The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice

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'Dumbledore has seen to it that we can't get at the Potter boy, or even find him,' said Lucius Malfoy. 'So we can't use him to bring the Dark Lord back. But all these items once belonged to the Dark Lord, they were all used by him, and they hold a resonance that I'm certain we can use to restore him to life. This book even contains his own preserved memory. But it will only work if we can sacrifice a child of about Potter's age.'

'Where are we going to find a kid that age?' asked Crabbe, looking around the tower room as if expecting to see one amongst the magical equipment.

'Well, if you can't think of anything better, what about Vincent? He's the right age.'

Crabbe's jaw dropped, and he stared at Lucius.

'Oh, close your mouth. Have you never heard of schools? Never mind, it was a rhetorical question. No, you don't have to answer it. We have to make this work, if only because when the Dark Lord returns, I'll be able to have an intelligent conversation with someone!'

'Schools?' asked Goyle.

'Places children go to? Neatly sorted -- by age? So all you have to do is go and find a nice Muggle school, not in the village, but that town we flew over, and bring back a child that we won't care about. That means your son will be safe, Crabbe. Use that charm I taught you first, though. We don't want some Mudblood child to mess up the sacrifice with accidental magic! Oh, and in case you have trouble finding a child the right age -- try and remember what Vincent and Gregory look like? Your sons? Yes, them. Don't forget to take my Cloak.'

*

'This looks like the right one,' said Crabbe, pushing open the classroom door and walking into a room of eight-year-olds.

'Hey! What do you think you're doing in here?' demanded the indignant teacher.

'Stupefy!' said Goyle, pointing his wand, and the teacher collapsed to the floor. Most of the class gasped, though a few clapped.

'Are you magicians?' asked a plump blond boy near the front.

'Yes, kid,' said Crabbe. 'And we're looking for a kid to take on an adventure with us.'

Many of the kids jumped up from their desks at his words. Goyle hurriedly said, 'But we got to test you first to see who's the best to take.'

At the word 'test' the children sat glumly back down again. A girl with freckles asked, 'Is it going to be a difficult test?'

'No, I just wave my wand and it'll make a glow round all your heads. Then we'll choose one of you by looking at the glows.'

A brown-haired girl three rows back remembered what her parents had told her about not going anywhere with strangers. She hoped, hoped, hoped that they wouldn't choose her, that there wouldn't even be a glow round her head.

Goyle waved his wand and an aura appeared around each kid's head. None of the auras were very big, suggesting that while they might one day become the parents of a Mudblood, none of them would be getting their own letters from Hogwarts. Crabbe pointed to a pupil who didn't have any aura at all. 'That one?'

Goyle nodded, and with a gesture of his wand, the brown-haired girl was levitated from her desk to the front of the class. 'You're going on an adventure, kid!'

'I don't want to! Mum and Dad said I shouldn't!'

'Are you going to listen to them all your life?' asked Crabbe.

Goyle nudged him in the ribs and said, 'Yeah, she is. Think about it.'

'I don't want to go!' she insisted, turning back toward her desk. Crabbe sighed, and cast Stupefy on her too, catching her and putting her over his shoulder.

Goyle arranged the Invisibility Cloak over both their heads, to the amazement of the other kids in the class, and they walked out with their captive, unseen.

*

Sleep ... darkness ... a strange voice saying a word ... 'Enervate!'

The girl stirred, looked at the three men, one thin one and the two big men who came to the school, and at the strange room she was in, and screamed.

'Good, she looks about the right age. I don't know how, but you actually got this right,' said the thin man. To the girl, he said, 'I had you brought here.' He smiled, and not a nice smile. She didn't like him.

'Nobody can hear you, kid,' said the man who asked if she'd always listen to her parents. 'There's a spell to keep this room quiet. The boss is clever.'

She screamed again anyway. He might be lying, it might work, and if he wasn't, it still seemed worth trying in case she broke the spell.

'Silencio,' said the boss, gesturing with his wand, and the screaming stopped. 'That's better,' he said. The girl was still trying to scream, but couldn't even hear herself.

