The Sun Slave

by PurpleFuzzyDragon

After an innocent mistake her second year, Carina's existence is wiped from the memories of everyone around her and she is cursed to live each day twice. Sixth year rolls around and she is a nameless face. Why, then, does a regular boy who has been forgetting for five years suddenly remember her?

28. Jagobin's Plan

Chapter 28-Jagobin's Plan

I open my eyes and sit up instantly. I hadn't even realized I'd fallen asleep, but here I lay on the floor with a kink in my neck that I try to massage out. I feel strange and yucky, like I've been inhaling too much dust and things have started to grow on my skin and in my lungs. I look up at the windows and my eyes are met with the first bit of sun that peaks through.

I stay there for a long while, staring up at the sliver of golden light so the rays that shoot through the window drive straight into my eyes and across my brain. I haven't seen them in twelve hours, but it feels like twelve days. I don't know how long I stare. It feels like seconds, but it must be well over an hour because the sun eventually rises too high for me to see. I close my eyes and let the heat from them drift downwards through my body. It makes me feel warm and rested. It loosens my joints. The kink in my neck soon vanishes.

I steadily lower myself down and lay back against the concrete, warm from my body and the sun, and my eyes wander to the crates. It couldn't be that easy. I can't just climb up and break the glass of the windows. No, it would be magically protected. Jagobin would have something keeping this room sealed. Unless he doesn't.

I pick up a piece of rubble the size of my hand sitting beside me, sit up, and chuck it. The rock bounces off of the window harmlessly, making a hollow thunking sound as it hits before dropping back to the floor and splitting in two. Plastic. Fantastic. If only I had my wand; I could melt it down. A true witch could climb up there, place a hand to the window, and melt her own print into the plastic to weaken it or just burn through it completely. But I am not nearly as powerful as my classmates. Maybe if I had bothered to work at my magic, but it's too late now. I am too old to ever improve.

Even if I did have stronger magic, I have no wand and it probably has magical barriers on it. That makes me think. We're underground. I'm sure we're underground. The sun is far away from me. I feel every meter of the astronomical unit separating the two of us and the extra space between the sun and me is practically visible. I'm several levels down. The only reason the sun feels so real is because it's an image of the actual sun outside. It must be connected with a window far above, like the enchanted windows in the Ministry of Magic. This isn't a window at all. It's a trick. Why go to the trouble? I wonder.

I look to my left when I hear the door open. Frieda stands in the entrance.

"Good morning, Carina," she says stiffly. "Your friends never came last night. I don't suppose Leo held off because he wanted to go to the Quidditch party?"

I shake my head, pressing my fingers into my hair. "He wouldn't do that. He's just being logical. He's smart. He'll wait until he has everyone together and gathered a clear plan before he comes. He needs to rest after the Quidditch game as well."

"Well, he'd better not rest much longer. Jagobin is not a patient goblin and I dread what comes next."

I knit my eyebrows. "What comes next?"

She looks hesitant. "Listen, I just want you to know, I'm sorry. It was my fault and all my idea. I made it up as some way to buy time with Jagobin. I…I didn't know it could actually work."

I get to my feet. "Frieda, what are they going to do? I might be able to help if—."

The door behind her opens and two goblins nod to Frieda—evidently they know one another—before they head towards me. She hands me a solid gaze before she disappears through the door. I wonder for a moment why she told me nothing last night when I remember that Frieda's just another expendable to Jagobin. He may not have told her what he would do until this morning.

One of the goblins grabs my shoulder and forces me down to my knees. He has no real strength, but I do as he wants. He binds my wrists behind me and commands that I stand. He knows I'll do as he asks. They know the ways through this place to avoid traps, but I am clueless. I could fall into fifty of them just by running down the hallway and as we walk out the door and be easily be hauled back. There is hardly any point.

---

I hear a door open and I'm pushed inside a room where I fall to my knees on the ground. Why is everything here cement? I wonder as they cut my bindings again and let the blindfold drop.

A larger goblin with a face beyond strange is standing there. He kneels before me and I can smell something strange on him. Moth balls.

"You know, I'm surprised by you," he says.

"Oh? Why is that?"

"Because I didn't think you were an idiot."

"I thought I was an idiot if I didn't join you and I didn't; therefore, you shouldn't be surprised."

