Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
A/n: Okay, so I lied about the title in the last chapter smiles sheepishly. P.S. The rating has been upped, mostly for kidnapping and some mild dark themes. But I didn't lie about the action which starts RIGHT AWAY!
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Voldemort snarled.
"You told me they were dead!" He hissed at the pale-blonde man in front of him.
"My lord, I didn't! I said they were taken care of, but they should be dead! I don't know why they're alive!"
"Don't contradict me, fool!" Voldemort made a slashing motion with his wand and Malfoy fell to the ground, screaming.
Not bothering to remove the curse he stood off his throne and stalked to the other side of the chamber. On the wall hung a polished mirror whose frame was made up of twisting snakes.
He needed the Potter and his family that came originally from this world dead! He needed them dead NOW! And so he needed to set a trap. But what would lure Potter, and therefore his family after him, to where he needed them to be?
The answer came in a moment. Voldemort lifted his wand and shot a sickly orange curse into the mirror; moments later a likeness of him that was not his reflection showed up, red-slit eyes flickering maliciously.
xXxXxXxXx
They caught her from behind.
She didn't even have time to think before someone grabbed her arms and knocked her roughly to the floor. Instinctively she began to shift into her lynx form, but someone hit her with something in the back of her head. It was pain beyond anything except the Cruciatus.
She collapsed instantly.
xXxXxXxXx
The first thing she noticed when she woke was pain. Pain in her head, her arms, her stomach. She was lying on something cold; it might have been stone, it might not, but it was rough and digging into her skin. And she was starving.
How long had she been out? Hours? Days?
A door opened somewhere. She tried to lift her head but gave it up as a fruitless task until someone pushed a tray in front of her. She ate without thinking.
I need to get out of here. I need…I need…
One word came from behind the closed door. "Drugged."
xXxXxXxXx
The Pride was lounging around their suite near the kitchens, shed of their Glamours for the moment, sharing a tense atmosphere with Harry and his friends. Wolf walked in from a fun two hours running around the Forbidden Forest and happily threw himself onto a couch.
Lynx had said she was going to come join him, but she had never come. Concerned at the time, he had checked their new-found connection. It had been blurred and hard to reach through and while that had worried him he knew his pendants would act up if something had happened. The blurriness was probably because it was new and she was probably asleep. Against instincts but knowing Redwing would never let anything happen, he had shrugged it off.
Wolf had decided to take the better part of valor and acted as if Harry hadn't even hit him yesterday. And, of course, it helped that the fact that Wolf didn't even acknowledge it made Harry angrier.
"Hey Redwing," Wolf called finally, when the hushed conversations among the groups became too much, "Where'd Lynx disappear to?"
The redhead looked up, suddenly tense. "She said she was coming to meet you," Redwing said slowly.
That brought Wolf up fast.
"Are you alright?" Hermione asked suddenly, drawing everyone's eyes to the now completely white Wolf.
"No," he said tensely, answering Hermione and saying the word to Redwing at the same time. "No, she never came."
"But our pendants," Neenie protested. "They'd tell us if something was wrong or if something had happened."
"Not if someone attacked her," Shade said darkly. "Not if someone attacked her from behind."
All eyes of the Pride turned to Meghan, who had gone pale beneath her dark complexion. Everyone in the Pride remembered when she was ten and Peter Pettigrew had knocked her out from behind. If Neenie hadn't been there at the time that she had…It was something they normally didn't think about.
Wolf lurched to his feet.
Ginny! Lynx!
Nothing. There was nothing. Where he expected her familiar presence was blocked. It wasn't the blurriness anymore, just blocked.
Wolf let out a strangled cry and bolted out the door, completely forgetting to put on his Glamour. The minute he burst into Dumbledore's office, every eye turned him. Especially his Pack-parents: Moony, Danger, Padfoot, and Letha. Their pendants were outside their shirts and the wolf cub was shining.
Wolf hadn't even noticed that his pendants were hot until that moment. They were flaming hot and ice cold at the same time.
"She's gone! Lynx is gone. We think she's been taken!"
Dumbledore was on his feet and out the door before Wolf had even stopped talking, his face deadly serious. Wolf looked at his Pack-parents with pleading eyes, but the looks on their faces told him all he needed to know, even as Padfoot rushed out to follow Dumbledore, his wand already in his hand.
