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UnBroken	By : OddDoll Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 6172 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
Unbroken
By Odd Doll
Chapter 28
Over the next several days they kept Jim busy running errands back and forth to the resort with papers Phoebe had signed, while Phoebe seemed to spend every minute on her cell phone talking with Michael or the contractor she had hired. Finally, in the evening of the third day, she could take no more.
"Severus, please. Couldn't we just go for a little ride? What harm could there be?"
He was reading, as always, although she suspected he might be a little bored, too. At times she saw him pick up a book or a magazine only to toss it aside and search for another. At least he could take a walk every morning and evening.
"We've had this discussion before, Phoebe."
"If they were out there, wouldn't we know by now?"
"I could take her up on my broom," Jim offered. "What harm could there be in that if I'm driving?"
"Or mine. I just got a Nimbus Stratocaster."
Jim sat up straight in the recliner he had been lounging in. "A Strat? Man, could I see it?"
"Sure."
She went to her room and quickly retrieved the broom from the depths of her trunk.
"Sweet," Jim said when she handed it to him. "I don't know which is sweeter, this or that yellow 'vette of yours."
"You saw that?"
"Yeah. Nice ride."
"'Vette?" Severus asked.
"Corvette. My car."
Jim hefted the broom with a look of adoration in his eyes, stroked the handle and its perfectly matched twigs, and looked up with pleading in his eyes. "Could I?"
Phoebe laughed. "Of course."
The words were hardly out of her mouth before he was through the door and launching himself from the deck. He soared out into the darkness over the lake.
When he returned, windblown and ruddy-cheeked, he laughed and held out the broom to Severus. "You've gotta try it. It turns on a dime. You practically can think your moves and it responds."
"Please, Severus? Come with me? Wouldn't it be alright for a short ride?"
Severus scowled, but relented. "All right. A short ride." He took the broom from Jim and turned it over in his hands. "I've always wanted to ride a good racing broom."
Out on the deck, though, he handed the broom to Phoebe. "I think you should do the driving. I'm not quite..."
"It's okay. Get on behind me and hang on tight."
She wondered how he would feel sitting with his arms around her, but that turned out not to be his biggest concern.
"Phoebe, aren't we going a little fast?"
She gave a grin that he couldn't see. "Naw. It's a racing broom. It performs best at these speeds." His arms tightened around her waist, but he said no more.
They were headed north into the darkness, but she made a quick turn to face the glittering lights of the town on the lake shore behind them. She felt more than heard Severus's grunt, and his grip, which had been loose when they left the ground, was now quite snug.
"Where are we going?"
"Oh, I don't know." On an impulse she steered off to the right, heading west. They rode that direction until they were no longer over the lake.
"Phoebe, I said only a short ride."
"I know. It hasn't been that long." She didn't want to stop. The urge to ride and ride grew stronger, and all she knew was that she was headed in the right direction.
"Phoebe, we are quite high."
"I need to be. There's a mountain coming up and we need to clear the trees."
"The house is the other direction. We need to turn back."
Phoebe frowned and looked down at the treetops below her. She didn't want to turn around, she wanted to keep going. She needed to keep going.
"Turn back, Phoebe. Now."
"No, Severus. There's someplace just ahead that I need to be."
She felt his right arm slide away from her waist. A second later the tip of his wand touched her temple.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry," he whispered almost into her ear. "Imperio."
*****
"What did you do?" She landed on the deck with an inglorious thump, cheeks chapped from the cold mountain air, lips numb from the heights they had flown. "What happened?"
"What do you remember?"
She frowned, the confusion of the Imperius still clouding her mind. "I needed to be someplace. What happened? Did you put the Imperius on me?"
"I had to, Phoebe. They were using some kind of weak Fetch or Compulsion to draw you to them. It didn't breach our wards, but once you were beyond them, it had you."
Phoebe's knees quivered. She rested a shoulder against the wall of the house. Jim arrived and took the broom from her trembling hands.
"What direction was I going?"
Severus pointed toward the west. "That way."
"San Francisco is that way," Jim said. "Your house is, too. They could be anywhere. You would have gone straight to them if he hadn't stopped you."
"So, I really can't leave the house."
"You really can't leave the house," Severus said. "Not until we're ready to Apparate far away from here."
"What I'm worried about," Jim said, "is what they'll try when they see this scheme isn't working."
"They'll user stronger magic, Dark Magic, that can get through any ward we set."
