You may now thank LBibliophile (He captures Harry and summons his Death Eaters, but they all take one look at the situation and start backing away, wondering what Harry will do to escape this time) and Lady Lily Anne (Harry gets kidnapped by Wormtail at the end of the tournament, knocks Cedric out before he dies, and just for kicks, lets Wormtail tie him to the headstone to see what he'll do. The second he starts the ritual, he does his magic and gets Cedric and himself to his house, while the Wizarding World starts a manhunt for the two of them, only to find them back at Hogwarts in the morning) for this piece. I tried to fit roserayrose's suggestion of escaping quickly into here, but I don't think it quite worked. *makes face* And just for future reference, I hate writing fourth year. Hate it. I don't rightly know why, because fourth year fics are the best if done right, but it's so much work and so many details happening in so short of a time that it drives me crazy. So yeah, if you peeps ever see anything that looks even sort of like fourth year, you guys can figure that it came with a lot of headdesk-ing. Especially if fourth year is important. I'm going through fourth year in one of my unfinished stories and my initial reaction is kind of like a cat who has had its tail stepped on.

Enjoy!

Ruby

They touched the Cup, and with a whirl of color, they were someplace else.

Harry drew his wand as soon as he saw the graveyard and not the modified Quidditch stadium. Cedric pulled his wand as well.

"Where are we?" Harry whispered.

"Little Hangleton Graveyard," Cedric said. "Do you know where Little Hangleton is?"

Harry shook his head. "Nope."

Then they saw the bulky figure walking towards them. "Kill the spare."

Harry swore and knocked Cedric towards the Cup. A blazing, crackling green light zoomed by Cedric's arm and missed him by millimeters. The older teen tripped and practically fell onto the portkey.

Harry was left alone in the graveyard.

His scar ached something fierce.

"Are ya crazy? Watch where you point that thing," Harry mock-chided, bouncing out of the way of a stunning spell.

How to get out, how to get out…

He dodged two binding spells, tripped and fell on his face which allowed him to 'dodge' another stunner, and he just barely didn't make it out of the way of the third stunning spell.

His world sank into darkness.

When he woke, it was to Voldemort poking him like he was a half-dead, though still intriguing, bug. His scar flared with excruciating pain.

"What the—the hell are you doing alive?" Harry rasped, lurching away from the prodding finger and scrabbling away in a crab-walk position. Surprisingly, he wasn't bound.

"Ah, little Potter," Voldemort said, laughing lowly and straightening. "How amusing you are."

"Normally, I would take that as a compliment. From you, though, I don't think that it was intended as such."

Okay, so I have no supplies, probably no wand, and Voldemort and whoever was shooting at me and Cedric earlier watching my every move.

Not a good situation, Potter.

"How astute," said Voldemort. He waved his hand airily, summoning his pet Death Eater. With a start, Harry realized that it was Wormtail. He was missing a hand for unknown reasons, and bleeding profusely.

"Wormtail," Harry growled. "How convenient."

Pettigrew gibbered even more.

Voldemort looked at Harry curiously. "You sound like you hate Peter even more than myself, Potter."

"You're obvious. My parents knew that you were gunning for them. I might not like terrorists, and I definitely am not appreciative of making me the last of my family—or at least, any family that I care to claim—but I absolutely hate traitorous rats that made it possible in the first place for you to kill my parents who trusted him and got me shipped off to magic-hating Muggles. Xenophobic bastards."

Wormtail gibbered and stuttered and stammered until Harry kicked him solidly in the solar plexus. Then he was more worried about recovering his breath.

"Oh, shut up," Harry sneered. "Your pathetic gibbering is going to get your miniscule brain dribbled out through your nose one of these days. No wonder Voldemort uses the Cruciatus on you."

Voldemort eyed him like he had just done a backflip for no reason: with surprise, fascination, and faint confusion.

Harry glared at him. "Now what are you going to do? String me up by my toes and laugh maniacally like Filch wants to do?"

"Sir—" Wormtail gasped out. "Sir, there's something—"

Harry considered him for half a second, realized that his buddies were probably people that had kidnapped him before, and kicked him again in the plexus to keep him quiet. He promptly rolled out of the way of an almost-absentminded Cruciatus from Voldemort.

"Wormtail," Voldemort said, seeming to roll the word around in his mouth before he actually said it. "Your arm."

Pettigrew fell to his knees, offering the damaged limb and gasping out, "Thank you, master—"

"The other one, fool!"

Harry subtly scanned the surrounding area for his wand while whatever was going on was going on, or basically anything useful. There were a lot of elaborate gravestones. Normally he wouldn't even think of using a memorial for his own gain, but when his own gain was his life…

A small color change would enable an easy blending if he had to, something that was kinda doable without his wand. The overcast day played in his favor: no sharp shadows to give himself away.

The bunch of loud POPs broke into his thoughts.

Men dressed in dark gray robes with white masks appeared, arranging themselves in a large circle with pieces missing.

"Ah," Voldemort said, as if he wasn't expecting them. "My loyal servants."

Arse, Harry thought.

He went on to monologue, giving names (brilliant idea) and letting Harry generally be able to give a crap ton of information to anyone who asked after he escaped.

Then, of course, Voldemort drew attention to him, still sitting on the ground. Harry grinned maliciously when three quarters of them shifted uneasily.

"Potter," Voldemort said levelly, not missing the exchange, "what is the history between you and my servants?"