The flame of certainty in Wolf's chest that his Pack-parents could fix everything – naïve and childish as it was for him to keep nurturing it - flickered and diminished until it was nearly gone. He turned away from them and played with the flames of a candle on the wall. It flickered around his fingers, providing warmth and comfort.
Letha came over and put a hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry Greeneyes. We'll find her. We'll find her and she'll be fine."
Standing as he was, with his back to her, he didn't see her look away from the back of his head and mouth "Please God, don't make me a liar".
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The next time Lynx woke she was much more coherent; and much, much angrier with herself.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She hissed at herself, punching the stone underneath her with each word. It was stone now; she was awake enough to tell. And maybe it made her hands hurt but it sure felt good to hit something.
She took a few deep breaths and then began her leisurely, calming change into her lynx form.
Nothing.
She tried again. Nothing. Now panicking, she tried a third time.
She was still human.
Lynx let out the human equivalent of a caterwaul. What was going on? Why couldn't she change?
Her mind recalled the story Wolf had told once, about how he escaped the Shrieking Shack. She used his technique now.
"Think Ginny, think. You're good at that. You have brains in your head so use them." Maybe it sounded like she was going insane, but talking to empty air made her feel better.
Alright Lynx, start with the room: What's in the room?
She looked around. Not much.
There was really nothing. A cot lay to her right, though she was on the floor – And they couldn't have put me there because…? – and a solid-looking door was across from that. Otherwise it was bare. It could have been any dungeon-like, cold room in any place in the world.
So where was I last?
She rubbed her temples as if to coax her mind into remembering the answer. In Hogwarts. Doing what? Walking. And then what? People kidnapped you.
If the situation had been less dire, Lynx would have found it much more ironic that her inner voice was sarcastic.
She tried to shift into lynx form again and found the ability still beyond her reach. She groaned because now her drugged mind could dredge up memories of her father talking about a potion that halted Animagus transformation.
Well, if I make it out of here alive I'll be sure to inform Dumbledore it's been invented here too. Maybe I can just tell Harry…
Lynx's head snapped up so fast she might have hurt something in her neck.
Harry! Why didn't I think of him before? And with this handy new connection…
Harry! Wolf!
Just like with her Animagus transformation, there was nothing. She searched for him in her mind, but instead of comfort and warmth and familiarity she found a block. It was akin to running smack into a solid brick wall, complete with the sense of shock.
She couldn't talk to Wolf. Something was numbing her mind, and she had a good guess it was probably a drug of some kind.
Wolf had described how he had broken the wall in her mind even from across the worlds. So she tried; but she was too weak to break them. Her mind was still a little sluggish and her body was still drugged. She'd have to flush the drug out before she tried it again. Again, this was if she made it out alive.
Lynx groaned and dragged herself up onto the cot, even though her limbs felt like someone had replaced her bones with lead. If making it out alive is the best option I have, I'm in a pretty poor situation.
At just that moment another Death Eater came in and, upon seeing her awake, merely dropped the tray of food on the ground without any sort of care and walked out. He/she/it might have been sneering, but it was hard to tell beneath that mask. She did, however, recognize the very long pale-blonde hair that came from beneath it before he closed the door.
She snarled but didn't move. Lucius Malfoy: for what you did and are going to do to my Pack, my Pride, and our new counterpart friends…you better hope I never get my claws into you.
Then again, at the moment, she couldn't get her claws into anything. The visual was good, though. She reached for the food and stopped.
Drugged. Right. The drug that stops my transformation and blocks me from Wolf is probably in my food. Or water.
Ginny sighed. How long could a human being go without food or water?
xXxXxXxXx
It was two days before she felt the full absence of the food and water. Her mind was clearer, but she was losing weight at a pace much too rapid to be healthy. And that night she woke up gasping, her stomach cramping painfully until she curled into a ball with the pain.
She needed food and water, and she was getting so sick.
That was her last coherent thought.
xXxXxXxXx
There was a battle going on somewhere. She could hear it but she was too numb to care. Someone opened her door. He had on a Death Eater mask and he was pulling at her arms and tugging at her. Hissing at her.
"Come on otherworlder, move!"
