Disclaimer: Well, you know already, nothing's mine.

I know I left everyone hanging. Partly because I'm just mean like that. Partly because I had other things going on and no time to write. This is actually only part of what I planned to be Chapter 14, but I decided to split it up because it was getting long. I was also trying to make some decisions as to the fate of important characters- well, you'll see. This chapter is a bit violent, you've been warned.

The first section, in italics, is a dream, or a memory-- both, I guess.

Chapter 14- The Sins of the Father

Cailean McCarrick raised his wand "Crucio!"

The man on the floor fell back stiffly, twitching with the pain, but he would not cry out.

Morgan watched in horror as her father tortured the man, she was so stricken she was no longer thinking of staying out of sight.

Suddenly, someone grabbed her arm roughly, and she was whipped into the drawing room and slammed up against the wall. Walden MacNair had her pinned against the wall, his hand at her throat.

"Cailean you said she would not wake!" He bellowed.

Her father took his eyes from the man he was torturing, his face full of a rage she had never seen before. He advanced on her, and for the first time, she was afraid of him. He pushed MacNair away, and she tried to move, but he grabbed her arm and pushed her against the wall again. Her head struck painfully and brought tears to her eyes, but he did not seem to care. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy her pain, as he twisted her arm harder. As he held here there his sleeve slipped back, and she saw the ugly mark burned into his arm.

"Well Morgan, do you like what you've seen?" He hissed, not sounding like her father at all.

"How could you? How can you be one of them? They're evil." She whispered.

He laughed. "There is no evil, there is only power. Power that should belong to us. Power that has been eroded by mudbloods and muggle lovers taking what should be ours." There was an insane glint in his eyes. He had never hit her before, and perhaps that was why she did not see it coming when he struck her across the face, hard. "You foolish child!" In a sudden movement, she threw her to the floor. "You would understand but for her. Her influence over you was too strong. That's why I had to finish her. But you are mine, and you will do as I wish."

"I won't! I won't ever be one of them!"

"You will learn to do as you're told! CRUCIO!"

******

Morgan awoke with a gasp, sweating and shaking. The nightmare was a familiar one, as was the feeling of relief that it was in the past, only a memory now. Her relief was immediately replaced by apprehension as she noted her surroundings. She was not safely in bed, but sitting, slumped over slightly, in a hard wooden chair. The room she was in was luxurious, thick carpet under her feet and rich velvet hangings on the walls. She could see a cushy sofa that looked wonderful in comparison to her hard chair, and a heavy and highly polished desk. And leaning against the desk, his arms crossed with an air of boredom, was Lucius Malfoy.

Then it all came back to her, their mission into the Department of Mysteries, and the arrival of the Death Eaters. She had been dueling with MacNair, and then…everything went blank. She looked around, she and Malfoy were the only ones in the room. She wondered if the others had managed to escape, or if they were just being kept somewhere else.

"Well hello, Miss McCarrick. Pleasant dreams?" Malfoy drawled, in that smooth, refined voice. She narrowed her eyes at him, but did not speak. Her head was pounding so violently she did not know if she could speak.

"Where are you manners Miss McCarrick? I asked you a question. And surely you were raised to answer politely to direct questions, were you not? You see, that is what irritates me about you McCarrick. Mrs. Potter, for example, she cannot help being a mudblood. And Mr. Potter, who clearly lacks proper wizarding pride, was taught by his parents to be a muggle lover. But you, Miss McCarrick, with your blood and your upbringing, can blame no one but yourself for your ridiculous and misguided ideals."

She ignored his rant, and gingerly reached up to the source of the pain at the back of her head. She winced and pulled her hand away, her hair was stiff with dried blood and she felt faint at the pain.

"Oh yes, that hurts, doesn't it?" He said softly. "Goyle lacks a certain…finesse…but he is nonetheless effective."

She saw no reason to even bother with answering, but instead tried to assess how badly hurt she was. Her head was by far the worst, the pain every time she moved was dizzying. Her shoulder and hip felt bruised on the side she had fallen, but she was otherwise all right.

Malfoy approached her with an air that was decidedly menacing, but she could not move even if she had felt better, some sort of charm kept her bound to the chair. He grabbed her chin roughly, forcing her to look at him. She could feel his fingers digging into her jaw.

"I know you're in Dumbledore's inner circle. Tell me, what was the meeting in Scotland about?"

She did not answer, and she wondered idly if he actually expected her to.

"What were you looking for in the Department of Mysteries? Did Dumbledore send you there? What is he doing? How did he find out where to look for Claremont? Don't try my patience, My Dear."

