Day 1
After what had been ages, or perhaps just a moment, someone took her arm and shook it as she opened her eyes, feeling a dull ache in the back of her head. Brian's face was hovering inches over hers, causing her to blink in surprise at how close his concerned eyes were to hers.
"What happened? A portkey?" Marissa groaned feeling her head gingerly, relieved not to feel any blood.
"That damned cat was a stuffed animal portkey; some Muggle electronic toy and we fell for it, that's the best I can come up with. You've been out for only thirty seconds or so." He helped her to a sitting position and she closed her eyes as a wave of dizziness engulfed her. Clutching his arm she took a few deep breaths then tentatively cracked her eyes open again. They were in a small room, by themselves. A little fireplace stood in one corner and a double sized bed was across from her. A rectangular window, large enough to maybe fit a house elf through stood high up on the ceiling.
"Where're our bags?" Marissa turned her head slowly as the walls seemed to spin around her. His hand on her back was the only thing holding her upright at the moment.
"I needed to hide them," he said in a low voice and gestured to the corner, "my invisibility cloak is covering them. I think we also need to figure out how to stay together. I get the feeling that only one of us was supposed to be here and I don't think he'll toss one of us back into Hogwarts, thinking that we'd go quietly."
Marissa tried standing which resulted in a groan as the thumping in her head seemed to drown out all sounds and she pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to keep her head from splitting apart. She rocked back and forth on her knees for a moment, taking deep breaths.
"Slow down," Brian started trying to still her movements. "Listen, someone planted that for me or you and we need to stay together. If they split us up, whoever THEY are…it'll just be harder to find two people in two different places…," Brian began explaining and Marissa quickly caught on, now able to stand up with his hand supporting her.
"How do you propose we make ourselves stick together?" Marissa asked her nerves showing with the way she was shaking and the tremor in her voice.
"Doing just that…using a sticking charm. We can do it on ourselves, so neither of us can move more than a few feet without pulling the other one along. I can make it so things can pass between us, but nothing can pull us further than three or four feet apart."
"Alright…do you know how to do that?" Marissa asked a hand to her head, the other one reaching into her pocket for her wand. Glancing sideways at him, she saw him nod as they heard a door slide open somewhere on their level. Brian waved his wand over them muttering a charm just as a figure opened their door.
She felt a surge of magical energy hit her wand and course through to her palm, causing her to drop it in surprise. Brian obviously felt the same thing because his clattered next to hers and a moment later they were in the person's hand at the door.
"There will be no need for wands in here." Slowly, Brian continued to support Marissa feeling her full weight leaning against him.
Marissa couldn't see who the person was as he was standing in the shadow, but she could tell it was a "he" and thought she recognized the voice. Suddenly, her legs threatened to give out and she sank to the floor.
"What do you want?" Brian asked, kneeling down next reaching an arm protectively around Marissa's shoulders and pulling her to him.
"Well, I originally wanted Miss Malfoy here, but you came as a bonus," the man stepped out of the shadows and Brian heard Marissa make a deep noise in her throat as she forced her head to look up and at the figure.
"What I really want is my daughter, so I decided since your father has MINE, it's only fair that I have HIS. And Harry Potter's son coming along will fit quite nicely too. I can hold you for quite a bit of money." Thomas Nott directed his comment to Marissa as he put his hands on the door handle which, was only on the outside of the door, both noticed. Brian dug his fingers into Marissa's shoulder willing her to be quiet sensing her ready temper.
For a while a staring match ensued and Marissa found that it hurt to keep staring at him, so she lowered her eyes and
closed them not really caring what he thought of her at the moment. She was only conscious of a strong arm around her
shoulder and she sank against him, grateful he was there with her.
Then Nott spoke again.
"I'm lucky to have two unused rooms in this house, so Mr. Potter if you'd be so kind to come to the door, I'll take you to your own…personal room."
Brian just sat there, holding Marissa so tight she thought the blood circulation might be cut off to her arm with the way he was squeezing her shoulder. She could feel Brian's anger at being put in this situation in the way he held her, how hard he was trying to keep his emotions under control and so she sat still, but her mind was moving in many different directions from possibly knocking out Nott and taking off through the door, to what her parents were doing while she was here, with Brian.
