Harry’s feet hit the floor and he fell to his knees. Trying to control the wave of dizziness and nausea that threatened to overtake him, he took the opportunity to observe his surroundings. He was in a cold, dark room with stone walls. The damp and dank chamber gave Harry the impression that he was in some sort of underground hideout. There was an echoing drip of water in the distance but, other than that, there was no sound in the small room.
Wormtail, after tucking the Portkey into the inner pocket of his robes, dragged Harry up roughly by the arm and quickly transfigured the boy’s pajamas into plain, black robes. “Let’s go,” he said shortly, putting his hand on Harry’s shoulder and guiding him to a wooden door on the far end of the room.
The two exited the chamber, walked down a long corridor, two flights of steps, and then another corridor before they finally stopped. Harry no longer felt any pain or weakness as his body had become numb from the cold. Ahead of him, he saw a heavy wooden door with a guard on either side. Both were dressed in black robes, their eyes glinting menacingly through the slits in their hoods.
“I’m here to deliver the boy to the Dark Lord, so you can step aside,” Wormtail said coldly.
Dark Lord? Harry thought, panicking slightly. What the bloody hell is a ‘Dark Lord’? And what does he want with me?
“Well, well,” one of the guards snickered, drawing Harry from his thoughts. “You finally found something useful to do for the Dark Lord, eh?” The other guard laughed as well.
“At least I had a more honorable duty to perform than merely standing guard,” Wormtail replied scathingly. Both guards stopped laughing and for a moment Harry thought that they might attack the rat-faced little man, but a high, cold voice from behind the door stopped them.
“Bring him in, Wormtail,” the voice hissed. The two guards grudgingly stood aside, not wishing to enrage their master, as Wormtail pushed open the door and pulled Harry inside with him.
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“What do you mean ‘missing’?” Molly Weasley had been angry before, but it had been nothing compared to how she was feeling now. Now, she was furious. By ten o’clock that same morning, the Order of the Phoenix was gathered together in the kitchen of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. First, Dumbledore had informed them that Harry had suffered severe memory loss because of the Cruciatus curse, and now he was missing! How Mrs. Weasley asked herself, could Dumbledore have allowed this to happen?
“What exactly happened, Albus?” Professor McGonagall asked, her usually stern expression still unusually soft.
“From the information I was able to gather, Peter Pettigrew found a way into the school late last night. He took Harry by Portkey,” Dumbledore answered tiredly; it had been a long day and it wasn’t even noon yet. Tonks, who had been released from St. Mungo’s an hour earlier, spoke next.
“Where did he take him?” she inquired, her usually cheerful demeanor having evaporated. Now, she looked every bit the Auror that she was.
“Most likely to Voldemort.”
“And do we have any idea where that might be?” Her voice seemed to become lower and more dangerous by the second, startling those around her.
“At the moment, we do not.”
“Well, isn’t that just lovely,” she spat sarcastically, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. No one in the room had ever seen her look so angry.
“But,” Mrs. Weasley reentered the conversation, “how did he get into the school in the first place?”
“That… I do not know. He may have found a hole in the wards or a number of other alternatives. I haven’t been able to find where this weakness is yet, but I shall continue to try.”
This, however, did nothing to soften her expression. “I thought that Hogwarts was the safest place to be! And now you tell us that there may be ‘a hole in the wards’!” Mrs. Weasley’s temper was rising again. She still had two children and two who were as good as her own in the school. She had thought that Hogwarts was safe; this only proved that nowhere was a completely safe haven anymore. That thought, more than any other, was what scared her the most.
“What do you think You-Know-Who will do to him?” Arthur Weasley asked Dumbledore quietly. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, who had been given permission to attend the meeting, flinched. At the moment, none of them wanted to think about the many possible ways that the Dark Lord could possibly be torturing Harry. But, at Dumbledore’s answer, a million new ideas forcibly entered their minds.
“With Harry’s memory in its current state, there are many more options beside torture or death, I’m afraid,” the headmaster replied as calmly as possible, but no one missed the look of grim defeat in his eyes. Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the wizard who could fix almost anything, was at a loss for the first time that any of them could remember.
Remus slammed his fist down on the table and Mrs. Weasley began to cry into her husband’s shoulder, her anger giving way to worry and fear. “Then, what do we do?” the werewolf demanded through clenched teeth. Much to his chagrin, no one was able to supply an answer.
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As Wormtail closed the door behind himself and Harry, Harry surveyed his surroundings for a moment. They were in yet another cold, dark room with stone walls. This one, however, had a worn carpet covering the floor. At the far end of the chamber was a crackling fire, but it gave only a small amount of light and hardly any warmth at all. There was a throne-like chair in front of the fireplace, but its back was to the two new arrivals.
Wormtail seized Harry’s elbow and half-dragged him toward the throne. As they made their way around the chair, Harry just barely stifled his gasp. In the chair sat a man-or what Harry assumed to be a man. He had hands resembling large, pale spiders and red eyes. The pupils were actually more like cat-like slits, gleaming in the light of the fire. As Harry half-gaped at the figure, he began to speak softly.
“Hello, Harry Potter,” Lord Voldemort said in his high, cold voice.
Oh no! Another deviously evil cliffie! Sorry it’s so short, by the way. The problem is that the next part just had no break-off point. Trust me, I checked at least three times.
Oh, yeah! Ten points and an e-cookie to whoever figured out that every part of the description for Voldemort was taken (practically word for word, actually) from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 33: The Death Eaters, page 644, paragraph one. Okay, you don’t have to know ALL of that! And yes, that is my official description disclaimer. Thank you for reading, please review, and stay tuned for the next chapter! Thank you!
~Moony
Cruciatus Cursed by Moony 62442
Chapter Notes: Hello again! Here is my gift to you: chapter six! As always, I am but a humble writer using the brilliant subjects and characters of Jo Rowling. So, in other words: I own nothing! Zip! Zilch! NADA! Too bad for me… Now, read on and review, please!