Chapter 7

Riddle Manor

"Not so glamorous like Malfoy Manor, eh, Malfoy?" sneered Fauss, looking around the manor on behalf of them, it seemed, though as they past the tall, rusted gates into the property, he appeared to know the place as he did the feel of his wand in his hand.

On either sides of the pathway on which they approached the dilapidated-looking manor in front of them sprawled unsightly stretches of weeds, and in even less instances, weed-riddled vegetation; right from these to the broken and boarded windows, they sent odd chills down Harry's spine.

As they approached the front of the manor, the afternoon seemed to wane; the sun seemed to cower behind the clouds, for, and Harry was open to the chance it might be his mind playing with him, the air grew just a little darker; a strange shade engulfed them as they climbed the stairs onto the patio, after which Fauss throttled Harry as he dragged him towards a huge, two-part door. They immediately parted ways after Fauss raised his left arm, and they went through and entered the Riddle Manor.

Afternoon though it had clearly been outside, the area they were in was almost as dark as midnight. Harry heard Hermione's growls and noises of struggle muffled and ultimately smothered. He couldn't look behind, for Fauss' broad chest was forbidding and Fauss' his grip on him unassailable.

While stalking ahead of wherever, lanterns suddenly spluttered to life and threw eerie patches of light whose radiance did not reach the normal extents of that of normal light, as though the darkness was opposing the light, as though it were stronger than the light itself and reduced it to that small patch, hence, Harry suspected, why there were so many lanterns along the dark, slightly grimy walls, which bore strong suggestions that they had been even grimier before but perhaps worked upon for liveable occupation. But none of these things had registered in comparison with the graveyard by Harry, for it was at that graveyard that he had witnessed Voldemort reborn no more than four months ago.

"Home sweet home, Potter," said Fauss, looking around as they walked through the hallway. "Best you get used to it – you'll be having quite a long stay here, hm?" He rattled Harry slightly, who then heard a few following scuffles behind him which again he couldn't see and which were quickly dealt with; he subsequently heard a soft, dense thump and then a sharp exhalation preceding a hiss; he thought one of Fauss' lackeys may have hit either Ron, Dean, or Seamus, or perhaps even Draco. Harry was trying really hard to keep his cool, but his heart was pumping madly; his fear was threatening to get the better of him.

They proceeded through the long hallway as more lanterns burst into light, down a long, spiral flight of stairs as it grew darker and darker, until Harry couldn't see his feet when they reached the bottom, whereupon Fauss took off with him to the left, new lanterns spilling feeble light as they progressed into what then looked akin to a dungeon, if Harry ever saw one. There was another sharp exhalation behind him, though this time he couldn't tell from whom it came. The wild passageway, whose darkness also felt unnaturally dense, widened shortly into an open broad area with two curvaceous forks leading left and right to two flights of stairs, one ascending, and one going further down. In front of them stretched a tall circular wall bearing a large iron door, to where Fauss dragged him and directed the rest.

Hugely built though Fauss was, he struggled to open the foreboding iron doors, but soon enough, after applying learnt strategies, it seemed, which hinted Fauss was no novice in the dungeons, the doors groaned and growled as they slowly crawled away from each other and revealed a very large, arena-sized circular room within hosting some grimy and gaunt-looking cages. Torches lit one by one across the circular wall.

A thick smell Harry couldn't immediately place hit his nose as he heard a sharp gasp behind which he was sure came from Hermione now, and he couldn't blame her; it was not an appealing sight, and he was equally certain they would have to get used to it.

"In you go, then," commanded Fauss, as he finally let go of Harry and pushed him roughly ahead. The others were released as well, letting them pool beside each other and allowing Harry to catch by the dim light a bruise on Ron's cheek before he looked back at Fauss and friends.

Fauss simply pointed at the cage at the wall behind them.

Harry glared at the nine boys in front of them, but he simply couldn't find a way out of this.

"In the cage, Potter and party," ordered Fauss. "Surely you're not thinking of taking us on."

It was nine on six – it was foolish at best. Harry sought out the weakest-looking boy in the pack, who was Massice, but who also looked crazy enough to be capable of almost anything, though Harry noticed there was no more of that desperation in his face, as well that there was also an unassailable look of satisfaction on Warrington's beneath his blank visage; they had been captured – it was what they wanted in all probability. Harry wondered with what Voldemort had threatened them to get them to go to such lengths to do so.

"Where's your old little master?" asked Harry.

"Harry," whispered Hermione, with some amount of frustrated exasperation, "we so do not need this right now. Just lay off, please, for once in your life..." Harry rather thought she was thinking of Ron.

When no answer came from the boys in front of him – all Hogwarts students – Harry asked again, "Where's Voldemort?"

While a wince rippled along the rest of the boys, Fauss' face contorted with fury.

"As foul-mouthed and worthless and disrespectful as always, aren't you, Potter? Think you so brave, do you? I don't think you enjoyed enough my little Cruciatus Curse on you a few weeks back; would you like another taste of it?"

"I've had my fair share of those, thanks," replied Harry, "although Voldemort's pales in comparison with yours."

"What was that?" asked Fauss, after a second, his brow so severely furrowed it looked like a corrugated sheet of zinc.

"Your boss – his curse is nothing compared to yours."

