Replay

Replay

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Chapter Thirty-One

Lifting the Veil

"Here's yer dinner, Jugson. Happy Easter," Fergusson snarled at the former Death Eater, shoving a plate under the bottom of the bars keeping the old man in his cell.

Azkaban wasn't exactly festive on this Easter day but the prisoners did get a nicer meal than usual, including pudding, which was only to be had on Christmas, Easter and Halloween. The delivery method did not vary from the other days of the year: teams of two Aurors went down each corridor, one of them pushing a rickety old trolley heaped with plates of food while the other checked names off on a parchment. No one was employed at the prison who was not an Auror, for maximum security, so even cleaning, cooking and tedious jobs such as food delivery were the responsibility of Aurors trained for the most extreme sort of magical battles.

The trolleys had been charmed ahead of time to keep the food warm until it was delivered, but near the end the charm always tended to fade a bit. Sometimes the prisoners with the lukewarm food complained, but their complaints were usually met by, "Be grateful you're not in here with the Dementors anymore." Or, if the prisoner had been arrested after Voldemort had lured the Dementors away from the prison and the service of the Ministry, he or she might hear, "Be glad you never had to live with the Dementors, like the old prisoners." Sometimes the prisoners were complaining to the very Aurors who had arrested them; sympathy for the prisoners was thus always in scant supply.

"Jugson," Neville Longbottom mumbled, his heart beating just a little more quickly as he remembered the battle at the Ministry in his fifth year. He closed his eyes for a second and collected himself, then opened them and checked the name off on a curling piece of parchment. That was a long time ago and during what felt like a different life. In a way, Neville almost felt like being grateful to those Death Eaters, as he'd discovered what he could do in battle, even under pressure; on the other hand, "Thanks for attacking me and torturing me and trying to kill me; I learned loads," was just something he couldn't imagine saying to them.

As young as he'd been during the war, he'd confronted far too many Death Eaters to be unmoved by his own memories of battle when walking the corridors of Azkaban. He'd avoided prison duty for years with good reason; each night that he slept in the quarters for the guards he relived those dreadful battles in his dreams. Up here, practically at the top of the world, there was no Hermione to take him in her arms; there was no Frances to cuddle up to his neck, with her intoxicating baby smell. Without the two people he loved best to comfort him upon awaking he found that falling asleep again simply meant falling into more horrifying battle nightmares; as a result he felt more than a little sleep-deprived, even after only two days of duty. After a fortnight I'll be a complete zombie. Neville rubbed his eyes so hard that they squeaked in their sockets.

I'm not supposed to be here, he thought grumpily, following Fergusson to the next cell. He was supposed to be at the Weasleys', having a lovely home-cooked Easter dinner himself, rather than whatever had been provided for the Aurors unlucky enough to be doing prison duty during the holiday. Unfortunately, he'd asked his fellow Aurors for favors once too often, especially since Frances had been born, and had managed to avoid working at the prison for nearly four years. But all good things must come to an end: Leo DuPlessy, an older Auror who'd gone to school with his parents and who had substituted for him repeatedly, had called in a favour at the last minute. His daughter had had her baby earlier than expected, so he wanted to cut short his Azkaban rotation and go to visit her in Capetown. As a result, Neville had left for Azkaban on Friday night; he wouldn't see Hermione and Frances again for a fortnight while he finished what remained of DuPlessy's month-long stint at the prison.

Rubbing his eyes again, wondering whether he dared use a charm to try to get some sleep that night, he heard Fergusson slide a plate into the next cell. "Happy Easter, Malfoy," Fergusson grunted, making Neville lift his head in surprise; he hadn't realised that Draco Malfoy was on this corridor. He hadn't seen him in years...

But when the blond man who'd been curled up on the pallet stood slowly and started shuffling toward his meal, Neville gasped at the sight of him. How has no one noticed this? Neville had delivered meals in a different corridor the day before and had, mercifully, encountered no familiar names or faces.

"Wait!" he said as Fergusson started to push the trolley toward the next cell. He frowned at the parchment in his hand to see whether Fergusson was just confused, but according to the list this was Draco Malfoy's cell.

"Come here! Please!" Neville said quickly when the man had started to walk back to his bed with the plate of food, which would not be hot for long. The blond man did not move toward the door but lifted his head and stared hopelessly at Neville. "Who are you? What is your name?" Neville demanded, his voice shaking.

The man's mouth worked soundlessly for a half-minute before he finally said, "I heisse Draco Malfoy," in a mechanical voice.

"What?" Neville said, frowning. He turned to Fergusson. "Is he even speaking English?" he demanded.

Fergusson shrugged. "Dunno. He said his name, though. What's the matter with you? We're not even half done; come on..."

"No," Neville said, thrusting the parchment at Fergusson. "You'll have to finish by yourself."

"But we're not supposed to do this alone! Where the hell do you think you're going?" he shouted as Neville sprinted down the corridor away from him.

"To get help!"

"Help? Why?"

Continuing to run, Neville shouted over his shoulder, "Because that is not Draco Malfoy!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Where the hell are they?" Blaise Zabini fumed, pacing the floor of his drawing room. He glanced at the sleeping children; it hadn't been easy or comfortable to travel with a dozen kids via Portkey--three trips in all--and he had carefully checked that each of them was breathing after they'd experienced a rather bumpy landing. Since none of them were conscious it had been rather complicated to make certain that each one was touching the old hat Blaise had used for transport, and none of them could approximate a graceful landing in their sleep; some of the awkward positions in which they'd landed made him fear that they'd broken bones; they had to be in perfect health--and conscious--for the Power Transference spell to work properly.

And then he would kill them all.

He was also worried that the bumpy ride might awaken them, but they all seemed to be thoroughly drugged by the Easter eggs Draco had given them, so that he would neither have to deal with lying to them nor worry about their seeing his face. After checking for the third time to make certain that they were quite unconscious Blaise lifted his wand and Apparated to Wiltshire; he had a bone to pick with his incompetent minions.

He arrived in the cold, empty Malfoy drawing room and immediately started shouting, "Crabbe! Goyle! Why aren't you at my house?" His bellows echoed off the hard surfaces and high ceiling of the dilapidated room, and after a few seconds he heard their voices above.

"We're up here, Blaise!"

"Bloody hell," he muttered, going into the entrance hall and up the grand stairs. "Stupid, incompetent..." When he reached the top he still didn't see them.

"Where are you, you flaming idiots?" he called out affectionately.

"Crabbe's room," came Goyle's voice.

Blaise sprinted up another flight of stairs and found Percy Weasley in the corridor outside Crabbe's room, sweeping the floor with a well-worn broom.

"Excuse me, Weatherby," Blaise said curtly, pushing past him and storming into the room.

"Yes, sir," Percy mumbled deferentially as he was shoved against a wall.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As soon as they were in the room, Percy swiftly glanced up and down the corridor and took an Extendable Ear out of his pocket, to listen to what they were saying. As his memories of his old life had improved he remembered that he had this yet and took it out of his old suitcase, stashed under his bed. He'd had it in his pocket when Lucius Malfoy had put the memory charm on him and still had it when he was found in Gibraltar by the police; it was the only tie he had to who he had been but the police had not been able to make head nor tail of it. Nonetheless, Percy had held onto it, hoping against hope that it might one day jog his memory and help him to regain what he had lost. He finally had remembered, and he was very glad that he hadn't binned the strange, fleshy thing back when he'd decided to just start a new life as a clerk.

