Chapter 3: Rescue
Something… something was nipping his ear, nipping gently…
…pain…
Too tired. Too weary… It hurt to breathe, why not just… stop…
More nipping.
…it ached, ached so badly…
He shuddered, jerking convulsively, uncontrollably. He remembered the mad thrusts, the hot panting breaths and the way he was crushed, and the burning, burning pain—
He opened his eyes and glanced around fearfully, but he could see nothing. Darkness.
It hurt. It hurt so badly, he wished it would stop. Please, he shouted, pleaded, screamed, whispered. Please, to nobody in particular. To nobody at all.
Why not just let go. Why not…
But he couldn't. Something stopped him, something inside, something that woke the pain and denied him sleep.
He held his breath, though his ribs hurt terribly… There was dripping somewhere far away, echoing like a clock… A chain clinking, far off as well… Grumbling, moans in the distance, almost inaudible… Nearby, the sound of even, even breathing…
He spread his legs painfully, biting back a scream at the pain in his left leg. God, it felt—it was disgusting. He wanted a bath. He needed a bath, he needed to wash himself, to wash it out—oh God—water, please, he needed to drink anything besides his own blood—
Something brushed his face and his hands flew to his face, brushing away the horrible thing—
He hit feathers, soft feathers, and heard a slightly indignant hoot…
An… owl?
He paused, calming his breathing. Feathers brushed near his mouth, and he flinched, remembering what had happened… an hour ago? Two hours ago? Last night? Or yesterday? Anyway, it hardly mattered…
He let his fingers wander over the feathers, down to the talons and the proffered letter. Hesitantly, he took it. I wonder how the owl got down here, he thought as he heard a faint hoot and felt the beat of wings near his face. He waited, listening, and heard the almost imperceptible sound of the owl flying away…
A snort from somewhere close, and Harry jerked, scurried away until he crawled head-first into the wall. He crumpled against it, gasping as his bruises collided against the wall.
He lay, too hurt to move, the envelope still in his hand. The pain passed. Curious, he brought the envelope to his face. He could not see, but at least he could smell it…
The enveloped was strangely heavy, he realized. There seemed to be something inside it. He held it close to his nose and, over the heavy odor of semen and blood and refuse, he sniffed. Strange that he could discern it… The scent was vaguely, strangely familiar. He could not place it, exactly, but an image came unbidden, that of a swirl of petals and a voice tenderly singing…
A snorting noise sounded for the other end of the cell.
He's waking up, Harry thought, groping frantically. There was nowhere he could hide the letter. Nowhere. But he wasn't going to let it taken from him, by God, he would keep it safe—it was his, and nobody was going to take it from him! It was his. But where to hide it? Not in his clothes; he realized that he was naked (not that it made that much of a difference with his treatment at the Dursleys). And he doubted he would be able to find a hiding place in the cell…
Scraping sounds from the other end…
Desperate, Harry turned his back to the sounds and quickly folding the letter, put it in his parched mouth just as a hand gripped him cruelly on his shoulder and another crept down his chest and stomach…
Harry shivered as he fell limply against the wall. I have it safe in my mouth, he thought. I'll hide it under my tongue if—if…
Oh God, let it end, please let it end oh God let it end please please please…
And then his mind gave up and slipped from his body.
qpqpqp
Snape paused at the headmaster's door, listening. He had finished the tracking potion a few minutes ago, pleased that it looked successful, and had gone up to Dumbledore's office, but had heard fierce voices. Being a spy with an insatiable curiosity, of course he paused and eavesdropped. It wasn't as if Dumbledore didn't know he was there, though; Dumbledore always knew.
"…how could you let them, Albus? Why didn't you check?"
Snape frowned. He'd never heard the werewolf sound so quietly, deadly accusing, and nobody ever sounded that way to Albus Dumbledore.
"Calm down, Remus! Albus couldn't have known."
Snape frowned again. It was Arthur Weasley, and the potions master had never heard the man sound so upset and shaken.
Angry pacing.
"I'll need a few more words with Arabella…" Lupin growled, and Snape shivered, remembering the night, many long years ago, when the same person who was prowling on the other side of the door had nearly killed him…
"What matters now," the headmaster replied, "is for us to find Harry." Snape frowned. The old man's voice was even and calm, but he, having heard that voice so many times, could detect a thread of bone-deep weariness. "I believe Severus has a potion for us…?"
Snape stood up straight, straightening his robes, and pushed the door open before sweeping into the room.
