Notes: Another short one-sorry about another delay, I was out of town and offline over the weekend. Have some whump!

Warnings: Child endangerment and whump.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The scream seemed to go on and on, high and wavering and agonized. Then, abruptly, it broke off into whimpering gasps. The voice wasn't shrill enough to be Clint: it sounded older, but not by much.

Thor. It had to be Thor.

Loki didn't remember deciding to do anything, or even moving. One moment he was standing behind Stark, waiting for the older boy to tell them what to do.

The next, he was face-down on the snowy ground with Barney on top of him, a woolly mitten clamped over his mouth. Loki tried to fight and Barney just leaned on him harder.

"Be quiet," he hissed, "and calm down." There was menace in the older boy's voice and Loki froze, but Barney didn't do anything else. He waited for a moment and then whispered, "If I let you go, will you be sensible?" Loki nodded. Barney released him and got up.

Loki was too embarrassed to look at any of his friends- how could he have been so stupid, what did he think he was going to do against grown witches or wizards? Barney, strangely, stayed right next to him instead of moving away in disgust. Even more strangely, Loki realized he found that kind of comforting.

And then he forgot all about Barney, because Thor was screaming again. George and Annie both had their hands over their ears, and tears were running down Annie's face. Loki might have been crying himself, but if so he didn't notice. He just looked at Stark, hoping the older boy could fix this- or at least make it stop.

Stark's expression wasn't exactly reassuring: he actually looked like he was on the verge of either bursting into tears, himself, or being sick. He was also pretty obviously trying to think of what to do, and not coming up with anything helpful.

They couldn't see anything through the trees, and up to this point Thor's screaming was the only sound they could hear. Now, when he broke off into bubbling gasps, another voice spoke up. In a tone that sounded a bit like Loki imagined a poisonous snake might if she was talking to a mouse, the witch who had cast the Imperius curse on Thor and Clint spoke:

"Will you still tell us this brat is no brother of yours?"

Thor was gulping, the way you did when you were crying too hard to speak clearly- Loki knew what that felt like- but he managed to blubber, "... not."

"He's not?" the witch demanded, her tone sweetly deadly.

"N-no," Thor managed to say. "He's- he's just a boy from my house. He n-needed some extra help with his flying, so I was just- "

"Crucio!"

Thor broke off, screaming again, and the witch shouted over the sound:

"Liar! We know your father has two sons, and why else would you bother with a little whelp like this- "

"He's not my brother!" Thor shrieked, and a male voice, cool and amused and aristocratic, broke in:

"Catriona, it's not that I want to spoil your fun, but I think even you should be able to tell the brat is speaking the truth."

"I'll make him- " the witch snarled, and the male voice drawled,

"We both know you how you enjoy employing the Cruciatus curse, but if you keep it up all you're going to do is make him say whatever he thinks will make you stop. Boy, this really isn't your brother, is he?" Loki pictured Felix Campbell-Hardwicke- skinny and pale, with his black hair and light-coloured eyes- standing over Thor, looking down at him in evil amusement. Loki hadn't actually gotten a good enough look at the man to tell what colour his eyes were, but it was obvious Loki must resemble him. He hoped Thor didn't notice that.

Thor sniffled, but if he gave any answer it wasn't out loud. And then a third adult spoke up, in a burring Scottish-accented voice that Loki probably would have found pleasant, if Loki hadn't been so terrified and the voice hadn't sounded as choked with fright and tears as Thor's:

"Why don't you just Imperius him again?"

"Shut up," ordered the witch, at the same time the drawling male voice replied, "And where is the fun in that? We could have just Imperiused you, if it comes to it, but it's so much more entertaining to... persuade you to do what we want you to." He paused, and then- in a tone of light menace- he went on, "Do you need to be persuaded some more, do you think?"

The ginger-haired wizard didn't reply, but Loki could imagine him shrinking away from the black-haired one. There was an ugly moment of silence, and then the light, drawling voice addressed Thor again:

"All right, then. If this pup isn't your brother, where is he? You might as well tell us willingly. We're perfectly capable of making you. Ask Mr. Sinclair here if you don't believe us." There was a gulp that might have come from Thor, or from the Campbell-Hardwickes' unwilling accomplice. "Come along, Odinson, speak up or Catriona here will have to have another word with you. And we both know what that word will be, don't we, boy? I'll give you a hint, it begins with a C and ends with agonized screaming." His tone made it sound as if he was telling a funny story at a party, and Loki wished he knew a spell to drop a tree on his biological father.

