"You've caused us a great deal of trouble" he said quietly, towering over me in the the semi darkness that worked wonders for inspiring fear and awe, the shadows dancing around the clearing eerily alive and threatening.
"Well, that's some consolation then" I said, surprising myself. It was very hard to say and sounded feeble even to me, but at least it made him look a little bit annoyed, it was the least he could do when I was trying so hard to remain calm and logical as losing my head could only hurt at this point.
He chose to ignore my cheeky comment and turned to face the trees, waiting. For what, I did not know, and maybe it was better that way, for I knew the kind of creatures that the death eaters made use of and decided I would rather be surprised when the time came.
I could feel the energy draining from my body as the sun rose, and despite my fear and worry my head began to droop against my chest. The blood dried on my face and I was having trouble keeping my one good eye open. I spat bloody saliva onto the ground every once in awhile, gently feeling the spot where a tooth had been knocked out with the tip of my tongue. My legs were asleep after hours of kneeling on the hard ground and my hands had gone numb from being bound behind my back.
It turned out that my captor had not been waiting for any of the magical creatures that I had imagined being eaten by during the night, but only one of his masked pals, a shorter and rather wider fellow who filled out his robes a little too well, not that I had much time to dwell on this of course, for the newer death eater hardly spared his friend a glance before crossing the clearing and yanking me unexpectedly to my feet.
Needless to say it was a good few minutes before I was capable of supporting my own weight, as much as I hated having to lean on the heavy death eater, but once I could stand on my own he began to push me ahead of him and back into the trees in the direction he had just come from, mindless of my injuries or the fact that I could barely see the ground beneath my feet.
It was better than the sitting and waiting at least. Marching through the trees meant that something was happening, that I was headed somewhere, and maybe things would start to get rolling from there. I couldn't handle another night kneeling in the forest or wondering what had happened to my friends. And as I stumbled through the trees I began to spot things that I recognized and was finally able to place myself in the grand scheme of the forest, from a fallen tree that had slit in two to the pair that Sirius had pointed out that had grown and twisted together until they had become one.
At one point I even caught sight of a set of footprints that might have been my own from the night before but despite the fact that it's generally a great pleasure to discover where you are, this time it only raised a number of sticky questions, like, where were the others and how could I prevent life as I knew it from ending?