Chapter 5
MAKING HER WAY INTO THE office while battling a hangover is one of the worst things Rory has ever gone through. She promises to never drink so heavily on a work night again.
"Weasley, how're you holding up?"
Daniel, not Dylan, asks, sitting a cup of coffee on Rory's desk. She groans and lays her head down.
"Not good."
She mumbles.
"Did you get home okay?"
Daniel asks.
"Well I made it here so I guess I made it home."
Rory shrugs. She'd woken up at home, curled up on her couch with an empty teapot and a note from Pietro on the table.
"You don't remember the trip home?"
Jacob asks.
"Not really.”
More like not at all.
“I think I ran into my muggle friend though."
She adds to relieve some worry. At least she wasn’t wandering around late at night, drunk and alone.
"That's great Rory. But we gotta go, we've got a job to do. That guy we got gave up the location of their base, we're gonna check it out."
•
•
•
AS THE TWO AURORS CREEP through the seemingly abandoned warehouse, something sharp hits Rory's leg and she hisses in pain. Her vision goes fuzzy for a moment before it clears.
"Jacob!"
She cries as the group they were tracking jumps out and her partner is knocked back and unconscious. She looks around frantically and tries to send some jinxes out but her wand fizzles out.
"What did you do to me?!"
Rory demands, glaring at the men surrounding her. She gives her wand another flick but still nothing except a pitiful spark. This isn’t possible, nobody should have the ability to take a witch or wizards magic. It just isn’t possible.
"No!"
Rory screams as she’s grabbed roughly. Her wand slips from her fingers and so she’s left completely defenceless. She pushes at her mind to listen but all she gets is static. Something is very wrong. And everything goes dark.
•
•
•
"WHERE'S RORY?"
JACOB DEMANDS AS he comes to in the hospital. Nobody answers.
Jacob gets checked out and he’s completely fine, but his missing partner is not. No one seems to know where the young witch is and that concerns Jacob.
He’s only known her for four days, two of which he treated her horribly and one of which he’d been unconscious. But now she’s gone. He can’t go through this again. He needs to save his partner.
•
•
•
"WHERE IS MY AUROR?"
SAMUEL growls, slamming his fist down on his desk, making his stationery and Aurors jump. It’s been two days already.
"W-we've searched everywhere, sir. Ms Weasley seems to have vanished. None of the personnel saw anything, they were all unconscious by then. We did find blood and her wand though."
One of them says.
"I want her found. Send our best people, I do not want to deal with crap so she better be found before a week passes."
Samuel orders.
"Yes sir."
"If I may ask, why a week, sir?"
"Because Harry Potter is coming to visit in six days."
Samuel wipes his face tiredly.
"We are so screwed."
•
•
•
"SO, WHAT'S THE MISSION?"
PIETRO asks, spinning impatiently in the chair he'd claimed. Barton puts a hand down and stops him with a quick glare.
"Group of terrorists. They've got a hostage, according to our data. There's no information on her but she's still our main concern."
Stark informs the gathered avengers.
"I know her."
Pietro says as he recognises the head of bright red curls in the security footage.
"Sure, speedy."
Barton snorts teasingly.
"No really. Her name is Rory, she's from Cornwall."
The speedster shoots back hotly.
"And how do you know this?"
Rogers asks, deciding the humour the kid.
"I ran into her about a week ago and showed her to the Woolworth Building. I also had coffee with her at the Starbucks and then tea at her place after I found her drunkenly wandering the other night."
Pietro lists.
"When you took longer than usual getting me a smoothie from my favourite place?"
Wanda asks with a surprised look, referring to the first of her brother's examples.
"Yes!"
Pietro confirms.
"Right, lets go save the speedster's fake girlfriend."
Stark claps his hands and leads the way out of the briefing room.
"She's not my girlfriend!"
Pietro yells after him but he’s ignored as everyone prepares for the mission.
•
•
•
TIED TO A FILTHY TABLE is not how Rory saw her week going.
She isn’t completely surprised she's been captured and currently enduring torture, she is an Auror after all. But she'd expected her captors to at least be wizards. But no, Rory has sunk to a new low and she's allowed muggles to capture her.
It’s about the only thing about her captors that she’s figured out. The man they’d taken into custody had not been a wizard. There was no record of him anywhere. Yet somehow, he had magic and was causing trouble. These people were somehow connected to that.
"Tell me! Who are you working for?! How do you use magic!? What experiments did you go through?"
Her torturer demands.
"I told you! I was born with magic!"
Rory shoots back at him.
Obviously, she’s aware of the importance around secrecy of magic but this guy has been at her nonstop for three days. She was trained for torture, sure, but not muggle torture. Muggle torture is a whole different level from magical torture. Witches and wizards wishing to torture simply cast Crucio until their subject cracks. She’s trained to withstand it.
Muggles have a whole range of methods; beatings, cutting, poisoning, electrocution, drowning... The list seems to be endless. These people are particularly fond of beating and poisoning.
"Lies!"
He yells and slams another needle filled with toxins into Rory's neck. She screams and thrashes as her body burns. It feels like thousands of pins pricking her skin at once, over and over again.
"Tell me!"
He roars.
"Go..."
"Huh?"
He scoots closer, ear right in front of Rory's head. The fool.
"Go to hell!"
She scowls and jerks her head forward so it smashes into the bastard's face and breaks his nose with a satisfying crunch.
"Bitch!"
He yells, hands flying to his face to try and stem the bleeding. He retreats and calls for backup.
Guards storm the room and hold their guns at the ready.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
Rory mutters and lifts the armed guards slightly. Her magic is pathetically weak because of whatever they did to her back in the warehouse but she can achieve this spell at least, an untrained eleven year old probably could.
There’s a rush of air and a small electrical trail that follows a blue blur, breaking Rory's concentration. The guards stagger slightly upon touching the ground again but they are thrown back by something else before they can collect themselves.
As the last man goes flying, the blur stabilises and the young Auror passes out from shock of what appeared. First her magic was blocked then Pietro saved her. Blood loss may have also contributed to the fainting.