The Kidnapping

Chapter Ten

Salisbury's Study

On the thirty-first of July, a Monday, Harry Potter was eating lunch, wishing - never had he thought he would ever wish this - that he was back at the Dursleys. At least there he could get his birthday mail.

While he was busy eating, Catherine Scott and Connor Salisbury were in his bedroom, standing by the coat rack where his school robes were.

"You sure this is going to work?" Catherine asked, as Salisbury took out the small, unmarked golden band that, she assumed, he had shown her several days ago. "He'll be sure to notice it."

"Yes, eventually, but whenever he makes his escape attempt, he'll be in far too much of a hurry to bother checking the pockets of his robe. Once he discovers the ring, he probably won't think to throw it away."

"Probably?" she asked doubtfully, with an undercurrent of sarcasm.

Salisbury shrugged. "I do not think that Mr Potter will dispose of what seems to be a harmless trinket unless he knows what it does and why it was given to him. If I am not mistaken, his curiosity is just strong enough to guarantee that. If he discovers that it is a form of tracking device, he may decide to dispose of it. But by then he may be unwilling to do so."

"Why is that?"

"Some... safeguards... that are installed within the ring, to keep it from being discarded by its intended recipient."

Catherine wasn't entirely certain her adoptive father was being totally honest with her, but there was no point asking more questions about it. If he thought she needed to know, he would tell her, in his own way and his own good time.

Salisbury slipped the ring into the inner pocket of the robe. "We'd best be on our way before Mr Potter catches us in here rifling through his clothing," he said with a smile.

Catherine took a second to look around to make sure they hadn't misplaced anything before she left, closing the door behind her.

= = = = =

The observation post had been set up in the forested hills near Connor Salisbury's property, which lay just off of Mossy Creek Road. To hide it from unfriendly eyes, it was enchanted to appear like a tree.

Lupin and Hermione stepped up to the tree that concealed the post, and Hermione tapped on a peculiarly gnarled branch with her wand. The doorway shimmered slightly, and they walked through the bark into a two-level house. In many ways, the observation post was not unlike the tent that the Weasleys had borrowed for the Quidditch World Cup near the end of last summer.

To their right was a dining room; straight ahead was a set of stairs and a doorway into the kitchen. To their left, there was what the American wizards called an "operations centre". A large table with a map of Connor Salisbury's mansion and property displayed on it was in the central part of the room. The property was rendered in exquisite detail, although the defences around the house prevented them from seeing what was in it. The positions of the other observation posts were labelled, as were the positions of Salisbury's guards.

Dumbledore and Moody were sitting there at the table, and he stood to greet the two.

"Miss Granger, Remus, how fared the investigation of Mount Solon?" he asked.

Remus smiled before replying: "It's pretty small. There's not much there to speak of. A small grocery store is at the intersection where Natural Chimneys Road, Freemason Run Road, and Mossy Creek Road meet. There's a few benches there, and that's about the only place where I imagine you could meet with Mr Salisbury."

"Any signs of magical activity in the area?" asked Dumbledore.

"There wasn't anything magical at all, just a small village of Muggles," Hermione said.

Dumbledore nodded. "I do not know how Mr Salisbury intends on controlling Lord Voldemort when we are both present," he pondered. "The situation will be very unstable, to say the least. In the meantime, we have finished preparations for a rescue attempt."

"What are we going to do?" queried Hermione.

"The Americans, Severus, Alastor, Sirius, and Remus will engage Salisbury's horsemen, and keep them distracted. I will do my best to keep Lord Voldemort and Connor Salisbury from going to his home, while you, Mr Weasley, and Miss Chang enter into his house and find Harry."

"Shouldn't one of us go with them?" Lupin asked. "It's bound to be dangerous."

"Cho and I can probably identify and disarm any wards on the house," Hermione said with defiance. "So could Ron, if it comes to it," she added, blushing slightly at the omission.

"Of course, of course," Lupin said, smiling slightly.

"We will be making final arrangements after dinner this evening," Dumbledore explained to Hermione. "It will be important to be up early tomorrow. You will attempt your rescue exactly half an hour after Mr Salisbury leaves his home. Mr Weasley and Miss Chang are packing in preparation to leave: I suggest you do the same."

