The Kidnapping

Chapter Two

A Fair Trade

Harry awoke the next morning from a blessedly dreamless sleep to hear Hedwig tapping on the window and managing to look a little annoyed.

"Wha - oh, sorry, Hedwig," he said, shaking his head to clear away his grogginess. He opened the window, and the snowy owl dropped a letter on his bed, and returned to her cage. Harry got out an owl treat for her, and she nipped his finger affectionately after eating it.

"Thanks, Hedwig," Harry said, ruffling her head feathers. Hedwig hooted in reply. Harry went back to his bed to check the letter... it was Sirius' reply! Hurriedly, he opened it up and hungrily read what his godfather had to say.

Harry,

Thanks for letting me know right away about your dream. I know you don't want to make too much of an issue out of it, as it's a nightmare, but I think you should let Dumbledore know about it. Nightmares don't usually change that dramatically, not even for wizards. I should also mention that Dumbledore wrote me yesterday as well, and told me that he, Snape, and that old bat Trelawney saw the fiery eye as well. Nobody knows what it means, but I'd bet Voldemort's got something to do with it.

I can tell you're still beating yourself up over Cedric. Harry, whatever you do, don't do that. You didn't know better, and neither did he. I know you already know that, but I know you're still feeling guilty all the same. It's too bad you're pretty well confined to barracks for now, since visiting with your friend Ron might be a good way to get your mind off things.

I'm doing okay myself, lying low at our mutual friends' place - Harry knew that he was referring to Lupin, but he couldn't use his Marauder nickname now that Pettigrew was loose - and I'm feeling and eating better than I have in ages.

Just remember to bring me up anytime your relatives start acting up - Harry grinned wickedly at reading this - and keep your eyes open. There's something in the air, and something big. This eye vision ties in with it somehow, but we'll have just have to wait and see how things play out. Try to avoid interacting with the wizarding world if you can help it, except for owling your friends, Dumbledore, and I. Wouldn't want anyone to trace you back to your home. I know Dumbledore has placed rather elaborate protections around your Aunt's place, but Voldemort can probably get through them eventually if he finds out where you live.

I'll try and stop by or something as Padfoot in a week or so: I'll owl you to time everything right. Good luck!

Love, Sirius

Harry checked the clock, and saw that he didn't have enough time to write a letter to Dumbledore. Aunt Petunia would soon be around to wake him up.

Harry's day was without much incident: Aunt Petunia nagged at him as always to do a good job, Uncle Vernon told him in no uncertain terms to behave himself before he went off to work, and Dudley made a few lame attempts at poking fun at him on his way out to the car his instructor came and picked him up in every weekday morning. The Dursleys had protested at first, saying that Dudley was a good boy and would of course be able to make his own way, but the Smeltings nurse had insisted upon third party enforcement of his weight-loss regimen. Smeltings had at least been kind enough to pay for the programme, but Harry suspected that was because Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had complained long and hard about how much it would cost.

He had to admit, it was getting results: Dudley, while still grossly overweight, was no longer wider than he was tall, and Smeltings actually had uniforms in its stock that fit him.

The mail and milk deliveries had arrived, and Harry was pleased to see two letters addressed to him. The first was from Ron, and thankfully only had one stamp on it - he had written the Weasleys and told them how to send letters through Muggle post properly, and the second was from Hermione, who of course would be expected to know how to write a Muggle letter, and who didn't yet have an owl.

Harry had thrown both letters on his bed before heading out to do his day's work. While he found it all repetitive and boring, he also had to admit that he was feeling rather proud of the fact that on his own efforts he was keeping the Dursley demesne in excellent shape: gleaming exterior walls, windows so clean they glinted, an evenly cut lawn, healthy trimmed tree, and of course the garden, which Aunt Petunia was going to take photos of tomorrow for the local gardening contest.

