The Kidnapping

Chapter Four

Ambush at the Airport

Harry stared dully out into the English countryside. He had gotten precious little sleep, between being torn up with guilt over Cho's role as bait in his capture, and overcome with the magically-generated terror that the five creatures sitting on either side of him generated. He had overheard the old man calling them wraiths, and he had begun to think of them using that vocabulary as well.

The ride to Cho's home had been a nightmare for Harry. He had spent the entire journey seeing Cedric's lifeless eyes looking up at nothing into the sky, and hearing Voldemort's cold, high, inhuman voice, intoning "Kill the spare," again and again. He had been quite surprised when Cho had been unceremoniously dumped in front of her parents' house, alive and for the most part unhurt.

They had sped off at once after the two wraiths who had been keeping watch over the Chang residence got in the car, and they had gone on until they had reached an owlery, where Catherine Scott had got out with an envelope in her hand.

"A ransom note, of course," the old man had told him. "Just as Ms Chang was bait to secure you, so will you be bait to secure others." After Catherine had returned, they had set out again.

"We are going to a small airport," the old man was saying. "I have a private jet there, which will be taking us to the United States."

So we're going to America? Harry thought to himself, jolting out of the reverie induced by sleeplessness and fear. His insides were still churning, but he was thinking properly again.

"Father," Catherine said, pointing towards the airport, which was now visible in the distance. "There are no ground crews out on the fields, or anyone else for that matter. That's a bit unusual, don't you think?"

"Yes, it is," the old man said, looking towards the airstrip thoughtfully. "We'd best be on our guard. Someone may be preparing an unfriendly reception for us."

Harry felt a thrill of hope. He knew that Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape had seen him being led away from the Dursleys: maybe they'd been able to track them down!

The sedan pulled into the empty car park, and the eight of them got out. The old man took a small velvet bag out of his jacket pocket and opened the boot while Catherine handed Hedwig's cage to one of the wraiths. Hedwig had made too much of a fuss around the wraiths, so they'd put her in a stasis spell. She didn't need food, water, or air, but she was totally unresponsive until the spell was removed.

The old man waved his staff, and Harry's trunk floated out of the boot, shrinking as it did so, until it slipped into the small sack quite easily. Eventually, everything of Harry's had been placed into the sack, including Hedwig, and the old man put it back in his jacket.

"It's too quiet," Catherine noted disapprovingly. Harry saw her rather deliberately relaxing herself, as if she was gathering her energy. The tension in the air was electric, and he was becoming giddy.

Then he doubled over, gasping and clutching his forehead as his scar erupted in pain. Catherine stepped over and supported him before he lost his footing.

"That's his curse scar," she said to the old wizard, who was looking down at him, a slightly concerned expression on his face.

"Then our welcoming committee includes Lord Voldemort," he said. Then he smiled. "Excellent. I was wondering how I was going to deliver him his letter, but it looks like he will be able to receive it in person."

He glanced at the five wraiths, and they took their swords out from in their dusters.

"Come with me," Catherine whispered into Harry's ear, and she guided him along as they headed for the doors.

The five wraiths, swords in hand, strode boldly to the double doors at the entrance to the airport. Two of them shoved the doors open with their shoulders, and the other three entered silently, swords at the ready to parry an attack. The other two remained at the doors as the three humans passed through. Harry felt a fresh wave of fear as he went between the doors. Once they were through, the wraiths joined their fellows on the flank.

They were surrounded by two dozen Death Eaters. At the far edge of the semicircle the black-robed wizards formed was Voldemort himself, his red eyes alight with glee. All twenty-five of their assailants had their wands out and at the ready. Harry felt like he was going to be sick.

"Lord Voldemort, we meet at last," the old man said casually, as if he was meeting the fearsome sorcerer in a high-class restaurant. He moved out in front of the lead wraith.

"I believe you have me at a disadvantage," Voldemort said with an almost equally casual tone.

"Ah, my manners must be slipping in my old age. My name is Connor Salisbury," the old wizard said. "And I am afraid that young Mr Potter here is mine. Neither you, nor the rabble of traitors and cowards you call your servants will be taking him this day."

"We shall see about that," Voldemort said. He lifted his wand and pointed it at the old man. "Avada Kedavra!" he roared.

There was a flash of green light, and Salisbury brought his staff up and spun it around, as if to parry a blow. The curse deflected off the staff and Voldemort was forced to duck his head to the side as it blasted into the wall behind him, causing chunks of cement to fall off and leaving scorch marks behind.

"How..." Voldemort whispered. He took a step back, his eyes widening, and his white skin somehow managed to become even paler.

Salisbury didn't give him any time to cast another spell. He straightened his staff out, pointing the crystal at Voldemort, and thrust it forward, his face contorting into an expression of intense concentration. Voldemort reacted as if he had just been hit by a lorry: he went sailing back, and slammed into the reception desk, spun over and crashed against the wall face-first and collapsed to the floor. The Death Eaters gave a collective groan of despair.

The wraiths advanced slowly outwards, shrieking. The Death Eaters all backed away, and four of them were so unsettled that they broke and fled.