= = = = =

Ron, Cho, and Hermione each had their own bedroom, which were connected by a small lounge. Although the final briefing had ended an hour ago, and they were supposed to be getting ready for bed, they were all sitting in the lounge. Ron was nervously fidgeting with his wand, Hermione was hurriedly reading a book on disarming protective wards, and Cho was just sitting there, looking pale and flustered, staring down at the floor.

"What's up?" Ron asked, concerned.

Cho looked up at him. "I don't - I don't want to run into those - those things again," she said, looking down again.

"We'll do our best to keep away from them," Hermione said, confidently. "As long as everyone else manages to attract their attention, we should be able to get in and find Harry. Prof - I mean, Mr Lupin will be putting fear-repelling Charms on us, so I don't think we'll be put out of sorts if we get too close to one of them."

"But if they see us and try to run us down?" Cho asked, slightly agitated. "Dumbledore thinks they're resistant to most magic."

"We go for the horses," Hermione replied briskly. "If they get Stunned or something, then those creatures will have to get off them or get up from the ground if they got tossed off. That should give us enough time to get away."

They stopped when Dumbledore entered the lounge, a kindly smile upon his face. "I hope I am not intruding?" he asked, pausing by the doorway.

"Oh, not at all, Professor," Hermione said brightly.

"Good, good," Dumbledore said. "I have brought these for you. The Americans whipped them up today, and they should come in quite handy." He handed each of them a bronze bracelet adorned with a plain black gem.

"They're enchanted to detect the presence of the creatures," he explained. "They grow warmer the closer you are to them. Also, once you are on Salisbury's property, an arrow will appear in the gem pointing towards his house. I think you will also need some of this," he finished, his eyes twinkling as he brought some chocolate out of his robes.

"Thank you, sir," Cho managed weakly, and she smiled at him. Dumbledore nodded.

"Have a good night and best of luck tomorrow," he said before leaving.

= = = = =

Peter Pettigrew had returned to the house, early the next morning, August the First, carefully avoiding the black riders, and he sat under a bush, in rat form, waiting. He fumed with impatience and anxiety. When would the old man be on his way?

There! One of the three doors to the spacious garage building slid up and out of sight, and a comfortable-looking Mercedes came out and drove down the laneway to the gate. Pettigrew waited for a moment as the Mercedes turned westward and drove away. Once his rat ears could no longer hear the car, he counted to one hundred and scurried towards the door, transforming to his human form. He reached into his robe and got his wand out.

Licking his lips nervously, he began running his wand up and down the door, looking for protective Charms that had been cast on it. Some nearby foliage shook, and he turned, startled, wand at the ready, to see a couple of birds flying out of a juniper bush. Pettigrew sighed in relief. There would be trouble if any of the riders found him while he was right up at the door.

= = = = =

"Who the bloody hell is that?" said the American wizard beside Severus Snape.

Snape peered through his Omnioculars at the man who had just appeared in front of the door and hissed in recognition. "Peter Pettigrew!" he exclaimed, almost under his breath.

"Huh. Thought he'd died," said the American. "Well, guess not. What's up with his hand? It looks like metal?"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "He cut off his own right hand to help revive the Dark Lord," he explained, making no effort to keep his voice from going cold. "He was rewarded for his deeds with a new hand, courtesy of his master."

"I see," the American murmured, looking out at the front door from their post with his own pair of Omnioculars.

He checked his watch. "It'll be time in twenty seconds," he announced. "Let's get ourselves ready to go." He flashed Snape a nervous grin. Snape managed to avoid scowling, but he raised an eyebrow in irritation.

"Wands out," the American said. Snape complied, knowing that a run in with the black riders was well within the realm of possibility. They moved to the entrance of the small observation post. Snape was counting silently to himself.

Nine, eight, seven...

He carefully lowered himself to the ground, just outside of the property. The stone wall that ran parallel to the road was for show: other than the safeguards at the gate proper and the patrolling riders, there were no defences guarding the property. No obstacles lay between him and the copse of trees that lay just beyond the invisible boundary line that demarcated Salisbury's home and the extent of his riders' patrolling.

Six, five, four...

Snape felt a rush of irritation when he realized that the American was not behind him, but still up in the post. He turned to look up at him.

Three, two, one...

His eyes widened slightly as his mind registered that the American's wand was on him. He started bringing his own wand up, but as his mental countdown reached zero, the American shouted "Stupefy!" and Snape felt the curse strike him, and he felt himself falling backwards before everything went dark.