"He's not... he's not here," Thor mumbled.

"I beg your pardon?" demanded Felix Campbell-Hardwicke, his light tone going suddenly hard. "What was that?"

"He's not here," Thor repeated, weeping so hard he was difficult to understand. "At Hogwarts. I don't know who told you he was, but he's not, he's ten, he's, he's- "

"Crucio!" Felix wasn't drawling one bit, now, and over Thor's renewed screams they could hear Sinclair shouting,

"Will you stop it, he's a kid, you're going to kill him!"

"We're not sloppy enough for a mistake like that," Catriona assured him, in the horribly sweet voice again. "When we kill him, it will be on purpose." Loki started forward. Barney grabbed him again, and Stark, who was looking around as if trying to find a spot to mount an attack, reached down without looking to pat Loki awkwardly on the chest. Loki hardly noticed, because Catriona- his mother- was speaking to Thor again: "Don't keep making this difficult, boy. Where is your brother?"

Sounding terrified, but maybe trying to play for time for Thor, Sinclair spoke up again:

"What do you even want with the other kid? What use is a little boy to you?"

Loki froze, breath catching in his throat. What if they knew? All his terrible fantasies, the ones about his biological parents reclaiming him, had involved Loki being sent to Azkaban and someone telling them who was being put in their cell with them. He had wondered if his birth parents ever thought about him, if they wondered what had become of him (had hoped they didn't), but he had assumed they didn't know.

Now, he wondered- what if they were here at Hogwarts because of him? What if all this was his fault?

Thor had already disowned Loki as his brother when he figured out Loki was adopted. What would he do if he found out who Loki's real- no, his birth- parents were?

"What do we want with him? He's a start," Catriona snarled. "Odin Odinson is only one of those who defeated our aims, cast down our master, ruined our life's work- he captured and imprisoned and destroyed us, and we will destroy him. His hopes and dreams will all be tied up in his brats, and when he loses them he will lose everything. We know how his kind think, with their little ambitions and their short-sighted vision. We will begin with his children, and when he comes to seek revenge we'll have him, too."

Annie grabbed at Loki's hand, Stark put a hand on his shoulder, and Sinclair- sounding more frightened by the minute but also apparently more repulsed by the plot the more he knew about it- protested,

"You mean to say you've gone to all this, all this trouble and work, just to get revenge on one Ministry official? What could you possibly think that's going to accomplish?"

"It will be, it will be something," Catriona shouted, and now she sounded tearful as well as crazy and evil. "All our life's work, all our hopes, the dreams of our master, we will, we must do something to avenge it all- Tell us where we can find your brother!"

"London! He's in London!" Thor cried out, voice high and desperate. "Someone made a mistake, whoever told you, they told you the wrong thing, he's not at Hogwarts yet, he's only ten!"

And then there was more screaming from Thor, and incoherent ranting from Catriona, and Sinclair shouted a protest and Felix shouted back- Loki didn't recognize the incantation but it must have been a curse, because Sinclair screamed and then fell silent-

- and Stark must have decided no good plan was going to come to him no matter how long he thought, because he suddenly pushed through the undergrowth in a rush, wand in his hand- with Loki and Barney right behind him- and shouted,

"Expelliarmus!" There was a jet of red light, and Catriona Campbell-Hardwicke was blown backwards, long brown hair flying over her face, wand torn from her hand. Loki looked past her to where Sinclair was standing, while Felix, mouth bleeding, tried to stagger to his feet.

What?

Sinclair- or, rather, the ginger-haired wizard Loki had assumed was Sinclair- whirled to point his wand at Stark, who quickly shouted, "Levicorpus!" because apparently he was in no state to practice non-verbal magic. The ginger-haired wizard's feet were yanked out from under him and he flew up in the air to dangle as if from an ankle. He flailed wildly, but unfortunately didn't drop his wand. Stark cursed. Barney glanced around, spotted a pile of gear that included some cooking stuff, and took a chance.