She realised that she had been tied down to a table, with ropes around her ankles and wrists. She struggled, but had stopped trying to scream. She looked wildly around the room and at the three men. What were they going to do? This didn't feel like an adventure -- it felt like being a prisoner, like the ones in some of her books.

The boss took some objects, and started to arrange them. 'These belonged to the Dark Lord,' he told her. 'We're going to revive him ... by killing you.' She struggled harder when she heard that, making him smile. Some old robes were spread across her, some jewelled rings were placed in a halo shape around her head and something like a magic wand was placed on her stomach. She tried to shake it off by struggling, but it didn't fall off. A book was placed almost over her heart.

'This diary holds a remnant of the Dark Lord's personality. Soon you will be nothing, and he will live again,' he gloated. 'You two, stand on either side of her.'

He himself stood by her head, holding a sharp-looking knife. He turned it slowly, letting it catch the light from the different candles in the room as it turned. The girl was growing more and more scared, and he just seemed to be enjoying it. She hated him.

'We've waited seven years for this day. I've collected together all these objects for just this purpose.' He grinned a horribly evil grin. 'I suppose that it would have been polite to find out your name for the history books, but you can't speak now, and I find your screaming annoying.'

'Who cares about one more Muggle anyway?' asked one of the big men.

'Very true, Goyle. She's not important. Only the result of her death matters.'

She watched him as he raised the knife up and looked into her terrified eyes. He smiled and ...

The walls shattered, and slabs of the ceiling thudded down into the room, falling all around the table she was on. Not even the smaller bits of debris hit her.

'Aurors!' spat Goyle, spinning around to see who was attacking, seconds before a slab knocked him to the floor. The sky showed through where the ceiling had been.

The boss also turned, dropping the knife on the floor. Another slab hit the other big man, leaving the boss the only one standing. The ropes around the girl's wrists and ankles were unfastening themselves, and she climbed off the table and ran away from him as he vanished with a pop sound.

The girl threw away the robes that had been put over her, which were starting to burn for some reason, jumped up onto one of the big stone bits and ran out of the space where there had been a wall. She was so terrified, she hadn't noticed how high she was until she looked back at the house with the tower she'd escaped from and saw the last bits of the roof falling on the table where she'd been. She was up in the sky, slowly drifting down to the ground. She didn't know how she was floating; maybe there was a good wizard helping her down. She couldn't see who had helped her escape. What had that other man shouted? Orross? Was that the wizard's name?

She reached the ground and thought of something worse than being so high up before ... she didn't know where she was. Suppose she'd been brought here through a wardrobe when she was asleep -- it would probably go to a room in the house, and she didn't want to go back there. Maybe there would be some nice centaurs, or dwarves, or ... well, anything would be better than those wizards! She hoped somebody could send her home.

She could see some houses and a path which might go there, and ran towards it.

*

The police had left, and the girl's parents were relaxing, now that she had been found, brought home and tucked up in bed. She was finally asleep, after her mother had soothed her by reading some stories to her which had no magic in at all.

'Ted, why do you think she said all those things about magic? She seemed really surprised to find she was just twenty miles away, and not in some fantasy world,' her mother asked.

Her husband shrugged. 'You heard the police. All this "nonsense" she told them began with what the other children told the teacher -- and she didn't knock him out, did she? She didn't walk twenty miles, either. They took her somewhere.'

'You don't believe it all, though?'

'She believes it, doesn't she? I don't know what really happened, but I suppose kidnappers somehow faked the magic tricks, and ... well, who knows why they did it? Who knows how she escaped, either -- we're just lucky she did. Very lucky. Anything could have happened to her.'

Amalthea nodded.

*

Fuming, Lucius decided the oafs must have got the charm wrong. Obviously, the girl was a Mudblood, and had used accidental magic to escape. Now, thanks to the oafs' mistake, it would be impossible to recreate the ritual -- he'd just had time to grab the Dark Lord's wand and diary, but the other items he needed were destroyed, and Reparo wouldn't restore their resonances. The diary might still be used to trap a child -- this time a known blood traitor, perhaps. The wand would have to be kept for the Dark Lord's return.

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