= = = = =

Harry was reading one of his books from last year's course set, while Catherine was in the kitchen washing up after breakfast when it happened.

BANG! The lights flickered, even though Harry knew they were normal Muggle houselights.

Catherine came running out of the kitchen, cursing, with her wand at the ready.

"What's going on?" Harry asked, wishing he had his own wand.

"Someone's disabling the wards on the door. They're trying to get in," she snarled. "Look out the window and tell me who you see," she said, positioning herself near the front door, crouching by the stairwell to give herself some cover.

Harry dashed to the front. His scar wasn't hurting, so it couldn't be Voldemort...

"It's Wormtail!" he shouted after a quick glance out the window, trying to keep their assailant from noticing him.

"Well, we can deal with him," Catherine muttered. "Get behind a couch and stay there until I tell you otherwise," she ordered. There was another loud BANG and the door shook with the strain. Harry wondered if this had been what it was like when Voldemort had come for his parents...

... but this wasn't Voldemort, it was Wormtail. In all of Harry's encounters with his father's old friend, he had not yet seen much in the way of an independent streak. Oh, he could cast the Killing Curse as good as any, but that had only been at Voldemort's direct orders. Besides, he needed Harry alive, so he couldn't just leap in through the front door uttering curses.

There was a final BANG and the door was thrown open. Wormtail stepped in, his eyes and wand darting over the entranceway. Too late, he noticed Catherine Scott.

"Stupefy!" she shouted, and a jet of red light shot from her wand and blasted Wormtail into the door. He fell, unconscious, and his wand clattered to the ground. She stepped up to look at him, and Harry, seeing that he was out of her field of vision, grabbed the vase on the coffee table he was hiding beside and crept towards her as she knelt down, checked Wormtail, and put him under the Full Body-Bind.

"Right," she said, turning to address Harry and starting to rise, but he caught her in the side of the head with the vase. It shattered, and she collapsed beside Wormtail, twitching and out cold. Harry grabbed Wormtail's wand and cast the Body-Bind on her as well, to be safe, and took off up the stairs, dropping the wand on the floor at the top.

He rushed first to the guest room he was staying in and flung his trunk open. He grabbed his backpack and turned for his robe. He stopped for a second when he saw Hedwig, still frozen in her stasis and sitting in her cage. He looked from side to side, desperately, for a split second, and grabbed the cage. He put both of them near the door and hastily scooped his robe off the hook and got it on. He grabbed his backpack and Hedwig's cage and ran out.

Harry stopped at the top of the stairs and checked the two forms at the doorway. They were still and silent. No wraiths at the door either. He ran towards the stairs leading up to the third floor; those were where the forbidden areas of the house were. Harry thundered up the staircase and looked around. Which doors led to the rooms he hadn't been allowed into? His heart was beating wildly, and he could feel his belly constrict with tension.

He rushed to the door right across from him and threw it open. It was not locked. It was a bedroom. He went through it, looking for his broom in the closets, and he passed an adjoining bathroom. Judging from the various jars and bottles in the cupboard beside the sink, this was Catherine's room. No sign of his broom.

He came out and turned left. The room looked like it may have been a bedroom once, but where there should have been a bed there was merely an undecorated mat. Salisbury's room? Harry decided that he didn't dare touch anything in here, so he hoped fervently that Salisbury hadn't kept anything in his own chambers.

Where were the other rooms? There were one or two others. First, Harry thought, he should check and make sure that neither Catherine nor Wormtail were up. He rushed down, and looked again, preparing to scoop up Wormtail's wand. Neither of them were moving. He ran up again, and looked around hurriedly before settling on one of the four doors he hadn't been in yet and shoved it open. Still not locked. What on earth were Catherine and Salisbury thinking? Wouldn't they have accounted for the fact that he would eventually have tried to sneak into one of these rooms or the other? Or had Wormtail's abortive attack actually taken Catherine by surprise?

This room was some sort of office or study. Harry looked around in awe at the bookshelves. Half were crammed with books of all kinds, and the other half with vinyl records. He gaped at the room, not registering the map of North America on the wall opposite the window. Then he saw his broom in the corner, and beside it, on a small table holding a lamp, was his wand! He opened the table's drawer, and there was his Cloak, folded neatly away. He grabbed them, and stuffed his Cloak into his backpack.

