, and the jeering laughter from the Slytherin table each time she'd entered the Great Hall at mealtime. Thinking of nothing more than her absolute need to get away from it all, she'd waited until after the curfew and then snuck out of the castle. Several times she had come very close to being caught by patrolling teachers--the watch had been tripled after Sadie had gone missing--but each time she'd ducked into a room and waited until the teacher had passed by. When she had left the grounds behind, she'd blundered straight into the Forbidden Forest, and had been running wildly towards who-knew-what ever since.
The full moon disappeared behind a cloud, and the feeble wand light penetrated only a circumference of two or so feet. Emma slowed to a walk, glancing fearfully around at the black forest. She heard footsteps behind her, and then a twig snapped--she whirled around to find nothing behind her, that it had been only the effects of her over-tired imagination.
Trembling still, she turned back and continued to trudge slowly and--she hoped--quietly through the forest. After a few moments, the moon reappeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the milky-white light filtered through the dark leaves, aiding the light of her wand a little. The howls of the werewolf, she realized, had stopped--the forest was silent as the tomb. Emma thought that perhaps she preferred the spine-tingling howls to the eerie silence that hung about her now. Even the crunching of dead leaves under her feet had become muted; the only sound in a vast galaxy of complete silence.
She was not sure how long she walked in the silence, but after a while the sky--or at least, as much of it as she could see through the dark, suppressive leaves overhead, became slightly pink. After what might have been five or ten minutes, the sky had lightened considerably, though the forest remained dark. Emma strangely felt Sadie needed her and began to walk a bit faster, thinking that perhaps, by the thin light that dawn had brought, she might get out of the forest soon.
The arrival of day had brightened her spirits considerably. She began to walk with more purpose, towards what she thought to be the edge of the forest.
After Emma had continued towards her goal for several hours-the sun was now high overhead-fatigue hit her and she sat down against a tree trunk, not caring anymore about the dark shapes flitting just beyond her vision. Against her will, her eyes--heavy with sleeplessness--closed. The muted sounds of the forest grew dim and dimmer still, as she sank further into oblivion.
When she finally awoke, well into the late afternoon, she found herself in a spacious, tastefully decorated room. She was lying on a dark cherry wood four-poster bed, covered with a thick hunter-green comforter. Her torn school robes had been replaced by a soft cotton nightgown. Across from the four-poster was a fireplace lit by a small, cheerfully crackling fire. Parallel to the bed was a small, one-person table and a single willow- backed chair with a soft-looking green cushion.
After the initial delight of waking in a warm, comfortable bed after a night of running through the Forbidden Forest, Emma threw the covers from her and half-slid, half-fell onto the carpeted floor, tense and not knowing what to expect. She groped for her wand, but it had been taken with her robes, and was not anywhere on or around her. /Great, she thought. /Not only was I lost in the Forbidden Forest, but now I've been kidnapped or something.
The word struck a chord inside her, and she started in surprise. /Kidnapped?/ She thought, trying to squash the fear that tried to creep into her thoughts. /Sadie was kidnapped..maybe I-/ Attempting to put the small, sneaking suspicion from her mind, she sank into the lounge chair and sat for a few moments, staring reflectively into the flames.
She'd probably just been found, that's all, she thought. Yeah, just found. Who knows what might've been creeping up on her in the Forbidden Forest? Probably someone who was looking for her or for Sadie, or for both. /Terrific,/ she thought. /How many blunders can I make in one day? First I get lost in the Forbidden Forest.then I'm so dumb as to fall asleep there.then I let myself get caught by the very people who'll ship me right back to school./
Emma hadn't known how she could /bear/ to spend another hopeless, listless, horrible day at Hogwarts with Sadie gone. She'd woken rather later than usual the previous morning and had rushed down to the hospital wing in order to do her nebulizer, hoping not to be late at breakfast. When she'd entered the Great Hall, coming directly from Madam Pomfrey's, Sadie hadn't been in her usual seat at the long Ravenclaw table. Emma had quickly ducked back out of the Hall and rushed up to the dormitory, thinking of silly ways to wake her friend up.
