Lost: One Godson, Answers to Harry

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Harry's head was throbbing. His ears were full of a distant buzzing. And far away, a cold, high voice was speaking.

"You've done very well, all things considering. I knew I had made the right choice in you."

The voice was so familiar. Harry tried to reply, but all that came out was a muffled, "Lemme go…"

The high voice gave a soft laugh, "I think not. Do not try to escape again. You must know it is all in vain."

Harry tried to open his eyes, but he was too exhausted.

"Sleep now."

Harry wanted to protest, but his brain was already shutting down and the buzzing in his ears grew quieter as he drifted off into a deep slumber.

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Harry slowly opened his eyes and sat up. His eyes adjusted quickly to the familiar darkness of the bedroom, and he leaned over and switched on the small gas lamp by the bed.

He remembered how close he had been to escape and buried his face in his hands. For a moment he let himself sit there, thinking about the smell of the grass, then he pushed the disappointment away and slid his legs over the side of the bed and got to his feet. He went to the door of the bedroom, and found it locked. He jiggled the handle in frustration, but it paid him no heed. He was stuck in the bedroom until someone came to unlock it.

Leaving the door, Harry lit the lamps in the room and went into the bathroom. He did his business, then found the soap, filled the bath with a few inches of water and stripped off his clothes.

Wormtail never had gone through with his promise of hot water. Harry washed himself in the icy bath, scrubbing his skin until it was pink instead of bone-white from the lack of sun. He washed his hair too, trying to work out the tangles with his fingers. His hair had not been cut since…since he had last seen Sirius. It was so long it was down to his shoulders, and got in his eyes all the time. If he only had a pair of scissors and a mirror.

For a while he sat in the cold bath with his knees up to his chin, while his wet hair dripped around his face.

I will not stay here forever! Harry thought to himself. I will not! He tried to remember the last time he had heard music, and couldn't. He tried to remember what it felt like to wear clean clothes and shower in warm water and what ice cream tasted like, and found that he couldn't remember any of those things either. They might as well have been something he had read about in a book but never really experienced.

He tried to remember what it was like to feel safe, and a distant, fuzzy image came to him of his mother and father, in their secret house in Godric's Hollow, before everything had started to go wrong. That was all that came to him.

Harry pulled out the plug of the bath, got out and towelled himself dry. He was rubbing impatiently at his hair when he heard the lock click in the bedroom and the door swing open. He hurriedly wrapped the small towel around his waist, his vision swimming in a sudden burst of hatred for Wormtail. He looked around the corner of the bathroom doorway to see the back of the man's head laying down a tray of breakfast on the bedside table.

For a moment Harry had the urge to just rush out there, grab the breakfast tray and bring down as hard as he could on Wormtail's balding head. He could snatch the man's wand and before Wormtail knew what had happened he would be gone. But then the man shuffled around and saw Harry watching him.

For a moment, Harry could almost have felt sorry for him. Wormtail's master had not been forgiving for the slip up that had allowed Harry to leave the house. He looked paler and smaller than ever, and he cringed at the sight of Harry and backed hurriedly out the door and away.

Harry dressed and ate quickly, then went out into the hall, meaning to head downstairs. But he brought himself up short.

The stairwell was blocked. Not by an invisible, shimmering barrier like the one that had previously kept him locked inside, but by a brick wall. It completely covered the stairwell, every crack plastered up.

Harry stepped back, staring at the wall. How had Wormtail gotten through? Was he still on the top floor? But no – Harry had heard his footsteps on the creaking stairs – though they had seemed more muffled than usual. So how…?

He gingerly reached out and touched the wall, which gave no response. He prodded the bricks, thinking of the portal to enter Diagon Alley. But if this wall were like the one in Diagon Alley, then you would need a wand to open it.

"No!" Harry slammed his fist into the wall, bruising his knuckles. "Let me out, Wormtail!" He yelled, slapping his hand on the wall. "Let me out!"

He kept hammering and shouting, and suddenly the bricks seemed to be crumbling under his touch. He jumped back, mouth agape as they rolled and shuddered away until a hole about the size of a window had appeared in the wall. Wormtail's rat-like face peered through it.

"You're not a-allowed downstairs u-unless I say so," Wormtail said in a frightened hiss. "I'm to make a-all your meals. I'm in ch-charge."