A moment of silence permeated the room and this time Marissa spoke in a carefully controlled voice.
"You can't take one of us without the other."
"Really? I think I can do anything I want," Nott replied angrily and raised his wand. He muttered "Accio, Potter" and sure enough both of them slid across the floor to him. He looked at his wand for a moment and then tried a separation charm on them, repelling Marissa over towards the small fireplace, but sure enough both ended up moving over there, only a few feet apart.
"You think wrong. Where one of us goes, the other goes as well," Brian said in a cold voice, holding Marissa's arm and helping her to stand up. Determinedly she fought off the wave of dizziness and nausea that marked the sign of a concussion and stood her ground, thankful for the support of Brian's arm moving around her waist.
"Well, then…finite," Nott said tightly. Inwardly Marissa said a silent cheer as he tried to move them apart again and failed. Marissa inwardly gave Brian one point for outsmarting Nott, and squeezed his hip slightly letting him know what she was thinking. Brian squeezed back as Nott growled in frustration at the smug look on Brian and Marissa's faces.
"Don't think about using that fireplace for anything. It's just there because it came with the room, and isn't hooked up to anything. You'll get one meal a day and will be here for as long as it takes for my demands to be met." He gave them a thoroughly evil smile, revealing a row of crooked teeth.
"Good luck," Marissa spat with such force she felt her headache throb a bit. Nott just sneered at them, turned on his heel and left leaving the clanging echo of a door behind him.
Marissa let out a breath and felt all her strength go out with it, feeling herself sway as Brian caught her then eased her down and set her against the wall.
"You ok?" he asked, his hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah, I have a concussion I think. My head hurts." Marissa left her eyes closed and felt Brian run a hand softly over her head, pausing in the back and feeling the lump.
"How did you know to use that charm?" Marissa asked feeling very confused as to why they were locked in a room. Her common sense was being clouded by the pain in her head and the sleepiness that was on its heels. She was having a hard time separating Brian's voice from the pounding in her head.
"I had a feeling that whoever it was, Nott now we know, would try to keep us apart. I knew that there was a better chance of our parents working together to find us than by themselves; to make that happen we needed to be together." Both knew this was true just by the history of the Granger/Potter/Weasley and Malfoy families. From finding Voldemort to his death eaters a year later, both were sure that together their parents could find them using methods that they knew about (magical traces left behind by portkeys) and things they, their children, most likely knew nothing about.
"Nott never made it through his fifth year so he doesn't know how to un-stick us," Marissa mumbled sleepily, then winced as she moved her neck and became quiet.
Brian gave another nod and settled down next to her against the stark white wall. He let her drift off with the intent on waking her up in an hour or so and from his spot he looked at every corner of the room.
The room was close to a perfect square, maybe ten feet on each side. The floor was wooden and as his gaze wandered from floor to ceiling he observed, about ten feet up, at the very top of the wall was a window about two feet long and one foot high across with bars, of course. Brian briefly wondered how he could get up there to look outside. Continuing his observation of the room, his gaze wandered towards the door and saw it looked like a regular bedroom door, except there wasn't a door handle on the inside. Across from him was newer looking mattress with a sheet, pillow and blanket. He looked around twice more and realized there was nothing else. It was very clean, not one piece of dirt or a dust bunny, lest they managed to wandlessly conjure up one of those items into a weapon. He snorted at that thought, killer dust bunnies!, then set his eyes on the corner to his left, remembering their school bags.
He scooted away from her as far as he could until he began to feel a resistance, then using his foot he pulled the cloak off the backpacks and pulled them towards him. Grabbing one in each hand he leaned back against the wall and inventoried the contents of his bag.
One notebook, filled with Herbology notes
A few sheets of parchment and a quill
Bottle of water
Half eaten pack of crackers
Full box of crystallized fruit his mother had sent him
Invisibility cloak
He stuffed the cloak back in and turned to Marissa's hesitating for a moment, then unzipped hers. Hers was much more organized than his was.
