17th June 1998
It was daytime.
Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived Twice, rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes. He groaned as his thoughts crashed into his conscious mind then pressed the heels of his hands down over his lids hard enough to see patterns, his breath harsh.
It had been several weeks since the final battle with Voldemort. Several weeks since he had gone to that forest to die, had lost so many friends…
His breath caught and he felt his heart quicken. The seconds seemed to stretch out into hours as if time suddenly stretched out before him endlessly.
Must regain control…
He took a slow breath in, held it for a few seconds, and then slowly released it before repeating until his pulse returned to normal.
These attacks had been happening with increased frequency since the Battle of Hogwarts. So often, Draco Malfoy, of all people, knew about them. Harry feared he was beginning to lose his grip after fighting for so long. He had no desire to confess how he was feeling to anyone else in case he was right.
He cast his mind back to the events after the battle.
The mob had taken Snape and the other Death Eaters away. He had found Draco Malfoy huddled under the bridge near the Great Lake sometime after his mother had been taken into custody and his father had been…
Harry winced at the memory of spotting Lucius' lifeless body dangling from a rope near the Forbidden Forest. His heart started speeding up again so he focused his thoughts on Draco instead.
Several calming breaths later, and he remembered how he had hidden Draco under his invisibility cloak and smuggled him away to Grimmauld Place.
He opened his eyes and stared at the mural a young Sirius had painted on his night sky twinkled above him, even with daylight creeping in.
His eyes started stinging with tears as he was crushed with a sense of loss once more. His mum and dad, Dumbledore, Sirius, Mad Eye, Lupin…
Shaking his head, Harry sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He reached his nightstand and slipped his glasses on before he took a messy swig of water and padded to the door. He took one moment to cast a sad glance around the room before disappearing into the hall.
The house was eerily quiet in the cold light of the morning. Dust covered every surface and the stale smell of years of neglect hung in the air.
Harry planned what to do with the place almost every day, yet could never muster up the energy to clean or replace anything. Part of him, if he was honest with himself, did not want to be here at all.
Voices of the fallen seemed to call to him from the kitchen where the Order had once met. Shadows walked by, only visible in his imagination, in the dark and miserable hallways.
He resisted the urge to shudder and made his way downstairs, the thought of tea beckoning.
With a mixture of surprise and relief, he was met with the sight of Draco Malfoy sitting at the table with a mug of tea which he was stirring with a chopstick absentmindedly.
They exchanged greetings wordlessly as Harry's eyes settled, quizzical, on the chopstick.
"Couldn't find the spoons in this damn place…" Draco explained in a clipped manner, and indicated the sugar bowl with his make-shift stirrer.
"They're in the second drawer, over there." Harry answered, crossing the room to the kettle.
"You should move them closer to the tea stuff. No wonder I couldn't find them."
"Sirius liked them there," Harry replied,chose a mug, and poured hot water over the tea bag.
"Well, I don't think he'd mind, somehow." Malfoy spat.
Harry resisted the urge to yell at the other young man and retrieved the milk from the fridge.
"Sirius liked them there," he repeated.
Malfoy huffed, clearly exasperated, and poured the rest of the sugar into his cup pointedly, depriving Harry of any.
Harry sat opposite Draco, where his GodFather used to sit and slowly sipped his tea, unwilling to rise to the bait.
Draco stirred the excess sugar in and focused his gaze on the knots in the wooden table instead.
The room filled with an uncomfortable silence, punctuated with slurps and the odd cough. Several minutes passed before Draco spoke again.
"You kept me up for ages last night with your damned nightmares, Potter," he complained. "I thought you were working on controlling yourself?"
Harry furrowed his brow and rolled his eyes.
"Then why," Draco pressed, "are you still screaming in your sleep?"
Harry almost growled in annoyance and stood, scraping his chair along the floor and crossing to the sink. He tipped the rest of his drink away and turned to leave.
"Harry…" Draco called after him, making him stop. "Harry…I think you should tell your friends about these attacks… You're not right, Potter…"
Harry glanced over his shoulder and scowled at the Slytherin.
"Thank for your 'concern', Malfoy, but I can deal with this."
He left the kitchen, slammed the door behind him, and made his way to the master bathroom.
The sooner he's gone, the better! He thought.
He turned the taps for hot and cold and allowed himself a small smile as he turned a third for bubbles.
The thought of a nice, relaxing soak in hot water was enough to put him into a reasonable mood. He retrieved the previous day's clothes from the floor and grabbed a fresh pair of boxer shorts on his way past the massive wardrobe in Sirius' old room.
He stripped quickly and slipped into the water, sighing as he did so.