He noticed, with some satisfaction, Remus Lupin and Arthur Weasley gaze at him in shock. He smirked, then presented the potion to the headmaster.
"Ah," Dumbledore said, eyes glinting. "A tracking potion for Mr. Potter." The potion glittered green in its vial. The fact had surprised Snape for a moment: he'd expected it to be red after he'd put in that single strand of the brat's hair, but there was no proven correlation between potion color and tracker subject, so he'd dismissed it. Typical Potter idiocy. "Would you mind explaining it, Severus?"
Snape cocked a questioning eyebrow. "Certainly," he sneered, going into lecture mode. "The tracking potion for Potter shows, over a period of an hour, visions of where the subject is and the state he is in. It works well only with those who have connections with the person being tracked—a parent, for example, or a close friend…"
"What are we waiting for?" Lupin demanded, looking up coolly, eyes red from… crying? Snape kept his face expressionless but felt very puzzled indeed. Surely Lupin, who always kept himself calm and collected, couldn't have been crying…?
"Remus, Arthur, Severus," Dumbledore said, and Snape noticed, with faint dread, that a twinkle had started in them once more, "all three of you are qualified wizards, and all three of you have interacted strongly with Mr. Potter at one time or another—"
"Albus! You surely cannot expect the potion to work with me," Snape sputtered, guessing the headmaster's intentions. "I hate Potter. Potter hates me. Period."
"There may be a link of mutual dislike," Dumbledore replied, smiling optimistically. Snape scowled. "So, I would like each of you to drink the potion. Severus?"
Snape scowled again, reluctantly conjuring three porcelain cups (the potion reacted badly with metals; he'd found out one cauldron too late the first time he'd made it). Dumbledore beamed as he poured the green concoction into each of the cups as though he were serving tea.
Snape swooped down and took his, holding it while eying the other two mockingly. Both seemed rather hesitant to drink anything he had made… He smirked at them. Weasley reached forth first, followed by the werewolf.
"Drink up! Drink up!" Dumbledore encouraged happily. He turned serious and added: "It may be Harry's only hope, gentlemen."
Saving Potter again, are we, Snape thought bitterly as he downed the potion.
He felt the potion simmer down his esophagus then permeate through his body… He could feel the magic catalyzing now, any moment the surge would pass and he would be able to triumphantly tell Albus that he was right, he'd have no visions of Potter…
But even before he had completed the thought, he was hovering in the air, hurtling somewhere—south, he thought instinctively—over slums and cities, forest and wasteland… A dark building, made of concrete and cold iron, carelessly warded… Through the heavy doors emblazoned with rusty words—Jaeggar Prison—and inside, where a dozens of guttural whispers echoed in insanity… Down the corridor, to the very end, and Snape suddenly felt an insurmountable dread—
A hulking shadow, its gasps ringing with sickening clarity, his throaty whispers… A bundle beneath it, crumpled like a fallen robe, silent and blank… Eyes, closed, slitting open and closing again—
Snape choked and came to, barely aware of the porcelain cup shattering in the headmaster's office.
"…Severus?"
Vaguely, he heard the headmaster's concerned voice. He shook his head, and then snarled at Weasley and the werewolf (both of whom were staring blankly and with tinges of concern at the potions master)—
"Well?" he demanded. "What did you see?"
The two others stared blankly at the potions professor. "Nothing," they replied at once.
Snape's face darkened. "This is hardly the time for lies," he snarled coldly. "I should think you would appreciate Potter's situation more—"
"Severus," the headmaster admonished sternly.
Snape whirled around, slamming a lid onto his temper. "But Headmaster, I clearly saw some—startling images. If I saw anything," he snapped, "they must've seen more."
Dumbledore's eyes lit up. "You saw, Severus?"
"Of course I saw," Snape replied sharply. He glared, frustrated, at the two others.
"Really?" Remus began hesitantly. "Because I saw almost nothing—"
"Do you think your lies are funny, Lupin—?" Snape roared and Dumbledore was saying something, but he didn't hear it because suddenly the world spun away in darkness and he felt a horrible pain all over his body, and a terrible thirst… A feeling of disgusting filth all over, as though ants and leeches were all over him—
"Severus!"
Snape blinked.
What on earth happened to Potter? He thought, not hearing what the headmaster was saying. He knew only that there was darkness and pain, so much pain—but it didn't seem to be the Cruciatus. It was—physical. Real.
"…will you go, Severus?"