She had a piece of parchment folded up into quarters. Unfolding it he saw it was a schedule of the fifth year exams she was to take, starting up again after Easter.
"Fifth year? What the hell is she doing?" he wondered aloud. Making a mental note to ask her when the chance arose he set it aside. He thought of the exam he had just sent home to his mother via floo and his stomach fell as he thought about sitting here, when he should've been getting ready to go home for four days. Sighing heavily he pulled out a book: Sixth Year Muggle Studies.
"Sixth year?" he whispered to himself and flipped it over in his hands, trying to see if he misread the title. Shrugging he placed it on the floor next to him and looked through the rest of her bag. She also had a bottle of water, a bag of crackers, a few loose pieces of candy, a lightweight sweater and a quill. Under the quill was a small bag of floo powder from Potions class. Glancing towards the fireplace he wondered if they could use it on a note or something. They would need to know when Nott took down the ward to start the fire, if he ever did, because he would probably put it up again real fast.
He felt Marissa's head rest on his shoulder and he moved closer, taking the Muggle Studies book, since there wasn't anything else he could do with her sleeping.
`How long do you let people with concussions sleep? An hour?' he asked himself and he waded back through his memories, calling up conversations he had with his mother and snippets of information he heard from her about Healing. Shaking back his sleeve to his school shirt, which he never changed out of, he looked at his wizard's watch and did a double take.
They had gone out to visit Hagrid and the unicorn around three in the afternoon, staying until four. They must've come across the portkey a short time later, which landed him here about twenty minutes ago. So, it should be around four thirty in the afternoon. Why did his watch say ten thirty? He looked out the window again and noticed for the first time it was bright and seemed to be sunny. When they left it had been cloudy, but warm.
He reached over and carefully took Marissa's right arm and looked at her watch. It said the same time.
`What the hell? I didn't lose consciousness; I KNOW I didn't! If it's truly ten thirty in the morning, then did we move ahead a day?' Brian thought totally confused, gently setting her arm down and looking around once more for a clue as to where they were. He didn't observe anything that might help him. Resigned to the fact that nothing more could be done until they were both talking or got a look outside the room, he decided to read. Opening the Muggle Studies book, he began perusing it, knowing most of the information outlined in each chapter. Having both parents grow up as Muggles, he could've aced the course, but his parents wouldn't let him take it. They said it was a waste of his time and he needed to dedicate himself to learning something new and that would help direct his life.
Glancing at his watch every so often, he managed to browse through the whole book in a bit under an hour. Not being able to stand it anymore he nudged Marissa with his elbow.
"What?" she mumbled cracking open an eye.
"Feeling any better?" Brian reached over and felt her cheeks with the back of his hand finding them cool to the touch.
`Good, no fever,' he thought.
She smiled a bit as his knuckles grazed her cheek, relishing in the most reassuring thing that had happened to her since she left the Hogwarts grounds.
"I feel a bit better, though I'm stiff." She straightened up and moved her arms and legs slowly, then stood up watching Brian stand with her. She glanced down at the book and he told her he had gone through their bags.
"I'm curious as to why you have a sixth year text and a schedule for fifth year exams. Are you trying to skip your fifth year?" Brian held her arm as she leaned back against the wall feeling the room spin under her feet.
"Yeah. Trying to; no one was supposed to know, in case I failed miserably." Brian laughed aloud then quickly stifled it as she shot him a look, "I only wanted my parents to know, but that seems a bit…unimportant right now."
Brian wasn't sure what to say to that and changed the subject, asking her to look at her watch. Glancing at it, she saw it was nearly ten thirty …was it really that late? It didn't seem like six hours had passed.
"What? It's not that late!" Marissa shook her wrist then looked at it again.
"It's not "late"," Brian pointed towards the window and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "I think its morning…here. Mine says the same thing. I'm wondering if we are somewhere very far from Scotland? When I got this last year, I remember the sales witch saying it would change time zones on its own, but I didn't really care about that since I wasn't planning on going anywhere. So…where could it be six hours earlier?"
