Avery

My Master had given me permission to do what I wished with Potter until I was told otherwise. He was not to be "made ineffectual."

There was plenty of fun to be had.

My dungeons were large, but had previously been scarcely inhabited. There was a yren there for a time - a mythical creature said to produce a powerful acid, for those of you who are ignorant - but it died before Master's rebirth.

I amused myself by going to haunt him. He was always the ideal rebellious victim. I was afraid perhaps he had gone mad, once, but then I remembered he was in Gryffindor. They could not be driven mad. It had happened already, and had not been a long drive.

It was a comfort to know that I held one of the most famed and possibly powerful people in Europe in my dungeon.

I visited him at night when I wished, never allowing him sleep. I fed him Azkaban rations. Merciless and stale, and only when I felt like it.

I fed him myself. I did not trust house-elves or servants. I am not a trusting man.

Now I watched him sleep, and broke it through the bars, traditionally, with a large splash of freezing water - his clothes were still damp from the last one - and a mild Cruciatus.

I only held it long enough to hear him cry. To cry names I had heard for the last minutes while I watched him sleep. Mother and Father who he never knew. Hermione, the girl Peter told us all of, and Ron, the boy, and Ginny, the little sister. Curious that he would call, too, for Black and Lupin, for Dumbledore and other names I did not recognize. Names like Cedric or Fawkes.

He never cried for mercy, for pity, and it made me angry. I hit him with a hex that slashed his face and shoulder so he bled onto the floor, and he gasped. No cry this time. I sped the bleeding so that he would not be damaged to the extent that Master would be displeased but not enough for the pain to end. I did not clean the blood off the floor. It was a reminder.

"Do you fear me, Potter?"

He looked up at me with dull eyes and spat at my feet. I carelessly shot a Slapping Spell his way, and blood splattered again on the floor from his bleeding lips.

"Do you hate me, Potter?"

He looked away. I Slapped him again, from the other side, and shot a Punching Spell into his stomach. He grunted and took in a sharp breath.

"Tell me you wish to die."

He staggered to the bars. I did not move away, and he stared me in the eyes and hissed viciously, "You can break my body, but you will not break more. Your foul master will never win."

"And you will?" I laughed. He was pitiful. That line must have been taken straight from a Muggle action movie. Potter had lived with Muggles. Perhaps they were rubbing off on him.

"I was never meant to defeat Voldemort," he said softly.

"No one was meant to defeat him," I replied, "much less a worthless child."