DISCLAIMER: I am making no money off of this, and this site isn't either. This is purely fan-fiction written by a weird person who has absolutely nothing better to do than write this stuff. I don't own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, Snape, etc. J.K.R. does. I don't own Erik the Opera Ghost either—Gaston Leroux created him (or simply wrote about him, I don't know…)

Chapter 10

At first, the gloomy obscurity surrounding Snape and older Erik was impenetrable. This was until a bit of moonlight through a barred window allowed them to see what lay beyond.

Young Erik, now advanced to perhaps age fourteen, lay on a hard wooden bed. He had no blanket, though because of the heat he would not have needed one if he had it. A book lay at his feet, one on Advanced Algebra as the title announced. He had no clothes besides a grimy pair of trousers, and his mask was abandoned. The foul scent of excrement, blood, and mildew accosted the nostrils as though poison. Definitely, compared to this dungeon, the previous cage seemed like heaven.

"The policeman did take you to prison, then?" Snape inquired when his eyes had adjusted enough to see.

Erik shook his head. "No, he did not; you watch. And, for your future reference, his true name is Aladir Topari, though I always called him Daroga."

"So where is this?" Snape questioned with a hint of irritability.

"Mazenderan." Here Erik put a finger to his lips.

Younger Erik moved a little in his sleep. " Fatima . . ." he murmured, drawing his arm over his head.

Older Erik attempted to hide a blush. "Boyish craze of mine . . ." he coughed with embarrassment.

There was soon a gentle rattle at the door. "Hello?" called the young boy groggily, disturbed from his sleep. "Who wastes their time yonder? Come in with your hammers to strike me, enter with your rifles to shoot me, and bring hence your spears to impale me! Just be fast and do it hard!" He did not stir from the bed.

"Stop talking nonsense, Erik!" The voice of the Daroga pervaded, muffled, through the miniscule chinks in the wall. "Now come to this door, can you?"

"Oh dear Daroga!" Little Erik sat bolt upright. "You've come to see me in my distress! Oh, do not venture forth; they have taken away my mask!"

"Stop talking like a book and come to the door! Time is of the essence!"

Erik carefully rose and groped his way to the door. "I have risen, but I still warn you, my mask is off."

"I don't damned care right now! Do you want to die or live?"

Erik stopped. "I don't know."

"Oh come on! I didn't come up here for nothing! Of course you want to live, you're a genius!"

"So you say."

The Daroga's sigh was audible through the door. "Do not exasperate me. Come now, end this petty argument and come to the door!"

Tediously, Erik dragged himself further along. An inhuman rustling and squeaking occurred as he did so. "Shush Maurice! Clara! Clementine! Be quiet, your friend may be departing at long last!"

"Who do you speak to, Erik?"

Erik gave a short bark of a laugh. "The rats, of course."

There was a dull thud on the other side of the door.

"Daroga?"

"I'm slapping my forehead in frustration. Come now to the door, this is worse than pulling teeth!"

"I am here now." Erik slipped down onto the floor, leaning against the door.

"Here then. Take this. Quickly now!" They heard a cold grating noise, and then a metallic clink as something fell to the stones at Erik's feet. "It's a file. Use it to undo the latch on your side, I'll do the same here."

Erik disgustedly picked up the file from the ground. "This is my salvation? The key to my life depends on a harmless scrap of metal?"

"Well, what do you want? Have you any better ideas? I'm only a man, for the prophets' sakes. Now be quick!"

However, as he said this, Erik somehow assumed a strange supernatural strength and broke the great strong iron lock with his bare hands. Calmly, without rising, he opened the door partway.

"Good gracious Erik! How did you do that?" The Daroga stared, completely aghast.

Erik looked at his hands, then at the discarded lock on the scattered straw. "I do not know. I have barely the strength to walk, yet I broke that with my fingers unaided."

The Daroga dropped to his level, then remembered Erik did not wear his mask and turned away quickly. "Did you know you could do that?"

Erik lowered his face and mused, "I suppose."