Snape looked up, blinking. "I'm not quite sure what you mean, Albus…"
"Will you go find Harry, Severus? You may be our last hope, you know."
Snape worked his jaw open, and then shut it. He planned to protest vehemently, even though he knew that Albus always won in the end—but the words died in his throat much earlier than usual.
"Very well," he snapped. "I shall go—alone, I might add." He sneered at Lupin, who was looking concerned.
"Severus," the headmaster said firmly, "do take Remus along. We have no idea where you may end up, and two heads are always better than one." Snape glared at Dumbledore, but the old man just smiled placidly, looking quite smug at getting Snape to cave in.
Snape scowled and turned to leave, suspicions plaguing his mind. The werewolf followed, sputtering something to the headmaster—
"Remember to report back at any dangerous circumstance," Dumbledore warned as Snape nearly slammed the door in the werewolf's face. "Goodness knows we wouldn't want the rescuers to require rescue…"
qpqpqp
Severus Snape didn't understand what he had seen or felt—there was so much darkness, and a persistent pain coupled with a strange sense of detachment. Neither did he understand this strange compulsion to barge in like an idiotic Gryffindor.
Something was not right.
Snape could not believe how he had gotten himself in such a mess. And over a stupid Gryffindor, too!
When he apparated himself as close as he could to the place he had in his visions, he'd nearly gaped at the entrance to Jaeggar Prison. Harry Potter? Stuck in some almost unheard of wizarding prison?
He should have doubled back immediately and consulted with Albus Dumbledore on the next step. One did not barge into a strange, suspicious wizarding prison. But the moment he made up his mind, the damned potion surged up again, and he felt, achingly, the darkness and the pain.
So he had snarled at Remus Lupin to wait there or die, stepped into the Prison, found a dark corner, cast a few masking charms on himself, and went to search for Harry Potter, the bloody Boy-Who-Lived.
Merlin, he muttered as he took the corridor down to the deepest cells. Strangely, there was almost nobody there. Why am I saving the Potter brat again? If it weren't for Dumbledore, I'd…
The two guards in charge straightened when he was nearly upon them. Fools, he thought, sneering.
"G-Good afternoon, Mr. Malfoy," one of the guards stuttered.
Snape sneered, running one hand through the blond hair he now wore. The illusion spell felt like grease, and he did not need his hair to be oilier than it already was. "Well?" he barked. He was glad Malfoy was so notorious. He'd totally guessed as to what disguise to use, and apparently, he'd guessed correctly.
The two guards jumped. The one who hadn't spoken up nervously took out a wand. "I—you understand, s-sir, that under the prison's r-regulations, I—I must—"
Snape sent him a look akin to dissection. The guard swallowed.
"Right, Mr. Malfoy," he bumbled and waved his wand over Snape. "R-Reveloso!"
Pathetic, Snape thought. Even if Flitwick hadn't drawn up this new charm that was immune to most all commonly used revealing spells, this spell lacked any potency whatsoever.
"I'm sure… I'm sure we can skip the Prison's own revealing spells," the guard suggested weakly, and scurried to open the door when faced with Snape's death glare. Even in Malfoy's face it was effective.
The doors swung open and Snape strode in—and nearly froze as he felt the tingling of hostile magic as he passed through the doorway. For an instant, time stopped, and he felt the cold, ruthless magic probing him, and Snape stood very still, unconsciously holding his breath…
"Which level, Mr. M-Malfoy?" one of them asked.
Snape sneered as he felt the probing magic leave him. He shivered and took a step forward, raking his mind for clues. Only hesitating for a moment, he drawled, "The lowest floor, idiot."
A minute later, on a very rusty magical elevator, Snape was descending at an agonizingly slow pace down into the bowels of Jaeggar Prison. The Prison, he learned, actually had thirteen levels, but all the criminals were held in the bottom two. The other eleven were unused.
Snape had to fight very hard not to scowl or snap at the two nervous guards flanking him: though Malfoy sneered and drawled like he did, Malfoy did not scowl.
He was annoyed. He was impatient. He was bordered on worried. Worried about Potter. The thought only made him want to scowl and snarl even more.
"This w-way," one of the guards whispered.
Darkness.
Pain swept over him like a furious tide—heat, cold, dirty, dirty disgusting—pain—
It passed. Severus Snape faced the long corridor.
He turned around a sneered. In the dark, he fancied he looked like a nightmarish vampire, even with his Malfoy-blonde hair.
"You two will stay here until I return. Understand?"
The two guards nodded meekly.