When she'd reached the dormitory, the curtains around Sadie's bed had still been drawn. Emma had opened them quietly, hoping to startle Sadie into wakefulness.
The bed had been empty.
The bedding looked as thought it had not been disturbed all night. Thinking back to the night before, Emma remembered that she hadn't, after all, seen Sadie come up to bed. As they were leaving the Great Hall after dinner to come up to the Common Room, Professor Winsbree had asked to speak to Sadie for a moment about the recent test on wood fairies. Emma had proceeded up to the Common Room and, very tired, as she'd woken very early that morning to do her nebulizer, she'd retired to the dormitory soon afterwards and fallen quickly asleep. She'd assumed that Sadie had come up after she'd fallen asleep, though she realized that whatever had happened must have happened while Sadie was on her way up to the Common Room.
/Or,/ she thought suddenly, jerked back to the present, /when she was with Professor Winsbree./ She shivered, though not from cold, unable to wholly put this new thought out of her mind.
Immediately after she'd found Sadie's bed unoccupied, she'd fled back down to the Great Hall and, disregarding everyone else, gone immediately to Professor Dumbledore. Ignoring the scandalized looks from the other teachers, she'd gasped out the fact that Sadie was not there.
Dumbledore had stared hard at her for a moment, and then stood abruptly. He'd broken the news to the Hall and immediately sent several teachers to scour the school from top to bottom and look for the missing student.
Emma suspected that it had something to do with the death of Cedric Diggory the previous year--missing students had never before been searched for by nearly all the faculty, simply after being missing for a few minutes. She hadn't connected it then--but now, sitting in front of a strange fire, in a strange room, her rationality greatly lessened by her trepidation, a thought entered her mind.
/Could You-Know-Who have kidnapped Sadie?/
/Could You-Know-Who have kidnapped _her_?/
Her mind wandered back to the previous morning once more. The teachers had returned after three quarters of an hour or so. No trace of Sadie had found--and none, either, of Professor Winsbree. Dumbledore, looking suddenly very old, had asked Emma to come with him to his office.
The Headmaster had taken a seat behind his antiquated desk, motioning Emma to sit opposite him.
"Is there anything you'd like to talk to me about?" he asked slowly, fixing one of his searching looks on her.
"No," said Emma dully, thinking about Sadie and simply wishing to get out of here as soon as possible.
"Are you sure?" Dumbledore asked gently.
"Yeah--can I go now?" Emma asked, not looking him in the eye.
Dumbledore sighed. "Yes, you may," he said. He rose and walked to the door with her. "Remember," he said softly, "Though Night may be very long, and very dark, Morning will always come."
Emma had left the office then, and went back to her daily classes. She'd trudged painfully through each dull subject, drawn into herself and offering no word to anyone. During the time that was usually Defense Against the Dark Arts, she'd sat moodily in the Common Room, apart from the others who were using this free period as a sort of party-time.
Straight after dinner she'd fled up to her dormitory and drawn the curtains around her bed, hoping no one would bother her. As soon as all of her roommates--all of them, that is, except Sadie--had come up and finally fallen asleep, she'd crept down the staircase and out of the school.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. She sat, terrified, clutching the arms of the green lounge chair. The door opened and a smallish man, carrying a tray heaped with food in one hand and what looked like fresh robes in the other, entered. Without speaking he set both on the tiny table and left the room, only glancing at her once.
Emma sat, trembling slightly from the shock of being so startlingly interrupted, staring at the items on the small table. After a moment, thinking it could do no harm; she rose and changed into the new robes. They were a bit too large, but very comfortable--grey with a strange hunter- green emblem on them, and very light. Not knowing what to do with the nightgown, Emma finally folded it--it /seemed/ like the right thing to do-- and set it on the bed.
