Disclaimer: Blah blah Rowling blah blah copyright blah blah blah blah.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who wrote a review this week. As a thank-you, I've given another chappie right away. Enjoy!
Harry Potter and the Blind Seer of Durmstrang
Chapter 25
Wrapping his arms around his legs, Harry rested his chin on his knees. The floor felt hard and cold underneath him; probably bare cement or stone. In a way, the common, non-magical feel of the floor comforted him, bleak though it was.
At last, after a long time, he stood. For a moment, he felt shaky and weak. His nerves still remembered the fire that shot along them as the Cruciatus curse hit them. The cold air did nothing to relieve the pain, but made him even stiffer. He stood for a moment, stretching.
"Feeling better?" The voice made Harry jump, and he caught a gasp of surprise in his throat. He was so sure he was alone. There had been no sound, no breathing, not even that sense of another person in the room. His skin prickled at the feeling of being watched without knowing.
"Why didn't you say anything before?" he said angrily.
"I thought you saw me," said the Voice carelessly. It sounded neither old not young, neither male nor female. It was just a voice. Harry tried to tell if it belonged to an elf or goblin, possibly, but couldn't hear anything telltale.
Harry let out the indrawn breath with a frustrated sigh. "No," he said shortly. "I didn't."
"You must have really pissed him off," said the Voice with a sardonic hint of amusement.
"If I'd really pissed him off, I'd be dead," replied Harry.
"Not if he thinks he can use you," said the Voice practically.
Harry considered this. He'd assumed that the next time he saw Voldemort, he'd be dead before he could blink. As long as he could remember, he was the on top of Voldemort's hit list. The fact that he was still alive at the moment puzzled him.
"Use me?" he asked wearily.
"Use you," repeated the Voice. "To get at your friends, or Dumbledore, or something. He's practical, you know."
Yeah, Harry knew.
"Who are you?" Harry asked.
The only reply was a snort of derision.
For a long minute, Harry stood silently. He'd planned to explore the space in which he'd been held prisoner, but suddenly he felt self-conscious about doing it in front of this unknown watcher.
He'd gotten a lot more used to doing what needed to be done regardless of who was watching, but this seemed so intimate, so frightening. This person could be anyone, could be dangerous. He (She?) could be there is spy on Harry or guard him. Or he (she?) could be simply a fellow prisoner.
Harry slid back to the floor again.
"Want to get out of here?" the Voice said after a long silence.
Harry almost snorted with laughter himself. If that wasn't painfully obvious by now, his companion was an idiot.
"Do you still have your wand?" asked the Voice hopefully.
"No," said Harry ruefully. He wished he'd fought harder when the Death Eaters had carried him down, Cruciatus curse or not. Having his wand right now would be really useful. He felt odd without it, as if he had lost a few of his fingers. He also didn't have his stick. Another useful tool. He sighed, then he frowned. "How did I not know you were there earlier?" he asked.
The Voice did not answer, and the silence roared in Harry's ears. He listened as hard as he could, but again, no sound of breathing, and no rustle of fabric. He wondered if the Voice had apparated out of the room.
"Are you still here?" he asked cautiously.
"Of course I am," said the Voice irritably, and Harry jumped. He decided to quit worrying about how the Voice managed to be so quiet. It occurred to him that the Voice definitely sounded male. Human too, and not the squeaky voices of House Elves or the gravelly voices of goblins.
"Can you please tell me your name, at least?" Harry asked with an edge of exasperation in his voice.
"Call me Mack," said the Voice succinctly, without volunteering more information.
"Are you a prisoner too?" asked Harry wondering if a common enemy might result in an ally.
"Yes, but not for long," said Mack cryptically.
"What does that mean?" asked Harry.
"I'm going to get out of here," replied Mack.
"How?" asked Harry.
"I'll think of something," said Mack vaguely.
"Want some help?" Harry offered. Anything was better than sitting here on the cold floor.
"You're blind," stated Mack, as if that answered the issue entirely. Harry rolled his eyes. This, at least, he knew how to answer.
"Just because I can't…" he began, but Mack cut him off.
"I'm just taking the piss," he said with a chuckle. "You can help, of course."
Harry felt taken aback. He wasn't used to other people joking about blindness. Avoiding the issue, yes. Shuffling or hesitating, usually. Joking, no. He grinned. He hoped this Mack character was a friend because he began to like him.
"Have you been here long?" Harry asked. He'd only been in this room a few minutes and it had begun to feel like an eternity.
