Deatheaters' revenge, chapter six.
Disclaimer:-
Harry Potter belongs to J.K.Rowling, her various publishers and Warner Brothers. The only things in this story which belong to me are the plot and any characters not found in JKR's books.
Author's note...
I've corrected some errors in the last chapter. To anyone who didn't get how Harry knew it was the Riddle House he simply took it from the barmaid's memory of what Evanna had been screaming. (In the corrected version I've had him explain that.)
RECAP.
Ron and his team got into the house where the girls were being held and rescued Fleur, but Hermione and Ginny had already gone...
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Ron's team spent hours searching the house for any clue where they'd taken Hermione and Ginny, still not knowing if Hermione was even alive.
In the hospital Fleur was punching the air and screaming something in French until the mediwitch has to force some dreamless sleep potion down her throat to make her sleep.
"You might as well go home," she told Bill. "She won't wake until the morning."
"I'm staying," he retorted roughly.
The mediwitch nodded and left.
It was late that night when Ron arrived at the hospital. "Any news?" he asked.
"They said she'll be alright," said Bill heavily.
"But?"
"At least we'll have matching scars now," Bill replied in a bitter tone of voice.
"Sorry, mate."
"No. It's me who should be sorry. Moaning about something that doesn't matter. At least I got her back. Sorry I'd wasn't quicker. Perhaps if we'd kept working through the night..."
"You'd probably have ended up dead," finished Ron. "Harry and I know you couldn't rush it. Did she say anything when she came round?"
"She didn't really come round properly, just started screaming the place down till they poured potion down her throat to knock her out for the night."
Noting Ron's disappointed face, Bill added, "Look. The moment she can talk, I'll ask her about Hermione and Ginny, okay?"
Ron nodded. "I know you will. I think I'll head back to the burrow."
"You look all in. You'd better floo."
It was a sombre gathering at the burrow. Mrs. Weasley was unsuccessfully trying to get Harry to eat when Ron tripped through the fireplace landing uncomfortably on the floor.
"Ah, Ron. You'll have something to eat, I know."
"Not hungry," he muttered.
Everyone was so stunned by that comment that they didn't say a thing.
Harry felt strange to be sharing Ron's old room again. "Harry?"
"Yeah?"
"You awake?"
Too miserable to joke about it, he just replied, "Yeah. Can´t sleep."
"Me neither." ... "Harry?"
"Yeah, Ron?"
"What if she is dead? What do I do?"
"She won't be," Harry replied in a determined tone of voice.
"But if she is? I wasted so much time, put her through so much. And now, to lose her..."
"We'll get her back," Harry promised. "They wouldn't have bothered taking her with them if she was dead, would they?"
Ron thought. "I suppose not. Unlikely anyway. Now we've got to find them again."
Far away, someone else wasn't sleeping well either."It's my fault. If I'd been quicker..."
"Evanna," snapped Rupert. "It's nobody's fault but those bastards."
"Rupert! Language," said Emma, "Sorry, force of habit. He's right, Evanna."
"You don't understand," cried Evanna. "I have to find them."
The others tried to console her, but she pushed them all away and finally cried herself to sleep.
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Bill was woken by a scream. "Fleur!" he cried.
Fleur opened her eyes warily. "Bill?"
"It's okay now, we rescued you."
Fleur instinctively put a hand to her face.
"It doesn't matter," Bill assured her rapidly.
For once, the always self-assured Tri-Wizard champion of Beauxbatons looked unsure of herself.
"I mean it." ... "I love you, not your face."
Her eyes narrowed at that. Realising he'd somehow said the wrong thing, he reached out to touch her face. "These scars? They just mean my wife is brave, right?" echoing her own words from after he had been attacked by the werewolf and left with a scarred face.
"Molly told you?"
"Did you really think I could love you any less?"
For a moment Fleur look ashamed.
To lighten the mood Bill added, "And if I didn't have you, who would give me raw steaks?"