The Daroga gave a low whistle. "Dark magic. It must be. But why on Earth did you not do that before now, when you were strong?"

With a shrug of his shoulders, Erik replied, "I didn't suppose there would be any purpose in escape. The Sultan would hunt me down no matter what course I might take. But, seeing that you still have a scant amount of hope for my case, I'll gladly share in it."

Then young Erik noticed the perspiration on the Daroga's brow. "Come, my man. Rest a moment; you seem near exhausted as I." He gestured to his vacant bed. "It is rather sanitary, I suppose."

In response, the Daroga simply seated himself next to Erik.

"You needn't sit near a monster as I, among the rats and filth . . ." protested Erik, but then realized: "Oh. You do not want to face me."

"Don't take everything personally." The Daroga quickly changed the subject. "Explain to me, what happened with the Sultan? I thought his majesty was pleased with your work. Why are you here?"

"Oh, his majesty was pleased with my work, certainly." A hint of bitterness permeated Erik's voice. "Just, at the last minute when we were finishing the designs a month ago, he demanded that within his new palace I instate a labyrinth of secret passageways. Their purpose was so that, in the case of revolt or other emergency, he would have a chance of escape. However, I did such great work that, after, he decided that all us who knew about the passages should be killed."

Here he gave a resentful laugh. "Me! His head assassin and executioner! Replaced and killed! What a life I lead!" The tears began to stream down his face, unseen by the Daroga, who stared into space. "So I . . . I and the three men who built the passageways were condemned, upon our work's completion, to death! Now instead of humanly killing us all at once, he takes one of us every day, for he likes to watch us die and does not have enough hours in the day to see us all tortured and killed on the same one. He started from the least important of us and has gone onwards to the most. He killed the poor Persian laborer Bobar last Thursday. He executed the black laborer Gunya on Friday. He executed the Chinese laborer Po Chi on Saturday. However, today is Sunday, and, of course, a holy day. He would not kill a man on Sunday. Thus, tomorrow is my day to die."

"That would be a ghastly bit of good luck for us," mused the Persian.

"Now, Daroga, you did say time was of the essence when at first you came."

"That you did." The Daroga rose. "I apologize for my weakness; I had to fight two armed guards. I am afraid that I am not adept at the lasso as you." Here he slipped out to the doorway, picked up the same rope that older Erik had attempted to strangle Snape with the day before.

"Daroga! You and your upstanding morals! You killed the guards nonetheless?"

The Daroga smiled sickly. "Not quite. I brought a quantity of chloroform with me, which I used to blind their senses once I had them at my mercy. They shall awake and not remember what happened to them."

"Well! For a moment I had thought you had changed!"

Pityingly, the Daroga shook his head and gave the lasso to Erik. "I know you never will."

"For once, I heartily agree with you." Self-esteem temporarily restored, Erik brushed his face with his bare arm to clear it of wet tears and gave the best of a smile. Then, with closed eyes, the Daroga turned to the boy and offered both his hands. Erik accepted them gratefully, and soon he found himself upright. The Persian proceeded to kneel on the ground, and Erik clambered onto his back. Then the Persian rose, and fled from the scene carrying the very light young man easily as if he were much younger.

The memory ended here. Snape sniffed and flexed his nostrils in disgust.

"This is another which ends happily," he mused coldly. "What is your excuse for this one?"

"It illustrates what dire straits I got into over the course of that year," Erik replied simply. "Again, I skipped the parts where I slaughtered criminals and committed many assassinations for the Sultan. I also omitted my extraordinary ways of amusing the young Sultana--very gruesome, those were."

"I should like to see you killing someone," Snape suggested, as though saying 'I should like to attend your sixteenth birthday party if you have one,' or something of that nature.

Erik found himself startled. "What? Why?"

Severus sighed. "Of course, I shall do you the favor myself, of course."

Erik closed his beautiful, blazing eyes. "I agree."

But at that moment, they showed up at the scene that so many writers and directors have attempted to portray, and failed.

To Be Continued!!

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