The Game Has Changed
Savanna Rowle wasn’t sure if she ought to be feeling angry, scared, anxious, or some combination of all three, so naturally she ended up feeling nothing at all besides a queasy feeling in her stomach. After sitting around the breakfast table with Pamela Selwyn and Quinn Bulstrode for several hours, watching the food grow cold, Pamela finally had the mental idea to go knock on the Minister of Magic’s door.
“This is an awful idea!” Quinn hissed to Pamela, who was leading the two other girls through the rain, down the street, and to the Minister’s house.
“No, it’s not,” said Pamela, “I work for the Minister. It’s perfectly acceptable for me to stop by and ask him if he knows of anything. . . odd. . . going on with a certain group of boys his niece — and son — are affiliated with.”
“But what if he doesn’t? Then you’re making Zack and Evan and all the others look bloody suspicious. Last thing they probably want is the bloody Minister of Magic asking them what they’ve been up to-”
“Shut it, Quinn, you haven’t got any other ideas!”
Quinn fell into a grumbling silence. Savanna tried to give her a sympathetic glance under the pastel green umbrella she had conjured, but Quinn didn’t seem to notice. It was just as well, Savanna was sure her sympathetic face looked more like a grimace anyway. Savanna didn’t particularly think Pam’s idea was anything less than absurd, but she couldn’t tolerate sitting in the house any longer. And she was sure bothering the Minister of Magic was the sort of thing Adolphus would do if their roles had been reversed and she was the one who had mysteriously vanished with her friends hours ago.
Pamela was pleased with herself for thinking of such a plan of action. She hummed to herself as the girls darted down the street. The gray sky seemed to bear down upon the town and rain had grown heavy — Savanna had to strengthen the water-repelling charm on her umbrella. Not a soul was in sight, the poor weather had apparently confined everyone else in Lauterbrunnen indoors. Savanna sighed to herself. It was the type of weather that made her want to be cuddled up in bed with Adolphus, perhaps with some hot chocolate, maybe even a pumpkin pasty. Running through the rain on some fool’s mission to find out what her fiancé and his friends were up to was the last thing she’d expected to be doing during her stay in Lauterbrunnen. But alas. . this was Adolphus Lestrange and his fellow gang of swashbuckling, downright outrageous friends. She couldn’t help but laugh, and ignored the look Quinn gave her.
A huge muggle automobile with a Swiss flag attached to it was outside the Minister’s house. The flag was limp with water. Inside it, a man was reading a newspaper and throwing annoyed glances at the house. Pamela dashed right by it, leading Quinn and Savanna up the stairs. The front door was unlocked, so the three girls slipped in without a word, dropping the charms and umbrellas once out of the cold rain.
“Tiberius eats breakfast with the Swiss and Finnish Minister every morning.” Pamela pointed at the coat stand. Savanna knew Tiberius Malfoy hailed from a wealthy family, but she didn’t think three Ministers needed that many coats and hats.
“It’s after lunch,” Quinn pointed out.
“Exactly,” said Pamela, “so why are the other Ministers still here?”
“I don’t know what they do all day-” Quinn began but Pamela was already stalking down the hall. Savanna found herself shivering with what she quickly identified as excitement. This must be how it felt, she realized, being a swaggering, devilish knight — or whatever it was Adolphus referred to himself and the others as. She was nearly feverish, seeing nothing but the long hallway before her. The carpet, she noted, was nearly the same blue as Adolphus’s eyes.
Pamela squared her shoulders and took a deep breath as though to remind herself that she was about to knock on the door of the Minister of Magic. She rapped politely on the door with a few knuckles and took a step back.
Savanna hotblooded fervor turned cold when she heard the terse voice of Domitia Malfoy bark, “who in Salazar’s name could that be?”
Pamela cursed softly and Quinn groaned. The door opened and Savanna caught a glimpse of a room full of people — she recognized her grandfather, Ian Rowle, and her future father-in-law, Rabastan Lestrange, among them — before the platinum blond hair of Abraxas Malfoy obscured her vision. Abraxas muttered a swear and stepped into the hallway, closing the door and bringing with him the sweet scent of cigars.
“What are you three doing here?” he asked. His voice was strained, as though their appearance had caused an unnecessary stress upon him.
“Er,” Pamela flushed, “just, er, wondering if the Minister knew of anything going on around town. . . .”
Abraxas’s face darkened and Savanna’s queasiness returned. The excitement, the thrill was gone. Something wasn’t right in Lauterbrunnen. “What have you heard? Are people talking?”
“No,” Quinn answered, “we came from our house. Evan, Zack, Adolphus and the others left in a hurry early this morning.”
“Has something happened?” Pamela pushed for answers. “Does the Minister need my assistance?”
“The Minister has more than enough assistance at the moment,” Abraxas said slowly. He glanced at the closed door behind him as though to ask it a question. It was not missed upon Savanna that Abraxas blatantly ignored Pamela's first question.
