2:00. The red numbers on the muggle-manufactured clock burned themselves into his eyes. The clock, the source of entertainment here, his television, he supposed. He also supposed that they didn't use a real (by that he meant magic) clock because he might somehow use the power of a timepiece to break out of the cell. Ah, the cell. The musty, austere cell that had been his home for…
How many?
Five years, he thought as he counted the scratches in the wall. Five long, restless years. But now they were ending.
He waited for the clock to flick to 2:01. Sixty, forty-five, thirty seconds. The rain drummed its fingers on the slit in the wall with a piece of glass over it. They called it a window. He called it a taunting, malevolent monster. It was exactly two inches out of his reach when he pushed his cot over to it. He jumped, as high as he could without fear of breaking the springs holding the sorry cot together. But there was no sill. His fingernails once touched the cold glass and it was like he had just touched freedom. He had-
2:01.
There came the footsteps. He listened. He knew the sound exactly. The leather boots on a hefty man with the black soles. Clack-clack-clack-clack. And then they were gone, like always. They came back, patrolling the cages on each side of them. The footsteps that haunted him. They grew fainter. Then they came back for the last time. As always.
He picked up the crowbar he had made from one of the bars of his cot. It had taken him twenty-seven days to bend it. He pulled open the door. The partially rotted wood did not protest as it was cracked, did not squeak or creak.
He stood. Looking left and right, he stepped out into the hallway, footsteps muffled, bare feet against a quarter inch of dust punctuated with foot prints. He started walking in the opposite way of the end the footsteps had left. He smiled and had to refrain from screaming. Finally, finally, after all those days, weeks, months, years- finally!
He quickened his pace. He would only have fifteen minutes before the footsteps would be back, checking on the cells. And what will they find in mine? He thought, a broken cot, a crude crowbar, and scratches on the wall. But no me!
He had gotten about twenty feet down the hall when a voice from a cell pricked his ears. "You're not the guard," It stated, as if just to reassure himself that it was true. "You aren't the guard; you're a prisoner like me, good old Ron Weasley,"
His voice cracked. It had been five years since he had spoken civilly with another human. "I…I'm not the guard, no. But you don't sound like Ron. I think I used to know him."
"Well, this is only what's left of Ron speaking." The voice sighed. "And who does the corpse of Ronald Bilius Weasley have the pleasure of speaking to?"
"Well, I'm…I'm," He couldn't remember for a moment. It had been so long, so long. "I'm Harry Potter, I think."
And, as if just speaking his name was more magic than Merlin himself, everything came flooding back to him. Ron. Hermione. Voldemort. Magic. Hogwarts. Everything had been put away in effort to escape, or at least not to hurt. And last came the memory of why he was here.
He was Voldemort's prisoner.