The Kidnapping

Chapter Twelve

Telling the Tale

"Well I'll be damned. That's quite the operation they have going on here," Moody said, looking at the map and the letter, both now spread out on the main table of the safe house. They had spent the last few hours there: Moody had spent the time checking the safe house over to make sure everything was still working - including the Concealment Charms, while Cho and Harry had taken turns cleaning up. They were now sitting

"I wonder what this eye thing is?" Moody mused aloud after a long pause. "Dumbledore said he and Snape both had visions of a fiery eye one night, not long before you were taken."

"I saw it too," Harry said. His eyes flickered towards Cho... probably best not to mention that he'd seen it in his recurring nightmares about Cedric's death.

"What does it mean?" Moody growled. He took another sip from his hip-flask. "It has to be connected to Salisbury - he uses the little red eye as his personal sigil on his correspondence. But how? And why?"

Harry sighed, and stuck his hands in the pockets of his robes. Then he frowned, feeling something there that he was certain hadn't been there earlier.

"What have I got in my pockets?" he said suddenly, thinking out loud. Cho and Moody both turned to face him, surprised.

"A ring," Cho said as Harry pulled it out. She was quite right: it was a plain, unadorned gold ring. Harry was quite astonished. He had absolutely no idea where it had come from.

"Let me take a look at it," Moody said, stretching out one hand as the other grabbed his wand from the table. "They might have planted it on you as a homing device."

Harry reached over with his left hand and dropped the ring into Moody's outstretched palm, feeling a strange reluctance to do so as he did it. Moody carefully examined it, poking at it occasionally with his wand and inspecting it very closely with his magical eye.

After a few minutes, he handed it back to Harry, looking as perplexed as Harry imagined he was capable, given his battered and scarred features.

"Nothing, as far as I can tell," he said with a shrug. He took another sip from his hip-flask. He smiled and chuckled. "Either Salisbury was going to try and get you to propose to his adopted daughter, be a ring-bearer for her wedding to someone else, or he felt like giving you something to pawn off for some money if you made a break for it," he said with another chuckle. "At least, that's all it would be good for."

One of Harry's eyebrows rose as a slightly indignant expression crossed his face, and Cho giggled.

"You have a very unusual sense of humour, Pro - Moody," she said.

Moody smiled slightly. "Goes with the territory. If you've seen what I have - and I know you've had a taste of it, Potter - you have to have a pretty quirky sense of humour. Others might even call it sick. But if you don't, you'll burn out damn quick as an Auror."

Harry sobered slightly. The impostor Moody had told him he would make a good Auror. He wondered if that were true, or if he had been buttering him up.

Cho had noticed his slight change of expression. "Are you okay, Harry?" she asked.

Harry turned and nodded, feeling a twitter of nervousness in his stomach. "Oh - er, yes, I'm fine," he said. "I'm still a little shell-shocked, is all. Still getting over everything that's happened the past couple of days."

Cho flashed him a half-smile, and Harry felt his stomach lurch anew. "I'm sure we'll be fine, Harry," she said. "If we can just find out where they took everyone else and convince the right people that Salisbury is a menace, we'll get out of this."

Harry managed to smile back a little, hoping she felt as sure as she was trying to sound.

"Anyways, we'd best kip here overnight," Moody said, "and tomorrow we'll see about getting ourselves to Lake of the Woods and trying to take a look at this underground mock-up of Hogwarts. I'd bet that that's where they'll take the others, too - it'd be a perfect place to keep prisoners provided they can keep it a secret."

Moody got up and stumped towards the kitchen. "I suppose I'd better rustle up something to eat, though I don't know if we've got any food in here. Hope the last group that stayed remembered to Charm everything so as not to go bad. 'Course it's been quite a while since we last used this place, so it could have worn off."

"Ugh," Cho said, wrinkling her nose. "That would smell awful."

Harry stood up and walked after Moody. "I could probably make supper," he said. "I cooked a lot for the Dursleys."

Moody looked at him appraisingly. "You did, did you? Doesn't look like they let you eat your work too much. I think I might just have to have a talk with Dursley once we get through all of this mess. Well, be my guest. You'll probably do a better job than me."

