Be Careful
75: What Hurts You Take
By Anne B. Walsh
Extreme evil. Do not read while eating.
Harry jumped to his feet, Ron only an instant behind; the taller boy planted a hand in the small of his sister’s back and shoved her towards Harry. "Get her out," he hissed over the increasing whine of the Sneakoscope and the loud cracks of Apparition now sounding. "Get away from here, we’ll follow!"
"Take this!" Hermione threw the sword of Gryffindor awkwardly across the tent, and Harry caught it by the hilt with the hand not clamped around Ginny’s wrist. "Hurry!"
Shutting his eyes, Harry focused on the hilltop outside the tent. The trees there should give them cover, and it was nearby enough that he shouldn’t make much noise getting there but, he hoped, behind the men he could now hear laughing.
"Come on out, kiddies," called a hoarse voice. "Run away from school, have you? Come nice and quiet, now, and—"
Harry rose onto his toes and pivoted, pulling Ginny and the sword along with him into the darkness of Apparition. His heartbeat sounded once in his ears, and then he was standing on the hill with Ginny leaning against him, her face pressed against his robes to stifle a cry of despair as four Snatchers with torches and wands dragged Ron and Hermione out of the tent in the clearing below. Hermione was sobbing quietly, cradling her wand hand against her chest, and made no move to fight when one of the Snatchers patted roughly at her sides as though seeking gold or valuables.
"She’s hurt," Ginny breathed, looking at the red-spotted strip of cloth tied tightly around Hermione’s wrist and across her palm. "I think she got the sword by the blade when she threw it."
Harry went to one knee and growled under his breath as he noticed tell-tale smears of dark liquid on the silver blade. A corner of his robes wiped it clean, and he pulled Ginny’s wand from within his robes as he stood back up. "Hold still," he whispered. "I can’t just carry it."
"And I can?" Ginny was facing away from him, fumbling in her pocket, but Harry chose to ignore it in favor of imagining exactly what he needed. A few careful waves with the wand, and a bit of concentration, just as Professor McGonagall had always said—
He let out a silent breath of satisfaction. A leather scabbard had formed across Ginny’s back, belted into place across the front of her robes and running from her right shoulder to her left hip. The sword fitted perfectly into it, and he was only just in time as Ginny turned abruptly.
"Here," she mouthed, thrusting her DA Galleon at him. "Send a message to Fred and George. Tell them they need to get into hiding, warn the whole family. It won’t take those Snatchers too long to work out who Ron is." Correctly interpreting the stricken look on his face—he’d never been good at the shortening of sentences needed to get messages across on the Galleons—she scowled. "Try F&G take family into hiding now more later."
This fit with a bit of room to spare, and Harry sent it without delay, wondering in the back of his mind why neither of them was making a move towards helping Ron and Hermione. The Snatchers didn’t seem interested in hurting them at the moment, probably because the bounty on them was bigger if they were alive, but it seemed somehow disloyal to stand here and watch his friends be mistreated and do nothing.
As if reading his mind, Ginny put a hand on his wrist. "We have to wait," she murmured, her voice covered by the laughter of two of the Snatchers at Hermione’s continued weeping. "It’s four to one, we’d never win. Maybe if I draw two of them off, you can Stun the two that are still here and let Ron and Hermione go, and then you and Ron can come and get rid of the other two—"
"’Ang on a minute!" a voice rang out from below. "Look at this, in the Prophet! Give us some light, bring that torch over!"
The Snatchers all crowded around the tattered newspaper, and Ron snapped his head up, scanning around the area. Harry waited until his friend was looking directly at him and Ginny before sending up a solitary white spark. Ron’s eyes brightened, and he started hitching himself around so that his hands, tied behind his back, could be cut loose without Harry and Ginny having to move and give their position away—
"Well, well," said a voice Harry knew, and the Snatchers broke up to reveal the leering, hair-covered face of Fenrir Greyback. He had the Daily Prophet clutched in one yellow-taloned hand, and was peering from it to Hermione. "Looks like we may have caught ourselves a little prize. What do you say, girly? You ‘Hermione Granger, Mudblood thought to be traveling with Harry Potter’?"