She knew Malfoy tended toward violence, so she was not really surprised when he hit her hard across the face. It jarred her head and she merely focused on not being sick.

"The silent treatment will get you nowhere Morgan. The Dark Lord has ways of making you talk. Who else is working with Dumbledore?"

She ignored him, and finally he turned on her and his fingers closed around her throat, cutting off her breathing.

"Give me names McCarrick."

The room was beginning to swim before her face. Then she heard a voice as though from very far away, another unwelcome voice. "Don't kill her Lucius, the Dark Lord wants them all alive." And his hand released her. Slowly the room came into focus again. Bellatrix stood in the doorway.

"Besides, I can think of other ways of getting little Morgan to talk." Bella turned and gave her a wicked smile. "Crucio!"

******

When he stepped into the room, Morgan was unconscious or asleep. As he closed the door behind him, he saw the former was fairly likely, as Lucius had obviously indulged some of his more violent tendencies. Small bruises that were clearly fingerprints showed along her jaw and at her throat.

"Bastard." Muttered Snape. Yes, he hated her, but his turn-ons did not run to beating up little girls, and she clearly had taken a beating at Malfoy's hands.

He knelt down and tried to shake her awake. She opened her eyes, but they were clouded with pain and unfocused, he knew she didn't really seem him. He tried to ease her into sitting up but she flinched at his touch.

"Yes, yes, I know that hurts." He said quietly, with just a bit of impatience in his voice. "You have broken ribs I suspect, they hurt worse than they actually are."

She tried to turn away from the potion he was forcing on her, but she was barely strong enough to sit up, much less fight him. Then he laid her back down and watched as it took effect. Her eyes cleared, her expression became more aware and guarded, and finally she struggled to sit up on her own, wincing.

"If that's a painkiller you're losing your touch Snape."

"It will ease the pain, it won't get rid of it completely. If I made it any stronger it would make you drowsy, and I need you to be alert."

She nodded, but that only made her head pound. Morgan never would have thought she would actually be glad to see Snape. Whatever he had forced her to drink was at least helping to clear her head, and it eased some of the remaining pain from the cruciatus curse.

"Here, you'll need this."

She stared, he was handing her a wand.

"That's not mine."

He sighed impatiently. "I know that McCarrick, but the Dark Lord has yours and I do think asking him for it back would be a little obvious? You'll have to manage with this one."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"It's in Lord Voldemort's interest to keep you alive for now, he's trying to draw out Dumbledore I think. So he will send someone to check on you periodically. Next time I will see to it that it's Crabbe. You should easily be able to handle him, and it won't be hard for the others to believe that he was taken down by an unarmed nineteen-year-old witch."

"I'm twenty."

He ignored her. "That way suspicion won't fall on me. Do try to memory charm him though, so no one will question where you got the wand. I'll just tell everyone you seduced him."

"Because I'm so sexy at the moment?"

She thought she detected the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, but he said dryly "Your vanity is legendary McCarrick, but you'll just have to deal with it."

"Where are the others? James and Lily, and Frank and Alice?"

"I don't know."

She blinked at him. "Well, can't you ask?"

He did not bother to hide his impatience. "Oh, right, I'll just slip it into the conversation, shall I? Don't be stupid girl. One does not question Lord Voldemort, and I can't afford to compromise my position. I had the opportunity to get you out so I am taking it. This is not the time for heroics, get yourself out and leave the others to me, I'll deal with them as soon as possible. I understand this world better than you, so you'd do well to listen to me, am I understood?"

She didn't like his patronizing tone but knew that he was right. She nodded.

"The Dark Lord will not let me leave, so as soon as you're out of the grounds here you can disapparate. Go directly to Dumbledore." He stood abruptly and made to leave the room.

"Snape?"

He turned back around in the doorway and snarled "What now?"

She gave him a humorless smile. "Thank you."

******

Sirius was sipping wine and watching Juliet across the table, as she related some amusing anecdote that had occurred at the Ministry. He didn't really know the people involved and so he really wasn't listening, but more interested in watching her. He was thinking she looked very pretty tonight, wearing a dark wine color that set off her hair and eyes nicely. He found himself amused by the way she used her hands to talk when she got animated, and wondered again how he had never noticed before recently how charming she was. Of course, as he had told Morgan, he merely wanted to be friendly. How friendly though?