She stared hungrily at the food, her stomach growling loudly. She hadn't eaten anything since dinner last night, nearly twenty-four hours ago. Greedily she ate a piece of lavishly buttered toast before common sense got the better of her, and she stared in horror at the place the toast had been. /Oh, great,/ she thought deprecatingly, /Can I never get anything right? First I go get myself lost in the forest.then I fall asleep.then I get caught by who-knows-who.and then I eat the food, which is most likely drugged or poisoned or something else horrible./
Luckily, the door opened once more without warning before she was able to eat--or think about--any more of the food. A tall man she had never seen before entered, the smallish man who had brought her food and robes hovering close behind him. The small man was carrying a willow-backed, green-cushioned dining chair, which he set before the table across from Sadie. The stranger sat in it, waving his servant carelessly away with a long-fingered hand.
He looked as if he were in his sixties or seventies, with gray hair that had once been black and laugh lines around a smiling mouth. He had hazel eyes that bordered on amber, and a swift, easy manner. All of her suspicions dropped away immediately, and Emma realized with a sinking heart that this man could only be one of those searching for her or for Sadie.
"Good evening, Emma," said the stranger pleasantly. When Emma did not reply, he asked, "Do you know who I am?"
"How could I be expected to?" she asked frostily.
The stranger chuckled. "Good, very good. My name is Tom, and I think you might want to say hello, as you are very much in my debt, young lady."
Emma scowled, feeling more and more ill-tempered. "That's debatable," she said coldly.
Tom chuckled again. "I can see you are not very happy being here," he said. "But I think I can safely assume you would rather be here, than where you might by this time have been. It isn't a wise idea to go carelessly to sleep in the Forbidden Forest, you know. When I and my companions found you, you were encircled about by a number of harmful creatures unfit to describe to you, and would not have been around to be rescued for much longer. But now you're safe, and we can use as much speed as possible to transport you back to your school."
"And if I don't /want/ to go back?" she asked defiantly.
"I'm sure you will," said he, "Once you know who is there."
"Who?" Emma asked sullenly, unwilling to be overcurious.
"A good friend of yours," said Tom with a sad smile, "Who also happens to be my /obstinate/ grand-niece."
Emma looked at him in bewilderment. "I don't know who on earth you can be talking about," she admitted.
"Sadie," Tom replied.
Emma stared at him in amazement. "/Sadie?/" she asked incredulously.
Tom smiled sadly, "She does not know that she has family." He sighed heavily. "Her father was my half-nephew," he explained. "Her grandfather was my half-brother. My father," he scowled, "left my mother and I before I was born when he found out my mother was a witch. He remarried, and my half sister was the result. I did not know this until this year. It is such a sad thing that she has thought for all these many years that she was all alone--,"
"Does she know?" Emma interrupted excitedly, forgetting her resentment.
Tom sighed again. "Yes," he said heavily. "But she does not believe me. I found her, too, lost in the Forbidden Forest--very near the place you were--and brought her joyfully back with me, convinced that I'd found my grand niece. For some reason she did not believe that I was a relation, or even one searching for her (for I had heard that she'd gone missing from Hogwarts and set out to find her myself) on behalf of Professor Dumbledore. She ran away, with the help of one of the faculty of the school. I do not wish to frighten you, Emma, but I cannot believe that that teacher-- Professor Winsbree, was her name--can be allied with Dumbledore. I think that she must have darker connections, if you know what I mean."
"Professor /Winsbree?/" asked Emma, laughing in disbelief. "Trust me, she's a great teacher, but she isn't /half/ smart enough to--you know, go over to You-Know-Who's side. /Or/ kidnap Sadie from /anywhere, especially/ not Hogwarts. But aside from that," Emma furrowed her brows, "how can I be sure that you're who you say you are?"
Tom's hazel eyes grew cold, though he was still smiling pleasantly. The contrast made Emma shiver slightly, though she tried to hide it.
