Fear of a Name

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Necklace

Hours melted into days, and still there was no sign of rescue on the horizon. My collection of scars had only grown as the days had gone on. I'd lost track of the date, but I was sure it was somewhere around Christmas. The air was cold, and a blanket of snow was covering the ground outside my window. Shivering, I pulled my increasingly tattered and torn clothes closer to my body as my breath rose in misty spirals from my mouth.

Suddenly, I heard a noise, like nails scratching on metal. I looked up to see a great black dog pawing at the bars of my window.
"Sirius!" I said quietly, noticing the unique markings on his face almost immediately.
Sirius turned back into his human form, and looked at me sadly as I limped over to him.
"What're you doing here?" I asked him, keeping my voice down so nobody would hear me from upstairs.
"Rescuing you, of course," he replied in a low voice.
"How?" I said, looking at him through the gaps between the bars. "I can't get out of here; they've stopped me being able to do any form of magic in this room, and I'm guessing you don't have a wand..."
He shook his head regretfully.

"Oh!" I whispered after a moment's pause. "They didn't take mine, I remember now — you could try using that to get rid of these bars?"
"Good idea," he agreed, and I quickly handed him my wand, which he used to carefully and silently remove the bars from the hole in the wall that was supposed to be my window.
"Thanks," I said, painfully climbing out of the cell and into the cold winter's air. "But howl I get back to Hogwarts? I can't apparate, that would mean walking up to the castle from Hogsmeade, and I'm almost certain I won't be able to walk that far."

"Oh, that reminds me," Sirius said, smiling, and handing me back my wand. "I've got something for you."
He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled something out of it.
"Happy Christmas."
"Is that—" I hesitated "—my purse?"
"Yes it is," he grinned, giving it to me.
"But how did you get it?"
"My godson apparently didn't notice there was a big black dog in the Gryffindor common room," he said, laughing quietly.
I grinned. Harry wasn't the most observant type.

"Oh, and your actual Christmas present is inside it. I've got to go now, bye!"
And with that, he transformed back into his dog form and ran off into the bushes.
"Sirius!" I called quietly after him, being careful not to let any of the Death Eaters — or worse, my father — hear me. "Sirius, wait!"
But he didn't answer; he was long gone.

I looked around to make sure there was nobody nearby, then limped over to the same clump of bushes that Sirius had just disappeared into. I opened my purse, put it under one of the bushes, and climbed into it, wincing every time I had to put pressure on my right leg. The first thing I saw was a small box on the table, tied up with a bootlace. A note of some sort seemed to be next to it. I limped to it, picked up the note, and read:

'Ivory,
If you're reading this, it means I managed to get you out, thank Merlin. I know that there will be no time to explain anything, so I decided to write it in a letter.
You may or may not know, but I am Harry Potter's dogfather.'

I smiled slightly at this, my first genuine smile for weeks. Of course, he had to put a dog pun in there somewhere. I read on, still smiling.

'I don't have much else to say about that, I just did it for the pun.
Anyway, in this box is your Christmas present. It's a little bit like a portkey, only it will work an infinite amount of times, and can take you to almost anywhere. You just need to wear it, then concentrate very hard on where you want to go, much like you would when you're apparating. It also does some other cool stuff, which I'll let you work out on your own. It's much more fun that way.

'Just one more thing. Do not, under any circumstances, let Remus see it. He'll probably recognise it; he saw it enough times when we were at Hogwarts — I stole it from my mother in my first year. It was brilliant fun, especially combined with James' old cloak.
Happy Christmas, I hope you like the present. Use it well.
Sirius.'

I quickly opened the box and took out a beautiful silver necklace with a sizeable crescent moon pendant attached to it, which looked to be made out of gold. It was truly beautiful, and had been expertly crafted, meaning it was almost certainly goblin-made.
As I fastened it around my neck, an unnatural warmth began to creep through my body. Rather than being alarmed at this (as I should've been), I felt strangely comforted. It almost felt as if I'd been reunited with a friend whom I hadn't seen for many years.

Trying to ignore this, I limped over to my potions shelf as quickly as possible, grabbed a blood-replenishing potion and drank it all in one go. I then painfully climbed up the ladder and back into the bushes, picked up my purse and closed it with a snap.

"WHERE IS SHE?!" My mother's harsh voice broke the silence in the air from not too far away. "HOW DID SHE GET OUT?!"
Panicking slightly, I focused hard on where I wanted to be taken by my new necklace, hoping it would work.
Hogwarts! I want to go to Hogwarts! Take me to Hogwarts!
To my great relief, I finally felt the strange and somewhat horrible sensation of apparating, though it was slightly different to normal. My body felt less like it was being squeezed through a tight tube, and more like I was on a really fast roundabout in a Muggle playground, spinning faster and faster. Then, just as I was thinking that I would probably be flung out of the earth's atmosphere and into space, it stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Looking around, I saw that I'd landed in the entrance hall, fairly close to the doors into the great hall. I thought I could hear voices on the other side of it, and I strained my ears to try and hear what they were saying, ignoring the dizziness that was now threatening to overcome me.
"I doubt it will make much difference," came Professor McGonagall's voice, "unless a mad axe-man is waiting outside the doors to slaughter the first into the entrance hall."
There was some laughter, which stopped abruptly when I let out a sudden sneeze. I cursed inwardly.

"What was that?" I heard someone say in a rather high voice, which sounded like Ron.
"It sounded like a sneeze," someone else said, and I was sure this was Harry.
Then came footsteps, getting closer by the second. I quickly unclipped my necklace and stuffed it into my purse, feeling more and more lightheaded and dizzy by the second, which I assumed was from the way I'd got out of the grounds of Malfoy Manor. A second later, the doors of the great hall were flung open by Dumbledore.
"Miss Riddle?"
"Ivory!" Harry, Ron, and Hermione exclaimed together, running over to where I was swaying slightly on my feet.
"Hi guys, did you miss me?"
That was the last thing I remember before everything went black.