Phoebe shivered and rubbed her arms through the light fabric of her robe. "We need to get out of here."
*****
"This is called the Lost Child spell," Narcissa said as she swept debris from Phoebe's kitchen floor with the toe of her boot. "It works best at calling a person home, which is why we're here. Drag that cauldron over here."
Draco rolled the massive iron cauldron to the center of the space she had cleared. "What next?"
"Plain water. Get the hose from the garden and run it through those doors."
When the cauldron was full, she said a charm and it started to boil.
"This is the easy part, setting up the ingredients and preparing the potion. The hard part is calling to her for hours or however long it takes to get her to come."
"What if it you can't keep it up?"
"Then the spell fails." She smiled at him. "But that's your job, to take over when I'm exhausted. Now, give me the bag, we need to start."
Draco peeked into the leather bag before he handed it to her. He extracted a plastic bag full of a thick dark substance that coated the inside of the bag in slimy tendrils when he tilted it. "What is this stuff?"
"Human placenta. Fresh."
Draco whistled. "Dark Magic, judging by the stuff in here."
"The darkest. It makes a Compulsion so strong, it can break through almost any ward. If she's anywhere in the state, she'll come."
One by one she dropped the contents of the bag into the cauldron, muttering the words of the spell over each of them. Lastly she took a magical photograph from her robes and held it over the steaming brew until moisture beaded up and dripped off the paper. The only light in the room came from the now glowing potion, and it reflected off the paper to light her face until she dropped the photograph into the cauldron as well. The potion hissed as the paper dissolved.
"My own little touch," Narcissa said. "Now, we stir and call, and stir and call, and don't stop until she either comes or we can go on no longer." She took up a long wooden paddle, dipped it into the cauldron, and started to stir. "Come Phoebe. Come Phoebe. Michael needs you."
*****
Jim awoke long before the alarm was due to go off. In the morning they would drive to Phoenix, and from there to some spot that would, hopefully, be beyond the Malfoys' reach. After running errands all day, and Apparating to the resort and back at least six times with last minute instructions and papers from Phoebe, he had been worn out and grateful that Severus had the first shift of watching her. Still, the man was ill, and Jim wondered if he had the stamina to stay awake the extra few hours until Jim's shift.
Something felt wrong about the silence and the darkness around him, and Jim suddenly found himself wondering what had awoken him. He rose from the bed and slipped on his shoes. Otherwise, he had slept fully dressed.
The living room was deserted, as was Phoebe's room, but he found Severus sitting up in a chair at the kitchen table, quite asleep.
"Severus!"
His eyes opened and he looked around him. "What happened?"
"You fell asleep, you idiot. Where's Phoebe?"
But Severus didn't answer, only stared behind Jim at the wall where the door was. He turned to find it wide open. As Jim ran to it he heard the scrape of the chair behind him.
Jim ran into the darkened yard. "Would she have just walked away?"
"I put an anti-Apparation shield on the house while you were gone yesterday."
"Good idea," he said sarcastically. "Too bad you didn't also think to take a Wakefulness Potion."
Severus said nothing at first, but then stopped running and lifted his wand. "I'll find her. I was only asleep for a minute or two. She couldn't have been gone long."
"No. You're not up to it. I'll find her. You stay here in case she comes back."
"I created this mess, I'll get her out of it."
"Look we can argue about this all night, but that won't help her any. Now where should I go?"
Severus stared at him in the darkness for a moment before lowering his wand. "Try her home first, then the resort. If she's not there, then maybe Michael's place."
"Don't worry, Severus. I'll find her," Jim said and Disapparated.
*****
"What are you doing here?" Phoebe looked around in confusion. "Where's Michael?"
Narcissa Malfoy had been stirring something in a large cauldron, but now she raised the dripping paddle. As the potion slowly stopped revolving Phoebe came to her senses. She was in her living room, facing Narcissa and Draco Malfoy, who stood just beyond the doorway in her kitchen. Even as Draco raised his wand toward her, she raised her own to Disapparate, but nothing happened.
"We thought of that, Ms. Baher," Narcissa said. "You can come, but you can't leave.
Now, why don't you have a seat so we can have a talk?"
With Phoebe's wand already out and ready, it took only a thought to hex Narcissa and then Draco, whose reflexes must have been faster than his mother's, because he ducked even as he sent a Stun Hex back toward her. Phoebe rolled behind the nearest piece of furniture.