The warmth eased his aching muscles and the salts filled his nostrils with the sweet scent of summer flowers. His anxiety uncoiled its tendrils from his mind and retreated into a dark recesses of his inner most thoughts. He took a deep breath and relaxed, floating in the roll-top bath.
The bathroom was the only room Harry had bothered to modernise as it had previously been virtually unusable. The cracked tiles, blackened with mould, had been replaced with gleaming white ones. The golden taps added a touch of ostentation to the room, completed with reed-woven bathroom furniture and indulgent fluffy white towels.
Transfiguring everything for the transformation had kept Harry busy for several days until he was happy with the aesthetic, but had yet to do more rooms since.
Malfoy had offered to assist him, but the thought of a Malfoy touching his dear Godfather's things was sickening. Besides, Harry mused, as he thought back to his brief time in Malfoy Manor, Draco was unlikely to have the same tastes for décor as he did.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
"I'm in the bath!" Harry snapped, irritated again.
"Hurry up then," Malfoy replied. "I'm not using the guest bathroom-it's utterly disgusting!"
Harry rolled his eyes and sank deeper into his water.
The guest bathroom was very dark, covered in serpent-green paint that made it feel small and oppressive. The silver taps and fixtures had tarnished black after Kreacher had ignored them for a decade.
The entire guest wing was not somewhere Harry felt comfortable in alone. In that respect, as much as he did not wish to admit it, he was grateful for his surprise house-guest.
Another loud knock and Harry sat up angrily.
"Fine! Wait a minute!" He bellowed.
He ripped the plug out of his bath sooner than he would have liked and quickly towelled himself dry, then and dressed as fast as his fingers would allow. He glanced at his toothbrush before he opened the door to the corridor and his rude refugee beyond.
His breath caught in his throat as his eyes met the sight of Draco Malfoy's naked torso.
He stared at his rival's body and lingered on his flat stomach before, all of their own volition, his eyes meandered down a trail of shining platinum hair to where the towel was wrapped around Draco's waist.
Harry blinked and met Malfoy's eyes, remembering his frustration.
"We need a bathroom rota if we're going to share like this," he stated and pushed past towards the stairs.
Malfoy had stayed upstairs for most of the morning, leaving Harry to eat his breakfast alone with his thoughts. He turned over his situation again and again, searching for an answer.
The Death Eaters had been rounded up and the court system was churning out as many trials as possible to get through them all. The majority had been sent to Azkaban, a handful to St Mungo's, and a couple had received pardons.
Harry scanned the newspaper every day for any mention of Severus Snape but so far, his search had been fruitless.
Narcissa Malfoy was also yet to go to trial, though Harry did not expect a reprieve.
He spread butter on his toast with purpose, focusing on the task to allow his mind a chance to arrange itself.
He, Harry, was harbouring a criminal.
Harry had no doubt that Draco had been taken advantage of and he deeply regretted his decisions which had led to his taking the mark. However, that was a story being told time and time again in the trials and Harry could not shake the idea that this was the type of person Voldemort chose as Death Eaters.
All of them were angry youths with something to prove, all had been rejected by the wizarding world in some form or other, and all had been vulnerable.
He had not been able to save Snape, but perhaps he could argue the case for Draco…somehow.
Harry felt tears sting his eyes for the second time that day. He had very few people left whom he could trust with this and they were all concerned with other things…
Ron had lost his brother and as a family, the Weasleys were mourning. Harry still felt welcome with them, but he could not help feeling that he was encroaching on their family's private time.
He and Ginny had enjoyed a brief romance, but a mixture of her grief and Harry's anxiety had resulted in a mutual separation. If he were truly honest with himself, she had never quite felt right. There was something...missing...somehow.
Hermione had decided to throw herself back into her studies and was attending her seventh year at Hogwarts. Ron and she were seeing each other during the holidays and had been so wrapped up in their new relationship, Harry had felt like a third wheel and had declined further offers to see them.
Besides, he cast his eyes upwards at the ceiling, he had been in a constant state of panic whenever he was away from the house and Malfoy, fearing discovery.
I suppose I'm stuck with Draco alone until I've worked out what to do with him…
He tossed the knife down angrily and bit a rough chunk out of the heart started to race and a familiar churning sensation appeared in his stomach.
I won't let them take him, he concluded. They got Snape, I'm not letting them near Malfoy…
Severus lay in the darkness of his cell, lying on his side and staring at the bars a few feet away from him.
I don't want to die here, he thought, bitterly. I wanted to die in Hogwarts…It was the only place I ever felt at home...A single, lonely tear rolled down his face entirely independent from his will.
The Dementors may have been banished from this place, but it was still incredibly cold and hopeless. The walls were seeped in endless poor souls' tears, unanswered words hid in the cracks in the mortar, prayers lay in the floor slabs.
He shivered against the cold and held himself as tightly as his battered body would allow.
