The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|89| Trapped

Black shapes were emerging out of thin air all around us, blocking our way left and right; eyes glinted through slits in hoods, a dozen lit wand tips were pointing directly at their hearts. Ginny gave a gasp of horror.

"To me, Potter," repeated the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy as he held out his hand, palm up.

My insides plummeted sickeningly. We were trapped and outnumbered two to one.

"To me," said Malfoy yet again.

"Where's Sirius?" Harry said.

Several of the Death Eaters laughed. A harsh female voice from the midst of the shadowy figures to my left said triumphantly, "The Dark Lord always knows!"

"Always," echoed Malfoy softly. "Now, give me the prophecy, Potter."

"We want to know where Sirius is!" I shouted.

"We want to know where Sirius is!" mimicked the woman to my left. She and her fellow Death Eaters had closed in so that they were mere feet away from me and the others, the light from their wands dazzling my eyes.

"You've got him," said Harry, pushing me behind him. "He's here. I know he is."

"The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo," said the woman in a horrible, mock-baby voice. I slowly raised my wand with my free hand.

"Don't do anything," he muttered to me. "Not yet —"

The woman who had mimicked him let out a raucous scream of laughter.

"You hear him? You hear him? Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!"

"Oh, you don't know the Potters as I do, Bellatrix," said Malfoy softly. "They have a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about them. Now give me the prophecy, Potter."

"I know Sirius is here," said Harry. "I know you've got him!"

More of the Death Eaters laughed, though the woman still laughed loudest of all.

"It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter," said Malfoy. "Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."

"Go on, then," I stepped out from behind Harry and raised my wand again. As I did, the six wands of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, and Luna rose on either side of me. The knot in my stomach tightened.

But the Death Eaters did not strike.

"Hand over the prophecy and no one need get hurt," said Malfoy coolly.

It was my turn to laugh.

"Yeah, right!" I said. "I give you this— prophecy, is it? And you'll just let us skip off home, will you?"

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the female Death Eater shrieked, "Accio Proph —"

"Protego!" I shouted before she had finished her spell, and though the glass sphere slipped to the tips of my fingers I managed to cling on to it.

"Oh, she knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter," she said, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. "Very well, then —"

"I TOLD YOU, NO!" Lucius Malfoy roared at the woman. "If you smash it —!"

The woman stepped forward, away from her fellows, and pulled off her hood. Azkaban had hollowed Bellatrix Lestrange's face, making it gaunt and skull-like, but it was alive with a feverish, fanatical glow.