"No!" Hermione shook her head frantically, tears streaking her cheeks and her voice shaking in pain and terror. "No, that isn’t me, that’s not my name!"
"You sure?" Greyback shook the newspaper at her. "You wouldn’t want to find out what happens to people who lie to me, now—"
Ron launched himself at the werewolf, shouting in inarticulate rage. Greyback turned and casually kicked him in the face, and Ginny sucked in a breath as her brother doubled over. Harry clenched his hand around Ginny’s wand, wanting nothing more than to rush down the slope to rescue his friends, but it would only get him caught too, it wouldn’t help, he had to remember that, it wouldn’t help—
Standing here outside the gates wouldn’t help, he would have to take to the air—the person he wanted would be found up high, at the top of the tallest tower—
"Harry!"
Ginny’s hand was over his mouth, he was flat on his back in the underbrush, the wand was gone. "You almost shouted," she hissed in his ear. "I practically had to knock you down, what’s wrong with you?"
"Scar," Harry muttered as she took her hand away. Remembering to keep his voice down was no trouble, not when he felt that his head would crack open with the pain if he spoke above the tone he was using now. "He’s somewhere important—he thinks he’s close—"
"Try and fight it." Ginny pressed his hand, and the pain receded a little. "We have to go. They’re not quite sure Hermione is Hermione, but they’re going to take her and Ron to the Malfoys’ anyway, they figure someone there ought to know."
"They figure right." Harry clenched his teeth and pushed himself to his feet, accepting the wand Ginny pressed back into his hand. "They’re neither of them disguised, Draco Malfoy would know them in an instant, and if he’s not there his dad wouldn’t have much trouble either. Even his mum might do, she was in the Top Box with us at the World Cup, and Ron said they’d all seen him looking like Hermione when Malfoy caught him back in October—" Turning, he caught an odd expression on Ginny’s face. "What?"
"I need you to send another message." Ginny’s forehead was furrowed, and she had her lower lip between her teeth. "Start it with LL. Then put R&H caught being taken to Malfoys help? End it with a question mark and sign it GW. Quick, we don’t want to be too far behind them."
Harry did as he was told, storing the cryptic words and letters in the back of his mind for later examination. He had enough troubles to be going on with at this point.
Ron may have got away from the Death Eaters once already, but that just means they’ll have made it harder to do this time.
Concentrating, through the pain in his scar, on arriving somewhere hidden near Malfoy Manor, he pulled Ginny close and Disapparated.
Bellatrix looked up from her scroll as laughter and shouts sounded from the front hallway of the manor house. "Bring them in," her sister’s voice rose over the din. "I will call my son, he is upstairs—"
"Who’s upstairs?" Draco’s voice cut in. "Ahhhhh." The sigh was mingled gloating and anticipation. "Look who’s come back to see us again. And she’s brought a friend along! Hullo, Weasley, spattergroit all better now?"
Increasing her pace, Bella entered the front hall in time to see one of Arthur Weasley’s parcel of gawky, ginger-haired brats wrestle free of the two Snatchers holding him and snarl an invitation to do something unnatural to himself at her nephew, who stood on the stairs looking down on the scene. She strode over to the blood traitor and slapped him hard enough to knock him to the ground, taking care to jostle his recently broken nose. The Mudblood girl, nursing a bandaged hand, cried out faintly in protest, but Greyback shook her where he grasped her shoulders and she fell silent.
Draco bounded down the rest of the stairs and hauled the other boy to his feet, grinning at Bella. "Ah, now, auntie, you know what the Dark Lord said about proper protocol. We’ll start with the Mudblood and save the blood-traitor for later." He looked thoughtful for a second. "Did that rhyme? I think that rhymed."
Bella laughed. "A proper pureblood should be master of all talents," she said, patting Draco’s shoulder. "Go on, put that one away for now. We’ll get the Mudblood to tell us where Potter’s got to." She glanced back at the girl, relishing the prospect of her screams. "See just how painful that hand really is."
