A/N: This chapter has been re-written as of July 7, 2005.

Chapter Two: Questions and Answers

Uncle Albus! Michaela thought.

"Michaela!" Albus Dumbledore ran to her side. "What's wrong? Where are your parents?" he asked with urgency in his unmistakable British accent.

All Michaela could do, though, was move her eyes.

"Of course, the body bind," Dumbledore said, realizing. He muttered the spell to undo it and Michaela immediately felt relief in her limbs, which were becoming sore from the stiffness. Michaela tried to get up, but her legs wouldn't hold her and she fell to the floor again.

"Don't try to get up just yet. Where are your parents?" asked Dumbledore, still anxious.

"D-De-Death Eater!" said Michaela with some difficulty because of her stiff jaw.

Dumbledore's blue eyes increased with fear—but only for a moment, when they were replaced with anger. He stood up and strode through the hallway, looking around.

"N-no-no, they're gone!" Michaela cried out, climbing unstably to her feet. "They—he bound Mom and Dad and Disapparated!"

Dumbledore turned back to her, his expression now something that looked as though he didn't know whether to be furious or scared. He ended up wiping any emotion from his face, though surely he must have been in turmoil inside.

With an intensity wrought from the situation, he said, "We must leave now—it's not safe to be here." He took Michaela's hand and for the third time, there was a loud crack in Michaela's kitchen.

Crack. They landed in what looked like an office. There was a large desk cluttered with various items and portraits of sleeping individuals. A loud, roaring fire was in place with purple flames. Dumbledore let go of Michaela's hand and said to her with urgency, "Now tell me exactly what happened."

Michaela looked at him. His eyes seem to bore into the very depths of her soul, just like her mother's when Michaela was caught lying. Her mother. She probably wasn't going to see her mother again. With that thought, Michaela broke down crying and fell back into a plush chair that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

Dumbledore went over to her and hugged her, patting her back. "It's okay, Michaela. We'll get them back." Michaela nodded through her tears. "But you need to tell me everything that happened."

Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself, Michaela began. Her voice was shaky at first, but it grew stronger as she told what happened.

" . . . and when I started to run to help Dad, somehow I got the body bind curse on me. I couldn't move or do anything and the Death Eater didn't see me, so he bound up Dad and took my parents away."

"And your mother was already tied up?"

"Yeah. She didn't have her wand and Dad was in pa—on the ground, you know."

Dumbledore stroked his long white beard, thinking. "Did you know, Michaela, that when a wizard or a witch has particularly strong emotions, they can cast spells without using their wands?" Michaela shook her head.

"It seems that your mother was so distraught at seeing you there that she managed to put that hex on you."

"Then why couldn't she have—"

"—done something for herself? It just wasn't powerful enough, Michaela. You are her daughter and she must have been that much more worried about you."

Michaela sighed. "But, why? I was trying to help—"

"Your mother was saving your life, Michaela," Dumbledore interrupted sharply. "You couldn't have done anything to help your parents; it's lucky that you didn't get caught as it is."

"And why didn't the Death Eater even look for me?" asked Michaela. "It seems that Voldemort's best chance at getting information out of my parents would be threatening to hurt or kill me." As she said these words, she couldn't believe how quickly she had adapted to the situation, looking at possibilities and successfully closing off her emotional mind. Or at least that's what she told herself.

"The best theory that I can think of is that Voldemort didn't know that your parents had a child. Since you're a Squib (am I correct?), your name isn't on the official record of wizards and witches. It was by mere lucky chance that you got away."

"I know, but I just feel that I should've . . ."

"Michaela, listen to me. I know that you haven't exactly lived in the Wizarding world, but surely you understand that even if you were a witch, the chances of you taking down a Death Eater are very small, at best. There was nothing you could've done to prevent this."

Michaela knew that it was useless to argue this point and so asked another question that still confused her. "How did you know that my parents were in danger?"

Dumbledore gave a small smile for the first time that night and merely pointed to his middle finger, which, upon Michaela's closer inspection, bore a red ring with some strange familiar markings on it.

"I've seen that ring before! Mom has one just like it, but it was silver." Michaela had always seen, without fail, the ring on her mother's finger. As far as she knew, her mother never took it off, even at night.

"Yes, it's a type of ring called a "Dwarves Ring." When dwarves mined deep underground centuries ago, there was no way to alert each other if someone was in grave danger. The dwarves appealed to the wizards, who were the main consumers of the precious metals, and so the wizards charmed the ring to make it burn bright red when the other wearer was in grave danger.

"I gave one to your mother when she migrated to America to recruit people for the Order of the Phoenix before Voldemort's fall. I knew that she was putting herself at risk and I gave her the ring to wear so that we would be forewarned if the other was in grave danger.

"As you know, she met your father there and they had you and then after Voldemort's fall, there was no more real danger anymore, but we kept our rings in case the need ever arose again. This is the first time, in fact, that the ring has burned red since we got them."

"Can it tell you where they are?" asked Michaela with a small hope.

Dumbledore sighed. "No, I'm sorry, it can't."

"So what are we going to do?" asked Michaela, jumping up. She suddenly felt very impatient, now that both stories were told. "We need to find them! Mom's told me stories of what's happened to . . . oh God. They're being tortured, aren't they? Aren't they!"

"Michaela, I will do everything in my power to get them back. I do have a few ideas of where they might be—"

Michaela looked hopefully at Dumbledore.

"-but no, you can't come with me, it's too dangerous."

"So what am I going to do? Where are we anyhow?" she demanded, looking around the room again with impatience.

"We're in my office at Hogwarts. But-"

"We're in England? Aren't I going back home?"

"Yes, we are, but no, you can't go back to California because sooner or later Voldemort will realize that you exist and will come after you. I'll have to take you to our headquarters for the Order. You do know about that, right?"

Michaela nodded. "Mom told me all about it but I didn't know it had started up again."

Dumbledore sat down at his desk, moving aside cluttered pieces of parchment and found a clean roll. He wrote something on it with a blue quill and handed it to her, saying, "Read this to yourself and memorize it."

It said:

The headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix
May be found at number 12 Grimmauld Place

"Got it?" Michaela nodded. Dumbledore took the parchment and threw it into the fireplace behind him, though not before ripping it into several different pieces.

"Why did you-"

"I'll explain later; it's not completely safe to discuss it here. Take my hand, please."

Michaela obliged and for the fourth and last time of that night, Michaela heard a loud crack and they were gone from Dumbledore's office.