Ch.54

They were after a witch who was firing spells into the stands. Harry supposed they were after Bellatrix Lestrange, the Azkaban escapee. She must be as crazy as her reputation to do such a thing on this rotten day.

Harry rose up in the air to get away from the spell casting. Something tugged at him though and he flew off his broom into the Forbidden Forest. He cast a slowing spell he hadn't practiced much. It didn't matter, there was already a cushioning spell in place. Landing didn't hurt much at all, but that did nothing for his anxiety.

With the weather and the crazy woman on the pitch, no one could have seen him disappear. Harry looked around. He had no idea exactly where he was.

The man stepped on Harry's hand and snapped Harry's wand.

Harry cried out.

"I've gone to considerable efforts to arrange this. I didn't count on this weather, but there was nothing more perfect for my needs."

He pulled a fearsome knife. It glinted as it caught the reflection of lightning in the sky.

Rookwood...

"You killed the Wolf of Bandon...," Harry said.

Harry was trying to understand. His mind couldn't do anything else. His wand was broken. He carried no knife or other weapon.

"The other escapee is on the pitch. There are a hundred qualified wizards there... They'll kill her. They were your friends."

"A Death Eater has no friends, Potter. He has orders."

From Voldemort...

The man remained on Harry's hand, but he knelt toward Harry's head. That knife. It flicked out... Harry expected a slash of his throat.

But no.

Rookwood held something wet in his hand. Wet and dark.

Hair?

Rookwood had brought him here to steal his hair?

"All the necessaries. Hair, blood, and the rest."

Blood... What did he mean blood...

The man dropped a cloth on Harry. "You'll need this."

He shifted and ground Harry's hand deeper into the dirt. All Harry knew was dire pain. He screamed, but it was nothing compared to the sound of the rain beating on leaves and thudding against the ground.

Rookwood's foot was off his hand, then back on it. He hadn't noticed when that happened.

When Rookwood stood he closed a flask and pocketed it. In his hand he had something else. A flash of lightning revealed it to be pale, pale and bloody.

The shape... Was that a finger?

Was that Harry's finger?

His mouth filled with bile and he vomited.

"Hair, blood, bone, flesh. You're a bit young for needing semen. I suppose I could get some bile from you. Hard to do it without killing a body, though. It'll be enough, what I collected."

Harry didn't understand. He had arranged all this for some blood and one of Harry's fingers. He wasn't going to kill?

Rookwood knew the unasked question. "My Master requires me to leave you alive, Potter. He wants the honor of killing you himself. Hopefully you'll present more of a challenge next time. He's coming soon. Farewell, Boy-Who-Bled, Boy-Who-Shall-Die."

Rookwood stomped off toward a path.

Harry's wand hand was no longer crushed, but the pain... His wand was in pieces.

Harry picked up the largest fragment of his wand with his alternate hand. The poor shard had a bit of bedraggled feather poking out. It didn't look like much, so broken, not unlike Harry.

He pointed and shouted, "Fulmenifer."

The power of lightning wasn't just confined to the sky. For a brief instant it existed far closer to the Earth.

Harry had really worked the spell, otherwise casting this in the rain would have done far more damage to himself than his target. Still, the effort burned up the fragment of his wand and didn't seem fatal to that horrible wizard.

Harry pushed himself up. He took that little cloth Rookwood had dropped and held it on the stump of his missing pinky finger.

Harry found Rookwood on the ground. He had dropped Harry's finger. Harry picked it up along with the knife that had severed it.

When he stood, he tried to orient himself. Where was the castle? There, he thought. There he could see the lights in a tower.

Harry heard chittering noises which were louder than the rain for a brief moment. What in the world made that kind of sound?

Harry stepped on the flask Rookwood had on him. How was he parted from it now? Didn't matter. Harry looked for Rookwood's wand. There. Harry picked it up, took a few more steps, and cast Sunfire on the flask of blood. The wand fought him a little, but the spell worked. Harry dropped the wand. It felt like sickness.

He started walking and didn't look back. He advanced with Rookwood's knife, his finger (unburned by the Fulmenifer, best as Harry could tell), and what fragments remained of his wand.

He was shaking, but it wasn't from the rain. He didn't even know if magic could repair something like the damage to his hand. He just knew he had to get to safety.

He thought he heard some screaming from the clearing where Rookwood had captured him. Harry found he didn't care.

.....

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