I don't own any of the characters except Raveyn

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She lay down next to the water, watching the patterns of refracted light play across the shed. She smiled at the night and dipped her hand in the pool allowing the warm water to slide through her fingers. The stars twinkled above her, she sighed and breathed in the moon. After a harrowing week of exams, Raveyn just wanted to close her eyes and sleep for a thousand years, so she did close them and waited for time to pass over her.

"Maybe I'll grow a beard," she whispered to no one in particular.

A cool breeze washed over her cheeks. She licked her lips and enjoyed the sweet feeling of the wind freezing her tongue and mouth, a gentle kiss. Her pool was surrounded by evergreens so as to dissuade any nosy neighbors from watching them as they took a dip. The breeze moved them and all around her seemed was this soft rustling, like running water; and yet, was there…something else? Her brow furrowed as she strained to hear the alien sound in amongst the rustling, something soft like folds of material brushing against each other…and shuffling, an almost soundless shuffling like a cat.

Her cat was inside.

Bruising pressure, she opened her eyes immediately and was greeting by two slanted black holes and jagged teeth. She screamed; at least, she thought she did, but nothing but air passed her front teeth. She tried again. Silence. The thing pulled her upward, the back of her legs grazed the rough slip-proof concrete she had been lying on; blood trickled down her leg. She lashed out, kicking, punching, biting, hurling herself out of the arms of her captor, but to no avail- he was too strong. She yelled and cried and shrieked in complete silence, which sent her into a frenzy. Even though she could breath, her unexplainable silence made her feel as if she was being suffocated. She only had one phobia that sent her into a true state of panic and that was being claustrophobic. She began to hyperventilate; her pulse raged past her temples, her vision began to fall into sparkling white dots like white noise on a television screen. Why couldn't she scream? Who was this? She tried to calm herself, see clearly through the haze that her mind had become through too much adrenaline. Mind over matter. Mind over matter. Mind over matter- a mantra she repeated over and over. Gathering all her remaining strength she pushed back against the thing, bent her knees and pushed forward away from him. Unbalanced, her kidnapper…rapist…demon lost her. Raveyn did not think, she ran. If she had thought she might have remembered the many shuffling sounds she had heard. Perhaps then she would have known how unlikely it was that she would be able to run the eight feet to pool gate, pull up the handle (which had a tendency of sticking) to open it, and then run another six or seven feet to the sliding door that led to her kitchen and not be caught by another dark figure.

But she was not thinking. She could not.

This is why it only came as a surprise to her that another pair of dark arms caught her and pulled her back, back towards the pool, back towards at least a dozen cloaks with animal skulls attached to their faces, back into the dark shadows of fir trees. She continued to struggle, but she could barely lift her arms- she was crashing, fast. Her sight was turning black, more hands took hold of her body, and she felt chains slide up her body and bind it. Her head flopped downward and she was forced to look at her bound body; she could not trust her eyes, she decided, as she could see no chains. A whisper of a memory crawled on all fours through her mind. Mind…over…matter. Desperate and half-dead she drew in a breath from her very soul.

"HELP!"

Over the sound of her own heartbeat she could just hear cloaked, shocked whispers.

"Petrificus Totalis."

Her body went rigid; her mouth could no longer move.

Raveyn collapsed with that last desperate cry and a slight bit of annoyance over a particularly painful scratch on the back of her neck.

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"Where is she?" The voice staled upon the air; it might have been human once. There was a hint of a person there, somewhere. There had been a childhood and a personality, but all of that seem muffled and distorted by the serpent in him. A human mouth which could not quite seem to form the vowels of animal or devil and yet a soul that could not…do anything anymore, let alone form the tone and feeling of a human voice.

The room was dark; the only light came from four large candles that flickered magically around a jade and emerald throne on which Voldemort sat. Occasionally the light danced upon the faces of the unmasked death eaters around them, but only momentarily. There did not need to be light, the only one that mattered, that needed to be seen was the Dark Lord. There was more than one reason for the Death Eaters cloaks to blend so easily with shadows.

"Crabbe and Goyle are standing by her upstairs in the main hall," a pause, "she's unconscious."

"I told you I needed her to be unharmed Alecto," there was an unspoken threat in the air.

