Yet Another Snape Meets the Dursleys Story: by rabbit
Disclaimer: I am playing in JKR's sandbox. I'll try not to lose the shovel.
Chapter 15: The Captives
Summary: It's too early to sleep, for some.
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Petunia heard the lock click over at the door, and berated herself for failing to check it when Snape had first closed it. She might have escaped! Might have been able to free Dudley and run for it, now that Snape had shown his truly evil nature. Tying her up! Locking Vernon under the stairs! The man was horrible.
She went back to trying to work off the gag. It didn't have a knot, nothing that she could untie, but she could work her fingers under it, and coax it to move, gradually, away from her mouth. If she left it for a moment, though, it contracted again around her face. She'd begun by trying to pull it down, but when she'd discovered that it contracted she had changed her mind and worked upwards instead, dreading the thought of the thing's horrid texture against her neck all night.
It felt like…like fish flesh. Like petting a manta ray. Like grasping an electric eel. Under her fingers she could feel little sparks moving under the surface like moths in a light fixture.
This is all Lily's fault! If she hadn't got herself killed she would have been the one to deal with her precious brat and his freak teachers. We should have left him at an orphanage. If it hadn't been for old Figg's meddling, no one would have even known the boy had been left here in the first place. Except for the freak who left him there, of course, and what could he have done about it?
Vernon had decided that it was only the proper thing to do, to raise the orphaned boy properly. It would be proof that a proper family could eradicate the weirdness, if he and Petunia trained the boy up right. Then he had gone off to work, and it had been Petunia who had to deal with Harry all day.
Fourteen years that boy's been here, a thorn in my side. Disobedient, defiant, taking the bread from my poor Dudley's mouth. I should have drowned him as an infant.
She shuddered, ambushed by an old memory best forgotten. A week after Harry had appeared on the doorstep; Harry sleeping in the pram in the driveway while she took Dudley in and settled him for his nap. She'd bumped it – accidentally of course – as she went past, and it had started to roll very slowly down towards the street. But she had Dudley to see to, and Privet Drive was never very busy. She'd been giving her son his bath when she heard the screech of brakes outside. But no one had come knocking on the door.
All the time she'd been putting Dudley into his pajamas and settling him into his cot she'd waited, her shoulders tightening, for the knock. And it hadn't come. At last she'd gone outside. There was no one around.
The pram was three houses down, smashed against a tree.
But Harry was sitting in her flowerbed, chuckling as a worm crawled over his bare feet.
She'd told Vernon that the pram brakes were faulty, and they'd written a nasty letter to the company. But she'd never told him that her nephew had been in the pram.
Or ought to have been.
They were spying on me. The freaks. I still cannot believe that a one year old child could have…
She'd never dared try again.
******
Dudley sat down on the guest room bed and made a face at the tome Snape had shoved into his hand before he'd locked the door. Oliver Twist. He'd had to write a thank you note for the book three Christmases ago, because Aunt Marge's librarian friend had a nasty habit of raising a fuss if her gift subscription to the "Young Briton's Classic Book Club" weren't acknowledged. Four useless books a year. Four stupid thank you notes a year. (Although those were a lot easier now that he'd shown Mummy where to type in the title and author. All he had to do was change the font for appearances sake and sign the printout.) Just because the old cow had won some sweepstakes years ago and didn't have any children of her own to spend it on. Business correspondence, Daddy called it. At least she never expected him to actually read the books.
Snape did though.
And it was pretty good odds that they'd changed the story when they'd made the film. Which was all right, because he'd only seen half the film anyway. Bunch of stupid orphans, all singing about food…
What kind of a teacher is Snape, anyway? Dudley wondered. He let me eat. That makes him nice. But then he locked Daddy under the stairs, and Mummy in my other room, and me in here, and that makes him mean. Doesn't it?
You lock things up because they're bad. But we haven't been bad. Not really. We've done the things Snape asked us to.