To all of their surprise, the door opened and out stepped Melania Malfoy.
“Melania?” Pam couldn’t hide her sourness. “You're here?”
“Yes, Pam,” Melania shot the other girl a sharp look. Savanna avoided meeting anyone’s eyes. She was no stranger to the bitterness Pamela Selwyn had over Melania Crouch being the first of the Hogwarts’ roommates to be married.
Melania turned to Abraxas. “I can tell them, if that’s alright. I’ll walk back to their house and stay there. You’ll be alright without me.” The last bit sounded like a question, but a question to which Melania would not take "no" for an answer.
Abraxas hesitated but soon nodded. “Yes, I suppose they ought to know. I’ll be alright. Be careful.” He leaned down to give his wife such a sweet kiss, Savanna blushed and found herself envisioning her upcoming wedding day for what had to be the millionth time since she and Adolphus had first begun dating.
Abraxas slipped back into the room and Melania beckoned the three girls down the hall. They followed in a daze. Savanna felt a bit like a duckling following its mother, clueless and discombobulated, waiting for everything to be explained.
“What’s going on?” Pamela demanded as soon as they were out of the house and back in the pouring rain.
Melania simply shook her head and started up the street. “I’ll explain when we’re inside.”
Lord Voldemort led Natalie back down the corridor, through a room full of broken suits of armor, down a staircase, and through a door. Natalie hadn’t even remembered going that far while in pursuit of Solokov. She found herself laughing under her breath. Everything suddenly seemed enormously funny. A quick spell had shown her the time and the date. It was an hour after noon on the third of August. The World Cup was less than two days away. The thought made her ribs hurt from laughter.
She sensed the others well before they were anywhere near them. Dawson, Lestrange, and Dolohov all reeked of their own blood. Rosier’s heart rate was the slowest, while Mulciber’s heart rate was through the roof. Nott kept sighing and fidgeting about.
Voldemort stopped in the middle of one of the well-lit corridors and she nearly walked into him. He laughed to himself under his breath, pulled open a door and steered her through the bubble of a Silencing Charm around a large room.
Before she could ask how exactly he knew where the others would be, Rosier whistled. “Here’s the death eater, lads.”
“What’d it taste like?” Lestrange asked curiously. “The, the — how do you say it — Excerebratus Parasitus?”
“Like death, as Evan fancies,” she snorted and crossed the room to look out the windows, overcome with a vicious desire to get out of the castle. The boys had all conjured chairs for themselves and were sitting in a circle as though this was some sort of briefing. Mulciber was puttering about, checking on injuries. As the eldest, it was clear he thought himself responsible — until Dolohov made a rather rude remark to him.
Natalie stared through the windows, focusing on her breathing. Her senses were on high alert, her blood still hot and fiery, her skin tingling from murdering Solokov moments ago.
The town of Lauterbrunnen was barely visible as a thick gray fog blanketed the valley below. Rain fell against the windows as though tapping out a secret message. She drummed her fingers against the glass, it was cool and slick and she fancied herself responding to the rain’s message. Lightning forked across the sky before thunder rumbled loud enough to shake the cold stone floor beneath her bare feet and drown out every other sound, even her own breathing. She found herself grinning maniacally and grabbed hold of the ring around her neck to quell the hysterical desire to smash the windows and fling herself out of the castle.
She turned back to study the boys. They were discussing how to escape the castle. Voldemort paced around them, occasionally shooting down a suggestion that was too ludicrous. She found herself captivated by the scene. There was something mesmerizing about it all — perhaps it was the sharpness of their eyes, the sureness of the wands within their hands, the lethality embedded in their voices. These were not the same boys she had led onto the Quidditch field at Hogwarts. They were much, much more. Natalie found her deranged grin turning softer as an unexpected feeling rose within her. Pride.
“We could try to clear the tunnel out,” suggested Lestrange. He and Dawson had pushed their chairs right next to each other as though they were terrified of ever being separated again.
“No bloody way,” Mulciber shook his head. “It’s completely caved in.”
“We could try our luck with the front door,” said Rosier.
“And if we don’t get lucky, we what, die because of your idiotic idea?” remarked Dolohov. “I’ll pass.”
Nott tugged at his ear as though the motion would stimulate his cognitive faculties. “You two said the eagle you saw died?”
“Yeah,” said Dawson. “Bloody bird hit the curse and fell into the moat.”
“Then something ate it,” added Rosier with a grin. “So we can’t swim out either.”
“Seymour, now would be an excellent time if you have any more ridiculous facts about this castle that are based on truths,” Voldemort stopped pacing and looked at Mulciber, who paled.
“Er, not sure I do,” he muttered.