He'd been listening to Crabbe's and Goyle's slow, thick voices for a little while before Zabini had returned to the house and they said basically the same things to Zabini that they'd been saying to each other.

"We would have been there--" came Crabbe's sluggish voice.

"We tried to come--" Goyle started to say, just as slowly.

"--but we couldn't remember where to go--"

"--and we kept trying to remember as hard as we could--"

"--but it kept slipping away from us, as if--"

"What are you idiots talking about? I told you this morning, as plain as the stupid expression on Crabbe's face: come to number three Gimgroinahoppetser Street, Froygleheister, London."

Percy made a face; yes, that was what Crabbe and Goyle had been saying, but it didn't make any sense. He didn't know London from end to end, but he was fairly certain he'd never heard of a place called "Froygleheister" and "Gimgroinahoppetser Street" also sounded extremely unlikely.

"Right! That's what you said!" Percy heard Crabbe cry with what passed for indignation with him. "But we can't find that on any map of London and we've been all over Muggle London to one map shop after the other. Tried to take a taxi there as well, since London cabbies are supposed to know where everything is, but they just kept laughing in our faces." This was more than Percy had heard Crabbe say in the previous thirty minutes of continuous conversation with Goyle.

"We even did some, erm, nasty things to a couple of Muggles we thought were just refusing to help us to be annoying--I wouldn't put it past Muggles-- but they really didn't seem to know what we were talking about," Goyle added.

Blaise Zabini swore very loudly before saying, "Oh, bloody hell! Let me write it down for you..."

Percy heard the scratching of a quill on parchment, then Crabbe declaring, "That doesn't even look like letters! How do you expect us to--"

"It's perfectly legible! Are you completely illiterate?" Zabini counter-attacked.

"No, it's not!" Goyle declared. "And I may not have been at the top of our year, but I know English when I see it, and that isn't it!" Percy was starting to wonder whether the three of them would just kill each other, leaving him just Narcissa, Pansy and Draco to deal with--wherever Draco was. He thought he was probably at his parents' house, pretending to be him, Percy, but he wasn't certain. Were the children all right? he wondered. Had they been kidnapped yet?

He got his answer a second later, when Zabini said, "Listen, I've had enough of this; I've got twelve unconscious kids at my house and I need the pair of you to stop acting as if your brains have been sucked out of your skulls by--by a Brazilian Brain-Sucking Tree Newt. Now stop fooling around and--"

The almost complete silence surprised Percy; he stuffed the Extendable Ear in his pocket, to play it safe, and moved a few feet down the corridor, to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping. It was lucky that he did this, as the three Slytherins emerged from Crabbe's room a second later, pushing roughly past him on their way to the stairs.

"Should have thought of this sooner!" he heard Zabini muttering as he passed.

"Yeah, you should have," he heard Goyle grumble as he followed Zabini. "I mean, if Mrs Malfoy is your Secret Keeper, then she's the only one who can tell us where your bloody house is, isn't she?"

"Shut up," Zabini shot back at him. "I remembered eventually, didn't I? We'll just get Narcissa to tell you and then you can go over there and--"

They were out of earshot for Percy now; creeping as close to the top of the stairs as he dared, he peered down carefully, to see whether he could see the tops of their heads, as there was a danger that they could look up and see him if he could. But they'd already begun to walk down the corridor to Narcissa's bedroom, so he was safe. Walking down to the floor below as quietly as he could--still wielding his broom, which Zabini didn't know was a flying broom that Percy had removed from the broom shed and made to appear old and utilitarian--Percy began to process what was going on.

They had used the Fidelius Charm. Narcissa Malfoy was the only one who could divulge the location of Blaise Zabini's home, so when Blaise himself had attempted to tell Crabbe and Goyle where to come before he'd left to kidnap the children it had come out like gibberish and they still had no idea where to go!

Feeling glad of incompetent dark wizards, Percy peered down the corridor, glad to find it empty. He swiftly crept to the room next to Narcissa's and let himself in, going to the wall between the rooms to use the Extendable Ear to listen again. However, before he even reached the wall, let alone taking the pink Ear out of his pocket, he heard a shrill voice behind him.

"What do you think you're doing?" demanded Pansy Parkinson.

Percy turned to find Pansy wearing nothing but a towel, having just emerged from the bath. He felt like slapping himself; he'd forgotten that this was Draco's room! "Erm, um," Percy started to say when he noticed the pale legs visible below her towel, the skin just dusted with a little water from her bath. They weren't bad legs, as legs went. He tried to force himself to blush--thinking of his first time with Penelope helped--and he addressed his shoes, mumbling, "I have a confession..."

He paused long enough to make her ask indignantly, "Well?"

"I--I fancy you," he blurted out suddenly, lifting his eyes to her unfortunately very pug-like face.

To his surprise she wasn't screaming or hexing him; her wand was within easy reach, on the table behind her. Pansy was blushing a little bit herself before remembering who she was--and who he was--and her indignation returned. "Might I remind you--?"

"--that Mr Malfoy has been very kind to me," he began, inching toward her, even though this was a lie--only Blaise was sometimes kind to him, oddly enough, "and given me a home and a job," he added, even though the job didn't come with a salary, "and you are his girlfriend..." She seemed to have the wind taken out of her sails due to his saying all of the things she looked as if she wanted to say. "I know it makes me seem terribly ungrateful," he went on, trying to avert his eyes both from her towel-covered bosom, in case she threw a fit about that, and her face, because it was rather difficult for him to maintain the fiction that he fancied her while staring at a woman who resembled a small, tappy dog that much.

He was highly aware of the weight of the former spoon in his apron pocket, the fake wand he'd been working on to look just like Pansy's. Ever since he'd finished it he'd been carrying it around with him wherever he went in the house on the very slim chance that he just might be able to swap it for Pansy's real wand and there it was, sitting not eight feet away from him, in plain sight, growing nearer as he moved his feet forward by infinitesimal increments. He was having a rather difficult time now not staring at the wand as if he adored it; he tried to direct his adoring gaze to Pansy instead, thinking, You have a lovely wand there, my dear. You don't really need it, do you?

Evidently his declaration of love--such as it was--had softened Pansy somewhat, and she was giving him an appraising look. "I'm taken, you know," she said with a hint of coyness in her voice.

"I--I understand completely, miss. And you would never be unfaithful to Mr Malfoy," he continued, wondering whether he was prepared to go as far as she was in this game--however far that was.

Then she took a step toward him and he thought PenelopePenelopePenelope.... Just think of Penelope...

"You know, he doesn't pay much attention to me," she said, pouting, near enough to touch his arm now. His stomach writhed within him but he tried to seem pleased about this.

"I can't imagine why," Percy responded, shaking his head in sympathy even as he was turning the pair of them so that they had traded places and he was standing in front of the table with the wand on it.

"Neither do I!" Pansy declared before flinging herself on him and crying into his neck. The contact jolted Percy a bit for a moment, but he'd already managed to reach behind him and pick up her wand; while she cried on him and he patted her back with one hand he managed to take the fake wand out of his pocket with the other and place it on the table.

