Chapter Three – Meeting the Second

Harry had resolved that on this meeting, he would be calm. He would not allow Snape's silence and deadly glare to anger him the way it had yesterday. It was a perfectly good resolve, up until he walked into the cell, and saw Snape. There was a lazy demeanor to Snape's posture and expression, as though there was just another chapter in his life and nothing to be taken terribly seriously. As if it were all, really, just some kind of game. Despite that, though, Harry couldn't ignore the fact that there were deep purplish bruises across most of Snape's exposed body. It made Harry slightly sick to his stomach, but not nearly enough to feel properly sympathetic. It only took fifteen minutes with the man before Harry was screaming again. Worse, it felt as though Snape was silently laughing at him, at the fact that he still had the ability to produce this effect in Harry.

It was only when Harry realized that that he decided to leave, at least to get a breath of fresh air. The unfortunate part was that there was not a breath of fresh air to be had in all of Azkaban, and once he had Apparated back home, he didn't feel much like going back out again. It seemed didn't seem to matter about the fact that he was going to lose his job if he didn't treat this with more seriousness.

Having had another failed day, though, didn't make him particularly inclined to go to work even for a half-day. It was another in the long list of misdeeds that he was slowly accumulating that was going to get him fired, but there was something very appealing about lying sprawled on his very comfortable chair in front of the television with a beer. Of course, the one beer turned to three turned to six turned to twelve. All before tea-time.

By the time evening came around, Harry wasn't even sure that he could get out of the chair with any guarantee of success, let alone do any work or come up with even a vaguely believable explanation for Jenkins. He wondered if Jenkins was going to fire him today or would wait until he finally made it into the office. That wasn't much incentive, he realized, to go into the office in the first place.

There was a bang from outside. Harry stood up, and immediately regretted it. The world tilted at a crazy angle and in his attempt to get everything back at the right angle, ended up on his back. It was a remarkably comfortable position, despite the fact that he had banged his knee on the way down. He decided that staying like this would be the best option. Maybe he could even sleep like this. He closed his eyes. Sleep sounded good right now.

"Harry? Harry! What are you doing?"

It was Ginny. Harry managed a slight grunt in response and tried to will her away. Sadly, he didn't think there was spell that could do it. And even if there was one, his wand was on the other side of the room and his mind was in no state to even cast a Lumos, let alone anything more complicated.

"Harry…you've been drinking!"

"Mmm."

"It's not even six yet!"

"Mmm."

Suddenly, Harry was no longer drunk. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. The most prominently negative effect of a sober-up spell was that it gave one an awful hangover. There was no hangover-cure spell, it was only a potion. Harry had bought some at one point, but had spilled it down the drain while trying to open it, and had never gotten around to buying any more of it. So now Ginny had condemned him to this agony and he was not happy about it. "Go'way, Ginny," he managed to mutter before weaving his way back to the chair and burying his face in the rough material. If his head exploded right now, he would offer his tearful thanks to the person who had taken away his pain.

"Harry, we need to talk." Ginny's tone was business-like and offered no chance that she was going to go away. "I've been talking to Felix. He's not pleased."

His face still buried in the chair, he said, "Did you know they're torturing him?"

"Excuse me? If you could sit up and talk to me rather than the chair, that would be great."

Cautiously and slowly, Harry turned himself around in the chair. Burying his head in his hands to try to ward off the pain, he repeated himself.

"I am also not in your hands. Harry, we're not going to get anywhere if I can't understand what you're saying."

He sat up and shouted, "They're torturing Snape! They want a confession out of him and so they're torturing him! And no one sees a thing wrong with it!" As soon as he had finished, he regretted raising his voice and wished that, if Voldemort was back, that he would just show up and kill him now, to spare him this agony.

"I know, Harry," said Ginny, softly. At least she appeared to have a bit of sense, having not yet raised her voice once. "But I agree with Felix. You're the one that can get the confession out of him. Not any of us, and I think that we all know that torture isn't going to do anything."

"Why me?"

"You saw it happen. He knows that, now."

"Are you sure?"

"Fairly sure. And if not, time he learned. You are the only person living today who saw him kill Dumbledore. That's why you have to get the confession out of him. That's why you're the only person that's going to be able to get it out of him."

Harry didn't think that there was any way to respond to that, so he didn't, and just concentrated on trying to mentally kill himself to get rid of all of this pain.

"Now, come on. We're getting you to bed, and tomorrow you're going to start acting like a normal person again." Without giving him any time to complain, she levitated him to his bed and left him there to his misery.