The cloth was rough against his eyelids and cheeks and the stubble of his shaved head, and he could feel the blindfold's tight knot at the back of his head where it was tied. A bead of sweat rolled down his spine, and he resisted the urge to bring his arms across his exposed ribs, or to hunch over from his upright position.
"You can take the blindfold off to fight back anytime you like, Potter." The drill sergeant's voice didn't sound like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket, which Dudley had let Harry watch with him last summer when they'd started going to the boxing club together. "This test has not been used by the Aurors in 10 years; the Ministry deemed it excessively violent and inhumane," continued the sergeant, sneering now. Harry's heart pounded in his chest, and he strained to hear something beyond the circular pacing of the Auror around him. "The record holders for the past 100 years are as follows." School text book now. Professor Binns. "Severus Snape, 29 minutes 32 seconds, aged 21; Sirius Black," Harry's stomach dropped into his toes, "27 minutes 58 seconds, aged 20; Frank Longbottom, 26 minutes 0 seconds, aged 21; James Potter, 25 minutes 51 seconds, aged 19." Harry thought he might be sick, and he tried to calm his racing heart. "You lose consciousness, your time stops. You remove the blindfold, your time stops. You call STOP, your time stops. It can stop whenever you want it to. Remember that." Harry nodded, feeling ridiculously exposed in the black boxer briefs he had been given, waiting for a blow, a sound, anything that would alert him to an attack –
SMACK. He shouted out and twisted away from the stick that had struck him across the lower back and forearm – straight into a vicious blow to the side of his head which spun him round into a sweep at his legs, and the next he knew he was lying on the mats, blows raining down on his neck and head, and he was seeing stars in the dark. Weren't you supposed to be trained for this sort of thing? He was losing it, fading, the stars were winking at him and he felt something warm and distant run down his face…Severus Snape. 29 minutes 32 seconds. 29 minutes 32 seconds. Snape. Severus Snape. Sirius Black. James Potter…
"NO!" he roared, and then he was surging upwards, lashing out with violently wind-milling arms, fists clenched. There was a crunch under his left fist and a cry, and he leapt towards it, arms raised now to protect his head and neck, blows cracking against the trembling muscles of his back and sides. Stinging, smarting blows landed on his thighs as he seized clothing, and then he was punching, feeling flesh under his hand grow wet. An almighty blow landed on his upper arm and he felt the skin split and the stick crack. He bellowed and whipped around, dropping the limp thing he had been holding to seize the broken half of bamboo that fell at his feet. He clenched it tightly in his fist and lashed out, the wood scything audibly through the air, but more blows still raining in on him, and he was going to have to drop it because surely they would be going for the knockout now, and if he didn't protect his head – there was a hiss of air from behind him and he threw his forearm up and back. The force of the blow it blocked slammed his arm into his head and he pitched forwards – and down, into a roll, hoping to escape the blows for even a moment. He came up with his arms raised on either side of his head, remembering punches raining down on painfully bruised forearms in the ring with Dudley. But they were still there, and he folded over a stick that drove into his side, arms still raised. He grit his teeth as more blows rained in on him, keeping low and on the balls of his feet, backing away because nothing was striking at him from behind.
Then pain shot up his leg with a blow to the hamstrings and his knee had folded under him, dropping him to the side. His hands dropped slightly and his head snapped back, his lips driven onto his own teeth. Warmth ran down his chest now, and he didn't know if it was blood or sweat or tears, because there were tears from the pain. A booted foot rocketed into his sternum and he collapsed sideways – agony, agony, he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, they'd stopped his heart, he was dead, trying to suck in air that wouldn't come, curled into the fetal position, one arm wrapped around his chest and the other shielding his head. The white hot anger that had come with the first blows was turning to desperation, and he choked on the blood in his throat that must have come from his nose. Short of breath but breathing blessed, sweet air again, he reached out blindly and snagged a foot that was too slow to get out of his way and yanked hard, crying out inarticulately. He scrambled over the body and smashed it in the face with elbows and fists, then rolled under it and threw it off him, leaping up and away from the bamboo sticks, staggering.