Suddenly, he pulled back from her. "Miss--I don't think this is strictly appropriate. I--I should go..." He moved quickly toward the door, adding, "I respect you far too much to do anything that could possibly besmirch your honour." He hoped that "besmirch" would sound properly priggish and not as though he were full of hot air, only pretending to be attracted to her.

It worked; she looked as if she might actually have been falling for him and this was the final thing that pushed her over the edge. "How gallant!" she sighed as he left.

Percy leaned on the door, his heart thumping loudly. I need to hear where the house is, I need to hear where the house is, he thought, just as the door to Narcissa's room opened; he leapt behind a suit of armour as quickly as he could when Zabini, Crabbe and Goyle emerged from Narcissa's room and walked quickly past his hiding place.

"Have you got that now?" Zabini demanded of them. "Can the pair of you go there now and do what I've told you to do?"

When they were gone Percy swore under his breath; he'd missed it! He needed to trick Narcissa into giving up the information to him in some way...

And then he remembered how Dumbledore had first given him the information about the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix: written on a piece of paper, delivered by Fawkes himself. Fawkes could not be intercepted, like other delivery birds, and even though other members of the Order were not to know, at first, what Percy was doing, he always went disguised as another member of the Order, usually Bill or Remus (when Dumbledore had assured him that neither Bill nor Remus were there already). In this way he was sometimes able to meet with Dumbledore without going all the way to Hogwarts.

Percy wished that he was still working under the protection of Dumbledore as he crept out from behind the armour and let himself into the bedroom that Blaise used when he stayed at the Malfoys' but did not wish to share Narcissa's bed. He was about to do something he'd been planning for a while, but doing it a bit sooner than expected. There was no help for that, however; he had to learn the secret of where Blaise Zabini's house was now. If he waited Narcissa would be suspicious and his cover would be blown by a Malfoy--again.

Finding a hair on a jumper in Zabini's wardrobe, he added this to a flask of Polyjuice Potion he had secreted in his apron, along with Pansy's wand; over a period of months, he had surreptitiously stolen a drop here and a drop there from Draco's flask, whenever he was sleeping, making certain that he stole pure potion and not something that had had a body part added to it. He didn't think that he had even one hour's worth of potion, so he would need to work quickly.

He dressed in one of Zabini's robes first, one that was as close as possible to what Percy had seen him wearing minutes earlier. The potion took effect quickly and painfully, and after checking the mirror to be certain that he looked convincingly like Zabini, he crept into the corridor, wand out. It was a strange sensation to have one in his hand again. He realised that it would have been a good idea to cast a spell or two in Zabini's room, to test the wand, see how well it responded to him, but now that he'd taken the potion there was no time to spare; he would have to take his chances with Pansy's untried wand. He let himself into Narcissa's room without knocking, surprised to find her still in bed, tucking his armed hand between the folds of his robe to hide the wand. To his dismay, she smiled lasciviously upon seeing him.

"There you are! Got rid of them yet? I know you're peeved with me for not letting them in here without you, but since when do I invite them into my bedroom? You're another story, of course," she added, holding out her hand to him. Her lank blonde and grey hair spilled over her shoulders and chest, her sallow complexion looking as if it hadn't seen the sun in years.

Narcissa's writing table sat near the windows; Percy always made certain that there was an inkwell and quill at the ready, plus a pile of curling parchment, even though Narcissa seldom wrote to anyone. "I am afraid there is no time for that, my dear," he said, unused to Zabini's voice coming out of his mouth; he'd always strongly disliked using Polyjuice when he'd been in the Order. "It's those two idiots... They already can't remember what you told them. If you just write it down I can charm the parchment so that only they can read it, and I can put another charm on it to keep them from losing it. It'll practically be following them around."

She raised an eyebrow as she emerged from beneath the covers; Percy panicked for a moment, worried that she might not be wearing anything, but she had on a filmy white nightgown (which might as well have been nothing when the light was behind it), over which she drew a slightly shabby dressing gown. "If they're that bad, why on earth do you keep them around?"

"Why did Draco ever keep them around? They're convenient. In their way. Up to a point. That's enough. They serve their purpose." Percy hoped he sounded convincingly curt.

She shrugged as she walked languidly to the writing table, as though she had all day, while inside his head, Percy screamed, Could you walk a little more slowly, you old hag?

"Couldn't you write it out for them?" she asked, even as she sat and drew a piece of parchment toward her, picking up the quill and dipping it tentatively into the ink. Her slowness was starting to make Percy think he would explode.

"It has to come from your hand, as the Secret Keeper," he told her, even though he thought she had a point; since she'd already told them, it was possible that Zabini could write it down for them and they'd be able to read it now. He hoped that she wouldn't see through this as he watched her write, Blaise Zabini lives at number three, Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London, in a sweeping flourish. Trying not to sigh from relief, he thought, There. Now I know; I can't tell someone else, but I could go there myself...

"Thank you, my darling," he said, trying to maintain the facade that he was Zabini. However, she was staring at him with her mouth open in an amazed circle, and he had a bad feeling that his tiny bit of Polyjuice Potion had already worn off. He swiftly pulled out Pansy's wand, crying out, "Stupefy!"

She went rigid as a board and fell to the floor, obviously not expecting "Weatherby" to either have a wand nor recollect enough about being a wizard to cast a spell. The glimpse he caught of himself in the overmantel looking glass showed that he had returned to his own appearance already. He carried her to the bed, tucking her in carefully, but before he went to the door, he removed Zabini's robes, which he stuffed into a hamper, then revived her, Obliviated her, and put the wand away again.

Narcissa Malfoy's eyes clouded over and she looked dreamy and unconcerned; when her eyes came into focus again she frowned at seeing Percy standing in the open doorway.

"Yes, Weatherby? What is it? What are you doing in my bedroom?"

"I thought that Mr Zabini said that you wanted me to come up. Perhaps I misunderstood him?"

She frowned even more deeply, then seemed to think better of how this would affect the lines on her face. "Yes, you must have done. Please prepare my breakfast. Oh, and don't forget Miss Parkinson's tomatoes... She loves them," she added smugly.

"Yes, Ma'am," Percy lied, having no intention of doing such a thing. It would be extremely ungrateful of me after she was so stupid to let me take her wand, he thought. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes." Miss Parkinson had her breakfast hours ago, and most people are eating their Easter dinners now.

"Make it thirty. I'm going to draw a bath. You can make her food sooner, though."

"Yes, Ma'am," he repeated before leaving.

He was not, however, going to make any food before he paid a visit to the scullery, where the large, dark eagle owl had his perch near an open window. Percy read the parchment again with Blaise Zabini's address on it, hoping that this would work. Ideally, since it had been written with Narcissa Malfoy's own hand, anyone receiving this parchment would, in effect, be told the secret by Zabini's own Secret Keeper, and they would therefore be able to find his house and the kidnapped children.