"Harry, are you really doing this...?" whispered Hermione vaguely, with her mouth hanging open at Harry. "I don't think flattery will really get us anywhere, no less out of this situation..."

Fauss was frowning heavily at Harry.

"Are you trying to get in my head, Potter?" asked Fauss, in a deadly quiet voice as the hay underneath his feet crunched louder the closer he came.

Harry shook his head, keeping his gaze on Fauss.

"I'm just saying what it is."

Fauss slowly prowled over, his cold, smalt eyes narrowed upon Harry.

"What are you playing at, Potter?" hissed Fauss, still coming closer.

Hermione made a strangled noise of disbelief.

"Nothing. Can't you Slytherins just take a compliment for what it is?"

Fauss moved with a speed that wasn't befitting of his bulk as his hand clamped around Harry's neck, where which Harry's hands flew, struggling for a sliver of breath. When Ron and Dean headed for Fauss, knuckles were cracked and wands were raised, and so they halted.

"Don't get smart with me, Potter, you here? I'm not as dumb as you obviously think I am. You're going to be a good little sport and tell these gutterlings of yours to back up in that cage right now, do you hear me, Potter?"

Harry struggled breathlessly in Fauss' grasp for some few seconds before his eyes started turning red and he was in desperate need of breath; his head jerked aside either way, whereupon Fauss – after some teasing, inhumane seconds later in which the blood vessels in Harry's eyes neared to burst – released Harry, who collapsed to the floor and drew in great amounts of air, sending a horrible, wheezy, rattling noise ringing along the grimy dungeon walls scarcely different from that of a Dementor.

"Learn to shut your trap and what's good for you. In the cages you go," Fauss ordered all of them, while Harry glared up at Fauss from the ground as he caressed his neck. Ron tried to help Harry up, but Harry ripped himself from his grip and came to both feet on his own.

"Oh and I so nearly forgot," said Fauss, smiling into Harry's face, which was positively radiating hatred, "your wands."

This was something Harry hadn't expected in a million light-years.

No one responded to these words for a full ten seconds.

"Wands, now," repeated Fauss, flapping his open hand.

Every eye turned to Harry to see what he was going to do.

"What's the use?" he growled. "You've got us down here, don't you? It's not as if we could do anything to escape."

"How cunningly deceptive," drawled Fauss, clearly of the opposite opinion. "Wands – now."

He somewhat knew their way in – he just had to reverse the path to get out...

Fauss received his wish as a wand flashed into view and a split second later Fauss was growling to the floor; eight spells instantly flew through the air, but they missed their targets, whereupon the four other boys and Hermione whipped out their own wands and began duelling with the Slytherins.

It was quite true six on nine was foolish and that Fauss and team were winning, as Seamus and Hermione were already on the floor suffering burns, but what happened next could be described as eerie: as their furiously discharged spells flew into the air towards the other, they simply fizzled into nothingnesss, extinguished like mere candles.

Harry caught a look of surprise Fauss and the other Slytherins were too slow to hide. As recently as the dungeon room was filled with roars and the sparkling of spells, now it had become quite silent.

Fauss shouted, "Crucio!" and the brilliantly orange spell duly blasted out from his wand, yet it failed to complete its trajectory, for less than halfway towards Harry, the spell simply went out and was softly erased from their sight with not even as much fanfare as a puff of smoke.

Despite themselves, everyone in that dungeon looked up at the small-seeming gauzed ceiling at the same time before returning their eyes to each and reasserting their wands, which now, however, seemed more useless than the twigs they were, than gills in air, or perhaps more useless than Harry's Useless Magic book, though that may be a gross compliment.

"Well, there you have it," said Fauss, who apparently had decided it futile to hide the fact that they hadn't anticipated what had just happened in the slightest. "The Dark Lord probably thought you'd try and get smart like this, and he was right – he's always right like that. Give me those wands, come on, or do you want me to come over there?"

Harry furtively looked around him at Ron, Dean, Seamus, Draco, and Hermione, who were looking back at him as though he were their leader, as though awaiting his orders.

Harry gave Fauss the dirtiest look he could manage before he dropped his wand below in front of him.

Fauss narrowed his eyes thickly at him.

Four more wands landed softly on the hay beside Harry's to be joined a second later by Draco's after he gave Harry an incredulous, sidelong look.

Fauss gave them all a brief, sharp, thick look of compact contempt; Harry thought Fauss would have loved to use the spell Dumbledore had to collect the wands of the four of the boys standing behind him. After a while, Fauss then stalked over and slowly picked up each wand, leaving the middle one for last, and when he finally closed his large hand around Harry's, he straightened up slowly, his eyes travelling from Harry's foot and slowly up his body until they locked onto Harry's own eyes and beamed that thick, compacted hatred into them. Fauss then straightened his shoulders with a few bone cracks, exhaled slowly, and then said, "Behave well, won't you, little kids?" He was responded to with several death glares and a few even dirtier looks, but Fauss composedly pointed at the cage over Harry's shoulder again. "In. We on the other hand have very pleasant news to report to some people."