One of them shouted a curse, and Harry recognized his voice: Lucius Malfoy.

"Avada Kedavra!" he exclaimed, and the curse streaked across the short distance between him and a nearby wraith. It staggered away from him when the curse impacted, but remained on its feet.

"No!" Malfoy thundered, enraged. The airport reception area degenerated into a confused war zone as curses flew from the wands of the Death Eaters and uselessly struck the wraiths. Their formation broke as the wraiths charged their ranks, and the wizards fled before those wicked blades.

Salisbury turned to Catherine. "Take the boy to the plane and get it ready to fly."

"Yes, Father," she said, and with one hand on Harry's shoulder she started to guide him towards the exit onto the airfield and the runways.

There was a pop and a Death Eater appeared right in front of them, his wand at the ready. Catherine Scott was too fast for him. She let go of Harry, spun around, and kicked the wand out of his hand. There was a dull metallic ring as she did so, and his cry of surprise was familiar. Peter Pettigrew!

Run! Harry thought to himself, and he tensed, but Catherine noticed and shot him a warning glance. Best wait until I can get my Cloak, he decided. Left wandless, Pettigrew tried to throw a punch, but she sidestepped it, turned herself around, grabbed his arm as he followed through with the missed blow, and using her body as a lever she neatly flipped him over. There was a nasty crack as his head hit the floor, and Pettigrew was out cold.

"Come on!" she snapped, and grabbed Harry's arm. They sprinted for the exit, but were stopped again, mere feet away, as three pops announced the arrival of three more Death Eaters, two of whom had to be Crabbe and Goyle, senior, judging from their size. The third one's hood had partially slipped, revealing Lucius Malfoy's pale yellow hair.

Like Pettigrew before him, one of the two larger men tried to level his wand at Catherine, but she was too close. She stepped forward and kneed him sharply in the groin. He cried out in pain and doubled over, and she slammed the open palm of her right hand into his face. Harry heard a wet crunch and blood began to flow freely out from under his cowl. The larger man bellowed like an ox, and then she kicked him soundly on the side of his head. Crabbe - or was it Goyle? - staggered backwards a few steps and crumpled into an unconscious heap.

Malfoy and his remaining flunky attempted to flank Catherine, but she twisted out of the way.

"Stay back," Malfoy warned the other man, and his wand was at the ready. Harry was quite certain things were going to get ugly now...

Then one of the wraiths noticed their predicament and came charging over, its terror-inspiring cry shattering Harry's adrenaline-enhanced composure and forcing the larger man to beat a hasty retreat. Malfoy was distracted by the wraith's intervention, which gave Catherine her opening.

No longer forced to adopt a defensive pose, Catherine Scott went on the attack, using her speed and reflexes to reach Malfoy before he could get his wand up again. She sucker-punched him in the stomach and followed up with a foot to his jaw. Malfoy fell to the floor and lay still.

Harry had just enough time to see Salisbury drop an envelope behind the reception desk, presumably leaving it on Voldemort's unconscious form, before Catherine hauled him through the doors and onto the airfield itself.

They sprinted down the airfield to the Gulfstream IV sitting out in the extra runway: there were no hangars here large enough to hold it, and it was clear to Harry that it would have been inconvenient for the jet to be in a hangar anyways. After two minutes of running, Harry was starting to feel a little breathless, but they had reached the aircraft.

Catherine had a wand out. She aimed it at a hatch on the main fuselage and chanted, "Recludo Limen!" The hatch swung open, and a glowing set of steps appeared, winding down from the hatchway to the ground.

"Come on, up the stairs," she snapped, and gave Harry a shove. He fumbled his way up the stairs and into the aircraft. Catherine guided him to the passenger compartment and sat him in a chair. Her wand was now aimed at him.

"And to keep you out of trouble while we finish up here," she muttered, and then her wand swished through the air as she chanted, "Petrificus Totalus!" Harry felt himself go quite stiff, and he knew he was trapped in his sitting position until the spell wore off. The Full Body-Bind! His kidnappers had thought of everything, it seemed, but Harry was still fairly certain they weren't reckoning on his having an Invisibility Cloak. Still, for the time being, he was trapped.

= = = = =

With Harry under the Body-Bind, Catherine went to the cockpit. Several enchantments had been placed on this Gulfstream to improve its performance, including a few that made it possible to get away in a hurry. Catherine was fairly certain the time had come to leave in a frightful hurry indeed. She pointed her wand at the controls and started everything up, her spell doing the work of the pre-flight checks. Once the control boards were all green, she could take off.

She hurried over to the open hatch, and saw the wraiths rushing towards the aircraft, and her adoptive father striding calmly and composedly along behind them. One of the wraiths, she noted, had a fair bit of blood on its sword.

Just the thing to get on the carpeting, she thought to herself in distaste.

Connor Salisbury turned around, and made a sweeping motion with his staff. A thin multicoloured barrier started to rise from the ground, and it spread until it had surrounded the plane. It rose about thirty feet in the air.

How Father does that sort of thing, I'll never understand. I just hope he can dispel it before we take off, it won't be pretty if we collide.