But he couldn't leave it at that; sitting down at the small desk in the scullery where he wrote out shopping lists, he took out a piece of parchment and dipped an old owl feather in some thin, brown ink. To whom should he send it, though? His father? His mother? It should be someone who would believe in him, but someone who had been in contact with Draco while he was pretending to be Percy, so that he might be able to convince the person that he really was him, while Draco was not. He thought of seeing both Pansy and Narcissa in their bedrooms again and realised to whom he should write: the person he'd most wanted to see ever since he'd returned to Britain from Gibraltar.

My dearest Penelope...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Teddy groaned as he stretched and opened his eyes. Why did he feel so stiff and bruised? Had he been thrashing around in his sleep?

Then he stared around at the room in which he found himself, remembering that it wasn't the morning after Easter, he wasn't back at school, and he hadn't just slept in his familiar four-poster bed in Gryffindor Tower. He'd been at Ginny's parents' house, gamely helping the younger children with the Easter Egg Hunt and occasionally having to throw gnomes over the hedge when they became truculent about giving up the eggs the children had found. The last thing he remembered was helping Hal and Cedric crack open their eggs and fish out the even smaller eggs and chocolate rabbits inside. They'd freely shared their bounty with him--and then everything was a blur and blackness and then--here.

Wherever here was.

It appeared to be a grand drawing room, long and slim and tall, with ornate silver ornamentation on the pale green, paneled walls and chimney breast, a polished grey marble mantel surrounding a cold, dark fireplace, and numerous unlit candles in silvery sconces on the walls. The very high ceiling was painted with what he would have thought of as mythological scenes, but he had a feeling that he actually knew the stories depicted. These paintings were what told him that he was definitely in a wizarding house, for they appeared to be scenes from goblin wars he'd heard Professor Borodin talk about (and Professor Binns as well, before they'd exorcised his spirit from the castle).

Beside him, Nate was still snoring away, his glasses askew on his face because they'd been damaged; the right earpiece was missing, so the frames sat awkwardly on his freckled nose, and the left lens was cracked through the middle. Teddy put his hands up to his face, tentatively touching his own glasses; he took them off and examined them but they seemed to be all right, if a little bent in the middle, across the nose-piece. After putting them back on he reached into his pocket for his wand, to fix Nate's glasses for him. (He was used to doing a little magic outside of school when he was at Harry's or the Weasleys', where magic was arguably done by more than one adult wizard, although he would never dare to perform a spell at Latere Farm or on the Isle of Wight.)

His wand wasn't in his pocket. It was gone. He looked around frantically, wondering whether Nate had his wand, and that's when he heard the sound of other people in the room. He stood cautiously, walking around the couch where he and Nate had been sleeping, propped up next to each other. There was another seating arrangement behind theirs, with more couches and some armchairs, and on these pieces of furniture he found his sisters and cousins and the other children who'd been involved in the Easter Egg Hunt.

Was it all a coincidence? Was this some sort of prize for finding the eggs? Somehow he didn't think so. The children and babies all seemed to be sleeping peacefully; their deep breaths were slow and even. He went back to Nate and tried to shake him into wakefulness; after a few minutes Nate finally started to frown in his sleep, then to mumble, "All right, Mum, all right! I'm getting up, really I am..."

"It's not your mum," Teddy said tersely. "Wake up! We've got an emergency here."

Nate stretched and groaned, as Teddy had done, then looked around, his eyes confused and then wild. He pushed his glasses up onto the top of his head, rubbed his eyes, then tried to position the spectacles on his face again, immediately missing the right earpiece.

"Oh, bugger! Mum's going to kill me! She says I go through glasses as if--"

"Your mum scolding you for breaking your glasses again is the least of your worries, Nate. Look where we are! And look at them." Teddy stood and walked around the couch, showing the other children to Nate.

"Julian!" Nate immediately cried, going down on his knees next to his little brother. He shook Julian a little bit but the younger boy did not wake. Nate lifted worried eyes to Teddy.

"What's wrong with them?"

Teddy shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. And I don't know why I woke up first and why you're awake now but they're not. But let's see whether we can wake up anyone else."

Nate left his brother alone for the moment, moving to one of the twins--it was impossible to tell whether it was Ruby or Rory with their eyes closed--while Teddy tried the other twin. Finally, the one Nate had been shaking started to groan and sit up, her eyes still closed.

"Ruby? Rory?" Nate said anxiously, continuing to shake her. She finally opened her eyes enough that Teddy could see that the right one was green. He sighed with relief.

"Ruby, are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

She glared at him as only an irritated little sister could, squirming as she stretched dramatically. "No, I'm not all right. I've never felt so stiff in my life; has someone been using me for a Quaffle in a Quidditch match? And where in the bloody world are we? What happened?" she demanded, staring around the strangely formal room that had had a mob of children dumped into it for some reason.

"Dunno," Teddy said, hoping she would calm down but not sure what he could say or do to help this to happen. "Last thing I remember I was helping Ced and Hal find eggs," he said, pointing to the five- and six-year-old boys.

"...and I was helping Perce and Jules," Nate added, pointing at his brother and Ruby's cousin; both boys were still unconscious.

Ruby did seem as if she was calming a little. She nodded and rubbed the back of her head, saying, "Yeah, Rory and Marguerite and I were helping the little girls," she said, gesturing toward the slumbering Charlotte, Diana and Frances, who were leaning against Rory and Marguerite. The babies had chocolate smears all over their faces and their chocolatey fingers were thrust into their mouths while they slept. Ruby tried shaking Rory, beside her, but she still did not rouse, just as Julian had not.

Ruby shrugged. "I'm not surprised. She was eating a ton of chocolate. You know how she's always knocked out when she eats a lot. I reckon in a few years you'll be able to tell us apart by which one is the size of a baby dragon, not just by our eyes."

Nate frowned. "That's not a very nice thing to say about your sister, Ruby. And she's not awake to defend herself, either," he scolded her. Ruby rolled her eyes, used to Nate by now.

But something Ruby had said caused a spark to go off in Teddy's mind. "Chocolate!" he exclaimed suddenly, fixating again on the chocolate smears marking the smaller children's faces. Julian was liberally decorated with evidence of his excess, as was Rory and even Marguerite. Hal, Cedric and young Percy looked as if they'd been to visit a chocolate factory. "I hardly had anything--I didn't want the kids to think I was just helping them because I wanted their sweets--and you probably didn't have much, either, Nate, because--"

"--because I like toffee best!" Nate exclaimed.

Ruby grimaced and gave Nate a disgruntled look. "Oh; me too," she said, as if it pained her to admit that she had this in common with him.

Teddy was elated by his small victory. "So that's it! The chocolate knocked us out, but we didn't have as much as the others, so we woke up first! That means they'll come round eventually, depending on how much each of them had. Although the little ones might take longest, since just a bit would probably go a long way with them..."

Ruby snorted. "You might be surprised. Marguerite and Rory between them didn't let the little girls get much. I'm used to Rory, but Marguerite told us that her mum has just started restricting her sweets since she turned ten, because she doesn't want her to get fat and have problems with her complexion." Ruby rolled her eyes yet again. "So--when Marguerite got her hands on some of the chocolate eggs, she went a bit--well, insane. I've never seen her like that. She's usually so dainty about everything..."

"Anyway," Teddy said, cutting in, "we need to try to wake the others up and find out where we are."