"My Lord, she panicked at the silencing charm we placed upon her and fainted," Alecto kept his voice steady, only just.

"Very well. Good work Alecto."

"Thank you Master," a beat, "I was just wondering, my lord, what we should do with her now."

"What do you mean?" Impatience. Human, snake, dark wizard, or demon, Voldemort could express negative emotions with the best of them.

"Well, we have nowhere to put her sir. Right now she is asleep on the floor of the main hall."

"Narcissa," he did not need to shout. When Voldemort called a name the very shock of hearing it coming from a mouth that had terrorized so many could bring anyone to attention no matter how big of a room one was in. The figure stepped forward, curtsying deeply- since Lucius had been imprisoned she did all she could to pledge her loyalty to the Dark Wizard. She had opened her home to him and to all the death eaters, she fed them all, and her house elves served them, her wealth became their treasury and still she did not seem to find favor with him; not did her son.

"My lord."

"Find a place for her." The woman nodded and stepped back, along with Alecto, into the shadows, and disappeared into the shadows. Silently she found her way through the cool darkness and the gentle breeze created by passing through a crowd of billowing robes to the back of the room. She did not once bump into any man or any wall; Narcissa had a way of moving through darkness- she'd done so all her life after all.

She felt for the doorknob and with a gentle click it opened and with another it closed. She placed a hand on the cool stone of the stairwell and leaned her forehead against it. She stayed like that only for a moment, and then made her way up the two flights of stairs that led to the secret door made out of the large Tudor wood panelling that covered the Main Hall of Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa did not notice the beauty of the large domed skylight forty feet above her head, nor did she notice the way that the light from the two large windows half way up the wall- just above the arched, engraved, oaken doorway- seemed to dance on the faces of the priceless statues that had been recovered from the four corners of the globe when there had actually been four corners, even some recovered by a past Malfoy from Atlantis. The light made them look alive, ready to run up the two large staircases with the antique wooden banisters and white marble steps which led to the floor above, each ending on the east and west sides of the rectangular balcony that spread around the entire first floor, overlooking the main hall, and led to just the first of hundreds of rooms. No, Narcissa simply stalked across the marble floor, with white and burgundy squares, all the while being watched by dozens of pairs of eyes peering out of expensive frames and discussing the unconscious girl with long black hair that looked so vaguely familiar.

Both Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle jumped up at the sound of Narcissa's heels crossing the marble floor, but not fast enough for Narcissa to miss the way they had been oogling the unconscious girl and tracing the line of her body. She didn't say anything; she wouldn't have even if she wanted to. She did not look at them, but simply lifted her nose to the sky.

"Take her upstairs to my son's room. I'll have the house elves clear a room for her, but in the mean time I don't want her ruining the finish on this floor."

She watched as they lifted her up and carried her up the flight of stairs and then turning left, the first of a labyrinth of turns to reach her son's room. The girl would be unharmed there for the moment, more then she could have said had she put the girl in any of the other rooms- her husband had a habit of leaving very dangerous artefacts in the most spontaneous of places. For a moment her thoughts drifted to Reginald, the family greyhound who had an unfortunate rendezvous with rather barbaric Alaskan fir cone, but they soon went back to the girl. She had had difficulty pleasing the Dark Lord all those years ago as well, but more because she did not want to attend that particular gathering of the Death Eaters. It was simply bad timing, Raveyn and Draco had been so close to each other in age and she had been a new mother. She'd kept Draco in a cradle next to her bed for months after that, but who could've blamed her after she had watched what they did to Raveyn.

Narcissa shrugged and stalked away from the Main Hall and went in search of her House Elf whistle. With her Nose firmly planted in the air, she whistled for Dobby's replacement, Agatha, hoping that the stupid thing had ironed its fingers after what a shoddy job it had done with mending that seam in her grey skirt.

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Author's Note

I've decided to change this story about a bit so it incorporates some of Book Six's plot since it fits in so well with the original story anyway. You'll probably see more of what I mean at about the 30th takes a deep breath (I think ) Anyway, there will be another chapter tomorrow thatI can I think I can continues the plot, and possibly another one after that that has a few more flashbacks and a bit more of the plot. We'll see how it goes.