Cupboards and Cryogenics

Chapter 4

When Severus comes to, his whole body aches with numerous pains and his mind throbs horribly in his skull. He'd much rather still be out of it right now.

The pain isn't as intense as the Cruciatus Curse, but Severus has physical injuries at the moment. There's a lump in the back of his head and his body is heavily bruised, especially his throat.

The memories flood back quickly. He's still laying on the dented slide that the long-haired man with the metal prosthetic arm had thrown him into. Severus' own body had been the thing to dent the metal slide, and there are a couple sharp parts poking into his body.

The boy. Potter. Where is he? Obviously, the muggles were kidnapping him, but for what purpose? Do they know how important he is to the wizarding world? The vast majority of muggles don't know about magic, of course, but it seems more than a little coincidental that they were going for the Boy Who Lived.

Severus gropes around for his wand and doesn't find it anywhere. He tries to wandlessly summon it with Accio but still nothing happens. What in Merlin's name?

Had the attacker taken his wand?

The Potions Master sits up from his crater in the slide, aching body fiercely protesting the movement. Just in case, he scans the ground for any sign of his wand, in case the wandless charm simply hadn't worked.

No sign of it. Apparently it had been misappropriated by the attacker. Severus scowls furiously- being without his wand is the last thing he needs right now.

From the looks of it, the attacker is gone.

Potter is nowhere to be seen, as well. So that attacker had successfully kidnapped Potter and is Merlin knows where with the brat right now. Obviously, he hadn't taken the car that Severus disabled, but he could have made it a fair distance on foot by now- the man was inordinately fast- or perhaps even obtained another vehicle.

Either way, there is an incredibly slim chance of him finding the man, let alone catching up to him, without a wand.

This was not how Severus thought the night was going to go. He was hoping to find the Potter brat quickly and let Dumbledore find another home for him, since his relatives are indeed dead.

The two attackers he'd petrified are still laying motionless on the street. The situation is nowhere near as dire as if they had not been here. It should be simple to extract the location of wherever they were planning on taking the boy, which is presumably where their metal-armed associate is now. Without a wand, though, Severus cannot un-petrify them, or contain them if they try to run.

Sticking his wand arm out over the street, he summons the Knight Bus. If he had any other choice right now, he'd chose that instead of the Knight Bus.

The triple-decker purple bus can be used by Squibs like Mrs. Figg, so he doesn't need a wand to summon it. Also, the attacker had apparently decided to leave Severus' money with him. Perhaps he thought Galleons were fools' gold.

The triple-decker purple bus appears with a bang in the street, and the abandoned car and the two petrified goons' bodies are magically thrown out of the way of the bus.

The behemoth of a vehicle screeches to a stop without any regard to momentum. The conductor comes out while Severus starts to try to carry the two petrified kidnappers. His own aching body protests, and even if he was in his best condition it would be hard to carry the bulky men.

The conductor seems a little confused to be helping Severus with his 'baggage', but the Potions Master makes up a story involving copious amounts of Firewhiskey and stupid dueling bets.