Ruby was surprisingly calm now. She shrugged again and said, "Well, if the chocolates knocked us out that means that Nana did it, because she made them, so she and everyone else must be here somewhere. This must be some sort of Easter surprise. I reckon we're not having Easter dinner at The Burrow after all."

Teddy wasn't so sure; he surveyed the room, sceptical. "But then, where are we? And why weren't they here when we woke up?"

"Maybe she expected you to eat more chocolate and the others to eat less. And maybe we're at Hogwarts. This is a little like Professor Nott's quarters; he invited us and Mum and Dad to tea in his rooms a few times. It's very posh, like this place."

Teddy looked around a little more optimistically. "But not just like this, right? Hm... Maybe it's Professor Borodin's quarters?" he mused, hoping ardently that he was wrong; although the new History of Magic master gave him good marks and seemed favourably disposed toward him, due to his being responsible (with Nate) for his getting the job, he somehow doubted that the rather priggish professor would invite Teddy's entire extended family to use his Hogwarts residence for their Easter dinner.

One of the other children groaned a little amidst the contented snores; Julian started to move, showing signs of waking. Nate shook him vigorously. "Jules! Wake up!"

When he had finally opened his eyes Teddy, Nate and Ruby explained what had happened, as far as they knew. Julian looked around, very interested, but could offer no alternative explanation for what had occurred apart from Nate's grandmother having a rather weird sense of humour. Which gave Teddy another revelation.

"Humour!" he cried, slapping himself on the brow. "I'll bet Nana didn't make these eggs herself at all--I'll bet she bought them from the twins! Your uncles," he explained to Ruby, who grimaced disdainfully.

"I knew what you meant. But--I'm not so sure. A couple of times when Mum was talking to Nana in the last week she was talking about making the eggs herself..."

"Well, then, Fred and George came over and put something in the chocolate when she wasn't looking. However it happened, I'll just bet you that they're at the bottom of it!"

He felt almost happy now, for what harm could come from one of Fred and George's pranks? His dad had been surviving their senses of humour for years now, and the worst that had ever happened to him had been temporarily turning into poultry. It would be all right; Fred and George were just being funny.

"And maybe this is their place; didn't they move out of the flat above the shop? Said they got a nicer flat in Muggle London, did a bit of decorating, too, to make it more wizarding. That would explain the ceiling," he added, pointing. Ruby and Julian squinted up at it and Nate examined it again through his one good lens.

Now Ruby was the sceptical one. "I don't know... doesn't seem very them, does it? I reckon they could have just told the artist to paint whatever he liked, but all of this seems pretty un-Fred-and-George, at least to me. They've told me and Rory about loads of things they've done--Mum is afraid we'll get ideas, but she doesn't always manage to stop them in time--and this is just different."

They couldn't seem to agree on whether Fred and George had anything to do with their predicament, but while they were arguing about this the other children eventually awoke, one at a time. The older ones wanted to know where they were and why; Teddy and Nate had to admit that they didn't know. Upon waking, Frances started to cry but Marguerite picked her up and sang to her in French, quieting her; she leaned her head on Marguerite's shoulder, thumb thrust into her mouth. This also served to entertain little Charlotte and Diana for a while, but soon all three of the babies--and the youngest boys as well--were displaying signs of crossness and irritability. Keeping order was sapping both Teddy's stamina and his patience; somehow, even though Nate was the oldest among them, everyone had started looking to him to solve petty disputes (of which there were plenty, every few minutes, it seemed).

Teddy wasn't able to get very far in exploring the room and trying to work out where they were because of the squabbles he was constantly being asked to arbitrate, so he put Nate to work trying to open the shutters on the windows, but they seemed to be latched shut in some invisible way, possibly magic, in which case there wasn't much Nate could do, especially without a wand. (His was also missing.)

When Teddy's stomach started making almost as much noise as the whining Hal and Cedric, he realised what the problem with the little ones was: they were hungry. Ruby and Rory were sniping at each other as well in a way he'd become used to; they habitually did this when waiting for dinner at St Clare's Chapel. He wasn't certain what time it was, as he didn't have a watch, but it felt as if it had been a long time since they'd eaten the drugged chocolates. He wondered whether whoever had brought them here had completely forgotten about them.

"Quiet!" he cried suddenly, trying to cut through the noise of Ruby and Rory's disagreement, Marguerite shushing Frances, Charlotte and Diana, Julian and Percy having a pillow fight and Hal and Cedric each pulling the other's hair.

No one noticed.

Sighing, he strode to one of the tall doors on the wall opposite the towering, shuttered windows and started pounding on the green-painted wood, shouting, "Hello! Is anyone there? We've been in here for a long time and we're hungry! Hello? Anyone? Oi!"

To his surprise he heard footsteps on the other side of the door; he backed up to the couches where the other children were. When one of the doors started to open the others finally stopped making noise, even the babies, and Nate turned around and put his hands behind his back where he stood at one of the windows, trying to seem as if he had not been trying to open the shutters.

Two hulking figures entered, wearing long black robes with hoods pulled up over their heads and eerie white masks on the faces under the hoods. They both had their wands drawn and one of them closed the door and stood in front of it, wand at the ready, should any of them get any ideas about bolting.

Teddy glanced at the others; the twins were obviously terrified, their eyes large and round, and he could see that Marguerite was trembling on her chair as she held Frances and Charlotte closer to her chest. Julian and Percy looked at each other uncertainly while Hal and Cedric pulled their little sister, Diana, closer and made her sit between them, all three staring at their captors in fright.

"So. You all right?" came a slightly thick, unhurried voice from under a hood. Teddy regarded the others, then the hulking figure, who seemed to be male. Male and very solid. Teddy then glanced at Nate, who was still standing by the window, but Nate did not move. It was up to Teddy to speak for the others. He stood and stepped forward, barely coming up to the chest of the large wizard who'd spoken.

"Where are we? How did we get here?" he demanded, trying to keep his voice from shaking, wishing he could see their faces; somehow he didn't think they'd be as frightening then. He stood his ground, swallowing, waiting for a response. The man seemed to be peering at him with interest through the eye-slits of his mask, and Teddy trembled when a pale, meaty hand reached out and held his jaw, then turned his face from side to side, examining his left and right profiles.

Suddenly the hand left him again; Teddy rubbed his jaw where it had been held. The wizard turned to the one standing guard at the door, saying excitedly, "Oi, Greg! He really does look just like him!" Many people would have said this somewhat urgently, but the wizard's speech was as laconic as before.

"No, he don't. Not just like. Different eye colour. And no scar, o'course," came the equally unhurried response from "Greg", although he sounded a little more alert than Not-Greg.

"Well, yeah, I can see that, but look! 'Mazing, innit?" the large wizard mused, tilting his head slowly to examine Teddy, as if he'd appear different from an angle.

Greg did agree that Teddy's resemblance to his father was amazing, which made Teddy wonder what sort of kidnappers these could be. When they were talking to each other they weren't very frightening at all. They even seemed rather childlike, which gave him an idea.

"Who do I look like?" Teddy asked innocently.

"You know who!" Not-Greg said. "No, I don't mean You-Know-Who," he went on, shaking his head. "You don't look nothing like him, o'course. Him! Harry Potter!"

