Yo. Apologies for the long wait. Stuff happened but I won't bore you with my excuses. I loved the awesome response you all gave me for the first chapter, and, as I expected, most of you managed to guess who nearly everyone was. I won't be telling you yet, of course. You'll have to wait for that, but it was interesting to see what you all thought. Oh, and because it's been brought up more than once, the letters from the previous chapter were never meant to be subtle, and the reason for the code names will be explained later on.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters...
Severus Snape was stalking down Privet Drive. It was the morning of August second, and Headmaster Albus Dumbledore had requested that he go get the recently turned sixteen year old Harry Potter, and bring him to the Burrow, which was currently being used as headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix.
Severus didn't want to have anything to do with Potter, of course, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice. So he had dragged himself out of bed, and forced himself to get dressed in order to get the blasted boy.
The sun had already risen, but the street of Privet Drive was void of life. Cars stood gleaming in driveways, the various lawns were all neatly cut and a healthy green. All the hedges had been trimmed, and many different kinds of flowers stood proudly in the gardens. Severus sneered. How boring.
He walked down the street, glancing at the numbered plates as he passed them. When he spotted Number Four, he came to a stop. Severus sneered again at the sight of the perfect looking house with its perfect lawn and perfect garden, then frowned when he caught sight of a window on the second floor that seemed to be covered with bars.
Shrugging it off as some foolish new Muggle thing, the man headed up the walkway and rapped his knuckles against the door. As he waited for someone to open it, he frowned, wondering whether he was even in the right place. He couldn't feel any magic, which was very strange.
Severus knew he was a fairly strong wizard, and that meant he was able to feel the magic around others. Potter, he reluctantly admitted, was more than fairly strong, and, as far as he knew, hadn't yet grasped how to conceal his magic, which meant Severus should have been able to feel it nearby. But he couldn't, meaning either Potter had left Privet Drive, or was dead.
The door was opened very suddenly by a large boy who was definitely overweight. "What'dya want?" he demanded rudely, releasing a loud burp.
Severus held back a grimace and the reprimand that was on the tip of his tongue. "I am here for Potter," he stated instead.
The boy's eyes got impossibly wide, and he began to both sweat and stammer, recoiling in fear. "M-m-mummy! D-dad! It's one of those freaks!" he cried out, before virtually bolting away down the hall and away from the door.
Severus stood in the doorway, feeling very confused by the boy's reaction. He didn't have much time to dwell on it, for the loud sound of booming footsteps reached his ears. If the boy who had opened the door had been large, it was nothing compared to how massive the man standing before him now was.
"What the blazes do you want!?" demanded the moustached man, face purple. "The old man said the freak would be staying here until the end of summer, didn't he?"
Ignoring the use of the word 'freak', and figuring 'the old man' meant Dumbledore, Severus said, "Plans change."
"Not like that they don't! Get off my property!"
When the obese man attempted to shut the door in his face, Severus braced a forearm against it and pushed back with a surprising amount of force. When the shorter man stumbled back, the Potions Master stepped into the house, shut the door behind him, and pulled out his wand. "Where is Potter?" he demanded.
The other man did not reply. Instead, he took the same path his son had taken, down the hall and out of sight. Severus stood there for a moment, before rolling his eyes and following. He had been hoping to be in and out within a few seconds, but it didn't seem like that would be happening.
When he reached the sitting room, the onyx eyed man came to a stop. The two Dursley men, if it was even worth calling them that, were there, but no one else.
"Where is Potter?" he repeated.
"What are you doing in my house, Snape?"
Severus turned to see that a woman had entered the room behind him. Upon catching sight of his wand, she rushed across the room to stand with her husband and son.
"Well, well, well. If is isn't Petunia. Age has not agreed with you at all, dear Tuney," replied Severus in a dangerously silky voice.
Petunia sniffed, but said nothing, ignoring the hushed questions of whom Severus recalled were Vernon and Dudley.
"I am a professor at Hogwarts, and have come to collect Potter," the Potions Master finally said. "Where is he?" Still, he received no answer. "Very well then, I suppose I will simply take a look around. I am sure you will not mind?" It wasn't really a question.