Movement became an eternity of pain, of his desperate, bitten off cries clenched in his teeth so hard that his jaw ached, and warm blood running down his skin. He moved and staggered and lashed out where he could, and every now and then he would find himself on the ground, or feel vomit rising in his throat when the blows became too much.
Then he staggered, and his back met the padded wall, fist and forearms raised, feet braced. The breath whooshed from his lungs with one, two, three single blows to his midriff, but he was too weak now to do anything about it. He clenched his teeth and lunged forwards, but strong hands seized him and hurled him back, winding him against the wall. He didn't want to stand up on his own again, and then blows were cracking and slapping against his shoulders and head, and he threw fists and arms out wildly to try and block. But he was slow, exhausted now, and his head whipped to the side with a blow. He was twisted to the other side by a second blow, and now he was drooling, gasping for breath, head drooping, batting uselessly at the slow, occasional blows he couldn't see. There was a hiss, a crack and white light flashed where only darkness had been before now. The world spun in his mind, and he remembered Ron's arms tight around him. The air had been cold on his head when they'd shaved it, and the freezing showers had left him shivering for hours. His balance went, and the slick plastic mats at his back slid along, moving away from him, and then something was soft at his cheek, and he was whirling and spinning. He lay still. His head dropped to the side, and there were no more blows, just swinging, seesawing whiteness and motion – then nothing.
There was muted breathing in his ears. Gradually he became aware of coarse hands running over his limbs, feeling along his fingers, pushing softly at tender bruising and sore joints.
"Aah," he murmured, when the hands were replaced by a damp cloth on blood encrusted skin on his arms and chest. It rasped over splits in his skin, and he realised when he stirred that stitches pulled at them.
"Be still." His eyes flew open at the voice, and he almost flinched at the sight of Snape leaning over him. "If you tear the stitches I will have little sympathy for you, boy. Not that I have any at present." But he didn't sneer, and Harry lay still. "You are lucky. Nothing is broken." Long fingers pressed into his ribs, running over his chest and round his sides, then closing over his hip-bones and squeezing. "Yes, merely bruising," finished Snape. Harry stared at him, marveling at how surreal life was becoming. A though struck him as Snape – astonishingly softly – began to wipe him down with the lukewarm cloth. He shivered.
"How-" his voice caught in his raw throat, and he swallowed and tried again, less raspy this time. "What was my time?" Snape's hands stilled. He straightened and looked down at Harry. The silence stretched, and Harry swallowed again, but not because of a dry throat. Snape's voice was soft when he answered.
"29 minutes dead, Potter." Harry let out a breath and had trouble drawing one in again when Snape continued. "It was an immensely impressive feat to behold."
Harry nudged his empty chamber pot under his bed with a foot, then turned and strode naked across the room of half-dressed soldiers, his blanket in his hand. He folded it neatly and set it in his open locker, before heading towards the icy cold of the showers. He stood under the stream for less than a minute, then dried himself with one of the straggly towels hanging on pegs outside the cold, grey-tiled area. His fingers ghosted lightly over the black ink of his name and date of birth tattooed high on his left side, just below the armpit. He didn't own any civilian clothes, so he pulled on a pair of black BDUs, laced his military-issue boots, and slid his fish-knife and wand into the back of his belt – the only pieces of gear no man was required to keep in the lock-up. A desert warfare beige t-shirt sat neatly folded in the corner of his locker, and he considered that it might be a change to the constant black he was expected to wear. The pouch of galleons he kept in his locker at all times went into his hip pocket, and his black squad jacket, Union Jack sewn onto the shoulder above a faded white skull and wand emblem, Potter in block capitals on a patch on the left breast, slid over his shoulders. He hadn't spoken to anyone since he woken up, and that didn't end when he fell into step with Draco as they headed out across the exercise yard towards the gates. The sentries nodded and smiled at them, and stamped their leave papers before handing them back, and then they were standing in a misty country lane at six in the morning in rural Ireland.
"Diagon Alley?" asked Draco.
"I think so. We can get breakfast." There was a loud crack, and then the little farm road was silent and empty once more.