Snape stalked down the long, dark corridor, unaware of the hisses and faint clinks from the cells. One or two of them yelled out at him, but he did not hear them. His concentration was trained on that presence—closer and closer. A persistent pain, a gnawing darkness…
He hurried. He was approaching the cell at the end of the corridor— Strange sounds, like an animal panting, issued from it—
"Lumos," he whispered, and the strange, animalistic panting stopped, giving way to heavy, human breathing.
Snape stared.
A human—or what resembled a human—was crouched in the light, a black beard covering most of its twisted face. It flinched in the light and scampered away, muttering oaths under its breath, leaving a pile underneath…
It was a body. For a moment, Snape was sure it was a dead body: cuts and bruises criss-crossed the otherwise white skin. Splatters of blood formed puddles around the body… the body of a boy. Then, the boy moved slightly, and Snape realized with all the implications that the boy was naked, and the area between his spread legs was particularly bloody—
The visions and aches from the potion juxtaposed themselves onto what he was seeing, and he hissed, "Potter?"
The boy didn't respond.
Cursing, Snape jabbed his wand at the prison bars, feeling the wards, undoing them shakily one by one. Once, long ago, he had learned the art of undoing prison wards. The wards he were currently undoing were old, about four hundred years old, and though they were once strong, after all these years, they had decayed. He concentrated: the wards were tuned to spontaneous bursts of power, the reason being that wand-less prisoners would only be able to produce random spurts of uncontrolled magic. Yes… Slowly, he inserted his own magic, feeling the wards crumble…
The iron bars arched open.
Snape swooped down, waving his wand over the boy's body.
He reached a hand down to take the boy's pulse—and the boy shuddered, jerked like a dying spider, pulling away.
"Potter?" he demanded, as loudly as he dared. He glanced at the boy's face and started: this was not Potter! It was too angular, too sharp, cheekbones too high, hair too long… But then he caught sight of the lightning-bolt scar, and gritted his teeth. This was Potter. This broken, beaten, bloody heap of skin and bones.
"Oh what've you done now, Potter?" Snape muttered. The boy required medical attention he did not know how to give. Casting a basic healing-bubble charm, the potion master bent down and as gently as he could, picked up the trembling body…
The boy whimpered and crossed his arms (the wrists, Snape noted, were bloodied and raw) over his thin chest, and squeezed his legs together as tightly as possible.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Potter," Snape snarled under his breath, but it lacked any venom. If anything, he felt the ridiculous urge to tighten his hold on the limp, nearly weightless body. He straightened and took a step out—
"Hey! What do you think you're doing—"
Snape whirled around to see a man dragging a baton-wand pointing at accusing finger at Snape. The potion master squinted in the darkness: the man's ID tag read something 'Shaw.'
"Yes?" Snape demanded imperiously, stepping out of the cell as smoothly as a gliding bat.
"Don't move!" Shaw shouted as the bars clanged shut. Snape froze, all the while eying the guard disdainfully. His wand was still in his pocket, and with the boy in his arms, reaching his wand would draw too much attention…
"You're under arrest," Shaw barked, his baton wand directed at Snape, "for attempting to break a deadly prisoner out and—"
"Dare you arrest me, Shaw?" Snape hissed, taking a step forward as the guard took an involuntary one backwards. "I am a Malfoy." The sudden shock and hesitation in the guard's eyes were quite satisfying, even if it was because of looking like Malfoy. "And this," Snape shifted the boy in his arm, ignoring the almost inaudible whimper and imperceptible shudder, "this is Harry Potter." He moved some of the sticky, bloodstained black hair to reveal the scar…
"Great Merlin!" Shaw breathed, but narrowed his eyes. "No wonder… Always getting himself into trouble, that one," the guard muttered, eyes fixed on the lightning-bolt scar, not noticing Snape's hand creeping to his pocket… "Deserves what he gets, this one…"
While he normally would have concurred whole-heartedly without blinking, he found himself having to lie. "While I agree with you," Snape remarked amiably, his hand closing on his wand, "I must be going now…"
"You can't do that! You can't just take prisoners out and leave—"
"Stupefy!"
Shaw's eyes rolled back suddenly before he fell on one knee, then the other, and then keeled over altogether.
"Not bad," Snape muttered, pulling through his hair. "You and I are going," Snape whispered to Potter's whimpering, shivering form, "to Hogwarts." He grasped the tiny black jewel that was attached to a strand of his oily hair, and the two vanished.