"I want her alive, Draco!"
Phoebe dared a peek around the edge of the sofa she had ended up behind and saw Draco peeking back at her from the edge of the doorway. She reeled off a quick curse, but knew she would miss.
"You can't escape, Ms. Baher," Narcissa said. "Either of us could best you, and you have no hope against our combined strength."
Phoebe thought of the tape recorder in the police station and wanted to taunt Narcissa with it, but decided that would be counterproductive. She didn't want her so enraged that she forgot that she wanted Phoebe alive.
She struggled to remember her best curses and hexes, but none of them seemed good enough to incapacitate both of them at once. The problem was that the only exit from the room was through the kitchen. Or a window, but she didn't think she could get out one of them fast enough to evade a Stun Curse.
Anything can be a weapon. Use what you find around you.
At the recollection of her father's voice, Phoebe suddenly calmed and she began to think in terms of strategy. If she were the Malfoys, she would send one of them outside to the windows. At this thought she crawled from behind the couch to dash behind a chair that was angled enough to protect her from both directions. Seconds later, the windows shattered from outside.
"I don't see her," Draco said from outside.
"She hasn't come this way. Come out, Phoebe, you can't hide forever."
"Let's smoke her out."
"No!" Narcissa shouted, but it was too late. Draco had already cast the charm to set on fire one the quilts hanging on the wall. Phoebe's augamente charm missed and Draco was casting too many hexes and curses through the window for her to find a better aim.
Phoebe could not see Narcissa, but she knew that she must be somewhere behind the huge cauldron that stood beyond the doorway. Quickly she levitated it just enough to tip it over and was gratified to hear Narcissa scream. In the ensuing confusion, Phoebe scrambled closer to the kitchen archway to peek around the edge, but the scalding water had soaked into the carpet, burning her knees, and she was forced to rock back onto her heels.
Meanwhile, the fire spread to the surrounding furniture, but while Draco continued to shout curses, they no longer seemed to be directed into the room. Phoebe risked another aguamente charm, but wasn't sure if it got the entire fire or not. Thankfully, most of the smoke billowed out of the gaping holes where the windows had been.
Draco screamed, and she heard Narcissa shout his name. Phoebe jumped up and ran into the kitchen. Narcissa stood just outside on the terrace, facing Jim Robinson. Phoebe raised her wand to throw the strongest Stun Curse she knew, but not fast enough to stop the Killing Curse from leaving Narcissa's mouth. Both victims dropped to the terracotta tiles. Phoebe ran to Jim and knelt beside his body. Even though she knew it was stupid, she cradled his head and shoulders in her arms.
"Jim? Jim?" After a moment she looked up. In her horror she had forgotten all about Draco, but now she saw his bloodied head lying in a patch of ruddy light. It took her a second to realize that the light was from the fire that had now engulfed the far end of her living room. She dashed into the kitchen, slipping on the wet floor, but was driven out again by the smoke.
Phoebe stood on the terrace of the home that she had worked for years to earn and stared numbly at the death and destruction around her. There was nothing she could do but leave and save herself. When Narcissa Malfoy rolled over and coughed, she raised her wand and Disapparated.
*****
After the longest twenty minutes of his life, Severus heard the pop of Apparation in the yard and ran to the door. Phoebe was there, wet and disheveled, and smelling of smoke.
"What happened? Where's Jim?"
"Dead."
"What?"
Phoebe brushed past him, headed toward her room, but she stopped and turned. "He's dead. And right now my house is burning to the ground. And Draco, I don't know. He might be dead, too."
"What about Narcissa?"
"Alive. Now if you'll excuse me, I want to be alone to cry for a while. I know how that disturbs you."
"Phoebe--" He paced after her as she stalked down the short hallway to her door. "We have plans to make. We need to get out of here. Now." She stopped and stared back at him, her hand on her door. "It's no time to get emotional."
"Emotional!" she shrieked. "A good man is dead because of me! And you. And I've lost everything important to me. My home is gone and I don't know when I'll be able to return again. So excuse me, if I get a little emotional about how fucked up my life is right now!"
She slammed the door in his face and he heard a thump and a hiss as her body hit it and she slid to the floor on the other side. After that the only sounds he heard were her sobs and the irregular pounding of his weakened heart. His vision darkened. He felt dizzy for only a moment before he too slid to the floor.
End of Part II
- 27
- 28
- 29
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