Warning: This chapter contains torture.
CHAPTER 10
GET UP
It was strange how, in spite of everything that was happening to him, Severus was getting to notice all the minuscule details. The earthy film of dirt covering the floor, the stench of sweat and filth that filled his nostrils to disgust, and the cold. The wretched cold that seeped out of the stone floor into his blood, bit into his flesh, made him want to curl in on himself and downright whimper.
"Get up. Humility doesn't suit you," came the Dark Lord's voice from somewhere above.
Well, if he was observing all these details, Severus reckoned, he must have been spending too much time on the floor. Unsteady with pain, he pushed himself to his knees.
"No. On your feet. I want you to stand."
Severus clenched his jaw, struggled to get up, ignored the piercing ache below his ribs, ditched the impulse to clutch at the wound, lifted himself off the floor, somehow — just, somehow.
"Good. Good," the Dark Lord said and raised his wand.
A dull ache coursed through Severus' bones and brought him back down on his knees. For a second, he thought he heard laughter, faint at first. He couldn't be sure. It grew louder, that laughter — and it wasn't the Dark Lord's — as the current in his body heightened and drilled sharper until the sound of amusement was drowned in his own screams.
He couldn't tell at what point the maddening throes had stopped, but now he was shivering like a twig in a storm.
"Up," came the cold voice through the mess of his own hitched breaths. "Stand up."
He tried, he did, but his body felt disjointed, his limbs disconnected from his brain's commands. He was sprawled on his back, he realised, must have passed out at some point.
The Dark Lord paced around him, observing him with clinical dispassion like Severus were a cockroach flipped on its back that couldn't turn.
"It's hardly dignifying what you're doing down there, is it not?"
That snicker drifted in again, and whispers, and with them, realisation was sinking in: It was turning into a show of ridicule.
He managed somehow to turn on his side, his limbs twitching oddly — too much frying of his nerves? His chest hurt with every breath. He had scrambled up to kneeling, wondering how much more. What if he'd been wrong, and he was dispensable? And this would never end.
"You do not want me to have to tell you a third time — Stand up. On your feet."
By the time he had lifted himself to standing, he was still shaking, with pain and exhaustion and sickening anticipation.
He couldn't tell how he had gotten on his feet; he hadn't thought he still could. But now that he had, Severus was doing all in his power to not move. Not an inch. Not an infinitesimal fraction of one. Not at all, to not throw off whatever shabby balance was keeping him upright.
Turned out his own body had other plans. It swayed this way and that as if unseen winds were pushing and pulling at it dizzily. It must have been too much at some point — the force of the imaginary currents of air, because his legs buckled and gave in, and he sank to the floor.
Someone guffawed, grotesquely loud — was it Dolohov?
"Suits him well, the kneeling." Definitely Dolohov.
More laughter swept through the room, mocking Severus for wiping the floor with his knees like some rookie recruit to be made an example of.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of a shape, someone approaching him, and he turned his head to look — found no one. Only faces in the shadows, and he could tell them apart. Every one of them: Dolohov and Carrow and Greyback and that traitor Pettigrew. All watching him, as he knelt in the filth on the ground, and their grinning faces looked truly happy tonight.
"I'm here, Severus," came the soulless voice.
He turned to look ahead, drowsy enough to forget to lower his gaze, and saw the Dark Lord smirk in malicious satisfaction as he lifted his wand, a white dot of light pulsing at the tip of it, growing in size.
Severus raised his arm to shield himself from the blow, a futile reflex, it would make no difference where the curse hit. But the blow never came.
No blow at all.
Only a whisper from the back of the room.
"What a coward."
And muffle chuckles.
Severus' stomach clenched. He scrunched his eyes shut tighter against the sudden realisation and the chill of it.
He froze.
There was no blow, he understood with jarring clarity. Only ridicule. He had cowered in fear at a mere flick of a hand.
Another snicker — "how long 'til he works the spine to lower that arm?" — answered by some rowdy chuckle that sounded amused.
It was petty schoolyard humiliation. Played by the book, step by calculated step. Severus should have known better, but he didn't. He really didn't. He felt every bit the ridiculed sixteen-year-old, frozen breathless on his knees, eyes scrunched shut, face hidden behind his arm. If he didn't move and didn't look and didn't breathe, it would go away.
It wouldn't.
Of course it wouldn't.
He opened his eyes and lowered his arm — he knew what was coming — found the Dark Lord's wand no longer raised. No threat to justify his gutless fear.