As unruffled as ever, Salisbury resumed his walk to the hatch, as Catherine made room for the wraiths to get on. They would head to the luggage compartment, where they would leave the passengers alone.

A moment later, Salisbury mounted, and once he was in, Catherine dispelled the magical steps and swung the door shut. It sealed itself up on its own, the result of a specially-modified Sealing Charm, and Catherine joined Salisbury in the cockpit.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," she replied steadily. Salisbury nodded, and tapped his staff on the floor. The shimmering barrier he had put up dissipated in an instant, and Catherine waved her wand at the pilot's console.

The plane lurched as it thundered down the runway, but the cockpit, like the other inhabited sections, had been specially enchanted to be unaffected by turbulence or other inertial shocks. The Gulfstream's engines roared as they were pressed beyond their normal operating limits. Seconds later, they were airborne.

"Well, Father, what happens next?" she asked him as they made their way back to the passenger compartment.

"I must rest. That was a very tiring battle. We are very fortunate to have the wraiths with us, or Voldemort would have prevailed with his superior numbers."

= = = = =

When Pettigrew came to, he was aware of a dull pain in the back of his head. However, he quickly determined that any actual damage had been repaired by the Death Eater who was kneeling beside him.

"They killed Macnair," Avery's voice said bitterly from behind the cowl. Pettigrew sat up, rubbing his head.

"How?" he asked, perplexed.

"He tried using his axe after we realized none of our curses worked. But he wasn't as good with it as those things were with their swords. One of them ran him through. Everyone else threw up protective wards, and at least those seemed to work."

Pettigrew shuddered. He'd been out cold and easy prey for most of the short, sharp affray. If any of those creatures had had the presence of mind, it could have finished him off quite easily.

"The woman managed to get Potter out and into their aeroplane," Avery continued. "Some of us tried to take down the old man, but he deflected our spells with his staff. He left a letter for our Master, and then made a break for it along with those creatures. He set up some sort of barrier that we couldn't get curses through, and we couldn't Apparate through it either. The barrier went down right before the aeroplane lifted off."

"So they have gone," Pettigrew said. "And- and the boy has escaped us again."

"Speaking of which," Avery changed the topic, his voice dropping to a whisper, "He wants to see you."

Pettigrew felt a new surge of fear. His master would be quite displeased with the events of the day. Possibly displeased enough to take it out on his servant.

Lord Voldemort was standing in the centre of the airport, surveying the scene. The Death Eaters had all returned and were erasing any evidence of their presence. One still form lay in an untidy heap near a corner. Pettigrew assumed that was Macnair. He hesitantly got up and shuffled over to Voldemort, who lazily shifted his head to look at his servant.

"I have dealt with, and often destroyed, many Dark creatures, Wormtail, but I have never encountered such creatures before," he said. "Nor have I ever been witness to the sort of wizardry that this Connor Salisbury was able to conjure."

He handed Pettigrew an opened letter. "Read it, Wormtail," he commanded.

By now, you will know that a Mr Harry Potter, of your acquaintance, has gone missing.

The opportunity exists for you to recover him, if you desire. Be in Mt. Solon, Virginia, on the first of August, alone. If you bring anyone with you, you will be escorted firmly from the village's boundaries. Another wizard of your acquaintance, Albus Dumbledore, will be in Mt. Solon that day as well. It is advisable that you do not let the feud between the two of you grow to violence whilst you are there. Dumbledore will be receiving a similar letter as the one you read now.

Yrs respectfully,

C. Salisbury

At the bottom of the letter, Pettigrew noticed, was a small eye, drawn in red ink. He swallowed. "It must surely be a trap, my Lord," he said.

"Almost certainly," Voldemort replied. "But even the most thoroughly prepared snare can fail, as you should well recall from this past June."

Yes, the night of the Third Task... Pettigrew remembered it all too vividly. He rubbed his silver hand, remembering the excruciating agony... how long had he sat there, stanching his bleeding stump of an arm, before Voldemort had finally replaced it? Humiliation and resentment flourished, unbidden, in the deepest recesses of his mind. But the point Voldemort wanted to make was made: despite nursing a pair of nasty wounds and beset on all sides by the Death Eaters, Harry Potter had managed somehow to buck the odds and escape the trap that had been set for him.

Surely, then, Voldemort could also avoid being ensnared in machinations designed to reduce him to captivity, could he not?

Lucius Malfoy came up to them then. "My Lord," he said, bowing before Voldemort, "we have almost finished removing traces of our presence. What is your will concerning Macnair?"

Voldemort looked over to the still form in its black Death Eater robes. "He shall disappear. Though he has died well in my service, his death will raise more questions than a mere disappearance will. It is fortunate that he is a widower. We will be able to use his demesne as a base of operations for the next few days.

"Lucius, you must take control here. See to it that you cause division among the ranks of our enemies, as subtly as possible. Despite this setback, we must spread through the wizarding world like a cancer, unchecked and unstoppable.

"You and I will go to America, Wormtail," Voldemort said. "And we will find and destroy Harry Potter. But first, we have a rendezvous with Severus Snape tonight."