"Of course I bloody mind!" yelled Vernon, taking a large step forward.
Severus, with a lazy flick of his wand, immobilized the three Dursleys, and silenced them as well when they began to protest loudly. Ignoring them immediately, he started to wander the house, beginning his search for Harry Potter. Severus Snape had no idea what he was about to discover. No idea at all...
While walking through the first floor of the house, the first thing Severus noticed, besides Potter not being there, was that the Dursleys didn't seem to have any photographs of their nephew around. He didn't see any photos of Lily either, which was strange considering she and Petunia had been sisters. Then again, it wasn't as if they had gotten along. The next thing Severus noticed was that Petunia still seemed to have an obsessive cleaning disorder. It was obvious by the way everything practically sparkled.
Not finding Potter anywhere on the ground floor, the professor headed up the stairs and froze on the landing of the second floor. There was a short hallway off the stairs, and various doors the man assumed led to bedrooms, a bathroom, and perhaps a closet of some sort. The first door on the right caught his attention though.
While the rest of the doors were all a boring white and had nothing but the knob, this one as different. It was still white with a knob, but there were many locks-seven-going from the top of the door all the way to the bottom. And stranger still was the pet door, which seemed very out of place.
With the sense of foreboding increasing, Severus decided to examine the rest of the rooms on the floor first. That locked door was just giving him a very bad feeling.
He went through the master bedroom, the guest bedroom, the bathroom, and Dudley's room, all leading to nothing. Potter wasn't in any of them, and nothing showed that the young wizard was even living in the house.
It wasn't much later that Severus found himself back in front of the locked door. Dread only getting worse, he tapped each of the locks, then, bracing himself, pushed the door open. While the man wasn't exactly sure what he had been expecting to find behind that door, it certainly hadn't been this.
Standing in the smallest of the four bedrooms, Severus looked around the desolate space, glad he was alone, because he was having a hard time concealing his emotions right now.
The room had a bed, a desk and chair, and a wardrobe, all of which were broken in some way. The window had been barred shut, and there were, what seemed to be shackles attached to the head and foot of the bed. The walls, at first glance, seemed to have been painted an odd mix of peach, brown and red, until Severus realized that while they had been painted peach, the brown and red were really old and fresh blood that had also splattered, streaked, and pooled on the ceiling and floor, along with the walls.
And perhaps the most horrifying thing of all was the small doodle of an owl on the wall close to the headboard. It had been drawn in blood.
Severus wasn't sure how long he stood there for before his mind really registered what he was seeing, but the moment it did, he very nearly ran back downstairs. Entering the sitting room once again, he flicked his wand to remove the silencing spell.
"Where is Potter!?" he demanded a third time, sounding far more urgent now, than before.
The three Dursleys, though clearly terrified, remained steadfast in their silence.
Severus barely stopped himself from growling. When he hadn't sensed Potter's magic, he had assumed the boy had foolishly run away. But now he was wondering whether the teen was even alive.
Suddenly, a strange sound met Severus' ears. It was an odd scratching that seemed to be coming from somewhere behind him. Just when he was about to glance over, he saw three pairs of frightened eyes flick over to-the professor looked over his shoulder-the cupboard under the stairs? Was that where the scratching noise was coming from? Why did the Dursleys look even more afraid now that his attention had been drawn to this cupboard? Unless...but it couldn't be-
...Could it?
Severus approached the cupboard under the stairs, and knelt down in front of it, examining the three locks on the small door. There were two deadbolts, one on top and the other on the bottom, and the third lock, the one in the middle, was a padlock.
He had briefly noticed these earlier, but hadn't paid much attention to the peculiarity. Now he wished he had looked here first. But after seeing that room upstairs, Severus doubted anything else could surprise him.
He was wrong.
And that's it for now. ...Come to think of it, why didn't Sev just use a point-me spell or something. Oh well, whatever. Please excuse any typos. It's one in the morning, and I'm typing this while watching the Return of the King. I'd forgotten how much of a dick Denethor was. Well, at least I have one series where my favourite character doesn't die. Anyway, I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but chapter lengths will vary, which is why this is so much shorter than the first. I'm tired and can't think of anything else to say, so looking forward to reviews! Laterz!