For a moment everything stood still, even Severus' breathing, but not his heart, pounding so loudly he was sure everyone in the room could could hear it.
A single snigger broke the silence — it was Pettigrew's — and the room boomed in laughter, rowdy with delight. They were chortling and snorting, relishing in his fear and his weakness and every bit the failure. They laughed yet louder.
YOU'VE MADE YOUR POINT!
Severus caught himself before shouting to the Dark Lord.
Then, sooner than his feverish mind could revisit and he would voice the words, the curse hit again, and the pain robbed his senses.
Regaining his senses from the clutch of the Torture Curse hardly brought any relief. Severus panted on the floor, on all fours, like a dog, shaking convulsively.
He wondered how much time had passed. There were no windows, not even a slit. It could have been four hours, it could have been four days, there was no way of telling.
He thought of Black, coddled up in his kitchen right now, and wondered: did he wish Black were here instead of him? Trembling in pain, bordering on delirium, while Severus watched it all unfold from a safe distance — enjoy the show, maybe even crack a joke with Dolohov, throw in a curse of his own. Exchange remarks with that lowly traitor, Pettigrew.
It would have been easy, wouldn't it? To not lift a finger, relish in the shady comfort of the sidelines.
Like a bloody coward.
Pressing with his palms against the floor, Severus grit his teeth and pushed to get up, with all the strength he had, but — just then and just to spite him — a pang shot up his shoulder, and his arms trembled in protest, and he simply couldn't. And he slumped on his forearms and breathed heavily.
Another wave of laughter whirred the air. He heard Carrow's apish jeer, louder than all others, and someone saying it did him good to be brought down to earth. Though, by this point, it could have all been figments of his imagination. He couldn't tell.
Degrading as it was, he found he was caring less and less.
"Try again, Severus," the Dark Lord said, "try harder."
He was doing it purposefully, every move tailored to Severus' personal tastes. He had tailored well; there was no doubt. And Severus, against his best efforts, was putting on quite an act.
Every shred of weakness he never knew he possessed had gathered up and balled together into this one pathetic mockery of himself.
"My Lord, I cannot stand."
"I see… you disappoint me, Severus. It would seem you are making a habit of disappointing me."
For a flash of a second, the air to his side moved, and he turned his head quickly, whatever quickly meant by now, but found, again — nothing. Was the Dark Lord playing tricks on him? Were the others? Or was his delirious mind slipping sideways, blending boundaries between worlds?
"My Lord, if I may speak my mind," came a familiar voice from behind, and Severus, in his feverish state, couldn't discern whose it was.
"Of course you may speak, Lucius. We are not animals."
"Thank you, My Lord. You are most kind. Considering the circumstances, My Lord, and knowing Severus, I reason that Sirius Black could not have escaped without help."
Severus thought he had misheard. He wished he had — his imagination playing tricks on him, throwing his worst nightmares into this hallucinatory game.
"I believe Black may have had warning which allowed him to prepare his escape," Lucius continued, and Severus suddenly felt like he might throw up. He was even surprised a few moments later that he hadn't. "My Lord, Severus does not bear the full weight of responsibility for this failure. Someone may have betrayed us."
Lucius, you fool.
Severus nearly laughed, unstrung, at the irony of this macabre fiasco, but the Dark Lord beat him to it, and his laughter was cold and mirthless, and definitely too loud.
At last, it stopped abruptly.
"You see, Lucius, it's intriguing you would reach such a conclusion," said the Dark Lord. "I entrusted this matter to no one but Severus and Bellatrix. And while Bella has proven her unabiding loyalty to me, time and time again, Severus has always fallen short of doing so."
"My Lord," Lucius said. "Then I was wrong in my assumption. Forgive my insolence."
"No, Lucius, on the contrary. You were… enlightening, I might say."
"I did not know, My Lord — Severus would never—"
"Shut up, Lucius. We are not debating."
"My Lord," Lucius conceded, then added in a quiet note, "forgive me."
Severus had the vague impression that the apology wasn't truly meant for the Dark Lord. But he might have been wrong. It made no difference one way or another.
Ironically, knowing Lucius and his sense of self-preservation, he must have scraped up quite some courage to speak for Severus. A great deal of comfort that brought him.
It would turn out Severus, never one to swear, was surprising himself tonight doing it passionately on end. He cursed, inwardly, the whole goddamn world around him and Lucius Malfoy's sudden worthy intentions, and tried to ditch the fear that was seizing his mind.
Try all he might, there was no ditching anything, and he wasn't fooling even himself. He was so afraid, it still astounded him he hadn't yet thrown up.