You lock things up because they're dangerous. Maybe he thinks we're dangerous. That's better. Maybe we're as frightening to the freaks as they are to us. That'd be great. Except…
Snape hadn't seemed frightened. Tired, at the last, yes. But mostly… mostly, he'd seemed angry.
Very angry.
Maybe he's afraid of what he'd do to us, if we weren't locked up.
Dudley fiddled with the book, nervously, bending the cover back and forth. There wasn't anyone around to stop Snape from doing whatever he felt like, except Harry – and after Dudley had poisoned his bird, he had a hunch that Harry wouldn't have a lot of reasons to stop Snape from doing something awful.
I'd better read this book, after all.
******
It was a very small cupboard.
It smelled funny.
And it had spiders in it.
It was dark, too.
It didn't have to be dark. There was a light, installed on the underside of one of the higher stairs, and Petunia had replaced the batteries in it not four months ago, but Vernon had decided that the spiders were less nerve-wracking when they were invisible.
At least for the moment. He reserved the right to change his mind the next time one of them ran across his face.
Had it been like this for Harry, every night for the eight years he'd slept in this cupboard? Surely not. He had a sleeping cot. He wasn't directly on the floor. The spiders…
…would have been able to climb right up the legs of it.
Damn.
Vernon wanted to be angry. He wanted to be furious. But he knew why Snape had locked him in here.
And he couldn't even blame Harry for it.
Not much anyway.
Boy probably witched the spiders away from himself somehow, Vernon consoled himself. That's right. Spiders like freaks. You're always seeing them together, witches and spiders and bats and things. And Harry Did Things, even before he ever went to that school. He would have been all right in here. He would have been just fine.
Except for the not-being-able-to-get-out part.
*******
Harry was shaken awake by the chattering of his own teeth. He'd been too hot, the last time he'd surfaced at the edge of consciousness, and he vaguely remembered pushing the blankets away, but now he was too cold, like he'd been trapped at the bottom of Hogwarts lake too long.
Cedric…
He shuddered, and pushed himself up from the pillow, not wanting to go back to sleep if it meant more dreams about the Tournament. His stomach made a funny, gurgling noise, and he tasted sour vomit at the back of his throat. Harry groaned, swinging his feet over the side of the bed. He'd have to break the window open to be sick outside or something, or maybe try to get to a corner. Uncle Vernon would never come to open the door this late at ni…
Something nudged his knee and Harry jumped backwards, the scream caught in his throat as he clapped both hands over his mouth and swallowed hard to keep from throwing up all over the Animated chair. It scuttled back a few inches and settled with an air of hopeful willingness.
The chair. Snape. Right. Harry reached out a hand and the chair came forward, positioning itself so he could make the transfer easily. "Take me … lavatory," he gasped out, hoping that the chair wouldn't lurch too much along the way.
To his surprise, once he got to the basin, he couldn't actually manage to be sick. At least not at that end. And even the bout of diarrhea wasn't as bad as it could have been. It wasn't any worse than the reaction he got from eating too many sweets with Ron. He'd actually warmed up some by the end of it, and wasn't shaking so much. When he looked in the mirror, he could see pink rising on his face, and feel the flush of something like health beneath it. What had Snape said? Something about being out of balance?
It felt a little bit like being on a see-saw looked. First up, then down; first hot, then cold. First sick, then hungry. Harry thought about going downstairs for a snack, and decided against it. He'd only get sick again later. Better stick to getting a drink of water from the tap.
The sound of the flushing toilet seemed particularly loud, and Harry grimaced at his reflection as he washed his hands, hoping that the tone-climbing whine wouldn't wake up Snape. He was crotchety enough at the best of times.
Someone banged on the wall. "Hey!" It was Dudley. "Hey? Is someone awake in there?! Can you hear me?"
Idiot!
Harry's legs shook as he stood at the wall and cupped his hands against it to make a sound tunnel, and hopefully muffle his shout back. "Shut up, Dudley!"