= = = = =

Harry had ended up needing quite a bit of help from Cho to prepare supper, having never made food in a wizarding kitchen before. Actually, he had been planning on asking Moody - since the retired Auror lived on his own, Harry reckoned he made his own food and would know his way around magical cookware - but Moody had smoothly nudged Cho into the task instead. Harry wondered if Moody wasn't just doing it because of his "old bones".

Dinner was a short, subdued affair. They were all too preoccupied worrying for everyone else to enjoy their food properly. Moody offered to do the washing up, and after a couple of hours during which Harry and Cho did nothing but do a little brooding and reading, Moody came in and suggested they turn in for the evening.

= = = = =

The dream was different again. Harry and Cedric arrived in the graveyard, and Harry fell over, grimacing with the pain of the bite in his leg.

Harry looked around and saw them. The wraiths. Standing silently around the graveyard, as if waiting for the inevitable to happen. But they were dressed differently: instead of the duster jackets and motorcycle helmets, they wore thick black robes and cloaks. They held their swords up with both hands, and stood completely still, like grim statues guarding a place of evil.

"Wands out, d'you reckon?" Cedric said, unsuccessfully trying to suppress the fear in his voice.

NO! Harry tried to say. But he couldn't.

There was the shuffling sound, and the shape in the darkness, and Harry felt his scar explode with pain.

"Kill the spare," Voldemort's cruel voice commanded.

"Avada Kedavra!" Wormtail cried out, and there was a terrifying flash of green light, and when Harry was able to look, Cedric was dead. Harry felt himself hauled to his feet, and when he looked up, it wasn't Wormtail anymore, but rather Connor Salisbury. The wraiths had gathered round a cauldron that was full of a bubbling red liquid that Harry thought looked an awful lot like the lava he had seen in specials on volcanoes on the television at the Dursleys. The thing that was Voldemort was nowhere to be seen.

Connor Salisbury did not tie Harry up at the gravestone, but rather turned his back on him and rummaged through his pockets for something. He threw it into the cauldron, and there was a great explosion of light and fire. For a moment, the night sky over Little Hangleton was rent asunder as the massive, fiery Eye stared down at Harry, and then it suddenly surged down in a spiral of flames and entered Cedric's body through his mouth.

Harry stared as Cedric's lifeless form twitched, and then his head came up to look at Harry. Cedric's eyes, which had been glassy and glazed over with death, had been replaced by pools of fire.

Harry heard himself scream in terror, and he saw more than heard the thing possessing Cedric open its mouth and say, "Harry, wake up," in a deep, inhuman voice before he suddenly pitched forward and found himself sitting up in a bed in one of the three bedrooms at the safe house, hearing the last echoes of a terrified holler that he realized had come from between his own lips. He only barely registered his scar prickling.

"Harry!" Cho shrieked. She had her hands out, as if she had been trying to shake him awake.

Harry almost moaned with despair. The last person on earth he'd have wanted to have had this nightmare around...

There was an uncomfortable silence. "You... you were dreaming about that night, weren't you?" Cho asked quietly, cautiously, as if afraid of Harry's reaction. She was looking down at the floor, and Harry could see the tears brimming in her eyes.

"I-yes, yes I was," he managed to stammer out.

"Could you - could you tell me what happened?" This question came out particularly timidly, as if she'd had to work up all her courage to ask it, and was only just managing.

Harry felt his insides turn to lead. But what else could he do? He remembered what she had looked like at the Leaving Feast last June. If their roles were reversed, Harry was certain he'd want to hear the whole story from the only surviving eyewitness.

So he told her. Harry recounted everything that had happened from when he and Cedric touched the Triwizard Cup together. Cedric's murder, the ritual that had brought Voldemort back to his full strength, the summoning of the Death Eaters, Wormtail's new arm, and their fight. He told her about the strange binding of their brother wands, and how the regurgitated victims of Voldemort's Killing Curses had held him off long enough for Harry to get Cedric's body and return to the Cup. He explained how Mad-Eye Moody had taken him to his office and tried to kill him, and how he had turned out to be Barty Crouch Junior in disguise, how the real Moody had spent the whole school year in his own trunk.