He wondered about what Morgan had said, about how Juliet was "bouncing back a little too quickly." Then he discarded it...what did Morgan know anyway? She'd always had a nasty jealous streak, and who was she to make assumptions of judgements about what Juliet was thinking? Besides, it wasn't as though she was throwing herself at him. To be honest, the signals were a little mixed. She had accepted the dinner invitation, so that meant that she didn't absolutely detest being in his company. On the other hand, she wasn't really flirting either, just being friendly. Sirius sighed suddenly, wondering if he would ever learn to track what women were thinking.

"Is something wrong?" I must be boring you, talking about work."

He realized he had sighed audibly. "No, not at all, I'm having a good time." He said quickly. He didn't care if she recited History of Magic dates so long as he could sit there and watch her.

"Excuse me, Mr. Black?"

He glanced up, slightly irritated, at the waitress who had just appeared at his elbow.

"Yes?"

"This came for you." She handed him a note, magically sealed.

He glanced apologetically at Juliet. "I'm sorry, I should probably-"

She waved a hand. "Go ahead."

He unsealed it with his wand and the terse message Come immediately, A.D. took a moment to sink in, then he realized- Albus Dumbledore. Something had to be very wrong for the headmaster to summon him that way. He looked back to Juliet, who was watching him with a look of concern.

"I'm sorry, I...I really have to go."

"Is everything okay?"

"Well, I'm not sure, I guess I have to go check on something. I apologize."

"Don't worry about it, go on. I'll owl you later."

He nodded. "Thanks for understanding." and disapparated.

******

My leg hurts.

That was James' first coherent thought. It was immediately followed by well, that's good, that must mean I'm not dead. Now, if I could just remember why I ought to be dead.

He opened his eyes and saw only darkness. He waited, afraid to move until he could see where he was. His eyes slowly began to adjust, which helped very little, because his surroundings told him nothing at all. He was in a small, windowless room, with nondescript gray walls. And he was alone. As his mind cleared, panic took over- where was Lily?

Slowly he sat up, and his fogged brain recalled what had happened in the Department of Mysteries. They had been petrified and blindfolded, until finally Malfoy had simply stunned them, so he had no idea where they had been taken. It was cold, but that was all he could gather from his surroundings. He had no idea where he was, if he was even still in England, or how long he had been unconscious.

He stood hesitantly, he was sore from lying on the cold floor, but not hurt. He tried the doorknob, which was of course locked, and checked his pockets for his wand, which they had of course taken. Having exhausted the obvious choices, he tried to think what to do. He figured that since he was not dead, they must have a reason to keep him alive. Information. So presumably someone would come for him eventually. But he could not wait, not without knowing where Lily was or what they were doing to her.

******

Lily was in a large, cavernous room. A large fire burned, but did not make the room any warmer. The door closed behind her.

"Mrs. Potter." Said a voice. There was only one piece of furniture in the room, a high backed chair facing the fire. Lily could not see who sat in it, but she knew the voice coming from it. Voldemort.

Her guess was confirmed a moment later, when he stood, and strolled around the chair toward her. She did not flinch as she met his eyes, but it took all her strength not to turn away from the scarlet gaze. This seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, a cold, cruel smile. He stopped, directly in front of her, close enough to touch her, but he did not.

"You and I have a lot in common you know." He said conversationally. "My father too was a muggle. Sadly, he did not inspire in me a great deal of respect for the race. He did not like magic you see, and he abandoned my mother. Abandoned me. Little could he have known what I would become, the greatest wizard in the world, and little did he know I would one day exact revenge. I know you have a sister who views magic in rather the same way."

She didn't know how he could know about Petunia, but she tried not to show it on her face.

"We have other things in common besides our unsatisfactory families. We both excelled at school….we are both ambitious Lily." He took a step closer, so that she could feel his breath. She shuddered. "You can overcome your parentage Lily, as I have. You have a powerful magic." He reached out, fingering a lock of her hair that was hanging over her shoulder. "You can join me Lily. I can make you more powerful than you ever imagined. I can give you far more than Potter."

At the mention of James, she found her voice. "I'm nothing like you, and I never will be." Her voice was clear, it carried and echoed slightly in the vast empty room.

His eyes burned into her. "As you wish." He turned away in a swish of robes, walked to the door, and said to someone "Bring me Potter." He turned back to her. "You still have your uses."

******

Sirius was consumed by emotions he couldn't even begin to sort out- fear, helplessness, but mostly an overwhelming, blind rage. He had never realized until now how real the danger was. His best friends, the people who meant the most in the world to him, were missing, in Voldemort's hands, quite possibly already dead. Dumbledore was doing everything he could to find out where they were, but even he had admitted he did not know where Voldemort was currently hiding. But Sirius knew someone who might know, and someone he could still bully into telling him.