"Harry? Harry, let me out! I've got to go!"
Like you ever did the same for me. Harry thought, and then remembered that he'd never asked. And Dudley had made sure to give Harry bathroom breaks on the rare occasions when his parents had gone out for an evening and he'd stayed behind. Even if he and his gang had teased Harry about it all the way down the hall and back. And besides, Harry told himself, if I don't let him out, he'll just keep making noise until he wakes up Everyone. Including Snape.
"Shut up, and let me come around to the door," Harry called through the wall, and he heard Dudley bumbling against furniture in the guest room as he turned to summon the Animated chair. Hedwig crooned at Harry as the chair carried him across the dark bedroom to the hall, but fortunately, the shadowed black form on the bed near the window didn't seem to have been disturbed. Yet.
Dudley was already calling Harry's name through the door by the time Harry got there, and he had to thump on it to get the big lump to stop making noise long enough to listen.
"You're going to wake up Snape," Harry threatened, in a loud whisper.
"Oh. Sorry." Dudley's volume dropped immediately. "Sorry. Hurry up and let me out."
"Just a… Wait. The key's not here, Dudley."
Dudley made a funny, straining sort of groan. "Can't you … can't you do magic and open it?"
"Not without my wand. Which is in my school trunk." Harry realized that the trunk was just beyond him in the hall suddenly. "Which is right here," he said happily. Uncle Vernon's combination locks didn't look too hard to figure out. "Hold on, Dudley."
"No, wait. You'll blow us all up!" Dudley forgot to whisper in his panic.
"Blow us up?" Harry repeated. "And don't shout."
"The professor. He said… something about booby traps," Dudley babbled. "Because it had been out of the house."
Harry sighed. He'd really have felt better with his wand, but Snape knew better than he did if there was a chance that one of Voldemort's agents had gotten to his school trunk. They might have turned it into a Portkey. Or something inside it. It wasn't worth the risk. "That leaves that out, then. Without a key or a wand, I can't open the door. Sorry, Dudley."
"But I've got to pee!"
"So hang it out the window," Harry told his cousin impatiently. His head was starting to hurt again, and he wanted to go back to bed.
"What?" Dudley exclaimed.
"You're a boy. It's dark out. Use the window."
"But… but…" He could almost see the confused look in Dudley's piggy eyes.
"Would you rather explain to Snape why you woke him up?" Harry said. "'Cause if you plan on it, tell me now so I can go find a safe place to hide."
"No. No, that's all right." Dudley panicked nicely at the thought. "I'll just…just do what you said."
"Turn the light off, first," Harry advised him, and then patted the arm of the chair. "Take me back to the bed, please."
As the chair negotiated the turn into the bedroom, Harry heard a rattling noise on the dressing table. He couldn't see in the dark room after the light in the hallway very well, but Snape hadn't woken up, so he thought it was safe to turn on the overhead light for a moment. The sudden brilliance caught Hedwig, investigating the mouse cage, but the look she turned on Harry was unabashed.
"Still hungry, are you?" Harry whispered to her. "Chair, take me to the dressing table please."
He glanced over towards the window bed. Snape was sprawled uncomfortably at the edge of it, his face waxy white where the gauntness of it hadn't cast deep shadows. The light hadn't disturbed him, at least. Harry wondered what had made him so tired, and decided that he didn't want to disturb Snape to ask. He's so tired he might actually answer.
When Hedwig saw that Harry was going to give her another mouse to eat, she hooted her approval, winging to the top of the bedside table lamp for a good perch to swoop down from. Harry realized that the lampshade could never hold her weight. "Hedwig!" he called, but it was too late.
With a crash, the lamp fell to the floor, the bulb popping loudly. The mouse escaped from Harry's hand forgotten as he twisted round to defend himself from whatever an angry, wakened Potions professor might do.
But Snape still hadn't moved.
"Oh hell," Harry breathed, his stomach in a cold knot. "He's dead."