"That's about it. I told Dumbledore all about it in his office with Sirius, and they took me to the hospital wing, and then Minister Fudge came in and they had an argument - apparently Fudge had let a Dementor Kiss Crouch - and I guess that's that," Harry concluded dully. He felt like he was going to be sick again, and he was staring down at his sweat-soaked blankets with blank eyes.

"I'm sorry," Cho said, crying openly by now. "I'm so sorry, Harry," she managed to get out in between sobs, and she reached over and pulled him into a tight hug. Harry felt a stirring of panic mingled with an upsurge of his own grief, and he bit his lip to keep a strangled cry from escaping his mouth. He felt a few tears sliding down his cheeks, and a couple slid onto his lips, salty to the taste.

Cho pulled away and dabbed at her eyes and face with a tissue paper she took from the box by Harry's bed. Harry took the opportunity while she wasn't looking to wipe his face with his sleeve.

"I really am sorry, Harry, I shouldn't have asked you to do that," she said tearfully. "It was dreadfully selfish..."

"No, no," Harry said, "I think - I think you needed to hear it after - after what Salisbury did."

"I just couldn't get over him, not without finally hearing how - how it happened," she said despondently, looking down at her lap, where her fingers were now fidgeting with the tissue.

"It's okay," Harry said, trying to sound as collected as he could. "It was hard for me to talk about it, but - but I had to bottle everything up at the Dursleys." He was having a hard time putting into words just what it meant to tell the story to someone who would get some closure out of it. "I guess you did deserve to know what happened to Cedric."

Cho looked up at him and managed a wan smile. "Thank you," she said at last, and there was no mistaking the genuine gratitude in her voice. Harry felt his lips curve upwards as well.

Cho's expression turned serious again. "Harry, I have a question I wanted to ask you," she said.

Harry felt himself grow nervous again. "Yes?" he managed with suddenly dry lips.

What it was she was going to ask him, Harry didn't find out. There was a loud bang down at the front door, and the house shook. An unearthly shriek came in through the open window.

"The wraiths!" Harry whispered loudly, jumping to his feet and wishing he had a change of clothes. He grabbed his wand off the nightstand near his bed. There was another great THUD, and Cho stood as well, looking uncomfortably pale.

"Quick, get your wand!" Harry hissed. She hurried out of his room and down the hall. Harry wondered for a moment if she knew how to use the Patronus Charm. Probably not.

Moody's voice came shouting up from downstairs. "Cho and Harry, you two make a run for it down the fire escape!" he bellowed. "I'll hold them here until I'm sure you're gone, and then I'll get out of here. Harry, take the papers!"

Harry quickly stuffed what he could in his pack. He wished it was magical. He would wait until Cho got back to get under the Cloak. He put his bag, Hedwig's cage, and his broom near the door and ran down to the living room and grabbed the map and the letter.

When he came up, he stopped suddenly in shock.

Wormtail was standing there, dressed in ordinary robes rather than his Death Eater regalia. His wand was out and pointed right at Harry's heart, and he had a slight smile on his face. Harry noticed with a confused expression that he was wearing a pewter medallion with a red eye carved into its centre.

"Wha... how... how did you get in here?" Harry stammered out, the loud blows of the wraiths on the door seeming to recede in the distance.

Wormtail's smile grew. "I knew about this safe house, of course, and how to get in and out. I was part of the Order, you know."

Harry didn't know what Order he was talking about, but his eyes narrowed with fury. "Yes, you did, didn't you, and then you killed my PARENTS!" he shouted.

"Temper, temper," Wormtail said, jabbing his wand at Harry's chest. "Now, why don't you just give me those papers and I'll be on my way. No one need get hurt. Or, I could just kill you now and take them. Your choice."

Harry goggled at him. Where once there had been the snivelling, wretched man who had cowered from everyone around him, there was now a true wizard; both competent and confident. Harry wondered what had happened. He thought fast. He had to keep him busy long enough for Cho to sneak up on him.