"You doubt me?" Tom asked quizzically. "Why ever would I pretend to be someone I'm not?"
A warning light clicked on in the back of Emma's mind, and she stared hard at the man seated across from her. What was it.it was something about Sadie.Sadie's name.but what could possibly be wrong with Sadie's name.it was just Sadie, that's all.
/A girl she had never seen before, accompanied by ex-Professor Remus Lupin, had walked into the bookshop, looking slightly nervous. She'd hesitantly asked Emma where the clerk was.when Emma had replied that she was the clerk, she'd relaxed and introduced herself as Sadie./
Sadie Riddle.
Tom--Tom Riddle. Of course. Everyone at school had heard about Harry Potter's encounters with Tom Riddle, more commonly known as Lord Voldemort. He probably /was/ Sadie's great uncle, then, after all. Heaven help Sadie! Emma became suddenly cold, unable to look at the "kindly" man seated across from her.
"Well?" he asked impatiently. "Why would I?"
"I guess you wouldn't," said Emma, forcing herself to remain calm while thinking wildly. /I could jump out the window,/ she thought desperately, wildly, glancing at the darkened sky. /It doesn't look like it's more than a few feet down. But how would I get away from there?/
"Ah, then," said Tom with a sigh of satisfaction, "We are in agreement. Now, if you would consent to helping me to convince Sadie of the truth of our genealogical connection."
"No," said Emma before she could stop herself.
The smile quickly faded from her captor's face. "Why not?" he asked, making very little effort to sound cordial. "Do you not wish the best for your friend, as I do?"
"I do," said Emma, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. "And that's why I'm not going to help /you!/"
Tom--or rather, Voldemort--rose and clapped his hands abruptly. The small, terrified man who had brought Emma's breakfast to her entered and bowed very low. "M-master!" he stammered, carefully avoiding Emma's eyes.
/Peter Pettigrew,/ Emma thought as she looked at him. He fit the description Harry had given her of the treacherous double-crosser the year before. It was hard to think that he'd once been one of Harry's dad's best friends...
"Please return the school robes to Miss Walker," Voldemort ordered. "She will be returning to Hogwarts presently."
"What if I don't want to go?" Emma shot at him, knowing she was only digging her hole deeper but unable to keep silent.
"I do not think you have a choice in the matter," he replied smoothly. "Indeed, you won't have a choice in much of anything in a moment."
Before Emma could react, he had drawn his wand. "If you will not consent to help me," he said mockingly, "I suppose I shall have to gain your support some other way. We wouldn't want to let dear Sadie slip through our fingers, now, would we?" he smiled broadly, and waved the wand at Emma.
"IMPERIO!"
Sonora would never grasp how she regained her senses and helped Remus put Sadie on his back. Nor would she ever forget that walk back to the castle. Remus used Sadie's wand to put up sparks and handed it to Sonora to light the way. The castle looked like heaven itself when they came to the edge of the forest. Dumbledore met them inside on the way to Remus's office. One look at the group of them and he had all the information he needed.
"Help her, Remus," he entreated softly, "Do all you can."
Remus's clawed hands could not unlock the door, so he told Sonora where the extra key was and they brought Sadie in. She was still out cold when Remus laid her on his lumpy couch in the side room.
"Shouldn't she be awake yet?"
Remus shook his hairy head. "You don't wake up until dawn with a werewolf bite. It goes all the way through your system. I don't know what we'll do when she gets up."
Dawn came slowly in the little office. Remus stepped out of the room when the sun was nearly up. He came back in human form moments after Sadie was revived.
She gazed intently in his eyes as he sat down next to the bed.
"I'm a werewolf, aren't I? Tell me straight, I don't want it to sound any better than it really is."
Remus sighed heavily. "Yes, you are a werewolf."
"You were that tan werewolf, weren't you?"
Remus smiled wearily. "Yes."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Sadie looked out the window, tears welling up in her eyes. "It's like illegal or something for me to be adopted now, isn't it? Or even go in a foster home? Or ever have a family?"