"The less you know about me, the better, Harry Potter, so stop asking questions," said Mack sourly.
Harry was used to people knowing who he was. Being at such a disadvantage for information, however, frustrated him, and just as suddenly as he had begun to like Mack, he disliked him and hoped that they could manage to escape and part ways, the sooner the better.
"I've been here long enough," added Mack grimly. "Long enough to know that this little window has a spell over it, and that the walls are all stone."
That answered Harry's question about the window.
"Is it night?" he asked.
"Almost," said Mack. "And they haven't given me any other light in here, either. The good thing is, they almost never check on me, err… us. Shoving you in here is the first time I've seen anyone for quite a while."
Harry considered this. If they seldom checked, it might be easier to get away without being followed. If they could find a way out. He pushed himself to his feet with a slight groan. It suddenly occurred to him how tired he felt. He wondered if there was anything to sleep on.
"Where's the window?" he asked.
"Over here," said Mack from across the room. Harry judged the room to be small, maybe five metres square with a low ceiling. There seemed to be things stacked here and there along the walls, and rather than walking straight toward Mack, he followed the wall to the right, past the door hinges, to the corner, and down the side wall. He still felt a little awkward, knowing that Mack's eyes followed him, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he wanted to know what was there.
His hands found a stack of wooden shelves, rough with age and soft with dust. On them seemed to be bottles and jars reminiscent of the Potions classroom at Hogwarts. Lower ones held rough sacks, full of something grainy and stacked several deep. He followed the shelves along until he found the back wall. Turning, he tripped over several wooden crates. Gritting his teeth and wishing Mack would offer some helpful guidance, he at last found the window, grimy glass held into the stone wall with an old wooden frame. He felt its perimeter for a catch, and when he found it, he tugged. It wouldn't budge.
He continued his circuit of the room, and as he reached the opposite wall of shelves, Mack stood and joined him, standing in front of them. He sounded shorter than Harry himself, and Harry wondered if he was wrong about the goblin guess.
"The walls are all stone," Mack repeated. "Checked those already. Window's painted shut. Shelves all have food, and a few potion ingredients. Dusty buggers. Looks like nothing's been touched for a few centuries."
Harry stood with both hands on the shelf in front of him, thinking. If Mack had already knocked on the walls, there was no use trying that again.
"A vent?" he asked.
"Nothing on the ceiling," said Mack. "Beams, and boards."
Harry turned back toward the window, tripping again over a crate. It was empty, and skittered across the floor. "Bugger," he said, rubbing his toe on the back of the other leg.
"There is a grate here," said Mack, hurrying over to the corner where the crate had been, and shifting the one behind it. That one was full, and he grunted as he lifted it. He and Harry both squatted on the floor, Harry extending a hand to sweep curious fingers over the grate. About half a metre square, it was made of heavy metal with horizontal bars, evidently covering a drain in the floor. It was wider than it was long, and a chilly draught of air rose from it.
Although Harry suspected that it would be charmed shut, to his surprise, when he and Mack tugged on it, it lifted easily, leaving an open hole under it. Beside him, he felt Mack bend over the hole, peering into it.
"No light, dammit," Mack muttered, sitting back on his heels. Without their wands, and with the daylight gone, the hole was as dark to Mack as it was to Harry.
With a shudder, Harry extended his arm into the hole, sweeping it back and forth, but aside from a couple of filmy cobwebs, the square hole seemed to be deeper than he could reach. "Still, there is air," he said hopefully. And the smell of sewage, he thought. He didn't relish a climb into that hole.
Mack rose and began rummaging on the shelf behind them again. Harry heard him clinking jars and bottles.
"What are you looking for?" he asked, rising to stand beside Mack.
"Light," said Mack shortly, continuing to shuffle through the shelf. "Here, hold this," he said, and when Harry held out his hand, he stuffed a wad of burlap and a shallow glass jar into it. He added to the pile a metal table knife and another jar, this time earthenware.
"Put those over there," he ordered, by Harry stood still, unsure of where "over there" was.
"On the crates," Mack said crossly, and Harry obediently edged his way toward the crates under the window, feeling for them with one toe, since his hands were full. He heard Mack feeling around on the floor. Then came a crash, and a curse. Harry grinned to himself. Apparently, it had grown very dark. He set down the items Mack had given him and sat beside them on the crate.