"For a goblin, my company is a smart choice," he lies. It is for the benefit of the other three goblins in the room. "But for a witch, it's just plain stupid." Frieda isn't here. I thought she would be, but she's gone. Jagobin can't stop confusing me. I thought for sure he'd have her standing in plain view. At first, I think he knows it will torment Frieda to see whatever he plans to do being done and that she'll try to stop it, so he's removed her so as to have no one save me. Then, I think better of it. I didn't trust Freida before and look where it got me. If she says Jagobin trusts her, I can't argue. Maybe Jagobin is just upset that I wasn't surprised to see Frieda, his big reveal, so he doesn't have her here to spoil his fun. That sounds more like the man she described.

He sighs. "But, unfortunately, if you don't want to join me, I haven't much time, so I'll have to make you join me."

"But goblins can't do Imperious curses," I say. Unless his half-wizard status makes him able to control a wand, though I doubt it. Using one would only make him appear more advanced in the eyes of his goblin followers. He would wield it constantly.

"Imperious curse? I have something better. Get on the table."

I rise slowly to my feet and walk over to where there are two tables. They are the main part of the room. The room is barren and grey. There are torches to light the place, but even their great blaze is swallowed by the dull interior. I wonder where the fumes to those fires are going before I notice two vents in the ceiling to pipe air in and out.

I look down at the tables and notice the symbols. All along the tables are runes written in strange patterns and shapes, like the ones Lorcan had written. Part of me wishes I had taken Ancient Runes and learned to read these things.

Without hesitation, I get up on the table and lay flat. I'm not afraid. I thought I would be but I'm not. The unknown doesn't frighten me. Perhaps because I'm unknown to myself.

Beside me, I see Jagobin lay on the neighboring table.

"I don't understand what you plan on doing," I say as they bind my wrists and ankles to the table.

"You don't understand me and I don't understand you," he says. "Perhaps this will help change that." He looks straight at the ceiling. "Do it."

The goblins come to his table and tie him down. My head lifts and worry stabs through my chest with its dull blade. Why are they binding him? A flash of the two of us in searing pain passes through my mind, Jagobin running from the room in the middle of the procedure in a fit of hysteria and agony. The bindings could be to keep him there through whatever they're about to do.

Then, I see them lift bindings and tie down his neck. I don't have neck bindings. Why don't I have neck bindings? Why does he and I don't? Suddenly, I want some because the more Jagobin and I are in the same situation, the more comfortable I feel. Now, fear threatens to leak into my body through my skin, absorbing it from the air. It leaks outwards through my bones from deep inside of me to infect me with palsy.

A goblin puts his scraggly fingers against my forehead as I stare and slams my head back against the table. I keep it there. He does not tie my neck to the table. The goblin lays each of his palms flat on the two tables, closes his eyes, and begins to chant.

The runes around us begin to glow a daring red. When I look to the side, Jagobin is staring straight ahead, at the ceiling, unmoving. The goblin's chanting gets more intense. His voice rises and falls and goes into strange glottal stops that are part of no language I've ever heard. Jagobin's body is soon shielded by the unnatural red light darting upwards. It soon gets so thick and bright that I can see nothing. The chanting goblin's fingers next to me and my own arm are glowing red. I see nothing. I feel nothing. In fact, it is less than normal. I sit my head against the table and stare straight like Jagobin had. Things feel so strange and dirty like after cleaning for hours with a strange detergent and feeling the chemicals from it all over your skin. I feel those chemicals are everywhere on my body. That disgusting flavor from Scorpius's toothbrush bites my tongue.

My eyes start to close and my head droops to the side when I see that Jagobin's eyes are closed as well. No, I think immediately. But then logic grabs my brain and slams it against the inner wall of my own skull and I black out. I must face whatever is coming.

It doesn't last more than a minute. I'm unconscious and then wake. It's over. My eyes open, I breathe. The air is clear. I try to lift my head, but I can't. That's when I realize. My neck is tied down.

I turn my head to the left and look at myself. I stare back. I blink. I smile maliciously. My goblin cronies untie me and I sit up and hop down from the table.

"Don't worry," I say, smiling. "It's temporary. I would never stay in the body of a witch."

And I am Jagobin. The feeling is strange. My breaths are more shallow, my fingers knobby like those of an arthritic man, and boils pop out along those parts of my body I can feel with bound hands. It isn't being Jagobin that's horrifying. It's seeing my own body controlled by someone else. And wondering what he'll do with it. But I know what he'll do with it. He'll destroy it. And I'll never get it back.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!" I scream. I scream and scream and scream until I see the goblins smiling and even then I still scream, even when I don't want to give them the satisfaction, I scream until my throat cuts out and won't let me ring out another note. Even then, I whine and groan and writhe in my restraints. I can't stop any of it. I don't know this body. I don't know it!

Jagobin grins as he watches me.

"So you finally broke. Now you know what it is to live in a goblin's body. I hope you wizards learn."