Remus's eyes grew misty. "Yes, it's illegal."
"Where is Emma? She needs to know. She needs to know a lot of things." A bitter darkness was in her eyes.
Remus looked very uncomfortable, like he knew something unpleasant that he didn't want to tell. "Emma is..." But Sadie's eyes begged him to tell her. "Emma is gone."
"/Gone?/ What do you mean /gone?/ Where did she go?"
Remus looked intently into her eyes. "To look for you."
Sadie fought back the tears and held on to her pride. "Can I be by myself for a while?" she entreated. The professors looked at each other and stepped into the main part of the office, closing the door behind them. They tried not to listen to the sobbing in the next room, the mourning over lost dreams, faraway friends, and the premonition of an empty future.
***
Emma ran blindly through the Forest, her wand--held high in her hand-- glowing faintly. She shivered as a mournful, wailing howl rose above the trees. /A werewolf,/ she thought bitterly. /Just exactly what I need./ The sounds did not come any closer, however, so she continued to stumble feverishly through the dark, moody Forest. She had lost all sense of direction--she could not be any worse off, as she had no idea where--or what--her destination might be.
After a full day with Sadie missing, she'd grown tired of the whispers that had followed her everywhere, the sad, pitying looks from the teachers, and the jeering laughter from the Slytherin table each time she'd entered the Great Hall at mealtime. Thinking of nothing more than her absolute need to get away from it all, she'd waited until after the curfew and then snuck out of the castle. Several times she had come very close to being caught by patrolling teachers--the watch had been tripled after Sadie had gone missing--but each time she'd ducked into a room and waited until the teacher had passed by. When she had left the grounds behind, she'd blundered straight into the Forbidden Forest, and had been running wildly towards who-knew-what ever since.
The full moon disappeared behind a cloud, and the feeble wand light penetrated only a circumference of two or so feet. Emma slowed to a walk, glancing fearfully around at the black forest. She heard footsteps behind her, and then a twig snapped--she whirled around to find nothing behind her, that it had been only the effects of her over-tired imagination.
Trembling still, she turned back and continued to trudge slowly and--she hoped--quietly through the forest. After a few moments, the moon reappeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the milky-white light filtered through the dark leaves, aiding the light of her wand a little. The howls of the werewolf, she realized, had stopped--the forest was silent as the tomb. Emma thought that perhaps she preferred the spine-tingling howls to the eerie silence that hung about her now. Even the crunching of dead leaves under her feet had become muted; the only sound in a vast galaxy of complete silence.
She was not sure how long she walked in the silence, but after a while the sky--or at least, as much of it as she could see through the dark, suppressive leaves overhead, became slightly pink. After what might have been five or ten minutes, the sky had lightened considerably, though the forest remained dark. Emma strangely felt Sadie needed her and began to walk a bit faster, thinking that perhaps, by the thin light that dawn had brought, she might get out of the forest soon.
The arrival of day had brightened her spirits considerably. She began to walk with more purpose, towards what she thought to be the edge of the forest.
After Emma had continued towards her goal for several hours-the sun was now high overhead-fatigue hit her and she sat down against a tree trunk, not caring anymore about the dark shapes flitting just beyond her vision. Against her will, her eyes--heavy with sleeplessness--closed. The muted sounds of the forest grew dim and dimmer still, as she sank further into oblivion.
When she finally awoke, well into the late afternoon, she found herself in a spacious, tastefully decorated room. She was lying on a dark cherry wood four-poster bed, covered with a thick hunter-green comforter. Her torn school robes had been replaced by a soft cotton nightgown. Across from the four-poster was a fireplace lit by a small, cheerfully crackling fire. Parallel to the bed was a small, one-person table and a single willow- backed chair with a soft-looking green cushion.
