Harry, Ron and Hermione spent the next two weeks meticulously planning their mission. For hours everyday, they calculated which entrance would be the best, how much polyjuice potion they would need for the period of time it would take to obtain the locket, and how they were going to get the hairs in the first place.
Despite my protestations on a daily basis, none of them relented and agreed to let me join them. It was always the same muttered apologies, the insistence that I was too unpredictable and if I happened to run into Lucius Malfoy, I wouldn't be able to stop myself cursing him all the way back to Malfoy Manor. Which, to be fair, was probably true.
Still, it hurt me to be left out of their plans, my only involvement in the whole affair being that I was the best at making polyjuice potion. Not even needing the recipe, I sent Kreacher out to fetch the ingredients - lacewing flies, leeches, bicorn hair, knotgrass, fluxweed and boomsland skin - and spent much of my time locked away in the pantry, where the conditions were dark and warm, perfect for brewing such a potion. Thankfully, the lacewing flies had already been stewed for the compulsory twenty-one days, otherwise we would have had to wait and entire month.
It felt good to be making potions again. The calm relaxation it brought me was welcome for relieving the hours of endless boredom, providing an escape from sitting in the corner of the drawing room, unincluded in the others' conversation. When I wasn't in the pantry surrounded by the sweet smoke eminating from the cauldron, I continued to clean and repair the house, now a lot easier with Kreacher and occasionally Dobby there to help. Together, we managed to strip the old, mouldy wallpaper off the walls, fixing the cracks in the walls beneath and painting the walls navy - a brighter alternative to the black that had been everywhere before. With a simple click of his fingers, Kreacher managed to changed every floorboard in the house from dusty and dull to the gleaming mahogany it had been when it was first laid down. We replaced the rugs and curtains, cleaned every piece of furniture in the house until it looked as good as new, removed the jars with the shrunken heads of deceased house elves and made the house habitable once again. The only room I didn't touch was the tapestry room, in which the entire Black family tree still stood. I knew that I could never bring myself to take down what was one of the only links to my ancestors.
By the time the polyjuice potion was done, the house looked better than I expected it ever had. We left windows open a lot of the time, allowing the last of the warm summer air to fill the house and remind us of what the world outside was like. Thanks to the extensive concealment charms placed on 12 Grimmauld Place, nobody even knew we were here. Except of course for the Death Eaters.
For several nights they had been there, standing on the square outside as if they were waiting for something. They couldn't see the house, and there was no way for them to get in. And yet they remained on guard, waiting for us to slip up and accidentally give a sign that we were here.
Instead, we just increased our guard, taking more care with our actions and sending out Kreacher - who could freely apparate in and out of the house using his house-elf magic - whenever we needed anything. Kreacher was only too happy to oblige to whatever we needed, even having civil conversations with Hermione, who he had always been disgusted at before. And so we survived easily for those two weeks, always having a comfortable bed to sleep in and a hot meal on the table.
Finally and yet suddenly, the day came when the polyjuice potion was ready, and Harry and the others were ready to go. We ate breakfast in silence, my almost volcanic mood enough to dissuade any of them from talking to me. I'd been tempted to sabotage the polyjuice potion, to put a couple of Fred and George's Puking Pastilles in too, just to make their transformations a little bit worse as a punishment for leaving me out, but in the end I had poured three doses of the potion into a vial and stored the rest in case we would need it at a further date. I reluctantly handed it over to Hermione, and sat watching them as they made sure that they had everything they needed.
"Ron, where's the fake locket?" Hermione asked as she rummaged through her bag. He pulled the trinket from his back pocket and threw it to her, Hermione catching it and throwing it into the bag. "I figured that we can replace the real locket with this, so Umbridge never even notice it's missing."
"Good thinking Hermione," Harry said as he shoved his wand into his pocket. I remained silent, twirling the end of my ponytail through my fingers as I sat at the foot of the stairs and watched them with unmasked jealousy.
Eventually, they were ready. Dressed in muggle clothes so not to draw the attention of the businessmen and woman rushing through London on this regular Tuesday morning, they gathered together in front of me, each smiling apologetically and coming forward to hug me in turn.
"We'll be back in time for tea," Hermione said as she squeezed me. I quirked an eyebrow, "what if you're caught?"
Harry spoke as Ron came forward to hug me. "We've thought about that. Wait here for as long as you can, then you need to head out and continue the mission."
I gasped, frowning as he tried to hug me. "But I can't, not on my own..."
"You can," Harry said firmly, "we all believe in you Li. If we're not back here by tomorrow evening, then you need to go. Move on to the next horcrux and destroy it."
