M is for Missing

[Kassia Burke]

Kassia swallowed and it tasted like ash in her mouth. Then came the same pounding headache that the other girls had described. Finally a heaviness in her chest and a pain in her arm. She didn't speak. She knew immediately something was wrong and so she listened, but what she heard made her heart pound.

She had been taken by the serial killer, but how? Why?

Things like this didn't happen to Burkes. Then again Christine Montgomery had been taken and things like this didn't happen to Montgomeries either.

"What does he want?" if he took her, maybe they could be ransomed.

[Colette Borgin]

"Kassia?" Colette tried again to peer through the bars, this time to see her friend. "Oh my Godric, are you okay?"


Evelyn was confused by Christine's tearful questions. But then she remembered that Miss Raines said Christine had been missing for ten days, and she pieced together the puzzle. It was more than a week ago that she read about the surviving Auror. There wasn't a lot of information in the Daily Prophet, but it said she was alive. She sniffled then moved closer to the bars as she spoke.

"Yes. The paper said she'd been attacked but survived. It didn't mention her name, but..." Evelyn didn't know who Lex was, but if there was any chance Lex and this Auror were the same person, she wouldn't steal that shred of hope away from Christine.

[Kassia Burke]

"Colette?" she asked hearing her friend's voice. This son of a banshee managed to take a Borgin too? Was there any powerful family he hadn't pissed off? Were the Scotts here? A Malfoy? One of the Blacks?

"I'm..I-" she took a mental assessment of her situation and realized that her arm that had been numb was now hurting quite badly, "I think my arm is broken." she said with a surprising amount of calm in her voice. "Are you alright?"

[Colette Borgin]

"Your arm's broken!" she cried in shock. Instinctively she reached for her wand to help her friend, which she usually carried in the pocket of her skirt, but of course it wasn't there. She could only stand there while her friend was hurt, waiting for whatever was coming. "I'm fine," she answered as it was the only thing she could do for Kassia at the moment.

They had to get out of there. Colette didn't want to meet the man who had taken them. She didn't even remember being taken. Actually, she didn't remember a whole lot at all. They were in the dungeon heading for the common room. Did she make it inside? She couldn't recall. Thinking about it made her head hurt again.

[Kassia Burke]

"The adrenaline's got me now, but this is going to hurt in a minute." she told Colette still calm. She was scared, but her mind was really too muddled to panic, as if by panicking the pain and terror would set in.

****

Christine swallowed the news that Lex was alright, but that did little for their situation. What was their situation now? What was hers? There was only one man that could answer that question and he wasn't there. Heaven help them when he did come.

[Trina Nivens]

Trina couldn't move. She heard strange, disembodied voices all around her, swirling like the kaleidoscope she'd loved to play with as a little girl. Everything hurt, even the sound of the voices. Where was she?

She groaned and tried to move, but her head seemed to be spinning wildly, or maybe it was the room that was spinning. She opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out.

She had been visiting Hogwarts to see her friend Chip Gardner--her ex-boyfriend, actually--but she never actually made it to the intended meeting place by the lake. She vaguely remembered walking around the other side of the Herbology greenhouse when she felt a sharp pain, and everything went black.

And she woke up here, where ever "here" was.

With some effort, she was finally able to move her hand and she reached up to touch her head, and felt something sticky there. She was bleeding.

Oh, Godric.

She never followed the news or read newspapers, but Darryl did and had been blathering on about some psycho attacking women and how he wanted her to be careful. But Darryl was always worrying about something, and she hadn't really paid attention to what he was talking about. After all, if Trina had always listened to everything all of her big brothers ever said to her, she'd never get to do anything fun at all. Now, of course, she rather wished she had listened to him, just this once.

So she tried to listen to the talk around her. Although she had graduated almost two years ago, she still knew a lot of the names, at least. Kassia, Colette, Christine Montgomery. Evelyn and Alyx were younger, so she didn't know them well, but they were Gryffindors, so she vaguely remembered them from the common room. And was that the guidance counselor, Miss Raines?

She coughed, trying to clear her throat, and realized that she was coughing up blood. Fighting the horrible pain in her head, she managed to sit up and crawl over to the bars. On the other side, she could see some of the other girls... some she recognized slightly, and others she didn't. They were all trapped.

"Hey.... what's going on?" she managed in a hoarse voice. "Where are we?"