Harry lunged at the window and got his head and shoulders through before Wormtail raised his wand. The bricks contracted once more: Harry only had time to pull one arm out when he suddenly found he was stuck, wedged half-way through a brick wall. He struggled angrily, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment at his position rise in his cheeks. Wormtail had retreated back down a few stairs.

"I'll stop eating again," Harry warned, gritting his teeth. The bricks were slowly tightening around his middle, and it was beginning to hurt.

"Master already knows," Wormtail replied. His voice was not so frightened now. He jabbed his wand at Harry and the bricks contracted further. "If y-you try it, I'll call Him and He'll sort you o-out."

Harry could not repress a grunt as the air was slowly pushed out of his lungs by the contracting bricks. Was Wormtail trying to kill him? And suddenly Harry looked into the man's pointed face and realised that was exactly what Wormtail wanted to do. He hated Harry just as much as Harry hated him, and he could not keep himself from hurting Harry…

"Let me go," Harry growled, and he no longer had enough air in his lungs for it to come out as anything more than a gasp.

Wormtail suddenly seemed to come to himself. The expression of loathing on his face vanished and he flicked his wand and turned away down the stairs. The bricks loosened just enough for Harry to wriggle backwards, back into the hallway. Once he was free, the wall closed up once more.

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Being trapped in the upper storey of the house fuelled Harry's determination as nothing before. He worked at finding more and more ingenious ways to escape his prison. All of the enchantments in the house had been strengthened, and none of them responded to him any more. He had tried other wandless magic with no success. So clearly, all that he had left o reply on was his own brains.

Wormtail only allowed Harry to come downstairs when he was in a particularly good mood, so Harry took the rare opportunities he had to steal the blunt cutlery out of the kitchen, find himself some decent food, and check all the doors and windows for weaknesses. The only thing he found was that the gap under one of the front doors had not been blocked like the rest.

It wasn't a big gap. It wasn't large enough for Harry to even get his little finger under, but it gave him an idea, which he added to the mental list of all the other ideas he'd already had for escaping.

Wormtail had to go somewhere to get food and other supplies. There must be a muggle village nearby. Harry could ask Wormtail to buy him some muggle chewing gum. Then he could write a note describing his situation and use the chewing gum to stick it to the back of Wormtail's jacket. When Wormtail went down to the village, someone would see the note and pull it off. Of course, there was a good chance Wormtail would snatch the note back if he saw it…but maybe, just maybe…

Harry decided he would try it. He had to find some paper first, so he tore a nearly-blank page out of the front of one of the books in the upstairs library.

Now he had to find something to write with. But he didn't have any ink, or a pen or pencil. He tried using the gritty yellow soap from the bathroom, but it left no colour on the paper. He tried mixing dust from under the bed with a little bit of water, but the dust fell off the paper as it dried. He searched the library from bottles of ink – even dried ink which he might have recovered – but there was nothing.

At last, Harry realised he had no other choice. There was only one thing he could use that he was certain would not fade or disappear.

Blood.

The fork he had stolen from the kitchen was the sharpest instrument he had. He had planned to use it as a weapon against Wormtail, and felt a little ill to think of using it on himself. But he could not think of anything else to do. He tore out another piece of paper and rolled the tip of it up tightly, for a make-shift quill. Then he took his writing-paper, his paper-quill and the fork into the bathroom and set all the lamps he could find nearby so that he had as much light as possible.

It took all his courage to make the cut on his palm. It also took about half an hour, and hurt a lot more than he had expected. His eyes kept watering involuntarily, and he had to stop to wipe them. Finally a trickle of blood welled up in the cut he had made, and he put the fork aside with a sigh of relief. He cradled his stinging hand to his chest and pick up the paper quill.

Then he realised. He was right-handed. He had made the cut on his right hand.

Harry nearly cried then, out of despair and frustration at his own stupidity. It took him a moment to get a hold of himself. He could still write with the left hand. It would just take longer, and it would be harder, that was all.

With his good hand, he flattened the paper on the floor and put the tip of the quill to the cut on his hand. Blood soaked up into the paper and he quickly transferred the quill to the open page. Now he realised he had no idea what to write. How could he express all that he wanted to say in so small a note? He wanted to write everything – he wanted to talk about how desperate to be free he was and how lonely he felt, and about how he had escaped, and how he had set fire to the curtains, and how there were spells on the doors, and how much he hated Wormtail.

But this letter might be his only chance. He had to write exactly what his would-be rescuer needed to know.