The inside was also kept quite clean as well, mainly thanks to Harry's efforts. Aunt Petunia got to spend the day yakking away with her friends and neighbours, trading gossip about anyone and everyone. Harry, in the meantime, when he finished his outdoor work, would come in, wolf down lunch, and start tidying up inside, dusting, vacuuming, doing the laundry (Harry had a pair of rubber gloves he used to handle Dudley's dirty laundry), and so on. Harry reckoned that the only thing Aunt Petunia did at this point was cook food.

By dinner time, with the rest of the Dursleys home, Harry had crossed off the last chore on his list and had done some of his homework. He planned on reading the letters his friends had sent him, and hoped to arrange to get at least two weeks away from the rest of the Dursleys at the end of the summer. Maybe get away for his birthday as well...

Harry's stomach gave a lurch. He managed to avoid flinching, but he realized that the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. He felt nervous, and he didn't know why. He felt a chill run down his spine. Was it Dementors?

He looked at his relatives. Dudley was looking pale, and his Aunt and Uncle had expressions of distress mixed with confusion on their faces.

"I'm feeling rather uneasy about something," Uncle Vernon said, turning purple and glaring at Harry. "And I imagine it has something to do with you, boy!"

Harry opened his mouth to protest, when a loud slam at the front door made Aunt Petunia shriek and jump out of her chair. All eyes turned towards the hallway, even though the front door wasn't visible from the dining room. The entire house seemed to vibrate as another blow from their unknown assailant struck the door.

Harry was reminded of his eleventh birthday, when Hagrid had arrived at the hut out on the islet to give him his Hogwarts letter. Somehow, he didn't think Hagrid was coming to call. Another chill of fear coursed through him... maybe Voldemort had found him at last? He discounted that almost immediately: his scar wasn't hurting.

Harry walked slowly out to face the doorway, while his relatives cowered behind cover. The journey seemed to take forever, and Harry felt as if he was exerting himself enormously to take each step. He felt himself trembling with an unnatural terror. All the while, the house reverberated as someone, or something, repeatedly rammed the front door.

Harry was facing the door from the kitchen entrance, a determined expression on his face as he tried to swallow down his fear. The door at last came off its hinges with a loud crash, and fell to the floor

Standing in the doorway was a tall, menacing, dark figure, hard to make out properly in the evening shade. It stood just over six feet, dressed in tall black leather boots and a thick black leather duster. Black driving gloves (also leather) adorned its hands, and it wore a thick black scarf and a motorcycle helmet. Harry also noticed it was carrying in its right hand a long, wicked looking sword, with all manner of unpleasant runes etched into the blade and along the spiked crosspiece.

Harry backed up as a fresh wave of terror threatened to overwhelm him. His wand! It was too far away now, hidden away up in his bedroom. The creature advanced into the house, raising its sword and stepping towards him, as two more like it came in right behind. Harry backed all the way into the kitchen, as the first sword-wielding creature kept him in its sights while the others went into the dining room to cover the Dursleys.

"Get-get out of my house!" Uncle Vernon cried in a hoarse, half-hearted way. Harry could hear Dudley whimpering from the dining room.

The three intruders said nothing in reply, merely waiting as Harry saw more people coming in the front door. The first was an old man in an expensive-looking black Muggle suit: in fact, he was also dressed entirely in black, tie, shirt, and all. He had penetrating grey eyes and sported a thick staff, which was jet black aside from a single crystalline orb set in its head. Two more came in, but between his assailant and the old man, Harry couldn't see who they were.

"Mr Harry Potter, I presume," the old man said, with an amused smirk on his face. "A pleasure to meet you, at long last. I feel it would be amiss of me to conduct this business without informing your legal guardians of the situation, so if you would be so good as to go into the dining room."

Harry cautiously stepped around the counter, his every move shadowed by the sword-wielding creature - Harry simply couldn't think of it as a human being - and went into the dining room, where the Dursleys were still trying to keep pieces of furniture between them and the razor-sharp swords.