"So, betraying your best friends wasn't enough, was it, Wormtail?" Harry said with a sneer. "Voldemort not powerful enough to protect you from the big bullies now? Is that why you're here with the wraiths?"

Wormtail's expression darkened. "My name," he spat, "is Peter Pettigrew." He jabbed Harry again. "Come on, now, give me that map and that letter before I send you to meet your parents at long last."

"Stupefy!"

Wormtail's angry expression changed briefly to one of surprise, and then he pitched over backwards and collapsed in a heap. Cho was standing behind him, a determined look on her face and her wand in her hand. She had her robes and shoes on - ready to travel.

"Come on, Harry, we've got to get out of here," she said urgently. Harry heard a final CRASH below, and he heard Moody firing hexes and curses at the entering wraiths. He needed no further encouragement. He rushed to the door to his room and handed Cho Hedwig and his broom. He quickly stuffed his feet into his shoes without bothering to tie them up, and hauled his robe on. Then he folded the papers as fast as he could without crumpling them and stuffed them in his bag, and then he took Hedwig back, picked up the Cloak, and threw it over them.

"Now," he said as they headed for the fire escape, "if there are any wraiths waiting at the bottom of the stairs, I want you to get on the broom and try to find a Gringotts or something around here. I can fend them off, and catch up with you."

They reached the door to the fire escape. It looked like it had been tampered with.

"His work, I bet," Harry said, turning around to look at the unconscious form of Wormtail. He sighed. "I wish we could tie him up or something," he muttered.

"I do too, Harry, but we need to get out of here," Cho said, blanching when several wraiths below shrieked. Their cries brought Harry back to his senses and, covered with the Cloak, they both headed out onto the metal staircase of the fire escape.

There were no wraiths waiting at the bottom, fortunately, and Harry and Cho managed to get out to the street. Five motorcycles were sitting out along the street in front of the house, and the front door had been broken open. They turned and walked as quickly as they could away from the safe house.

"C'mon, we need to find our way to a Gringotts or something," Harry said. "Is this where you stayed with everyone else when you were all here?" he asked Cho.

Cho shook her head. "We stayed in a skyscraper owned by the Department of Magical Affairs," she explained. "It was downtown. I think that's where all the important magical things are here in New York. And You-Know-Who has a hide-out there too."

"I guess we'd better find our way downtown then," Harry said. "Maybe we should take the underground, er, whatever they call it here."

Cho glanced behind them. "They're coming out!" she hissed. They both turned to get a better look.

Wormtail came out, looking frustrated, followed by the wraiths. Of Moody there was no sign. Wormtail had his wand out, and he scanned the streets.

"They can't have gone too far," he said to the wraiths, "there'll be two of them under that Invisibility Cloak. Try sniffing them out."

At this command, the wraiths raised the visors on their helmets, again revealing the inky nothingness beneath, and began sniffing loudly, as if to scent Harry and Cho out.

"C'mon," Harry whispered as loudly as he dared, grabbing Cho's arm and wheeling the two of them around. "Let's get out of here before they find us."

The wraiths were taking their time, meticulously covering all the ground they could. Harry and Cho were preoccupied only with being quiet until they were far enough away to walk faster, which they did. They were almost ten blocks down when Harry motioned for them to stop.

"We need to get ourselves oriented," he said to Cho, looking at his watch. It was four-thirty in the morning, and in this mostly suburban part of the metropolis there was no one about. "We have to find a way to get ourselves out of here before it gets worse."

And then his scar erupted again, and he stifled a loud cry. Cho gasped as someone yanked the Cloak off. His broom and Hedwig's cage clattered to the ground.

"Oh, but it is worse, Harry Potter," a cold, high voice said from behind him. Harry turned, sweat pouring down his forehead, his scar burning with pain. Two men were standing there, both dressed in black robes. One of them, Harry didn't recognize - he was completely covered up. His wand was covering Cho, and the Cloak was in a heap at his feet.

The other was Lord Voldemort.