Harry and Fauss engaged in another battles of glares before Harry slowly turned towards the large rectangular cage in the back of the circular room. He looked up to gauze wiring just under a slate circular ceiling, but he followed his orders and rattled the lock of the cage, which unfortunately clicked open at his touch and allowed him inside. He, Ron, Dean, Seamus, Draco, and Hermione stood there behind bars, glowering at the boys jeering at them, though Fauss, Warrington, Carrow, Massice, and Blaise did not do so.

"Oh and just one more thing," said Fauss, hanging on the one sliding door, smirking at them all. "Thanks for the brooms." He pushed the large, iron doors towards each other, and they exited the circular dungeon room, Blaise not sparing the slightest glance at least in Draco's direction, as though he hadn't fought the werewolves beside them... Then again, he hadn't after all – he had only run away from them beside the DA...

Ron swore at the door with just the expression of his face before he kicked at the hay.

"Oh!" growled Hermione, wringing on the iron bars in frustration, her singed and blackened brunette hair vibrating. "Cannot believe that just happened! I just knew something like this was GOING TO HAPPEN! AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!"

"Me?" squawked Draco at Hermione, who appeared beyond reason. "I wanted to do a good thing and get Harry's sight back to him! But of course we shouldn't have done that, should've we? Because guess what, that is not what friends hope for their friends!"

"Of course I've always wanted Harry to get his sight back, no one can question that, but it did not have to be this way!" argued Hermione. "We could have planned that outing more carefully! But oh so dearly concerned were you about your precious Harry you just had to do that favour for him today! You thought you had the unquestionable right to do that for him as the first only real meaningful thing you've done for him since you two got together, after he had done a world much more for you! And look where it got us, huh?" She wrung the iron bars again indicatively.

Draco glared at her, but he seemed short for words.

"Hermione, Draco, there's no use fighting over this now," said Ron tiredly, throwing himself carelessly on the hay-strewn floor as though they were livestock.

The mechanical smell of grime and aging steel sickened Harry to his stomach, which he thought just did a small flip. He too dropped himself onto the hay and rested his head against the wall no matter how dirty it was.

"And this is what I get for being kind, for wanting what's best for Harry," said Draco, as though he felt that his first foray into humility wasn't treated with the recognition and significance it deserved.

"The question is not the motivation behind what you did," replied Hermione testily, "but how you went about doing it. Did you consult me? Did you say, 'Hermione, this is what I'm planning to do, but you have to still keep a secret from anyone because I want to surprise Harry'. All it needed was proper planning! Now look where we are!"

"We agreed to it, if you conveniently forgot," interjected Seamus flatly.

Hermione gave Seamus a look that made him take half a step backwards.

"That we did," agreed Ron sadly. "It wasn't his fault, Hermione, just lay off." A haunted look then flashed across his face, and Harry rather thought he was thinking about the Nimbus brooms removed from their sight, not to mention their hands. For Harry, though he had touched and carried the Nimbus GK2.0 with his own hands, it seemed to have all been a dream, too good to be true, and so he found himself rather longing for his old Firebolt more than he did the Nimbus.

"And those people! They just stood there and gawked at us while we were being attacked!"

"That's high society for you," snorted Draco emotionlessly, "exceedingly prissy to the point that when something unlikely occurs they would rather take to gaping and having heart attacks and discussing its vulgarity than lift their own hands, which they've got elves for to do it for them."

"And you!" she yelled, now rounding on Harry, quite far from disarmed. "What happened to your code names? What happened to Drake?"

"Did we agree on code names to start with?" countered Harry.

Hermione glared at him wordlessly. "All-or-none law – you start something to stick with it until the very end or you don't start it at all – regardless."

Ron, Dean, and Seamus winced after these words.

Harry had never felt the urge to do something violent to Hermione as he did then.

"Hm, Granger," said Draco hoarsely, clearing his throat, "do you have a talent for picking the right time for these things or what..."

Seamus said, "And don't forget neither of us even questioned why there were four dusty loafer truants in the middle of high-class Winox Lane. They didn't belong in that picture in the first place."

Harry swore at himself for never having stopped and thought about that indeed strange sight of the shabby-looking boys leaning on an outside wall far cleaner than themselves. He had just been so caught up in the fun of the day...

"Well, it doesn't matter now," said Draco dismissively, searching himself, "because... I think... there's still... one more... way... out of here..."

After Hermione had closed and covered her eyes to Harry's flat stare with her hands, she sharply looked up at Draco, as did everyone in that room.

"What do you mean?" whispered Seamus, hope shining in his miserable-looking eyes.

"The Chassio," said Draco quietly, and even though Fauss was nowhere to be seen, his eyes flicked over to the iron doors.

Daring to believe it despite himself, Harry sprung to his feet. "Draco," was all he could say, for there had sprouted a blinding beam of hope in his chest that they didn't have to endure all this after all.

Wide-eyed, Hermione looked on quietly at Draco as he revealed from his robes the Chassio he had evidently brought along, to the surprise of just about everyone in that cell.

"You came with it?" asked Harry, in an unnecessarily quiet voice as well.

Draco nodded. "Just in case. Fauss destroyed the Portkey, but my Chassio can take me straight to the manor."

"Malfoy Manor?" said Seamus, gaping as he stood up and clamped down on his shoulder.

Draco nodded vigorously, looking down carefully at the Chassio, licking his lips, but then all movement ceased from him, and he subsequently shook his Chassio.