After the initial delight of waking in a warm, comfortable bed after a night of running through the Forbidden Forest, Emma threw the covers from her and half-slid, half-fell onto the carpeted floor, tense and not knowing what to expect. She groped for her wand, but it had been taken with her robes, and was not anywhere on or around her. /Great, she thought. /Not only was I lost in the Forbidden Forest, but now I've been kidnapped or something.
The word struck a chord inside her, and she started in surprise. /Kidnapped?/ She thought, trying to squash the fear that tried to creep into her thoughts. /Sadie was kidnapped..maybe I-/ Attempting to put the small, sneaking suspicion from her mind, she sank into the lounge chair and sat for a few moments, staring reflectively into the flames.
She'd probably just been found, that's all, she thought. Yeah, just found. Who knows what might've been creeping up on her in the Forbidden Forest? Probably someone who was looking for her or for Sadie, or for both. /Terrific,/ she thought. /How many blunders can I make in one day? First I get lost in the Forbidden Forest.then I'm so dumb as to fall asleep there.then I let myself get caught by the very people who'll ship me right back to school./
Emma hadn't known how she could /bear/ to spend another hopeless, listless, horrible day at Hogwarts with Sadie gone. She'd woken rather later than usual the previous morning and had rushed down to the hospital wing in order to do her nebulizer, hoping not to be late at breakfast. When she'd entered the Great Hall, coming directly from Madam Pomfrey's, Sadie hadn't been in her usual seat at the long Ravenclaw table. Emma had quickly ducked back out of the Hall and rushed up to the dormitory, thinking of silly ways to wake her friend up.
When she'd reached the dormitory, the curtains around Sadie's bed had still been drawn. Emma had opened them quietly, hoping to startle Sadie into wakefulness.
The bed had been empty.
The bedding looked as thought it had not been disturbed all night. Thinking back to the night before, Emma remembered that she hadn't, after all, seen Sadie come up to bed. As they were leaving the Great Hall after dinner to come up to the Common Room, Professor Winsbree had asked to speak to Sadie for a moment about the recent test on wood fairies. Emma had proceeded up to the Common Room and, very tired, as she'd woken very early that morning to do her nebulizer, she'd retired to the dormitory soon afterwards and fallen quickly asleep. She'd assumed that Sadie had come up after she'd fallen asleep, though she realized that whatever had happened must have happened while Sadie was on her way up to the Common Room.
/Or,/ she thought suddenly, jerked back to the present, /when she was with Professor Winsbree./ She shivered, though not from cold, unable to wholly put this new thought out of her mind.
Immediately after she'd found Sadie's bed unoccupied, she'd fled back down to the Great Hall and, disregarding everyone else, gone immediately to Professor Dumbledore. Ignoring the scandalized looks from the other teachers, she'd gasped out the fact that Sadie was not there.
Dumbledore had stared hard at her for a moment, and then stood abruptly. He'd broken the news to the Hall and immediately sent several teachers to scour the school from top to bottom and look for the missing student.
Emma suspected that it had something to do with the death of Cedric Diggory the previous year--missing students had never before been searched for by nearly all the faculty, simply after being missing for a few minutes. She hadn't connected it then--but now, sitting in front of a strange fire, in a strange room, her rationality greatly lessened by her trepidation, a thought entered her mind.
/Could You-Know-Who have kidnapped Sadie?/
/Could You-Know-Who have kidnapped _her_?/
Her mind wandered back to the previous morning once more. The teachers had returned after three quarters of an hour or so. No trace of Sadie had found--and none, either, of Professor Winsbree. Dumbledore, looking suddenly very old, had asked Emma to come with him to his office.
The Headmaster had taken a seat behind his antiquated desk, motioning Emma to sit opposite him.
"Is there anything you'd like to talk to me about?" he asked slowly, fixing one of his searching looks on her.
"No," said Emma dully, thinking about Sadie and simply wishing to get out of here as soon as possible.
"Are you sure?" Dumbledore asked gently.
"Yeah--can I go now?" Emma asked, not looking him in the eye.
