Chapter Four - Waking Up

Harry woke up with a pounding headache. Absently, he rubbed his forehead. Or rather, he tried to. All the fog vanished from his mind as his wrist was jerked to a halt by the shackle chaining him to the bed. Why was he on a bed? He had been at the salon. Had he been kidnapped again? He resisted the urge to groan aloud. He had moved to Italy to get away from things like this.

"Voi! I know you're awake, trash!" The voice was obscenely loud, and his head throbbed in protest. Harry swore that he could feel the echoes of the shout reverberating around the inside of his skull

It was also familiar. Harry turned his head, very carefully, towards the source of the noise. His entire head throbbed in agony at the movement, and he hissed. Was he concussed? His thinking was disordered, and he couldn't pull together an explanation for what had happened. There was only one way to find out. Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes, slamming them closed at the bright light.

"Look at me!" Again, the familiar voice.

"If you don't stop shouting, I am going superglue your mouth shut," Harry growled. He was not in a mood to cooperate, and the voice that was trying to liquidate his brain wasn't helping.

There was a giggle. That was familiar. A face flashed through his mind. Sunglasses, green hair. Lussuria. Right. He had turned his back like some firstie, assuming that anonymity kept him safe, that there was nothing a muggle could do to him before he had a chance to draw his wand. Moody was probably turning in his grave.

"Do you want to tell us why you're here, Harry-chan?" Lussuria cooed. The high-pitched voice felt like someone was taking a cheese grater to his brain, but that was a step up from feeling like it was being disintegrated, so he would take it over Shouty.

"Because one of customers decided to kidnap me." When in doubt, be a smartass.

"We just have some questions for you, Harry-chan. You want to help us, don't you?"

"Sure. Help. Of course, helping the people who chained me to a bed is my very first priority." Harry could hear Shouty growling, and imagined him grinding his teeth with the effort to keep quiet. It was a good image.

"Right then! What's your name?"

"Harry Evans," Harry said, before he was cut off.

"Voi! Don't even try it! We know that background is as fake as Lussuria's hair colour. Try again."

"Why do you want to know?" Harry was getting the feeling that he was in over his head. He should have shoved his curiosity back into its box and left Italy the first time he met these people. He knew that they were trouble – the twelve year old threw knives, for Merlin's sake! How much of a hint did he need? Hermione had told him that bad things happened when Slytherin curiosity and Gryffindor braver combined.

"No one is that comfortable around knives and blood with the experience your profile says you have. You're lying about something. If you can't explain what, I'm afraid we can't let you leave this room," Lussuria told him.

They were willing to talk, and he was in a bedroom instead of a dungeon. They had answered his question, and they hadn't started torture or anything. Harry got the feeling that for these people, this was civil. He didn't know whether to find that thought reassuring or terrifying.

"I was in the middle of the terrorist attacks in Britain. I lead a group of rebels. I saved the daughter of someone very important, so after the fighting ended, they created a false identity for me. I moved to Italy and became a hair dresser." Harry gave the entirely truthful, and very watered-down, version of events.

"Can't you give us any more details than that? Who did you save? What was your name before you changed it? Why Italy? You can't just leave us with half a story!" Lussuria demanded

Actually, Harry would have been quite happy leaving them with the abridged version. Still, he elaborated. "I saved the daughter of a wealthy businessman who had political connections. I only communicated through the daughter, for both our comfort and safety, and I'm almost sure that the name she gave me was fake anyway. Before I changed my name, I was Harry Potter. I chose Italy because Italian was the only language other than English that I spoke."

Harry was uncomfortably aware of both his watchers scrutinising his face as he spoke. He had no doubt that they would pick up on a lie, and he was grateful that his story was entirely muggle-friendly. The problem was if they went digging into Harry Potter's history, and found the gaps there.

"Can you open your eyes for me, Harry-chan?" Lussuria trilled, back to high-pitched fabulousness. It would have been reassuring if it hadn't been so painful.

Harry pried his eyes open. The light wasn't so overwhelming this time. His eyes felt nasty and sore. He really needed to change his contact lenses.

Shouty grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, so that Harry was forced to look into his eyes. Harry yelped in pain as his eyes watered.

"Are you Flame-active?"

What the Hell? Flame what? What did flames have to do with anything? His confusion must have been obvious – Moody really would be furious if he was that easy to read just because of a headache and possibly concussion – because Shouty scoffed and let go of his hair, relieving the awful pressure on his scalp.

"So it was a fluke. Too bad for you"

That didn't sound good. Harry tensed. The magic he could cast without his wand in his hand was painfully limited, but there had to be something he could do. This would be a really embarrassing way to die.

"Don't scare him, Squa-Squa!" Lussuria chimed in before Harry could commit to a course of action. "What Squalo means is that you know about us now, and it would ruin our reputation to let you go now, wouldn't it, hmm?"

"I don't know anything!" Harry was confused, and irritated. The grin on Lussuria's face suggested that he found that amusing.

"Aren't you a feisty one! And if you don't know anything, we'll just have to explain." Squalo interrupted him before he could continue.

"Voi! You're wasting time, trash. Listen up," Squalo addressed Harry. "We're the Varia. We're assassins. Cross us, and you die. You're now our full-time hairdresser. We'll set you up with a contract and everything. Congratulations."

"Okay. I'm your hairdresser. Anything else while we're here?" This was a shock. Now that he was more or less certain that there was no immediate danger, he really just wanted an hour or two to process. His head was ringing and throbbing, his wrists hurt and it was hard to focus on anything.

"Now that you mention it," the grin that Squalo gave him was pure evil, "Bel needs an adult role model in his life. Someone who can make sure he eats rights, goes to his lessons, who isn't intimidated by him. Thank you for volunteering."

Harry hated him. So, so much. And slamming his head back onto the bed not only failed to express his exasperation, it made his headache flare back to life, in all its vicious glory. Wonderful.

Yeah, Harry's pretty disoriented and useless here. Once he's feeling better, should he shrug and roll with it, try to escape, fight back or take another option?