"Rare," she corrected, "Not raw, rare." She smiled knowing he was teasing.
He smiled back, the only one who could get away with teasing Fleur. "I will always love you, only you."
Just as he thought everything was okay, she turned her face away again. This time she began to cry.
"What's wrong?" he asked, alarmed. This was Fleur. Nothing made her cry. Not even giving birth to their children had made her cry, which had amazed Molly and totally astounded Ginny.
"Tell me, Fleur. What's wrong?" Suddenly the look of shame on her face gave him a clue. "What did they do to you?"
After what seemed to Bill to be an age, Fleur opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Ron came bursting into the room. "Has she said anything yet?"
Tightening his fists to control himself, Bill replied evenly. "Not yet. She's only just woken up." Having a good idea of the pain Ron was going through, Bill's anger quickly melted away. He turned to Fleur and asked, "Can you tell us anything about Hermione and Ginny?"
Ron couldn't keep silent. "Is Hermione alive?" he asked desperately.
At her quiet reply of "Yes", Ron let out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. "She's alive, but she's unconscious most of the time. We couldn't do anything for her," Fleur said, biting her lip to stop herself crying again.
"What happened?" asked Ron almost frantically.
"Ginny said she hit her head on the wall..."
"How?"
"One of them threw her... Then they used the cruciatus, but Ginny isn't sure she was conscious enough to feel it. Ever since Ginny and I have been casting healing charms over her, but she never came round properly. I don't know why they took her and let me go."
"I do," said Ron bitterly. "They want to get at me. I should never have married her," he said, despairingly. "I put her in danger."
For the first time that morning both men saw anger and strength in Fleur. "Don't you dare say that."
Ron stared. "It's true."
"How dare you? You think Hermione didn't know it was dangerous to be the wife of an head auror? You think I didn't know it could be dangerous to me when Bill offered to help break those curses? I told him to go."
Ron looked at Bill, who was nodding.
"We chose our paths, the same as you did." Bill was smiling now. This was Fleur as he knew her again. "Don't you dare take away our choice on how we live." Suddenly her voice faltered. "That's what they did," she finished quietly.
It was obvious to both men what she must be referring to. Bill, not wanting to get into a discussion of that with Ron there, quickly changed the subject. "How is Ginny?" he asked.
"Good," Fleur replied, giving a grateful glance at Bill. "She's good. She's stronger than I am, I think."
Bill gave her a disbelieving look. Ron, remembering all the hexes he'd suffered at Ginny's hands when they were small, was more easily convinced.
"You've no idea where they've taken them?" Ron asked.
Fleur shook her head. "Ginny heard something about a place you could never find them, but we had no idea where."
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Miles away, a very different conversation was going on. Evanna had been so distraught the evening before and had frequently woken up in the night, crying, that Daniel, Rupert, Emma and Bonnie had been taking it in turns to stay with her.
A loud pop woke up Evanna and startled Rupert, who'd been falling asleep, and brought the others running.
Luna looked at them musingly. "It's nice to have friends," she said.
Emma looked sad for her, but Luna smiled. "I have friends now," she assured her. "Good friends." She quickly turned to Evanna. "How are you, Evanna?"
Evanna didn't answer.
"You shouldn't blame yourself," she continued, getting straight to the point as usual. "That's what they'd want you to do."
"Who?"
"Those who took them," she replied, then added, "And the nargles."
The others looked at her trying to decide if she was serious or not, but her face, as usual, gave nothing away.
"I was talking with Professor McGonagall last night. I thought perhaps your connection might be stronger in a place surrounded by magic. And she agreed. Would you like to come back to Hogwarts?"
Evanna's face brightened at the thought, then she looked at Bonnie and her other friends.
"It's okay. They can come too."
"Us?" said Daniel, "Go to the real Hogwarts?"
Luna smiled and Rupert wondered how she'd managed not to have any friends in her early years at Hogwarts with a smile like that.
"Go to Hogwarts?" repeated Emma. "Oh yes."
