Written for the Quidditch League Season 9, on the team Caerphilly Catapults.
Round 4: It's a Horror Story Out There!
Thanks to my incredible betas: CupCakeyyy, S L Blake
Using prompts:
Chaser 2: Freak Show
(character) Severus Snape
(word) Collateral
(word) Venture
Word count: 2751
Warnings: body modifications, human experiments, incarceration, mentions of torture, character death. The theme of this is Freak Show and it lives up to the name, I think.
"Potter," a voice hissed.
Harry woke to the nightmare.
A couple of his fingers chimed as he pushed himself up from the floor, taking in his surroundings. The cell he found himself in didn't seem familiar but that didn't mean he hadn't been here before. They always wiped his memory after a trial, he was pretty sure, and the scars, aches and pains he felt over his body indicated he'd been here a while.
The stab of pain he felt every time he tried to flex a finger made sense as he inspected his hands. Each of his fingers had been removed, instead being replaced by a shaft of some material. His index finger on his right hand was wood, the closest thing to a wand. The other 'fingers' were made of other materials, metal, ceramic, glass. He couldn't feel through them, but where they were fused to the flesh of his palm he could maneuver them.
It hurt.
This would be what Voldemort's latest twisted experiment would be. One of dozens he'd experienced, though he couldn't remember the rest.
"Come on, Potter, we don't have long," the voice hissed again.
Harry looked towards the voice, to the person who he would say he had once hated most. How petty that hatred seemed now.
Snape was focused on the shielding charm that stopped Harry from leaving his cell, waving his wand across it. The man was hunched over, his hair grey when Harry had always remembered it being black. He looked older, the wrinkles on his face obvious and his eyes looked ancient, haunted.
"Long for what?" Talking felt like his throat was a blackboard and someone was running their nails up it.
"To get you out of here," Snape said as the shield fell. "They're clearing up a failed experiment, it gives you a window."
"Out of here? I'm leaving?" Harry's mind felt like mud.
Snape finally looked at him, pausing at the incomprehension in Harry's voice.
"I'm helping you, Potter." Snape placed a hand on Harry's shoulder and squeezed. "Dumbledore told me a long, long time ago; you're the only one who can stop him."
Harry felt like he was pressing through fog to catch up with just what was happening, what this meant. Snape was on their side? After all this time?
He didn't know how long it had been, how long ago Voldemort had won the war, captured him and his friends. If Snape was here helping him now, able to get to him, he must have been a spy, alone, for years.
Harry stood a little straighter, determination pushing away the exhaustion and dread he felt in his bones. Any chance was better than none at all.
"This way." Snape took off again, leading Harry down the dungeon hallway.
The dungeon was colder than the one in Hogwarts and the stonework was far less organised. Harry hurried along the uneven surface, the light from flickering sconces making the shadows splay out against the jumbled stones.
They passed by other cells along the way, the figures that lay beyond drawing Harry's eye. He passed by one cell with both Creevy brothers inside, their eyes replaced with enormous glass lenses, gazing out at him soullessly. They were standing still as Harry walked, only their heads turning to track the movement.
The next cell he saw Ginny floating in a clear, glass sphere, her hair splayed out behind her. She was emaciated, her skin white as bone. She was shivering. She slowly turned upside down in the air to face Harry. There was a bubble head charm over her mouth and the moment she spotted him she began calling out to him, but Harry couldn't hear a thing. Her eyes held a desperate, frantic liveliness.
"We don't have time to stop, Potter."
Harry turned to argue with the man but was met with a defeated look. Snape would have saved everyone here if he could.
But he could only save one.
They carried on walking and Harry did his best to not get drawn into the gruesome experiments they passed.
He looked away from Fred Weasley spontaneously duplicating and both copies staggering to the back of their cell to throw up. At least a dozen more copies were slumped against the walls.
He pressed his hands over his ears as he heard Lupin shrieking over a forced werewolf transformation. Some of the rods-turned-fingers felt cold against his skin.
He quickened his pace as they passed Hermione, her skin folding and unfolding, printed red words shuffling across her body as she cried out in pain.
Harry felt the nausea pressing on the base of his throat. He fought the instinct, knowing that it would only slow them down.
They heard voices further along the dungeon and Snape grabbed his arm, pulling him into another hallway. The voices started coming closer. Death Eaters, in all likelihood.
"Never going to be easy-" Snape peeked around the corner, then looked down the corridor they now found themselves in. He paused, uncertain.