And then he – for some reason she just thought it was a he – was dragging her and tossing her outside. It was cold, really cold, but she was outside. Her body registered that before her mind did and she found a hidden reserve of strength. She did the only thing she could and bolted.
When she was far enough away that she couldn't hear the sounds of fighting anymore she collapsed. She needed water, but there was plenty around. When she couldn't take in any more she lay against the ground.
I'll just rest a bit. Her groggy mind said.
She didn't even notice that, even though it was still freezing, she had stopped shivering.
xXxXxXxXx
Wolf felt the moment Lynx's mind shifted and he knew something was terribly wrong. It had been days since she disappeared and now he knew what it must have felt like when the Pack had first been pushed into the otherworld. Her mind was not closed off anymore but it was slipping away like…like what?
She wasn't falling asleep. Well, she was, but something told him it was a bad kind of sleep…
He jumped up and sobbed. Moony came over and put his hands on his shoulders but Wolf shoved him away.
"Something's wrong with her," he said hoarsely. "Something really bad."
Moony went to go steady him again but Wolf shook his head and transformed into his wolf form. He curled up in a small ball and put his snout under his tail, whining.
He closed his mind and pictured her inside his eyes. He pictured her hair and her eyes and her laugh, but mostly he pulled the memory of her magic: the warm, soft shade of red, the scent of flowers. He willed himself to her.
And then suddenly he was very cold. There was fighting way up what looked like a mountain, and he was lying in snow. Something instinctual told him changing back to human would draw attention, so he didn't.
There was an unmoving figure lying feet from him. She had red hair.
xXxXxXxXx
Lynx woke up abruptly, coughing and clinging to the animal next to her. When it was over and she was dragging in breath the animal moved closer, giving her its warmth. The black wolf lifted its head and gave her a loving lick, its green eyes looking at her worriedly.
"Wolf?" her voice croaked, the warmth in the word giving it more meaning than just naming the animal.
Wolf nodded.
"Why don't you change back?"
Wolf turned his head towards the lights of the battle.
I can't. He said in her mind and she had to keep from jumping with joy as the connection burst open again, pushing past the block. If I change back before we've reached somewhere safe the magic from my transformation will probably tell them where we are.
She nodded and knew she should get moving, but she didn't get up. She went to lie back down. A cold nose at the side of her neck made her jump.
No, don't lie down! Wolf's voice sounded so urgent she focused on him. If you lie back down you'll go to sleep, you'll freeze to death. Please, you have to get up.
She grabbed his fur and pulled herself up, following him.
I can't change. She said in answer to his questioning look. They gave me a potion. It won't wear off for…I don't know. Her sense of time was skewed. Wolf nodded.
The walk was long and Lynx would have liked to stop and rest many times, but Wolf wouldn't let her. He didn't say anything, but Lynx knew he feared she wouldn't wake. When she strayed he nudged her, bumping her legs.
It was a long walk, but he wouldn't let her stop walking.
xXxXxXxXx
Harry had never seen anyone as distressed as the Pride was right then. They were all huddled together in the kitchens, a place that was apparently as familiar as it was comforting. Neenie had changed into her cat form and was curled up on Redwing's lap as he stroked her fur. Shade and Meghan were sitting back to back, their finger entwined. Fox had his head in Starwing's lap. No of them had said anything for hours.
Characteristically, Meghan broke the silence. "Mama Letha always said Wolf was too much like his Dad, James. She said, in love they were always incomparable. Incomparably brave and incomparably stupid."
Most chuckled a little, but their hearts weren't in it.
Starwing stood up suddenly and went to a spot on the wall near the fire. "Thank you Godric." A hole opened up and she turned to look at everyone. The rest of the Pride followed her without question, followed (hesitantly) by Harry and his friends as soon as it was indicated they could come too.
They wound up in another kitchen.
"Where are we?" Hermione asked, "I've never read about this place."
"The Hogwarts Den," Shade said when they entered what looked like a main room, with banners over doors. "Comfortable sleeping place, please, and sleeping bags for our guests."
"Who are you –?" Neville began to ask, before the room morphed under their feet. The ground was solid but comfortable, and six sleeping bags were piled.