Dumbledore sighed. "Yes, you may," he said. He rose and walked to the door with her. "Remember," he said softly, "Though Night may be very long, and very dark, Morning will always come."
Emma had left the office then, and went back to her daily classes. She'd trudged painfully through each dull subject, drawn into herself and offering no word to anyone. During the time that was usually Defense Against the Dark Arts, she'd sat moodily in the Common Room, apart from the others who were using this free period as a sort of party-time.
Straight after dinner she'd fled up to her dormitory and drawn the curtains around her bed, hoping no one would bother her. As soon as all of her roommates--all of them, that is, except Sadie--had come up and finally fallen asleep, she'd crept down the staircase and out of the school.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. She sat, terrified, clutching the arms of the green lounge chair. The door opened and a smallish man, carrying a tray heaped with food in one hand and what looked like fresh robes in the other, entered. Without speaking he set both on the tiny table and left the room, only glancing at her once.
Emma sat, trembling slightly from the shock of being so startlingly interrupted, staring at the items on the small table. After a moment, thinking it could do no harm; she rose and changed into the new robes. They were a bit too large, but very comfortable--grey with a strange hunter- green emblem on them, and very light. Not knowing what to do with the nightgown, Emma finally folded it--it /seemed/ like the right thing to do-- and set it on the bed.
She stared hungrily at the food, her stomach growling loudly. She hadn't eaten anything since dinner last night, nearly twenty-four hours ago. Greedily she ate a piece of lavishly buttered toast before common sense got the better of her, and she stared in horror at the place the toast had been. /Oh, great,/ she thought deprecatingly, /Can I never get anything right? First I go get myself lost in the forest.then I fall asleep.then I get caught by who-knows-who.and then I eat the food, which is most likely drugged or poisoned or something else horrible./
Luckily, the door opened once more without warning before she was able to eat--or think about--any more of the food. A tall man she had never seen before entered, the smallish man who had brought her food and robes hovering close behind him. The small man was carrying a willow-backed, green-cushioned dining chair, which he set before the table across from Sadie. The stranger sat in it, waving his servant carelessly away with a long-fingered hand.
He looked as if he were in his sixties or seventies, with gray hair that had once been black and laugh lines around a smiling mouth. He had hazel eyes that bordered on amber, and a swift, easy manner. All of her suspicions dropped away immediately, and Emma realized with a sinking heart that this man could only be one of those searching for her or for Sadie.
"Good evening, Emma," said the stranger pleasantly. When Emma did not reply, he asked, "Do you know who I am?"
"How could I be expected to?" she asked frostily.
The stranger chuckled. "Good, very good. My name is Tom, and I think you might want to say hello, as you are very much in my debt, young lady."
Emma scowled, feeling more and more ill-tempered. "That's debatable," she said coldly.
Tom chuckled again. "I can see you are not very happy being here," he said. "But I think I can safely assume you would rather be here, than where you might by this time have been. It isn't a wise idea to go carelessly to sleep in the Forbidden Forest, you know. When I and my companions found you, you were encircled about by a number of harmful creatures unfit to describe to you, and would not have been around to be rescued for much longer. But now you're safe, and we can use as much speed as possible to transport you back to your school."
"And if I don't /want/ to go back?" she asked defiantly.
"I'm sure you will," said he, "Once you know who is there."
"Who?" Emma asked sullenly, unwilling to be overcurious.
"A good friend of yours," said Tom with a sad smile, "Who also happens to be my /obstinate/ grand-niece."
Emma looked at him in bewilderment. "I don't know who on earth you can be talking about," she admitted.
"Sadie," Tom replied.
Emma stared at him in amazement. "/Sadie?/" she asked incredulously.
Tom smiled sadly, "She does not know that she has family." He sighed heavily. "Her father was my half-nephew," he explained. "Her grandfather was my half-brother. My father," he scowled, "left my mother and I before I was born when he found out my mother was a witch. He remarried, and my half sister was the result. I did not know this until this year. It is such a sad thing that she has thought for all these many years that she was all alone--,"
"Does she know?" Emma interrupted excitedly, forgetting her resentment.