He pointed his wand at the window, intending on breaking it and flying out, when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the letter sitting on the desk. He turned and looked at it, fascinated and horrified when he began to read it.

Mr Salisbury,

Albus Dumbledore arrived in New York City several days ago, and he and his rabble made their way to the ring of observation posts surrounding your property not long after. While he intends on keeping his promise and meeting you in Mount Solon on the First of August, the others will attempt to gain entry into your home and rescue your hostage.

Rest assured that we will take care of things, and none of the others will even get onto your property for the wraiths to deal with, never mind reach the house. As per your instructions, we will not kill them; just take them prisoner until it is safe to release them. I have made sure that only my loyal men are assigned to this case, all the better to keep any unwitting fools from interfering.

We have no information on Lord Voldemort, unfortunately, though Dumbledore and company assure us that he is here in America, along with one of his servants, a fellow known as "Wormtail." Of their whereabouts, we have had no sign.

I would also tell you of great news: the flying beasts we have been breeding in the Canadian Arctic are finally ready. We need only expose them to the wraiths to determine their suitability. If all works out, we can discontinue that project and close down one of the riskier elements of the plan. We are still running radiation assault tests on the Hogwarts model deep underground near the Lake of the Woods, Ontario, and I can report with certainty that they are going well. The special operations units that Kaplan managed to lend us have been good sports about the whole thing, and they are working hard at training up. Of course, we did not divulge the fact that we have excised all knowledge of their existence from the minds of the rest of the American military.

Lastly, we have narrowed our search for a suitable site for the final phase of the operation to three: Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids of Giza, and the Statue of Liberty. The former two are sites of great magical power. Lady Liberty isn't magically important, but I thought the irony would be too good to discount the possibility of using that site.

Operational security is still doing well. Not a word of this has leaked to the general public, anyone else in the department, or even to the Secretary herself. They're still dismissing the return of Lord Voldemort as Britain's problem - just like the Europeans. Same as last time he was running amok, only this time not even the British want to acknowledge he's back among them. Well, he'll soon be a sideshow, but that day is still a ways in the future. Best of luck with your meeting.

Yours respectfully,

Malcolm Holmes, Undersecretary for the Department of Magical Affairs

Harry gasped with horror as he finished reading the letter, and he looked up on the map and saw, clearly stamped on the map with the icon of a red eye, some of the sites the letter talked about. Up in the Northwest Territories, near the north end of the Great Bear Lake, was the place where they must be testing the flying beasts. Near the common border point of Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota, by the Lake of the Woods, was another spot, presumably the underground mock-up of Hogwarts. And for some reason, Connor Salisbury had marked off New York City as well. Was it because he had chosen the Statue of Liberty to be the site of the final phase of this operation?

Thinking fast, Harry grabbed the letter and stuffed it in his backpack.

"Accio map!" he called, and the map sprung off the wall and into his hands. He quickly folded it and shoved it in his pack, like the rest.

A sudden movement at the door caught his eye. Catherine Scott was there, wand in her hand and murder in her eyes.

"Stop!" she shouted, rushing in and thrusting her wand at him, but Harry was faster - his Quidditch-honed reflexes snapped into action, and before she even opened her mouth again to shout out a spell, he had whipped his wand up and yelled, "Expelliarmus!"

Catherine shot back out of the room with a cry, and her wand shot through the air to fall near Harry's feet.

"Reducto!" he cried, wand pointing at the door, which was slowly swinging back into a closed position, and it blasted apart. Catherine, who had been getting back up, fell back again, shrieking with shock and rage as the door blew up in her face.

Harry turned, mounting his broom. "Reducto!" he cried again, blasting the window into smithereens. Then he shot forward on his broom and out, whooping with excitement. He was free!

He zoomed out into the air, and away from the broken window, to keep Catherine from getting a good shot off at him. He stopped and hovered over the house, avoiding a line of sight from the windows, pausing to get his bearings.

There was a deep, muffled boom in the distance, and Harry's head swivelled over to face the west. There was what looked to be a massive explosion, and he could make out more flashes of fiery light coming from what must have been a nearby town. Dumbledore was there, facing off against Salisbury and Voldemort!

Harry began turning his broom, hoping to try and get to the scene to help, when he felt his insides go cold at the sound of a wraith screeching. His guts felt like they had dissolved when he heard the scream of a girl, far below.

"Cho!"