Year Four - Chapter Seventeen

Saying I was jittery would be an understatement. Someone had stolen my wand. Though that someone had also tried to kill me, that was secondary to the fact I was now without a wand. Someone had come into the Ravenclaw common room, found its way inside since the lock was merely a riddle away, and then dealt with me.

I took a deep breath. I had to reason this through. The infirmary was nice, and comfortable. Whoever had been under the Invisibility Cloak couldn't have been at the party. Mad Eye Moody could see through the cloaks with its eye. At least, that bit I vaguely remembered. So, they had followed Amanda and I after the fact, or had already been in wait inside the Common Room.

Since the staff would be at the party, and Alastor Moody with them, it made sense it would be the safest time to get into Hogwarts. Unless they had been invited in. Crouch Senior wasn't at the party, though it meant surprisingly little. He'd be a lot of things, but he wouldn't attempt to kill me, I reckoned. If, somehow, Crouch Junior had escaped, then having an invisibility cloak wouldn't be beneath him.

The Dark Mark hadn't shown up in the sky, Harry hadn't lost his wand.

Had he even been at the Quidditch World Cup? Well, if Sirius' words were to go by, he would. But...but would he be at the same seat, considering Sirius' presence? No, no he wouldn't.

Butterflies.

"Crouch Junior is free," I muttered. It was as good of a possible answer as any. "He's free, with a wand, and an invisibility cloak. He also has a chip on his shoulder against me for some reason." I wondered which reason could it ever be.

Still, this wouldn't be solved unless I got my wand back.

The infirmary door opened with a quiet creak, and I was already behind the mattress, my body flat against the floor as I rolled below the bed.

"Hey Shade-wait a minute, where is he?" it was Amanda's voice. "Did they discharge him already?"

"The bed looks left in a hurry," Wayne pointed out. I glanced at the number of feet. There were three pairs. So the third had to be Megan, right? It could also be someone under an Invisibility cloak.

"Might have gone to speak with the Headmaster about what happened last night," Megan said. "Did he really summon your Beater Bat through the window?"

"Broke it and gave us the darn coldest night of them all," Amanda replied with a huff.

"Sorry about that," I said, emerging from beneath the bed. The trio jumped back, if briefly. I dusted myself off, and sighed. "Had to think fast, and that was the fastest way to catch someone's attention."

"Shade, I'm just glad you're all right," Megan said with a sigh as I sat back down on the edge of the bed.

"I brought you a few chocolate frogs," Wayne said instead, clutching on to a bunch of them, still wrapped to prevent them from starting to jump away.

I gave an awkward nod, and pulled out from the bedside Amanda's bat. "I guess I should return this now," I said, only for Amanda to shake her head.

"You keep it," she remarked. "I can always get another, and if someone tries something, you just get their kneecaps with it."

I chuckled at that, giving a small nod. I'd do just that, I reckoned. I also needed another wand, which meant a trip to Diagon Alley, or to Hogsmeade. There was a branch of Ollivander's wand shop there, wasn't it?

The true extent of the attack weren't known to me until I was actually cleared from the Infirmary, and sent straight to Dumbledore's office. There, I came face to face with the crux of the problem. "An attack right in the heart of Hogwarts? It's intolerable, Albus, outright insulting ever," Alastor Moody was speaking to the Headmaster with an extremely angry look. "You're too lax in your security, and this happened! If only you'd have let me plant those curses and dismembering charms-"

"Then we'd have a few children sorely missing their limbs by now, Alastor," Dumbledore sighed as he said that. "Mister Umbrus, I will need you to recount the events of what happened last night, if you'd please."

I quietly gave the description of all that I could remember, much to Alastor's grumbling. "It's not a Death Eater," he said in the end, gruffly. "They'd have killed you and put a Dark Mark over your corpse."

"Then it means that it was someone from Durmstrang or Beauxbatons," Albus acquiesced. "A badly thought out attempt to wound or injure a participant of the Triwizard Tournament, one poised to win, I would presume."

"A tree literally exploded, more than one tree literally exploded," I said. "They wanted to kill me."

"Might have maimed you," Alastor snorted. "But you wouldn't be alive right now if they had really been Death Eaters."

"They left me to the wolves to die," I shrilly hissed.

"Aye," Alastor nodded. "A coward without the guts to do the work himself. That's no Death Eater," he bared a smile. "Wanted you properly scared, out of your mind, and paranoid," his magical eye twirled. "Not a professional."

"Or maybe it's a professional masquerading as someone not professional," I retorted hotly.

"Even more reason for those dismembering charms," Alastor said, sounding triumphant.

"I will not put any curse, or dangerous charm, where it may hurt a student," Dumbledore spoke firmly, setting the issue in stone once and for all.

I took deep breaths. "I'll need another wand in the meantime," I said. "But it's the day after Christmas," I muttered. "When does Ollivander's open again?"

Dumbledore grimaced, ever so slightly. "Perhaps that might not be necessary, Mister Umbrus," as he spoke, he pulled out from the top drawer of his desk a small box, which he opened to reveal the smashed wooden remains of a wand, small filaments of something entangled within. "Whoever took you also broke you wand into pieces," he acquiesced.

I stared at the remains of the wand with a heavy feeling. Wands couldn't normally be repaired. You needed the Elder Wand to do that. It was actually common knowledge that rather than repair a wand, one always bought another. "A Death Eater wouldn't have bothered," Alastor grumbled. "It wasn't a professional hit."

"It was still a hit," I muttered. "I...I guess the wand's gone then, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore shook his head, and tapped with his own wand, the Elder Wand, at the grisly remains of my own. It snapped back together, twirling up in the air as it returned to being as new as the day I had woken up in this strange world, wand in hand.

I extended my right hand to grasp hold of it, and tiny sparks left its tip. I swished it, a gout of flames burning out, twirling in mid-air under my quiet, silent command. The flame whip twirled in midair, and then harmlessly dissipated in a cloud of glittering golden dust.

I stared at my wand, and clutched it tightly. "They will regret hurting you," I whispered. "They will regret it most dearly."

"Mister Umbrus, I wouldn't have you hunt down the perpetrator by yourself, but I am reasonably sure you will do as you please," the Headmaster said in the end, a sigh in his voice, "I merely ask you to keep the heartaches to a minimum while doing so, and the damage to the school low, though the latter is something that can be easily fixed and I actually encourage you to damage as much as possible of the ugly, old wallpapers we have on the fourth and fifth floors." As he spoke, his eyes twinkled ever so gently.

I gave the headmaster a quiet nod.

This time, I had been lucky.

I couldn't risk there being a second chance. If Fred and George Weasley could put a permanent Protego charm on hats and clothes, who was to say I couldn't do the same?

I had never felt less at ease, less naked, less worried than on the night before. It was something that I would never let happen again.

For with a kind word and a big gun...

...you can earn much more than with a kind word alone.