Natalie cleared her throat loudly, drawing all eyes to her. She couldn’t help but send them a winning smile but quickly ushered it from her face. “We’ve got to go find my teammates. We need to get them out too.”
Voldemort gave her a blank stare. “They’re unharmed. The Russians planned to have the teams play the World Cup, but with you incapacitated enough to not catch the Snitch. I foiled that part of their plan by getting the parasite out of you.”
She stared back at him. “So. . . why aren’t we going to get them?”
“Get who?”
“My bloody team!”
“They’re completely unharmed.”
“Sure, but we need to get them out with us. And the Finns, too. I still want to play in the World Cup. I’m still bloody playing the stupid World Cup after this disaster-”
“We can allow the Aurors to take over after we get out-”
“I thought you said the Aurors were all knocked out-”
“They are. But there are other Aurors in the town and the Ministry can easily summon more-”
Natalie stood on her tip toes and took a few warning steps towards Voldemort. Her lips curled into a snarl as she glared at him. The others quickly scooted their chairs back and the room grew still, even the rain didn’t seem as loud anymore.
“I’m not leaving the teams in this castle! I want to win the bloody Cup! I deserve that, at the very least!”
“The teams are the least of our problems, seeing as we don’t even have a way out of this castle yet and there are still Russians here who would love to see you dead!” he hissed back.
“I’m sure your brilliant mind can think of something!”
“This would be much quicker if you assisted instead of making things more difficult!”
Natalie dropped onto her heels and fell silent. Turning her mind over to this challenge and away from growling at Voldemort. He saw the change in her expression and relaxed, though not without rolling his eyes.
Seeing as there was an Anti-Apparation jinx around the castle and the entire town, and the castle was not connected to the Floo Network, there was only one way in and out of the castle — the drawbridge over the moat. Or at least, that was what she had been told. Apparently the secret tunnels leading in and out of the castle had caved in. And, apparently, the Russians had put a curse around the entire castle, even the parapets, where she had flown onto just a few days back.
“Is the curse still active?” she asked the room as though she had not been yelling at Lord Voldemort seconds ago.
“Assuming so,” replied Voldemort, also in an entirely different tone of voice than before. “And nobody here seems very eager to test it.”
“Whose curse is it?” she asked and then answered her own question at the same time Voldemort gave her the answer.
“Blue Eyes.”
They stared at each other, blinking slowly for a moment upon realizing they had both nicknamed the Russian the same thing.
“It’s his only defining characteristic,” she mumbled and dropped to the floor, sitting cross-legged and wrapping her arms around herself. “That and his backhand.”
Her moving to the floor seemed to make the others relax. Dolohov finally exhaled. Nott resumed tugging on his ear. Rosier snickered. Mulciber’s heart rate perceptively dropped — slightly.
Lestrange leaned over to whisper to Dawson. “What the fuck are they talking about?”
“I know alright,” Dawson replied with a wince. Rosier rubbed his jaw, complete with missing teeth and sent Dawson a grin crusted with dried blood.
“Where is Blue Eyes?” she wondered aloud.
“He turned into a bat, I swear to Merlin,” Dolohov seemed eager to share this piece of information. “Evan got him with my dagger, but he nearly brought the ceiling down on us and vanished.”
Nott was nodding to himself, still tugging away at his ear. “He’s regrouping. Probably rounding up the rest of his blokes so they’ve got strength in numbers. They’ve lost their leverage, so they’re going to panic-”
“No,” Natalie breathed, meeting Mulciber’s dark eyes. He had realized the same thing she had.
“They haven’t lost their leverage,” Mulciber leaned forward in his seat. “They still have plenty of it — two bloody teams. They’ve lost Natalie but they can still threaten to delay the World Cup by holding onto the rest of the teams. And they can hope it’ll be enough pressure on the international Ministries to force Triple I into the agreement.”
Natalie sent Voldemort a glare to make sure he knew she was right about the need to get the teams out. He gave her a look that told her precisely how much he cared about the World Cup, the international Ministries, and Triple I. She was tongue-tied for a moment, staring at him with the realization that he was there because of her and her alone. Until he rolled his eyes and she knew that when this was all over, she would be on the end of what looked to be a very long lasting “I told you so” lecture.
“How noble,” she couldn’t resist taunting him.
“I don’t like others touching what's mine,” he almost sounded bored.
“Then I should have let you kill him.”
“I can’t deny wanting to, but I doubt I could have persuaded you not to.”
Lestrange let out a small cough that turned into a groan as he clutched his stomach. “Sorry. . . but, er, so — what are we doing next? None of us know what you two are talking about-”
“We’re getting to the rest of the teams before Blue Eyes and his cronies do,” Natalie announced.
“How noble,” Voldemort mocked her. “And then what? Has your brilliant mind come to any conclusions about how we might survive getting out of this ridiculous castle?”
She scowled, both at him and at her own sudden urge to snog him. “We’ll get to that.”