Harry's eyes strayed to the Death Eaters. "They started kidnapping me when I was quite young, in an attempt to please you when you came back. After the first couple of times with some very large incidents of accidental magic to aid my escape, I ended up getting self-defense training and getting more creative with my escapes. Malfoy, for instance, I brained with the chair that I was tied to when I was six."

Then he bolted like a bat out of hell—not towards the entrance, but deeper into the cemetery.

"FIND HIM!"

Harry skidded to a stop and ducked under the arms of a protective angel, urging his agitated magic to turn his skin, hair, and clothes the color of the surrounding stone. He closed his eyes as his saw his skin start to bloom gray, ducking his head as if in prayer. Footsteps pounded, and he stood stock-still, not even daring to breathe.

They stopped suddenly, then continued on. He listened hard for a moment, and drew in a deep, silent breath, cracking open one eye. Seeing that it was clear for the immediate surroundings, he looked around for a fence that he could hop over.

There!

To his immediate right, perhaps fifteen or twenty gravestones over. He scanned the elaborate markers for something else that he could easily add himself to.

He peeled himself off of the angel's front, slinking quietly three graves down before kneeling before the specter of Death, the stone robe and frankly scary-looking scythe towering over him. He slammed his eyes shut as a Death Eater looked his way.

Two Death Eaters approached; he recognized the voices when one said, "Fuckin' creepy," and the other said, "The wards haven't even gone off and he's quite clearly gone."

Wards, Harry groaned mentally, glad that he stopped and hid rather than immediately bolting for the edge.

"How th' hell does 'e do that?" the first one asked.

"Merlin, who knows?" said the second one.

"Why would anyone want Death on 'is gravestone?" the first one said, changing the subject.

"Muggles 're weird," the second one said, an element of a shrug in his voice.

Oooooo, crap. They're looking at me. They look too long and they'll realize that the "statue" is way too detailed. And familiar.

They didn't linger, thankfully. Harry cracked open an eye to scan his immediate surroundings, and slowly turned his head to look behind himself. No one was watching, so he slid off the side, keeping low, and bolted another six graves down, climbing into a weeping statue's lap and watching his dark grey skin lighten to match the lighter stone, sprawling artfully, as though dead.

He waited for a long while before a solitary set of footsteps wandered by. At least five minutes ticked by, and he could hear the Death Eaters getting more restless with every second. He cracked open an eye, looked to his left—he had switched sides to be looking at the nearest fence—and he had another seven gravestones to get past before he could hop the fence and trigger the wards.

Hopefully, he would catch them off guard when he finally triggered them.

"IMBECILES! HOMONIUM REVELIO!"

Ha, Harry thought, curling in his feet and head and keeping himself sheltered by the stone. It was the third time he'd dodged the magic. Unfortunately for Voldemort, sacred stone was impenetrable by magic. Anyone hiding behind—or in front, as it were—said stone would be invisible. Of course, sacred stone was sacred stone, regardless if it was Muggle or Magic. That Voldemort wouldn't realize this, being a xenophobe, was always a plus.

Then, very quietly, Harry heard, "What the hell?" and he had to resist the urge to stuff his fist in his mouth to muffle his laughter.

He opened his eyes, looked both ways, and bolted for the last gravestone, keeping low to the ground. Harry had to scramble to get himself situated, skin growing darker with the dark stone. Voldemort looked his way as Harry's eyes shut and he settled in against another angel.

Again, very quietly, Harry heard, "I saw movement."

Run now, or run later? Harry thought to himself. His magic spun angrily. Run later, then.

Half a dozen footsteps trotted over to his general area. He forced his breaths to come out shallowly and silently, chest moving imperceptibly. His heart rate slowed to a light pitter-patter than the thump-thump-thump-thump that it had been.

I really, really don't want to have to fight my way out of this one, Harry thought. I'll lose. Badly.

"Tell me," Voldemort said. He sounded like he was close enough for Harry to reach out and touch, and Harry just barely controlled his flinch. "Is Potter always this elusive?"

"He's been known to slip from wards before," one of the Death Eaters admitted like it was dragged from him.

"And bindings, magical or physical," another said.

Voldemort hummed. "Clever, Potter."

Harry dearly wanted to say something smart and scare the skins off of all of them. Something along the lines of: I've had some practice. Or, Is that grudging admiration I hear? Perhaps even something casually cheeky, like: Hi.

He refrained, though.

His muscles began to cramp after five minutes of holding completely still. After ten, Voldemort wandered off to go do…whatever. After twenty, there were shooting pains going up Harry's left leg, but he held still. After twenty-five minutes, Voldemort announced that they would find Potter later.

(That Potter would come to Voldemort, as he had his wand.)

And then they left. Harry stayed still for another three minutes, though, just to make sure that it truly wasn't a trap to lure him out. Then he cracked one eye, looked around as much as possible without moving, then opened both eyes, looked around some more, and then carefully turned around. He cringed silently as his muscles protested moving after such a long time of being locked into place.

After a minute of careful contemplation of the statues, to make sure that Voldemort hadn't pulled the same trick that Harry had, he slid from under the angel's arms with a thankful pat. His skin, clothes, and hair returned to their normal color.

Harry walked out the front entrance of the graveyard, and called collect for Aunt Petunia to come pick him up from his latest disaster.

Toodles!

Ruby