He pressed the quill to the paper and found it had already dried. Biting his lip to keep from shouting in exasperation, Harry gathered more blood on the tip and wrote, I am in the house on the hill, Please help. He thought for a moment, then decided if muggles were going to read this letter, he didn't want them bringing the muggle authorities into the matter. The Death Eaters could easily deal with muggle authorities. So he wrote, don't call police.

He continued to write, haltingly with his left hand, until the paper was filled. Then he gently pressed the washcloth to the cut on his hand until it stopped bleeding. He washed away the excess blood and flushed all the evidence except from the precious note down the toilet. His hand was bleeding again by then but he wrapped the washcloth around it and didn't touch anything with it.

He read through the note again.

"I am in the house on the hill
Please help, don't call police
Find Sirius Black
12 Grimmauld Pl. London
Tell him: name of the village
No guard but Wormtail
Outer doors and windows
impenetrable, outer wall is
bewitched, untouchable
He will know what to do
My love to him & Moony
Harry"

There. That should be enough. Harry folded up the note and put it into his pocket. It felt as if it was warming him through his clothes. He was going to get out of here: all he had to do now was get the note to someone in the village, and Sirius would come, and he would take Harry home.

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It was almost another month before Harry got his chance. In the end, he didn't have to ask Wormtail for chewing gum. Fate, at last, gave him some help.

It was one of the rare days where Wormtail let him downstairs, though he told Harry that it was only for an hour or so, because he was leaving the house to buy their weekly groceries. Harry simply nodded. He avoided speaking to Wormtail whenever he could help it.

The note was still in his pocket, scrunched and torn, the blood dried to brown, but still intact and legible. Harry had been carrying it for weeks, waiting to plant it on Wormtail. But on this day he was not even thinking about escape.

He was hungry – he was always hungry, now that he was no longer allowed to make his own meals – and was rummaging through the pantries looking for something to eat. There was no bread left, no vegetables, not even raw flour or oats. Harry opened up the cupboards, but they were empty of anything edible. Stomach rumbling, he left the kitchen and slipped through into the room with the fireplace, which he shunned most of the time because Wormtail was usually in there. But he had never been afraid of raiding Wormtail's possessions, so he began opening the chest of drawers in the hope of finding a stash of biscuits or something that his guard had hidden.

And there it was. While all the other drawers were empty, one contained a single white envelope – and it was unsealed. Slowly, glancing over his shoulder, Harry picked it up and folded back the flap. Within was a thin piece of white paper. Harry took it out, careful not to get even a smudge of dirt on it, and looked at it.

It was a cheque, written out to a man named Frank Bryce, and at the bottom it was stamped Malfoy Estate. Harry hungrily read through the cheque. It was in muggle pounds, and there was just enough money for about a week's wages.

This was a paycheck, Harry realised. Wormtail must be going to deliver it. But a week's wages wasn't much: did Wormtail deliver such a check every week, under the name of Malfoy? But who would the Death Eaters pay regularly every week, in muggle money?

The old man. The gardener.

Quickly, his heart thumping, Harry pulled his own scuffed note out of his pocket and put it into the envelope, then position the check so that his note could not be seen. He folded the flap down and put the envelope back in the drawer, trying to place it in exactly the same position. Would Wormtail notice that it was thicker than it should be? Would he open it and check it before he delivered it?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Harry pushed the drawer closed as quietly as he could and went back into the kitchen. When Wormtail came back ten minutes later and told him he was to go back upstairs, he did so without protest. The guard glared at him suspiciously but didn't ask him why he was being so well-behaved.

All Harry could think was, please let this work. Please. Please.

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A month had gone by. No one had come. Nothing had happened.

Harry had tried to escape twice in the last three weeks, once managing to get a hold of a knife and slash the curtains in a downstairs window before Wormtail caught him and stunned him, the second time attempting to dig his chains out of the wall during the full moon, but intercepted when he broke through the door of the basement.

Harry lay in until noon, though he had no way of knowing it was noon. He might as well have been living underground. He didn't have the to energy to get up or move around. He didn't even have the energy to find a book for himself.

His joints ached, and he felt ill all the time now. He never ate all of the food Wormtail brought him, even when his stomach cried out for it. He always felt too sick. And his gums were beginning to hurt too. Harry had stopped brushed his teeth because it made his gums bleed. He constantly felt as if he was on the verge of going down with a cold, but all that ever came out was a few racking coughs.

