Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.
3.
You get no warning that he is there. One minute, you are bracing yourself for the daily Session, wondering who your warden will be today (hopefully not MacNair, you have no desire to get personally acquainted with that knife of his…) and the next, you are staring the Dark Lord in the face. You are feeling a hair better today, courtesy of a relatively short session with Lucius yesterday, and make the effort to stand and face the bastard on two feet. "Hello, Tom." You drawl, ignoring the way your abused voice rasps. "Fancy seeing you here. Tea?" You gesture expansively to your accommodations. A cell, barely large enough to fit the three of you, with a packed dirt floor has been your home now for several days. (You'd know exactly if your watch hadn't broken after the second task.) The walls seem to have been reinforced with stone, likely of magical origin, and a hole in one corner is the extent of their "facilities".
Voldemort snarls and backhands you viciously. Your reflexes are slowed by the torture sessions and the general lack of food, and you crash into the unforgiving stone. You blink groggily, and see a furious Hermione being restrained, barely, by Snape. Still stunned, you don't fight as you are chained to the wall by your wrists and ankles. Snape's snarl of fury pulls you out long enough to see the other two in the same predicament as you, before you are falling dizzily into nothingness.
You land on an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. A small black haired boy is playing quietly in one corner, a toy dinosaur clutched in each hand. You can only faintly hear the words the boy is muttering as he clashes the two dinosaurs together. "…my land! Arghh!" He mumbles, smiling slightly as the t-rex wins and begins devouring the hapless stegosaurus. "Ahh, no!" he says, slightly louder, mimicking the plight of the stegosaurus. "Curse-"
The door slams open, and in charges a bull of a man, heavily built, and you do not need to get any closer to smell the stench of alcohol on the his breath. "What do you think you're doing, boy? Making this infernal racket! What have I told you, you ungrateful little monster?" The man lunges forward and grabs the boy by his collar, pulling him close. He is surprisingly agile for one so inebriated. "What did I say? You are to make NO NOISE! ABSOLUTELY NONE!" The boy squeaks slightly and nods frantically, and you find yourself remembering the ringing in your ears as your uncle bellowed much like this.
What happens next reminds you even more strongly, and you find yourself shaking, both from anger and from the effort of fighting off a flashback to a moment oh-so-similar. Even now, you can feel the sting as each crack of the belt landed, and the sharp pain where the buckle connected. You cannot stop yourself, and you move to end this, to end the "punishment", only to have your hand pass right though the man's wrist. You still abruptly, and begin to look at your surroundings, using all your will power to ignore the sounds from behind you. Finally you spot a newspaper, and you hurry forward to investigate. In the corner, you can just barely read the words Saturday, August 28, 1967.
You step back, reeling. If this isn't really happening right now, you think, but in 1967- you turn sharply and stare at the small boy, now alone, who is collapsed on the ground. His face is grimy and streaked with tears, and the bones more prominent, but the dark eyes leave no doubt in your mind that you are in one of Severus Snape's memories.