"That can't be right. Are we north? Is it six thirty-seven in the evening? And who here wants to hurt me?"

"Well, probably not, definitely no, and maybe later," answered Hermione, and then went on despairingly, "Are you sure that thing is working?"

Draco shook the Chassio again and the thirteen needles spun wildly until coming to an improbable stop, for Harry was certain it hadn't become nine o' clock in the space of five seconds, he doubted they were now south-west after apparently being north, and he was reasonably sure nobody in that cage meant any harm to Draco, unless one considered the cage or the dungeon itself as possibly harmful to him.

Draco hissed a fluent string of swearwords that had never graced Harry's ears, nor, it appeared, had they Ron's.

"Maybe it's because of something in here. You saw what happened when we were duelling," said Seamus, who had retreated back to the iron bars and who appeared not to like Draco's profanity; he may have thought Draco had been above it.

Draco shook his head. "This thing is dead."

Despondent beyond measure, Harry returned to his previous position on the floor against the wall.

Hermione sighed despairingly, and she closed her eyes.

"I assume that was the troll Fauss," she deadpanned, after a while.

"Yeah," answered Harry flatly, from the floor.

Hermione nodded shortly.

"The sick bastard."

"Oh you saw what I saw too?" asked Harry, with a small, bitter snort.

"He's just as twisted and mad as that other major bastard," said Hermione quietly, as she found for herself a place on the floor unsurprisingly close to Ron.

"No wonder they're such best pals these days," remarked Harry, referring to the fact that Fauss seemed to have shot up in the rankings of the Death Eaters, or at least bore enough prominence to be included amongst adult Death Eaters who had been as such for more than a quarter of a century, for Harry had caught a glimpse of his square face and cold eyes on that Hogsmeade night before he fled with Voldemort and the rest.

"What's this now?" asked Seamus as he held a hand to his shoulder, and with a familiar, slight undertone in his words, which Harry thought he knew what it was about, that there was a divine and impenetrable level of understanding between himself, Ron, and Hermione. It had initially surfaced when they had been about to discuss the Horcruxes at the villa.

"Fauss," spat Harry in the interim, "you didn't see his pants, did you?"

"It's like everyone's obsessed beyond reason with control and power these days," observed Hermione angrily.

"What?" said Seamus, "He had a hard-on?" he asked, now positively clamping on his shoulder.

"Major hard-on," agreed Harry, nodding against the black wall behind him. "And that was just from a compliment. Can you imagine if I had went on my knees?"

"That bloke had a hard-on when he was looking at you like that when you were saying he was better than Voldemort?" asked Dean disbelievingly.

Harry merely stared at Dean in answer.

"It's not surprising," remarked Draco. "Power seems to be the new 'cool', doesn't it?"

Seamus gave a cynical-sounding snort; it sounded rather watery as well.

"He likes you in that way?" asked Dean, plainly confused.

There were several snorts.

"No, not in the way you're thinking about," said Draco. "Trust me, if there ever was a straight bloke it is Fauss. No, he likes overpowering people, likes being in control, likes dominating them, likes it too much, it seems."

"That's sick," announced Dean shortly, nevertheless, his words ringing alone in the silence.

"Voldemort's sick," he continued.

"Everyone's sick on this side," he finished, to the accompaniment of more silence. His words hadn't garnered the support for which he may have been hunting, or perhaps he was genuinely disgusted beyond measure, at least it sounded as such.

Seamus hissed.

"So where do you think we are?" Dean went on, asking anyone at large, really.

"In Voldemort's father's house," answered Harry.

Dean looked as though he would have preferred Harry not to have said this.

"Oh yeah, he must have been a kid himself once," said Dean, though he appeared to struggle imagining this, even Harry did slightly in spite of the fact that he had seen a fourteen-year-old Riddle in second year.

"And that graveyard out there was where Wormtail tied me up when he was reviving Voldemort."

"Blimey, Harry," said Ron vaguely. It may be because Harry had divulged the details of that night to neither him nor Hermione, except for Sirius and Dumbledore.

Harry shrugged at him, picked up a straw of hay, snapped it, and started folding it systematically.

"So what exactly happened?" Ron asked Harry, taking this opportunity to pry Harry a little more open to revealing the details of that horrible night months ago.

"Fuckin' hell...!" moaned Seamus, whose eyes were now red and swimming with tears.

"What's wrong?" asked Hermione, turning to him.

Seamus shortly let go of his shoulder for a second to reveal a nasty, red, smooth burn mark, at which Dean and Ron whistled.

"Oh, Seamus!" cried Hermione sympathetically. "You should've shown me when I still had my wand!"

"At what point, you mean?" asked Seamus. "When we were duelling? When he demanded them?"

"But you can't live with a burn wound like that...!" hissed Hermione, hissing and wincing on Seamus' behalf needlessly.

On his knees, Seamus quietly went over to the iron bars and pressed his shoulder against one of them, whereupon he sighed in relief.

"It's something."

"But are you gonna sit there the whole time?" asked Ron sceptically.

Seamus shrugged. "What choice do I have?" Soon after, he lowered his shoulder on the bar to seek out a freshly cold area.