The old man stepped into the dining room as well, and sat down. The two remaining people came into the dining room. One of them, Harry noticed, without much surprise, was Catherine Scott, wearing garb much like that of the old man, only with a knee-length skirt rather than pants. The other was a girl, probably close to his age, wearing a white t-shirt and plaid pyjama bottoms. She had a burlap sack over her head, so Harry didn't know who she was, but his gut wrenched with the feeling that he probably should.

"Ah, Mr Dursley," the old man continued with an aristocratic accent in his rich, smooth baritone. "I would be polite and introduce myself, but I wouldn't want my name falling into the hands of the authorities just yet. I'm here about your nephew."

"Someone will have called the police by now," Uncle Vernon said, trying to show courage that Harry was quite certain he wasn't feeling.

The old man raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. But I rather suspect none of your neighbours either know or care what is going on in these premises, thanks to a few well-placed apathy enchantments.

"Back to the business at hand, Mr Dursley. I would like to take young Mr Potter with me when I leave in a few minutes' time. I do plan on returning him unharmed, but it does mean that he won't be available to work around the house for some time to come."

Were it not for the fact that the old man was discussing his forced kidnapping, and he was being held at swordpoint, Harry would have almost found the situation comical. Vernon Dursley was faced with a dilemma: Harry was out of the house and possibly on the way to meeting the sort of sticky end that would mean he'd no longer have the teenaged wizard under his roof. That was good. But the offer to take Harry away was being made by a wizard who was using the threat of force to get what he wanted, and Harry was serving as a convenient source of free manual labour. On balance, Harry decided, his leaving would be considered a bad thing, if only because of the circumstances of his departure.

Uncle Vernon was working his mouth open and closed, but no sound was coming out. Not that his answer would mean anything, Harry thought. The old wizard wasn't exactly asking permission, was he?

The old wizard shifted to face Harry. "Now, Mr Potter, I understand you are obviously reluctant to surrender yourself. However, as you can see," he gestured with his staff towards the girl, "we have accounted for that possibility as well." He nodded, and Catherine Scott pulled the sack off the girl's head.

Harry gasped, and he felt like his insides had melted away. It was Cho! Her face was haggard and tear-stained, and the skin around her eyes was red and puffed-up. She had a cloth gagging her mouth. She looked at him with a plaintive expression. She looked weary and quite frightened.

Harry felt like he was going to explode, or maybe be sick; he was trembling with fear and pent-up rage. A vase in the connected lounge exploded, showering ceramics, dirt, and plant matter all over the room, though none of it reached the dining room. Cho and the Dursleys all started or flinched, but the old man, Catherine, and the three swordsmen were unmoved.

"Really, Mr Potter, I hope you can control yourself better than that," the old wizard said reprovingly. "In any case, I'm giving you ten seconds to agree to surrender willingly to me, or else Ms Chang's parents will be finding their daughter's head in a box on their front steps tomorrow morning. Do I make myself clear?"

Harry felt his heart wrench, and he gazed at Cho. It's my fault you're here, he thought, looking her in the eyes. They're using you to get me.

"Five seconds, Mr Potter."

Harry felt as if his insides were going to collapse in on themselves, and he slumped over, a defeated expression on his face. "I'm sorry," he whispered to Cho.

The old man smiled once more. "A wise choice, Mr Potter. Ms Scott will help you pack your possessions and bring them to the car." He turned again to face Cho, and spoke to her in a disarmingly gentle tone. "There you go, Ms Chang, you'll be home in a mere matter of hours."

She continued to gaze steadily at Harry, her expression unreadable. Harry dully followed Catherine towards the stairs and his bedroom, and he heard the heavy footsteps of one of the sword-wielding enforcers behind him. He was surprised to notice that the agonizing terror of being in its presence was diminished by an overpowering wave of guilt.

The look in her eyes, he thought to himself. When had she been taken? Last night, in the early hours after midnight, perhaps, with the duster-clad creatures surrounding her house, making her skin crawl with unnatural fear?