Teddy smirked. "Well, he is my father. I don't know, though..."

"What don't you know?" Not-Greg asked him.

"I don't know how you can claim that I look just like my father when you've probably only seen photos. Everyone thinks they know what he looks like."

Not-Greg snorted as he laughed. "Oh, I know what Harry Bleeding Potter looks like. I should do; went to school with him for seven years. And I had my face up in his more than once, showing him a thing or two with my fists," he added with what seemed half-hearted menace. Teddy tried not to smile; he'd managed to get Not-Greg to reveal a little bit about himself and wanted him to reveal more without realising he'd done it.

Teddy shrugged eloquently. "Oh, okay. If you say so. Sure, whatever you say; you went to school with Harry Potter and you beat him up. Uh-huh," he added, trying to sound as unconvinced as possible. He glanced at the twins out of the corner of his eye and to his relief the girls seemed to understand what he was doing; Ruby covered her mouth and laughed into the palm of her hand, while Rory tried to hold her mouth shut, her eyes merry, before failing and bursting into laughter, which she immediately tried to stifle with a hand, like Ruby. "And my sisters sound so convinced, too," Teddy said, in a voice that was as patronising as he could manage. His mother had scolded him for this more than once, telling him that at thirteen he was far too young to speak in a patronising tone of voice to his own mother, but now he was glad he'd had some practice at this.

Not-Greg could tell that Teddy's words were not sincere. "I did so go to school with'im! Had Potions until sixth year and Care of Magical Creatures in years three, four and five! Played Quidditch against him, too, and wasn't he just shaking to see one of us hitting a Bludger at him! Don't tell me I don't know Harry Potter!" he proclaimed, poking a beefy finger in the middle of Teddy's chest.

Teddy's heart was beating very fast, so that it felt as if it was going to leap out of his chest. But this wasn't because of the enormous finger poking at his ribcage. Bloody hell, he thought.

I know who they are.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Penelope's vision cleared and she looked around; she didn't do magic very often and was a little concerned about Apparating to The Burrow, in case she was rusty at it, but she didn't want to put up with the chaos of the Knight Bus, let alone the time-delay from waiting for the bus to go to any stops that were before hers. She needed to get to the Weasley house and she needed to get there now.

As soon as she arrived she knew that something was terribly wrong, but that wasn't a shock after reading the letter from Percy.

Percy. She had no doubt that the letter really was from him. After she read it, the world made so much more sense, although there were also things that she knew now that made her mentally cringe. I went to bed with Draco Malfoy, was the first cringe-worthy thought. If she'd taken the Knight Bus she wouldn't be able to tell whether she was spewing because of the ride or because of thinking about what she'd done with Malfoy.

Nate and Julian. He's going to hurt my little boys. It didn't matter that Nate was fourteen and Julian eight; they would always be her little boys. She knew it was a hazard of being a single mother, but despite knowing that Severus would do anything for Julian (and Nate as well) and despite "Percy" having returned (although now she understood why he had never really seemed attached to Nate), she was the one who was responsible for them on a daily basis, at least until Nate had gone off to Hogwarts. And even then, she wrote to him daily, sent him little care-packages, and thought of him often. Julian wouldn't be ready to go off to Hogwarts for another three years and she was glad of that; he missed his brother dreadfully and talked often about being able to see Nate more often once he was at school with him, even though they would only overlap for one year, since Julian's first year in school would be Nate's last.

When I get my hands on Draco Malfoy, she thought, I am going to kill him. The garden of The Burrow was a strange sight; wicker chairs that had been standing in a circle had been hastily vacated, it seemed, for some of them had been tipped over and not righted. The remains of Easter baskets lay scattered about, the shells of chocolate eggs littering the ground; for some reason there were garden gnomes lying next to the eggs, snoring. While this seemed odd to her--she seemed to remember that gnomes preferred to sleep underground--she didn't dwell on it. Her sons were more important than gnomes.

She heard anxious voices coming from the kitchen, including Harry's distinctive voice rising authoritatively above the rest, and she hurried across the vegetable patch, heedless of the seedlings she was crushing under the heels of her trainers. She'd been planning a quiet weekend at home, since the boys weren't going to be with her, and it certainly didn't occur to her, before Apparating to the Weasleys' house, to put on more appropriate "wizarding" clothes than her old jeans, a stretched-out cotton jumper and her battered trainers. She didn't care that she didn't look like a proper witch--or even a proper adult, according to her mum. She just wanted to protect her sons.

Everyone was crushed into the kitchen and pandemonium reigned. Harry stood at the head of the battered old table, leaning on it with his hands; he seemed like he was biting his tongue while Molly Weasley spoke:

"Those eggs haven't been out of my sight! I made all of them myself; how could they be drugged?" Her wild red-and-grey hair flew about her head in a tangle and tear-tracks were clearly evident on her cheeks. Her husband put his arm around her shoulder; he was the first one to notice that Penelope had entered.

"Penelope!" he cried, blanching. "Did you come to get, erm, because you see, if you did... We're doing our best to work out what happened, but--"

Penelope shook her head; she didn't have the patience to deal with Arthur's inability to finish a sentence right now, nor the guilt with which he seemed to be wrestling. She glanced around the room quickly but did not see Percy (or anyone pretending to be him). "I came because I know exactly what's happened to--to the children," she said, her voice shaking as she raised the fist in which she grasped the parchment the real Percy had sent to her. At the last minute she remembered to be concerned for all of the children, not just her own sons; Percy had told her that Nate and Julian weren't the only ones in danger. "And I know where they are."

"You do?" Molly gasped. "But how--? Oh, dear! We should get Percy down here; he went up to the bathroom..."

"No!" Penelope cried quickly. "You can't! Then he'll know--" She stopped abruptly, looking at Percy's parents, then at Harry, who was frowning deeply; clearly, he'd taken charge of the crisis. "You see," she tried to explain, dropping her voice and glancing nervously toward the doorway to the hall, "that isn't Percy."

Molly stared at her in disbelief. "What? But he was--he was just giving the children horsey rides on his back a little while ago... Did someone kidnap him as well? And take his place?" she whispered in horror. She turned in tears to Arthur. "Just when we'd got him back, he's been taken from us again..."

Penelope didn't argue about the "just"--Molly made it sound as if Percy had walked in the door five minutes earlier--but answered her, "No. You never had him back. He's been an imposter the entire time. So that he could do this, take our kids..."

Harry was solemn. Holding out his hand, his voice low and even, he said, "Can I see that parchment, Penelope?"

She nodded, glad that he was here, and walked to the head of the table to give him Percy's letter. He read it quickly, Ron, Ginny and Hermione craning to see it over his shoulder, and the three of them gasped as one as they read what Percy had written; Harry did not gasp but drew his lips together into a grim line, his eyes glittering with menace as he ground out the hated name between clenched teeth:

"Malfoy."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's Crabbe and Goyle, Draco Malfoy's old cronies, Teddy thought, hoping that his face didn't show that he'd had this epiphany. Harry had told him several amusing stories about the pair of them. Was this an old vendetta, then? Why had they kidnapped the other kids as well if this was about Harry? He thought he remembered Harry giving first names to Crabbe and Goyle but he couldn't remember them; on the off chance that "Greg" went with "Goyle" he decided that Not-Greg was Crabbe.