He could see the marks on the wall which recorded how long he had been in captivity. Each circle he had drawn represented a full moon, and there were nine of them. Nearly ten months: that was how long it was since he had last seen a friendly face. Curiously enough, Harry had still not got the hang of recording individual days. There were never enough marks between the full moons – sometimes twenty-seven, sometimes as few as twenty-five, when there should be twenty-eight each time. Harry couldn't figure out why he kept forgetting to record some days, but it didn't really matter, since he always had the full moon to keep track.

It's going to kill me, he often thought, living in this house. Sooner or later, I'm just going to die. He didn't want that to happen. But somehow he didn't have the anymore energy to get up and do something about it. So he lay in bed and read, or stared at the wall, in a kind of dreary, thoughtless stupor.

He was in that stupor when Wormtail brought him lunch. He saw that Harry hadn't eaten his breakfast and his nose twitched nervously.

"Y-you're not trying the hunger strike again, are you?" he asked suspiciously.

Harry didn't answer. He heard footsteps and found Wormtail looming over him.

"Are you?" Wormtail repeated.

"Go away," said Harry, turning his head towards the pillow. He wished he could just stay there forever. He wished Wormtail would leave and never come back.

"You h-have to eat something," Wormtail said. His voice didn't have the usual whine in it, that made Harry want to hit him. It sounded more commanding, as if the strength Harry had lost had been grafted onto Wormtail.

Then he felt sweaty hands take a hold of his arm and pull. He wriggled and rolled over, protesting feebly, but Wormtail, panting from the effort, kept tugging his arm until he pulled Harry right off the bed. Harry just managed to put his feet out to catch himself. Wormtail pushed him and dragged him over to the end of the bed and then made him eat. Harry could not be bothered arguing, and spooned the lumpy mash which passed for potatoes into his mouth.

"I h-hate it here as much as you, you know," Wormtail said sulkily. Harry looked up from the greyish ham he was cutting and stared at the man. Wormtail was sitting on his haunches, his hands in his lap. "I wish He h-hadn't put me here. I've always been loyal to him…" Wormtail gave a small gasp, "I never failed h-him. Not once. I even gave him you…and your parents…but still h-he never rewarded me."

Harry suddenly found he couldn't swallow the greyish ham. His hands were trembling. Wormtail had never spoken of Harry's parents before. Harry felt his heart thumping in his chest. This man had killed them, without a thought, and now he was upset because he hadn't been rewarded for it?

With an enormous effort, he managed to swallow his mouthful and say, "Why are you telling me this?"

Wormtail stood up and took the empty tray from Harry. "I thought it might make you f-feel better," he said, and then he left the room.

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Harry paced the hallway after that. He didn't want to stay in the bedroom in case Wormtail came back. In the end he settled himself in the library and flicked through the books, his eyes barely taking in a single word.

He's read most of the books in this library, or at least, most of those he could. The small room seemed to be a relic from some past owner of the house, because most of the books were more than fifty years old. Harry couldn't read a lot of them, because they were in languages he didn't speak, French, Latin or German. Others were simply too difficult work for a twelve-year-old to read.

So that day, Harry picked up one of the only books he hadn't read, The British Medical Dictionary, without a second thought. There were some interesting diseases in there, or enough to keep in occupied for a few hours. He skipped through to the 'P's and read about pneumonia (perhaps that explains my cough, Harry thought) and the dangers of using a poultice.

He went on to the 'R's and read about rheumatoid arthritis ("a chronic disease of the connective tissue"), rhodopsin ("light-sensitive pigment in the eye") and rickets ("defective growth of bone due to lack of vitamin D").

Harry stopped reading and sat up a little straighter. He read through the rest of the article of Rickets. "The vitamin is formed in human skin exposed to sunlight," he read, "Children deprived of sunlight need vitamin D in their diet…not enough calcium salts are deposited in bone to make it rigid…weight-bearing bones are twisted out of shape…"

Harry put the book down and gingerly touched his wrist, as if afraid it would snap off. Children deprived of sunlight… but it probably took years to develop Rickets… all the same, he'd seen barely a flash of sunlight for ten months… and even if that wasn't long enough to get Rickets, it would be eventually… Harry began to smile to himself. He had found it: real, unquestionable proof that being stuck in this prison was going to make him sick…

He picked the book up and ran down the hall. He hammered on the brick wall of the stairway.