"No!" The Weasley boy tried to pull free, but Draco had a good grip on the ropes. "Not her hand, you can’t, it’ll kill her!"
"Melodrama," said Draco with a disdainful sniff. "Come on, Weasley, I’m sure you’re anxious to see how little Lovegood’s been doing. You can swap stories while you’re waiting your turn." He yanked Weasley towards the stairs, forcing the taller boy to follow or fall and be dragged. "Don’t start without me, now!" he added over his shoulder. "I’ll only be a minute—come on, Weasley, remember we’ve got no need to keep your balls intact, there’s certainly enough of your brothers around to keep the bloodline going without you..."
His chattering died away as he rounded the corner on the first floor, Weasley tagging helplessly behind, and Bella turned her attention to the brown-haired girl shivering in Greyback’s hold. "I almost hope you survive questioning," she said softly, approaching step by step and enjoying the fear mounting in the brown eyes as she came. "We can have your boyfriend back down here, and most likely Potter too by then, so they can watch what happens to you."
Carelessly, as though by accident, she let her gaze slide from Granger’s face to Greyback’s. The werewolf snickered and lowered his face to press it against the bushy hair, sniffing with every evidence of pleasure, then sliding it down to the girl’s ear. "Oh, yes," he breathed, his tongue darting out to touch her skin. "Little Malfoy won’t be taking this one away from me, no, he won’t..."
Granger whimpered as Greyback caught the top curve of her ear between his teeth. "Wait your turn," Bella directed sharply. Greyback growled under his breath, but opened his mouth and straightened up. Snickers came from the other three Snatchers who had been out with him, and Bella smiled to see Greyback discomfited.
"I can’t tell you anything," Granger said in a thread of a voice, her eyes half-shut as though the lights in the hall were too bright for her. "Harry left us. I don’t know where he is. You can torture me all you want and I still won’t know."
"No idea at all?" Bella closed the distance between them and pulled the girl’s head up by her hair, eliciting a fresh gasp of pain from her. "Not even a guess where he might’ve gone? From his best friend in the world?"
"I told you I don’t know!" Granger cried out. "He just went—he didn’t say where—please—please—"
Swift footsteps beside her. "Auntie, I’m disappointed in you," said Draco in his most coaxing tone. "Is that any way to behave to a guest?"
Bella blinked at her nephew, letting go Granger’s hair in her astonishment. Draco dropped her a broad wink, then turned to Greyback and snapped his fingers, flicking his left hand back in a commanding motion. The werewolf’s nostrils flared, and he looked as though he were about to challenge the order, but Draco had his wand trained between the bloodshot eyes before Greyback could speak. "Go on," he said in a voice that managed to fill all available space while remaining soft. "Give me an excuse."
Greyback snarled, but released Granger, who sagged in place. Draco moved quickly to catch her and lower her to the floor, seemingly all solicitude. "What happened to that hand?" he asked in syrupy tones. "Cut it on something? Let me see." He pursed his lips and made noises of disapproval at the swollen, green-tinged palm Granger displayed. "Oh, that looks bad. You’ll never be able to concentrate on everything we need to ask you with this little lot in the way." His tone turned suddenly chill. "Why don’t I take care of it for you? Permanently?"
Bella was peripherally aware of Lucius’ arrival behind her, of Cissy coming forward from her place at the door, but her attention was riveted on Draco’s wand as it swept down. A muttered two-word incantation, and Granger gasped as a gout of flame shot from the wand’s tip, engulfing her hand and the carpet beneath it. A second incantation, and the flame was gone, vanished as though it had never been.
Just like the right hand of Hermione Granger.
"There," said Draco in satisfaction. "That’s much better." He scrambled to his feet, caught the girl by the left shoulder, and hoisted her up after him. "Now, let’s talk about Harry Potter..."
Yes, I’m a horrible evil person. Hermione’s injury was a late inspiration, but it fits so perfectly that I just had to use it. Super points if you know the real reason Draco did what he did, besides wanting to look all Death-Eater in front of his parents and his aunt. Now, I must to bed, or I will be useless at work tomorrow. Leave me plenty of lovely horrified reviews for when I wake up, and for after work!