Harry didn't realize he had slowed his pace, since he got a rough shove from behind. He felt the chill off the flat of the sword's blade as it pressed into his back. He stumbled forward and hurried the rest of the way. He went up the stairs, and began packing all his meagre possessions as fast as he could.

As he pulled his trunk out to the middle of the room and began stuffing clothes in it willy-nilly, he realized that he had a glimmer of hope, at least once Cho had been returned to her home: his Invisibility Cloak was hidden away at the bottom of the trunk, and he was fairly certain that his having one wasn't common knowledge. A slight thrill ran through his stomach at the thought, and he quickly got back to packing his broom servicing kit to keep the room's other two occupants from noticing his hesitation.

= = = = =

Snape was sitting in his Potions classroom, on the chair from which he customarily watched his students going about their work, every so often getting up to patrol, to chastise every last one of those clumsy children, and to offer sparse praise to the few gifted ones.

Or to butter up the Malfoy brat, he thought to himself. He winced, breaking his vacant expression, and looked down at the note. It had come in an unmarked envelope, save for the picture of a beaker stamped in the sealing wax: that was how they'd known it was for Snape. In the privacy of his office, Snape had opened it, and read the letter. He looked down. The text hadn't changed in the three hours since the owl post had dropped it off:

Meet us at Stonehenge, on Monday night at midnight. Don't be late. ~W.

And then there was the tiny Dark Mark etched in ink onto the bottom of the parchment.

Severus Snape, you are going to die tomorrow night, he thought to himself for what had to be the thousandth time. The letter was from Wormtail, obviously, and there was only one other person in the world whom Wormtail was currently associating with on a regular basis. So there was no question as to who the "us" was. Snape was due for a meeting with Voldemort. Wormtail was sending the message and would be in attendance only because the Dark Lord didn't trust the incompetent fool to manage on his own in whatever location Voldemort was using as a headquarters.

Snape didn't consider himself the type to wax melancholy, but he knew that every day since the Third Task, and every waking hour he spent since he had first met with Lord Voldemort this summer, he had been expecting a letter of this sort. He looked at the empty draught on his desk: a potion to keep himself awake. He hadn't been able to sleep: the one time he'd tried in the Hospital Wing, he had just ended up reliving every Cruciatus curse he'd ever been exposed to in his nightmares. Hardly what one could call restful, now was it? His lips curled upwards in a self-deprecating grimace.

His head snapped up when Dumbledore burst into the room, his face blazing with urgency, and Snape was disquieted to see worry lines on the Headmaster's face. Dumbledore looked at Snape, seemingly only barely taking in the potion and the parchment in his hands. The Headmaster spoke the three words Snape had been expecting since the end of the Triwizard Tournament:

"Harry's in trouble,"

= = = = =

"Some magical beings forced their way into his house fifteen minutes ago," Dumbledore explained as they rushed towards the main entrance. "He's still there, but I don't know for how much longer."

"How did they find him?" Snape asked. "You just told me late last night that he has a Fidelius Charm on his home."

"Yes, I did," Dumbledore said, with a note of self-deprecation slipping into his voice. "However, his relatives were required to make his adoption known to the Muggle authorities."

"Ah, yes," Snape said, his voice lacking the cutting tone it would have normally taken at this point - he never spoke in that way to Dumbledore - "the paper trail."

He thought for a moment as they raced towards the edge of the grounds - soon they would be able to Apparate out to Little Whinging.

"The beauty of it is that Voldemort and his followers would never think of using Muggle records to find him," he said. Dumbledore managed to flash a brief smile before replying.

"He and his followers have a complete disdain of Muggles and their methods, a blind spot that I hope we can eventually exploit," the Headmaster said.

With that, they had gone through the outer gates, and were free to go where they wished. Both men's wands were out in a heartbeat.

"Arabella's house, on the count of three," Dumbledore said quietly, pausing for just an instant before continuing. "One... two... three!"