I frowned. "But I don't even know where to find them, the Dark Lord and I aren't connected like you and him are, Harry."
My friend shook his head and smiled. "Juliet, you are one of the smartest and bravest people I know. You'll figure it out, I know you will. You just need to believe in yourself. Besides, we have every intention of coming back."
I stared at them, and wondered to myself how I had come to be here. I was a Slytherin, moreover I was a Black, and yet here I was, sister to a blood traitor and best friend to a muggle born and the Chosen One. What would my ancestors think of me now, allowing such people to stay in their house? Would they be angry? Would my father be disappointed?
I found myself nodding and clearing my throat. "If you can't get back here, meet me in three days in the Forest of Dean. Take this..." I reached into my pocket and withdrew a vial of clear liquid, complete with a tiny pipette. "Drop a droplet on the floor, every couple of metres, as you walk through the forest. It's matched to me, so only I will be able to see the trail and I can catch up with you."
Hermione nodded and pocketed the vial, before stepping back to the boys. "Good luck," I muttered, my throat thick as I realised that they were really going to leave me, that they wouldn't change their minds. Each of them nodded and muttered the same thing in reply, before taking each others hands and shutting their eyes.
I watched helplessly as with a familiar crack, they apparated away, and I was alone.
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The day was painstakingly boring.
For the first hour, I didn't move from the stairs, convinced that they would return for me at any second and announce that they couldn't do it without me. But, to my dismay, they never came back, and eventually I was lured away from the steps by Kreacher, with the announcement of a new batch of ingredients he'd procured from an apothecary.
I spent the rest of the morning and the majority of the afternoon in the pantry, brewing potions from the potion books I had found upstairs in the library. Kreacher watched curiously as I worked, keeping myself busy in order to stop my mind from drifting to what would be going on at the Ministry.
As the grandfather clock upstairs chimed 5 o'clock, my stomach began to grow heavy. They should be back by now, surely. I'd only given them enough polyjuice potion to last a few hours, since Harry had insisted that they wouldn't need any more. What was taking them so long? Had something gone wrong?
I abandoned the pantry and instead moved back to the stairs, chomping on an apple as I made myself comfortable and started a book on how to tell if an animal was actually an animagus in disguise. At my feet, I kept the rucksack that Hermione had prepared for me just in case I had to run suddenly, all of my prized possessions, food, water, spare clothing and a tent packed inside. I'd taken the photograph of my parents and Perseus from the frame, placing the photograph inside my bag along with a Sneakoscope I'd found in my father's room. Along with the potions I'd spent the day brewing, the left-over polyjuice potion and an assortment of hairs I'd collected over the years should the need for a disguise arise, and all of the other potions I'd created beforehand, I was ready to go.
However, when they actually did return, it took me completely by surprise and my heart got caught in my throat.
Suddenly, in front of my eyes, there was a tremendous crack as they apparated in. A smile had already formed on my face, before I met Hermione's frightened eyes - her face being the only distinguishable thing in the whirling smoke and entangled bodies. My smile instantly faded as her lips parted, and she screamed a single word before there was another crack and they disappeared.
"RUN!"
That was when I felt my stomach lurch.
"Kreacher!" I screamed, pulling on my thick duffle coat as the house-elf appeared, his eyes wide. "Is everything ok, Mistress?" he asked in panic.
"Kreacher, I have to go, I think that the others may have accidentally revealed the house's location. You need to go too Kreacher, go into hiding so that they can't get you. I can't have your blood on my hands..."
"Kreacher would gladly die to defend the noble House of Black, Mistress," the house-elf protested. I nodded my head and took his scrawny little hand, squeezing it gently. "Thank you Kreacher, for everything. Hopefully I'll be seeing you again some time, until then I wanted you to go to my mother, tell her that I'm safe. Then, I want you to stay with her and my brother - you'll be safe with them - and protect them for me."
Kreacher's eyes filled with tears. "Kreacher lives to serve, Mistress. He will do what you ask, now please be careful..."
With that, the house-elf disapparated, and I was alone in the big house.
I took a deep breath and drew my wand, knowing that every second I spent here was another second closer to danger. I needed to get away, to safety, and yet I felt as if tearing myself away from here was like cutting off a limb.
"I'll be back," I whispered to the house and the spirits of my ancestors that I was sure lived within it. "I promise."
The exact same promise I'd made Hogwarts when I left there, and who knew when I'd ever get to sit in the Great Hall again, the Slytherin prefect and potential Head Girl. Probably never, I thought with a sigh.
