Nobody else ever called it the Mini-Malfoy Incident, of that at least, he was certain.
Or even thought of it in that particular way. Though it was conceivable that some of his followers did think of it as the Incident In Which The Dark Lord Ended Up Carting About The Malfoy Heir For Days On End, or something like that...
He hadn't been all that worried, when the "disappearances" had started to happen. Not at first.
Once he'd spent a couple of nights on pepper-up potion, monitoring anybody with his Mark, just to make sure that none of his was going on a bit of unauthorized ---mayhem-making---he'd simply told all his followers to be on the alert, try to gather information, and go out in pairs or more if at all possible, and left it at that. Fledgeling Dark Wizards or Dark Witchs flexing their Magical muscle was 't all that uncommon, really, and since the great majority of them overstepped and met a messy end sooner rather then later without any outward assistance---he didn't really feel the need to make any kind of gesture on his part, frankly.
If the fledgelings in question actually managed to survive for any leangh of time on their own, then things would be different, of course.
No, he hadn't been all that worried---then. Not with the Malfoys grabbing each and every morsal of attention he had to give, that was to be sure...
The "disappearances" had become more widespread, going from the edges of Wizarding society right to the center of Hogsmeade. Bodies began to show up, too, quite dead and without a mark on them.
And then the Dark Mark had rouse over an gutted manor, and everything had changed. And yet, not.
It had been very hard to convince certain of his Loyal Servants that Dark Marks floating in the air when they hadn't been the ones that had sent them there was Not A Good Thing, even if the gutted manor-house in question had used to belong to one of the more notorious allies of Dumbledore and his little Order.
The Enemies of your Enemies were not necessary your Friends. He knew that. Oh, how he knew that.
No information, no nothing, and monitoring attempts using his entire Larger Circle---basicly, everybody and anybody with his Mark on them---as a monitoring board had all been sheerly, utterly unsuccessful. It was becoming quite clear that this was no minor Dark circle on a blood-soaked rampage, but then, what were they?
The real problem, when push comes to shove, is not that he doesn't have the faintest idea about what is going on. It's more like that he does.
And he doesn't like it one bit.
Sometimes, whatever that is left of one Tom Marvelo Riddle wishes he didn't have such a good imagination. Or a good memory.
Just sometimes.
His Loyal Servants utterly hate it when he tells them most ongoing operations cancelled for the duration, hunker down, prepere weapons and artifacts, gather energies and wait.
Stage 1, disappearances and strangeness. Stage 2, larger scale attacks...
And now this was beginning Stage 3, if his theories were correct.
And to see if they were...
Now one did have to---experiment, didn't one?
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(Posted Fri, 11 Mar 2005 12:35)
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