Title: Shuffle
Challenge: #304: Five Senses: Hearing
Word Count: 4 x 100
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None.
Summary: This dungeon, Severus decides, is nothing like the one back at Hogwarts.
He had been drifting in and out of sleep, always waking up to complete darkness, then lulled back into an uneasy sleep by white noise and the jumble of his own thoughts.
This time he woke up to the sound of someone sobbing. He was momentarily horrified, thinking that he'd finally lost it, finally being reduced to produce such pathetic sounds. He had never done it, despite the spiteful Marauders' contrary claims.
Realisation dawned quickly, and he was rather glad that it wasn't him who made such noise.
Which meant that he was no longer alone.
The sobbing grew louder.
The crying irritated his already frayed nerves. "Stop it!"
The sobbing, coming from somewhere at the other end of the room, stopped immediately, replaced by the odd hitching and gulping.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice echoing lightly within the room.
The gulping noises receded, muffled against something. A palm over a mouth, or a fabric of one's clothing. But no answer.
Severus stopped himself from crawling around trying to find the other person. No telling who awaited there. Best stay put.
"Who are you?" he asked again.
"Perry Ticklehart."
The voice sounded terribly young. The name sounded familiar.
"And who are you?" the voice named Perry asked.
"S... Te...," sigh "Theo," he decided. The longer he could hide his identity the better. His dunderheaded captors thought he was Lupin's, but he won't be calling himself something so juvenile and saccharine as 'Teddy'. He was almost Theo, after all.
"Were you at Hogwarts, too?" Perry asked again.
Rather big for his age. Longbottom-ish at Potions. Severus finally remembered. But sorted Ravenclaw.
"Not in your year," Severus answered.
"Yeah, you sound younger than me," Perry decided.
It was quite an effort on Severus's part not to correct the boy.
Suddenly their world of darkness was no longer quite so silent.
"What's happening?" Perry whispered.
Raised voices, doors being thrown open, footsteps hurrying up and down the corridor.
'Leave nothing behind!' gruff voice rose above the din. 'Get the kids moving!'
More doors being opened. Then, sounds of young frightened voices crying for their parents.
More children! How many more?
Sounds of footsteps getting closer to their door. Perry had started sobbing again.
The door opened. Men at the doorway casting long shadows upon them. Once muffled noise rushed inside the room like a wall of sound. Merlin help us.