The comment makes me glare at him.

"Hah," I say. "Your body is nothing. I scream out of selfishness, not empathy.

He crosses his arms and squints, still intrigued with me.

I start, "You know, I used to think that if I ever had this wretched curse lifted, everything in my life would fall back into place and I could lead a normal life, but I realize that I was wrong. After befriending all the people that I have over the last few months, all of the witches and wizards who I need to use to get my own ends, I know now that I'm nothing special without my gifts. I'll just be a girl without money, relations, or skill. The only thing I will have is below average magic. That wouldn't bother me except I have so much to compete with all around me and I'm not sure I would be able to make it at life. How I live, my powers, is who I am. Now, it's there. Now, you're so selfish as to take it for yourself. My mind without my powers may as well be anyone else's. You have not left me a thing."

"Don't pretend as if wizards aren't selfish."

"Don't pretend to have a moral high ground," I counter. "No murderer is a good man."

"Wizards murdered one another in the war," he justified.

"This is no war."

"I am protecting my race."

"One that you only half belong to."

He strikes me across the face and though I feel strangely separate from this body while in it, the sting is real and connects me to that wretched cheek like it's my own. Just that one part of his body belongs to me now.

"LEAVE US!" he orders his goblins.

Immediately, the they file out of the room and I hear the door slam as Jagobin watches my eyes carefully. I don't mean to follow his, but I stare into them anyway because I can't escape them. He's trapped his own pupils and I've trapped mine. I realize it's so much harder to read my own eyes through somebody else's.

He's too fascinated with me. He likes me far too much. He's frustrated that he's unable to read me, like I was frustrated when Leo kept remembering me. It ruined everything. I couldn't ignore him. He knew me. The more I wanted him to forget me, the more I followed him, the more I talked to him, the more I wanted him to remember me. I hated it. He must be stuck in that same place. He needs to kill me, but he doesn't want to for the same reason I didn't want to stop talking to Leo.

"You are worthless!" he spits. It doesn't have quite the same effect, though, as it did in his body and I look utterly foolish, a small girl with soft features trying to look intimidating. Perhaps it's just because I know myself too well and can't see my own face as being threatening.

"You're very clever," I return.

"I'm…" It takes a moment for him to process this. "Yes…" he agrees slowly, narrowing his eyes. I almost laugh.

"You're planning on using my body to access my curse so that you can bond with the Pearl and are able to control it. I'm not sure if that's how curses work, but I have to give you kudos for the idea." Assuming he doesn't know what's transpired between Frieda and me as she thinks, I decide to play with him. "Judging from all of the muggle movies Frieda watches, I'm going to assume you actually got the idea from her." His eye twitches in annoyance. Of course, I know he got the idea from Frieda, she just told me. I need to stop fooling people into thinking I'm smarter than I really am, but it's just so much fun to irk this half-blood. "But that doesn't overshadow the genius of the whole operation," I say, trying to satisfy his ego as I realize I'm leading myself into dangerous waters. "I can only imagine the amount of planning and improvisation this must've taken to make work." Like waiting outside of a school and kidnapping me. Very complex. "It's too bad you're going to fail. Leo's coming to save me."

Jagobin smirks. "I'm counting on it."

"Right, right," I say. "You need the Living Pearl from him. Tell me, how do you intend on removing it?"

"I thought I'd just split his stomach. Unless you have a better idea?"

"No," I lie.

And that's when the alarm sounds. The room flashes red as the torches on the walls burn crimson flames. The alert is the screeching of some animal I don't recognize. It clearly echoes from the vent in the far corner of the room.

The goblins burst in through the door.

"Someone's in the building!" one of them says in his scratchy voice.

Jagobin narrows his eyes—my eyes. "I want the boy. You've seen his picture. Find him and lock whoever's with him in the cells. These are children. They should be no problem." As the goblins run back out of the room and down the hall, Jagobin turns to me in my body and smiles flirtatiously, shaking my hips a bit as he flips back my long, snarled black hair. "Wish me luck."

I shake my head. If he's trying to mimic me, he's failing.

Jagobin skips out of the room. I would laugh if I wasn't in this strange body. Everything feels uncomfortable. Breathing is harder. My lungs are shallower so every time I take a breath, it never seems like enough and always fight to get more, but I can't fit it all. And then when I breathe out, there is no relief. I feel like I am perpetually catching my breath. I'm always at that point just after I've run along the Hogwarts green in my bare feet, with the grass between my toes and the wind blowing back my hair. I'm walking along that green and breathing the always fresh air under that sun that controls me. My heart rate slows and I walk. But I can only take shallow breaths in that time when I need as much air as I can get. That is Jagobin's body.