His breathing was harsh in his ears and he shook, felt sick. The strength in his shoulders and arms seemed useless now, where he lay on his back, stripped, wet cloth tied over his eyes and nose. He was soaked and shivering from the frigid water that had choked and drowned him moments ago when it was poured into his jaw, chin pushed into his throat by brutal hands to keep his gasping mouth open. He dared not relax for fear that the whip or the riding crop would return to his exposed midriff, lying on his hands bound awkwardly behind his back as he was. He was praying, hoping that the crop would not slip lower to his bare genitals. Pain was one thing but that was on entirely another level. In that moment he wished for the torment of the exercise yards again, and the brutal spell sessions with the Aurors. He had no wand now, and that made him feel more naked than he ever had in the first hand-to-hand combat classes. And –
CRACK! The pain of the riding crop lanced through his bruised stomach and he groaned through clenched teeth. There were no questions in this interrogation, just requests. Just simple requests for the soldier.
"Give in." The voice was always calm, always in control. Never angry. That would have been easier, he thought. "Just give in. We can stop this right now, boy." And wasn't that the killer. BOY. His uncle Vernon had been ok, really. Ok until he got into the whiskey, and then it had been kick the boy. Or hit the boy. Or…well. He supposed he was lucky his uncle hadn't been a proper pervert, just a bit unstable. Thank god for small mercies really.
Time faded and passed, and he felt weak, dizzy without sight, and he though he remembered being sick on himself but couldn't be sure, because the water kept washing it away, and the dull pain of bone-bruises put a haze on his senses. Then hands were seizing his shoulders, manhandling him upright, and he had to be awake, be AWAKE, because wasn't this supposed to be about escaping captivity as well as surviving it? The white room they had kept him in before had always been light, and he knew the food had come at irregular times because he had felt like a drunk, with no system, no routine. No recourse to the outside world, which was hinted at by the footsteps which went constantly, randomly, always back, and then perhaps forth and back and back, past the door. He didn't know how long he'd been alone for, had forced himself to eat though, had forced himself to exercise, because what if this was just to weaken him, break him down into easier meat? He was in the corridor now, not the water-room that he had never seen. He knew it was a corridor because he tripped sometimes, fell deliberately to see if he could bounce himself into a wall, just to know where he was. And the floor felt the same under his bare feet. Screams echoed randomly from left or right, and sometimes from somewhere else he though might be in his own ringing ears from his own torture. The air tasted different now, and he wondered briefly how much more he could take of this endless, endless dark and light and no magic and only pain, humiliation, naked vulnerability. He hadn't seen anyone in…well, he didn't know how long. He felt drunk, felt drugged, imagined that a dead man or a ghost might feel so placeless.
Then he was shoved, and landed hard on hands and knees on bare concrete, but dry and cold this time. A door slammed and he tore the blindfold from his face – light. He was dazzled for a moment, but then he saw the high barred window was letting in grey daylight. The cell had a drain in the centre and that was all. The concrete around it was stained darkly, and the place stank of rotten meat. Rotten meat and piss and shit, and he shivered. The whole world had gone mad, and he was going to die here. He didn't really know what the real world was like anymore when he though about it. He'd been six months in the exercise yards and then the war pens, and he'd seen Malfoy once. They'd been in fighting rings next to each other that one time, and before the hooded sergeants could drag him away, he'd leant over the ropes where they both stood and seized his hand, looked him in the eye. He hadn't seen him since.
He supposed this was a kind of brain-washing really. Break them down through sheer brutal violence. The most violent are the best, and that required a sort of separation from everything. He didn't know if anyone had died, but he supposed that many of the bleeding or exhausted wrecks who had collapsed in the dust hadn't gotten back up. He was going to die here. Hadn't seen anyone he knew. They weren't allowed to talk to anyone. No names, no labels of any kind. If he was put in a room with people he didn't know if he'd be able to look at them; the idea of human contact was terrifying. How did you talk to people, really? How did you have a conversation that you were interested in? To get through a day full of people where you had to interact, had to act, had to be in relation to things, was unthinkable. Impossible. Maybe this was the real world and the talking and acting was just that – and act.