Tom sighed again. "Yes," he said heavily. "But she does not believe me. I found her, too, lost in the Forbidden Forest--very near the place you were--and brought her joyfully back with me, convinced that I'd found my grand niece. For some reason she did not believe that I was a relation, or even one searching for her (for I had heard that she'd gone missing from Hogwarts and set out to find her myself) on behalf of Professor Dumbledore. She ran away, with the help of one of the faculty of the school. I do not wish to frighten you, Emma, but I cannot believe that that teacher-- Professor Winsbree, was her name--can be allied with Dumbledore. I think that she must have darker connections, if you know what I mean."
"Professor /Winsbree?/" asked Emma, laughing in disbelief. "Trust me, she's a great teacher, but she isn't /half/ smart enough to--you know, go over to You-Know-Who's side. /Or/ kidnap Sadie from /anywhere, especially/ not Hogwarts. But aside from that," Emma furrowed her brows, "how can I be sure that you're who you say you are?"
Tom's hazel eyes grew cold, though he was still smiling pleasantly. The contrast made Emma shiver slightly, though she tried to hide it.
"You doubt me?" Tom asked quizzically. "Why ever would I pretend to be someone I'm not?"
A warning light clicked on in the back of Emma's mind, and she stared hard at the man seated across from her. What was it.it was something about Sadie.Sadie's name.but what could possibly be wrong with Sadie's name.it was just Sadie, that's all.
/A girl she had never seen before, accompanied by ex-Professor Remus Lupin, had walked into the bookshop, looking slightly nervous. She'd hesitantly asked Emma where the clerk was.when Emma had replied that she was the clerk, she'd relaxed and introduced herself as Sadie./
Sadie Riddle.
Tom--Tom Riddle. Of course. Everyone at school had heard about Harry Potter's encounters with Tom Riddle, more commonly known as Lord Voldemort. He probably /was/ Sadie's great uncle, then, after all. Heaven help Sadie! Emma became suddenly cold, unable to look at the "kindly" man seated across from her.
"Well?" he asked impatiently. "Why would I?"
"I guess you wouldn't," said Emma, forcing herself to remain calm while thinking wildly. /I could jump out the window,/ she thought desperately, wildly, glancing at the darkened sky. /It doesn't look like it's more than a few feet down. But how would I get away from there?/
"Ah, then," said Tom with a sigh of satisfaction, "We are in agreement. Now, if you would consent to helping me to convince Sadie of the truth of our genealogical connection."
"No," said Emma before she could stop herself.
The smile quickly faded from her captor's face. "Why not?" he asked, making very little effort to sound cordial. "Do you not wish the best for your friend, as I do?"
"I do," said Emma, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. "And that's why I'm not going to help /you!/"
Tom--or rather, Voldemort--rose and clapped his hands abruptly. The small, terrified man who had brought Emma's breakfast to her entered and bowed very low. "M-master!" he stammered, carefully avoiding Emma's eyes.
/Peter Pettigrew,/ Emma thought as she looked at him. He fit the description Harry had given her of the treacherous double-crosser the year before. It was hard to think that he'd once been one of Harry's dad's best friends...
"Please return the school robes to Miss Walker," Voldemort ordered. "She will be returning to Hogwarts presently."
"What if I don't want to go?" Emma shot at him, knowing she was only digging her hole deeper but unable to keep silent.
"I do not think you have a choice in the matter," he replied smoothly. "Indeed, you won't have a choice in much of anything in a moment."
Before Emma could react, he had drawn his wand. "If you will not consent to help me," he said mockingly, "I suppose I shall have to gain your support some other way. We wouldn't want to let dear Sadie slip through our fingers, now, would we?" he smiled broadly, and waved the wand at Emma.
"IMPERIO!"