Warning: This chapter includes a depiction of torture and sexual assault of a minor child. Technically the minor child is polyjuiced… But still, it's pretty disturbing. So, you've been warned.
Chapter 21: Twelve
Draco stood silent, as the Dark Lord stood and circled him. The crowd around him grew menacingly close and he felt the cold room getting unaccountably warmer.
Vincent, he thought. Possibly Greg. It didn't matter now. He'd have to explain. How? Shit. He should never have trusted them. How to lie without lying? Draco's hands felt clammy but he didn't speak, because he knew he couldn't lie without having his throat slit from the inside again.
The Dark Lord was watching him closely as he stopped and stood on the other side of the circle. He raised his wand casually, and pain surged through Draco's body, shooting down his spine and out through every nerve ending. It went on and on and he had no idea whether he was screaming or not. Finally, it stopped, and he found himself crumpled on the floor. But he knew enough by now to quickly get up again, an indication of submission, of willingness to accept more.
The Dark Lord strolled over to Goyle, "your turn," taking his seat again.
Goyle's eyes glinted, and his crucio seemed longer and harder than the last. Draco was still twitching when it finally ended, and he nearly fell over as he tried to stand back up. Snickers arose from the circle around them.
Next came Crabbe, and Draco winced when he did not raise his wand, but spoke.
"Think you can threaten my boy? You worthless, spoiled, arrogant –" words failed him, and Draco wondered exactly what Vincent had told him, but then "perverted -" and Draco barely had time to register the implications of that last word before another round of agony overcame him.
When next he came to, he was lying on the ground. He quickly scrambled up, and vaguely wondered how much of his transgression the rest of the circle knew. Little, he suspected, but he couldn't be sure.
The Dark Lord turned to him and said, "It's seems you are gifted at potions like Severus, here" he said, his eyes moving to rest on Snape for a moment. Draco followed his eyes. Snape's face was unreadable, but as his eyes moved to Draco, he could see the hard, fierce look in his eyes that Draco had seen before, and it made him shiver.
The Dark Lord continued, "you have inspired me." Then he flicked his wand and the bound, gagged body of an elderly Muggle woman floated over from the back of the room.
He released the leviosa and she dropped to the floor with a crunch and a whimper. He moved closer to release her gag, then handed Draco a flask. Draco understood, and offered it to the woman, who pursed her lips and shook her head violently, until Draco shakily got out his wand and imperiused her into swallowing it.
The Dark Lord then unbound her and the group watched, captivated, as the surface of her skin bubbled, and changed. Gradually she shrank in height, then in girth. Her curly grey hair grew short and straight and turned blond, and her wrinkled skin stretched until it was youthful, taut and white. Her sagging breasts shrank and then disappeared entirely, and her spider-veined legs melted into thin, creamy, knobby-kneed stems.
When the transformation was complete, she had taken on the body of a twelve-year-old boy. A blond, twelve-year-old boy. And not just any blond, twelve-year-old boy.
She was Draco exactlyas he had been in second year.
Draco felt queasy and wanted desperately to look away but he found he couldn't.
"Uncanny, isn't it?" came the cold, high voice of the Dark Lord. He looked up to see cruel red eyes watching him, face twisted in pleasure. "The follicles in the hair," he began to explain, turning to the circle in the same tone he had used to explain Snape's bone-cracking potion, "or any other sample, will preserve the state of the person at the time it is taken. This," he indicated the flask in Draco's stunned hand, "was taken from your room."
Draco felt a jolt of indignation that someone had been rifling through his belongings. That quickly gave way to fear on behalf of his Mother, and something like bitter gratitude that they hadn't used a hair from his three-year-old self. Or from his current self.
The Muggle-turned-Draco turned around disoriented, examining herself and her new, male, preteen body.
Draco was staring at her and so was everyone else in the room and Draco became aware that the atmosphere in the room had shifted palpably. Again his eyes sought out Snape, who stood behind him, his features unreadable.
Then he turned back to the Dark Lord, who waved him back into the crowd, as though dismissed, though whatever was to come next was clearly meant for his benefit. Draco bowed and stepped backward, aiming blindly and gratefully landing right next to Snape. They stood side by side, and Draco resisted the urge to look up at the older man. Suddenly he wished he hadn't been so belligerent.
But now the Dark Lord had handed the reigns to Aunt Bella, who smiled maliciously and walked up to the boy.
"Aw, is wittle Dwaco missing his mummy?" she crooned. Draco felt sick.
She flicked and flourished her wand at the boy's clothes and they shrank and transfigured into something resembling trousers and a shirt.
Then she pointed at his crotch, and a dark patch appeared, and slowly spread. Draco felt his face growing red as he watched his twelve-year-old self wetting his pants, a look of abject terror and humiliation marring his delicate features. Around the circle, Death Eaters howled and jeered, and Draco felt the burn of his blush up to his ears. A roiling, coiling hatred awakened in his stomach as he recalled the last time he'd been submitted to much the same humiliation. He watched the little trickle running out of the boy's pant-legs and forming a puddle on the floor at his feet. It was almost worse having to watch. Or rather, being watched while watching: he was painfully, acutely, aware that the hungry eyes around him were surveying him at least as often as his younger impersonator.
Crabbe and Goyle were next. Crabbe stripped the boy with a spell and Goyle slapped him across the face, leering at the pale, naked body. Draco tried to look away. He drew his eyes up to peer at the others in the circle. Most of them were greedily gazing at the pale form, but a handful were now boldly leering at Draco himself.
Draco realized with a shiver that the Dark Lord was one of them.
The message could not have been clearer. Whatever they planned to do would be horrible just to watch. But it was also a threat meant for Draco and everyone else in the room.
Crabbe walked up to the boy, wand in hand, and suddenly he was bound by the wrists and hanging from the ceiling, so that his feet barely reached the ground. Shook his wand out to the side and several leather tails, knotted at the ends, shot from the tip. He walked in a slow, oppressively close circle around the hanging boy, dragging the dangling whip-tails across the white flesh. He flipped his wand around and ran the end of it slowly bump by bump over the stretched ribcage, then spun the boy around and dragged it slowly, slowly, from the back of his neck all the way down, down, until it reached the crevice of his arse and paused, chuckling.
Then the whipping started. Broad welts appears across this back and legs. Crabbe was panting with exertion and was obliged to stop when the blood oozing from the wounds had managed to trickle all the way down his torso, down the backs of his legs, and was now dripping onto the floor.
The boy passed out twice but a revivalo brought him back to consciousness.
Then he was cut down and propped up on his knees and elbows, wrists still bound. Some sort of acid, probably, was thrown across the wounds and the boys screamed. The blood sizzled and disappeared, leaving the wounds raw and glistening but no longer dripping blood.
Goyle mounted him without any preparation. The boy's screams echoed in the dark room as the circle closed in. He pulled out bloody to a round of applause.
Crabbe followed, but not before repositioning the boy, now barely conscious again, so that he could stare Draco directly in the face as he thrust in and the boy burst into renewed screams.
Draco allowed his eyes to go unfocused. He knew he was probably shaking, but he couldn't do anything about it. His hands hung trembling at his sides, helpless to do anything to stop it, stop them, to save himself.
He nearly gasped when he felt Snape's strong fingers curling around his elbow, but as soon as he recognized the gesture – that same rough grasp by which Snape always pulled him around – he exhaled and leaned into the touch. Gradually he felt the solid ground beneath his feet. The boy – himself – was not he. She was a Muggle woman. This was all a mind-game, and Draco could withstand it, would withstand it. He fought with the nausea, and the fear, but somehow he felt less alone.