"Six hours earlier, means going west, so in America on the East Coast it would be about eleven in the morning."
Marissa stared at her watch again and then jumped as Brian slammed his hands against the wall behind him.
"I feel so stupid for thinking that cat was real!"
Marissa frowned slightly, wondering why he was blaming himself, when her love for cats overshadowed her reasoning of safety. She shouldn't have touched the animal, one she had never seen before.
"I do too, Brian," Marissa admitted then walked towards the bed and sat down on it, the sticking charm forcing Brian to follow her. He realized they could get about four feet away from each other before the other one was pulled along. Marissa tested the firmness of the bed and bounced on it a few times. It wasn't very soft and she glanced over at Brian who was watching her closely.
The realization of their situation hit Marissa and she felt a sense of panic hit her.
`No one knows where we are, not even us. No one saw us leave…how will our parents find us? When?'
She hid her face in her hands and rested her elbows on her knees, trying to maintain control of herself. But her head hurt, her body hurt…she hadn't even asked Brian how he was so she looked over at him and found him staring at the back of the door as if willing it to open.
"How're you? I didn't even ask," Marissa whispered. He nodded indicating he was fine and continued his staring at the door. His jaw muscles were twitching and she could see he was still angry.
"Do you think he'll start a fire? If he does, maybe we can sneak something in the floo to go home that'll let everyone know where we are, or at least let them know we're ok."
Suddenly the unmistakable crack of someone apparating made them both jump as a small house elf appeared inside their door holding a tray.
"Who're you?" Brian asked taking in the small house elf wearing what looked like a kids yellow t shirt that had the arms ripped out of it. A piece of dirty string was tied around the creature's middle to make it look something like a toga.
"I am Millie here with your food, Harry Potter's boy." She looked at him in what Marissa guessed was guarded amazement. Millie bent down and set the tray on the floor and with a shy look at them, she apparated away.
"Well, she knows who you are at least, and it's me he wanted," Marissa said grumpily staring at the food.
"I don't know if we should eat that," Brian said wearily, his stomach growling along with hers.
"Well, I don't think he'd kill us if he wants money and Amy. He wouldn't do that…yet, anyway." Marissa stood up slowly and shuffled over looking at the soup with Brian.
"It looks just like chicken broth," she said crouching down and sniffing it. "And, unless we can master a wandless refilling charm, we're going to have to eat something," she said sarcastically, knowing full well that either one of them successfully attempting wandless magic was just about out of the question.
She sat down gingerly and took a bite of the bread. Brian followed her lead a bit hesitantly but after a few minutes no one had fallen over or complained so they finished what was on the tray. After they set their spoon down in the bowl, Millie apparated back in.
"What? Were you waiting on the other side of the door?" Marissa asked, falling back in surprise, her head thumping in response to her sudden movement.
"Oh no. I would never eavesdrop, Miss Malfoy!" Millie said looking horror struck at the very idea. Her enormous dark eyes widened and she jumped a bit as Brian stood up suddenly.
"Millie? Where are we?" he asked, trying to sound polite.
"In Master Nott's spare room. I must go now before I divulge more and have to pull out my nails one by one to punish myself!" and with that she was gone, along with the tray. Marissa shuddered at the thought.
"Well, we KNOW that…spare room," Brian muttered running his hands through his already messed up dark hair, and then shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.
"Wonder what we do for the bathroom?" Marissa asked aloud to no one in particular and as if on cue, she heard a door open down the hall. They both rushed over to their bags and threw the cloak on top of them, then stood in the middle of the room and watched Nott make an appearance.
"As there aren't any bathrooms in here, you'll have to go down the hall here. Twice a day is when I will let you go; I don't want to have to come down here more than I have too. Now move," he said and stepped away from the door. Taking Marissa's hand Brian walked a few steps in front of her, both of their eyes taking in the dark hallway with odd looking lamps. Something neither of them have seen before. Ahead, there was a door at the end of the hall, open to a very small bathroom.