The bones in his hand had been clumsily healed, the dexterity lost in his long, clever fingers.
No matter, he thought , it's not like I need them anyway.
He started sealing up his mind from emotion, as he had done as a spy. Layer upon layer of buried feelings and memories, slowly retreating where even he could not find them.
A loud clang on the bars jolted him out of his mental exercise.
"You're the bastard what killed Dumbledore, ain't ya?"
He steeled himself and glanced over from his position in the corner of the room.
"Grammar is clearly a weakness of yours," he said silkily to the dark shape in the corridor. "I don't even know where to start with that sentence."
The other man slammed the bars again with a metal rod he held. Snape tried to keep the fear off his face at the sight of it, aware the candle light made him visible to his tormentor.
"I asked you a question, Death-Eater scum," came the angry reply.
Snape cocked his head to one side and sneered at him, unwilling to be intimidated by a man who could barely string words together.
The man stepped a bit closer and into the light.
His features were as clumsy as his intellect and he was quite short and wide. His matted dark hair framed his face messily and his eyes looked dull, though they held rod in his hand was also lit up and it became clear it was a branding iron.
Snape shivered involuntarily and decided it may be best to cooperate.
The man pressed his face between the bars and glared at him.
"Dumbledore was a great wizard," the man spat. "You are a pathetic sad-case with no one. I saw at your trial- usually there's some deluded idiot who still loves the wanker in the chair, but not you. You're all alone."
He kicked the bars, sending a loud vibration peeling around the room.
"Bet no one will even collect your body," he continued, "We'll have to throw it in the sea for the animals to eat…"
Snape swallowed a sob of self pity, tore his eyes away from the man, and fixed his gaze on the floor.
What would happen to his remains after his death had not really occurred to him.
Snape was not a spiritual man, he preferred to live in the here and now, so it came as a nasty shock that such a thing should end up mattering.
He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of more footsteps and the gate to the cell opening.
Three other men stepped in and made their way across to him.,The man with whom he had just conversed followed in behind with the iron and a torch.
He was grabbed and wrenched to his feet by his arms.
His hands were secured behind his back by one man while another- tall with a deep scar on his cheek and a very clumsy shave, stood in front of him, grinning.
Snape's blood went cold and he fought the feeling of helplessness. His survival instinct refused to allow him to relax into his fate and he found himself panting and struggling.
"I'm sentenced to prison, I was not aware of any corporal punishment being included in that!" He protested. "You are in direct violation of dozens of rules and regulations!"
The tall man in front of him smirked and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
"Who's going to care what we do to you?" he asked, a sadistic edge to his voice that Snape knew all too well.
His words sank in and Snape felt the fight leave him.
He blinked up into the cruel face, who was now undoing the buttons on the front of Snape's prison robes.
"Why…?" He found himself asking.
A rumble of laughter came from each one of the men as the tallest one reached the last button and undid it.
"We all had kids in Hogwarts last year, you sick fuck," he answered. "Milton and Arto's sons were both tortured by your cronies…"
He gestured to the man holding Snape from behind, and the other over his shoulder.
"We all had great respect for Dumbledore," the man named Milton' added. "You remember - the man you murdered in cold blood?"
The tall man stood aside so Snape could take in what the other two were doing behind him, now made visible.
The iron was being heated over the flames from Arto's wand. The metal started to glow red-hot and Snape felt a bead of sweat run down his forehead and tears sting his eyes.
He froze with fear, no longer able to struggle against the man he now knew as Milton's grip.
I've never been branded before, he thought desperately. I wonder if it hurts as much as it looks like it does…
His musings came to an end when his legs were kicked out,forcing him to kneel. His head was pulled back so he had to watch the iron-glowing red and shaped in a lightning bolt- come towards him.
"No!" He found himself yelling as the metal was pressed to his sternum.
He screamed with all his might but it did nothing to lessen the pain. It was almost as excruciating as the Cruciatus curse, yet isolated to one point.
He felt his skin crisp and burn as the disgusting scent of his own cooking flesh hit his nose and sent a wave of nausea to his stomach.
His body twisted and contorted yet was held fast as the iron was pressed harder, until it was finally withdrawn.
The pain, however, still remained and he found himself pathetically sobbing and crying out in reaction to it.
His head hit the hard stone floor as he was tossed down and he curled up into a ball, muttering and weeping as the extreme burning sensation gave way to a persistent, throbbing agony.
He was unaware when the giggling men left, busy as he was, throwing up his last meagre meal and choking on his own tears.
After a few hours, he managed to pull himself from the pain-filled haze and pulled his knees to his damaged chest, closing up like an oyster, taking care not to touch the wound.
"Dumbledore…" he whispered into the darkness, "Lily…"
