Dawn Rivera

Malfoy Manor

I look around at the other four, now mere outlines in the darkness. I point my hands and Hermione her wand, not towards the outside, but into Harry and Danny's faces; there are bangs, bursts of white light, and they buckle in agony. I can see their faces swelling rapidly under their hands, as heavy footfalls surround me.

"Get up, vermin."

Unknown hands drag me roughly off the ground. Before I can stop them, someone has rummaged through my pockets. Harry and Danny clutch at their faces, unrecognisable beneath their fingers, tight, swollen and puffy as though they have suffered some violent allergic reaction. Their eyes have been reduced to slits; Harry's glasses fall off as they are bundled out of the tent: the four of five shapes wrestling Ron, Hermione and I outside too seem a blur.

"Get - off - them!" Ron shouts. There is the unmistakable sound of knuckles hitting flesh: Ron grunts in pain and I scream, "No! Leave him alone, leave him alone!"

"Your boyfriend's going to have worse than that done to him if he's on my list," says the horribly familiar, rasping voice. "Delicious girls...I do enjoy the softness of the skin..."

My stomach turns over. I know who this is: Fenfir Greyback,  there werewolf who is permitted to wear Death Eater robes in return for his hired savagery.

"Search the tent!" says another voice.

Harry and Danny are thrown, face down, on to the ground. A loud this tells me that Ron has been cast down beside them. We can hear footsteps and crashes; the men are pushing over chairs inside the tent as they search.

"Now, let's see who we've got," says Greyback's gloating voice from overhead, and Harry and Danny are rolled over onto their backs. A beam of wandlight falls into their faces and Greyback laughs.

"I'll be needing Butterbeer to wash this one down. What happened to you, uglies?"

Harry and Danny do not answer immediately.

"I said," repeats Greyback, and Harry and Danny receive blows to the diaphragm that make them double over in pain, "what happened to you?"

"Stung," Danny mutters. "Been stung."

"Yeah, looks like it," says a second voice.

"What's your names?" snarls Greyback.

"Dudley," says Harry. "We're brothers."

"And your first names?"

"I - Vernon and Max," says Danny. "Vernon and Max Dudley."

"Check the list, Scabior," says Greyback, and I hear him move sideways to look down at Ron instead. "And what about you, Ginger?"

"Stan Shunpike," says Ron.

"Like 'ell you are," says the man called Scabior. "We know Stan Shunpike, 'e's put a bit of work our way."

There is another thud.

"I'b Bardy," says Ron, and I can tell that his mouth is full of blood. "Bardy Weadley."

"A Weasley?" rasps Greyback. "So you're related to blood traitors even if you're not a Mudblood. And lastly, your pretty little friends..." The relish in his voice makes my flesh crawl.

"Easy, Greyback," says Scabior, over the jeering of the others.

"Oh, I'm not going to bite just yet. We'll see if they're a bit quicker at reborn wring their names than Barny. Who are you, girlies?"

"Penelope Clearwater and Gracie Smith," says Hermione. She sounds terrified, but convincing.

"What's your Blood Statuses?"