Supported & Torn (HP) {Book 3 of the Wild & Free Series}

5. The Boggart

"What have you done?"

"We know where she lives, my lord. We followed her to her orphanage. Then, we decided to take her with us and give her to you — as a gift, my lord," the man with the brown ponytail said. He and his friend were standing in front of Voldemort, who was eyeing them suspiciously.

"That didn't quite work it, did it, Jackson?" Voldemort hissed.

"We just wanted to —" the other man said, but he got cut off.

"I TOLD YOU TO STAY LOW AND DRAW NO ATTENTION! WHAT MADE YOU THINK YOU COULD TAKE ON THE GIRL WITH ALL THE PROTECTION SHE'S GIVEN?"

"But she was —"

"Avada Kedavra!"

The man with the black hair got hit by the green spell and fell to the ground, dead.

"Don't disappoint me again, Jackson," Voldemort said.

I woke up with a heavy pain in my scar. I had dreamt of Voldemort again. I knew this had been real; they had talked about me.

Over the next few days Lucy and I spent most of our time alone, away from the others. Mr. Weasley had brought a confused Yara back to the orphanage and I still could see the disgusted and fearful look on her face when she had talked to me. I had refused any offer from Ron, Hermione, Rowan, Harry and even from George and Sirius to talk to them. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to be left alone.

Lucy, however, only let Rowan talk to her. They had grown quite close and Lucy probably felt like she could talk freely to him.

I found myself daydreaming about Hogwarts more and more as the end of the holidays approached; I could not wait to see Hagrid again, to play Quidditch, even to stroll across the vegetable patches to the Herbology greenhouses. It would be a treat just to leave this dusty, musty house, where half of the cupboards were still bolted shut and Kreacher wheezed insults out of the shadows as you passed. The house really didn't improve my mood.

The fact was that living at the headquarters of the anti-Voldemort movement was not nearly as interesting or exciting as I would have expected before I'd experienced it. Though members of the Order of the Phoenix came and went regularly, sometimes staying for meals, sometimes only for a few minutes' whispered conversation, Mrs. Weasley made sure that everyone was kept well out of earshot (whether Extendable or normal) and nobody, not even Sirius, seemed to feel that Harry and I needed to know anything more than we had heard on the night of our arrival.

On the very last day of the holidays I was moping around when Harry walked toward me and pulled me into his, Rowan's and Ron's bedroom, without saying anything.

"Booklists have arrived," Ron said when I got in, throwing one of the envelopes in his hands up to me.

"About time, I thought they'd forgotten, they usually come much earlier than this..." Harry said and sat down on his bed. I went to sit on the armchair next to the door.

I opened my letter: It contained two pieces of parchment, one the usual reminder that term started on the first of September, the other telling me which books I would need for the coming year.

"Only two new ones," I said, reading the list. "The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5, by Miranda Goshawk and Defensive Magical Theory, by Wilbert Slinkhard."