In the hours since his sight had been ripped from him, Harry had hardly had time to think about it, he was so focused on deciding if he was still in danger and wanting to get as far from Voldemort as possible. Obviously, Voldemort had set up his headquarters in some Muggle house, and Harry was being held captive in its stone cellar. Who Mack was, Harry had no idea, but if he was going to help Harry escape, Harry didn't much care. At least the floor had stopped tilting. Harry supposed he was getting used to a complete lack of vision, which would have terrified him had he stopped to think about it. As it was, he rather enjoyed the relief from the searing pain of the light sensitivity that had followed him for the past eighteen months, and he called into use every technique for coping without sight that Lupin had taught him. Now, he used fingertips to explore the earthenware jar that Mack had given him. It was tightly sealed with wax, but he worked at it with the knife, and finally broke the seal. Sniffing the contents and touching it with a hesitant finger, he determined that the jar held lard.
"Put some in the dish," said Mack, joining him on the bench, and ruefully rubbing his head where he'd bashed it. He set something with a clunk onto the crate beside Harry, who brushed it with the back of his hand as he searched for the bowl. It seemed to be some sort of rock, taken from the crumbling mortar of the wall.
With the knife, Harry scraped a glob of the lard and plopped it into the bowl. It stank. "More?" he asked, and with Mack's affirmative, he added another glob.
Mack, meanwhile, was ripping the burlap. Dust flew, and Harry sneezed. With Harry still holding the bowl, Mack took the burlap strip he'd ripped and pushed it gingerly into the rancid lard. He then removed the bowl from Harry's grip and set it carefully on the stone floor. Taking the rock and steel knife, he sat himself next to the bowl.
Still sitting on the crate, Harry heard a scraping sound that ended with a ringing of metal. Mack scraped the knife against the rock over and over, sometimes harder, and sometimes more lightly. Nothing happened.
Mack cursed and shifted position on the hard floor.
For a long time, Harry heard nothing but scraping of stone on metal and an occasional curse.
"What are you doing?" he asked, but when he got no answer, and the string of oaths increased, he decided it might be more prudent to simply wait.
Scrape. Scrape. Hiss… "Got it!" cried Mack joyfully, and rose again to join Harry. "I did it!"
Harry was at a complete loss. "Did what?" he asked in bewilderment.
"Made a light!" Mack set the bowl carefully beside Harry on the crate. Now, he could feel the warmth of flame. It dawned on him what Mack was doing. Using the burlap as a wick and the lard for fuel, Mack had made a sort of oil candle.
"How did you do that?" he asked, amazed.
"Flint," said Mack happily, setting the rock in Harry's hand. "These walls are full of it."
Harry felt the rock again. It felt like an ordinary rock, weighing in his palm, and he was astounded that Mack could use it to light the wick.
Mack was already peering into the hole, lowering his makeshift light as he did so.
"It's not deep at all," he reported at last. "We can get down that and into the sewer tunnel."
Fantastic, thought Harry wryly.
Mack wasted no time squeezing himself feet-first into the square hole. Harry heard a muted splash and a grunt. He hurried to the hole himself.
"I'm down!" Mack called in a stage whisper. "Come on. It's not far. I've brought the light."
Like that will help, thought Harry. But he nevertheless sat on the edge of the hole with feet dangling. For a moment, he did not know if he had the courage to drop into the tight space, but the thought of returning to Voldemort quickly hardened his resolve. He pulled the grate close to the hole, and as he lowered himself into the space, he pulled it back over himself. Hanging by his fingertips, with knees wedged against the sides of the hole, he once again wavered. Then, drawing a deep breath, he let go.
The drop was shorter than he'd expected, and he dropped into shin-deep liquid with a jolt. The sewer tunnel, a long, echoing arched space, was barely tall enough to stand in, with a level floor. He could hear Mack already following the flow of the water along the tunnel.
Harry's stomach twisted. He felt trapped in the tunnel, but there was nothing to do by follow Mack and find the way out. Mack moved fairly quickly, and Harry followed as well as he could, trailing his right hand along the wall, his left held in front of his head to warn him of pipes or overhangs that he might hit. He remembered Lupin teaching him this method, and his feeling of scorn when he was told to do this, but now he gratefully used the technique, glad to know he wasn't likely to gain a black eye into the bargain.
"Here," said Mack's voice, and the sound bounced in fading echoes around the tunnel, like so many accompanying ghosts. "Yes, indeed," said Mack to himself.
"What is it?" asked Harry, coming up to him.
"The way out," said Mack.
Please Read and Review! Thanks!