Turning away from him slowly with sympathy in their faces, the attention then resumed upon Harry, who for a long while, looked ahead of him through the large iron sliding doors, but soon enough he found himself recounting almost every detail of that night when Voldemort was returned to life as Draco had nearly done his parents. When he finished there was no closed mouth around him, and the one whose jaw was closest to the floor was Draco.

"Bleedin' hell, mate," whispered Ron. "That's hectic, that."

"So you really are strong like Voldemort!" said Seamus, with something of a grin.

Harry raised his eyebrows lazily.

"Well, you said your wands had connected and you managed to push the beams of light towards him – that says something, don't it?"

"Who's obsessed with power now?" murmured Dean to Ron, who smirked in amusement back at him.

"I don't think so, Seamus, and anyway Voldemort is much powerful now, isn't he? Remember what happened that night?"

"How can we forget?" breathed Seamus, shaking his head, his eyes distancing as his mind lapsed into the memory. "All ghostly and shrieking and all..."

"Yeah," said Harry shortly.

"How much stuff did we actually lose, though?" asked Ron, as he started pulling from out his robes several items, which remained in their shrunken sizes since he didn't have his wand anymore.

"Catch that Snitch! is gone," Harry told him, as he also searched himself, taking stock.

"AnnoCup too," said Seamus, pulling out stuff from his own robes whilst still maintaining contact with his shoulder and a bar.

"Woozoo," said Ron sadly. "But there's something to be salvaged in this Bludge Bar." He started sucking sadly on a very small red wrapper of a chocolate bar, which in addition had been blasted into two and melted by the fierce duel and the sun. A Bludge Bar was a continuous chocolate bar made up of a line of five chocolate balls, in which there was blissfully tasty nougat awaiting one's tongue and an outer layer of toasted short biscuits. "Managed to save some Snitch discs and some Shank-Shakers... Oh and I got seven pieces of my chess set..." Hermione inserted herself at this point and rubbed Ron's back consolingly as he stared at the tiny, shattered glass pieces in his hand.

There came a muffled shriek beyond the iron doors.

"The lot of you are filthy liars! Show me them! Show me! You realize what I'll do to you or have you do if I came here for a hoax, then? Go on, open it! No use getting nerves over it now!"

The iron doors groaned and creaked and then finally starting slowly sliding apart to reveal a figure with a strong jaw, heavy, black bags under her eyes, and a permanently shocked head of black hair, and the face Bellatrix Lestrange wore was one of utter shock. Her eyes traditionally flew to and locked onto Harry's – dark eyes for green ones. Bellatrix looked speechless.

"Ah!" she shrieked wildly, her shocked hair going this way and that. She burst into speed as she took into the dungeon, but then she squeaked to a sudden halt in the hay, spun around, and took Fauss by the front of his robes, dragging him as she flew to the cage for no apparent reason. Her head with her widened eyes jerked from one captive to the other until they landed on Draco, at whom she gave a tremulous, gleeful grin, before she found Harry again, her eyes growing even wider. "Oh, Mitchell, you'll soon be dining with our Lord for this pleasing capture! Seems you deserve your Mark, after all! Unlike the rest of you mongrels!" she spat behind her, whereupon Harry noticed Carrow, Massice, Warrington, and Blaise exchange glances. Harry was quite sure they did not have Dark Marks. "Ah! Potter! Behind bars yourself for once, how does that go?"

"Quite nice, actually," replied Harry, who had come to his feet in his alarm. "The hay rounds it off nicely."

Bellatrix shrieked with beaming delight again, her chest rising and falling rapidly with so much dear excitement it was almost palpable to Harry standing no more than four metres away from her.

"Still have words, do you?" she questioned, and she shook her head vigorously. "No different than Dumbledore – also had a fair deal to say before they offed him. See what I told you about Potter and Dumbledore? More than just student and headmaster, you can bet! Having nice little sessions in your headmaster's office after school hours, were you?" she teased shrilly, jumping from the tip of her toe to that of the other toe. "How did Dumbledore do it, Potter? How did he get it up and running and in drip-drop condition for you?"

The dungeon shook with the cruel laughter that rumbled behind Bellatrix, who was absolutely radiant in her exquisite glee, beside her Fauss' chest pumping up and down as he laughed.

Despite the believed extreme bounds of his tolerance, Harry's face had flushed with anger.

"He did nothing of that sort to me."

Bellatrix threw her head back and seemed to struggle for breath as she jumped up and down on the patina of hay on the floor.

"Hah! He can't even say it with a straight face! He's blushing like a proper virgin!"

The hilarity mounted, exploding into the stratosphere as many clapped each other and doubled over, saliva hanging from several lips.

Harry's heart was beating very fast; he did not think he had ever experienced such humiliation in his entire life. Being called crazy, delusional, an attention seeker, or a delinquent positively sounded like flattering compliments in comparison.

"No – no – no!" gasped Bellatrix loudly, her eyes floating in her sockets around her tears. "Would you like it on all fours or on your back, Mr Potter? And never mind a Mint Toffee, how about a cocksickle!"

After this, she seemed to lose all her breath in one unladylike howl as she dropped to the floor, while Fauss and his lackeys behind him started having fits – their bodies jerking with uncontrollable laughter. Fauss banged on his chest, his mouth hanging, struggling to draw breath. Warrington was stomping his foot on the floor like a horse, Massice was rolling in the hay with Carrow, and Blaise's body shook modestly with mirth as he leaned against the black wall, his face pink.