"Wormtail!" he yelled. "Wormtail, I need to talk to you!" shouting make his throat hurt. He'd barely used his voice for weeks.

For a while, it seemed Wormtail was simply going to ignore him. Then at last, the bricks folded away and the man's rat-like face appeared.

"W-what is it?"

"Rickets!" Harry crowed, thrusting the open book at Wormtail. "It's a disease! You get it from not enough sunlight. Listen… growth retardation, pliability and tendency to fracture in bones… that's what I'm going to get if you don't let me out of this house!"

Harry was grinning from ear to ear. He let Wormtail snatch the book away from him and scan through the article, nearly cheering when Wormtail's eyes widened in shock.

"It's a m-muggle disease," Wormtail stammered. "Not…wizards…"

"That doesn't matter! Wizards can still get it! And you have to make sure I stay healthy," Harry replied, laughing at the fear on Wormtail's face. "So you've got to let me go outside! You've got to!"

Wormtail flicked his wand and the brick wall closed up with a snap. Harry leaned against it, feeling some of his triumph ebb away. What if Wormtail destroyed the book without showing anyone? He would still only let Harry outside if his master ordered him to…

"He has to. He's too frightened of my getting sick," Harry muttered to himself.

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A day went by and Harry sat in the bedroom, too excited to think. Wormtail did not bring him any meals at all, but he barely noticed.

When Wormtail returned he looked almost angry, and he wasn't carrying a meal. Harry jumped off the bed and waited, his heart thumping, for the verdict.

"My master just laughed," Wormtail said breathlessly, lines of misery forming on his face. "When I showed h-him that muggle book."

Harry felt his stomach give a back flip. No…surely…

But Wormtail was still speaking. He took a breath and then said, "He told me you a-are to be let o-out whenever you like." He wrung his hands as he said it. "I-I'm to a-accompany you, and you're not to leave the garden."

Harry grabbed the bedpost to keep his legs from buckling. A smile spread across his face before he could stop himself. He could have hugged Wormtail – at that moment, had he been present, Harry thought him might have even hugged You-Know-Who. I'm allowed outside…I'm allowed outside… ran through his head like a song.

"Now," Harry said weakly. "I want to go now."

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Harry had to cover his eyes as he stepped out into the sunlight. It was so bright it hurt even through his eyelids. He was sure it was brighter than he remembered sunlight ever being. It even seemed to sting his skin. That didn't come as a surprise, since he was so pale. He knew he was probably going to get very sunburned, but he didn't care, he didn't care at all.

Slowly his eyes adjusted to the light. It took at least ten minutes before he could even squint, and he still shaded his eyes with his hand. He walked across the green lawn, feeling the fresh air fill his lungs, hearing the sound of the trees moving in the wind.

He wandered through the garden in a daze. The colours were so bright they made him feel strangely unreal, like a ghost. In the distance was the forbidding stone wall, but by day it seemed almost tame. It was the only barrier left. Get over that wall, and he was free…

And then he saw the old man bending over the flowerbeds not far away. Harry turned back to look at Wormtail, still standing in the doorway of the house. Harry's voice was still too hoarse to call out, so he went back to the house.

"I want to go and talk to the muggle," he said. "Am I allowed to?"

Wormtail, who was standing back in the shade of the house, nodded slowly. "H-he's got bewitchments on h-him, so don't bother a-asking him to send for help," he warned.

"I won't," Harry said, although that was exactly what he was planning to do.

He ran back across the lawn. Even running felt strange – it was so long since he'd had space to run – and he was thankful he didn't fall over. The old man raised his head when he heard Harry approached. He was thin and wrinkled, with a sour brown face and a cap pulled down to shade his eyes.

"Hello," said Harry, feeling suddenly nervous.

The old man stood up and leaned on his spade. He held out one hand for Harry to shake and Harry did so, feeling the cool dry skin against his palm. "Hello, lad," the old man said. "I'm Frank. And you must be Harry," he lowered his voice. "I got your messages, lad, don't you worry."

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TBC

A/N: Of course, Voldemort, having grown up in an orphanage, would probably know that Rickets is easily prevented by a tablespoon of cod-liver oil a day. Or a good diet of fish, eggs and milk. You don't see Voldemort with growth retardation and easily-fractured bones, no sirree. He probably makes all his Death Eaters have a spoonful of cod-liver oil every morning.

Thanks to the Penguin Medical Dictionary for the all the info on rickets!

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