Memories from another life. He'd been a great friend, a good friend, once. Ron Weasley. Hermione. Ginny. He remembered the sun and the faint taste of real food. He'd come to die for all them and all that. He was going to die, he was sure of it now. The cell stank and he could see it was a butcher's room; the walls had dark sprays on them and if he sniffed at them they smelt of death. It must have been a long time, because if he brushed his hands over his head and face he could feel the thick fuzz of his hair starting to grow out, and stubble on his chin which he'd never managed to grow before without at least a week of not shaving. He sat down facing the door, the blindfold, a long piece of cloth with tails and folded over three times when it had been over his face, discarded in a corner. The light from the window above him grew brighter, and he supposed he was seeing dawn and early morning. He closed his eyes.
The steel door bounced off the wall with a resounding bang when it was hurled open. He scrambled to his feet. Two men were standing in the cell entrance. All in black, gloved hands, tack vests and black helmets, dark visors covering the upper halves of their faces. One of them had a wand. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pushed off the wall behind him, then stepped forwards to the centre of the cell. Over the drain. The second one was unarmed that he could see, and suddenly he realised that he didn't want to die. He wanted to hate, to fight and break and destroy these people as they had tried to do to him. An animal. He was an animal. There was nothing now. The wand-holder moved forwards to stand before him, and he knew this was it. The other man stood close behind him. The door was open.
"Kneel." And in that moment he moved. The violence was sudden and breathtaking. His hand shot up and into the throat of the wand-holder, clenching and twisting, and his other hand seized the wand wrist and twisted brutally – the wood came free as his knee rocketed into the crotch of the other man, too close behind his comrade – and then he felt cartilage give between his fingers. There was a gurgled choke from the man who's throat he released, and then he had seized the helmet, wrenched and twisted up and sideways – and the crunch told him the second man was gone before he dropped him like a stone.
He turned frantically fast and flicked the wand at the blindfold cloth in the corner. It whipped into the air and smarted briefly as it wrapped snugly around his crotch, buttocks and thighs – after all, he didn't want anything getting caught in the great escape. He stepped cautiously into the corridor, and he saw the sloping floor where it went steeply upwards not a metre to his right. There was nothing in the dull, yellow-lit corridor to his left. He turned and sprinted. The undersides of his toes smarted as he tore up the concrete ramp, and he powered on, breath tearing at his throat, acid in his mouth. His eyes felt swollen and bruised like the rest of him, and he knew his puffy lips were split. The faint daylight he had thought he'd dreamed at the bottom of the ramp was a reality now, and he slowed as he saw it up above. There was no door that he could see, and he ground to a halt. He lowered himself to his hands and knees and squinted up and what had to be sunlight, because nothing else looked quite that bright. The wand was clutched tightly in his hand. What the hell. He bolted.
The grass was green and blissfully soft under his feet. The sun was warm on skin that looked pale to his watering eyes, and the air tasted fresh in his stale mouth. The barracks and the exercise yards were lined with watching men across the green from him, and a man was striding across the grass towards him. The man was tall, and his black hair stuck out at awkward angles, cut short but not shaved as it was; it looked vaguely greasy as he drew closer. The BDUs and black vest looked familiar too, and he had a rolled bundle under his arm.
"Potter?" The voice was familiar too. He had hated that voice once. Hated it with the same passion he had hated the two men he had killed down in the cell, but now he was tired, drained, and contentedly distant. "Potter, look at me." The voice was gentle, and for some reason he felt that was unusual. But then this was Snape, and he was Potter, the boy who Snape had always hated. He dragged his gaze away from Snape's shoulder to meet his eyes. He reached out for the clothes Snape held out for him. The black vest and the BDUs felt rough against overly sensitive skin, and he almost fell over when pain from his chest and stomach flared when he laced the boots. Snape's hand was strong on his shoulder, and he straightened without really caring that the men lining the edge of the exercise yards and standing before the barracks were all staring at him. He had only ever seen the barracks from the yard or the war pens where he and the other new recruits had been kept on the other side of them.
"You have passed, Potter. With flying colours, as witnessed by all the officers and the recruits on a video-feed. They found you intriguing, and so they though perhaps it should be shown to all." There should have been anger at that, but there wasn't. He didn't speak, just nodded. Snape looked strangely concerned, and he wondered why nothing was said about the men he'd killed. "Follow me."