"On my back please, sir, I want to see the faces you ma..." Bellatrix could barely finish this sentence, and there was a moment where the dungeon went quiet as every uvula was exposed in silence, and then the storm of roaring laughter boomed across the circular room; teenagers dropped onto the hey, and Bellatrix held onto Fauss, who was hardly standing himself, teetering on his fit as his fits continued.

"Ah, Harry my boy, you stoke... my... rusted... burning... loins...!"

"Salazar's toupee, stop, stop, stop it...!"

Little tremors were shaking Harry's body all over. He was suspended it utter disbelief of it all. His neck felt stiff and stuck – he couldn't look aside at his friends even if he wanted to, which he hadn't the slightest desire to do at the moment. This was beyond humiliating. It seemed to wither his person such that he felt he was almost weightless, floating on his feet, such was his ignominy before his friends. If only they could have done this anywhere but in front of Draco, in front of Ron, in front of Dean, and Hermione and Seamus, the latter of whom strangely enough looked quite close to joining the mirthful gaggle, and then he released a pressurized snort he couldn't hold back any longer, at which point the entire room stopped laughing so suddenly, Harry thought some kind of black hole would erupt in front of them, wondering where all that energy from that hysteria could have gone, displaced on swiftly.

"Whatchu sniggering at?" yelled Bellatrix, now standing quite strongly on her own two feet, looking the furthest from amused.

The little upward curl of Seamus' lips wilted before her demanding glare, and his Adam's apple bobbed feverishly, begging to hide in a niche under his jaw again.

Bellatrix sniffed and wiped her eyes face clean, the Slytherins picked themselves up from the floor, and everything seemed as normal as it had been minutes prior. Bellatrix's eyes found Harry's eyes again.

"I think I've right lost about ten pounds after that," she lilted, hands on her hips, and she was flattered by chuckles from the boys.

"Your own friends sniggering at you, Potter!" she spat, her wand hand twitching. "You liked my jokes, little lad?"

Seamus' face lost all colour.

"Hey!" said Bellatrix, hitting the iron bars with her wand as though Seamus was an animal. "I asked you a question, yeah?" She merely gave a look at Fauss, who must have been dragged all the way next to her to do precisely this – wave his wand over the locker, which, however, did not click open; impatient, Bellatrix clucked her tongue and by her mere touch, it opened; Seamus and every other person in that cage backed off despite their male egos, even Draco, leaving Harry the only one to remain where he stood.

Bellatrix gazed at Harry breathlessly as she stepped in, her eyes wide in seeming expectation of him to do something, which she appeared excited about, but when Harry did nothing, her face didn't falter in the slightest as she sloped aside.

"I was asking you a question, boy!" She waved her wand at Seamus, at which point Harry's body jerked, but all she had done to Seamus was lift all his Body Modification Charms in one stroke. She subsequently turned to the rest of them, croaking their name and flicking her wand at them as she passed with some bizarre knowing, until she had standing in front of her the original appearances of Ron, Dean, Seamus, Harry, Draco, and Hermione.

"Thought those were real disguises?" she snorted in cold derision.

Seamus, clearly hoping Bellatrix Lestrange had forgotten him, inched closer to Dean, which Harry thought was an unforgivable mistake in front of a pureblood.

And Bellatrix was crazy enough to catch the hint.

"Ah..." she said slowly, her heavily lidded eyes glowing with searing malice. "Running cowering to your shining knight, Dean Thomas, isn't it?" Dean didn't speak, though Bellatrix hadn't sounded to be asking him to confirm his name but merely stating it. "I can already guess who gets what in the what! All of you!" She swept her wand around them all. "Befouling the name of wizard with your repugnant acts! Draco! Of all people, little nephew! I thank Salazar Lucius didn't live to see this, his only son snivelling behind his boyfriend! What hope did the Malf—hey, don't you move away from me, I asked you a question – I said, what were you laughing at?"

Seamus' lips had shut tightly, while Dean's jaw bones stood out as he stared at the air in front of him.

"I do not like repeating myself, laddie," warned Bellatrix kindly, as she ticked her wand this way and that, prowling towards Seamus. She put her whole face close up into his. "No?" she said, shaking her head, and when she stuck her wand up the underside of Seamus' chin and was about to utter something, Seamus made a strangled noise.

"What was that? Come on, boy, speak up, speak up."

"You were funny, is all," muttered Seamus through tightly bitten lips. "I mean, the loins and the toupee…"

Bellatrix's eyebrow slowly went over her forehead, scalp, and came to rest invisibly at the back of her hair. "Oh, you think I'm hilarious, do you?" she whispered, nodding her head at Seamus as though addressing a toddler, while her wand still stabbed into the hollow of his throat. "Wait till you see what I crack up after this, yeah, then you'll really laugh so hard you're gonna drop to the floor." She grinned and nodded at him again, and then she slithered over Dean, jerking her face forward into his in an intimidating way, but she passed on and halted at Harry, by whom she evidently couldn't stop another mad giggle of delight. "Can't wait for him to meet you again! Bet your faggot arse I will be here, Potter, to watch the fireworks, ha! And of course when the lights finally go out! But while we're here, I'm dying to know who takes the other from behind between you and my nephew!"