Teddy shrugged again, hoping neither one of them would hex him. "I said okay. You don't have to be so defensive. If you say you knew him, you knew him. Fine. The only thing is--the little kids are pretty hungry. If you're going to kidnap us can you at least feed us?"

"And we're going to need nappies for the babies," Ruby added.

"And a bathroom. You can't expect us to relieve ourselves out in the open," Rory said, wrinkling her nose.

"One thing at a time!" Crabbe proclaimed, sounding a little disoriented at their quick words. Teddy wondered whether he grew confused when people talked too fast for him. "First--yeah, we're going to feed you. Kitchen's downstairs; I just need to charm the food up through the floor here," he said slowly. He took out his wand and appeared to be concentrating very hard on the table in front of the couch. He finally shouted a spell--Teddy couldn't understand what he'd said, as it was a bit garbled--and waved his wand, but nothing appeared on the table.

Crabbe swore, making Marguerite proclaim, "Language!" in such a stern and disapproving voice, her hands over the ears of the babies, that Crabbe turned to her and actually bowed.

"Erm, sorry, sorry, not used to little kids..."

Hal and Cedric and Diana peered under the table where the food was supposed to be. "Here it is!" Hal told the rest of them. "But--but most of it seems to be stuck in the floor."

Teddy crouched and looked under the table. Sure enough, some apples and bananas were protruding through the carpet, although a plate piled with toast seemed to be intact. Teddy straightened up.

"That's it? You put some fruit on a plate, made some toast, and that's what we're supposed to eat? Plus, we can't even eat the fruit, since it's only half through the floor. And there's nothing to drink."

"I made a pot of tea!" Crabbe told him, clearly embarrassed by his shoddy spellwork. "And there's milk for the babies!"

Cedric touched the carpet under the table, then pulled his hand away, making a face. "Yes. It's here. The tea and milk's in the carpet now," he said, with a serenity that reminded Teddy of his Aunt Luna. He stooped down again and confirmed this.

"Ced's right. It's sodden. Well, thanks for the effort, I suppose. You meant well." Teddy tried his best to sound like one of his most hated teachers back in the village school near Latere Farm; Mrs Ringgold had always made it sound as if she was commending Teddy or another student for their "effort" when the real meaning that usually came from her tone was that no one in the world could possibly have made less of an effort nor produced anything more inferior.

Crabbe seemed to get Teddy's meaning. "Well, I'd like to see you do better."

Yes, so would I, he thought. Just give me your wand... Teddy stood and looked as directly as he could at Crabbe's eyes, through the mask. "If you take us down to the kitchen we can probably fend for ourselves, and I promise that we'll behave. We just want to eat."

"And to go to the bathroom," Julian said in a pinched, high-pitched voice, his legs crossed and his face rather red.

Crabbe sighed, turning to Goyle, who hadn't moved or said anything else. The two put their heads together, standing in front of the door and speaking in low whispers that still sounded very slow to Teddy; considering how long it took each of them to think and speak he wondered whether they'd get an answer within the hour.

Crabbe finally turned back to them and said, "Okay, here's how it is. I'll take half of you to the kitchen and he'll take half of you to the loo. We don't have any nappies but we could just use magic to clean them up, you know? Okay, let's go..."

"Magic? To clean the nappies? I'm sorry," Ruby said haughtily, "but I don't want you getting your wand near them. You'll splinch them or something."

Shut up, Ruby, Teddy thought irritably. However, her words seemed to have the effect of further undermining Crabbe's confidence in himself.

"Erm, okay, well... We'll look for something to use for nappies..."

"Couldn't you just go out and buy some nappies? Honestly, you didn't really think this through, did you? Kidnapping babies without any proper supplies..." Rory said, shaking her head over their lack of preparedness. Teddy was trying not to laugh now at the sight of his eleven-year-old sisters chastising their huge kidnappers.

"You can Apparate, can't you?" Teddy said suddenly, hoping to catch them off-guard. Crabbe looked back at Goyle, then at Teddy again.

"Well, no, not as such..."

Goyle laughed. "You kept Splinching yourself at the examination! They were going to name a ward after you at St Mungo's..."

Crabbe turned to him, and Teddy was certain that he was scowling under the mask. "You didn't do any better. Twelve miles off the mark was your best go, wasn't it? And your clothes about five miles on. I don't see you Apparating all over the country, do I?"

Teddy's sisters and Marguerite seemed to be tittering over the idea of Goyle's clothes going somewhere else when he Apparated and he was finding it hard not to laugh himself; instead he cleared his throat. "Anyway..."

Crabbe turned back to him. "Yeah. Right. Well, we're near some Muggle places where they have nappies. Probably. Easy as pie. But that'll have to wait until after you've all eaten and visited the loo. Once you're all back in here one of us'll go to a shop for nappies, all right?"

Teddy tried to seem pensive without revealing his elation. We're near Muggles! That's something, at least. We're not in the middle of nowhere, he thought. "Okay," he said to Crabbe. "That sounds all right." Teddy felt distinctly strange that these hulking men, who had wands while he did not, were deferring to him. He almost felt bad that he was trying to work out a way to get the better of them; they weren't terrible ogres, after all. He assumed that they were working for someone else and wondered what the someone else wanted with twelve children, including all four of Harry Potter's kids. Then he decided that he didn't care if he never found out; he just wanted to get them all safely home.

When they were escorted into the corridor by their captors, they found that the reason for the long, narrow drawing room was that they were in a long, narrow house; it was rather clear, once Crabbe and Goyle started leading them down the stairs to the kitchen and bathroom, that the house was only about nineteen or twenty feet wide, as the doorways opened only off one side of the stairs and Teddy could see how deep (or rather, how shallow) those rooms were. The wall on the other side of the staircase seemed to be dividing the house from the next property over and there were no windows in this wall. We must be in a terraced house in a city, Teddy thought. Most likely London.

As though reading his mind, Nate said, "This is a lot like the building where we have our flat," as he looked up and down the stairs.

"There's even a skylight at the top, like at our place," Julian added, pointing up to the roof of the house, several flights above their heads. He walked by Goyle's side, as he wanted to go to the bathroom first. Goyle looked up.

"Yeah," he mused softly, through his mask; "I like the window up there. Gives a lot of good light," he said slowly before continuing down the stairs, his hand on Julian's shoulder much more as if he were helping him, not threatening him.

Teddy nodded, acknowledging all three of them, but did not speak. That was good; if this was the same sort of house that Nate and Julian lived in they might know where things were that he wouldn't know, having only lived on Latere Farm and at Hogwarts, plus occasionally visiting St Clare's Chapel and Severus's cottage on the Isle of Wight. Nate and Julian walked down the stairs as though they were perfectly at home. He thought it possible that houses in other cities could be laid out like this one and like Nate and Julian's, but the possibility that this meant that they were in London was very encouraging to Teddy; if they could only get outside they stood a chance of escaping. They could even be quite close to the Clearwater flat, or if not in the same neighbourhood, they might at least be someplace that Nate recognized.