Everyone disappeared into a room for a moment, before coming out again. Shade had seemed to sneak upstairs and gotten their pajamas, because that was what he came back in carrying. A set for all of them, followed by Meghan who had the girl's. Redwing and the others appeared with sets of blue, red, and green blankets, which they also dumped on the floor.
Everyone changed, and then the Pride, with the blankets they had, built…well it was something like a nest or a den. Harry and the others spread their sleeping bags nearby and climbed in. The Pride climbed into the blankets, curling around each other like a litter of puppies might.
"Why are we here?" Ginny asked quietly after a moment, as if afraid she was disturbing something.
"When we were little," Neenie began, "Wolf had just been brought from his relatives, and Padfoot from jail, and they had nightmares. Sleeping together like this chased them away. Then we did it on full moons, when Danger's latent magic tamed Moony's werewolf, turning him into a human-minded, sane, regular wolf for the night."
"Then on special days like Halloween, or April 14." Fox added. "We're doing it now because we're upset and need the comfort. We offered you the chance to come because we want you to know we trust you, and we hope the reverse is true."
Everyone was quiet after that, but few people had fallen asleep. Harry stayed looking at the ceiling the entire time, thinking over how he had acted. His face heated up. He had acted like a right prat to people who didn't even want to be here. He had no right to treat them like that.
"I'm sorry," he said, as quietly as everyone else. And he let it mean all it should have.
Everyone began to fall asleep after that, but he got the distinct feeling that not only did the Pride know what he meant, but they understood and accepted. It was a comforting feeling and he fell asleep to it, and to the sounds of the other's breathing matching his.
xXxXxXxXx
Lynx wasn't sure, but she must have been walking for hours. Her shoes were scant protection against the snow and she was shaking and cold, but Wolf kept her moving. The sun was over the horizon when her world suddenly went black.
She woke to Wolf whining and nuzzling at her.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed out. "I can't."
He ran around in desperate circles, barking every so often to encourage her.
Please Lynx, he pleaded with her, please get up. I know you're sick and I know you're tired but you can't just give up. Please! I won't let you give up.
Lynx wanted to listen but her abused body had had enough. She closed her eyes.
xXxXxXxXx
She was on the ground, sick, cold, lost, and frightened. Wolf was frightened too, she could feel it. Why was only Wolf there? Why hadn't the rest of the Pride come? She began to cry. Wolf licked her face, her fever making her sweat and shiver uncontrollably.
Her head felt too heavy and she placed her forehead to the ground, crying. Suddenly strong, warm hands pulled at her shoulders and lifted her up so she was sitting. Lynx tensed for a moment, then relaxed when she felt no terror, only the feeling of protection.
The hands brushed back her hair and offered her water, which she drank greedily and gratefully. She tried to lie back down and arms circled her, cradling her. She shivered and they held more tightly.
xXxXxXxXx
Her fever broke the next day, and she woke curled against someone's chest with their arms around her. She looked up at the face of the person holding her and sighed. No wonder she had felt protected, as green eyes blinked open and smiled down at her.
"I thought you couldn't change." She told Wolf rhetorically. He shrugged, knowing she knew that he had risked the Death Eaters knowing their whereabouts so he could take care of her.
She knew instinctively that this was her Wolf, and not an imposter, and not the otherworlder, but hers, though his being there was impossible.
Protector, companion, friend. Someone she could trust with her life and her heart. A mate, whom she could turn to in any moment of joy or grief. A leader, someone to rule beside her.
She sighed blissfully and laid her head against his shoulder. "Harry."
She didn't even argue as he scooped her up and started walking again. South. Always south, away from the fortress above.
In fact, she sort of liked being held like that. But still she hoped the potion would wear off soon, so she could run with him hard and fast, and as far away from the fortress as possible.
xXxXxXxXx
Severus Snape had burst in and informed the Order of the Phoenix of where the fortress was in the nick of time. The Order had charged there and now a great battle ensued.
Albus Dumbledore stood to watch it all for a moment, just a moment, before he lent his hand to the fray.
Why must it always come to this, Tom? His mind asked the snake-like man within. Why blood and death? And what was the purpose of this trap with Lynx?
Where are Wolf and Lynx now?
And more importantly: Who will be lost this time?
xXxXxXxXx
Will Lynx and Wolf make it home safe? Will the battle end well? Will the Pack and Pride EVER get home? Fine out next time in: Battle.