"Accio knife!" he shouted, and a sharp-looking clasp knife came flying across the clearing toward him. He was able to catch it by the handle and tossed it toward Loki. "Cut them loose!" he ordered. Loki obeyed, picking up the knife and rushing toward his brother and Clint. Both of them were tied up, Clint with a piece of cloth stuffed so far into his mouth it was a wonder he hadn't suffocated. Loki yanked it out first and then fell to his knees behind Thor, sawing at the ropes that bound his brother's wrists.

Catriona, on her hands and knees, was scrabbling toward her wand when George- because Loki's friends had of course come running out after Loki- pointed his and called out, "Wingardium leviosa!" Catriona's wand flew up in the air- and then just hung there, because first year hadn't gotten past simple levitation yet. The witch scrambled to her feet and made a leap toward her wand. She just missed it, and George desperately flicked his own wand to send the captured one higher.

"Finite!" shouted the dangling wizard, without a trace of a Scottish accent, and the spell on himself and the one on Catriona's wand both failed. He crashed to the snowy ground, and the black-haired wizard- Sinclair, he had to be Sinclair, how could he be Sinclair?- wandless and still dazed-looking, tackled Felix.

Which was probably all that saved Sinclair when Catriona got her wand back: the two wizards were in such a struggling tangle that it was impossible for her to cast a curse at one of them without hitting both. Instead, she turned on the three boys huddled together in the snow, Loki still desperately cutting through the last of the rope that bound his brother's wrists. Annie, who had run over to try and help, squeaked in panic and then grabbed a pine cone off the ground. She flicked her wand from the pine cone to Catriona's wand and uttered the incantation for a switching spell.

This was the most complicated spell the first-years had attempted in Transfiguration, and nobody had managed to completely switch one object for another yet. So it was quite an accomplishment when Catriona's wand went short and fat and spiky in her hand, if only for a moment. The grown witch shrieked in surprise and nearly dropped her wand, and in that second Stark turned his own wand on her and shouted, "Stupefy!"

Once again, Loki's biological mother was blasted off her feet, and once again Loki felt a vicious jab of satisfaction. Then he had cut through the ropes tying Thor, and his brother stumbled to his feet.

"Run!" Stark shouted, and for once Barney didn't hesitate or try to argue: he ran over, scooped up the still-bound Clint, and flipped him over his shoulder. Loki and Annie got one on each side of the wobbly Thor, and all of them headed into the trees as fast as they could go.

Felix and Sinclair were still wrestling on the ground when Mitchell and George ran up to help. Neither of them could perform a stunning spell yet, so Mitchell picked up the biggest rock he could find. Felix had just thrown off Sinclair and was grabbing for the black-haired man's throat when Mitchell ran up behind him and hit him in the head, as hard as he could. The ginger-haired wizard groaned and slumped to the ground, and George helped Mitchell help Sinclair to his feet.

The black-haired wizard gaped at the two boys in recognition. "Where did you come from?" he demanded, but when Catriona showed signs of recovering from Stark's spell he hastily added, "Never mind. Let's get out of here."

George was scuffling through the snow, looking for Felix's wand, but when the fallen wizard made a weak but purposeful grab for his ankles, George retreated hastily. Stark grabbed him by the shoulder, started to point his wand at Sinclair, then glanced down to see that Mitchell had the other man by the hand.

"It's okay, really," Mitchell promised desperately. Stark looked very doubtful, but apparently he didn't have the heart to stun the third escapee and leave him with the other two. Across the clearing, Catriona managed to sit up, and nobody had the nerve to hang around scrabbling through the snow to see if they could find the Campbell-Hardwickes' wands first.

"Go," Stark commanded, and covered everyone's retreat as they ran into the trees.

Note: Okay, there was some speculation in comments and reviews that, maybe, the Campbell-Hardwickes were going to turn out to be not quite so bad as Loki imagined. Given my tendencies as a writer, that was a decent guess, since I write Loki-redemption stories and about half the villains in this series have turned out to be misguided or misunderstood.

But. I am pretty sure I'm not the only one who sees a lot of World War II parallels in the Harry Potter stories, and the parallels I see make Voldemort the local equivalent of Hitler, which means his Death Eaters are the SS, and that means not only are the C-H's just as bad as Loki fears, they're actually probably worse.

Sorry, Loki.