"Don't worry about her," said Rupert. "She won't get in the way. You'll never get her out of the library."
"I'm not Hermione," replied Emma.
"You should see her exam results," Rupert insisted.
Daniel nodded with a smirk on his face.
"Boys!" Emma sighed, to laughter all round.
But surprisingly, it was Rupert, not Emma, that pointed out that they couldn't simply disappear to Hogwarts without leaving some sort of word where they had gone, which would satisfy the media, not to mention the bosses of Time Warner.
So Emma let the hotel and her agent know that they were taking a rest in another hotel in a secret location, away from the press, asking him to inform Time Warner.
Once that was done Luna said they'd be apparating to Hogwarts.
"But you can't apparate to Hogwarts," objected Emma. Lune smiled. "It says so in..." Realising she was being laughed at again, she finished, "Hermione says so."
Luna simply called some castle elves from Hogwarts. Before the muggles could even react, an elf took each of them by the hand and they'd disappeared.
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Yet another very different, very one-sided, conversation was going on elsewhere.
"Hermione, please wake up," Ginny begged, not really expecting her to do so. "I don't like being stuck here in the dark on my own." Wherever they had her tied was pitch black. She could see no more than the unconscious Hermione.
Ginny remembered that Fleur had told her it was important to talk to someone who was unconscious, so, as Fleur had instructed, Ginny began telling Hermione everything that was happening. "Harry and Ron came for us yesterday. They found us, do you hear? Fleur escaped..." Ginny realised this wasn't quite the truth but she wanted to sound as optimistic as possible. "So, Harry and Ron won't take long to find us again and we'll be free. So you have to wake up for Ron, okay?" Ginny found herself choking on the words. "You have to, okay? My dumb brother needs you."
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Luna had said to Professor McGonagall that she'd bring the muggles to Hogwarts discretely. The professor wasn't sure that having the castle elves appear with them in the Great Hall while breakfast was still going on was what she would call discrete personally.
It was difficult to say who was more stunned, Daniel, Rupert and Emma, or the Hogwarts students, or come to that, the Hogwarts staff.
Bonnie and Evanna seemed pleased to be back and some of the students who knew them ran up to welcome them. They quickly introduced the other three, who didn't actually need introducing as they quickly found that they were as well known in Hogwarts as they were everywhere else.
They spent most of the day being shown around Hogwarts by Bonnie and a group of students, while Professor McGonagall had insisted that Evanna spend at least a good part of the day resting, much to her frustration.
She also suggested, somewhat reluctantly, that Evanna might spend some of the day with Professor Trelawney.
Daniel had found he quickly had his hands full, mostly being questioned by the younger students on how he could fly in the films if he wasn't really a wizard.
His attempts to explain special effects were largely unsuccessful and many of the younger witches and wizards seemed to remain convinced that he was really a wizard in disguise, much to Emma's amusement
"Don't you dare tell the Phelps twins about this," Daniel begged Rupert, who was laughing almost as much as Emma. "I'll never live it down."
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There was less pleasant laughter elsewhere as the kidnappers discussed the final stages of their plan. "You're actually going to bring them here?"
"Yes. I'm sure it will have memories. But I'll add a little light. I want to see their heroic faces when they see the girls' bodies."
"But they'll come with a whole group."
"No. I will make sure that the entrance will only allow one at a time. We kill one, then allow the other to join him. By the time anyone else finds their way in, we'll be long gone."
"Exactly where are we anyway?"
"Somewhere impossible. Not even the one who got us in here knows where we are or how we got in here."
For the first time, the other kidnappers began to worry, not about the plan failing, but what might happen to them when it succeeded.
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Author's note...
Someone offered to beta for me but a disastrous computer crash means I lost their email. Please contact me again as I still don't have a beta. I've finished this chapter and two chapters of Prophecy Repeated. Unfortunately as I write this my internet connection is STILL not working for me to post them. Thanks Telecom! I finally transferred this to a diskette to upload from an internet cafe. Please review.