I drew my wand, staring down at the 10in beech wand with it's dragon heartstring, and remember how it had never let me down before. With a final sigh, I close my eyes and picture the Forest of Dean in my head, a familiar place I had gone to on holiday once with my parents, when I could have been no older than 7. How happy I had been there, camping in the trees, spending the days playing with my siblings and the evenings sat around the campfire, watching as my mother managed to turn the simplest of ingredients into the most wonderful meal. Perhaps that was what had inspired me to embark on potions - I'd never been a very good cook, finding it much easier to manipulate dead flies and unicorn tears than vegetables. If so, I made a mental note to thank my mother the next time I saw her.
Taking a deep breathe, I concentrated, and found myself suddenly being pulled upwards by an invisible force, my soul leaving my body and twirling through the air. I kept holding my breathe, knowing that opening my mouth would only leave me winded, and gritted my teeth before I suddenly plummeted back towards the earth, my soul rejoining with my body once more.
A gentle breeze blew through my hair, coaxing me to open my eyes. Tentatively, I opened them, my wand drawn and ready to attack should anybody be lurking.
I was stood in a clearing, surrounded by trees, whose leaves billowed in the evening breeze. The sun was setting on the horizon; I wouldn't have much of the daylight left today, and so I intended to make the most of it. Hitching my rucksack up onto my back and scanning the clearing once again for any glowing droplets on the floor, it soon became clear that I would have to get to the others by foot - apparating was impossible when I didn't know where they were.
With a curse word, I pulled my thick hair up into a ponytail, and wondered why I hadn't thought this plan through any better. It was incredibly dangerous to walk through the forest, especially alone, when I was a wanted woman and it was well-known that groups of Snatchers liked to frequent these parts. I'd hoped that Ron would remember this clearing - the place we'd spent so many happy memories as children - but either they'd never been here or he'd forgotten. There wasn't a sign of any of them anywhere.
"Left or right," I said out loud, gazing from each direction. Neither boasted any signs that anybody had passed through recently, and so I decided to go right purely because I was right-handed. With a deep breathe, I started to walk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I walked for hours, until it was too dark for me to see and I resolved that it would be best to get some sleep and wait until the sun rose. With a yawn, I pitched the tent that Hermione had packed into my bag and took a seat outside, pulling some of the sandwiches Kreacher had made and beginning to eat. Before then, I hadn't realised how hungry I was, and my stomach grumbled in appreciation as I sank into the ham and cheese sandwiches.
After I'd eaten, I crawled inside the tent - easily the size of a small house on the inside with bunk-beds and a sitting area - and curled up on one of the beds, wrapping the layers of blankets Hermione had provided around me. I was exhausted from the walking, and so it didn't take me long to find a comfortable position and fall into a deep sleep.
Then, what seemed to be a few seconds later although it must have been hours, I woke up with a start, my heart in my throat as I realised that I'd forgotten to place protective enchantments around the tent as I slept.
Stupid, stupid Li, I cursed myself, pulling myself out of the bed and reaching for my wand on the table beside my head. Then, to my horror, I realised that it wasn't there.
"Lookin' for somethin' beautiful?"
I snapped my head to the doorway, where a man dressed in black leather and a blood red scarf was leaning, his dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck and a cruel smile on his face. In his hands was my wand, leaving me defenceless against this intruder.
"Who are you?" I snarled. The Snatcher quirked an eyebrow and grinned. "The name's Scabior, and I already know who you are, Juliet Weasley. You're quite famous, you know, even among us Snatchers."
"Are you going to kill me?" I hissed. Scabior shook his head, grinning fiendishly as he stepped closer, revealing a group of men behind him. I smirked as I realised that there were a lot of them, clearly they'd been anticipating a fight.
"Nah, the boss was very specific about you gettin' there in one piece. Savin' you for 'imself, it sounds like."
My stomach lurched in revulsion and terror as I wondered where they were taking me. To the Dark Lord's lair no doubt, although who knew what hovel he was hiding in these days. Good, let them take me to him. If I was going down, at least I could go down with a fight.
"And why is the Dark Lord so concerned about my welfare all of a sudden?" I asked, crossing my arms across my chest.
Scabior frowned, and then smirked. "Oh honey, we don't work for the Dark Lord. Nah, for you there's a much 'igher bidder."
Now it was my turn to look confused. "But if you're not taking me to the Dark Lord, where are you taking me?"
Scabior smirked and crossed his arms across his chest too, mimicking me. "You'll see soon enough, but for now..."
There was a sudden pain at the back of my head as from nowhere, another Snatcher appeared and hit me around the head with his fist. I toppled to the floor, my vision filling with stars and little black spots and my head throbbing in agony. I opened my mouth to protest against them, but then the second blow came, and everything went black.
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I hope you enjoyed that update!
Who do you think is after Juliet? Should she be afraid?
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