As he sat in the huge old basement kitchen eating some chicken under Crabbe's watchful gaze, Teddy glanced at little Percy and at Rory and Ruby, who were feeding Charlotte and Frances in between feeding themselves; Nate, Julian, Hal, Cedric, Marguerite and Diana had gone to the bathroom with Goyle. Yeah, he thought, feeling more dispirited now; a dozen kids from babies to teenagers are going to be really inconspicuous travelling around London--or anywhere.

He wondered how they had come to be in this house in the first place. Floo powder, perhaps? That would explain why many of them were complaining of aches and pains they hadn't had back at the Burrow. Teddy couldn't imagine someone carting the twelve of them along while riding a broom and the only other form of magical transportation he was familiar with besides the Hogwarts Express was the Knight Bus. He definitely could not picture someone taking twelve unconscious children on the Knight Bus (although a bus ride would also explain their bumps and bruises). The other passengers, even if they were busy spewing, would be bound to notice the kidnapping of a dozen children.

Especially if one of them was the spitting image of The Boy Who Lived.

Dad! Teddy thought suddenly. Dad'll do something. He'd never stand by and let someone take his kids. This made him feel a little bit better, as he remembered some of the things he'd read about his dad doing when he was young, but then he thought, Would Dad have just waited around for someone else to save him? Or would he have tried doing something about it himself?

He swallowed his food and watched the other children, his three sisters, his step-cousin who was named after Nate's dad--when Uncle Ron and Aunt Luna thought he was dead--and he looked at Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom's little girl, thinking of his father telling him that Hermione and Neville were like a brother and sister to him. He thought of Percy's brothers and sister, their cousin Marguerite, and of Nate, the best mate anyone could have, and his thin, weedy little brother, Severus's son, who was also Teddy's little brother now. And he knew that it wasn't just up to him to speak for them all.

It was up to him to save them all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Draco had left the Weasleys' kitchen for three reasons: first, he really did need to use the loo; second, he knew that his Polyjuice Potion would be wearing off soon and he wanted to spend some time alone, as himself, before looking like Percy again; and third, he'd been having some difficulty keeping a straight face and feigning concern over the missing children. Stupid blood traitors! They have no idea who they're dealing with.

He'd been gone for almost an hour and would need to return to the kitchen and play the role of the distraught father without letting on that he had drugged Molly's Easter Eggs as she was making them, playing the helpful son, assisting his "beloved" mum. Blergh, he thought, picturing Molly's flushed face as she heated the chocolate with her wand and caused it to be poured into the moulds. Perhaps, he reflected, I'd have turned out an idiotic blood traitor as well, with her for a mother.

He started to open the bathroom door but then decided that that wasn't very efficient; it was ridiculous how little the Weasleys used magic! Always walking up and down stairs, never doing much of anything to improve their sorry excuse for a house...

He decided to Apparate to the garden instead of walking back down the stairs to the crowded kitchen so that he could eavesdrop under the open window near the cooker; that way he could laugh all he liked (after putting a charm on himself) instead of continuing to pretend to be so concerned about the children. He'd just leave the bathroom door locked and Apparate back upstairs if they started wondering what was taking him so long. In a trice he was standing in the garden, near the hedge; he crept around the unconscious garden gnomes who'd evidently eaten what was left of the Easter eggs until he reached the kitchen window and settled himself comfortably on a burlap-covered flower bed, ready to be amused.

However, to his surprise, what he heard was Harry Potter's voice growling, "Malfoy."

Draco immediately felt his face all over; yes, he definitely looked like Percy Weasley; he could also see the freckled arms and red hair out of the corner of his eye, and the glasses he wore were still necessary to correct his vision. Potter evidently hadn't spotted him through the window, looking like himself. So what was going on?

Suddenly there was a flurry of noise as loud footsteps pounded on the worn old kitchen floor, into the hall, and up the rickety stairs. "Harry! Ron!" Granger called. There was a distant sound of voices shouting spells as the rest of the party in the kitchen also ran into the hall and up the stairs. A crack of magic produced a splintering noise--probably the bathroom door. This was followed by the crash of breaking glass and a lot of very loud swearing; Draco was certain that he even heard Molly swear. Draco broke out in a cold sweat, glad that he'd Apparated to the garden and wasn't finding out firsthand what spells Scarhead and the Weasel were using in the bathroom. They know I'm not really Percy!

He lifted his wand to Disapparate, but then a nagging voice in his head said, But how do they know? As he pondered this, he heard footsteps return to the kitchen; he crouched even lower against the wall of the house and held his breath. He was terrified, but he had to find out what had happened. He kept his wand clutched tightly in his hand, ready to make his escape as soon as he learned how much they knew.

"Already gone." That was Granger, the stupid bint.

"We should have known," Arthur Weasley said, sighing noisily. "I can't believe--"

Another cluster of feet returned to the kitchen, and the accompanying voices overlapped each other in a frantic conversation that had the odd effect of making Draco feel much calmer; they evidently thought he'd already got away. He was safe for the moment. Plus, he had a bit of insurance in his pocket...

"But what if Pansy's wand isn't very--effective?" said a familiar voice after the hubbub died down a little more and he could make out individual voices.

Penelope! What's she doing here?

"I think it'll do. Pansy actually didn't do too badly in school; it seems to have served her well," came Potter's voice. Then Granger must have done something because he went on, "Yes, Hermione, I know she wasn't in your league. But she did get a handful of OWLs and went on to sit a few NEWTs, which is more than you can say for Crabbe and Goyle."

The Weasel--Draco was certain that it was him--made a disgusted snorting noise that made Draco want to hex him. "Too right. That'll help, it will, that they're involved. I think you're right, Harry. Pansy's wand against those two incompetents shouldn't be a problem."

Pansy against Crabbe and Goyle? Draco thought. What's going on here?

Penelope spoke again. "I couldn't believe it when that eagle-owl started rapping at my window. Scared me out of my wits! But I was so glad to read the letter...although not to know that, well, you can imagine..."

"Yeah, unfortunately," the Weasel said quickly. "At least now we know. I'm going to get my kids back and then I am going to kill Draco Malfoy."

"Get in line," Granger told him. "If he hurts Frances..."

Bloody hell! Draco thought. They really do know everything! But how? And how do they think they're getting their kids back? They don't know where they are, and couldn't get into the house anyway. We'll be through with them long before they even get close, and by then they'll all just be lifeless bodies, he thought with satisfaction.

Draco decided that it was time to leave. He knew that he should return to his house and ask Pansy just what they had meant by talking about her going up against Crabbe and Goyle. Had she betrayed them all? Had she meddled with the Polyjuice Potion? Perhaps Zabini was right about her. I hate it when Zabini's right, he thought grumpily.

But just as he raised his wand to Apparate back to Wiltshire, he heard Harry say, "So has everyone here read the parchment about Zabini's house? According to the letter, Narcissa Malfoy wrote it herself, and she's Zabini's Secret Keeper, so that amounts to her telling anyone who reads this."

"Pass it here," Arthur said urgently; then he read it aloud: "Blaise Zabini lives at number three, Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London. Got it."

Bloody hell! Draco thought again, sweat beading on his forehead. They know where to go!

He Disapparated a second later; there was no time to lose. They had to move the children to Wiltshire as quickly as possible!

And he had to decide what to do with that blood-traitor, Pansy Parkinson.

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