More laughter broke from behind.

Harry didn't answer Bellatrix's radiantly mad face but kept his own face stoic, impassive, still stiff from her humiliating taunts about him and Dumbledore.

Bellatrix raised her eyebrows again, sticking his wand into Harry's throat, but Harry still didn't react, at which point Bellatrix slowly turned to those behind her and said lusciously, "Oh I do love to play with him…

"Crucio!"

Harry fell to the floor, writhing in pain, while his friends watched on with horror.

"His famous stubbornness is rather amusing," observed Bellatrix, as she cocked her head to the side while Harry screamed under her wand.

"STOP!" shrieked Hermione. "STOP IT, YOU'RE HURTING HIM, CAN'T YOU SEE?"

"Whatchu say, Mudblood girl? A gutterling telling me what to do? Crucio!"

When Ron charged full steam ahead, Bellatrix waved her wand again, cackling.

"Stupefy!"

Ron crashed to Bellatrix's feet; Bellatrix kicked him and scampered away, her face contorted with disgust. "Blood traitors of the generation! I spit after the marks of your family!"

She then turned to Harry. "Go on, why don't you fuck her like you've always wanted to, poopy Potty-poo! Little missy probably still a bleedin' virgin, ain't she? Why don't you help your friend out and loosen her a bit, eh? Imperio!" she shouted at Harry, who was still taking in rattling breaths after his torture but who now with an odd graceful languidness utterly unbecoming of him slowly stepped over Ron, but Dean swiftly tackled Harry towards the iron bars, whereupon Bellatrix screamed, "Incarcerus!" and ropes burst from her wand and bound Dean, dropping him to the floor rigidly; serenely unperturbed, Harry took this opportunity of clear way to bring himself smoothly to his feet, step over Dean's struggling body, and saunter over to a twitching Hermione on the floor, recovering from the curse.

Wandless, Draco looked on from his little corner helplessly.

Bellatrix howled in utter pleasure while the boys behind them watched on with amusement.

"Go on, wanna get in the action?" laughed Bellatrix, a mad glow in her black-ringed eyes. "Hey—Oh! Draco, I have a better idea! Imperio! Bugger him, get, get – go!" she yelled at Seamus, who promptly walked over to Draco with an elegant limpness as well.

"Aunt Bella…" said Draco quietly, seeming not to belief what Bellatrix had just done. Instinctively, his hand flew to the insides of his robes, but of course his wand was safely in Fauss' possession.

"Don't you think you'd like a change of fit?" asked Bellatrix. "Add a little colour to your sex life? I'm sure Irish or Scottish meat or whatever is just as good as Potter's! Go on, go on, whatever your name is!"

"Aunt Bella! Seamus! Finnigan, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!"

"HARRY! Don't do this, please don't do this! Ron! RON! Hold him back!" cried Hermione, but a Stupefied Ron was in no such position to do so, nor was an Incarcerated Dean, leaving Harry free to overpower her easily and take her down to the floor, where he opened his zip.

Draco ran around Seamus and tried pulling Harry off Hermione, but then Seamus was lifting up his robes from behind and Draco gave a rather unmanly scream and pummeled Seamus with a brief rain of punches before returning to Harry, who Hermione was trying to beat in the head but didn't have it within her to do it, since Harry cared more for undressing her than any direct attacks to his undefended face. Hermione continued to struggle under Harry, while Draco tried yanking him off, and the same time Seamus was recovering from the floor, rising to get a hold of Draco again; Draco kicked behind him.

"Harry, fuckin' snap out of it, please, Harry!" pleaded Draco, as he fought off Seamus, who was now breathing hard through his mouth as he rubbed himself against Draco's robes, so uncontrollable was his manufactured lust, and then Draco growled when Seamus swayed to the floor with him.

Meanwhile, with Bellatrix's jumping yells of encouragement, Harry caught both Hermione's arms over her head, his penis was out in the open, and he was pulling her skirt up her legs.

Bellatrix appeared to be in euphoria. Her laugh had even transformed from a mad cackle to an almost pleasant, airy giggle, while she threw head back and clawed at her chest, unable to control her feelings of 'beatification'.

By the slight advantage of height and build he had over Draco – who was easily the weakest boy in that cage – Seamus fought with unnatural stamina to systemically acquire each one of Draco's limbs in his grip as Draco's own stamina started waning, when his cheeks – red from exhaustion – had slackened due to the lack of energy even to shout anymore had left him, but Draco still struggled bravely, if futilely, for then Seamus – still moving and maneuvering his body like a snake with languid patience – could finally turn him at least partially on his side and move his robes out the way to find access to his pants, which he then started pulling down as patiently as an anaconda will be in engulfing its prey, knowing that after the long process of ingesting the animal, it would finally be in its stomach, Seamus would ultimately attain what he was cursed to want.

