Marked • Tom Riddle

His Hold

   

   The lights above me seemed to blur together with every attempt I made to open my eyes and focus my vision, but the excruciating pounding in my head rendered my attempts useless. I was in a haze, a seemingly never-ending haze of pain and confusion. From what I could make out through my limited vision against the striking lights was that I was somewhere dark, cold, and damp. From what I could remember before I ended up here was that someone had struck me over the head with enough force to knock me out. However, that wasn't the worst part. As I regained some focus and realized the lights above me seemed to be moving, it became evidently apparent that the worst part was that whoever had struck me was now, with an impressive strength, dragging me through some sort of tunnel. 

   As my brain processed the imminent danger I was in, my body allowed itself to kick into its fight or flight mode, causing me to trash against my captors hold, kicking and screaming for help until they finally gave and I scurried away, scraping my hands and knees against the gravel ground as I did. 

   "Oh wonderful, you're up," said my captor. Looking back in panic and shock, I realized my captor was none other than Lucinda. She smiled politely against my gaze, but her eye's held a flicker of panic as she focused her wand on me. I reached for my own, but found it missing, earning a slight laugh from her. "I took your wand, Miss. It would have been stupid of me not to."

   "What are you doing?" I questioned, finding it difficult to fully comprehend my situation due to my limited knowledge of my surroundings. I had absolutely no idea where we were, if we were still on the estate, or somewhere miles away. "Where are we?"

   "Servant's tunnels, Miss," she informed. "Now get up and don't you dare try anything."

   Searching her eyes, seeing the bit of fear that dared to poke through in contrast to her ever permanent smile, something occurred to me that I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed before. This wasn't Lucinda, or at least these weren't her actions. Growing up around the dark arts and having witnessed my fair share of unforgivable curses, I knew she wasn't willingly doing this and hadn't been doing any of this for quite some time. "You're under the Imperius curse." 

   "Well, of course I am, Miss," she smiled. "Now get up please, before I am required to Imperius you."

   During my upbringing around the dark arts, I'd seen a select few wizards fight off the curse, but I knew she wasn't capable of that, she wasn't strong enough. So I complied with her demands and stood and when she told me to start walking, I did just that. There was no use in arguing with someone under the Imperius curse, for they were not the ones who needed to be argued with. It was smarter for me to comply as much as I could while I thought of a plan and while I dug for answers, instead of being under the control of someone else. 

   "Where are we going?" I questioned, trying to gather as much information as possible to piece together some sort of plan that would get me out of this mess. So far, all I knew was that I was still somewhere on the estate, somewhere deep underground. I also knew Lucinda was under the control of another witch or wizard, perhaps one of the ones who had attempted the attack of me. I had no idea of just how much time had passed since I'd blacked out, the lack of natural light in the dark and looming tunnel made sure of that. However, there was one piece of knowledge that brought me comfort, and that was that the Dark Lord would be returning sometime around dinner. Lucinda had mentioned he sometimes arrived earlier or even later, but I hoped for my sake today he would choose to arrive much earlier. 

   "Well, this tunnel leads out to the gardens, Miss," she calmly informed. 

   "So, it was you in the gardens that night."