"You best make this blasted venture worth it, Potter. We're going to have to go through Mr. Weasley's chamber; it has another exit on the far side."
The two of them set off again, away from the approaching voices and down the hallway. "Ron? Can we get him out of here, too?" Harry asked.
"No. Don't engage with him. It would be more trouble than it's worth." Snape came to a halt outside the door and cracked it open a few inches. He peered inside.
"He's my best friend. I have to try."
"You were always such a petulant student," Snape hissed, opening the door and sneaking inside before Harry could reply.
Harry glared after the man, stepping into the room as well. It was much larger than any of the cells they had passed so far. The ceiling was a good fifteen feet high and was otherwise about the size of the Entrance Hall of Hogwarts. It was dark and stank like something had been left to fester. Harry could feel grime peel up underfoot each time he took a step.
There was only one torch flickering on the wall, doing little to illuminate the place. Harry could just make out another door across the room from them, maybe fifty feet away, but Harry looked around the room for his friend.
"He's just been fed. Don't provoke him," Snape whispered, continuing to creep across the room.
Harry glanced at the potions master quizzically before spotting a mop of red hair off to the side of the room, furthest from the light.
"Ron!"
Harry called out before he had time to process what was wrong with what he was seeing. Red hair made sense, but there was far more of it, expanding across a head that was at least Harry's arm in length. Ron lumbered to his feet, turning to face Harry's voice.
Everything was magnified, huge, disproportionate and off-centre. Ron stood about twelve feet tall, but his legs were the same length as before, his torso expanded and his gut sagging out and spilling onto the ground around him. When he took a step, he had to kick his overflowing stomach out of the way. Harry could make out stitchwork across his flesh, like someone had gone to a painstaking effort to manually attach more mass to his oldest friend.
"Ron." Harry's voice sounded broken even to his own ears.
The creature took a step forward and his jaw levered open at a ninety degree angle, spreading impossibly wide. There was some sort of magical expansion at play, because Harry felt that it could consume him in only two bites.
He glanced behind the creature that had once been Ron, at what he had been hunched over and saw the remains of failed experiments. His diet.
Something that Harry likely looked just like.
Snape hit Ron with a blasting hex, barely seeming to faze him. It was enough of a distraction for Harry to get clear, grabbing a hold of Snape as the man dragged him to the exit.
"HUUUUUUUUNNNNNGRRRYYYYYYYY," a deep, coarse voice came from behind them. It seemed to shake the stones loose from the walls.
Harry could hear the slaps of flesh colliding with the floor, quickly closing in on them. Snape slammed into the door, the two of them piling through to the hallway on the other side. Harry glanced back to see a stubby arm reaching out towards them, unable to reach them, the rest of Ron's mass stopping him from passing through the doorway.
Harry looked around them at the hallway, taking in even more experiments attached to even more familiar faces.
"Why would he do this?" Harry asked.
"The Dark Lord has a particularly cruel sense of humour." Snape stood, dusting himself off, but his usual unshakeable mask was slipping. "And he was always one to delve into the darkest possibilities of magic. Space travel, time manipulation, Giant-flesh suits."
"Hungry," the voice came from the room again. Ron took a step further back into his room, then launched himself forward with all his weight. The doorway held, but the stonework around it did noticeably shift.
"That's not good," Harry said.
Ron took a step back again, preparing for another attempt.
Harry and Snape ran. In the distance, back the way they had come, they heard shouting.
"They've discovered your missing," Snape said, taking a left at the next intersection and beginning to lead Harry up some stairs. "We don't have much time."
A moment later they heard a mighty crash. That would be Ron breaking free to feast.
They reached the top of the staircase to an atrium of some sort of grand mansion or castle. Harry might have appreciated the grandiosity of the place if it wasn't for the dozen or so Death Eaters who turned at their appearance, readying wands as they realised who it was coming up the stairs.
Snape fired a curse at the nearest Death Eater before they could defend themself and then pulled Harry back to the stairs for cover. It was a poor choice of shelter, but it was the best they had.
"Where do we go?!" Harry looked back down the staircase, hoping to spot another exit, but had no luck.
"Through them," Snape yelled back, firing more curses out before ducking to an onslaught of spells. "There's no other way. Stop being useless and help me deal with them, Potter."
"I don't have a wand," Harry snapped.
"Yes, you do. Use your fingers," Snape said, taking out another Death Eater with a potshot. "I've seen them work before, even if they wiped your memory from that experiment."
Harry glanced down at the rods of various materials that extended from his palms. It was hard enough to control them, but to use them for magic?