I jiggle my restraints and wriggle my body. This way, that way, this way, that way. I get a good rhythm to it, but eventually I just get so frustrated with the exercise doing nothing to loosen my restraints in addition to it aggravating my breathing that I just give up and lay on the table. No one is there watching me, so I whine. I think if the ceiling were to cave in, I'd be trapped here, unable to run, and just have to watch it crash down on me. I'd rather die fleeing a crumbling prison than lay unmoving as it happens.

The room is still red. The sirens still blare. It makes my ears ring. It's so loud and terrible. I hate every bit of it. I want to clamp my hands over my ears and stuff them with clay and mud and grass and whatever else my fingers contact as I dig my fingers into the ground. The sound soon makes me want to scream. I think I should scream back until my voice gives out again. I yank and violently pull at my restraints. For hours. Hours it goes. Hours until the alarm shuts down. Hours until my wrists are sore and bleeding in a ring. Hours I'm twisting and screaming to come free. Hours until the rope at my neck comes loose.

I stop when I realize what's happened. There weren't originally neck restraints on these tables, so the goblins just nailed this one down. My relentless wiggling had made the twine come free. My head is free and I put it to immediate use. I'm flexible, strangely enough, in this goblin state. I bend towards my left wrist easily and bite the flap of the restraints with my teeth. It's a buckle like any other. I pull at it until the leather flap moves out of the frame and pull even harder so the prong pops out. Then, I let go. I wince at pulling my wrist out momentarily, but bite my inner cheek and pull my wrist out of the restraints. The skin lies uselessly over a bloody ring around my wrist and my arms shivers.

From there, the rest is so easy. I'm sore all over even from just lying there, but I undo all of my bindings and hop down from the table. It takes a moment to regain myself, the edges of the room moving to places they're not supposed to be, but I do and I walk to the edge of the room, at the open door. I walk down the hall. I keep walking, walking, walking. Soon…I'm running. I'm a goblin running. Merlin, it's so difficult. I try to catch my breath and nearly faint. This body isn't designed for—

"HEY!"

I turn back and see a boy standing in the hallway.

"Leo." I say, stepping forward.

"Stay back!" he shouts. "Where is Carina?!"

"What? I—." And then I realize. No I'm not. I'm Jagobin. But how do I tell him that? "I am Carina."

"Let me try again," he says. "Tell me where my friend is or I'll blast you to kingdom come."

"No, Leo, I can explain." I step forward.

"Incendio!" he shouts and a ball of fire shoots at me. I drop to the ground to narrowly miss it, staring wide-eyed at him as I lay on my back. He'll never believe me. What could I say to make him? He starts walking towards me. "I've searched this place inside-out and I know she's in here somewhere."

Then, I see myself. Like in a dream, I step out of the corner, into the hall behind him. I'm silent and still. There's a wand in my hand. My wand. My body is behind Leo, armed. Before I can open my mouth or pull him down to avoid the curse, Jagobin lifts my arm and shouts, "AVADA KEDAVERA!" Light streaks down the hallway and strikes Leo in the back.

He was looking at me. I am looking into his eyes and see the glow inside of them shut off. They no longer see me and he falls forward, at my feet.

"LEO!" I scream. I scramble to him and turn him over. His eyes are still open, but he just lays there, motionless. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no… I shake him and shake him. He must wake up. He must. My chest feels a hundred times heavier each second. It goes down through me like I've swallowed a glowing red steel needle and it's sinking through my body, burning a tiny hole through all of my vital organs. My heart is left with pinpricks that spills the blood from throughout my body down over my ribs and intestines like a mother pours a bucket of warm bath water over her child's head. "Leo," I say, shaking him lightly.

"He's dead, girl."

I look back at myself standing there, Jagobin, and shake my head. "If only you knew."

With that, I look down at Leo, my hand still on his chest that drums no beat. I bend over and kiss him. Right on the lips.

I open my eyes.

I breathe, I choke, I writhe on the ground until I can feel my heart beating in my chest and know it hasn't been destroyed. None of me has. I am still me. I am who I am. Merlin, what a bloody miracle.

I look to my left when I hear the door open. Frieda stands in the entrance.

"Good morning, Carina," she says stiffly. "Your friends never came last night. I don't suppose—."

"Frieda!"

I scramble across the room and jump into her arms, pressing her to my chest. I pull away instantly to a bewildered-looking girl.

"Go!"

"What?"

"Don't wait. Go now. If you're to do it, do it now, Frieda. Please." I look into her eyes, my hands gripping her arms as they shake uncontrollably from my vision. "You're our only hope."