He knew from rumors and whispers that Regulus and his crowd were known to patronize some of the rougher pubs in Knockturn Alley, and he finally found him in a pub aptly named The Cloak and Dagger. Regulus was hunched over the bar with another man who Sirius thought might have been at Hogwart's a few years behind him, a Slytherin of course.

Sirius grabbed him by the collar and dragged him off the barstool, and pushed him back against the bar. "Where is he?"

"What the Hell are you doing here?" His brother drawled, but Sirius had seen the fear flash in his eyes for a split second. They both knew who was stronger. The barman barely glanced in their direction, fights were common enough there. The other patrons paid no mind, it was not the sort of place where you interfered in someone else's business.

"Where is Voldemort?" Sirius repeated, keeping his voice low. "I know what you are. I know you know where he hides out. Tell me."

"Why should I tell you anything?" Sneered Regulus. "You're nothing to me. You're an embarrassment to my father, to my name."

"If you think you're going to make me feel bad by telling me I'm nothing like them, I can assure you the opposite is true. Daddy isn't here. You can't hide behind him now. Tell me." He pressed the tip of his wand directly into his brother's chest. "Don't think I won't do it."

Regulus looked to his companion for help, but the man, Nott was his name Sirius now recalled, clearly did not wish to intervene. There was a long silence.

"Fine." Sirius raised his wand, took a breath.

"Wait!" Regulus had apparently seen he wasn't bluffing. "I don't know. You can hex me, it won't make a difference, I've never been there. But I know it's on an island somewhere."

"Black!" Hissed Nott, obviously agitated, looking around frantically.

"Where is the island?"

"I just told you, I don't know, I've never been there."

He was telling the truth, it showed on his face. Sirius took a step back. "You're completely useless, as always. Petrificus Totalus." And he walked out of the bar.

******

Morgan looked impassively down at Crabbe, who was crumpled on the ground. Snape was right, he was as thick as you could get, he never knew what had hit him. She'd had trouble deciding which curse to use and had finally ended up trying several, he was very big after all. She guessed he would be unconscious for quite awhile. She paused a moment, and then took his cloak. It was far too big and dragged several feet on the floor, but it was very cold.

She was standing in a stone-walled corridor, which stretched off in both directions as far as she could see. Right then Morgan, she thought, right or left? Pick one. Her first impulse was to go right, and so she did, making her way quickly and silently down the corridor, her wand ready. It was silent, and the passage seemed very long. Whereever they were, it was large. She remembered what Snape had said, that she should get out and not attempt to find the others, but she knew she could not just leave them- they would never just leave her.

At the end of the corridor was a staircase, she guessed she was in a dungeon because it was so cold, so going up, maybe she would be able to tell more of where she was. The staircase curved around and around until she emerged in another corridor- it was like a maze.

She was halfway along it when a door opened. Frantically, she looked around, but there was nowhere to hide, no way to avoid being seen. Then she had a sudden inspiration….they were about the same size, it just might work, it was her only choice. She drew the hood up, concealing her face, as the man emerging from a doorway spotted her. She knew who he was, his name was Antonin Dolohov. He started at the sight of her.

"Who's there?"

"Don't waste my time Dolohov." She drawled, trying to imitate a voice she knew well. She must have done a fairly good job, because he relaxed.

"Oh. Bella."

"Always the keen observer." She indicated the door he was coming from, which was still just a crack open. "What's in there?"

"Who, don't you mean. More of the meddling fools from the Ministry. The Longbottoms, but the Dark Lord says he'll deal with them later- what are you doing?"

She had, without thinking, drawn her wand. They were so close, if she could get past Dolohov, she would not be alone, she would have Frank and Alice with her. But Dolohov was not as stupid as Crabbe.

"Accio wand!" It flew out of her hand and he caught it, and then took a step toward her and yanked back the hood. "You're not Bella!" He said, staring at her.

"Always the keen observer." She said again, in her own voice.

Dolohov's face twisted into a grin. "The Dark Lord said we could kill anyone who tried to escape. Big mistake, McCarrick." He raised his wand. "AVADA KEDA-"

"IMPEDIMENTA!"

Several jets of colored light shot around the hallway at once. When they cleared, both Morgan and Dolohov were unconscious on the floor. Halfway through the killing curse, Dolohov had been hit with a curse from behind, and now Frank Longbottom stepped out of the still slightly open door, kicked him out of the way a little roughly, and knelt down to see if Morgan was all right. Slowly, he turned back to Alice.

"She's dead."

_______________________________________________

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I know I'm leaving you hanging again. What can I say, a girl's got to study for her GRE.