An instant later, they were in the living room that could only belong to a very old woman who liked cats. Of course, Snape knew that Arabella Figg was a very old woman who happened to like cats, and owned probably more than her fair share. One of them was already rubbing against his leg, mewing at him. He looked down at it, scowling.

"Look, in the kitchen," Dumbledore said. Snape went cold when he saw a pair of feet, belonging to someone lying prone on the floor. They hurried in, and found the old woman sprawled out on the floor, a can of soup half-opened spilled out beside her and a Muggle can opener still in her hand. Old Mrs Figg, being a Squib, had quite easily slipped into the role of old Muggle widow so that she could keep an eye on Harry. Dumbledore had already run his wand over her and checked her pulse, Muggle fashion.

"She's alive, but unconscious. A powerful charm indeed to broach the wards around her home," he said, looking up at Snape.

"Death Eaters, you think?" Snape said, licking his lips nervously.

"No, they wouldn't have left her alive if they'd bothered to do this much to keep her from interfering," Dumbledore said. "Whoever did this wanted her out of the picture, but knew that casting the Killing Curse in this neighbourhood would trip several magical alarms."

They rushed out of the house, stopping at the edge while Dumbledore sniffed in the air.

"Someone has cast several potent Apathos Charms quite recently," he said. They both looked down towards Number Four Privet Drive. Several figures were emerging from the house in the murky twilight. Snape couldn't see details that well, but it looked like the door had been broken down.

"They have Harry with them, and if I'm not mistaken that's Miss Chang," Dumbledore said, his wand in his hand, a definite note of anger in his tone as he strode purposefully towards the four-door sedan that was parked on the street that the small group coming out of Number Four was headed for.

"They've spotted us," Snape said darkly as one of the group, an old man in an all-black suit and wielding a staff that was almost certainly magical gestured towards them. Three tall figures dressed up like some sort of Muggle motorcyclists and wielding very unpleasant looking swords turned to face them and spread out along the street, advancing slowly to meet the two wizards.

The one in the centre of the formation lifted the visor of its motorbike helmet. Snape peered at it, squinting, as he slowed to a stop to keep his distance, but he couldn't see anything where there should have been a face.

"Do not interfere," the sword-wielding creature hissed, in a voice that made a shudder run down Snape's spine. There was something unearthly and altogether evil about that voice.

"You will not stop us," Dumbledore said quite calmly. Snape wished he had the older wizard's unflinching sense of certainty.

As if in defiance, the creature screeched... Snape wasn't quite sure how to describe it, actually. It was like a human scream, only so high in pitch, so piercing in quality that no human could ever hope to produce a sound like that, and it invoked in him a terror that he could never remember feeling before. He quailed, stepping backwards, but Dumbledore remained where he stood, immovable, unshakeable.

Snape rallied himself, and took two steps forward. "Expelliarmus!" he shouted, brandishing his wand in duelling position. The curse slammed full-bore into one of the flanking creatures, but Snape noted with dismay that all it did was stagger back a few steps. Its sword was still in hand, which was the important detail, in any case.

"They've accomplished their mission," Dumbledore said quietly, his voice tinged with regret. "They delayed us just long enough."

Snape looked past the three swordsmen and saw the sedan lurching into motion, as someone threw three pieces of trash onto the street as it set off. They tumbled onto the pavement and transformed into large, fearsome looking horses. All the details of this operation, it seemed, had been carefully looked after.

The middle creature let out another spine-tingling cry, and the three of them turned and ran for their mounts, sheathing their swords within the depths of their dusters. They got up on the horses rapidly and with ease, and were hot on the heels of the car. The car, followed by the three riders, sped around a corner and out of sight, and seconds later was longer audible.

"Damn!" Snape shouted, hurling his wand to the ground.

Dumbledore stood there, his posture still calm and unruffled, his face pensive, and thoughtful.

Snape picked his wand up, and looked at the man who had saved his life, literally and metaphorically, all those years ago.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

Dumbledore looked at him. "The obvious thing, of course. Try to find out who has captured Harry, what they want with him, and how we can stop them."