"You go first. We should be able to stand on either side of the door." Brian whispered in her ear and she ducked in and closed the door. Brian stood against the door, figuring they were almost three feet apart because he could sense the sticking charm beginning to pull him. He stared at Nott who returned his stare and then asked him what his father, the great Harry Potter was going to do now, but Brian didn't answer. He heard the sink running then Marissa opened the door and Brian ducked in quickly, not liking the idea of leaving her out there with him.
"You two are nothing without your wands. I bet Hogwarts doesn't teach wandless magic," Nott growled and Marissa clenched her jaw and mentally took a deep breath.
"Hogwarts never taught it; if you had stayed there all seven years, you'd know that. Witches and Wizards that can control it are very rare."
Brian opened the door right as she finished her retort and Nott pushed them back towards the room. A minute later both of them were locked up back in their room securely.
"I wonder if house elves know how to take down wards on fireplaces?" Brian walked over the small brick fireplace and ran his hands long it. It looked brand new, like it had never been used. He looked inside and up the chimney as Marissa turned from the fireplace and headed towards the bed, feeling weary, forgetting Brian was forced to follow.
"Maybe, if their master shows them. I don't think Millie would answer that question yet."
Marissa laid on the side on the bed, tucking an arm under the pillow and stared up at the window.
"What're we going to do? We don't even know where we are, how will our parents?" Marissa was beginning to feel desperate and that combined with the tiredness made her feel like crying.
"They have the Ministry and Hogwarts at their disposal; they'll figure out something. In the meantime," Brian came and sat on the edge of the bed opposite her, "we have to see what we can do to try and get word out. Why don't you nap and I'll stay up, keep an eye on you…."
"I'm fine," Marissa interjected.
"You have a concussion and with both our mum's being healers we both know that I need to wake you up every so often," Brian said firmly shaking his head as she tried to insist she didn't need watching.
"Fine," Marissa relented with a sigh and watched him lean back against the wall, kick off his slightly
scuffed trainers and stretching his long legs out on the sparse bed.
"Do you suppose they're missing us yet?" Marissa asked quietly and she felt his hand bump hers as he settled in. Hesitating for a moment she gently took it and felt him interlace his fingers with hers, holding tight.
"I'm sure they're just realizing it, especially since I was supposed to floo back with my sisters around five." Brian's voice took on a wistful quality as he imagined his father quizzing his sisters while his mum was talking to Ginny, via the floo, about where they were. Marissa was quiet for so long he thought she might have fallen asleep.
"I think," Marissa started and Brian turned his head towards her, "that if I was here by myself, like he wanted I would have totally freaked out by now."
Brian squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"I think you would have dealt with it. But you aren't here alone, so try not to worry about it."
"I'm really glad you brought your invisibility cloak." She squeezed his hand back (thinking of how little they would have if Nott took their bags) and Brian could feel her trembling, although he was uncertain exactly which part of their predicament had set her off. The whole situation was beginning to hit him all at once like a ton of bricks and he felt the need to quietly try and figure out what they were going to do.
"Does your head hurt a lot?" he turned to look at her and saw her carefully turn to her other side and look at him as if asking him for answers as to why they were locked in a room. He rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand reassuringly, watching her struggling to contain her emotions.
"Just very sore. I can't lay on my back." He saw her close her eyes and could see she was still struggling to not break down.
"We'll be ok. I promise," Brian said softly, moving a bit closer.
"You can't promise that," Marissa replied hoarsely, thinking if she kept her eyes closed the tears wouldn't leak out.
"I can and I do." Brian gently slipped his arm under her neck and pulled her towards him gently settling her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Craving the closeness and security, she moved closer, shifting her head a bit to find the most comfortable position. His arm curled under her and rubbed her shoulder gently, helping to calm her nerves.
Marissa tucked her own arms between her chest and Brian's side and thought he was much more comfortable than the lumpy pillow. If she had been anywhere else she would probably have gone crazy with all the romantic notions that would have run through her head. But here, now, all she wanted to do was sleep and as she heard the comforting thump of his heart beating she closed her eyes, hoping this was all a dream.
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