"Harry, you can stop this, Harry, please, you can stop doing this right now," said Hermione, in quiet, quivering whispers at Harry as he started pulling down her underwear while his legs repressed hers. "Moody taught us, Harry, don't you remember?" she whispered with a long, moist sniff, her eyes darting to Bellatrix, who was quite beside herself at the moment. "Harry, Harry, I am begging you, just say no again, like you did in class, like you told us you did with Voldemort in the graveyard today… please, please, please, Harry, sssshhhh…" She hissed and cried silently as she felt the blunt tip of Harry's penis on the flesh of her vagina, and at that moment, Draco gave a soft cry as Seamus pushed his own dry penis at his anus.

Harry's green eyes pulsated, his penis paused from pushing the lips of Hermione's vagina apart as the decibels of that soft cry resonated to a track in his mind; Hermione looked down from the ceiling, staring up at Harry with brimming eyes.

"Ahah, Harry…!" cried Draco, who was now completely lying on his stomach. "Lemelefuckalone, Seamus…!"

Green fire exploded in the cage, and Bellatrix was too late in rearing her head back from when it was thrown back in laughter; her throat and chest were charred instantly, and she fell shrieking in pain to the floor.

Harry caught his pants as he teetered over to Draco and Seamus, who he pushed off and for whom he swung his arm above him and delivered the hardest slap he could manage, but such a physical action couldn't assail the superior power of an Unforgivable; Seamus started struggling with Harry to get to Draco, and at the same time there were gasps and yells of shock and outrage from behind him; Harry whipped around on Seamus for a split second to see Fauss and his gang pelting for them, Fauss already flinging the gate apart to get inside the cage. Harry left Seamus to lunge for Bellatrix's wand as Fauss raised his own wand at him, but Dean then gave a might flip of his tied body and nearly took Fauss to the floor but was not able to make him stumble over his incantation; his spell shot directly to Harry but fizzled out of life before it could reach him, while Harry desperately latched onto Bellatrix's fallen wand and bellowed with all the force in his body, mind, and spirit, "CRUCIO!"

So much was the power behind this word that though what ultimately survived the smothering air of the dungeon were some few short sparks of brilliant orange, it was more than enough to wrench from Fauss' lungs the kind of howls that could have sent chills down even the Slytherins' backs, but they were now storming into the cage, and eight on one was not a fight to begin with, and so Harry was beaten up without curses but with the traditional fist and boot, and soon after, he was propped up against the wall, blood dripping from his fringe, his left eye purple and swollen already.

No longer under Bellatrix's Imperius Curse, Seamus was dripping soft tears of seeming violation and humiliation into his lap as he sat next to Dean, who wasn't freed from the binding ropes and remained on the floor. Ron had snapped out of Bellatrix's Stunner Spell as well and was now holding fiercely onto Hermione as he muttered, "What happened? What's wrong? What happened?"

The Slytherins had carried out an endlessly shrieking Bellatrix and helped Fauss out of the cage and ultimately out of the dungeons. Harry thought Voldemort wouldn't be too pleased to see what seemed to be his favourite follower marked by Harry as such.

But then at the tail of this single thought, there was a mad shriek, the iron doors shot apart from each other and framed in the threshold was again Bellatrix – her face contorted beyond human limits, the front of her robes burnt and charred, and her throat and chest a grisly canvas of black and red. She half cried, half screamed as she blitzed into the dungeon, her wand out, slashing it through the air to make all of them cower, but her spells were too erratic to hold their aims true and threaten any of them. Clearly beyond reason and clearly beside herself Bellatrix threw aside the gate and stomped back into the cage, screaming at the top of her voice as she jerked her wand back and forth at Harry, jumping from foot to foot.

"I SHALL KILL HIM NOW! I SWEAR I SHALL KILL HIM NOW, FORGIVE ME, MY LORD!" she wailed at him, still jumping on her feet, blood staining the hay beneath her red.

"Our Lord said you must not kill Potter and especially Malfoy!" boomed Fauss, whose fear for Bellatrix seemed to have been overcome in the light of what she was threatening to do, as he stormed over towards her. One of his cheeks and his left arm was twitching steadily after Harry's Cruciatus Curse.

And immediately after these words, still shrieking her lungs out, the bulging eyes in her skull flew to the others for whom perhaps there was no explicit order not to harm. Her incensed eyes found the person she perhaps judged she could hurt most, or perhaps hurt Harry with most. They rather fastened upon Seamus, a moment later there was a whooshing noise and a flash of green, and an already Incarcerated Dean stopped struggling against the ropes, and the soft thud of his head on the hay was the last sound to issue from him as he laid on the floor, peaceful and unmoving.

Seamus had yet to register what exactly had happened when Bellatrix seemed to go into access and burst into a mad cackling sight of simple, broken, and utter mania. She laughed all around them, their frozen faces seeming to stimulate her to the furthest bounds of pleasure achievable by man, though there was still a trace of a crying note in her laughter. Her face lingered on Harry before she pranced gleefully out of the cage only to flounder gracelessly to the floor a few metres from it, her laughter now slowly transcending into shrill cries of pain as her euphoria wore off and the pain started encroaching back upon her flayed nerves by Harry's emerald fire dragon. She called for Fauss, who promptly helped her up and dragged her out of the dungeon, leaving a trail of red in their wake. The huge iron doors slowly slid towards each other after them and ultimately closed the sight of Bellatrix hobbling and crying in Fauss' arms.

After two seconds of the iron bars clashing closed, Seamus swooned and fainted on top of Dean's corpse.