He pointed his hands downwards, each rod pointing down towards the floor.
"Stupefy," he said.
He felt the energy of the spell pulse through the nerves as the end of his palms painfully, rocketing into the various rods. Some of the materials barely managed to conduct the spell, the metal ones failing to do much more than tint a little reddish hue, but the spell shot out of a fair few of his fingers. The wood seemed to produce the most regular looking spell, but the ceramic finger produced a spell that spiralled in the air and the glass finger-rod produced a scattershot of tiny stunning spell-fragments. One nearly caught his foot and he realised he'd have to be careful not to take himself out of the fight.
Harry was pulled out of the way of some falling rubble by Snape, bringing his attention back to the fight. Snape was sweating, firing off spells as often as he could, barely managing to block some of the more ferocious ones.
Harry decided to go on the offensive.
Hands raised and finger-rods spread, Harry peeked over the edge of the stairs and fired off another stunner. The pain in his hand flared, but a fair few spells fired out of his fingers, even managing to connect with one of the Death Eaters. Ignoring the pain, Harry began firing off more spells, curses, and hexes all mingling into his spell chains.
Death Eaters turned their fire to him, but he cast a shielding charm and the results were impressive. Half a dozen shields appeared in front of him of varying thickness and effectiveness, able to stop every spell that came his way. Snape joined him behind his shields, taking the chance to catch a breath.
The moment of reprieve was short lived, however, as they heard the sound of flesh slapping against stone behind them. Harry looked back down the stairs to see Ron holding Luna above his mouth and biting off one of her arms as she tried to free herself. Luna's shout of pain was interrupted as she flickered in a blip of green light and reappeared with her arm reattached, seemingly unhurt. Unphased, Ron bit her arm off again and the process repeated.
"Confundus," Harry uttered, pointing his index wooden finger-rod at Ron. The spell shot across the distance and flew into Ron's gaping maw. Ron dropped Luna to the ground, looking around with a dazed look on his face, and Harry cast a quick Lumos to catch his attention.
Ron started lumbering up the stairs, aiming for the glowing light like a moth to the flame. Behind him, Luna flashed green again and reappeared in the air where Ron had been holding her, falling to the ground again. A few seconds later, the process repeated itself.
Ron's rolls of stomach nearly caused him to trip as he ascended. Harry held one hand up to the side, maintaining his shields from the onslaught of spells, but something of a plan had formed in his mind after pulling Ron's attention away from Luna.
"I'm dropping the shield," Harry said to Snape. "In 3… 2… 1…"
The shields went down just as Ron reached the top of the stairs. Harry's Lumos Charm winked out and all that was left to stimulate Ron's attention was the spellfire of Death Eaters.
"FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD," Ron bellowed, his mouth snapping closed around the upper half of the nearest Death Eater. The other attacks turned to him, and Harry longed to stay behind, to protect his friend, but knew that this was their opening.
There was seemingly very little of his friend left in this abomination.
It was Harry's turn to grab a hold of Snape and drag him away, the finger-rods barely managing to make purchase on the potion master's clothes.
The two dashed through the atrium, ducking under spellfire the whole way, crashing through the grand entrance doors and out into the night. Harry didn't recognise the place he had been held, but figuring out where he was was the last thing on his mind. Right now, all he wanted was to get away safely, to figure out his next move.
They rushed to the edge of the wards as the cracks of Apparition started to sound around them.
Harry had only a few moments to take in the dark figures that surrounded them, the roars of Ron in the distance continuing to fight his captors. Amongst the appearing figures was one with a snakelike face, snarling in fury as Snape and Harry crossed the ward line.
Voldemort cast a spell and Snape twisted in front of Harry, the two spinning. They spun away, into that constricting tube of Apparition, appearing alone in a forest.
Harry hit the ground and Snape fell atop him, coughing. Harry felt a sudden burst of slickness against his palms.
The quiet of the forest, the softly shifting branches and leaves above their heads was little comfort. Harry was about to move Snape off of him before he noticed how white the man had become.
"You get him, Potter," Snape said, strained, black eyes meeting green. "Don't let this be the end."
Harry reached, feeling for where that slickness came from even though he already knew. Snape had taken the spell for him as they'd fled.
Harry didn't look down at whatever wound Snape had sustained. He'd seen too much already tonight.
Rather than push him away, he held the man he'd hated. They stayed silent, Harry searching for some words of comfort or hope to give the man, but he found none.
It didn't take long for him to slip away.