[Leilani Evetts]

Muffled voices pulled Lani from her sleep, groaning slightly as she came to and was aware of her body and increasingly more aware of her surroundings. Everything felt heavy, like she was both made of stone and buried under several tons of it.

She recognized the voices, and that was what truly pulled her to consciousness. They were classmates. Had she fallen asleep in the library, and one of the boys was playing a prank on them? Or...

Pushing herself into a sitting position, she voiced the only thought that came to mind immediately. "Why is it so dark?"

[Colette Borgin]

There were more voices now, she recognized one of them. "Lani? Oh Godric." It almost seemed as though the kidnapper was going after girls from important, well-to-do families, but neither Evelyn nor Alyx would fit that description.

"We've been kidnapped," she told the voice she didn't recognize.

[Simon Montague]

Simon listened to the voices, the fear and worry of each girl as they woke. He kept his presence hidden for the moment as he indulged in his victory over each of the blossoming flowers.

[Trina Nivens]

Trina was very confused. Why was she here? Everyone here was a student, or a teacher, and she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right? It didn't make sense that anyone would target her. She wasn't a Burke or a Borgin or a Montgomery. She wasn't from a rich family, just a large one. And she might have had a brother who was an auror and another who was a lawyer, but in general, they were not a particularly prestigious family. But then, maybe this sicko had other reasons for taking them. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what reasons those could be.

"I figured that much--I doubted you all liked hanging out in cages," she said. "But why? What did we do? And what is this place?"

[Evelyn Turner]

Evelyn tried to suppress her tears but they just kept coming as more girls became conscious and joined the confusion. "It's the man from the paper," she choked in response. "He's taking girls from the school, but we don't know why." Evelyn let out a small wail and buried her head in her hands.

"Of course we know why!" Colette's tone was angry to cover the fact that she was actually terrified. "What do you think a man like that plans to do with pretty school girls in a dungeon? He's not planning a tea party!"

"But we're not all school girls," Evelyn argued back as she continued to cry. She had to argue, because what Colette was insinuating was too frightening to think on. "Miss Raines is a counselor. And Trina graduated years ago. So it can't have anything to do with being students!"

"She doesn't even go here," Colette bemoaned of the girl called Trina. "Smartass little Evelyn obviously knows all about the bastard who brought us here. Go on then, tell us what you read!" Colette could hear Evelyn's sobs get louder from her cell. She told herself that it didn't make her feel horrible.

[Christine Montgomery]

"Hey why don't you back the hell of Borgin! At least she has an idea of what's going on. Your only commentary so far has been piss and wine, so if we really have been brought here to be tortured, the least you could do is not add to it." Alyx said angry on her friend's behalf. They were all scared, and in moments of fear you could find out who you really were. Alyx was terrified, but she had stood up for herself and her friends in Hogsmeade. She had faced a Death Eater and lived. She was about to face a serial killer soon, so she was not going to let someone like Colette Borgin intimidate her or put down her friend.

****

Christine took her moment to privately rejoice over Lex's recovery, if indeed it had been Lex who survived, but when the bickering started she rejoined the conversation.

She was about to speak when Erica called sharply-

***

"Enough! We're all here, and we're all scared, but putting down one another is not going to get anyone out of this. We need to work together and try to get out of here. Christine, you've been here for over a week...what," she swallowed trying to get the question out, "what has he done to you? What have you seen? Does he have any weaknesses?"

***

"He'll drug you." Christine answered, "It's in the food. He doesn't rely solely on magic, he's used muggle instruments...handcuffs instead of incarcerous, ducktape instead of silencio. But he knows magic, he's used polyjuice potion to...to make me believe he's someone else. He hasn't hurt me. He's hurt others. He's left me alone in the cell most of the time...I don't know Erica...I don't. He's capable of anything."

Christine wanted to cry. There was more she wasn't saying, she didn't know how to say it. Right now all of the girls were scared and frightened and she didn't want to make it worse. So far she was relatively unharmed, but the things he had done to the woman before Christine took the empty cell had been horrific, and if that was her fate then the girls would learn soon enough. But Christine would fight. She would fight for the other girls if she could.

***
Kassia knew Colette was more or less reacting out of fear for their circumstances, she wished she could comfort her friend, but it was taking everything inside of her not to scream out at the pain in her arm.

Kassia handled fear and pain differently than most. She kept it hidden and bottled up inside. If she felt scared or anxious she would often smile and say how she didn't much care for the little things. That phrase however seemed wildly out of place now.

***